Summary of Criterion Box Set - Essential Art House, 50 Years of Janus Films

Regular readers (should such things exist) will have picked up that a fair proportion of the films we watch have come from a box set we bought many moons ago (I just checked and apparently I bought it in 2006 for $625 - it's a bit more now) - so many that they're all DVDs, not Blu-Rays, let alone 4K - and have worked through on and off for two decades.  Well, we finally finished all 50 films.  I say "we" but I lost Jami in the last furlong, as she can't take anything remotely gloomy these days.  Anyhoo, here are some photos:

As you can see, it comes in a (now slightly tatty) case and consists of a large book to contain the 51 discs (there's also a disc of three documentaries - about Paul Robeson, "The Love Goddesses" and "The Great Chase" - lots of clips taken from classic silents involving Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, the Keystone Kops et al.) and a thinner volume which has gorgeous glossy photographs along with a mini-essay about each film.  The actual discs, while very high quality to view (some of them you wouldn't know weren't Blu-Ray) have no extras and rudimentary menus, but all have subtitles, mostly because the majority aren't in English.  You might notice that the Seven Samurai disk above doesn't have the same typeface because I lent it out and it vanished, so I got the Criterion DVD edition to make sure the collection is complete (this despite the fact that we own it on Blu-Ray and I have to stop myself buying it on 4K every time Criterion has a 50% off sale).  Anyway, let's start by listing the contents in chronological order, complete with length and director:

1922 - Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1hr 44m)
1929 - Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 2hr 13m)
1931 - M (Fritz Lang, 1hr 50m)
1935 - The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1hr 26m)
1937 - Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1hr 34m)
1937 - Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1hr 54m)
1938 - Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, 1hr 30m)
1938 - The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock, 1hr 37m)
1938 - Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein, 1hr 48m)
1939 - The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1hr 46m)
1939 - Le Jour Se Lève (Marcel Carné, 1hr 30m)
1943 - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell, 2hrs 43m)
1945 - Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1hr 26m)
1946 - Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1hr 33m)
1948 - The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed, 1hr 35m)
1949 - The Third Man (Reed, 1hr 44m)
1949 - Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1hr 46m)
1950 - Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1hr 28m)
1951 - Miss Julie (Alf Sjöberg, 1hr 30m)
1952 - Ikiru (Kurosawa, 2hrs 23m)
1952 - The Importance of Being Earnest (Asquith, 1hr 35m)
1952 - Forbidden Games (René Clément, 1hr 25m)
1952 - Umberto D (Vittorio de Sica, 1hr 29m)
1952 - The White Sheik (Federico Fellini, 1hr 26m)
1953 - The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 2hrs 27m)
1953 - Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1hr 37m)
1953 - M. Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1hr 27m)
1954 - Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 3hrs 27m)
1954 - La Strada (Fellini, 1hr 48m)
1955 - Richard III (Laurence Olivier, 2hr 38m)
1955 - Summertime (Lean, 1hr 40m)
1957 - The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1hr 36m)
1957 - Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1hr 31m)
1958 - Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1hr 43m)
1958 - Ivan the Terrible Part II (Eisenstein, 1hr 25m)
1959 - Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukhrai, 1hr 28m)
1959 - Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1hr 47m)
1959 - Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa, 1hr 44m)
1959 - Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu, 2hrs)
1959 - The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1hr 39m)
1960 - L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 2hrs 23m)
1960 - The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1hr 29m)
1961 - Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1hr 33m)
1961 - Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1hr 31m)
1962 - Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 1hr, 45m)
1962 - Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1hr 34m)
1965 - Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio, 1hr 48m)
1965 - Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, 1hr 25m)
1973 - The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1hr 39m)

While there are some undeniable gold-star classics in there, and most great directors get at least one entry (and in Kurosawa's and Bergman's case, three), this is in some ways an odd selection.  I'm no Godard fan but surely Breathless at least deserves to be here? And where are F.W. Murnau, Tarkovsky, Agnes Varda, Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jacques Demy, Alain Resnais, Pasolini, Fassbinder, Melville, and many more?  No Battle of Algiers?  No El Verdugo? Nothing from the British Kitchen Sink dramas?  And some of the films chosen for well-known directors are a little odd: The White Sheik over 8½ or La Dolce Vita? Floating Weeds over Tokyo Story?  The Virgin Spring over Persona?  Le Jour Se Lève over Children of Paradise?  Umberto D over Bicycle Thieves? Il Posto over The Tree of Wooden Clogs?  Hulot over Playtime?  Having said that, I prefer all but Jour and Virgin Spring of the lesser films in that list, so...  And no doubt the explanation has more to do with what films they could secure the rights to (or that Janus Films happened to release in the US) than pure quality.  It's interesting how the 50s comprises about half of all the films (not that I'm complaining: I think of the 50s as a weak decade for films, but that's only Hollywood.  The number of immortal classics included here is stunning) so perhaps that was the peak of Janus's operating period.

You can get an idea of how many films we saw before I started blogging films we watched (2020) - they're the ones without links above. Anyway, on to some lists.  

Films I almost certainly saw before we owned this set
39 Steps, Lady Vanishes, Third Man, Kind Hearts, Wages of Fear, Hulot, Seven Samurai, Seventh Seal

Now some lists of ten, in chronological order.

Absolute Stone-Cold Unmissable (you cannot die without seeing them) Classics
M
Grand Illusion
Beauty and the Beast
Rashomon
Ugetsu
Seven Samurai
La Strada
The Seventh Seal
The 400 Blows
L'Avventura  

Top Entertainment (you don't have to be a cinephile)
The 39 Steps
The Lady Vanishes
Pygmalion
The Fallen Idol
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Importance of Being Earnest 
The White Sheik
The Wages of Fear
M. Hulot's Holiday
Seven Samurai

Gems in the collection that I would never have seen otherwise
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (it's a whopper, but a classic)
Brief Encounter (very famous, but it was my Grandma's favorite, which put me off, silly me)
Beauty and the Beast
The Fallen Idol
Forbidden Games (just a jewel of a film)
The White Sheik (my favorite Fellini that I've seen, although undoubtedly not among his greatest)
Ballad of a Soldier (apparently this film is legendary in the former USSR)
Fires on the Plain
Il Posto (probably my fave of the films I'd not heard of)
The Spirit of the Beehive

Films that I didn't love but that have indelible images
Häxan
Alexander Nevsky (amazing battle scene)
Richard III (likewise)
Ashes and Diamonds (upside down Christ)
Ivan the Terrible Part II
Black Orpheus (just Rio and environs)
Viridiana (a feast)
Fists in the Pocket 

Overall: while there are some I won't be revisiting (hello Miss Julie, Pandora's Box) these are actually few and far between.  It's like the books you were forced to read in school that leave deep impressions even if you didn't love them at the time.  So if you haven't seen the majority of this collection, and come across a second hand copy (make me an offer), you absolutely have to buy it.  In the mood for an action flick?  The Seven Samurai is the best one ever made.  Want an achingly romantic love story?  Brief Encounter.  Want a film that will have you holding your breath for an hour straight?  The Wages of Fear.  Want the grimmest anti-war film outside of Come and See? Fires on the Plain is for you.  Want to see the breakthrough films of the directors of  Chinatown and Amadeus?  Knife in the Water and Loves of a Blonde.  Want a better version of My Fair Lady?  Pygmalion.  Want films about children that will put a knife through your heart? Forbidden Games and The Spirit of the Beehive should do it.  Want films about old men that will do the same?  Umberto D and Ikiru.  Want to enter an entirely-realized but alien world for an hour and a half? Ugetsu and Beauty and the Beast.  Want some batshit crazy images to play in the background of your next Halloween party?  Häxan.  Finally, did you, like me, love Gregory's Girl and Billy Liar growing up?  Check out Il Posto - you'll thank me later.

Film review: Miss Julie (1951)

This is it - film number 50 from our 50-film box set of "Classic Art House" movies, which I will get to next.  For basically the last ten, the films have been ones that I (or Jami, although she opted out of watching the last couple) have put off, expecting them to be a drag, and for all the others I've been pleasantly surprised.  However, I have to say that I made the right call with this one.  I found the characters unlikeable, which is not necessarily a strike against the film (or play, as it's an adaptation of a Strindberg play of the same name) if you could empathize with them to some extent, but they're also both a little bit crazy (well, Julie in particular is) and the products of systems that I never really encountered and about which I do not care (in the same way that watching The Crown holds zero appeal to me).  Basically it's a two-hander (except for flashbacks) of Julie, who is the troubled (and how!) daughter of a Count, and Jean, who is the Count's sort-of lead servant/Butler, whom Julie appears to be obsessed with.  

Both characters are both attracted and repelled by the other, her sense of exalted stature and his resentment against same definitely causing most of the conflict.  But also she was the product of a "modern" (I think the play is set either in or not long after Napoleonic times, because there's a painting on the wall of him and he is referred to as "The Emperor") union, or rather, mother, who not only refused to marry the Count (being perfectly willing to be his mistress, but he had eyes only for her), but laughed insanely (there's a fair amount of that in this, which always takes me out of a film) when she produced a daughter instead of the Count's longed-for son, but then, out of "progressive" motivations, insisted that her daughter be dressed and raised as a son (and that all the women on the estate do the man's work, and vice versa - cue humorous montages of each sex failing disastrously at their allotted tasks), until at last The Count intervenes and allows her to be a girl, and to have a doll (with the strange name "Blenda"), something the mother resents to the extent that it almost causes Julie's death.  I don't know how you can come out of the film without seeing the mother as the villain and a large part of Julie's troubles to be caused by her cross-gendered childhood, although I see that this play is supposed to have a feminist message (because of Julie's occasional outbursts against men - wishing they would all drown in a pool of blood, for example?).  I don't see it.  The only message I get is "everything is awful and people are selfish shits".

I will say that the setting, of Midsummer's Eve celebrations and the long daylit night over which the play takes place, is very engrossing, and the camera work, although jarring in places (the director loves ZOOMING in on a character's face), at least adventurous.  In fact the film looks a lot more modern than the content - it's as if it's being pulled to the future by the one and the past by the other.

Adding to the cruelty is that Jean seems to be two-faced, telling Julie he loved her as a poor child visiting the estate (when he first meets her he is reeking of shit because he's had to escape an outside lavatory through the toilet) and then later saying that was all made up.  He also veers between lust and disdain, and then occasionally is quite sincere with her, so that he appears almost as unstable as she does.  There are also moments when characters (okay, it's pretty much always Julie) stare into the middle distance and say portentous things about life, and I was vividly reminded of Groucho doing the same to much more enjoyable effect (and probably spoofing Strindberg or Ibsen, or those influenced by them [edit: apparently Eugene O'Neil, specifically Strange Interlude]).  Probably the person I feel for most is the Count, who seems a genuinely decent fellow (his servants all seem to like him, although his effect on Jean of unconsciously making him servile is one of the things Jean resents most) and who loved his strange wife and adores his strange daughter, right to the tragic end.  The film won at Cannes and I can see why the French would love it, and love the ending.  But it left me with an appreciation for Bergman's sense of humor, would you believe. 

Flint from the 11th Floor

 ..of the Northbank Center, where I record my video lectures.  I go there the evening before to write everything on the board, and when I take a break...

Rainy reset

It's been warm (up into the 50s) and it actually rained today (in February!) to wash all but the most stubborn remaining snow away.  People are emerging and finally removing their outdoor Xmas lights that it was too cold to bother with previously.  And now... fog!

 

Frozen Lake Follies

As Frederick hasn't felt up to going for walks lately, I haven't got to do a favorite winter activity of mine, which is walking on frozen lakes.  And as temps in the 50s are forecast in the next few days, it seemed like now might be the last wise time to try.  So I went for a little jaunt at Holly Rec.

 A couple of those (notably the selfie) were taken when my phone suddenly decided to drop to 3% power and dim the screen to the point where it was unreadable (apparently it can't stand the cold) so I couldn't see what I was taking.  Here's me crossing the lake:

 

Film review: Father Brown/The Detective (1954)

Well, this is a British film from the 50s, so guess who's the first actor you see in it?  If you guessed Sid James, you've been paying attention.  He is fleeing down the stairs of some sort of factory at night as Police climb them and somehow he manages to avoid them and get out to safety.  When the police get to their destination, which appears to be the payroll office, the shine their lights around and reveal Alec Guinness's Father Brown calmly replacing stacks of bills in the safe.  Nonetheless they arrest him and take him to the station 

and put him in a cell, after first emptying his pockets (he asks for his bar of chocolate, because he hasn't eaten) and taking his glasses, leaving him squinting like Mr. Magoo.  After some calls to other stations, looking for info on conmen who pose as priests (largely because the arresting officer refuses to believe he's really called "Brown" - although his first name is the much less prosaic "Ignatius"), they find somebody who knows of him because of his status as an amateur detective, and he is released, bearing them no animus.  In fact, very rarely do we see Father Brown betray annoyance (so that on the one occasion I remember, it's rather shocking), at most he is disappointed.  When he gets out, Sid James is there to meet him.  As we might have guessed, Father Brown worked out where Bert Parkinson (Sid's character) would be operating and talked him out of it.  As they walk together by the canal, Father Brown talks Bert into going straight, specifically as a chauffeur for a "friend of mine."  This turns out to be Lady Warren, played by Joan "posher-sounding Glynis Johns" Greenwood, 

who was also paired with Guinness in The Man in the White Suit.  (Another fellow Ealing Comedy castmate of Guinness's, Cecil Parker (who plays the first of The Ladykillers to lose his nerve and get bumped off) shows up as Father Brown's Bishop.)  Anyway, the main plot of the film concerns Father Brown's pursuit of notorious thief Flambeau, played by Peter Finch, whom I only knew for his final, Oscar-winning role in Network ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!") but who is wonderful here, underplaying nicely and managing a believable French accent.

The initial battle is over a thousand-year-old cross (I think he says it was St. Augustine's) that needs to be sent to Rome.  The church is convinced that Flambeau will try to take it, so make plans to send it under armed guard.  Father Brown thinks this is ridiculous, and because "the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest" he suggests that a priest should carry it, as vast numbers of clergy are descending on Rome, and Flambeau won't know who has it.  When he gets overruled, Father Brown takes the cross anyway.  This is his first time outside of England, and he commiserates with a fellow priest on the very rough ferry ride.  They ride on together to Paris, where the other priest shows him around, having served on a mission or something there.  They are being followed by a team of an English policeman and a French, as it has been discovered that Father Brown has the cross.  As this will attract unwanted attention, Father Brown and the other priest (who spot the cops as they're eating at a cafe) 

escape on a bus and then down into the Catacombs... where Father Brown calls the other priest Flambeau, for of course it is he (under a fake goatee).  Where he went wrong, Father Brown reveals, is in ordering a ham sandwich at the cafe, as I think it is Friday.  Flambeau takes the parcel Father Brown is carrying, at which FB smugly says that he switched parcels and left the real crucifix back at the cafe.  Then Flambeau opens the parcel to reveal the crucifix and says he switched them back.  Then he ties up FB, changes clothes and limps out of the Catacombs, taking time to report to the cops that have followed them that he heard a disturbance at [revealing FB's location, so he wont have to stay tied up].  Of course FB is in huge hot water for disobeying orders and causing the loss of the crucifix, but FB is confident he can set things right.  And to do so he convinces Lady Warren to set a trap by auctioning a priceless chess set, because he knows Flambeau won't be able to resist it.

Father Brown does indeed catch Flambeau (seeing through another of his disguises because of another "ham sandwich"-style mistake) but (a) Flambeau returns the chess set (clearly taken with Lady Warren) 

and (b) FB helps him escape, for which he gets into more hot water.  BUT, he has a clue: he lifted Flambeau's cigarette case (it's revealed early in the film that he has the skills of an "oyster" which apparently was slang for pickpocket - he has also shown that he is a good wrestler) 

which has his family crest on it, so the first thing to do is return to Paris to a repository of French Heraldry.  

Will FB catch Flambeau?  Why does Flambeau steal (and then sometimes return it)?  Both times FB and Flambeau have encountered each other, they have been studiously polite, but Flambeau has become annoyed at FB's attempts to reform him.  He reveals that he steals because he is a man out of time: he has skills (as a fencer, as a horseman) that are obsolete, and tastes that he cannot afford to satiate, so he steals so he can have beautiful things.  Well, he's in for a real scolding if FB catches him again...

As with the books, one can enjoy the character and the story without being too nauseated by the gentle Catholic Propaganda (in this way it reminds me of the Don Camillo stories).  Alec Guinness is in prime Ealing Era comedic chameleon mode (with a very unfortunate haircut), which the part calls for, but which allows Peter Finch, who has a genuinely poignant edge to his performance, to more-or-less steal the picture.  As Jami remarked, it was more like a TV show than a proper film, but that's true of a lot of British cinema, particularly in the 50s, but all the performances are good, at least.  I'd certainly watch more of Guinness-as-Brown, so it's rather a shame there aren't any more. 

Film review: Little Caesar (1931)

This is the film that made the image of Edward G. Robinson that those of us weaned on Bugs Bunny Cartoons know well, 

and where he utters the immortal line "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" (And is probably the reason it's called RICO.)  Apparently it also entered the public domain on January 1st.  I hope somebody puts out a cleaned-up print of it, because what we watched on the Criterion Channel was not a patch on any of the films of this era and earlier available in the Criterion Collection or on Kino Lorber.

It's pre-code, which didn't mean much in this case except I picked up some serious homoerotic sub-text (our anti-hero, Caesar Enrico Bandello has "no time" for Dames, but is very attached to his buddy Joe (played by the much-taller Douglas Fairbanks Jr., 

who did not really distinguish himself in the role), to the extent that when Joe betrays him, this ruthless killer gets moist-eyed and not only can't bring himself to shoot him, he prevents his stooge from shooting him too.  The plot is pretty formulaic, too - the usual "ascent of the criminal ladder" plot that would be perfected in films like The Roaring Twenties.

We first see Joe and Rico at an all-night diner (getting "Spaghetti and coffee") after having pulled off a heist in the small town that is their stomping ground.  Rico reads a story in the paper about a big-time gangster getting feted and decides he needs to head East to where the action is.  Joe doesn't seem all that keen, and mutters about going back to being a dancer, but Rico informs him he's coming along.

Next, Rico does become a goon for a small-time boss called Sam Vettori 

(who gives Rico his titular nickname, and introduces Rico to his gang, such as Killer Peppi, Scabby, Kid Bean and Bat Korilla), who works for "Diamond" Pete Montana, who in turn works for a shadowy figure called "Big Boy" (no, he doesn't wear checked dungarees and carry burgers aloft).  

Joe does indeed go back to dancing, and, with the help of his new love "Olga," 

gets a job for what seems like the princely sum of $100 a week, dancing at the Bronze Peacock.  Alas, the club is owned by a rival of Sam's (Arnie Lorch) so Rico basically gives Joe no option but to help rob it on New Year's Eve.  To make matters worse, the new crusading (and incorruptible) Crime Commissioner, Alvin McClure was at the club, but was leaving because he found out who owned it (told you he was incorruptible) when Rico guns him down.  This makes Sam super-nervous, which prompts Rico to take over as gang boss, claiming that Sam's lost his nerve.  

(He isn't the only one: the driver, Tony, has a full-on panic attack, freezing at the wheel and then later crashing the car, and when one of the gang meets him walking on the street, he's on the way to talk to his priest.  So Rico has him gunned down on the steps of the church, in a killing that echoes Cagney's death in The Roaring Twenties.  

But he does make sure he gets a lavish funeral parade afterwards).  

Meanwhile McClure's former underling Thomas Flaherty 

(all the cops (and the priest) are Irish, all the gangsters Italian) swears that he's going to get Rico, after Rico survives an assassination attempt by Lorch with just a graze, 

and then drives Lorch out of town as punishment.  Rico's ambition gets him noticed by Big Boy (whose gaudy house dazzles Rico when he visits, a clear sign of his humble origins (as is his discomfort in the "monkey suit" he puts on to make the visit)

because it very much resembles something decorated by Donald Trump), who informs him that he is now to replace Diamond Pete in charge of the Northside territory.

Rico finally gets feted as he wanted, 

although things are soured somewhat when Flaherty visits and reveals that a watch identical to the one Rico has just been presented as a gift by his loyal men has just been snatched from a local Jeweller's.

At this point Rico grows paranoid that Joe will squeal on him and demands that he quit both dancing and Olga and come back to a life of crime.  The distraught Joe tries to get Olga to flee the city with him, but Olga is a cool customer and points out that Rico will track them wherever they go, so it's better to strike first and reveal to Flaherty that it was Rico who killed McClure (following?).  They hole up in the apartment and wait for Flaherty to come over, but the knock on the door turns out to be Rico and his most trigger-happy henchman Otero.  This is when the afore-mentioned tears and the saving-of-Joe happen, before Flahery shows up and the two hoods run for it down the fire escape.  Otero doesn't make it, but Rico does, and first hides out in a hidden room in Ma Magalena's Fruit Store, 

who refuses to be intimidated, and then he "takes to the gutter" to vanish.  We later find him in a flophouse, drinking alcohol (that he had fastidiously refused throughout the whole movie) and growing enraged at the anti-Rico taunts from Flaherty that a fellow bum is reading from the newspaper.  He calls up Flaherty to set up a showdown... and pretty soon this is indeed the end of Rico, 

gunned down behind a sign advertising Joe and Olga.

As I said, pretty corny stuff overall (for example, Tony's death is made all-but inevitable by him going home to visit his loving Ma after the shooting), but Robinson shines.  His voice is inimitable and he has that sheer force of personality that, like Cagney, makes him much larger than his stature.  Two scenes in particular stand out for me, both of which are where the director (Mervyn LeRoy - this is part of a collection of his films on the Criterion Channel) moves in slowly on his face and he conveys volumes without speaking.  This one is where he's paused while telling Joe what he will do in order to answer the phone, only to return to find that Joe has done a runner:

And the other is the tears scene:

proving that raw magnetism can come in stocky, unprepossessing packages.