Rebecca (Ben Wheatley, 2020)

Rebounded

(WARNING: Plot of Daphne Du Maurier's / Alfred Hitchcock's / Ben Wheatley's Rebecca discussed in explicit detail!)

"How dare he?" I hear the folks hissing: "an Alfred Hitchcock classic, and an Oscar Best Picture winner!" Critics haven't been kind to Ben Wheatley's 2020 adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel, and who can blame them? It's as if he'd taken a spraycan to La Giaconda and smeared her smile lime green.

Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)

(An old post reposted, just because)
 
Saw this for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time was blown away. Poor Alicia (Bergman), with her nymphomanic appetites--which, it's suggested, stem from a deep inner conflict with her father; poor Devlin (Grant), who shies away from women because of painful experiences in the past with women like Alicia; poor Alex (Rains), the, strange to say, most innocent of the three (strange because he's the villain), insecure because she's so beautiful and he's so old. Three unhappy people talking at cross purposes with each other, lying to each other, yearning that the other open up to him or her. It's about as painfully funny a portrait of an unhappy love triangle as any I can think of, and that there's an espionage plot seamlessly grafted on to the affair giving it a breathless urgency makes the film all the more remarkable.

Everyone points to the famous scene early in the picture where Hitchcock circumvents the Production Code about the permissible length of kisses (about three seconds) by having Alicia and Devlin pleasure each other with a series of shorter kisses, all the while locked in a casual yet carnal embrace, giving what is unmistakeably meant to be foreplay (it could as easily be postcoital but Hitchcock possibly to placate the censors pointedly shows them arriving at the apartment beforehand)--a brief buss, a nuzzle, an earlobe caressed, a nibble, the languorous sound of the waves cascading leisurely down the beach. Lovely scene, but really a prelude to the hot sizzle Hitchcock delivers later at Alex's house party, where in the official story Devlin has to think up a quick excuse for him and Alicia to be near the fateful basement (storehouse of the film's official MacGuffin: powdered uranium in wine bottles) and grabs Alicia, giving her a hard kiss. The allure of forbidden fruit (she's married to Alex), the added spice of exhibitionism (she's revealing her infidelity to her husband) flavors the thousand-watt charge of her frustrated feelings for Devlin unexpectedly given chance to vent: she gets into it (the way only Bergman with her astonishing intimacy with the camera can), she abandons herself to the moment, her whispers to Devlin are hoarse with lust and hopeless love.

And while Devlin and Alicia's romance/hatred for each other dominates the audience's attention, you can't help but point out another just-as-crucial couple onscreen, tearing each others hearts out: Alex and his mother Madame Sebastian (Leopoldine), who Alex loves and hates in equal measure and who loves and suffocates him in turn, heartbroken when her son chooses Alicia over her, to the point that she takes to bed (presumably to die). Then the magnificent moment when Alex comes to her bedroom, and admits failure (of his marriage, of his manhood); and Madame Anna--rising from her bed, putting a penis (sorry, cigarette) in her mouth--nonchalantly lighting it (symbolizing, in effect, the rekindling of her virility).

Then the ending, the slow glide down the stairways, the dread and terror one feels for Alicia that so neatly turns about with the simple slamming of a car door and settles unshakeably on Alex's shoulders. Alicia's glowing expression as she looks at the man she truly loves, while the man who truly loves her (and he does; he only turns malignant when he learns of her betrayal, of the danger she has put him in--whereas Devlin's regard for Alicia is never similarly tested) is left behind to face his destiny. Hitchcock has passed judgment and we're stunned, unsure at the justice of the verdict--but that could be part of Hitchcock's point: that in the genre of romantic thrillers (and life itself if you want to go in that direction) conclusions are rarely fair, happy endings not always deserving, beauty is its own (if unwarranted, even unwanted) reward. C'est la mort.

8.29.04

Mystic Hitchcock

Posted as part of the For the Love of Film: Film Preservation Blogathon. 

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Mystic Hitchcock

(Warning: stories, twists, and surprises of various films to follow will be discussed in close detail)

Despite his Roman Catholic background, you find a dearth of mysticism in Hitchcock. He seems more concerned with the mystery residing in the human mind, than with any unknown supernatural power residing in the world at large.

That's fine, I suppose--the mind is as complex a puzzle as any, and a lifetime's study probably won't offer any immediate solution. Hitchcock, one might say, has confined himself to specific territory, though a territory particularly rich in drama and conflict.

Original Sin

Possibly the most consistent influence Catholicism had on Hitchcock was on the idea of "transference of guilt"--of an innocent man who comes to bear the burden and suffering of one who is guilty. That idea bears more than passing resemblance to the Catholic concept of Original Sin--where all of  humanity is guilty by reason of Man's fallen state, and the only hope of redemption is through an innocent Son of God.

Hence the common thread going through films like The Wrong Man, The 39 Steps, The Lodger, I Confess, and Strangers on a Train, where a man is accused of a crime he did not commit. A scapegoat if you like, in the Old Testament sense, a creature arbitrarily chosen to be blamed for others' sins.

Which isn't the same as saying the man is a total innocent--in The Lodger one reason why the man is so suspicious, why he's always at the right place and time, why he carries so much circumstantial evidence around with him is because he does have a relationship with the killer; in I Confess the priest is suspected because he stands to profit from the murder; in Strangers on a Train the thought of murder is so tempting the hero actually blurts the thought out loud--in effect, he is guilty in all except the actual deed.

That's as far as Hitchcock went, mostly: a kind of subtle filigree of fear and paranoia, overlaid on his otherwise secular filmography.

Life after death

And then there's the idea of life after death, which Hitchcock didn't deal with often, but when he did it was with unnerving intensity.

In Vertigo Madeleine Elster dies halfway through the story--but death in one form or another was always implied in this picture. Through  color, through camera angles, through sound effects and above all Bernard Herrmann's haunting music we are made aware again and again that this is a film steeped in death and memories, that everyone is haunted by everyone else. Madeleine is haunted by Carlotta Valdez, the city is haunted by Madeleine's desolate figure, Scottie Ferguson is haunted by details and echoes of Madeleine scattered throughout the city long after she's gone. 

There's something otherworldly about Madeleine herself: Hitchcock often shoots her from a distance, in profile, constantly on the verge of turning round a street corner or stepping behind a redwood trunk or dropping off a stone pier into San Francisco Bay. Finally she evades him, slipping like a prestidigitator's assistant up the bell tower's trapdoor; Scotty catches a glimpse of her hurtling past a tower window. 

As for the body itself, crushed and broken on the Mission's rooftop, he could hardly be less interested: it's the woman's elusive ghost--her soul if you please--he's after, not its mere fleshy remains. He leaves that behind, slipping surreptitiously out a side entrance, for others to discover.

What makes the second half of Vertigo so unsettling, I submit, is Scottie's full-on attempt at resurrecting Madeleine through Judy Barton. We get a rough inventory of half the filmmaker's arsenal in realizing his ideal woman: clothes ("I want to look at an evening dress, a dinner dress, black, short, long sleeves...with a neck cut this..."), makeup and hair ("You're sure about the color of the hair?") even lighting (standing before the windows in such a way that when Judy steps out of her bathroom she's wrapped in the unnatural green glow of the hotel's street neon). "She's alive!" Scottie might have cried, the way Dr. Frankenstein did in James Whale's horror classic; she is for a while anyway before she steps off the bell tower ledge one last time, simultaneously stepping  into Scottie's despairing, devastated memories for all time. 

There is, sadly, a rational explanation behind the film's supernatural claptrap, Gavin Ellster's over-elaborate plan to kill his wife. But in mood and tone, in spirit and intent if not strictly in actual deed (and isn't that an accusation leveled at nearly all of Hitchcock's heroes?), Hitchcock manages to create one of the greatest ghost stories in all of cinema.

Then there's Psycho, where for the first thirty or so minutes Hitchcock seems to be setting up Norman Bates as one of his Wrongfully Accused. We know, of course, that his mother did it. 

Turns out we're right and wrong: Norman did it, but not as Norman. The whole case is written off as an example of split personality, presented in what has often been argued as Hitchcock's worst-directed scene--an endless expositional monologue by Dr. Fred Richman.

Simon Oakland's performance as Richman should have clued us in to what Hitchcock was really after. Oakland has the manner of a carnival barker, speaking hurriedly and energetically as if to keep his audience from leaving; a police officer enters, blanket draped over one arm: "He feels a little chill," the officer asks. "Can I bring him this blanket?" The camera follows the officer out the hallway towards a door, which he enters. The camera sits outside waiting; suddenly we hear a woman's soft husky voice call out: "Thank you!"

Cut to inside the room, the camera slowly approaching a seated Norman Bates as he wraps the blanket around him. We hear a woman--the same woman, we realize--talk: "It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son..." We recognize the gravelly voice of Mrs. Bates in voice-over.

Basically Hitchcock through Dr. Richman first gives us the official explanation, a tale full of cross-dressing and poison and enough guilt to kill an entire platoon of mama's boys. It's not a convincing performance; you wonder if Oakland was rushing through the text, if his heart was really into making the most of the short and specific period of time allotted to his character. It comes off like a makeshift reply, something cooked up last-minute to satisfy a deadline.

Then we have Mrs. Bates, taking slowly and deliberately while the camera brings us close and closer to Norman's glittering eyes, and we come to a realization: this is the film's true explanation, this is the film's (and Hitchcock's) true response--that Mrs. Bates is alive and well, living inside Norman's totally insane head. 

Fade to the film's final image, of a chain pulling a car out of the swamp. During the transition we catch a glimpse of an image superimposed over Bates' glittering eyes and wide grin: a human skull. We can't help but note that the shape and width of Bates' grin and eyes match those of the skull's almost perfectly. 

A final image meant to send the audience out of the theaters on an appropriately macabre note? A way of suggesting what's really going on inside Norman's head--basically cunning and implacable Death, grinning at our ludicrous need for a crumb of comfort, a word of reassurance? Or did Hitchcock in a moment of weakness betray his true attitude towards death--that certainly there's the possibility of an afterlife, but we're entirely too optimistic in thinking this a good thing?

A greater power

The Birds stands alone among all of Hitchcock's films, I think, in leaving us with no explanation, however demented, for the violence. Bruno wanted his father dead because he couldn't stand the man; Gavin Ellster wants his wife dead presumably because he wanted control of her money; Mrs. Bates wants any girl interested in her son dead because she's jealous of him (or rather, as Dr. Richman puts it, he's so intensely jealous of her he assumes she's the same way about him). The birds never tell us why they want everyone dead, they just keep at it--presumably will keep doing so until the desired end is achieved. 

There's a funny scene in a diner where different people gather together and offer explanations: changing weather, occult malevolence, biblical vengeance, none of which ultimately stick. With the film's final image--of the little sports car about to lose itself in a vast herd of fowl, inching towards a baleful sky--there's an ambivalent rise of volume and intensity in the birds' constant murmur: are they about to attack again? We can't know beyond the end credits; we can only speculate.

But the supreme moment for me isn't the film's appropriately bleak final image (not as bleak perhaps as in Daphne du Maurier's original short story, but in its way more cruel--as hope, represented by the few sun rays that manage to penetrate the gray cloud cover, is always more cruel than absolute despair); rather, it's the pause right after the gas station explosion--the breathless moment before the birds launch into their most massive attack yet.

To review: gulls attack a gas station attendant, knocking him down. Gas flows downhill, towards a parked car; the driver has stepped out to light a cigarette. The gasoline ignites, the car explodes; the flames follow the stream up the road to the station, which explodes.

Suddenly Hitchcock cuts to a high overhead shot, looking down on the town of Bodega Bay. Far below we see the flames from the burning car and gas station.

A startlingly peaceful moment, this. The panic and mayhem are all far below, out of earshot; the town itself looks like a toy diorama, where some willful boy has poured whiskey over one corner and set it alight.

Then you hear it: the sound of breathing. Barely registering on the ear but labored, as if someone were sucking air from a scuba tank. Then you see a pair of wings--here, there, gathering in increasing numbers. The birds are like skiers on a summit, looking down on the slope they plan to plunder; or like fighter planes perched above clouds waiting for the signal to attack--and suddenly you realize the burning station looks like a signal, like something they've been waiting for all this time.

Hitchcock is almost always about the point-of-view, about gliding, eye-level shots that increase our identification with the protagonist's helplessness and fear. Once in a blue moon (I'm thinking of the opening shot to the cropduster sequence in North by Northwest, or the camera swooping upwards to look down on Norman carrying his mother to the fruit cellar in Psycho) he resorts to a high overhead angle--less a point-of-view shot than a pitiless gaze assessing man's all-too-apparent vulnerability.

This was, well, different. This felt like both point-of-view and pitiless, sentient yet not quite human. The breathing (or rather the faintest suggestion of breathing) makes the moment all the more unnerving--who is this? Why is he doing all this? What does he intend to do next?

It's the closest, I submit, that Hitchcock ever comes to entertaining the possible existence of God, albeit here--and more clearly in du Maurier's story--a God in the guise of implacable nature. You do form specific impressions from this all-too-brief assumption of his  point of view, this fleeting glimpse of the world through his eyes: he seems less like the loving God of the New Testament, more like the vengeful God of old; and he seems to look down on the town and its inhabitants like so many ants--like a pestilence that must be dealt with, if a house is to be considered clean and fit to live in by more respectable inhabitants.

It's about as mysterious and terrifying an image as anything Hitchcock has ever produced--and as such, arguably one of the most mysterious, indescribably terrifying images ever created in the history of cinema. 

6.15.12

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Re-posted as part of the For the Love of Film: Film Preservation Blogathon. 

Merry Go Round Broke Down

(Warning: plot and story discussed in close detail)

Was looking at Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) again, drinking in all the little details. Like: Gavin Elster offering Scottie a drink, who turns it down, later pouring himself a drink at Midge's minibar. Scottie doesn't trust Elster enough to accept alcohol from him; Midge he trusts as an old friend--that is, completely, though this does him little good in the long run (Midge is about as effective as Scottie's instincts at keeping him out of trouble).

The Tourist (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

An innocent abroad

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Tourist has such a vile reputation one wants to walk into it wearing a body condom--acoording to its many detractors, it lacks sizzle, it lacks fizzle, it lacks chemistry, heat, spice, humor, thrills, chills, spills, so on and so forth. It's derivative; it borrows its best (or at least most obvious) elements from Hitchcock, particularly North by Northwest and from Stanley Donen's Charade, among others. Its plotting is dumb, its actors lifeless, its twists nonsensical.

So what did I watch anyway? Angelina Jolie plays Elise Clifton-Ward, a mysterious beauty who boards a Venice-bound train and is required to find a decoy, a patsy meant to throw off all the heavy-duty armed-to-the-teeth with mikes and lenses Interpol and Scotland Yard agents tailing her. At the spur of the moment, she elects to choose...Frank Tupelo, an American math teacher from Wisconsin. Johnny Depp is doing the average Everyman persona he does every other picture (Nick of Time, Donnie Brasco, The Ninth Gate), and truth to tell there's something reductive and inward-looking about him that lends itself towards making him seem so commonplace timid (as opposed to his sashaying, half-sober Captain Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies). Straight off Elise reveals herself to be something of a manipulator, a fairly ruthless one--yet in the guise of Angelina Jolie, all glorious cheekbones and lips to die for, one might understand an ordinary schoolteacher's impulse to walk into the trap eyes wide shut. Stepping off a cliff is not the smartest way to go, but boy, is the view spectacular. Wouldn't a public school educator from Wisconsin be tempted, even for a moment perhaps?

I can see people and critics alike being disappointed in the film--Hitchcock is a tough bar to beat, and North by Northwest is about the most perfect chase movie ever made. Donen's Charade isn't on that high level I think, but it does have Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and--God bless Depp--he isn't Grant, not by a long shot (though Jolie does have the kind of wattage that approaches Hepburn's, albeit with an altogether different flavor). All that said, I can appreciate what Donnersmarck is trying to do: a thriller, but not an obvious one; a romance with a touch more ambiguity; a chase that tumbles through the intricacies not of mere plot twists, but of character development. If Donnersmarck tamps down the heat factor of two very charismatic stars, that may be because he wants to show us gentler currents and eddies taking place between two recognizably human beings, the kind of dynamic found between two unlikely people falling in love despite themselves, and despite one of the lovers' explicitly callous brief ("pick a chump, any chump"). Doonersmarck's is a subtler, gentler approach, and what is revealed here isn't the metoric rise of an Everyman turning Superman--inspired by a daemonic muse--but of a remarkable man revealing even more remarkably commonplace emotions, a--dare we say it?--sweeter, more approachable form of love.

We see this time and time again: extraordinary situations where the people reveal themselves to be more human than the genre usually demands. A rooftoop chase sequence that has all the suspense and realistic vulnerability of a Roman Polanski film (Polanski being the default master of suspense generated by second-floor railings and the odd loose terra-cotta tile). Later, though one cannot visit Venice without running through its picturesque canals in high-speed boats, here the twist is that the boats are dragged down by various cables, hauling various weights--a visual metaphor for what the film is trying to do.

And, of course, the theme of surveillance, of acting as silent voyeur to the object of one's desire, an inescapable theme in Donnersmarck's best-known work The Lives of Others, about an introverted surveillance expert who wiretaps a famous dissident writer. Donnersmarck in this production seems to revel in what Western intelligence agencies with their larger budgets have to offer--video cameras, gun microphones, sophisticated chemical processes that can restore a burnt message back to coherence--all in the service of his overall motif: a human soul under close observation, by a not unsympathetic observer.

The film is such a throwback it's actually something of a revelation--a thriller without loud explosions, a comedy with more wit than crude humor, a romance with more tenderness than outright sexuality. No blatant CGI, no gigantic action setpieces, no loud beat-heavy music score. If people can't appreciate something entirely different from what they're used to, something pitched at a softer, lighter tone than anything they've enjoyed recently, then...what hope is there for anything else as soft or light, as subtle and unobstrusive?

First published in Businessworld, 1.13.11

"Psycho" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Mama's boy

(Warning: story discussed in close detail)

It's been fifty years--half a century--since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho first screened in theaters, and for the occasion there are plenty of articles written for the occasion. Jack Sullivan in the Wall Street Journal insists that Bernard Herrmann's slashing music score not only enhanced the infamous shower scene, but saved the film; J. Hoberman sketches the historical context in which the film appeared (it was released in roughly the same period as Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura), then reprints in whole Andrew Sarris' then freshly-minted appreciation:

“Psycho should be seen at least three times by any discerning film-goer, the first time for the sheer terror of the experience...the second time for the macabre comedy inherent in the conception of the film; and the third for all the hidden meanings and symbols lurking beneath the surface...”

Roger Ebert kills Brillante Mendoza's 'Kinatay' (which wins Best Director in Cannes anyway); Coraline; Rear Window; Le Plaisir

Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay

If they move, kill em

Roger Ebert, the gray eminence of Chicago film criticism, has weighed in on Kinatay (The Execution of P, 2009), Brillante Mendoza's latest work, presently in the Competition section of Cannes, and his verdict is not kind: Here is a film that forces me to apologize to Vincent Gallo for calling "The Brown Bunny" the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival.

Hitchcock, kids, umbrellas and trains, oh my!

Consider, if you will, a modest alternative to the usual flavorless multiplex fare, where morphing robots are so bereft of imaginative programming that all they can think of turning into are sports cars and ten wheelers, and effeminate pirates are so enamored of boxoffice profits they can't even recognize when they've been drained dry of creative juices and just lay down and die. Shake things up a bit, plug into something a liddle different, and sample fare at these two modest film festivals: the Fright Fest at Ayala Cinema's Glorietta 4, and Cine Europa at its traditional venue for the past ten years, the Shangri-La Plaza.

The Fright Fest features (what else) fright flicks from Wes Craven (not a big fan) to John Carpenter (who isn't, in my opinion, represented here by his best work), and four from this funny fat Englishman named Alfred Hitchcock. Who's he, you may ask? Only one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived, and, as all his own promotional material use to put it, a "Master of Suspense."

Probably best to take his pictures chronologically (more or less). Shadow of a Doubt (1943) is about a young girl (Teresa Wright, beautifully innocent, here), living in a quiet little community who starts suspecting that her "Uncle Charlie" (Joseph Cotten, at his most graciously menacing), fresh from the big city and a glamorous, mysterious figure, is actually a serial killer. Hitchcock considers this his favorite among all his films; I don't quite agree--I think the very best Hitchcock also needs above and beyond finely tuned thrills a strong element of sensual romance, even guilt over the consequences of said romance (something one can't quite find between the girl and Uncle Charlie (and anyone who suggests otherwise is a cad)). I do think it's a perfect melding of playwright Wilder (Our Town) and filmmaker Hitchcock, one feeding off of the other in an unholy, vampiric dance.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) is a romp, from exotic Morocco to England's Albert Hall; what makes it more than that is Hitchcock's incomparable skill in sketching unsettling details into the margins of his narratives. The way, for example, Dr. Ben McKenna (James Stewart, in an underrated performance) seems a tad too eager to drug his celebrity wife Jo (Doris Day, also underrated here) before telling her that their son had been kidnapped by international terrorists. The rest of the film is, as mentioned, a romp, but you're never ever sure from then on if the doctor's motives for anything is pure. Excellent--did I mention it's underrated?--Hitchcock thriller.

Rear Window (1954) is Hitchcock on top of his game. You can take the film on two levels: first, as a mystery where a man with a broken leg begins to suspect (Hitchcock's best works often start with someone in a familiar situation suddenly acquiring the notion that things aren't as they should be) that his neighbor across the way has just killed his wife; second, as a meditation on the consequences when a man is granted access into the lives of all the people around him--possibly the very first multi-screen, multi-channel entertainment system ever invented, in incomparably sharp detail and stunning color, churning out the '50s equivalent of reality TV. Hitchcock poses and pulls the stings of his little marionettes for Jeffries (again, Stewart, again amazing), and you share the fascination, the rush of power Jeffries feels. Should he--and we, by extension--feel disturbed? Should we, in fact, feel ashamed? Hitchcock may have been called the master of suspense to sell tickets, of course; no one points out how much Hitchcock is also a master of guilt and lasting remorse.

The Birds (1963) was Hitchcock's much-anticipated follow-up to his boxoffice hit Psycho (1960); in my opinion, the former exceeds all such anticipations. That's not a popular verdict; seen today, people consider The Birds a tad too ambitious, its bluescreen effects (despite contribution by animation legend U.B. Iwerks) too clunky and obvious ("think," some say, "of what Hitchcock would have done with digital effects!"). Seen on the big screen, however, The Birds is an entirely different creature; it's essentially an aural film, with Oskar Salas' collection of bird cries orchestrated by Bernard Herman's unique electronic keyboard into a cacophonic, apocalyptic attack on man's presumptuous position on the evolutionary ladder. Standing on top rung, Hitchcock seems to ask, are we as we often assume master of all beneath us, or are we just that much more exposed to takeover attempts from creatures below?

Hitchcock's films often ended with rational explanations and comforting reunions, presumably to make up for the unpleasantness he inflicts on his audiences. The Birds offers no such comfort: the animals attack, one by one we offer up theories that one by one are knocked down; the animals continue to attack without apparent end. As Hitchcock's most sweeping statement about the ultimate condition of our species and its relatively precarious grip on the planet Earth, The Birds stands alone; beyond any picture's ability to use giant apes or flamethrowing lizards or ants or spiders or sharks or worms or dinosaurs or whatever to rattle our environmental sense of smug entitlement, the film stands alone.

At the Shangri-la Cinema--Jan Sverak's Kolja (Kolya, 1996) was his most internationally successful work (it won one of those gold doorstops for Best Foreign-Language Film), and possibly most likeable, his variation on Eliot's Silas Marner where a man (Sverak's father Zdenek) acquires temporary custodianship of a young boy, learns to care for him, and along the way learns compassion and some measure of humanity. Sverak doesn't entirely transcend the sentiment, but his trademark low-key humor and effortlessly bittersweet melancholy (seen in fine form in previous works like Jizda (The Ride, 1994)) helps pull him through.

Fanny och Alexander (Fanny and Alexander, 1982), Ingmar Bergman's penultimate film, isn't so much a singular and intense work of art as it is an encyclopedia of singular and intense works of art--if anything, it seems to be a summation of Bergman's career at that time, not a bad thing to be at all. One wants to hold it like a treasury of great stories and images, and opens the book (or reviews the film in one's mind) directly at favorite passages--the spectacular Christmas Eve dinner early in the picture; Alexander's severe flogging; the terrifying moment in the Jew's workshop where God informs Alexander that He is stepping out and revealing himself. Not, perhaps, my favorite Bergman but easily his most accessible, a big, warm, fuzzy introduction (with a good dose of severe Lutheranism to balance it all out) to the filmmaker's works.

Jiri Menzel's Ostre sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains, 1966) is an amazing debut feature; ostensibly about the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, its hidden theme (and real subject) is the Soviet Union's stranglehold on the country since the Second World War. It comes off initially as a lighthearted romantic comedy about Milos (Vaclav Neckar) and his determination to lose his cherry, if you will. There are plenty of comically erotic opportunities, not to mention young nubile Czechs to lose it with, but the picture is no mere teenage giggle fest; Menzel carefully relates Milos' sexual repression with the Nazi repression of the country as a whole (and, by extension, the Communist repression of the country at the time), and never lets us forget the grim background against which the hilarity is playing out--the corpses glimpsed at in one train, Milos' attempted suicide, the film's own grim ending. One has to marvel at the way Menzel managed to say what he wanted to say and yet still toe the line, censorshipwise; thanks, ironically, to Soviet oppression, Menzel managed to create a subtly, cheerfully subversive film.

If Menzel's film is bittersweet, Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964) is bittersweet set to music. Michel Legrand's swooning romantic score and Demy's shocking color palette are an exhilirating match; add the incomparable Catherine Denueve and only a man with a heart of stone (and groin of boiled pasta) can resist the potent mix. Walk in with a will, walk out with bright reds, brilliant yellows and profound purples throbbing away against the back of your eyelids, with Legrand's indelible score warbling in your ears, and with the film's melancholy conclusion slowly, exquisitely breaking your heart.

Disturbia (D.J. Caruso, 2007)

There's no place like ho-hum

D.J. Caruso's Disturbia may seem like a teenage remake of Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) updated to allow for digital cameras and cellphones but other films figure as well: Tom Holland's Fright Night (1985), David Lynch's Blue Velvet released a year later, The Blair Witch Project (1999) among others. Nowadays you don't steal wholesale, you mix in borrowings from other pictures too--never mind that the result doesn't have the cheeky humor of Holland's stylish teen horror flick, the persuasiveness of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez's pseudo-documentary, the surreal kick of Lynch's small-town noir, the elegance and control of Hitchcock's thriller, one of the greatest ever made.

It does start off as its own movie--a horrifying car accident; Kale, a troubled teen (Shia LaBeouf) under house arrest for punching a teacher; an electronic ankle bracelet enforcing Kale's confinement; Ashley, a beautiful next-door neighbor (Sarah Roemer), newly moved in; and Mr. Turner (David Morse), a quietly eccentric neighbor Kale suspects of being a serial killer.

Caruso's coy about admitting to having lifted from Hitchcock; the early scenes of house arrest are more Lynch than anything, everyday suburbia overlaid with so much boredom and stillness you understand when Kale starts to freak out a little, at one point running far enough that his bracelet light turns red (ten seconds and the police are called in). When Kale's attention eventually turns to Turner, Caruso suggests that Turner's cunning may be too much for Kale, as Turner introduces himself to Kale's mother Julie (Carrie Ann-Moss, who in the words of one teenager is "hot"), hence introducing the possibility that he'll be visiting the house more often--maybe become the youth's latest stepfather (Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter (1955) anyone?).

That possibility is quickly dropped when Caruso goes into Blair Witch mode, with Kale's best friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo as the token Asian sidekick) sneaking around Mr. Turner's property with a digicam. Which is a pity--I'd like to have seen how Kale's angst might develop when faced with a possible killer for a father (besides Laughton's film, there's Joseph Ruben's The Stepfather (1987) and Olivier's 1948 Hamlet--'fathers gone wrong' is a rich genre, when you think about it); but Caruso's all about easy thrills as we eventually find out; subtle psychological tension isn't exactly his cup of tea.

And it would still be okay, these borrowings--Quentin Tarantino among others makes a so-so career out of such. But the visual style is so obvious and uninspired--shaky-cam, loud music, thunder and lightning--that you can't help but think of Hitchcock and how he played with audience expectations. Hitchcock wasn't above making his hero Jeff (James Stewart) send not the Comic Relief but Lisa, The Love Interest (Grace Kelly--such was Hitchcock's parsimoniousness that Kelly was Relief and Interest) running straight into danger (more at stake, you see), cunningly photographing everything in static long shot (exactly the way Jeff would see it), inserting mercilessly extended footage of Jeff's anguish while Lisa is being assaulted (he has to cover his ears while we hear Lisa's screams in the distance), then having the temerity to play a sweet love song in the background.

Then there's the plot loopholes--why, if Kale has such trouble convincing the police that Mr. Turner killed Ronnie doesn't he mention he has footage of Ronnie running into Mr. Turner's house? Why does Ronnie pull such a stupid stunt afterwards (he explains doing what he did because he didn't want to "get into trouble"--which is such a lame excuse you wonder if perhaps he and Mr. Turner are in fact collaborators)? Why is Mr. Turner silly enough to transmit footage of Ronnie unconscious, possibly dead when Kale can record it, maybe even broadcast it on the internet?

Tiresome stuff, and perhaps I wouldn't be so annoyed if the movie hadn't shown so much early promise--Caruso's blessed with a sufficently clever premise (a young man under house arrest suspects a neighbor of murder), a topnotch cast, and even young actors with some talent. Ann-Moss has the stricken gravity of her Trinity in the Matrix movies, and Morse shows us why he's such a terrific character actor--he plays up not the creepiness, but the affability, the charm, the sheer plausibility (at one point asked about the stench in the garage, he explains to a police officer "Thought I'd save a few steps and get it off the road myself") of man carefully living a quiet life.

LaBeouf is a pretty face, much as, say, Kyle MacLachlan was in Lynch's film, though Caruso largely uses LaBeouf in obvious ways, pointing up his boyish charms and teen angst instead of (as Lynch did) presenting paradigmatic innocence ready for corruption. Roemer is no Grace Kelly even if you keep one eye closed and afflicted the other with nearsightedness but she's an engaging enough presence, and she has a way with dialogue (looking at Kale's binoculars and listening to his explanation of what he's looking for, she replies "Where are the coffee and doughnuts? You can't have a stakeout without coffee and doughnuts").

But the script (by Christopher Landon (based on his story) and Carl Ellsworth (a TV and suspense flick veteran)) doesn't go beyond quick sketches and stereotypes. Accused by Ashley of peeping her, Kale explains "I've seen a lot; I mean, not like that…you're reading substantial books…so you look out the window all the time like I do, only you're looking at the world you know? Trying to figure it out, trying to understand the world. Trying to figure out why it's not in order like your books." It would have been nice of Landon and Ellsworth to have Ashley point out that she was reading Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, that life in that novel isn't exactly "in order" as Kale assumed. They might even have had something happen between Ashley and Mr. Turner to justify inserting the novel in the picture--but no, the filmmakers don't seem to want to work that hard.

In Rear Window Lisa points out to Jeff the full implications of what he's doing ("We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known"); in Disturbia Ashley raises the question then drops it without much discussion, much less thought. In Rear Window, the suspect, Lars Thornwald (a magnificent Raymond Burr) is no smirking, confident killer but a troubled man, fearful of exposure--you know he's capable of anything because he's scared to death of being found out. He's another of Hitchcock's guilt-haunted men, and such is the empathy Hitchcock builds around him you feel for him even as you wish for his capture (no such complex web of emotions surround Morse's otherwise stylish performance). Disturbia is a passable--sometimes less than that--way of wasting two hours, I suppose, but if my next-door neighbor happened to be playing Hitchcock's masterpiece on his DVD player, I'd rather stay at home and peep through his window.

(First published in Businessworld, 9/7/07)

Psycho Squared

Janet Leigh as Marion Crane in the 1960 version

Anne Heche in the remake

Psycho squared

(Plot of both films discussed in close detail)

I was involved in a kind of performance piece titled Psycho Squared, where my identical twin brother Joel and I sat down and dissected the original and Van Sant's remake as they played on a pair of video screens. I thought the results were rather illuminating, even if maybe the gimmick with us twins were a bit much.

Some of our observations: