Film reviews and commentary, random thoughts on the world around us, blatant promotion of favorite charities, and other ponderables.
Nang Nak (1999) Director: Nonzee Nimibutr
By Marilyn Ferdinand
You know a film renaissance is taking place in a country when one of its indigenous products outgrosses one of Hollywood’s juggernauts. That’s exactly what Nang Nak did to Titanic in Thailand, showing that the Thai New Wave was alive and real. Nonzee Nimibutr tapped a popular and enduring legend that had already received numerous film and television adaptations; from that standpoint, he was ensuring he had a built-in audience. But the huge popularity of his film in Thailand spread beyond the country’s borders. What ignites this version of the legend and gives it universal appeal are the deeply felt performances of its principal actors, Intira Jaroenpura and Winai Kraibutr, as Nak and Mak, a wife and husband who share a great and enduring love.
The film is set in the late 1860s in a rural area near Bangkok. Mak has been called to war. He tries to comfort his grief-stricken wife Nak as a row boat paddled by his friend comes down the stream on which they live to take Mak away. Nak clings to Mak as he arises and moves toward the stairs that lead to a small pier. She reluctantly lets go of him and plaintively calls his name as he climbs into the boat and slowly disappears from view.
The film moves forward to show the separate situations of Mak and Nak. Mak, in the middle of a battle, looks for his friend Prig, whose voice he thinks he hears. Gunfire and strewn bodies lay in his path. Injured himself, he passes out near Prig, who is near death. Coming to, he urges Prig to hang in there, but Prig’s eyes roll up in his blood-spattered head. Mak yells in a panic for the medics to come to his aid. From this point on, Mak’s injury will put him near death’s door for many months.
Meanwhile, Nak is revealed to be pregnant. She learns of Mak’s condition, but is unable to go to him. Worried, she goes to the head of the Buddhist temple in her town. He tells her that Mak’s good fortune remains strong and will help him through his illness. Nonetheless, she asks him to pray for Mak’s recovery. As she tends to the family farm, she feels a sudden spasm of pain. The town’s midwife is called, and Nak begins a very arduous birthing. At the same time as Nak goes through her ordeal, Mak has terrible dreams, ending with a horrifying image of Prig’s face at the time of death. He awakens with a scream, as Nimibutr cuts to Nak’s scream as the midwife cuts her vagina with a piece of glass to allow more room for her baby’s head to pass.
Eventually, Mak recovers from his illness and sets off for home. The stream on which he pushes his boat is marked with signs of decay and destruction. However, when his own home comes into view, Nak is standing on the pier. They call each other’s name, this time with joy. Mak discovers that his wife has borne a son, Dang. Nak is especially protective of Dang, keeping him with her always, even as she goes off to perform an errand Mak intended to do. Nak and Mak would seem to be off to a good life together, but strange warnings from their neighbors and unexpected problems at home—rats below the house, an unexpected break in a formerly solid rung on the front steps, strange forebodings of separation that keep Nak up at night—threaten their happiness.
If you know the story of Nang Nak (a term that has become synonymous in Thailand with “faithful wife"), you know what’s troubling Nak and the village. If you don’t know the story—as I did not—Nimibutr plants disturbing scenes throughout, from the horrifying image of the dead Prig to tense close-ups of Nak shaving Mak with a straight razor, to guide the viewer toward the truth. As the film progresses, the villagers reveal the secret that some viewers may already have suspected.
I found myself both anxious and saddened by the fate that was bound to befall the loving couple. In the interests of suspense, I won’t reveal some of the events that mix traditional folk beliefs and remedies with Buddhism in a tantalizing look at Thai culture. Just know that Thailand was revealed to me in richer detail, with brief and stunning fixed shots of natural settings announcing the passing of time through the changing of the seasons as well as the strength of culture that has helped the story of Nang Nak persist. The story is the strength of this film and carries it through some of the rudimentary acting and occasional clumsy editing. I was a bit baffled by the poor English subtitles, but never lost.
Most affecting of all was Intira Jaroenpura as Nak. A willowy actress of subtle beauty and grace, Jaroenpura imbues Nak with a poignancy that is very moving. Her first separation from Mak is grudging and helpless; her last, heartbreaking but filled with a kind of acceptance. It is said that a Nang Nak actually lived and that a relic of hers, inscribed with story and prayer, has been passed down from one Buddhist monk to the next until it passed out of the monastery, never to be seen again. The relic has become a symbol of eternal love. While some Thai fear the legend of Nang Nak, Jaroenpura restores the emotional core of the story with power, beauty, and sympathy. l
Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It’s a day when we remember our dead, particularly those who have served in combat. I mean no disrespect to the war dead and their families, but it has become more than painfully obvious that dying in war is no great honor, that war is a web of insanity in which sane people often are caught. Yet, we remember our fallen combatants in a sainted glow that, in my opinion, allows society to continue to make war. This myth is just one of many we as a society collude in to perpetuate norms.
It may seem trite at this point to switch to movies, but movies are the dreams societies have about themselves. In the case of Hollywood, they bolster the norms of American society and, increasingly, global societies that gobble them like popcorn. Independent film and documentaries may be an antidote to this myth-making, though those areas of filmmaking are often target of cooption by the majors, who prefer to control the story. And every story has its heroes and its villains.
That brings me to biopics. These films are practically destined to become fictions, lantern shows of good and evil. How does this happen? Historical records of long-dead figures may be lacking, contradictory, or deliberately embellished for the sake of posterity. If the subject is more contem- porary—and beloved—it can be hard to show the warts and all without inflaming outrage among fans and family alike. If the subject is still alive, he or she may become hostile to the project if things aren’t told just the right way or, more often, create an self-consciousness in the filmmakers that causes them to self-censor. Still other subjects may be used as nothing more than a template upon which to hang a fictional story, with name recognition used to pull in the crowds. There is even the question of whether a subject’s private life is relevant, whether a biopic should concern itself with the accomplishments of the subject to the near-exclusion of the life.
If you look below at the comments section of my review of Crazy, a new biopic about country/jazz musician Hank Garland, you’ll see some heartfelt concerns by Debra Garland, Hank’s youngest of two daughters. The comments led to a short correspondence between me and Debi, who was written out of the film and who has a running feud with her uncle Billy over it. I don’t know the exact nature of the feud, but I do know that the liberties this biopic took caused a great deal of conflict, not to mention a serious rewriting of history that sometimes becomes accepted fact. In this case, Debi was disappeared; for the people like me who may never have heard of Hank Garland before seeing the movie, there never was a younger daughter named Debra.
I started thinking about the nature of biopics and some films that are much beloved, perhaps for the wrong reasons: for example, what I consider the worst biopic ever made: The Pride of the Yankees. Obviously hurried into production to take advantage of the great public grief over the death of Lou Gehrig, it made Gehrig right-handed for everything but hitting and allowed Babe Ruth to mug shamelessly during Gehrig’s “luckiest man" speech. This film was excruciating in every way—and not just because it was a lie from the word “action"—yet it’s a cherished film among many moviegoers.
Then there is one of the best—The Song of Bernadette. This film about the teenage girl who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in a grotto at Lourdes takes its story and dialog from the historical record, reproducing the look of a mid 19th century French village, its poverty, and its transformation following the miracle. Only small touches may have been embellished to bring out some of the philosophical differences of the time, strengthening rather than weakening the biography. Why was Bernadette’s story so faithful to what we know about her? Is it because a belief in miracles and religion suits society? And is the miracle itself merely a lie made true by the faithful? You see, this biopic stuff gets complicated.
I’ve pondered this question from a lot of angles, and I’d like your opinions. What purpose do you think biopics serve? Why have they endured as a movie form? What examples do you have of good and bad biopics? I’d be very interested in your opinions. l
The Little Soldier (Le Petit Soldat, 1960) Director: Jean-Luc Godard
By Roderick Heath
After his debut with the vivid gangster film Breathless (À Bout de Souffle, 1959), Jean-Luc Godard, the once and future champion of avant-garde cinema, got himself in trouble. Again. Wanting to make a film about the still-raging French-Algerian war, he decided to make a work centering on the nest of espionage in his native city of Geneva, and where he figured he could make a film even more cheaply than his Parisian debut. He advertised in the newspaper for a “lead actress and girlfriend"—the man’s cheek knew no bounds. One girl who answered was a 17-year-old Dane named Anna Karina, soon to be Godard’s wife and muse. So he got what he asked for. And, as they say, those whom the Gods wish to destroy…
The Little Soldier, his second film, was not seen as his second. It was banned by the French authorities for three years, by which time he had come along in his directorial development. If The Little Soldier was something of a lost and rudely treated film, it bears attention as a thematic precursor to his genuinely anarchic Week-End (1967). The Little Soldier tells of the impossible position of Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), a young Frenchman who deserted from the army to hole up in neutral Switzerland, making his living as a photographer. Judging by his various conversations and confessions throughout the movie, his background is left wing, but he has fallen into the hands of the right-wing OSA, the reactionary paramilitary group who later attempt to assassinate DeGaulle for making peace with the Algerians. The reason for Bruno’s involvement remains shadowy—possibly lingering patriotism and guilt. His chief, Jacques (Henri-Jacques Huet), orders him to assassinate Palivoda, whose radio program “A Neutral Speaks" appears to be funded by pro-Algerian Marxists. Meanwhile, he is introduced by Paul (Paul Beauvais), a fellow OAS operative to Veronica Dreyer (Karina), an acquaintance. The friend bets Bruno 50 francs he will fall in love with her. Bruno pays the 50 francs at the end of their first meeting.
Bruno, like Belmondo in Breathless, is a man in love with his own image (“I am a secret agent after all," he states mysteriously to Veronica), except that his ardour is toned with a dark personal irony that’s not too inappropriate considering the backyard spy games he’s gotten himself into. He and Jacques are responsible for a previous assassination, and the lingering bitter taste, plus a personal aversion to feeling “defeated," causes him to refuse Jacques’ assignment to kill Palivoda. Jacques promises to pressure Bruno by getting him into trouble with the Swiss authorities, which might then mean his deportation to France and imprisonment there. Bruno’s attitude is, essentially, bring it on. He’s much too smitten with Veronica to care.
Hired by Veronica to take some photos, Bruno comes to her apartment, and they flirt shamelessly. As often with Godard, he presents explicitly long takes that are of a pretty girl being asked questions and offering her teasing answers, encouraging the viewer to drink up coquettish beauty exactly like a smitten, probing boyfriend. This is Godard at his most becalmed, wanting us to be sensitive to the slightest flash of her eye and curl of hair. It’s his sense of cinema boiled down to the fixated image. The sequence—Veronica cavorting playfully before Bruno’s camera, with still shots of Karina’s beaming features interspersed—became something of a handbook for how to shoot romantic lyricism in the 1960s.
Like all of Godard’s films, there is lying at its core an infuriating conflict—the conflict between intellectual discourse and cinematic sensuality. For example, Bruno luxuriates in verbal artefact when he engages in a long, fumbling, pseudointellectual rave about his inability to commit to any side because of his lingering, sometimes banal, attachment to various national products (“I like America because I like American cars"). Yet, Godard also turns to the visual image, the powerful conduit of feeling, like those long lingering close-ups of Karina. It’s more than a mere conflict between commitment and aesthetic—they intermingle in rich ways, as Godard’s sense of cinema is inextricable with his sense of politics. But how? Why? How, for instance, can he be a filmmaker so adoring of Hollywood’s mastery over the strength of cinema, whilst being so theoretically opposed to such industrialised art?
Godard’s answer was to fragment the cinematic space, to appreciate the shot over the tale because the shot is individual and dialectic—a communication device that lays out detail in opposition to narrative, which pulls the viewer to a preordained moral and intellectual conclusion. His lightning-in-a-bottle sense of cinema, full of flash edits, artfully haphazard cityscapes, and disorientating pans, revivifies the senses as much as he assaults them (with Raoul Coutard’s customarily extraordinary photography) with a vision that owes far more to the crisp energy of action photographers like Cartier-Bresson and Capa than to Hollywood. His attempts to overcome the limitations of traditional cinema in constructing the kind of art he desires were always determined but fumbling, much like Bruno’s speechifying, prefigured with a poet’s sense that everything is connected (as T.S. Eliot formulised the poet’s sensibility) and to place all things on an equal footing (intellectual explication; sensual admiration; the right of works in other art forms to claim centre-stage in a film). Hence, Bruno’s narration is as subdivided as Godard’s herky-jerky visuals, a reading list of young intellectual talking points and obsessions, swinging from fatalistic contemplations of his immediate fate as an agent to meditations on poets and cinema. Godard’s aesthetic battle between discourse and narrative, dialectic and dogma, would be the keynote of his career, a conflict he would take to various levels of climax—the traffic jam sequence in Week-End and its scene of the revolutionary garbagemen represent polar opposite solutions.
No one would ever mistake Godard for a feminist. His films are filled with duplicitous and untrustworthy femmes, many of whom end up branded as such and degraded, if not dead. Veronica, proves to be is associated with the enemy because they have ideals. Yet, in a way, she embodies the core of Godard’s sympathy for those with ideals rather than prejudices. Bruno’s conflicted situation, his higher level of self-awareness, and the more mysterious nature of Veronica means the film has a darker, more urgent sensibility than Breathless. Godard embraces melodramatic narrative sufficiently to make for a film that works rather more as a thriller than anything else he made.
Nonetheless, his emphases are entirely different to any like film prior to its making, with the long romantic scenes where nothing overtly romantic happens (the leap from edgy flirtation to Veronica in Bruno’s bed is skipped over). Usually realistic torture was never detailed before in movies, but here, in the film’s centrepiece sequence, Bruno, on the outs with the OAS who label him coward and traitor after his attempts to kill Palivoda end farcically, is captured by their enemies and is subjected to burns, suffocation, and electrocution in their attempts to pry Jacques’ phone number out of him. Bruno has no loyalty to Jacques or his tinpot agents, but keeps his mouth shut, once again, to avoid being defeated. His escape, rather than a nail biter, is amusingly simple—he leaps through a window, taking the chance that their room is on the first floor, and his voiceover informs us, as the camera cuts away to a shot of a high building, that, indeed, it was on the first floor.
That’s the closest Godard ever comes to Truffaut’s style of genre mockery (e.g., Shoot the Piano Player). But Godard uses the offhand nature of this narrative device as a double-edged blade—the finale’s tragic revelations are once again imparted only in voiceover, with ironic distance, as we watch Bruno, pressured at last into killing Palivoda to save Veronica, shoot the man in the back and make his escape, only to learn he disappears into anonymity and that Veronica dies from the OAS torture anyway. In his attempts to avoid defeat without taking a stand, Bruno defeats himself utterly. Nonetheless, as he states, “One thing I learnt is not to be bitter. I am just glad to have so much time ahead of me." It seems a bleak statement—a long future without Veronica—but it also contains an affirmation. Bruno has escaped into the future, and what he decides to do there will be entirely his own choice.
Godard’s attention to the new nature of warfare seems now positively prescient. The Algerian insurrection invented much of the current landscape of violence—terrorist bombings of civilian targets and methods of torture that are today chillingly familiar. If Godard’s take on the event is naively student-Marxist, tone-deaf to the notes of religious nationalism, it doesn’t lessen his electric sense of where the modern world was heading, atomising into cells of belief and allegiance. The lovers’ trysts, torture sessions, and terrorist cells hiding out in blandly boxlike modern apartments portrays a world becoming quickly devoid of true reference, and Bruno’s urgent attempts to synthesise his beliefs, his artistic and human fancies, is the behaviour of someone trying to knit himself a reference before he concludes in a long rave that silence might be the only worthwhile sound. Forty-eight years on, the energy welling out of this film is still startling and unsettling. l
Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage, 1959) Director: Georges Franju
The Devil Rides Out (1967) Director: Terence Fisher
By Roderick Heath
What’s the greatest horror film ever made?
Everyone will have a different answer to that, of course. Some will even say it’s an oxymoron. Lately, I caught up with two films that present themselves effectively for the nomination.
In many ways, they couldn’t be more different. Eyes Without a Face was a slow, unnerving, arty one-off for Georges Franju, a French filmmaker with a single previous credit—a documentary about slaughterhouses called L’Sang des Bêtes (1946). The Devil Rides Out is rocket-paced, entertaining, and artful. One is made by a French poet slumming and rising up with a pearl, the other by an English professional presenting his sleekest piece of craftsmanship. And yet they also share some qualities. Both films make the fantastic plausible and enthralling with solid settings, realistic detail, and minimalism in their special effects and mise en scène. Both films tell tales that involve a slow dive from a world of the everyday into bottomless pits of depravity. Both were unpopular at the time of their releases.
It’s virtually impossible to see Eyes Without a Face without prior knowledge as to what it’s about, and yet the way it introduces its audience to its grisly tale as a starkly unfolding mystery is cinematic narrative intelligence defined. The introductory scene instantly grabs attention, raising dozens of questions as it presents them. We see a woman (Alida Valli, in fact) driving a car—her face a map of anxiety—keeping an eye on the suited, hatted figure resting on the backseat and becoming electric with fear when a pair of headlights speed up behind her vehicle. It proves to be just an overtaking van. What is she afraid of? The answer comes in the subtlest, deftest of shots—the figure in the back of the car slumps over slightly, unmistakably a corpse. Soon, Valli is dragging this body, which proves to be that of a young woman, to dump in a lake.
The police cannot identify the corpse, so they call in two men who both have missing daughters, one of whom, Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur), a reputed surgeon, immediately identifies it as his girl. But it isn’t. His daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), was horrendously injured in a car accident and disappeared from the hospital. She lives in his villa up the road from the small hospital he runs, and is so disfigured she weard an eerie mask that mimics her proper face and yet travesties it. The discovered corpse was actually the result of a botched attempt by her father to perform a complete facial graft. The murdered girl is laid to rest in the cemetery under the stern eye of the doctor, his assistant Louise (Valli), whom he rescued from disfigurement, and Jacques (François Guérin), Christiane’s fiancé. Christiane places the blame for both the accident and his sickening quest on her father’s relentless desire for control. Indeed, for all Génessier and Valli’s “caring" motives, their icy savagery is revealed as all the more appalling as Valli tricks a young Swiss student (Juliette Mayniel) into their lair, where Génessier, with surgical skill and precision, slices off her face.
The long operation sequence, which Franju’s camera observes in fixated shots, were highly daring in 1959. Some have suggested Fanju’s film, along with Psycho and La Maschera del Demonio (both 1960), initiated the drift toward splatter-gore movies. But the scene is utterly functional, and quite sensitizing, providing an ideal counterpoint to the shallow showiness of modern equivalents. It does prefigure and well outclass elements of Eli Roth’s Hostel (2005) in exploiting the terror in the notion of awakening in a basement to find someone slicing bits off you. Franju’s approach to gore is interesting. He presents the surgery scene with uncompromising directness, but avoids properly showing Christiane’s disfigurement, for which we have been well prepped by the police discussions (“…and the rats," mentions one cop disquietingly in discussing her injuries) and the reaction of Mayniel when she sees her.
The taut realism of most of Eyes Without a Face, carefully etched by Eugen Schufftan’s barren cinematography, stands in effective contrast to the potential silliness of its story, not so far from The Raven (1936) or Circus of Horrors (1959), as well as to the carefully placed flourishes of fairytale poeticism that punctuate the tale in which it anticipates Argento’s Suspiria. Christiane is associated with white doves (a pre-accident portrait of her shows her with one seated on her hand) and is confirmed as an innocent for whom life both without her face is impossible but for whom the process of getting a new one is even worse. With her doll-like mask, childish clothes, essential fragility, and friendship with birds and the dogs caged in the basement (which her father uses for his torturous grafting experiments), she evokes a Snow White, Gretel, or Rapunzel at the mercy of an evil sorcerer and stepmother. It’s also not so fantastic as we’d like to think: in her control-freak father seen by the world as a gravely responsible authority figure, keeping his daughter in a state of perpetual juvenility in a home/prison, her beauty spoilt by his actions and henceforth in his hands, it’s not hard to see parallels with the recent Josef Fritzl case in Austria.
The turns of the story’s screws are careful and relentless. The graft of the Swiss girl’s face is apparently successful, Christiane restored to radiant beauty for a time, hoping to live a life for the girls who have been sacrificed as well as for herself. But cell necrosis sets in, and her father has to cut her new face off again, a tale baldly told in a series of photographs he’s taken of her new, then slowly rotting visage. A police investigation proves incredibly half-hearted and only succeeds in placing in danger a pretty, young shoplifter (Beatrice Altariba), who volunteers as bait. Therefore, the film can only end in a kind of familial apocalypse. To save this potential victim, Christiane stabs her evil pseudo-stepmother in the throat and releases her animal friends, the baying dogs to tear her father to pieces before she wanders out into a dark world, her face still a waxen mystery, a dove perched on her hand once more.
Franju’s poised camera is aided by a world-class set of collaborators—within a few years, DP Schufftan and composer Maurice Jarre, whose creepy-carnival score ties the film together with sickly romanticism, would have Oscars. The team of writers adapting Jean Redon’s novel include future director Claude Sautet and the famed writing duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who also provided the source material for Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques and Hitchcock’s Vertigo; like those films Eyes Without a Face retains a mysterious poise between the familiar, even seedy, and the fantastic, the threatening. Brasseur, best known for his delightfully charismatic performance in Les Enfants du Paradis, is the total antithesis here, as a dour, obsessive patriarch who keeps his emotions so deeply buried they only find proper expression in obscene activity. Scob effectively embodies a brittle innocence.
* * *
The Devil Rides Out apparently was the idea of Christopher Lee, who was and is something of a fantasy literature freak and who prodded Hammer Films to tackle Dennis Wheatley’s large canon. Wheatley, a skilled adventure writer with a gift for plot and pace, beloved of crackpots and counterculture acolytes as well as blood-and-thunder fans, contrived a fantastically broad conflation in his Black Magic novels, many of which featured the heroic Duc de Richlieu, in a kind of new-age wonderland that placed all religions and superstitions on a roughly equal footing. This mystical egalitarianism was undercut by Wheatley’s tendencies to racial stereotyping and cultural cliché. His terrific, if uneven, novel The Devil Rides Out (1934) was the first of these and a huge success. For the screenplay, Richard Matheson offered a stripped-down version of the novel’s narrative that cleaned off all the fat and the spiritualist mumbo-jumbo, leaving a tale that suited director Terence Fisher’s no-nonsense aesthetics perfectly.
Fisher had been on the outs with Hammer since the flop of his version of The Phantom of the Opera (1962), and fought his way through with the impressive The Gorgon (1963) and the delightfully tacky Island of Terror and Island of the Burning Doomed (both 1966). Along with the hilariously bad The Lost Continent (1966), Devil began a short-lived Wheatley cycle. As happened several times to Hammer when it became ambitious, the film flopped. The studio template would limp along in the future with soft-core teases like The Vampire Lovers (1970) and more lame Dracula films. The Devil Rides Out then might be considered the high water mark of Hammer Films: its production values are high, the cast generally excellent, and the sets and effects markedly improved from the pasteboard delights of the early films, making for a general lack of cheesy moments. Not that they’re entirely lacking. What fun would a Hammer film be without a little cheese?
Technically, Wheatley’s novel was a sequel, utilising characters set up in his earlier adventure novels. Matheson disposes of these background elements entirely, reducing the relationship between de Richlieu (Lee), Rex van Rijn (Leon Greene), and Simon Aron (Patrick Mower) to a simple basis—the Duc and Rex served with Simon’s father in the Lafayette Escadrille. Rex flies in from America to visit his old chums, meeting the Duc at the airport, but when they proceed to Simon’s house, they find he has been co-opted into a mysterious group of strangers, including the dark-haired beauty Tanith (Nike Arrighi) and the silver-haired, charismatic Mocata (Charles Gray). His suspicions stirred, the Duc discovers telltale signs that Simon has become involved with black magic. Rex knocks their friend out, and they carry him to the Duc’s London house, but a baleful influence causes Simon to almost strangle himself with the totemic crucifix the Duc places around his neck. Then it is removed to save his life, Simon immediately runs off. Returning to Simon’s house, the Duc and Rex narrowly avoid falling under the influence of an evil spirit Mocata has invoked—a short, tubby, black guy with glowing eyes.
To dig up a lead (and other things), Rex tracks down Tanith and takes her for a drive in the country. He encourages her to leave the coven and Mocata’s influence, but his plea falls on deaf ears, literally, as Tanith is mesmerised by Mocata in the rearview mirror. Tanith steals his car and drives into the yard of a white mansion with a creepy, multiheaded bird-serpent-thing guarding the front gate. It’s the base for the coven, which then proceeds to an invocation/orgy in the woods where Mocata plans to initiate Simon and Tanith into Satanism. They summon The Goat of Mendes, or, as only Christopher Lee can pronounce it properly, “The Devil himself!" But Rex and the Duc aren’t cowered by the prince of darkness. They drive Rex’s car into the midst of the coven, deliver a few good socks on the jaw, steal away their friends, and hole up in the country manor of de Richlieu’s niece Marie (Sarah Lawson) her husband Richard (Paul “Yes Minister" Eddington), and their child Peggy (Rosalyn Landor).
Fisher’s core contribution to the horror genre was an insistence on cliché-free villainy, the superior attractiveness of on-screen evil today considered axiomatic best defined in Fisher’s Dracula (1958) when the beast that descends the stairs proves not to be a fanged weirdo, but the rakishly handsome Lee. Fisher deftly provides more attractive evil in the form of Gray’s Mocata, described in the book as a pale, bloated creep, but here a lean, charismatic opposite to Lee’s rigorous de Richlieu. Gray’s Mocata, with jolly arrogance, visits the house when the Duc is absent, at first presenting himself as criminally misunderstood and helpful, and then slowly, in a rather brilliantly shot and edited sequence, asserting mesmeric influence over Marie, and driving Simon and Tanith to attack their guardians. Only the interruption by Peggy breaks Mocata’s grip on the household, and he is forced to leave, but with the grim promise that “something will come" in the night.
The Duc knows too well what this entails. Whilst Tanith insists that Rex keep her tied up well away from the others and remain with her in a barn, the Duc clears out Richard and Marie’s living room and sketches a mammoth magic circle on the floor within which they spend the night. They are assailed by psychological assaults, poisoned water, illusions of Peggy in danger, giant tarantulas in one of the genre’s greatest sequences, building in pace with a sleekly mobile camera by DP Arthur Grant, working in widescreen and tight editing. After they have resisted all these torments, eerie silence reigns, to be broken by the distant clatter of a horse’s hooves approaching. This is the Angel of Death himself called by Mocata to cart them all off to hell. The Duc warns them all not to look on his face, but when the armoured Angel lifts the beaver on his helmet, it reveals a grinning skull. Only the Duc’s shouting an obscure spell, the powerful but dangerous Susumar Ritual, seems to drive away the beast—but at a cost. Rex stumbles in with Tanith’s corpse, her soul having been stolen away by the Angel, and Peggy has been seized by Mocata for sacrifice.
From here on the novel rambles a bit, so Matheson and Fisher pare it back. The Duc summons Tanith’s spirit from the underworld, using Marie as the medium, to find where Mocata has take Peggy. Tanith’s fear of a guarding “winged serpent" tips Rex that they are at the white mansion. Simon, having already realised this, has rushed there, but finds he is powerless against Mocata. When the Duc and others arrive, Rex’s two-fisted approach doesn’t exactly cut it, and the Duc is too afraid to use the Susumar Ritual again. But Tanith takes possession of Marie again, and the possessed woman proceeds harmlessly through the coven. She gets the innocent Peggy to repeat the Ritual, and all hell literally breaks lose—the coven bursts into flames, and Mocata collapses when a huge crucifix is revealed behind a curtain. Suddenly, our heroes awaken, still resting within the magic chalk circle. When Rex brings in a very alive and clingy Tanith, the Duc realises that time has been reversed. Tthey have won their battle against Evil, and the reward is that the Angel stole back to Hades with Mocata rather than Tanith. Now that’s a dues ex machina ending.
If The Devil Rides Out largely lacks the bleakly ironic subtexts of Fisher’s initial Frankenstein and Dracula films, it does extend both his love of attractive evil and stern good, which become mutually destructive forces, using and consuming people between them. As in Eyes Without a Face, only the inarguable innocence of young women—here Tanith and Peggy— properly strike down Evil. By stripping away both the background details of the Duc and Mocata, they both become menacing combatants in an eternal, cosmic war. With its serial-like linearity and zippy Jazz-era stylisation, the film seems to have made enough of a mark on pop culture despite underperforming at the box office. I’ve seen it echoed through The Avengers TV series and episodes of Doctor Who, satirised in The Goodies, and possibly even affected those fated fans of both Hammer and the old serials, Spielberg and Lucas, whose Indiana Jones films may just owe something to this film. l
It’s not often that a musician becomes a legend in both country and jazz genres, but Hank Garland was no ordinary musician. A South Carolina native, Garland went to Nashville to earn his fortune. He became a valued session man who played with Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, and others. By hanging out in blues joints, he became familiar with the roots of jazz. His successful tours of big northern cities netted him his beautiful wife Evelyn and a reputation as a jazz guitarist. A horrific car crash damaged his brain and robbed him of his ability to play. Eventually, he taught himself to play again and came back to play briefly near the end of his life. This is a life that has been long overdue for a biopic. Now we have one—Crazy, which won the Best Feature at the Big Island Film Festival.
Unlike some biopics that span many years of a person’s life, Bieber chooses judiciously from the momentous meetings and milestones of Garland’s life. Beginning with Garland’s first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry, Garland (Waylon Payne) gets some advice from Hank Williams, Sr. (Steve Vai): “Start with a fast one. That always gets the audience going." Hank’s fluid guitar picking instantly attracts a distracted audience, and he’s on his way.
His career in Nashville as a session man and ladies man is going well, and he befriends a number of musicians, including Billy Byrd (Scott Michael Campbell). However, his inability to get credit—and pay—as a player and a songwriter frustrates him and begins a long enmity with record executive Ryan Bradford (David Conrad). He decides to go on tour in the north. He meets Evelyn (Ali Larter), who quickly beds and bewitches him. Evelyn comes to visit Hank in Nashville a couple of months later, and they are soon married. However, Hank’s growing success—a regular on The Eddie Arnold Show, on-call musician for Elvis, jazz stints in New York—makes Evelyn feel increasingly isolated. She has sex with Bradford, Hank receives the pictures, and he violently confronts Bradford. Evelyn goes to Chicago with their young daughter, then calls Hank to come pick her up. On the road, another car—presumably send by Bradford—rams Hank’s car repeatedly and sends him down a ravine, crippling and nearly killing him. His slow recovery in Florida leads to the denouement on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry legends tribute, where he plays his signature song “Sugarfoot Rag".
There are many great moments in this film. For example, during Hank’s first appearance on stage, he notices that his pick guard reflects light into the audience. He uses the beam to choose his “date" for the evening. When he uses the trick on Evelyn and goes up to her after his set, she asks him if that always works on the girls back home. Nonetheless, she chooses him because of the light he projects from within to warm her empty life. In an inevitable scene in Hank’s hospital room, she tells him about this hope and then says she learned too late that the beam only shines when he plays, “and now you can’t even do that."
I felt sympathy for Evelyn at times, but my heart truly went out to Hank, whom she betrayed to his near death and then abandoned. Bieber directs his cast from the inside out, palpably capturing the light inside Hank/Payne and the ugliness in the beautiful Evelyn/Larter. One very touching scene has Billy Byrd, now a troubled alcoholic whom nobody will hire, driving to Hank’s home and sitting outside in his car, forbidden by Evelyn from coming around anymore. Hank climbs in the car, and Billy pleads with him to take his guitar—the guitar they both invented—and hold it. “It’s the most beautiful thing I own, and if I keep it, I’m going to sell it. I really don’t want to sell it." The love between the two men is deeply felt, and the scene plays with great emotional truth. Other standout performances include Lane Garrison as Hank’s brother Bill and John Fleck as Lloyd “Cowboy" Copas, the leader of Hank’s studio band.
The outstanding music includes original recordings of “Crazy" by Patsy Cline and Payne as Hank Garland doing “Sugarfoot Rag." The closing credits show the real Hank doing the song as well. The story does rather play like a standard country biopic, with a crazy and troubled woman at its core. Nonetheless, no matter how the script was embellished for dramatic purposes, the film largely reflects an emotional reality that felt true.
The hubby and I saw the film right after the music biopic of Darby Crash and The Germs, What We Do Is Secret. While I preferred The Germs movie, I must give Crazy its props. These two films are well-done musician biopics and are worth your attention. l
Bricktown (2008) Director/Screenwriter: Michael Kelber
By Marilyn Ferdinand
It is fitting Michael Kelber’s first outing as a feature director was the opening feature of the Big Island Film Festival. As this festival goes through the growing pains of most young festivals—less-than-ideal venues, DVDs in unreadable formats, small audiences—so, too, has Kelber stretched his creative muscles, but with fewer false moves. Fitting, too, is his choice of narratives—two boyhood friends whose youthful mischief grows up to become deadly serious without either of them really intending for it to happen.
Paul (Howard Gibson) and Jim (Jason Hamer) are natives of Brick, New Jersey. The opening credits shot in the sepia haze of memory show the young boys pulling pranks—pulling a girl’s pigtails, tee-peeing a house, throwing eggs at a door. A final sequence shows the boys, now college age, with Samantha (Alice Rietveld), the girl with the pigtails who has grown up to be Jim’s girlfriend.
The film starts in earnest by showing us Paul and Jim stealing a car. They ride around for a while, and then Jim drops Paul at home. Paul tells Jim to ditch the car. Before he does, Jim pulls into a convenience store parking lot to pick up something to eat. The car is identified as stolen, and he is confronted by two cops. When they try to handcuff him, he hits one of them. That reckless impulse costs him four years in jail. Samantha promises Jim she’ll stand by him, and Paul promises to look out for her.
The film flash-forwards three years to show Jim being overpowered by three larger convicts with little question that they intend to rape him. Sam starts receiving depressed, angry letters from Jim. The newest and most alarming one arrives five days before his release. Paul is concerned and feels guilty that Jim did the time for the pair’s crime. Paul goes to the prison to see what’s up with Jim and assure him that he has a full-time job waiting for him in Paul’s landscaping business. Jim puts on a strong, devil-may-care face. Feeling helpless, Paul leaves.
After Jim is released from prison, he seems a changed man. Filled with anger, he drinks too much, skips meetings with his parole officer, and argues constantly with Sam. He clowns around on the job and seems headed for more trouble ahead.
On the fateful day that forms the dramatic crisis of the film, Paul attends his niece’s sixth birthday and commiserates with his divorced sister about her financial troubles. She’s preparing to leave their house for a more affordable apartment. Paul, however, has just received word that his loan application to expand his business has been approved. He goes home to a night of popcorn and videos.
That evening, Sam and Jim get into a huge argument. Jim storms out of the house and ends up at Paul’s home. He convinces the reluctant Paul to play a prank on a neighbor—string a wire across the street near the neighbor’s driveway and wait for him to run into it and break his headlights.
Hours pass, and the neighbor never shows up. Paul decides to leave. Jim, angered, starts hurling insults. Paul hurls them back. The young men get into a physical fight and are on the ground when they hear the screech of brakes and a crash. The friends take off running and hide in a tool shed in back of a house. The man of the house takes up a baseball bat and reluctantly hunts down the noise his wife heard. Panicking when he reaches the tool shed, Jim slugs the man in the eye. The police are called in, and a cat-and-mouse hunt ensues. I’ll just say it doesn’t end well for one of the cops. And of course, we saw it coming all along.
The story Kelber is interested in telling is how two friends in a classic ringleader-follower relationship react to a tragedy in which they both are culpable. Paul, a basically decent guy with little interest in causing trouble, seems to bear a larger burden of guilt for what was an out-of-control prank that started out relatively harmlessly. Jim seems to be a hard case after his stint in prison. But is he really a bad guy or a rape victim who never received counseling? When I talked with Kelber, he felt that both were decent people who made a very bad choice. I lost a lot of sympathy for Jim following his release from prison; he seemed quick with his fists in a way that wasn’t just prison survival. I gave up on him sooner than Kelber did. Regardless of this difference of opinion, we agreed that both actors turned in great performances and had the believable chemistry of long-time friends.
The low budget of the film—shot in the director’s hometown to save on costs and smooth permitting and casting—shows, but doesn’t really distract. Brick is a working class town and should look rough around the edges. The acting is uniformly fine, particularly from Michelle Wells as Paul’s sister and Rietveld. The film is well plotted and consistent, though a rather expansive first act could have been tightened without losing anything of importance. The middle act—the crisis—is very exciting, nerve wracking, and believable. I was in awe of the way Gibson and Hamer jumped fences through the backyards of Brick to evade the police patrolling with the searchlight. I also must mention the superb use of music in this film. I’m not very sensitive to scoring, so the fact that Carlos Rodriguez and Mr. e’s score for Bricktown seems so inevitable, suiting the pace and mood of each scene in a way that even I could admire, makes it one of the best I’ve heard.
Michael Kelber is a talented screenwriter and director whose debut feature promises good things to come. Bricktown may be a long shot for distribution, but I fully expect it to turn up at other film festivals. You should make time to see this touching, surprising, impressive debut of a new directorial talent. l
We at Ferdy on Films, etc., are awed by the volcanic explosion of creative dance movie posts over this past week. Rod and I never dreamed this would be as successful as it has been. We want to thank all the wonderful film and dance bloggers who joined in the fun:
Jonathan Lapper, Cinema Styles
Joe Valdez, This Distracted Globe
Glenn Kenny, Premiere.com
Rick Olson, Coosa Creek Mambo
J.D., Radiator Heaven
Bob Turnbull, Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind
Bob Westal, Foward to Yesterday
Peter Nellhaus, Coffee Coffee and More Coffee
Pat, Doodad Kind of Town
Danielle Gordon, Lady Wakasa's Journal
Arbogast, Arbogast on Film
Pat Piper, Lazy Eye Theatre
Jim, The Moviezzz Blog
SciFi Drive
David Cairns, Shadowplay
Richard Harland Smith, MovieMorlocks.com
Wayne Howard, Reel Whore
Henrik Eriksson, Swing, Jazz, and Blues - Dance to the Music
Kirby Holt, Movie Dearest
Anna Brady Nurse, Move the Frame
Kimberly Lindbergs, Cinebeats
Editor A, Cahiers2Cinema
Bob Glickstein, Gee Bobg
Whitney Borup, Dear Jesus
Jason Bellamy, The Cooler
bbrown, Screenshottery
Noel Vera, Critic After Dark
Gautam Valluri, Broken Projector
Carl Nelson, Carl's Jazz Dance Blog
Campespe, Self-Styled Siren
Rod is cooling his jets at home, while I'm heating mine on the edge of the Kilauea Crater on the Big Island of Hawaii. Ferdy on Films, etc. is going to take a break for vacation. We'll be back soon with all new reviews and reports from the world of offroad cinema. Mahalo! l
Grab a partner because it's time to hit the dance floor as bloggers everywhere get ready to dazzle you with their style, grace, and amazing feats of blogging about dance movies. Whether dance is used as a pure study in form, an element that is integral to the plot, or pure wow-’em entertainment, participants of Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon will give you unique ways to understand and enjoy these wonderful moments in film.
Joe Valdez at This Distracted Globe discusses a great teen dance film Save the Last Dance.
Marilyn Ferdinand at Ferdy on Films, etc. talks about Dancing in Tight Spaces using Royal Wedding, Tap, and Dance With Me as examples.
Glenn Kenny from Premiere.com offers some great screen caps from four films by Jean-Luc Godard.
Rick Olson at Coosa Creek Mambo contemplates in an older post the dance of the solar system in Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies.
Bob Turnbull gives us so many transcendent dance moments over at Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind, all I can say is "Go! See!"
Bob Westal at Forward to Yesterday offers a whole slew of posts he did for his own Fossethon late in 2007. I'm linking to Part I of a three-part post. I suggest you start here and then wend your way through the entire collection.
Danielle Gordon grapples with the definition of a dance movie at Lady Wakasa's Journal and promises a week of posts that try to answer that question in the broadest way possible. Must reading, if you ask me!
Monday, May 5
Peter Nellhaus from Coffee Coffee and More Coffee offers some sexy screen caps and commentary on the Coyote Ugly of Mexico, Mesa que Mas Aplauda.
Pat at Doodad Kind of Town offers a thoughtful review of Robert Altman's The Company.
Arbogast at Arbogast on Film tells a chilling tale of a dance on command in Curse of the Werewolf. Yikes!
Installment 2 from Danielle Gordon at Lady Wakasa's Journal is a tour de force on dance in silent movies. Thanks for mentioning our mutual love of silents, Lady!
Pat Piper has discovered a new film genre: The Angry Young Dancer. He's got the lowdown on the archetypal film of this genre, Footloose, over at Lazy Eye Theater.
Jim over at The Moviezzz Blog takes the hazardous step of choosing the best dance scenes of all time. Wanna argue about it? Visit his site.
David Cairns at Shadowplay took the weirdest Busby Berkeley film I've ever seen (and that's saying a lot!), The Gang's All Here (review on this blog somewhere), and gave a brilliant exposition on the disembodied heads in polka dots that end the film. You haven't lived until you've seen this "dancing heads" number.
Ah, Astaire! Adele, that is. Jonathan Lapper at Cinema Styles produces a photo of the more famous Astaire and his earliest dance partner--his sister--and tells us a little about where she got off to while Fred was becoming a star.
Wayne Howard at Reel Whore shows us more Angry Young Dancer and a whole lot of amazing moves in what he declares a masterpiece of impromptu dance as a source of comedy, Hot Rod. I'm not about to argue.
Peter Nellhaus of Coffee Coffee and More Coffee gives us a second post in his area of great interest--Asian films. The Japanese film Carmen comes Home explores cultural shifts in part by asking whether stripping is an art form. Great reading!
Rick Olson at Coosa Creek Mambo is back with a new post on the wonderfully archetypal dances in the films of Fellini. Sometimes you do have to be Fellini to figure it out!
Henrik Eriksson of Swing, Jazz, and Blues - Dance to the Music provides a treasure trove of films and performances that link music and dance. Have fun rifling through his wonderful closet of posts.
Kirby Holt at Movie Dearest shows the history of men dancing with men in the movies is extremely long, varied, and well worth your attention.
Anna Brady Nurse of Move the Frame, our first dance blogger(!), schools us on the Madison through the works of Jean-Luc Godard, Hal Hartley, and John Waters. This you gotta see!
Bob Turnbull of Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind checks in again with an older post, Blood Wedding, by my favorite filmmaker currently working in dance films, Carlos Saura. Bravo!
In case you had any doubt, Kimberly Lindbergs at Cinebeats reminds you that zombies don't like bad dancing in her post about Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City.
Editor A, Cahiers2Cinéma, "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, Ha ha ha ha ha." It's all here.
Thursday, May 8
This is a reminder that I am going to be spending most of the day on an airplane. I will check in as soon as I can in Honolulu and post all the new entries. Please be patient and please tell me about your new entries in the comments section of this post. Comcast is acting very weird lately.
Roderick Heath from right here on Ferdy on Films, etc. gives us the dance that keeps on giving with his take on John Travolta's famous disco dance in Saturday Night Fever and its numerous offshoots.
Haven't had your daily fix of psychokiller dancing. Hop over to Gee Bobg where Bob Glickstein has a bunch of "killer" video clips to share.
Whitney Borup at Dear Jesus brings us the good news about Newsies.
Friday, May 9
Sorry to be gone so long, but the famous wifi hotel wasn't after all. I'm working from the business center right now and hope to find an internet cafe somewhere today. Waikiki is kind of shock right now--so built up and my favorite hotel to stay here demolished to make way for some kind of gated village for vacationers. Ah me, nothing stays the same... But back to the blogathon.
Thought there was nothing to like about Heaven's Gate? Jason Bellamy of The Coolerbegs to differ.
After her great post on The CompanyPat from Doodad Kind of Town returns with another on East Side Story. Yes, East Side.
Installment 5 of Danielle Gordon's fascinating series on Lady Wakasa's Journal is Hurray for Bollywood! I know there are a lot of Bollywood fans out there, so go read what Danielle's got to say.
Let's help bbrown launch his new site, Screenshottery by viewing his sexy series of screenshots from Mean Streets.
I'm absolutely thrilled Peter Nellhaus of Coffee Coffee and More Coffee is back with his third and final entry into the blogathon--an appreciation of Nancy Kwan in Flower Drum Song. I may be in the minority in loving this film, but Peter tells you why it's worth your time.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Happy 109th Birthday, Fred Astaire
Here we are at the last day of the blogathon. We've got a last few posts from the diehard participants, but I want to thank all my participants (more listed below) and readers for making this such a fun party.
Does Your Heart Beat Faster?. It will after your read Critic After DarkNoel Vera's excellent review of "the subtlest, wittiest, and arguably most demented" film from his home country, The Philippines. Thanks, Noel!
A fever dream double feature from David Cairns at Shadowplay: The Great Gabbo and The Great Flamarian. Erich von Stroheim dances!
My good buddy Gautam Valluri at Broken Projector breaks from his usual fare to join the blogathon with a tribute to the birthday boy, Fred Astaire, in Three Little Words. Your timing is impeccable, Gautam.
Danielle Gordon from Lady Wakasa's Journal finishes up her outstanding series with a very informative post on Fred Astaire. Thanks, Danielle, for your wonderful insights all week.
Kimberly Lindbergs at Cinebeats checks in with one more wonderful entry, Ted V. Mikels' B-movie bonanza Girl in Gold Boots.
Carl Nelson at Carl's Jazz Dance Blog, our lindy hop specialist, checks in with great words and clips from Stormy Weather.
Campespe gracefully explores Dance as Soliloquy over at Self-Styled Siren.
I realised, after devoting not too much time thinking about it, that three of my dance scenes are all variations on the same moment, springing from Saturday Night Fever. It’s a film remembered as the flashpoint of Disco culture, a polyester-swathed celebration of those days of gritty glamour, chest hair, nose powder, and mirror balls. The soundtrack sold by the billion, and John Travolta was catapulted to the kind of stardom that consumes itself. But SNF is far more than just the ’70s equivalent of one of those lame ’50s rock films like Rock, Rock, Rock or Let’s Twist Again, where the latest big thing is trotted out in a dimly plotted vehicle. Saturday Night Fever was a ballsy, intelligent movie with telling things to say about (then) modern urban youth culture, a bridging point between the American New Wave cinema and the oncoming world of blockbusters.
Saturday Night Fever (1977) Director: John Badham Choreographer: Lester Wilson
Cunning producer Robert Stigwood found an even more cunning director in John Badham. What Badham did with the ailing dance movie formula was to take it back to its roots—a close ancestor is Lloyd Bacon’s 42nd Street (1933)—and contrast the high of cutting loose on the dance floor with the downer of surviving everyday life. Our hero is Tony Manero (John Travolta), a 19-year-old working-class Italian kid living at home with his nagging, neurotic parents in Brooklyn, working in a paint store and going nowhere fast,. Like so many people of his age and class, he only becomes what he truly is at night, when he transforms into an Achilles of the dance floor, desired, admired, and revered by all. He embodies a contemporary male fantasy, delighted in his own body and prowess as a dancer. He’s a love totem for females. So much pussy comes his way he’s become contemptuous of it.
His first journey to the 2001: Odyssey club begins momentously as he enters with his friends to the grandiose strains of “A Fifth of Beethoven." He cuts through this crowd like a messiah of cool. But Badham delays our true appreciation of Tony’s prowess. Tony dances here with two women who worship him, but he hardly burns up the floor. The DJ compounds his irritation by putting on a salsa-flavoured piece, the music of the despised Puerto Ricans; “You can’t dance to this shit!" But this is where he first glimpses Stephanie Mangano (Karen Lynn Gorney), the girl who temporarily dominates the floor in the same way he’s used to. Right from the start, Stephanie challenges Tony’s prejudices and self-love. And he digs it. But still he does not cut loose. Instead he is absorbed into the crowd line-dancing to “Night Fever." The link between the song, the film’s title, and Tony becoming absorbed, reinforces his place in a community, a lifestyle. His tale as just another in this semi-naked city.
Badham, having cultivated a Scorsese-esque verisimilitude in the rest of the film, presents the inside of the club as a candy-coloured dreamland filled with hot ladies, slick movers, strippers and hip tunes. The camera drinks up the flashy, sexy show on the floor; one shot of a woman’s swiveling dress and legs lasts about 20 seconds. Tony’s great dance number arrives halfway through the film. Tony is on a high, expecting Stephanie to come and in the company of his brother Frank (Martin Shakar), whose own decision to leave the priesthood mirrors Tony’s increasing discomfort. His frustrations, his inability to get in the groove, have then been mirrored by the audience’s own desire to see him let rip. With irritation and hope in his soul, and weighed down by a sluggish partner Connie (Fran Drescher, who would later gain horrible revenge for her slight in this scene), Tony hears the opening chords of “You Should Be Dancing" and declares, ‘Forget this!’ He sets about brushing away all the other dancers, and cuts loose.
Badham shoots the sequence with élan, but also visual economy. As Tony begins, he struts up the centre of the stage, pretending to roll up his sleeves and tighten his belt like a pugilist or gunfighter awaiting action. Badham cuts in for a low shot of Travolta’s beaming, aquiline face as he swings his arm about in a lordly survey that both embraces the audience in his coolness and makes them bow down to it. Travolta sleekly stakes out each of the four corners of the stage, his flared pants and platform shoes acting like knifes that slice the floor into rippling, patterned pieces. Each move gains in a technical and athletic virtuosity, building to herky-jerky robotic flourishes.
The centrepiece of the act sees him stake out the front of the stage, rapidly stabbing the air with alternating index fingers, slapping the soles of his shoes, before cocking his left leg out, leaning away to the right, thrusting his pelvis as his arm jabs the air like a musketeer’s sword before tossing in another play-act vignette of wiping off his own seat. Badham cuts in to a low-angle, front-on shot that emphasises the architecture of the move. It’s the most iconic image of the film, a perfect fusion of muscle, music and fashion. Tony retreats down stage, spins, throws himself into a splay-legged crouch, slides across the four quarters of the stage, and regains his feet in a kung-fu forward flip. He has established his indifference to gravity. He folds his arms, and begins dropping to his knees and leaping up in the Cossack style, crowned in the moment when he throws himself into the sky, legs wide out to his hands.
This is the dancer as action hero, as urban cultural warrior. The sequence is a celebration of his masculinity, a new brand of masculinity that likes to display itself in a fashion previously reserved for women. Tony caresses his ass and humps both air and stage. There is a recognisable progress from the prancing precision of Fred Astaire to the rough-and-tumble of Gene Kelly to this martial dance-artist, but the celebration of male sexual prowess is new. It’s fitting for the pansexual philosophy of the era, Disco having been friendly both to multiculturalism and to gay life—one of the many reasons it was as loathed as loved. The film has bent over backwards to reassure us of Tony’s heterosexuality, however, and his postures have placed him in context with a long tradition of screen heroes. He’s a riposte to Taxi Driver’s thesis that Travis Bickle was the NYC heir to Western heroes; no, Tony is, at least for these minutes on the dance floor.
Airplane! (1980) Directors: David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams Choreographer: Tom Mahoney
Burlesques on Saturday Night Fever were endless. None matched that found in Airplane! (David and Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams [“ZAZ"], 1980), a send-up of cheesy disaster movies that is actually a scurrilous satire on the cultural mores of the ’70s. The scene in the Mogumbo Bar presents the film’s approach in miniature, beginning as a caricature of the seedy movie dens that screen heroes like Humphrey Bogart would hang about in. A fist fight breaks out between a pair in uniform—not sailors or soldiers, but rather, two girl scouts—who beat the crap out of each other. One is sent sliding down the bar and collides with the jukebox, which immediately starts emitting a speeded-up version of “Stayin’ Alive." The grizzled bar whores head for the floor. When one is stabbed in the back, his partner Elaine (Julie Hagerty) can’t tell the difference between his dying contortions and the epileptic chic of Disco moves. Ted (Robert Hays), entranced by the sight of Elaine, heads onto the floor and confronts her. Both are dazzled. Ted strips off his Navy tunic to reveal a white vest and black shirt, and tosses his jacket with élan into the crowd before striking the finger-in-the-air pose—only to have the jacket thrown back in his face.
Unfazed, Ted and Elaine begin to dance, Ted throwing Elaine into the air and waiting many seconds for her to land again in his arms. He allows her to swing him by the ankles, until she accidentally sends him flying. Horror! Ted cartwheels through the air and falls to ground behind a crowd with a huge crash. But our hero is unharmed; he bursts out from the crowd and again strikes the air-stabbing pose, this time with such undeniable cool that his finger stabs in the air sound like bullets. Abrahams and the Zuckers prove how hip they are to the stylisation of SNF, as Ted’s heroic strut plays on Tony’s posing is an extension of the classic American movie hero. As well as being one of the funniest scenes ever committed to celluloid, it’s a true bookend to its model. In their late concerts, The Bee Gees took to showing both scenes on a big screen whenever they played “Stayin’ Alive."
Pulp Fiction (1994) Director: Quentin Tarantino
For Travolta, the film eventually proved to be a millstone. A decade and a half later, he was a living joke (and it wouldn’t be the last time), having made enough money from the Look Who’s Talking series to retire, but having flushed the last of his cred down the toilet. Then, Quentin Tarantino cast him in his hipster-noir epic Pulp Fiction and had him dance.
The sequence alludes to Travolta’s early role, but it also, in its deliberately stilted sinuosity, refers to the dance of Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande à Part (1964). The moves of Travolta and partner Uma Thurman are drawn from oddball models—Thurman’s from the Duchess of The Aristocats (1970) and Travolta tossing in Adam West’s Batusi, all set to Chuck Berry’s unique Cajun-rockabilly tune “You Never Can Tell." All this on top of the pair that we are supposed to be watching—a beatnik hitman and a coke-snorting ex-actress gangster’s moll falling in lust—builds into a scene that’s giddily hilarious, pointedly sexy, and subtly weird. It, in itself, became a vastly more ironic but equally pertinent pop culture icon to match the SNF scene, and remade Travolta’s career by both subverting and paying tribute to his time as the king of the dance floor. l
To most people, dancing mainly involves dancers making pleasing or dramatic shapes oftentimes while telling a story. Big moves, the flowy-showy costumes, and tricks are amply rewarded by audiences with appreciation and applause.
But crucially, dance is an expression of movement through space. In the case of clapping or tap dancing, sound may come into the picture, but the critical action is movement. How a dancer relates to the space through which he or she moves can communicate as much as a dramatic, emotional speech. In film, this space can be as large as all outdoors, depending on camera range and angle, or as small as a shoebox. I’m going to examine three films in which dancing happens in tight or crowded spaces and discuss why I think these scenes were choreographed the way they were, how they help move the themes of the film forward, and communicate more than the emotional experience of watching pleasing shapes.
Royal Wedding (1951) Director: Stanley Donen Choreographers: Nick Castle/Fred Astaire
Set in 1947, Royal Wedding has a brother and sister team (Astaire and Jane Powell) crossing the Atlantic to open their recently closed Broadway show in London the year of the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II to Philip. Naturally, both siblings find their true loves in the process. In one of the most famous scenes in all the movies, Fred finds himself thinking about Anne (Sarah Churchill), a dancer he met during auditions for the London show. He goes into the tavern of her father, seemingly casually looking for her, but finding only her dad to talk to. He goes back to his hotel, finds Anne’s picture in an advertising sandwich board, slips the picture out of its holder, and takes it up to his room. Regarding the picture, he sings “You’re Everything to Me" and then literally dances around the room to the orchestral arrangement of the song. Below is a clip of the scene before the dance in which Fred’s prospects for winning Anne are discussed (there’s the tail end of Powell singing a song at the very beginning), and then the complete “dancing on the ceiling" number:
Now, people have been wondering for ages, “How did he do that?" Just to clear the mystery up so we can go on to other things, the room rotated and the various parts of the film were cut to make a seamless dance. But why did Castle and Astaire choose to create a dance in a rotating box? I can’t say for sure, but certainly these two former vaudevillians most likely wanted to wow audiences with their ingenuity, and the use of such props as the ceiling light—an Astaire trademark—would be easy to incorporate. But I think there’s more to it than that. Astaire’s character is in love but is stuck unless and until Anne throws over her boyfriend. He’s literally boxed in with his feelings. At the same time, the song lets us know that Anne is Astaire’s whole world. At that moment, the room is his whole world, and he shows through his movements that he will do his best to defy its boundaries, defy gravity itself (lovers are often said to be “walking on air") to give free rein to his feelings. The giddy, exuberant dance comes pretty close to accomplishing those goals and serves the story as well as Astaire’s showmanship.
Tap (1989) Director: Nick Castle Choreographers: Henry de Tang/Gregory Hines
Here we have another Nick Castle film choreographed by another great vaudevillian, Henry de Tang, for a boatful of vaudeville stars, including Harold Nicholas, Sandman Sims, and Sammy Davis, Jr. This film is also noted for introducing one of the major dance lights of today, Savion Glover, then just a boy. In between is the great Gregory Hines, and the tap number I’m going to discuss is his credited “improvography." Hines plays a dancer who, tired of the financial hardships of his profession, turns to crime. The film opens in the prison block where Hines’ character is incarcerated. We move to his cell. The lighting is dark and the cell narrow. He pulls a thick board out and places it at the bars of his cell on the side opposite his bed. He starts to tap; his cellblock mates start to yell at the noise he’s making:
Watch him smash his cell wall loudly and repeatedly with his foot. “Let me out of here. Let me out of here!" If you saw Robert De Niro smash his fists into a wall in Raging Bull, you’ll recognize the frustration. But then, Hines starts to warm to his dancing itself. He seems to get into a frenzy of creativity, with small, precise, rapid taps showing his excitement. He has freed himself for a short while with his art, oblivious to the shouts around him. When we see his passion, we know that he will be drawn back into dancing—something he fights against when he is released—by the picture’s end. This scene shorthands the themes of this movie perfectly.
Dance With Me (1998) Director: Randa Haines Choreographer: Liz Curtis
A film that mixes the director of Children of a Lesser God, a dance instructor with no previous film credits as choreographer, a semi-dancer in Vanessa Williams, and a singing idol in Chayanne sounds like a risky proposition. Can the singer act? Can the semi-dancer really pull off championship ballroom sequences? Can a dramatic director shoot dance? Somehow it all comes together in this story of a jaded competitive ballroom dancer who finds new inspiration and love with a Cuban immigrant.
In the scene I’m going to discuss, Williams has accepted Chayanne’s invitation to go out dancing. She meets him in front of a salsa club and they go in. Lights and dancers are swirling in front of them in a hot red glow. When they first hit the dance floor, the couple is jostled by the closely packed crowd. However, as all the dancers warm up, a communal dance takes place.
In several shots, we can see that the dance floor is actually quite spacious. But it holds a lot of couples who would rather dance together than separately, making a virtue of close quarters. As a competitive dancer, Williams has always looked at other dancers as “the enemy." We see her face in medium-close shots as we watch the reserve we’ve seen in previous scenes dissolve in joy. The dancers pass partners off to each other, cooperate in forming lines and circles, gain energy from each other’s efforts, and work together with the salsa band to create an atmosphere that reflects Cuban life and culture. Williams is welcomed in as though she were a native, as though she belongs in a place where the celebration of life comes first. The camera seems to swirl with the dancers, though Haines really uses judicious angles and edits with precise pacing to make us feel as though we’re dancing with this wonderful crowd as well. I don’t think I’ve seen any other film that so completely conveys the pleasure, accessibility, and beauty of picking up one’s feet and dancing. This film, to my mind, is the best of the ballroom genre, and is all the more special for placing minority dancers in what has traditionally been a white dance style in movies.
I hope I’ve shown how the creative use of space is a formidable aid in the dancer/choreographer’s toolbox. Large spaces can be closed, and close spaces can be expanded. Every dancer is taught to be aware of their surroundings. In movies, that awareness can also tell a story. l
Starting this Sunday, the first Invitation to the Dance Movie Blogathon grand battements its way into the blogosphere. We’re very excited to be hosting this waltz through dance films, and we’ve already heard from some participants that their entries are waiting in the wings. I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with, and I hope you feel the same. It's not too late to participate. All the information you need can be found here.
I’m going to find this blogathon particularly exciting and challenging because from Thursday through Saturday—Fred Astaire’s birthday—I’ll be blogging near the sands of Waikiki. Yes, I couldn’t arrange airline tickets for May 11, as I planned, so I’ll be coming to you from the lobby of the Ohana East Hotel in Honolulu. In consideration of the great time difference between certain regions of the mainland and Hawaii (not to mention my desire to spend time with the hubby on our first real vacation in three years), I’ll be getting up as early as I can to make the rounds of the participating blogs and link their entries here. So mahalo in advance for your patience.
One benefit of my trip to Hawaii is that I will be blogging from the Third Annual Big Island Film Festival (assuming I can find wifi somewhere on the Kohala Coast). The hubby and I have our film choices made and will be attending special events where I hope to interview some film luminaries who will be attending. So stay tuned for that the weekend after the blogathon. l
One benefit of my trip to Hawaii is that I will be blogging from the 