March refuses to go out like a lamb

Film review: Notorious (1946)

This is a Hitchcock film that I was late to – I only saw it for the first time a few years ago, and I didn’t remember much about that viewing as I watched it this time, which was odd, because it’s indubitably a classic.  How could it fail to be when it has two of the most beautiful people who ever lived who also happen to be amazing actors?  It’s funny: we’ve watched a lot of Cary Grant films recently, mostly screwball comedies, and I find his mugging in those occasionally a bit grating.  But he’s absolutely mesmerizing in this one.  (It’s like Jim Carrey, only he takes it almost too far in Sunshine, appearing downright mopey, but Grant can do inner seething torment with a single glance.)  And the plot is dark: essentially the US government pimps out Ingrid Bergman so that she can “atone” for the sins of her Nazi-loving father.  And Grant’s character Devlin goes along with it, despite loving Bergman’s Alicia and knowing that she loves him in return.  She goes so far as to marry the closet Nazi Claude Rains.  The background to the film is that Hitchcock had just come from filming the liberation of the Nazi deathcamps as patriotic duty, only to have the footage suppressed until after he died because the British Government decided it would be too dispiriting for the West Germans, and the enemy was suddenly the Soviet Union.  Notorious also namechecks the real German company that used Auschwitz prisoners as slave labor (Claude Rains is working for it) – only this was censored for years because the US government cozied up to it after the war too.  The film is remarkably ambivalent: the least sympathetic characters in the film are probably Devlin’s immediate superiors, who look down on Alicia as they exploit her to their own ends.  Meanwhile Claude Rains is remarkably sympathetic (while also being a sinister villain – it’s his usual excellent performance).  And there’s a great role for an actress I was unfamiliar with, Leopoldine Konstantin, as Rain’s mother, who has the real spine in their family.  The rest of the film is pure cinema: pacing, lighting and ratcheting up the tension.  Not that much happens, nobody dies on camera, and yet there are scenes of almost unbearable tension, and great depths of feeling conveyed in glances.  Oh, and the “the longest screen kiss in history” up to that point, that Hitchock gets away with (despite rules against lips locking for more than seconds at a time) because it is actually interspersed with a conversation that is essential to the plot and thus cannot be cut.  Now THIS is a Cary Grant I can get behind.  (And, of course, in Suspicion.  And he actually does some serious stuff in Mr. Lucky, interspersed with scenes of him learning to knit.)  And why wasn’t Bergman in every Hitchcock?  Apart from anything, apparently he never tried anything abusive or pervy with her because she maintained a genuine affection for him ever after.  I was surprised to see at the end that it was not a short film, because it had whizzed by, which as far as I’m concerned is as high praise as you can give a film.  And the ending scene is cold as Devlin consigns Rain’s Sebastian to his death at the hands of his fellow Nazis and he walks inside and the door closes.  Hardly the romantic happy ending that we expect the film to culminate in.
So where does it rank among the Hitchcocks?  It's sort of an outlier.  It's not a packed-with-incident chase film (a la 39 Steps, Young And Innocent, Foreign Correspondent or North By Northwest, which is probably my favorite of his genres) - it's more of a mood piece, like Vertigo, perhaps, or Shadow of a Doubt, or (of course) Suspicion.  It's also a love story, and in a more convincing way than most Hitchocks, although, as one commentator points out, with definite sadomasochistic overtones, given what they both go through.  Of all American Hitchcocks, though, I'd say it has the best cast.  It would make a great double-bill with Casablanca.

Film review: Blockers (2018)

One of these things is not like the other.  Jami’s off in Chicago so I’m watching something cheerful and stupid, and this qualifies.  Given its premise it should be really, really bad, but like another recent comedy Game Night, it’s surprisingly good, with genuine laughs, likeable characters and a pretty good message.  Okay, here’s the premise: three teenage girls make a “sex pact” to lose their virginity on Prom Night, their parents (well, one parent each for each girl) discover this and spend the night chasing them around trying to “Block” them.  Add to that that it’s obviously from the Judd Apatow school of comedy (and one of the parents is his actual wife, Leslie Mann, who was in This is 40 and other gems), and it does not look promising.  Oh, and one of the other parents is the ex-wrestler John Cena.  So why did I watch it?  It was free and I’d “read good things” about it (although obviously not here).  And I’m glad I did – I heartily recommend it!  I liked Game Night, and I actually like this better.  Some recent study said that we laugh something like 40 times more if we watch a comedy with others, so I shouldn’t’ve laughed at all at this, but I did.  I even found myself smiling at the obligatory butt-chugging scene.  So how can such a premise be redeemed?  Well, by the fact that the parents learn that their daughters’ sex lives are none of their concern, and it’s totally okay if the boy involved is nice and they really like each other.  Plus it helps that everyone involved is actually funny and everyone has good chemistry.  My one caveat is that one parent/daughter pair seems to be the odd one out – the nerdy/Jewish/(mild spoiler alert) gay girl and her obnoxious, divorced, but actually most enlightened father.  Both are not treated well by their partners in crime, and it’s most noticeable in the girl, who is sort of ignored by her Jock/Princess friends.  I won’t tell you any of the other set pieces, but yes, drugs and puking and embarrassing sex (and not just by the young ‘uns) are involved.  And John Cena is naturally funny!  I suppose after The Rock and Dave Bautista (and Brian Glover) this shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s still worth noting.  So… if you’re on a ‘plane and it’s one of the options – check it out!  You’ll be pleasantly surprised (provided you're not exactly expecting sophistication).

Film review: The Exterminating Angel (1962)

This is a film that very clearly Means Something, and I feel stupid because I don’t know what that is.  It is to the credit of the director (Luis Buñuel) that the film is not boring, and always seems to be moving forward, even though it does not have that much of a plot.  Essentially, it is set in a mansion (in Mexico, where Buñuel was in exile from his native Spain because of Franco), where a lavish dinner party is being thrown for a party of musicians who are coming from a night at the opera.  As the film opens, the servants at the house are finishing preparations prior to cutting out.  The loyal butler cannot understand why they are all leaving, and, strangely, none of them seem to know why either.  The last action of one of them is to fall headlong with a plate of hors d’oeuvres, to the amusement of most of the dinner guests.  The hostess warns those of the staff that she catches leaving that they will be fired if they do so, but they politely insist.  However, the butler handles the rest of the meal, and the festivities continue until the small hours (ending with a piano performance by one of them) and then… nobody leaves.  They all bed down in the room they’re in.  They don’t even leave the room to go to the bathroom or one of the (presumably) many bedrooms in this palatial house.  And… that’s the plot of the film.  They can’t leave the room.  Why not?  Not because of some force field – just because they can’t. They can plan to, like the Butler, who, after bringing the leftovers from the night’s meal for breakfast, is told to get spoons for the coffee, and… can’t do it.  As you can imagine, they run out of food and liquid fast and things get ugly.  I think it’s implied that they’re using some of the closets as toilets, and one couple is canoodling in there – until they kill themselves in a suicide pact.  But that’s a while after one of the older ones just dies and his corpse starts to stench so badly from the closet they put it in that they stuff rags in the cracks round the door.  They eventually get water by smashing into the wall and exposing a water pipe, and when they’re on the brink of starvation, a trio of sheep which were intended to be part of the festivities (but the hostess decided against it after one of the guests was so po-faced about the dropped hors-d’oeuvres) and have been living elsewhere in the house in the indeterminate intervening time (along with a trained bear, for some reason) unwisely hoof it up the stairs and into the room.  Meanwhile, outside the house, crowds have gathered, but are equally unable even to get close to the house.  Things are coming to a head when most of the trapped turn on the host who invited them to this party and all that stands between him and death is a couple of brave, still-sane friends of his (including the Doctor, who has been the voice of reason throughout the whole ordeal).  To avoid a melee, the host is about to offer to kill himself (to “break the spell”) when one of the women (to my shame, I couldn’t keep anyone but a few characters straight, especially when they started to get all disheveled) points out that everyone (except, presumably, the three corpses in the closets) is in the exact position they were that night when the piano performance happened, just before everyone found themselves unable to leave.  Somehow this breaks the spell (and, coincidentally (?), all the staff who left before the meal show up outside simultaneously) and they can get out.  All’s well that ends well, right?  Then we see everyone inside a cathedral with a solemn service that one can only assume is to honor the dead, and, like the monster coming back to life after the credits of a horror film, everyone finds themselves unable to leave the cathedral…  Cut to shots of the military shooting people outside and…scene.

So what does it mean?  The proletariat know when to leave a dying country and the ruling class turns on each other?  Then the church is the next institution to go?  Only our minds stand in the way of saving ourselves? But what was it with those apparent time glitches at the start, like when the guests come in the front door and then it happens again? I dunno.  Watch it and let me know.