First Shot : Maria, a rebellious, self-centered, insolent 17-year-old girl, is making up, using the camera as a mirror. Clearly, she sees nothing and noone but herself. In two minutes, she breaks the news to her parents. She has dropped out school, she wants to Marry Anthony and she is pregnant. After a brief argument she slaps her father in the face and leaves the house. He drops dead. A rock-tune starts, as well as the credit list, giving a light touch to a tragic situation. The tone is given.
Second scene : Matthew quits his job after a fight with his boss. He appears violent, rebellious and feared. A social misfit.
Once home, we realise that, though he is in his twenties, he is constantly bullied and humiliated by his father. A bookworm, he only listens to classical music and always carries a grenade with him.
Maria, for her part, is then dumped by her boy-friend, let down by her best friend and thrown out of her house by her mother. She is now a homeless whose first reaction is to try and buy beer. She is nearly raped by the shopkeeper and ends up drinking in a dilapidated house....where she meets Matthew, gone out for a smoke.
The movie then tells their story, how they get to know each other, how they fall in love and manage to live a life of their own with psychopaths as parents.
It could be just another teen love story but it is far more than this. It is clever, funny as well as dramatic. It is both a social and economic satyre. With very little money, Hal Hartley succeeds in making a powerful work, with such an original tone that it could then rival with Jarmusch's movies as a landmark in independant cinema.
Everything works in this film !
You can analyse the names and their relation with characters (Matthew Slaughter, nurse Payne, Jean..). You can see how scenes and even dialogues are repeated and sometimes reversed.
You can remark the special effect Maria has on men, how they fall when she appears or start to talk.
You can compare the last shot with the first one and see what it tells you about Maria.
You can scrutinize the theme of trust.
Most of all, you can just sit and enjoy a great movie and wonder why its director has not been given more consideration. After all, there is a great line of H.H. In American cinema from Howard Hawks to Henry Hathaway, not mentioning the unequalled Taiwanese director Hou Hsao Hsien and his triple H !
Eventually you can have a thought for Adrienne Shelly, a remarkable actress, who was muredered in New York in her early fourties, as she was about to direct her first movie.
lezard's Reviews
Displaying Review 36 - 40 of 52 in total
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If someone, interested in theatre asked you : « Do I have to read Shakespeare ? »What to answer ?
If someone, interested in cinema asked you: « Do I have to watch John Ford's movies ? » What to answer ?
The same obvious thing. John Ford is one of the greatest directors ever. Orson Welles, just before he shot Citizen Kane, was asked by journalists how he got prepared, he answered : « I watch the old masters, that is to say John Ford, John Ford and John Ford. »
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is his before last western and one of his last movies. Ford is one of the inventors of the western and it is fascinating to see his last look on the genre he adores and its favorite themes : the birth of the law opposed to the wild west, truth and legend, fidelity, violence and its use, the birth of a community and a nation.
Old Senator Ransom Stodard and his wife Hallie come back to a small western town. They are greated by Sherif Appleyard. With very few words, a few looks, no explanation, emotion is there, nearly palpable. Then comes a reocurring scene in Ford's movies : the visit to the dead, in a graveyard. But this time it is an inaugural scene which is even more meaningful.
It is about celebrating, honoring. It is about memory.
For the very first time in Ford's movies, the film unfolds in flash-backs.
Ford casting a look back at history, revisiting memory and his own films and the image they give of the West ? Undeniably !In a lawless, faithless wild west. Liberty Valance, a gangster (what a doomed name!) terrorizes a small town. Ransom ( the ransom, of course, but also the redeeming one) Stodart, a young idealist lawyer comes to town and is mugged by Valance. He is helped by Tom Doniphon, the old time cowboy. Accomodated and cured by Hallie, Stodard keeps trying to fight Valance in legal ways until a final showdown. Tom Doniphon tries to persuade him that only violence will stop Valance (violence/Valance). This opposition is doubled by a rivalry to win Hallie's heart.
In the background there's a political fight between homesteaders and shopkeepers, on the one hand, and big land and farmowners, on the other hand.
With such a story, Ford can tackle fundamental questions such as : Can violence be legitimate, can violence instore law ? From whom does the law proceed ? Should violence prevail upon law when necessary ? Are legend and myth founding values when they originate in a lie ? Can we really know the truth ? Should we always tell it ?
But the movie, of course, is not the sum of these questions. It is far more than this. It is funny, deeply moving, thrilling.
There's a series of great characters, a cowardly, friendly, sympathetic sherif, a black man bearing a Roman emperor's name, an alcoholic doctor and an alcoholic journalist, that is to say, two very nice characters (in Ford's scale of values), and as usual, strong and interesting women.
Lee Marvin is prodigious. The opposition John Wayne/James Stewart works perfectly. The scenes of initiations to democracy are touching and funny. The photography is nothing but great. Can you ask for more ?
This movie is also the fight between the desert and the garden, the perversion of impotent men who use their whip as a sex, the explosion of paint pots in seminal jaleousy, a savage desire, as beautiful as a cactus flower, litterature that ignorants choke the weel-learned with, democracy as an intolerable limit to alcohol, the infinitely black memory of Abraham Lincoln and the first vote, as moving as a child's birth. It is also an exile, far from the places we were born in, the betrayal of our lives faced with the young men we once were, and a possible come-back that would be like mercy or a tribute paid to ourselves.
I know it sounds very confusing but John Ford is a master in the art of simplicity and obviousness.
A masterpiece ! -
For various reasons, some directors could only make one movie, many of which have a special flavour. Let's think about « Honeymoon Killers » by Leonard Kastle or « Electra Glide in Blue » by James William Guercio.
Among these ones, « The Night of the Hunter » shines with a unique light.
Charles Laughton, a genius of an actor, from "Mutiny on the Bounty" to "Quasimodo", from "Hobson's Choice" to "Spartacus", directed this jewel.A starry night, children's faces, an old lady telling a bedtime story blended with words from the bible. The tone is given. It is about lambs, wolves and prophets. If you like realism, just walk away. It is a fairy tale which is being told us.
As to the old lady, she is played by Lilian Gish, a great star of silent movies. Cinema of childhood, childhood of cinema. Everything falls into place at once. A classic thanks to its immediate modernity.Second scene : the camera starts from the sky and zooms down on children playing hide and seek. One of them discovers a woman's corpse in the cellar. The discovery of crime/evil by children/innocence. A topography is given : throughout the movie, going down will be dangerous.
Third scene : bird's eye view again ! Zoom down on a car, driven by Robert Mitchum/Harry Powell, a preacher addressing god, a widow-killer. With Peter Lorre in « M » by Fritz Lang, one of the first serial-killers in cinema.
These three first scenes are like a program, a teaser for the story which can now begin. Once again, a high-angle shot and a zoom down on children. John and Pearl are playing. Their father, chased down by a police car, has just robbed a bank. He gives them the money and makes them swear they won't tell where it is. The scene is set in a small Ohio town during the Great Depression. The father is sentenced to death and emprisoned in the same cell as Harry Powell, who immediatly understands that there's a possible loot to be grabbed, and a widow to be killed.
The film is then a carnival of visions and shadows, of cathedral-like bedrooms, of crypt-like cellars, of rabbits watched by owls and foxes, of a starry river just out of a 1001 nights story, and of the same song sung by the prey and the predator.
Where is darkness, where is light ?Charles Laughton knows the bible by heart . Stanley Cortez his director of photography knows expressionism by the book. The result is a masterpiece. A fantasmagoric puzzle wher every piece falls into place like a true wonder. John, as a naive prophet, knows and reveals. Pearl is a pure and precious thing, hidden of course. Mitchum is the wolf, the false prophet with a fake power/Powell. Icey Spoon sells ice-cream and « swallows » every lie. Miss Cooper/coop as a mother-hen welcoming children. John and Pearl's escape on the river reminds us of Mark Twain (litterature of childhood/childhood of American litterature) .
There is no specific age to read or watch good stories. Nevertheless, those who have seen « the Night of the Hunter » as children will never forget it.
« Childreeen !!! »
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First attempt, first success.
In 1957 "12 Angry Men" was released and met with little success but was awarded the Golden Bear in Berlin, the special prize in Locarno, was nominated for the Oscars and Henry Fonda was declared the best actor at the British Awards. Since then it has become an absolute classic !
It is a trial movie, a genre which counts numerous great movies from "The Paradine case" by Alfred Hitchcock, from "Anatomy of a Murder" by Otto Preminger, to "Witness for the Prosecution" by Billy Wilder. But whereas all these movies focus on the trial in itself, debates, witnesses, interrogations, the lawyers speeches, until the suspense of the verdict, this film is set in a single room, behind closed doors, during the jury's deliberation. An interesting challenge for stage directing.
A teenager from a violent neighborhood is charged with his father's murder. All evidence is against him. The twelve jurors expect a quick deliberation leading to an obvious verdict. Surprisingly, after a vote, one of them finds the defendent non-guilty. They have to debate, whether they want it or not.
The script is terribly efficient, like a clock's gears. All the proofs are examined, one after the other, and proved false with an undeniable logic. Roles are reversed : justice is here accused, as well as those who condemn blindly, out of prejudices.
The movie has many opponents. They find the scenario too simplistic, too « black and white ». They object that the jury is only composed of white men, but wasn't it the case at that time ? Yes Henry Fonda is the only one dressed in white ! Objection sustained, your honor !
Nevertheless, the film is thrilling and works perfectly. The staging if not revolutionary, is dynamic and inventive and makes the most of the situation. Lumet puts rythm in the debate, which could be boring otherwise. There are small interruptions, pauses, which enable us to get to know the jurors better, their life, families, jobs, dramas. This little « escapes » are like the breathing of the movie and the closed room is cut into a geography of micro spaces : the end of the table, the bathroom, a window sill...
Moments of tension alternate with calmer instants or funny ones. Lumet manages to turn every vote into a grasping suspense. All the prejudices that plague any society are exposed one by one which makes the movie so modern.
All the jurors correspond to well-defined categories and social backgrounds. They are well-scripted and the actors are great which is finally the greatest asset of the film.
Of course Lumet will direct other great movies, such as Serpico or Dog day afternoon but his first try is definitely worth seeing again and again. -
Let's talk about food !
First of all there's « haute cuisine ». Everything is thought over, planned, balanced. A feast of senses which has a certain price.
There are « small » restaurants, unformal and friendly. Traditional food, patiently cooked. It Provides pleasure and is affordable.
Fast food, which is most of the time not so fast and no so food, but is cheap. You don't « eat » but are fed.
Eventually, there's what poor people eat when they have nothing on their plate, if they have a plate : bread.
But bread can be excellent !When Comencini started to work on « Pane, amore e fantasia », he had already shot 5 very different movies and really felt like shooting something more « serious ». His initial project was way more ironical and critical, especially against the « carabinieri ». Due to financial problems the movie became a light comedy but met with huge success.
The pitch is quite thin : love, as usual. A carabinieri officer is appointed in a small village. He is a bachelor and a womanizer. There, he falls for the "Bersagliera" (Gina Lollobrigida) who is in love with a dumb carabinieri. Eventually, the aging officer, after some turns of events, will choose the village's midwife.
With such a simpistic plot, we can wonder where the charm of the movie comes from.
First of all, from its deep and sincere gaiety, which is something most, if not all the current movies lack. Funny movies are still made, as well as buddy movies meant to make us happy. Happy but not joyful, as only children, mentally defficient persons or very poor people can be. This gaiety is a luxury that rich people like us can't afford. We always have something in the back of our mind.
Secondly, it is first-degree cinema where cynicism doesn't exist. It is so relaxing !
Third : Gina Lollobrigida is a sight for sore eyes. It is nicely and lightly erotic, which may sound outdated in a time when you can watch hard-porn in one click. But, as François Truffaut used to say : »When everything is possible, nothing is important anymore ! ».
Honestly, I don't know if this kind of movie can still be watched and enjoyed, though it is refreshing indeed.Kubrick or Bergman, Ozu or Antonioni don 't deal with this dime-store stories. They are interested in « haute cuisine ». But you can't have this kind of food everyday if you don't want indigestion.
This movie deals with simple people and basic food.
« What are you having ? » the officer asks a man eating, sitting on a bench in the village. « Bread ! » He says. « What do you put in your bread ? » asks the officer. « Dreams ! » replies the man, bursting out laughing.
What an excellent summary ! When you aren't rich enough, laughter, gaiety can replace what you can't buy. After all, with sex, they are still the only affordable pleasures for everybody.
