Le Mura di Malapaga (1949)

The Walls of Malapaga feels like a fairly standard post-war tragic romance in the vein of the great De Sica movies from this period. Jean Gabin does his gruff lovable-yet-unlovable thing. Isa Miranda is lovely in this, and Louis Page photographs the war-ravaged city of Genoa with heartbreaking care (it's a sound stage, actually, but I believed it).

Also, I had been looking for a copy of this with English subtitles for years and was happy to have finally found one, so I watched it as soon as I found it. You can't find it on YouTube but it's over at Dailymotion:

Jacques Becker's Last Film

Le Trou is gorgeous. It's so weird because I love gangster and other crime films from this period – the films of Melville, Becker, Clément, Clouzot – but I really hate how the bad guys (by which I mean the good guys, the main characters of the film, whom we love and want to succeed) never get away with the crimes they wish to commit. Crime never pays in these movies. It's hearbtreaking.

Becker's film has a million things going for it, and like all of the movies in this genre, the movies doesn't particularly moralize at the end; it just refuses to let them get away with their scheme.

Le Trou is fundamentally a prison film, and because it is 1960 it is a prison film not about the abuses that occur in prisons but about the action of escaping the prison. There is one little very clear homo-moment. A character named Monseigneur is in the infirmary stealing some glass bottles, and there's another guy in there getting a shot for some venereal disease.
Monseigneur tells the guy: No women; that's the way to stay clean.
The guy replies: To each his own.
To which Monseigneur responds: No men either.
It's a funny little moment, intended only for color. I obviously found it delightful. The film itself is in love with Pierre Leroy's chest, as well, and he spends half the movie without a shirt. I found that, in particular, quite surprising.

As a film, this is one of Becker's best. It's beautifully shot and really explores the morality of friendship, duty to one's fellow man, and (especially) the time involved in breaking out of prison. Le Trou dwells in this, and it is both excruciating and fascinating. I loved this movie.

The Briefest of Reviews from 1973

I wish that I could like Luchino Visconti, but I guess I just don't. I liked Romy Schneider and Trevor Howard in Ludwig, and literally every shot could be framed and put in a gallery. It's that gorgeous. But the film is just so boring. And I am really interested in Ludwig II and in Richard Wagner, whose life and work have always fascinated me, but I feel like Visconti just drains all energy out of his films. This is sacrilege, I know, but I feel it is time to be honest about this.

There is one sequence in Ludwig that I liked and that has real emotional impact: there is an extended sequence (every sequence is an extended sequence in Visconti) where Romy Schneider takes a tour of all the castles that Ludwig has built. The castles are all empty and unbelievably sumptuous. At the end of the sequence, Schneider throws her head back and laughs. I loved this sequence, but for me that was the film's only scene of merit.

Also. I do not understand what it was with the Italians from this time – Fellini and Visconti in particular. Why are all their films dubbed? I fail to understand it. Helmut Berger, as far as I can tell, was speaking English in the film. But instead of listening to him speak in English, I listen to someone else speak over him in Italian and then read an English translation of that Italian in the subtitles. I am sure there must be an explanation for this, but whatever Visconti's reasoning (and Fellini's and René Clément's) the dubbing works to distance me from the emotional impact of the film.

A Kids' Movie?

As predicted by Julie, I loved Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which upped the ante on James Cameron's first (1984) Terminator by focusing more on character development, increasing the special effects and taking advantage of 1991's better visual effects technology. Arnold Schwarzenegger, merely menacing and indecipherable in the first film, emerges as a comic talent, essential to the second film, where he was only incidental in the first.

Edward Furlong is also great as the young John Connor, who learns to trust and love Schwarzenegger's Terminator. Cameron crafts these scenes so well that long before the heavy-handed voice-over explicitly states it, we realize that the cyborg gas become an important father-figure to the young boy. The only real problem with Terminator 2 is Linda Hamilton's overly serious performance as Sarah Connor. She's great in the first film, where she spends a lot of time running and screaming and, well, responding to all of the crazy plot twists provided in The Terminator. But in the second film, Hamilton is asked to drive entire sections of the movie, and her intensely earnest portrayal of what could be a diva-esque role makes her scenes irritating or even slightly painful when they could have been wickedly fun.

And today I watched René Clément's 1952 French film Jeux Interdits, which goes by the (rather salacious, if you ask me) title Forbidden Games. This is a movie about games played by two children and the English language title implies slightly scary sexual play to me. Anyway, my problems with the English title notwithstanding, Jeux Interdits is an excellent little film about a young girl named Paulette whose (civilian) parents are killed in one of the Nazi bombings of France. Paulette is immediately adopted/befriended by a little boy named Michel, who brings her home and insists that his family take her in. The jeux in the title refer to the pet cemetary the two children begin to construct after Paulette decides to bury her pet dog Jock, who was also killed by the Nazis.

Jeux Interdits didn't make me cry per se. It isn't sentimental in that way (I did cry at Terminator 2 in case you were wondering), but Clément's film gnaws away at you in a different way. The film's ending is absolutely devastating. It's a sock-in-the-jaw, merciless way to end a film that feels honest but heartbreaking. I'm not going to give the ending away, but for me the ending makes or breaks a film and Jeux Interdits' ending unequivocally makes this one.

Movies I've Seen Recently That Have Been Sort of Crap

WarGames. Lame. I love Ally Sheedy, but this movie was lame.  I wish I could save the world with a game of tic-tac-toe.

Havana.  Must we always see Cuba with a backdrop of 1958?  The reason for this is that Cuba after 1959 doesn't include any white people.  I'm tired of looking at this period in Cuba's history.  Let's see something else.  I still love Lena Olin, though.

Is Paris Burning?  This was supposed to be a star-studded extravaganza.  No.  The audio is horrible, but that's beside the point because this movie (clocking in at 172 minutes) is fucking boring.

Down with Love.  Down with this movie.  It was cute for the first 40 minutes and then it went south in a real hurry.  I really disliked Renée Zellweger in this film.  Her acting is just bad.  Ewan McGregor, however, can trick me into believing he's an astronaut any day of the week.

First Love.  Boo to Deana Durbin (who looks exactly like Renée Zellweger would look if she ate every once in a while), and boo to this partial retelling of the Cinderella story and partial ripoff of Victor Schertzinger's One Night of Love.

Hero.  Pretty... and pretty sentimental.  I love Zhang Yimou, but this movie was boring.  Hopefully his next film, House of Flying Daggers, is better.

It's a Wonderful Life.  Whatever.  This movie was good for a little while.  But it's sooo sentimental and schmaltzy.  I know everyone will say I have a heart of stone, but giving up your dreams to make other people happy is not "a wonderful life."  It may be noble, and he may feel some sort of righteousness, but he's still not living his dream and he's still not happy.  Jimmy Stewart was great, though.  I have to admit.

The Bostonians.  I usually like Merchant/Ivory.  At least I think I do.  The main problem with this movie is the always boring Christopher Reeve in the lead role.  Thank god he doesn't do movies anymore.  The lead girl and he have no chemistry and the lead girl is annoying in her own right.  I can't remember her name because I'm trying to forget it.