Film review: Peeping Tom (1960)

We're big Michael Powell fans in our household - I'm particularly partial to Black Narcissus, but the film of his that has been viewed most by far has got to be Thief of Baghdad.  At any rate, this one is leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, and it's supposedly the one that killed his career, so I was curious.  I can see why it did: it starts with the main character, through whose eyes (or rather, movie camera - although, as it turns out, they are rarely distinct) we are seeing, going up to a woman on a street at night in London, and she turns to him and says that "it'll be two quid," before turning and leading him inside and upstairs and proceeding to start undressing.  Pretty risque for the late 50s (at least, outside of France or Sweden), I think we can agree.  Of course, she meets a grisly fate swiftly thereafter.  This film seems as if it could have been a big influence on the Italian giallo films of Argento, Fulci and the like.  It's interesting that it was a dud, and deemed shocking and in poor taste, when Psycho was such a huge hit.  I can see why, though, in that Norman Bates is effectively de-humanized and made monstrous at the end, whereas "Mark Lewis" 

(who is supposed to be English, although he's played by the German actor Karlheinz Böhm, who sounds very much like Peter Lorre) is portrayed throughout as a damaged and tragic figure.  Not only that, but he is loved by the main female character (who is the incredibly English-looking young Anna Massey 

(who I see was also in the very similar return-to-England Hitchcock film Frenzy (which is decidedly nasty, and the only Hitchcock to feature nudity that I know of)) and able to resist his murderous impulses around her.  As you might know, the basic plot is that Mark is obsessed with filming people (women) as they are being murdered (with one of the tripod legs of his camera that has been adapted with a sword-like blade) 

to record the fear in their eyes.  But Mark is this way because his father, a famous psychologist, filmed him his entire childhood, all the while constantly traumatizing him (by shining lights in his eyes while he slept and then hurling a live lizard on his bed).  (Sidenote: psychology seems to have taken off in a big way in the mid century, at least in the imagination of thriller makers - see Hitchcock's Spellbound and Marnie, along with Psycho, of course.  This film simultaneously insults psychologists (besides the sadistic father, there is a humorous example in this film, an older man, called to the film set on which Mark is working, one of whose cast he has dispatched, to help the star try to cope with the trauma she now has as a result of discovering the victim's corpse in a large trunk in the course of filming a scene) while swallowing whole their theories of the formation of character and proclivities.)  Anyway, Mark owns the big house he grew up in (which is still wired in every room so that he can record the conversations of every tenant, including the kind Helen (Massey), who takes a shine to him, charging them only the bare minimum to pay for its upkeep, while his real job is working on film sets and taking smutty pictures for a seedy newsagent 

(an early scene shows a dirty old man picking through a booklet of them and deciding to buy the whole thing), all the while battling his urges.  He is not happy about them, and even consults the comic relief psychologist who says that they can be cured by a few years of therapy.  But that isn't quick enough, and you sense that Mark has plotted his own demise, along with filming the documentary of his murders and their investigation.

This is not a boring film, but it's not a thriller, really.  You worry for Helen, of course, but she's never really in any danger, unlike the poor lower-class prostitutes, actresses and scantily-clad models who are Mark's victims.  Apart from the fact that Mark clearly has feelings for her, Helen is protected by her blind mother, who (in the stereotypical psychic way of many cinematic blind people) can see right through Mark.  She listens to him creep about and pace around his apartment (which is huge and includes a screening room, so he can watch and re-watch the death throes of his victims) and senses he's Got Problems.  

Mostly in this film there's a feeling of dread, which isn't really a selling point for entertainment, at least not for me.  The film doesn't feel like it's the product of someone at their peak - the cast is mostly young or unknown, and (as I said) the star has a very unconvincing accent.  However, you can see why he was cast: he is very convincing as a haunted, damaged man, and manages to be creepy and sympathetic at the same time.  However, like all Powell's work, it is shot in gorgeously rich technicolor, and in fact it's funny to see fifties London, that you're used to seeing in black and white, pop off the screen like that.  Is it a great film?  I don't think so, but that may be because I find the whole psychobabble stuff so annoying.  I can see that it might have been an influential film.  Its depiction of the seedy underbelly of London is radical, and the whole subtext of the voyeurism of filmmaking has been much commented-on.  And the whole idea of a tortured serial killer was pretty fresh at the time.  Really Hammer films should've taken Powell to his bosom if the mainstream rejected him.  There's a cheesy Hammer film called Hands of the Ripper that seems very derivative of a lot of what's going on here.

Beard-B-Gone

So: every Winter I grow a beard. Or it might be more accurate to say, every Summer I shave, because a beard is too itchy when it's hot. So really, bearded is my natural state. Only I usually trim it a little, because I start feeling foolish standing in front of a class like that. Well, no classes to stand in front of, thanks to the pandemic, so I let it (and my head hair) run as wild as they ever have. The result:

The combination of beard and Captain Haddock sweater of course led my mind to the following (hat from Amazon, pipe borrowed from definite non-smoker Thomas):

Talking of teaching, I occasionally hold Zoom sessions for my Logic classes, and it was fun watching the students' reactions the first time they saw what Sophy calls my "Wild Man of the Woods" look, given that they've been watching videos of me that were recorded a couple of summers ago, when I was fully shorn. (The 101 Students have been exposed to the full beard in motion.) But it's been shorts weather the past couple of days, and I kept taking mouthfuls of beard along with my sandwiches, so it was time for it to go:

The Sam Elliot

The Stan Laurel

The David Lynch

The ol' faithful

Bring on Summer!

Film review: Extra Ordinary (2019)

This is a fun little one.  Basically it seems to be a vehicle for Maeve Higgins, an Irish comedian of whom I was previously unaware (who is effortlessly charming, if not necessarily the greatest actor), as Rose, the owner and proprietor of a tiny (as in one-car) driving school.

This is not much of a business, but it's her attempt at normalcy given that her real talents (or Talents, as her late father, whose face we see throughout the film on TV via the videos he made on various paranormal topics, refers to such abilities)

lie in communicating with ghosts, whom she can see wherever she looks. 

She and her father had a partnership where he would act as a vessel for the ghost and she would talk to them, but tragically her father embodied both the spirit of a dog and the spirit of the possessed pothole (!) the dog was trapped in, and because Rose forgot the incantation to free them both to send them to "the other side", he pranced off in front of a lorry.  However, as we see this in flashback, it is obvious that the father's spirit entered a magpie, who appears regularly throughout the film and has a crucial role at the climax.  Anyway, she wants no part of the business, although everyone keeps phoning her up asking her to get rid of various ectoplasmic problems.  Finally, Martin Martin tricks her into helping him with his bullying ex (and I mean ex) wife by booking a driving lesson as a pretext to pour his heart out.  Fortunately for him, Rose is very taken with him and agrees to help, just in time to be able to help him with a much more serious problem, which is that a Satanist one-hit-wonder American pop star Christian Winter (played with the usual bizarre panache by Will Forte) 

has cast a "Gloat" (short for floating goat - you'll have to watch the film to see why) spell on Martin's daughter, because he wants a virgin to sacrifice at the blood moon to become more than just a one-hit wonder.  Rose recognizes the problem and knows the solution: she and Martin (who turns out to share her father's ability to embody ghosts) have to collect ectoplasm by exorcising seven ghosts which they can then anoint the daughter with to break the spell.  Unfortunately for Martin, this involved vomiting up the ectoplasm into mason jars, but he's game.

Meanwhile Christian, along with his intensely annoying Australian wife (played by the very funny Claudia O'Doherty, who deserved better than her role)

are on to Rose, and set about trying to block her.  Christian in fact casts a spell to undo her powers, and then it's a race to see whether Rose, Martin, Rose's heavily pregnant sister "Sailor" and her current beau, town Councillor Brian can get to Christian's castle before the daughter is sacrificed.

The film is perfectly diverting, although it will not become a "horror comedy classic" mostly because it's not horrific enough (although there are moments towards the end).  It's more like the New Zealand film Housebound, which was actually better, I thought - both tenser and funnier.  However, there are enough moments to keep you engaged and most of the performers are very good and very good company.  It has a quirk that a lot of movies seem to have these days of being set in an indefinable near-past.  Is it the 80s?  The clothes and cars (and the fact that Christian's one hit was clearly no later than the early 70s) would seem to indicate so.  Is it the late 90s/early aughts?  They've got the right (Nokia) phones for that.  Rose also likes to come home and sit on a yoga ball while she eats a yogurt in her Spanx-like underwear, and I don't remember yoga balls being a thing before at least the early aughts.  Anyway, check it out once you've watched Housebound and decided "I want more like that!"

Film review: Christmas in July (1940)

 If you're in the mood for Preston Sturges (and who isn't) but you haven't got much time, this is the one for you.  At a very brisk hour and seven minutes it seems like it's missing some of the usual beats of a film and plays out essentially in real time.  It's a little anxiety-inducing for such tender plants as myself, as the premise is that a man (Dick Powell's Jimmy MacDonald) who's submitted an advertising slogan for a $25,000 prize is pranked by his co-workers into thinking he's won it, and proceeds to splurge huge sums of money on buying everyone in his neighborhood presents.  What will happen when everyone finds out?  And the thing is, the slogan is, well, stupid.  It's for "Maxford House" coffee and it's "If you can't sleep, it isn't the coffee, it's the bunk".  We are all in the same boat as his faithful girl Betty (a very pleasant Ellen Drew, who didn't seem to do much else in movies) who just doesn't get it. 

Apparently Jimmy heard some scientist insist that coffee does not, as everyone knew it to do, keep you up, and he was very enamored of the pun on "bunk."  (Turns out, one person agrees with him.)  We are quickly introduced to the couple as the film opens with them sitting up on the roof of their apartment building listening to the radio, on which they're supposed to announce the winners.

But this doesn't happen, because the jury is deadlocked, and Jimmy's dreams (which have been quashed repeatedly, in numerous competitions, as they reveal) remain alive for at least another day.  Then, the next day at work (which is a rival coffee company, oddly enough), his co-workers overhear him calling in to check if the winner has been decided and hatch their plan.  They make up a fake telegram while Jimmy is called into his (strict but kindly) supervisor, Mr. Waterbury's office and given an eye-opening speech about winners and losers in a capitalist system, which has Jimmy feeling better about himself even if he doesn't win, but then:

Naturally, he is overjoyed and he and Betty (who also works there) are soon dancing on a table.

This brings the boss in, who is suddenly drawn to the newly-confident Jimmy and listens raptly to Jimmy's (much better) slogans for his coffee ("Baxter's Coffee - the Blue-Blood Brew!  It's bred in the bean!") and promptly promotes him and gives him his own office.  Then it's off to collect the check from Dr. Maxford.  Somehow he gets in and Maxford (who is a real character) believes him (and the fake telegram) and, thoroughly fed up with the whole contest business after the deadlock the previous night ruined (in his view) a golden advertising opportunity merely remarks on the absence of newspapers and cameramen before handing over the check.  Jimmy and Betty then go in search of, first, a ring for her, and then all sorts of furniture for Jimmy's mother and then presents for everyone on their block (who all seem to be a polyglot mixture of recent immigrants, notably including close friends the Zimmermans, who are obviously Jewish, this being 1940).  Only while this is happening does Maxford  go in search of his top employees whom he thinks should be doing their regular work for him, having cocked up the contest, but are still fighting it out on the jury and inform him that the telegram must be fake. 

He blocks the check and the owner of the department store that has sold Jimmy and Betty all their stuff finds out first and hotfoots it to his address to reclaim all their goods.  They are being assailed by the locals, who are not about to give up their new presents when Maxford arrives.  This all leaves Jimmy and Betty in a pickle, and Jimmy's newfound confidence melts away.

To make matters worse, when he tells his boss that the whole thing was a joke, his boss is inclined to take away his office and his promotion, admitting (in classic Sturges dialogue) that he himself is a useless judge and only believed Jimmy's slogans to be good ones because somebody else had judged his slogan good, and now that turned out to be a sham, his confidence in Jimmy's sloganeering had evaporated.  However, it is Betty's turn to give a stirring speech, and she persuades Baxter to give Jimmy a shot.  He gives a grudging concession to a week or so, and we are left with what looks like a mildly positive ending, when the one man (Mr. Bildocker - played by Sturges stalwart William Demarest) who had been holding up the whole prize jury shows up to announce the real winner of the contest to Maxford... 
I liked this one once I got over my anxiety.  It's definitely closer to Sullivan's Travels (in that it definitely has at least one Message - immigrants are America's strength, capitalism is dehumanizing, the US should be taking part in the war (both Hitler and Mussolini get contemptuously namechecked)) than my favorite, all-out farce Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and Dick Powell is oddly subdued, more serious than in his Busby Berkeley roles (or even his role as Marlowe) and the better for it.  Probably the best comedy is from Raymond Walburn and Ernest Truex as the two coffee barons.  Definitely check it out, if you haven't seen it - you know you can spare an hour and seven minutes!

Holly Rec

Film review: A New Leaf (1971)

This is the first film directed by Elaine May (who also stars) who was Mike "The Graduate" Nichols's comedy partner. It's an odd little number: it has a very distinctive look and feel.  Everyone talks constantly (or rather, mumbles mostly), no thought goes unexpressed, and the camera tends to move around rather aimlessly.  It tells a very simple story: rich wastrel Henry Graham (Walter Matthau, acting posher and more restrained than normal - instead of his scheming registering in his expressions, he just reveals it with his words) finally exhausts the trust fund that has been keeping him in the high life and has to find a new source of funds, despite lacking charm or talent.  (There's an extended sequence after Henry's lawyer has finally tracked Henry down to deliver the bad news that gives you a taste of the style I mean, as Henry is filmed mournfully wandering around muttering "I'm poor!" and sadly visiting all the favorite haunts that he can no longer afford to visit, just to say goodbye.)  His solution (suggested by his faithful butler, who, unusually, has a Yorkshire accent) 

is to find a woman to marry.  There appears to be no shortage, but he deems most of them unsatisfactory (in one instance, a particularly frisky matron is about to remove her bikini top and he flees, shouting something to the effect of "No! Don't let them out!").  There is a time limit for his search, because he has borrowed $50,000 from his uncle 

(who reared him out of a sense of duty to his brother, but has ill-disguised loathing towards him) and if he doesn't repay it within a month he loses all of his remaining worldly goods (including his beloved Ferrari, which is always breaking down because of "carbon on the points") valued at about half a million, which he has put up as collateral.  There are only days left when he comes across chronically shy and clumsy Henrietta (Mays), a keen but lonely botanist, who lives all alone (apart from a retinue of servants who exploit and ignore her) in a massive old house bequeathed her by her industrialist (or composer - Henry's fellow club member whom he grills about her wealth isn't sure) father.  Her clumsiness and lack of refinement (he offers her vintage wine but she prefers wine coolers using "Mogen-David extra-heavy Malaga wine with soda water and lime juice," which he has to pretend to enjoy while wooing her, despite admitting to his butler that it is taking the enamel off his teeth) disgusts Henry, and he plots to murder her as soon as is convenient.  However, in a visual joke, he misses a prime opportunity on their honeymoon, as he is engrossed in a guide to toxicology as she hangs precariously off a cliff collecting a fern.  

This fern, however, is part of the meaning of the film's title, for it is a previously undiscovered type, which she insists be named Alsophilia grahami after him, something that touches him in a way that catches him off guard.  (In a subplot, the servants, which Henry immediately dismisses, are in league with Henrietta's lawyer, who has had his eye on her for years, and he tries desperately to sabotage the wedding 

(with the help of Henry's uncle, who wants that half-million worth of assets) but Henrietta doesn't care that Henry is in fact penniless, and marries him anyway.)  Henrietta discovers that Henry has somehow acquired a BA in History along the way and tries to encourage him to teach History at her university so that they can grade papers together in the common room, an idea he does not find appealing.  However, he does take her up on the offer to accompany her on her annual research trip to the remote parts of the Adirondacks, as this offers the perfect chance to bump her off.  But this is after a period of cohabitation during which, as the butler (who is alarmed by Henry's murderous intentions and appears rather fond of Henrietta - indeed, the butler seems to be the only decent male character in the film) points out, Henry has transformed from a rich layabout into a person with very definite skills: at going through finances, at running a household, at looking after Henrietta (in one of the best bits of physical comedy, he helps her wrestle her Greek-style nightgown, which she has put on wrong) (quote: "Oh no, I forgot to check her before she went to school this morning.  She'll be wandering around all day with price tags dangling from her sleeves").  Of course, this is the other meaning of "New Leaf," and it will surprise nobody that he turns down a chance to drown the non-swimmer Henrietta when they get dumped from their canoe 

in the rapids, especially once he realizes he's lost the fragment of frond she had encased in a token for him, that he initially scorned.  A very good advertisement for marriage.  He's even softening on the idea of teaching history, as they walk off together, dripping wet, into the woods.  This film is much-praised, and looking back, it does have a lot of excellent lines, but often delivered in such an offhand fashion that you don't really notice them.  And it has such a shambling quality to it (very Robert Altman-esque) that you don't notice how well-structured it is.  A sneaky charmer.  Much like Henry, really.  

(Sidenote: the film May intended to make was much longer, and had Henry successfully poison two characters (including Henrietta's lawyer, who, to be frank, had it coming), but the studio wrestled it away and cut it down.  As most people agree, this was not a bad thing.)