Movies for the week
Movies for the week
(03-09-2008)
Hatchet for the Honeymoon(1970, Mario Bava)
We watched Italian horror for our Weekly Movie Night.
The first movie was by one of the masters of Italian cinema, and the father of the giallo, Mario Bava. (Cool aside: one of his early films, Black Sabbath, inspired a certain band to make horror music). Like many European directors of his time, Bava is not primarily concerned with character resolution or three-act structures. He is a formalist, and his forte is mood.
Hatchet is all creepy sexual debauchery, yet it's oddly affect/effect-less. The plot is a classic "whydunnit" like Peeping Tom or Psycho, about a "psychotic" rich fashion designer who kills newlywed girls. He's doing it, you see, in order to find out who killed his mother (every murder grants him another flashback). Our psychotic protagonist is pursued by a detective, and harangued by his harridan wife.
Hatchet is ravishing, as is Bava's always amazing and inventive cinematography (he was one of Rossellini's cinematographers). Actually, the movie is about that; the deadly seduction of beauty, money and glamor. But mainly beauty. The male lead is as beautiful as the women - freakishly so, and his cold beauty mirrors the saturated and lurid film. The period costumes are awesome and silly, and like the film, revel in the dark aspects of the swinging 60s. Ultimately, the supernatural bubbles into the movie, but the colors and glamor reign supreme.
Hatchet is form without content... no, strike that. It's form with content as a footnote.
The Beyond(1981, Lucio Fulci)
The second feature on movie night was this Fulci film. Like the other film, it's beautifully shot, but as usual with Fulci, extremely gory.
The Beyond is incredibly bleak. The plot is barely coherent, as is most of the acting, but like Bava, the point is mood, which in this case was despair and hopelessness. The film gets that mood down, even if the movie is wildly uneven. It's about a gateway to hell in a Louisiana hotel, and some unlucky ex-model who inherits the property (and keeps it despite all the dying people). The cynicism is overwhelming, and a little silly, but it's worth it for the last nihilistic shot. If you can handle surrealist and relentless apocalyptic gore, see it. (Of note: the goofy and horrid tarantula scene.)
I have a weird relationship to gore. Gore is a little like porn; it's gratuitous and always lovingly framed, like a money shot. It's almost never necessary to the larger movie, and typically shocks the viewer out of the film's 'world'. And despite the best special effects, gore always looks fake. (Perhaps because real gore always looks fake, and representing the fake-looking will always be a losing proposition.) The way gore is framed usually turns it into an abstraction of squibs, sound effects, fake limbs, latex and fake blood, turning the gore scene into a mini-movie-within-the-movie. But gore has hypnotic appeal. I'm not sure what that appeal is - but it's quite different from staring at a real gore. (I grew up rural, so you'll have to trust me on that.) It's a tawdry and base appeal, but ultimately and always removed, and always an obvious representation. Someone suggested that gore allows us to viscerally (and safely) see the vulnerability of our bodies. Maybe.
Anyway, I need to think about it some more. But one recurring theme kept splattering up: eye mutilation. Ming pointed out that Fulci was attacking the audience's eyes, and that seems right. It's an angry film, pissed off at humanity and pissed off at the audience.
One last thing, the soundtrack is jarring and over the top, much like some of the film, but it never works. (And it's by a composer I like.)
Switchblade Sisters(1975, Jack Hill)
Switchblade Sisters is preposterous - the girls aren't tough or imposing, and their dialog is overcooked and corny. That said, the movie gets right what B-films often get right: a visceral self-presentation of a sub-culture, and an instinct for capturing the beauty of subterranean America. They are dreams of under-represented segments of society - in this case, pissed-off youth (this is before all films were geared towards youths). But don't get me wrong, despite it's hatred towards The Man, it's still an exploitation flick full of girls gone wild; girls spiting aggression and violence (but almost no nudity). There's incompetent cops, repellent rapists, mad gun play, pseudo-Black Panthers, ninja-chain weapons, and the use of a belly button as an ashtray.
Switchblade Sisters is part of my week of good "bad" films. All the films have subpar acting, too-attractive leads, and ridiculous plots. But it doesn't matter, since that's not the point. Since B-movies only have to titillate with sex or violence, anything goes, and as a side effect, B-movies are an odd combination of formal experimentation and a storytelling style that break the typical conventions. Like with Switchblade Sisters, B-movies tend to be super-cheesy, exploitative, but also intelligent, innovative, and more honest about the cultural undercurrents than any Hollywood white-washed dream.
So let's finish with some of the last dialog from Switchblade Sisters: "No, let me give you some advice, cop! You can beat us, chain us, lock us up. But we're gonna be back, understand? And when we do, cop, you better keep your ass off our turf, or we'll BLOW IT OFF! Ya dig?"
How can you not like that?
Bringing Up Baby(1938, Howard Hawks) [Re-watch]
I was showing friends clips from great screwball comedies and we just sort of ended up watching this. Still funny, even on the umpteenth viewing, but Katherine Hepburn's character is a total monster, even if I still love her.
There Will Be Blood(2007, P.T. Anderson) [Re-watch]
I showed this to my roommate. Watched it super-skeptically, yet it won me over (again). I liked the film's steady slide from authenticity to theatricality. Love it.