The end of the month meant getting in the last two Derek Jarman films I wanted to see before the left The Criterion Channel. The new month brought one of my all-time favorite films, a new favorite, an intriguing Argentine horror film and only one disappointment.
The Tempest
Scholars were incensed. Vincent Canby likened it to “a fingernail scratching a blackboard.” But there’s no denying the rampant originality and often striking imagery in Derek Jarman’s THE TEMPEST (1979). Set in Stoneleigh Abbey, Jarman’s queered production fragments and rearranges parts of the text, adds a homoerotic element to the relationship between Propsero (Heathcote Williams) and Ariel (Karl Johnson) and has Trinculo (Peter Turner) turn to drag. There are some quite intelligent line readings and some that aren’t, including a few instances in which visuals contradict the dialog (I missed Caliban’s long fingernails, and Ariel tells the courtiers to hold still when they’re not moving). But there are also some inspired choices, like playing Miranda (Toyah Wilcox) as a feral child. One of the best scenes is her silent descent of a staircase as she imagines what it would be like to be a grand hostess, and her scenes with Ferdinand (David Meyer) are charming in their innocence and sincerity. It’s also a joy to see Peter Bull, often cast as curmudgeons, delivering a moving interpretation of Alonso. The scenes with the fools feel out of place. Though the image of them dancing in the surf is beautiful, they seem to be in another film. They’re rather too over the top to be a part of Jarman-world. But that’s all forgiven in the final celebration when a very gay sailor’s hornpipe is followed by Elisabeth Welch’s performing “Stormy Weather.” It’s the kind of shocking choice that suddenly throws the director’s work into vivid relief. Just as Prospero’s vengeance gives way to forgiveness, and the series of destructive coups behind the action (Antonio’s against Prospero, Prospero’s against Sycorax, Antonio’s and Sebastian’s ambitions to kill Alonso) are followed by the comic coup attempted by Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo, so the storm that started the play and shipwrecked Prospero’s enemies has become aestheticized as a beatific vision. As Welch, all decked out in a fantasy version of Elizabethan drag, croons, the sailors break off into romantic couples and even Caliban is brought to a state of joy. Art can heal, and whatever flaws Jarman’s THE TEMPEST may have, that’s what it ultimately does.
The Angelic Conversation
Sweet love remembered in THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION
Using 14 Shakespeare sonnets as narration (delivered simply and effectively by Judi Dench), Derek Jarman’s THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION (1985, Criterion no more) is an impressionistic tale of obsessive desire. One man (Paul Reynolds) follows another (Phillip Williamson) until they achieve some form of purity, Reynolds by bathing and anointing a religious figure, Williamson by swimming naked to the accompaniment of Benjamin Britten’s “Sea Interludes.” Meanwhile images of a burning car, a fence and a radar tower serve as reminders of a civilization with no room for purity or love. It all creates an off-beat sense of fusion with Shakespeare’s words of love in the face of distance and social disapproval, particularly trenchant considering Jarman filmed this during Margaret Thatcher’s homophobic reign. This is a very demanding film from one of the screen’s most demanding directors. The rhythms are slow, and the images combine stop motion and slow motion that can be a little disorienting. I have to confess that the pacing was so close to the way my mind wanders as I’m drifting into sleep that it was hard not to nod off. But it’s worth the effort to share in this hallucinatory vision Jarman considered his favorite film.
M
M—simply one of the greatest films ever made
The best film I watched in August and probably the whole year will probably be a no brainer since I showed a friend Fritz Lang’s M (1931, Max, Prime) last night. Lang’s first sound film was a breakthrough in its use of tracking shots and a musical leitmotif to tell the tale of the hunt for a child killer (Peter Lorre) by the police on one side and the criminal underworld on the other. The film’s cynical view of power structures and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner’s painting with light and shadow would become major influences on the rise of film noir in the 1940s, while, with Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LODGER (1927), M would inspire decades of police procedurals with its panoramic view of the social effect of Lorre’s crimes. It also contains an unforgettable performance by the actor, who manages to make his character both animalistic and surprisingly sympathetic. His climactic monolog, delivered to a kangaroo court of criminals whose livelihood has been threatened by the police search for him, is one of the greatest acting moments on screen. What surprised me on re-viewing the film for the first time in years was how much humor Lang had injected into the film. Scenes of the public , as anybody seen talking to a child or in police custody is presumed to be the killer, are mordantly funny, while the quirks of the various legal and criminal authority figures create a great gallery of comic grotesques. As an early talkie, the film maintains a lot of the visual story telling of the silent era. You can tell the washerwoman featured early on is the mother of young Elsie just from the way Lang cuts between the two, and Elsie’s death is communicated through simple details — her ball rolling across the grass and the balloon Lorre had bought her tangled in some power lines. Lang also uses editing for social criticism, as he repeatedly cuts between a criminal meeting to discuss the murder investigation and a meeting of the city’s leaders. This is one of the film’s most subversive elements, the equation of the city government and police force with the criminal underworld. Is there that much difference between the police indiscriminately raiding underworld hangouts and the criminals breaking into an office building and torturing the night watchman? And when Elsie’s mother says at the end, “One needs to keep closer watch over our children, all of you!” the film becomes almost prescient, or at least benefits from our knowledge of the children (and adults) who would be slaughtered when the Third Reich came into power.
This Is Francis X. Bushman
More than just a punch line on THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, Francis X. Bushman was one of the screen’s first credited male stars and, with Beverly Bayne, half of the screen’s first great love team. He also wrote and directed some of his starring vehicles and directed, adapted and starred in an acclaimed production of ROMEO AND JULIET (insisting the actors learn Shakespeare’s lines even though it was silent) before scandal and a feud with Louis B. Mayer sent him plummeting into low-budget productions. In later years, the generosity of fans like Orson Welles, Groucho Marx and Bob Hope helped bring him back into the public eye. Lon Davis’ THIS IS FRANCIS X. BUSHMAN (2021, TCM) just barely misses being the tribute he deserves — it’s rather short and clearly low-budget — but it’s a good start. Bushman’s grandson, Chris Bushman, narrates, and though he reads the lines intelligently, he’s clearly not an actor. Generous excerpts from an interview with the star in 1957 bring a lot more energy to the soundtrack. The treasure, of course is the film clips. Most of Bushman’s films are lost, but those that remain show an actor who was at times surprisingly naturalistic for his era. In some clips there’s a startling contrast between his acting and that of his co-stars. It’s also a treat to see clips from the previously lost CHARGE OF THE GAUCHOS (1928) and the recently rediscovered CALL OF THE CIRCUS (1930), his first talking picture. I wish, however, they could have included something from his last film, THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966) instead of just dismissing it, particularly since there are interesting clips of his attempting to maintain his dignity (and act off a walking fence post) in his penultimate picture, THE PHANTOM PLANET (1961).
Terrified
Something is haunting the street where you live.
Usually when you can identify the other movies that inspired a horror film, it’s the imitation that looks tawdry in comparison. That’s not the case with Demian Rugna’s Argentine TERRIFIED (2017, Shudder, On Demand). This tale of a haunted street owes a debt to the episodic narrative of JU-ON (2002) and the domestic terrors of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (2007) and INSIDIOUS (2010) but manages to improve on its sources. I’m tempted to say it’s the film INSIDIOUS thinks it is. It opens with a great jump scare. A woman working in her kitchen hears something coming from the drain. She bends closer to listen as the camera moves in on the drain, and suddenly water hits the sink. It’s simply her turning on the tap to see if that will end the noises (it doesn’t), but it’s a definite jolt for the viewer. Later we get one of the few bloody scenes in the movie when something throws her around her bathroom as her husband watches in horror. When the police question him, they compare notes on other strange occurrences on his street. One neighbor’s furniture moves around as he sleeps, and a dead child returns from the grave simply to sit in his kitchen, immobile unless you turn away. That sets up a powerful theme, the queering of the domestic by supernatural forces. Were the plot to follow through with that, it would be one of the great horror films. Instead, however, the coroner and chief detective join two paranormal researchers to move into the houses and investigate. What follows is very good, but it loses the sense of an attack on our most sacred and private spaces. Still, Rugna balances the few jump scares with a sense of queasiness as the investigators realize that things aren’t always what they seem. TERRIFIED traffics in intelligent, truly unsettling scares and could have you looking at your home with more than a bit of dread, particularly if you’re streaming it in what you think is your safe place.
Teorema
Terence Stamp in white could be the dictionary picture for "seductive."
It's hard to pin down a single meaning for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s TEOREMA (1968, Criterion Channel, in English on Prime). He seems to have been working so close to his subconscious that even his statements about the film don’t seem to encompass everything happening on screen. I can only describe my own reactions to its depiction of an upper-middle-class household thrown into an uproar when a mysterious visitor (Terence Stamp at his sexiest) seduces the four family members and the maid. A lot of it feels like social satire. The film opens with a flash-forward, a news report on a Milanese factory whose owner has just turned it over to the workers. As a reporter with a clear liberal bias questions them, they seem unable to conceive that the change will move them into the middle class or result in a classless society. It’s a clash between two blindered views of life — the working class mired in its own subjugation and the liberal who can only see the world in terms of political movements. After a silent, sepia-toned sequence introducing the household’s members, the film switches to color with Stamp’s first appearance. The various seductions seem both sensual and silly as the characters stare at Stamp’s crotch or, in the case of mother Silvana Mangano (who’s utterly exquisite in this film), adore his discarded clothing. When he abruptly leaves, each of his willing conquests finds their lives irrevocably changed. I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll say the son’s (Andres Cruz Soublette) transformation into an artist whose increasingly abstract work is an attempt to capture the lover’s image seems one of the most positive responses, even as his words (and Pasolini’s after the fact) disparage his work. But like so much of the film, it’s both moving and somehow comical. There is a sense, overall, that the bourgeois family members, faced with an unclassifiable passion, fall apart. They’re unmoored from a comfortable world where everything to be consumed is in its proper place. Whether this unmooring is destructive or productive may be a question of your point of view, but damn, is it fascinating watching it happen.
Honeydew
Devereux Milburn’s HONEYDEW (2021, Shudder) starts like gangbusters. Its first hour sets up a New England farming community afflicted with a wheat fungus that can cause gangrene, seizures and even madness. Rylie (Malin Barr) and her actor boyfriend Sam (Sawyer Spielberg) have traveled there to research her dissertation. When their car breaks down, they stumble on a remote farmhouse and ask for help, only to wind up staying the night. The woman running the farm (Barbara Kingsley) is a bonafide eccentric, and Kingsley is very funny in the role as she drifts off during conversations and plies the disbelieving couple with food and small talk. Adding to the weirdness is the presence of her son, Gunni (Jamie Bradley), who she says was kicked in the face by a bull. He’s barely verbal and watches Max Fleisher cartoons while sucking on lemon wedges dipped in sugar and bleeding occasionally from the eyeball and a facial wound. So far, so good. There are tensions within the couple that add to the humor, particularly when the two dieters sneak food behind each other’s backs, and everything is well-played and well-shot. Of course, you know there’s going to be something deadly behind the silliness, and when it emerges, the film goes sour. Part of the problem is that the secret is derivative of other films pitting city people against rural folks. The other part is that Milburn cuts corners. In two instances, where we need to see scenes we suddenly cut and just see their results. And in one of those cases, the result doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Nor does the film ever follow through on the wheat fungus. Maybe it’s just a given, but this is a case where things need to be spelled out just a little bit more. There’s also a WTF cameo by Lena Dunham. She’s virtually unrecognizable, but if you realize it’s her, you’re likely to be distracted wondering how she wound up in this film. It’s enough to make you wish you were watching a marathon of GIRLS’ most annoying episodes.
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