Thoughts on... M (1931)

M, Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder, 1931.

Directed by Fritz Lang.
Starring Peter Lorre and Otto Wernicke.


SYNOPSIS:

In early 1930s Berlin a child killer is on the loose. The police and the local gangsters both independently vow to track him down.


Despite being quite a prolific director, Fritz Lang is a name associated primarily with two films: silent science fiction epic Metropolis and his first sound film M.

M is every bit as stunning as its formidable reputation would have you believe. From the expressive lighting and cinematography to its absorbing narrative and an engagement with German politics of the time, everything about M is top class.

When a number of children go missing in early 1930s Berlin the city begins to panic, suspecting a serial murderer of children. Soon everyone starts to suspect their neighbours and police are aggressively rounding up all the criminals they can. Berlin’s gangsters aren't happy at these actions – increased police interference is bad for business – so they set out to track down the killer themselves.

There are a couple of interesting things going on here. Firstly, the rounding up of anyone deemed vaguely criminal (read: Jewish) and a culture of spying and snitching on neighbours eerily foreshadowed Hitler's rise to power which began just a year after the film's release. Fritz Lang himself became a victim of Hitler's regime initially with The Testament of Dr. Mabuse being banned in 1933 as an ‘incitement to public disorder’ and then his later emigration to the USA owing to his part Jewish roots. It is genuinely fascinating to see a film offering snapshot of Germany just before these catastrophic events, and the dark moody tone of M is foreboding.

Aside from the unique political context there are a lot of other things to like about M. In terms of filmmaking, particularly considering the relative newness of sound, it’s genuinely brilliant. As an early sound film it uses dialogue in interesting ways. Much of the story is still told visually through physical acting or through text on the screen (letters and posters are frequently given lingering shots), and large chunks, particularly the more action oriented scenes, are shot absolutely silently. But when dialogue is used it's fantastic. There's a rhythm to the delivery and a sense of poetry to the script. Dialogue is used when the intricacies of the story can't be explained visually, or when it adds something significant to the experience.

There's an absolutely stunning feat or writing and editing when the two groups – the police and the gangsters – are both simultaneously having meetings to decide how best to tackle the killer. Cross cutting between the supposed heroes and the villains, it shows the similarities and differences between the two sides, emphasising their distinct approaches. Where the police are bogged down in bureaucracy and authority, the criminals use their street smarts and their contacts to formulate a better plan – get every beggar on every street corner to watch for clues to the identity of the killer. Everything is handled so well by Lang that these simple scenes of discussion turn out to be thrilling.

M often takes a lot of credit for influencing the style of American film noirs that were to come around a decade later and it’s plain to see why. M is a dark film and the look of it reflects this perfectly: the cinematography is exquisite, combining expressive framing with striking shadows. This style both looks great and fits well with stories of shady detectives and underworld criminals so it was easily applied to Hollywood films of similar subject matter.

Sadly today there is no complete version of M available – at 109 minutes the most current restoration runs 11 minutes shorter that Lang's original cut (although 109 minutes is certainly an improvement on the 96 minutes that is stored by the German Federal Film Archive). The film works perfectly well in its shorter format, but it leaves you wondering what was missed out. It also ends quite abruptly, which may not have been the case originally.

M should be celebrated as a superb piece of cinema that is just a satisfying artistically as it is entertaining. It might be 81 years old but it certainly doesn’t show its age.

Arnold Stone blogs at spaceshipbroken.com and can also be found on Twitter.

Thoughts on... The Searchers (1956)

The Searchers, 1956.

Directed by John Ford.
Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond and Natalie Wood.


SYNOPSIS:

Returning to his brother's family three years after the end of the civil war, Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) is a bitter and resentful war veteran. Soon after his return, a Comanche attack his leaves his nieces missing. Ethan heads out on a long hunt looking for the two girls, as well as for revenge against their captors.


How do you write about one of the best films of all time? Well, it's usually best to start by saying it's one of the best films of all time.

Despite being one of John Wayne and John Ford's best known films, The Searchers isn't a typical western. It's cold, dark, deep and twisted, and Wayne's character here is a far cry from the tough but lovable character found in the likes of Rio Bravo. Wayne was never really lauded for his acting (winning an Oscar for 1969's True Grit more out of respect to his career rather than the solid job he did in that film) but in The Searchers he gives, in my opinion, one of the best performances ever filmed. There is so much depth to his character, so much that is unsaid, and so much that is conveyed in a simple nuanced glance. It's the mark of a master of his craft.

We gather there is a back story between Ethan (Wayne) and his brother's wife (Dorothy Jordan). Perhaps they were in love before the circumstances of war separated them? But it's never spoken of. Instead it's conveyed by body language, a glace, a conflicted expression. Likewise his hatred of the native people is never explained, but it somehow defines him. What happened to Ethan during those three years between the end of the war and returning home? We assume that something has deeply has affected him, maybe some unspeakable horror?

This lack of clarity could prove frustrating in lesser hands but here it adds an air of mystery to a narrative that could have easily been a straight forward revenge story. It's the little touches that add depth and artistic flair. This is essentially what separates The Searchers from lesser westerns.

But it's not just the story and characters of The Searchers that impress; the cinematography is fantastic, and on blu-ray the film looks truly stunning. The vivid colours of the Vistavision process look sharp and pristine, that opening shot (of the farmhouse doors opening onto the plains) has never looked better. The wide-angle photography (made in a period where widescreen was still relatively rare) lends itself well to high definition, imbuing the external shots of Monument Valley with a real sense of awe – the baron wasteland at once both beautiful and dangerous.

By this time the honeymoon period of the classic western was already reaching its end. A decade later it would be replaced by the ultraviolence of The Wild Bunch and a style of European homage defined by Sergio Leone. It seems that with The Searchers, Ford himself was starting to question the genre – the simple character motivations of the past, and the way the industry had portrayed native Americans negatively. Here it's Wayne’s character, not the natives, who is a 'savage' blindly pursuing a violent cause for reasons that aren't entirely known. It's still obviously not Dances With Wolves in these respects, but it's a start.

So what makes The Searchers so great? It's simply the combination of everything. One of the greatest directors of all time, working in the genre that made his name. His star, John Wayne, giving the performance of his career. The cinematography. The story. The little moments and unspoken themes. The mystery behind Ethan's motivation. The space it allows the viewer to think and reflect - the ability to project onto the film your own interpretations.

The Searchers is a complex film, and that is why it still holds up so well today. But we shouldn’t forget that it's also thrilling watch. Like many westerns, The Searchers gives us an absorbing narrative led by an intriguing anti-hero on an exciting mission. It's just that The Searchers gives this and so much more too.

Arnold Stone blogs at spaceshipbroken.com and can also be found on Twitter.

DVD Review - The Outsiders (1983)

The Outsiders, 1983.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Starring C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise and Diane Lane.


SYNOPSIS: Two rival teen gangs, the working class Greasers and the well-off Socs get caught up in frequent confrontation in 1960s Oklahoma. But when one of the Socs is accidentally killed, the youngest Greasers, Ponyboy and Johnny, flee town.


The 1980s weren't as kind to Francis Ford Coppola as the 70s. After making a handful of films that are considered some of the best of all time - The Godfather parts I & II, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation - the following decade was much more low key.

In 1983, Coppola adapted S.E. Hinton's novel about 1960s teen gangs in small town America, The Outsiders. Edited down to approximately 90 minutes for theatrical release, the film wasn't very well received on it's initial run. Here, on a new DVD and Blu-ray, Coppola presents his originally intended cut of the film. Still running at less than 2 hours, it's not as painfully long as his redux version of Apocalypse Now, but it's not nearly as good as either version of that film. It's still quite enjoyable, but it feels almost as if it was made by an entirely different director.

The Outsiders is a small film, taking part in one southern American town - Tulsa, Oklahoma. Gone is the epic feel and glorious cinematography of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now and in it's place is an intimate portrait of a down-and-out group of teens known as 'the Greasers', focusing mainly on Ponyboy Curtis (played by C. Thomas Howell), a 14-year-old orphan looked after by his two older brothers (a young Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze). Ponyboy is a charismatic lead and holds the film together well. He becomes the emotional crux of everything experienced by the gang. It's really a film about the social standing of a group of kids without much hope, and how they come to deal with their situation by caring for one another.

It's interesting that C. Thomas Howell, so engaging here, never became a star. Particularly when you compare him to the rest of the stunning cast. It really is one of the best 'before they were famous' casts I've seen. We have Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane, Ralph Macchio (the Karate Kid, if you're not familiar with that name), and a cameo from Tom Waits. Bear in mind this was 1983 - so before Top Gun, Dirty Dancing or The Karate Kid. Other than Waits (who was known for his music rather than acting), none of these actors had done anything of note before this film. In contrast to the now household names, C. Thomas Howell was recently seen in Asylum 'mockbusters' The Da Vinci Treasure and War of The Worlds 2: The Next Wave.

The Outsiders is a flawed film, but one which is still watchable and fun. The plot's not really focused and seems to spiral into several directions at various points. That's one of the difficulties of adapting a novel, and here it does feel like an adapted novel rather than a fully formed three-act film. There's nothing really stunning about The Outsiders either. There are a few nicely composed shots, the Elvis-filled soundtrack is fitting and enjoyable but at times too loud for the dialogue, and while the characters are interesting, some of them don't feel fully developed. Coppola doesn't really put his own stamp on it either, never doing much to differentiate it from other coming-of-age films.

So why did I like it then? In a way its flaws are fairly charming and it's as if they are what gives it character and differentiates it from other films. There's a lot of heart there too, and a bunch of characters you come to like. I was happy to watch their story even when things started to drift or get muddled. And I guess this is what makes a cult film. It's far from perfect, but is full of charm and quirks, and does just about enough things right to make you like it. And when you have a young cast as impressive as this, it's hard to see why The Outsiders isn't given a cult status more often.

Arnold Stone blogs at spaceshipbroken.com and can also be found on Twitter.

DVD Review - Hammett (1982)

Hammett, 1982.

Directed by Wim Wenders.
Starring Frederic Forrest, Peter Boyle, Marilu Henner, Roy Kinnear and Elisha Cook, Jr.


SYNOPSIS: When and old detective friend shows up at his door, pulp fiction writer Dashiell Hammett gets involved in a world of gangsters and double-crossers that he thought he had left behind.


Hammett is a curiosity. It's a 1982 take on the Film Noir genre, based on a fictionalised story about Dashiell Hammett, the writer of pulp detective novels such as The Maltese Falcon. It seems to have slipped into obscurity since then however, and only now is getting a proper UK DVD release with, bizarrely, no sign of a Blu-ray in sight.

Hammett apes the great detective films of classic Hollywood, particularly Hammett's own most famous work, The Maltese Falcon, but also the likes of The Big Sleep. The novel twist of Hammett is that it's the writer doing the detective work. A bit like a stylised Murder, She Wrote then. Hammett has all but abandoned his earlier detective days, and put his talents into writing hard boiled stories influenced by his experiences and acquaintances. But when an old friend suddenly arrives asking him to help find a missing Chinese prostitute, Hammett gets caught up in the usual twists and turns of a Noir plot, discovering unsavoury characters, corruption and cover-ups.

Hammett was also technically the first American film directed by German art-house hero Wim Wenders, but differences between him and executive producer Francis Ford Coppola meant that most of the film was actually re-shot by Coppola himself. This inconsistency may explain some of the problems with the film, which is at times thrilling and at others messy.

What it has going for it is bundles of style. Aesthetically it's an authentic homage to a bygone era. Sound stages are used rather than location shoots, there's plenty of moody light seeping in through slatted blinds, and the costumes, intricate plotting, and hard boiled dialogue are spot on. But it still feels false in a way. Perhaps Wenders and Coppola mirror the 1940s style too closely. Everything is very classical, but it doesn't quite capture the joy of early Noirs. Neither does it put a distinct artistic stamp on the genre like Polanski's Chinatown did some years earlier, or Blade Runner did in the same year as Hammett.

What it lacks most are characters. Frederic Forrest is good as Hammett, but he doesn't have the same charisma as Humphrey Bogart does when playing Hammett's creation Sam Spade. Noir plots are convoluted and hard to follow at the best of times, but we're always pulled through by a charismatic hero. Here the lead character is interesting, but Forrest doesn't quite give us enough to distract in the moments we get lost in the plot.

That said, I still enjoyed watching Hammett. It's an unusual film, immediately at odds with a 1982 output that included Spielberg's E.T., Richard Gere cliché fest An Officer and a Gentleman, Sylvester Stallone's third entry in the Rocky series, and Oscar winner Gandhi. Quite who wanted to see an old-fashioned detective thriller in the early 80s isn't really clear. And that's probably why I hadn't heard of this film until the DVD release came along. It simply disappeared without a trace. It's an anomaly in both Wenders' and Coppola's work, as well as against its cinematic contemporaries. But Hammett is a worthwhile film, and one that should be seen as an admirable (and largely enjoyable) failure.

Hammett is released on DVD on November 7th.

Arnold Stone blogs at spaceshipbroken.com and can also be found on Twitter.

Thoughts on... The Losers (2010)

The Losers, 2010.

Directed by Sylvain White.
Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Idris Elba, Columbus Short, Óscar Jaenada and Jason Patric.


SYNOPSIS:

In the Bolivian jungle, a group of Special Ops soldiers plan an air strike on a village targeted by the US military. Finding a large amount of children in the village they save them, only for the helicopter carrying the children to be destroyed by a secretive villain known as Max. Presumed dead in the crash, the soldiers, now just ordinary ‘losers’, plan their revenge and their path back into the USA.


Going into The Losers I wasn’t expecting much – it has received pretty mediocre reviews and has lacked publicity upon its UK release, suggesting a lack of faith from its distributor Warner Bros. If Warner had got behind it though, they could have had a hit on their hands because The Losers is a genuinely entertaining piece of pulp filmmaking.

Based on a comic book that ran from 2003-2006, its story concerns a Special Forces team that are presumed dead after their helicopter was destroyed during a mission in Bolivia. They survived however, and plan to take out the man who wanted them dead, a Black Ops official with a side interest in trading arms, known only as Max.

The Losers plays out like a western along the lines of The Wild Bunch or The Magnificent Seven. The team members are somewhat caricatures, defined by their roles within the team and broad personalities. They are individually introduced by comic book style freeze frames showing their name and specialist military skill, before we quickly come to see them as the leader, the rogue, the nerdy hacker, the ice-cool sniper and the family-man pilot. Each man’s skill is essential to the team, and they operate, like in the classic westerns, as a rebel group, outside of the law but on the side of good.

The Losers brings this classic group dynamic into the 21st century however, and aims it squarely at the nerdy young male, with the snappy banter and squad based military format recalling the experience of playing online videogames. The Losers aims for this market aesthetically too, with plenty of camera trickery and clever editing that keeps it fast-paced and exciting without veering into the territory of feeling vacuous. The film draws on its comic book source for visual cues, but also on videogames, Hong Kong action movies, and MTV music videos – flashing up comic book style frames, projecting location names onto establishing shots, flirting between slow and fast motion, and cutting in time to the beat of the constantly murmuring score.

These visual flourishes, along with enthusiastic performances by all involved and a brisk running time of only 97 minutes make the film a satisfying indulgence. It may not be Citizen Kane but it doesn’t have the pretence to think it is – director Sylvain White, who hasn’t helmed much else of note, directs with an unashamed joy-de-vivre. The Losers knows its target audience and it understands the failings of bloated big-budget comic book adaptations, such as the Spiderman sequels. Opting for a focused and fun romp, The Losers delivers where it should and is enjoyable to watch.

Following the success of Kick Ass, it’s a shame that The Losers hasn’t performed better at the box office. While it isn’t quite up to the heights of that film – which so successfully melded a contemporary teenage comedy with a solid superhero film – it is perhaps a sign that the big film studios should be starting to look towards more recent comic books for their inspiration rather than the tired X-Men and Iron Man types that were created in the 1960s. Indeed, with the promising looking Scott Pilgrim vs. The World also coming soon, this movement could already be underway.

Arnold Stone

Movie Review Archive

Thoughts on... Robin Hood (2010)

Robin Hood, 2010.

Directed by Ridley Scott.
Starring Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Matthew Macfadyen, Mark Strong, William Hurt and Max von Sydow.


SYNOPSIS:

At the end of the 12th century, common archer Robin Hood makes his way back to England from fighting in King Richard’s crusades in France, only to become involved in another battle, this time to save England from a French invasion.


Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s latest collaboration, Robin Hood, is an interesting beast. It’s an origins story of sorts, telling of how Robin came to be known as an outlaw, yet also a historical drama, painting a picture of Britain in turmoil at the end of the 12th century. Rather than focusing solely on Russell Crowe’s hero, the film is more of an ensemble piece, taking in a large cast of characters including kings, knights, outlaws, and saboteurs.

Watching it for the first time, Robin Hood feels more complicated than it actually is – mainly because of this vast array of narratives that are all struggling for screen time. At the start of the film, Ridley Scott cuts between a group of orphan children stealing grain from the Loxley household in Nottingham (which includes Cate Blanchett’s Lady Marion and Max von Sydow’s Sir Walter), scenes setting up these characters and the people of Nottingham, King Richard’s assault on a French castle, Robin’s journey back from France, another group of Knights travelling back from France, the inept would-be-king John at odds with his mother, and a traitorous man with links to the English throne making a pact with the French King. Because of this, the film struggles to define its protagonists and develop a clear focus early on. It ends up feeling muddled and the pacing is slow, taking what seems like an age to reach a point where each character has been well enough defined to carry the plot forward.

In addition to this, Ridley Scott seems determined to not spell anything out explicitly; leaving the viewer to decipher lines of mumbled dialogue and assess what may or may not become significant later on. To an extent this work’s in Robin Hood’s favour, offering up a big summer movie that avoids the patronising hand-holding that contemporary blockbusters are often full of – Avatar is particularly guilty of this. It’s just that, at times, Robin Hood seems to need a little more focus to ensure the viewer doesn’t get lost or bored.

Despite these criticisms, when the film starts to come together (around half way in) it works really well. The multiple narrative strands begin to converge and the character building that went before gains significance. The film reaches a crescendo as Robin becomes the hero that he’s known as. In the two lengthy battle scenes that end the film, Ridley Scott really shows his flair as a director - the action is intense, exciting and brutal. A cast of hundreds of men and horses battling away on a beach, with waves crashing against the shore, is hugely impressive; a massive technical undertaking that is as exciting to watch as anything seen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Ridley Scott also manages to retain a real sense of time and space, something that lesser action directors often struggle with – it’s easy to recall the mess of fast editing and extreme close-ups that Michael Bay usually produces.

Robin Hood isn’t for everyone - those acclimatised to the fast pace and straightforward plots of modern blockbusters may find themselves looking at their watches. If you’re willing to put the time in though (at 140 minutes it’s a long film) you’ll find a rewarding experience that contains some spectacular action scenes and – by focusing on the years before he became an outlaw – offers a new perspective on the legend of Robin Hood.

Arnold Stone

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Five Essential... Films of Ridley Scott
Hard to Replicate: A Ridley Scott Profile

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