Movies for the week
Movies for the week
(03-16/03-30-2008)
Soy Cuba(1964, Mikhail Kalatozov)
Soy Cuba is one of the most beautiful films you'll ever see. It's the favorite movies\ of every director you love, and once you see it, you'll understand why: it's because the cinematography is astounding - and I fucking mean it. Throughout the film, I laughed out loud because the movie was so damn beautiful and surprising.
Soy Cuba is a propaganda film glorifying the roots of the Cuban revolution. U.S. citizens are portrayed as obnoxious cads who constantly chew gum like placated cows. U.S. citizens are portrayed as wicked capitalists who chew up people the way they chew up gum. U.S. citizens are portrayed by Russian actors who can barely fake a ridiculous "American" accent. They sound nothing like Americans, and it's funny to hear their lousy attempt.
The film 'shows' us how American capitalism causes prostitution, destitution, despair, despondency, debauchery, wealth inequality, etc. It's an over-the-top portrayal, but hey, it's a propaganda film, and it's a wild shock to see how another culture portrays us.
Despite the film's propaganda roots, it successfully conveys the origin of revolution. We see the disaffected lover who watches his girlfriend succumb to prostitution (in an amazing horror-esque scene); we see the substance farmer who loses his land to a U.S. multi-national corporation; and finally we watch the students and peasants chafing and revolting against the corrupt Cuban regime. It's effective, despite the corny propaganda, and beautiful beyond belief.
This film definitely won't convince anyone to turn Communist, but it will install an anger against the shitty conditions Cubans lived in, and it will install amazement at the ingenuity and beauty lovingly put into this film.
YouTube clips: The Procession / The Floor Show / The Student Revolution
Angel-A(2005, Luc Besson)
A stupid and unnecessary mash-up of It's a Wonderful Life, Wings of Desire and Heaven Only Knows. It's about a loser who saves the life of a beautiful suicidal woman. "Saves the life of" is stretching the scenario, since she didn't look like she was anywhere near drowning in that lazy shallow stream.
The beautiful woman decides to become the doofy man's slave, and she decides to devote her life to turning him into a better person. In order to do this, she lies, beats people up, and whores herself in order to pay off his debts and get him prestige and status.
Of course this woman (who looks like a slutty model) is secretly an angel. I mean a real angel, with wings and such. And because this is a stereotypical male fantasy, the hot slutty model stays on Earth in order to fuck and fall in love with our loser hero. Oh, and she didn't really whore herself off to all those guys, she just beat the shit out of them and pretended to fuck them. Nice Christian message, huh?
This movie is a piece of shit. Not even worth it if you're high and only want something on in the background while you make out with your inner bicep. But at least it looks good.
YouTube clips: Trailer for Angel-A
The Unknown(1927, Tod Browning)
Damn I loved this film.
I just realized that I've only watched black and white films for the last two weeks. That's kinda weird because I love color. Anyway, Tod Browning, the director of this film, made Freaks, a film I love which is a strange and wonderful story about a bunch of circus freaks who take revenge on a deceitful couple.
The Unknown is also centered around the circus, and is another odd and dream-like film. Lon Chaney Sr. stars as "Alonzo the Armless," a no-armed marksman. The film is about his sick obsession with his beautiful assistant (Joan Crawford) who is psychotically afraid of being touched. Twisted phobias and obsessions rule this film, along with deep seated lies. Neither Alonzo the Armless nor The Beauty are honest about their desires or their motives. Nothing is as it seems, and the constant obsessions, phobias and lies tighten noose-like around the characters, leading to hasty decisions and an inevitable ending.
It's not quite a horror film- more a creepy and twisted drama that set the mold for David Lynch and other masters of the subtly horrific. Lon Chaney is amazing and really seems to be able to use his feet as hands, but a lot of the foot work was by a stunt double - a circus performer who had no feet. But that's only a successful special effect - the film itself is fantastic.
YouTube clips: Part one of The Unknown (You can watch the whole thing on YouTube, but don't! It looks so much better on a decent screen!)
Pre-Code Movies
For Movie Night I showed two pre-Code films.
In 1930, due to outcry about the sexuality and violence in Hollywood movies, the Hollywood studios created a censorship code:
- No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
- Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
- Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
Of course, the Code had no teeth and wasn't enforced until 1934, when a few moral crusaders joined forces with the religious right to make sure that damn-heathen-Hollywood respects our U.S. Christian values! Before 1934, movies ignored the Code, and the period of 1930 to 1934 is full of wild sexy violent films. That period is known as the "pre Code era" and its films are particularly racy and full of sex and violence (and because of that, they feel totally contemporary).
Despite what I knew about Pre-Code films, I wasn't ready for how debaucherous they were. Tons of people showed up for Movie Night, and we were shocked, shocked, at what we saw. Except for Wayward Cloud and a few exploitation films, none of the films I've screened are so devoid of a "moral center."
Baby Face(1933, Alfred E. Green)
Baby Face opens in a sleazy little speak-easy. The camera, along with the bar patrons, lasciviously linger over a beautiful young woman (Barbara Stanwyck as Lily). Shortly after, she turns down a sleazy politician's demand for sex by bashing him over the head with a wine bottle. The owner comes in raging mad, and we find out the owner of the bar is her father, and we find out that her father has been whoring her out since she was 14. That's in the first 15 minutes.
Shortly after, the speak-easy burns down with her father trapped inside. Meanwhile, a kindly older German man has our heroine reading Nietzsche. Kindly Old German Man tells her to make her place in the world, and coaches her to exploit life and use her power as a young woman.
And that's what she does. The film is about her fucking her way to the top.
Yeah, you read that right.
She devours men, sucking them down like marshmallows in a bowl of Lucky Charms. After she's done, nothing is left but empty love-struck shells. She causes a murder/suicide, nearly brings down one of the largest Manhattan banks, destroys a couple of marriages, and prompts another attempted suicide. Originally, the film was supposed to end with her latest beau sprawled on the floor with his brains splattered around him, but the censors convinced them to tamper down that ending and suggest that our heroine has at last found true love and seen the error of her materialistic ways.
It's a hell of a film.
YouTube clips: The trailer to Baby Face (watch it)!
Red-Headed Woman(1932, Jack Conway)
Red-Headed Woman is the perfect counter-point to Baby Face, but it's the cheap and tawdry version. Red-Headed Woman is the slutty train wreck of Britney Spears to Baby Face's savvy social climbing of Madonna. Both movies are about attractive lower class women who want to rise above their station, but Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face is electrifying - she's all intelligence and drive, and despite her sociopathic ways and her destructive wake, you root for her and want her to succeed. You want her to defeat the system that keeps such a spectacular creature from flying high.
Red-Headed Woman, on the other hand, has no Nietzsche, and has no electrifying characters. Everyone in the film is pathetic, stupid, and driven by their base desires, with little or no intellect informing anything they do.
Where the first film showed us that individual vice might be justified in the face of institutional corruption, the second film shows us that in real life people aren't smart enough to game the system as elegantly as Baby Face. Most people muddle along, and when they do fight against the cogs of the machine, they end up crushing lots of people around them, for no good end.
Where Baby Face was oddly empowering, Red-Headed Woman made us all feel cheap and dirty. At one point, a friend muttered, "There oughta be a code against movies like this."
When you see these films you'll agree, but you'll love them anyway.
YouTube clips: a scene from Red-Headed Woman that kinda sums up the film.