Pièges (1939)

English titles: Personal Column; Snares

A series of disappearances of young women who have answered personal ads is being investigated. A friend of one of the victims decides to help the police by anwering the ads herself.

Almost like three consecutive films in one, this is a mildly interesting mystery story about a type of character which would become immensely popular a few decades later: the serial killer. Some plot details, including the ending, are very unsatisfactory, but it's a watchable film. I have noticed that, no matter the genre, whenever Chevalier is in a movie, he has to sing. Bizarre...

Rating: 51

L'année des méduses (1984)

Second viewing; first viewed on March 30, 2016

Former blog post:

[quote]
English title: Year of the Jellyfish

At a beach in the South of France, mother and 18-year-old daughter are spending some time. The mother gets involved with a younger man. The daughter has a wild sexual behavior and some psychological issues.

A lot of gorgeous women flaunting their breasts most of the time, and occasionally all her bodies. Total amorality. The young govern the old. It is well directed and flows nicely, despite the thinness and reticency of the plot. I knew there was a flashback somewhere because the daughter is sixteen in some scenes and eighteen in others, but I couldn't discern the exact point when real time transitions to flashback and vice-versa. Reportedly there is a novel that could shed light on some of those doubts.

Rating: 51
[end quote]

Now I understand the film better. It's not as reticent as I supposed. Young Chris's fixation on Romain, which goes way back -- before his involvement with her mother -- is an important plot point which I probably overlooked on my first viewing. For finer psychological points, there is always the novel, which I still haven't read.

Rating: 52 (up from 51)

Outpost in Morocco (1949)

A Foreign Legion captain falls in love with a Moroccan emir's daughter; her father leads a revolt against the French.

Colonialist adventure, with a negligible plot, and nice, if somewhat darkened, visuals, both outdoors and indoors. It was shot on location and in America; Moroccan scenes with the main cast are superimposed upon a background image.

Rating: 37

Klondike Annie (1936)

A Chinese restaurant owner's mistress who is being kept as a prisoner flees, and boards a merchant ship bound to Alaska. The ship's captain falls in love with her. A missionary woman comes aboard and befriends her.

Although horribly cut by censors, this is an interesting film on the benefits and dangers of being a sexual object. The film is also prophetic regarding showbusiness Christianity. Today's audiences may find chubby West an unsuitable choice for the title role, but she wrote it, and so was entitled to it. Somehow. TV Guide has a good review.

Rating: 51

L'année des méduses (1984)

English title: Year of the Jellyfish

At a beach in the South of France, mother and 18-year-old daughter are spending some time. The mother gets involved with a younger man. The daughter has a wild sexual behavior and some psychological issues.

A lot of gorgeous women flaunting their breasts most of the time, and occasionally all her bodies. Total amorality. The young govern the old. It is well directed and flows nicely, despite the thinness and reticency of the plot. I knew there was a flashback somewhere because the daughter is sixteen in some scenes and eighteen in others, but I couldn't discern the exact point when real time transitions to flashback and vice-versa. Reportedly there is a novel that could shed light on some of those doubts.

Rating: 51

Update: rewatched on April 13, 2016. There is a new blog entry on that date.

Avec le sourire (1936)

American title: With a Smile.

A man arrives penniless in Paris. He meets a young woman who is a dancer at a nightclub, and manages to get employed there.  Step by step, he climbs to the top of the social ladder, using his sense of opportunity, his lack of scruples, and his smile.

There isn't much to say about this film which isn't already in its dialogue. In a strictly moral sense, it is refreshing: it doesn't stray from objectivity for one second. You could call it a perfectly amoral film, or, if you do not like this terminology, you may call it an essay in social Darwinism. Even though it may look unique in that sense, I suspect it was not far from the standards of film writing in the 30s. Although I do not know a lot of that period's filmography, one needs only think of Hollywood's pre-code period for an approximate parallel. In America, however, the frankness was mostly sexual (and ended in 1934 with the strict enforcement of the Hays code), whereas in this film it is predominantly economical. Anyway, both in France and in America, films became more moralistic in later years. It was only in the late fifties that a certain spirit of boldness was to resume, but I doubt it would ever have the same free spirit again. For example, to pick a movie with a similar theme as this one, Room at the Top (1959) is a good movie, but is not without a certain implicit moralism, if memory serves me right.

Rating: 64

The Big Land (1957)

After the American Civil War, some Southerner cattle ranchers drive their cattle North to sell it. One of them befriends a drunken architect who has a businessman friend; they make a deal with said businessman, involving the building of a railroad. There are some rivals who do not like it.

Fairly routine yet watchable western.

Rating: 35

Quem matou Anabela? (1956)

A police inspector is summoned to a boarding house to investigate a murder. A corpse, found at a dam, is said to belong to one of the boarding house's inmates, a struggling actress. The boarding house's owner, the inmates, and the actress's fiancé, are interviewed by the police inspector. He is surprised by many conflicting confessions.

Mystery drama with satirical elements. The plot does not make much sense, but there are a few touches of formal playfulness which are refreshing.

Rating: 34

Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970)

Woman married to a sarcastic, egocentric, shallow, ungrateful, and exploitative husband takes a lover who doesn't treat her much better.

Drama based on a novel which, judging from the movie, was clearly written by a woman with a deep-seated hatred of men. There is no attempt to situate these people culturally; they celebrate Christmas but there is not a hint of any religious convictions or social roots. As an abstract exercise on conjugal sadomasochism, it is not bad, and is even sort of funny.

Rating: 51

Ma pomme (1950)

American title: Just Me.

A treasure is found at a construction site, with a will attached to it. After a search, the inheritors are found. The will establishes that one particular line of the bequeather's descendancy is to be empowered with the decision concerning the transmission of the inheritance. This man happens to be a tramp who thinks money brings mostly problems. He is initially inclined towards not accepting the inheritance, to the consternation of the other inheritors, who would thus be also deprived of it. However, when a new inheritor is found, he changes his mind.

Weakly scripted musical comedy with some interesting philosophical points, which are poorly explored.

Rating: 31

A família Lero-Lero (1953)

Second viewing; first viewed on November 15, 1992

Based on the play by Raimundo Magalhães Jr., first performed in 1941

A civil servant is constantly mistreated by his wife and leeched upon by his two sons and daughter who dream of impossible careers instead of settling down on modest yet reliable jobs. At work things are no better: he is a poorly paid civil servant who endures terrible working conditions. One day he decides to get away from it all.

Comedy which satirizes the Brazilian lower middle class and the infernal public service which was (and, in at least some aspects, still is) typical of that country. It is above-average for Brazilian standards in comicity and technical accomplishment. Its main actor, by his physical traits and demeanor, looks remarkably Japanese.

Rating: 56 (unchanged)

Le roi (1949)

Based on the play by Gaston Arman de Caillavet, Robert de Flers, and Émile Arène, first performed in 1908.

A foreign monarch is visiting France and gets pastry in the face thrown by a woman who happens to be the wife of a congressman. His party colleagues approach the politician and suggest ways to neutralize the embarrassing incident, which involve hunting and -- profiting from the monarch's philandering proclivities -- women.

Well-made comedy which sheds some light on the curious phenomenon of cuckolds in high places.

Rating: 52

Mr. Turner (2014)

Biopic about an English painter. He never marries and is something of a maverick and a curmudgeon.

Big disappointment from a diretor who had been consistently good up to this point. To be accurate, Vera Drake had an absurd plot, but scene by scene it was interesting. Not so this one, which has a plausible story (inevitable since it is a real one) but hardly any interesting scene. If you are curious of how Turner humped the maid from behind, or are particularly excited about absolutely trivial dialogue, this is for you. On the plus side, this is a photogenic film, even for digital which is a step backwards in film history. P.S. I am anxious for the DVD extras which will no doubt include Turner in the john, Turner's daughter's death in childbirth, the maid getting undressed in the dermatologist's office, and an extended version of the sequence where Turner discusses the evils of slavery with the traumatized slave merchant.

Rating: 40

Matou a família e foi ao cinema (1969)

Second viewing; first viewed on March 3, 1999

English title: Killed the Family and Went to the Movies

Several stories with a common theme of domestic violence. The central story is about two young middle-class women who are alone in a secluded mansion and talk about married life.

I still like the way this film plays with fragmentation and self-reference, and the use of the same actors in different but related roles; also, the use of songs in the soundtrack is daring and effective. I don't know if the film can be interpreted in one single way, but the Power theme seems to pervade all stories, and the underlying assumption seems to be foucauldian: the private sphere is subject to mechanisms of oppression which are analogous to the ones in the public sphere. I don't know why I couldn't relate in the same positive way with other films by this director. Perhaps it is a matter of giving them a second chance.

Rating: 72 (down from 86)

Babettes gæstebud (1987)

Second viewing; first viewed on June 4, 1989

English title: Babette's Feast

Based on a short story by Karen Dinesen, first published in 1958

Two sisters living in a remote fishing village are discouraged from marrying by their possessive father. In their elder years, they take a French refugee woman as a servant.

On Wikipedia, it says that its diretor changed the setting from that of the story so it would not look too 'touristy'. I find that funny, because this is a film which I appreciated mostly as an aesthetical succession of images. There is hardly any imagination in the mise-en-scène, and the text itself I found somewhat poor, relying as it does on clichés about both Nordic people and French ones. Reportedly, this is Jorge Bergoglio's favorite movie. It figures that the Court Jester of the Catholic Church should choose a Protestant movie as his personal pick. It also makes sense that a film which celebrates the pleasures of the flesh, albeit not the sexual ones, should find resonance in someone who is forced into perpetual celibacy by his own faith. He probably was also moved by the film's refugees-as-vibrancy message. In Brazil, this film was a great success amid the middle class, probably because it is a womanly film.

Rating: 50 (down from 59)

Die Legende von Paul und Paula (1973)

English title: The Legend of Paul and Paula

A working-class girl who has had a disastrous first relationship with a man falls in love with another who is already married, albeit unhappily so. They start seeing each other, but, despite their mutual affection, his lack of commitment poses problems.

Boring love story, allegedly Angela Kazmierczak's favorite movie. Some online reviews would have you think it is a very subversive film, but that is very far from being the truth; its characters, overall mood, and the reception it had bring to mind those verses from a Talking Heads song: "We don't want freedom. We don't want justice. We just want someone to love." It is my impression that, even for its time and place, the film's discourse is far from contestatory. For our time and place, it just reinforces the very conformist discourse of individualism which has been prevalent in our liberal society all through the duration of the closed regimes of Eastern Europe. The fact of the matter is that there really wasn't much of a difference between the two sides of the Cold War. The side that lost was seduced by images of a Paradise which was really a Hell which they are now experiencing, some of them under the fabulous leader mentioned in the beginning of this review.

Rating: 20

Memórias de um gigolô (1970)

English title: Memoirs of a Gigolo

Adventures of a man who spends his adolescence in a whorehouse, and falls in love with one of the girls, who has a relationship with a pimp.

Picaresque comedy with a very childish script. The author is of Italian stock, and I think it shows in the film's style, to which the diretor, born in that jolly peninsula, may have contributed. It is not badly filmed. The actors suit their respective roles fine, and perform professionally. The cinematography has nice colors and some of the locations are really photogenic. This is the kind of stuff that pleased audiences in the seventies in Brazil. They are probably just as undemanding today, but the films themselves have become quite unbearable, unlike this one, which has the bare minimum of goods to keep one from walking away.

Rating: 31

O Ibraim do subúrbio (1976)

Film in two segments: "Roy, o gargalhador profissional", about a professional cackler, and "O Ibraim do subúrbio", about a poor tailor who lives in a fantasy world of wealth and social celebrity.

I wouldn't recommend this film, because the scripts of both segments leave a lot to be desired. But for gleaners like me, there may be some value in its commentary about the plight of the poor folks who work hard and at times don't even have a place to work. The phenomenon which Marx named 'false consciousness' is explored on the second segment. The first one, which shows a grimmer reality of struggle and borderline despair, is seasoned with cruel irony. One doesn't see much of this mood in films made in Europe or the U.S., probably because the people there do not experience this neglect by the powers that be. Even in Brazil, there are few filmmakers today who are into exposing social wounds. But the wounds are still there.

Rating: 31

A Compadecida (1969)

English title: Our Lady of Compassion.

Based on the play O Auto da Compadecida, by Ariano Suassuna, written in 1955 and first staged in 1956.

Two small-town bakery employees, one a trickster and the other his simple-minded sidekick, go through several incidents as a gang of bandits raid the town in a murdering frenzy.

Botched theatrical adaptation, with no sense of narrative and poorly designed cinematic sequences. It has a lot of competent artists working in it, as cenographer, cinematographer, etc., and that shows, but a good crew a good film does not make; it takes a good screenplay and a competent diretor, both of which seem to be missing here. The storyline could be divided into two sections, the first of which is a picaresque sequence of events, and the second of which invokes the supernatural to convey a socially-updated re-reading of Christianity, with a preachy undertone to it. The Internet Movie Database hilariously merges two people into a single entity under the name George Jonas. One is this film's diretor, who was a Hungarian-born man established in Brazil in the celluloid processing business and later as a producer of TV advertising. The other is his much more famous namesake, who was also Hungarian-born but established himself in Canada as a journalist.

Some internet links about the Brazilian guy: on his book of memoirs and on his death.

Rating: 32

White Dog (1982)

Second viewing; first viewed on October 31, 1997.

Based on the story (or, according to some sources, on the novel) by Romain Gary, first published in 1970.

A young actress finds a stray dog and adopts it. After some time, she finds out it has been trained to attack blacks.

As I watched this, it increasingly puzzled me that I was so overwhelmed by it on my first viewing. Unfortunately, I have no way of getting back for a few instants to my previous self so I can understand what it was that blew me away then. I can more or less hypothesize that it had to do with the careful building up of suspense and atmosphere, attributes which so many critics have pointed out, and I still now acknowledge. Sadly, I suspect it also had to do with allegorical interpretations which critics also came up with, and to which I no longer subscribe. Although the storyline has the potential elements for that, they are too vaguely sketched (e.g., one cannot really know why the dog behaves in the specific way it does in the end, or what this could mean allegorically). But this is not why I cooled down about it; the fact is, this is only a slightly above average suspenser, with some dullness in the midsection, and a problematic plot weakness relating to the dog trainer's poorly explained motivation to persist in his course of action. However, if you are dead set on making this into a parable of sorts, I think you may view it as a moral tale about the dangers of doggedness.

Rating: 66 (down from 84)