Nosferatu 2024, 1979, 1922 (Robert Eggers, Werner Herzog, FW Murnau)

The blood drinkers

(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in explicit and gory detail)

FW Murnau did a low-budget unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula titled Nosferatu (1922) which Stoker's widow pursued with a vengeance, demanding all prints and negatives be destroyed (despite which the film went on to achieve unholy immortality); Werner Herzog did a remake in 1979 employing ten thousand rats and his own inimitable filmmaking style; now Robert Eggers-- who professes admiration for the Murnau-- has crafted his own version, shifting emphasis from vampire to victim in his 2024 remake. 

And how does Eggers' compare? Well let me tell you.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926)

Silhouette romance

A few weeks ago with little advance publicity, the Goethe Institute arranged the screening of Lotte Reiniger's films for two weeks-- free-- at the Metropolitan Museum, in Roxas Boulevard. Think of the best of Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies and his feature masterpiece (Fantasia, says many, Pinocchio says I*) being shown regularly for ten succeeding days without charge, and you won't even come close to suggesting the cinematic riches made available to us, almost without our knowing (I barely managed to catch the last screening myself). Hopefully they will allow one more screening, at the Goethe Institute in Aurora Boulevard.

*(Nowadays I'd say Sleeping Beauty)

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948); Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin (Letters from an Unknown Woman, Xu Jinglei, 2004)

A pair of unknown women 

(WARNING: details of Stefan Zweig's story, on page or in the big screen, are explicitly discussed!) 

Speaking of great, what other word can you use to describe Max Ophuls' Letter from an Unknown Woman? Hollywood refused to allow Ophuls his trademark long shots but even so you recognize the Ophuls style--in shorter gasps perhaps but thrillingly alive. The characters are filmed--caught if you like--in constant flux, literally and dramatically, fully aware that their life at any moment will irrevocably transform, like moths in an oil lamp.

Faust (Fritz Bennewitz)

Beat the Devil 

First published in the Manila Chronicle 12/14/94

With the passing of Lino Brocka, Mario O'Hara is one of a shrinking handful of Philippine film directors whose films are worth getting excited about. Lino has already made his masterpieces; one disadvantage to being dead is that there are no more works forthcoming.

In films such as Condemned and Bulaklak sa City Jail Mr. O'Hara has proven that he can elicit memorable performances and excellent ensemble acting from Dan Alvaro, Nora Aunor, Maya Valdez, Zenaida Amador; even genial German Moreno gave a chilling turn as prison warden in Bulaklak. I will stick my neck out and say that he is Brocka's superior in visual style, as witness the dark gloriously film-noir look of Bagong Hari or the claustrophobic squalor in City Jail. As late as last year with Johnny Tinoso and the Proud Beauty he was still doing fascinating work: while the first half of the film is a mess of underfunded special effects and poorly imagined art direction, the second half is one of the more enchanting fantasies made that year, local or foreign. It was more hip and sophisticated than Disney's Beauty and the Beast and fully realized the complexities of the Nick Joaquin short story it was based on.

One more thing about O'Hara's career: it is difficult it is agony to choose between his acting and his directing. He is a brilliant director but is a just as brilliant if not more so actor. Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang is one of Brocka's more ambitious films (his best some say). O'Hara has the supporting role of a leper who lives in the outskirts of the village near a cemetery; his companion is a woman driven insane by a forced abortion, played by Lolita Rodriguez. Their roles are hoary old cliches that stink to high heaven of sickly sweet sentiment--or should: O'Hara and Ms. Rodriguez perform with sublime simplicity, treading the thin line between bathos and comedy. The result is a tender portrait of small-town outcasts; the film is a starring vehicle for Christopher De Leon (who fares well) but it's O'Hara and Rodriguez who stay with you.

 O'Hara has made a few appearances since (he was memorable in Brocka's Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa as a malevolent gardener out to seduce a repressed widow, again played by Lolita Rodriguez--what is it about the two that the chemistry between them is so potent?). He has gone into directing, resulting in the films already mentioned (for which I am grateful), and has done work on stage.

Which brings us to O'Hara's Mephistopheles in the PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association) production of Faust. In England Shakespeare wrote among many plays Henry ll to Vll, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear; Germany has Goethe who wrote Faust. It took him sixty years and almost as long for modern audiences to sit through; PETA is doing only the first part but still--ambitious.

Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)

Papa don't preach

Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann on paper sounds like that most tiresome of tales: a free spirit goosing up a prig's life, teaching her how to relax, be in the moment, grow a sense of humor. Basically the plot of half of Robin Williams' movies (though for the record the films by Michael Richie, Terry Gilliam and Robert Altman I liked), Steve Martin's (though his collaborations with Herbert Ross, Fred Schepsi, and Carl Reiner I liked), John Candy's, a host of other Hollywood comedians.  

Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) teaches grade school music and is an incorrigible somewhat disturbing prankster--early on for example he makes his face up as a ghoul to pay tribute to a departing teacher; later at a lunch with family (and still wearing the makeup) he informs them that he has a side job at a retirement home--50 euros per death. His daughter Ines (Sandra Huller) is an ambitious up-and-comer in an international consulting firm, constantly on the cell phone, constantly traveling to other countries. The two aren't close: Winfried and his wife divorced and Ines grew up with her mother. Winfried only finds out at the lunch that Ines is celebrating her birthday early and has no gift for her; Ines in turn is palpably uneasy talking to him. When Ines flies to Bucharest for an important meet Winfried suddenly pops up at her office lobby to deliver his promised birthday gift, announcing that he's staying a month; Ines scrambles to close the deal and accommodate her dad at the same time.

If Ade largely avoids the pitfalls of the genre that's no small achievement. Peter Rainer at The Christian Science Monitor wonders at the oddity of a German comedy and wonders further if perhaps this is why most critics are rapturous about the picture; I think it's a tad more interesting than that. Simonischek, a hulking bristly man, doesn't play Winfried the way an accomplished comedian would; his schtick is more awkward than polished, his hunched massive frame half-ready to apologize for whatever absurdity he's about to commit, and he often gives up or admits it's a joke part of the way through; folks react with a blank face, unsure what to say, then give a polite nervous chuckle. It's like Open Mike night at the local comedy club: someone steps up halfway sure he's going to bomb, and you can't help but clap in embarrassed sympathy.

World on a Wire (Welt am Draht, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973)

Pure imagination

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's World on a Wire (Welt am Draht, 1973, from Daniel F. Galouye's novel Simulacron-3), done before he succeeded internationally with Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was--after a TV premiere and a few theatrical screenings--unavailable for the longest time. It was resurrected thirty-seven years later by the 60th Berlin Film Festival  before being released on Region 2 DVD, then on the Criterion label two years after that. 

Along with its many dislocations the film--as if stored in a vault, or catapulted by time machine some forty years into the future--gives us a glimpse of how the '70s viewed virtual reality, artificial intelligences, the digital age, all hazily distant concepts at the time. In some ways their ideas were wrongheaded, laughably caught up in their own fixations (nothing exposes a decade better than its notions of the future); in others they were remarkably on target, even disturbingly prescient about trends still developing today.