"Mon Oncle"

This French thing....it's continuing! Guess I've been missing France. And trying to speak its language, a little.

The next film up is "Mon Oncle," from Jacques Tati, and it's his film that's probably more well-known than any other. I'd never seen any of his films until 2 1/2 years ago or so, when I saw "M. Hulot's Holiday" for the first time. Great, great stuff. "Mon Oncle" is the follow-up to "Holiday," and Tati once again plays his M. Hulot character. This one is fairly long as comedies go, almost two hours. And it needs the time, as most of its gags build up over time.

The plot, or what there is of it (most of Tati's stuff seems to center on vignettes within a framework), concerns the manager of a plastics plant named Arpel, who has a wife, son, and a very modern (for 1958) house. A lot of the humor has to do with his and his wife's fascination with all this new gadgetry they have, regardless if they really need it or not. Most times, it's "not." Their small son likes to spend as much time as possible with his uncle, who is M. Hulot. Hulot lives in a ramshackle place in town that has infinitely more character and charm than the Arpels' place. Come to think of it, the Arpels' place looks a little like the interior of a rocket ship from a fifties sci-fi cheapie.

One great repeated gag concerns a mostly hideous fish fountain that Mme. Arpel turns on whenever she thinks someone important has come over. Whenever she finds out it's "just" Hulot or a delivery guy, she switches it off. But my favorite gag of the whole movie doesn't have anything to do with the Arpels' house but centers on the son and his friends trying to get local folk to run into light poles. They'll place bets with each other and then right as the poor intended victim is about three feet from a light pole, one of the boys will whistle, intended victim's head will turn, and then there may or may not be a collision with the light pole. There's a small succession of these, and then a great return to the gag later in the movie. I loved it and laughed harder than at anything else in the film.

Terry Jones (of Monty Python) provides an introduction to the film on the disc I saw, and in the intro, he admits that he didn't think much of the movie when he first saw it....only to have it become his favorite on repeated viewings. I think it might be that way for me, too, although I did like it on this first watch. It does seem like there might be a lot I didn't get this first time. Tati's films are very dense, and this one was no exception.

"The Thing That Couldn't Die"

Remember the Heinz ketchup commercial from the 70s? "It's sloooooow good." Sometimes things can be sloooooow not so good. On to this review....

"The Thing That Couldn't Die" is a horror (?) movie from 1958 I'd been wanting to see for some time. No big stars in it and directed by Will Cowan. And, man, is it a snoozer. And it's only 69 minutes!

The basic idea is good, involving a decapitated head that's been alive for hundreds of years and sealed in a wooden box. When released, the head can control nearby people to do its bidding, which mostly involves wanting to be reunited with its body. Like I said, the idea's kinda cool, and the way the head just mouths words without sound (no vocal chords or lungs) is rather creepy.

My issue with the film is its direction and staging; it's just exceedingly limp. Everything's lit way too brightly to ever give you any sort of dread feeling, and the cast is mostly either made up of poor actors or people ready to speak lines and head off to lunch. The final "reunification" scene is one of the most ineptly shot/acted scenes I've ever seen....and I actually like a lot of Jess Franco's movies. I'd call this one a wasted opportunity, and yet, at only 69 minutes, I don't feel like I wasted too much time.

The only trailer I can find is the MST3K version. Maybe that's the way to go to view this one.....

"La Grande Illusion"

Wow, back to the French stuff, huh? Well, yes. I had received the Blu-ray of this one and wanted to give it a quick spin to view video quality....and of course, enraptured in the first five minutes, watched the whole thing. And I've seen this movie a couple of times before. Many call it the greatest anti-war movie ever made, and I'd find it hard to disagree. It might even be the greatest war movie ever made, even without any combat footage. I find it interesting that when the three French soldiers are captured in the first ten minutes, it isn't shown. You only see the aftermath.

It would be hard to describe this movie, and not because of any big spoilers, really. It's just better absorbed and enjoyed. There's a little text and a lot of subtext concerning the European class system that may not play so well stateside. The two soldiers we spend the most time with are Maréchal (Jean Gabin), who has a common background, and de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), who is from aristocracy. Erich von Stroheim knocks his part as a German prison camps head out of the park. There is a complete shift in location for the final 20 minutes of the movie but absolutely no change in tone. I find that remarkable.

This is one fine flick.

"Mr. & Mrs. Smith"

Still playing catch-up of sorts, although I won't even try to go over films I watched during the year and a half or so I didn't write in this blog. THAT would be daunting. And, unless something was super-duper memorable, I've probably forgotten plenty about the movies viewed.

But, I did finish "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" yesterday, a Carole Lombard-Robert Montgomery comedy directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1941. I have to give it one big "meh." There are a couple of scenes that stand out, one being the couple stuck on an amusement park ride high above a crowd...bringing some of the ol' Hitch suspense...and another being a hilarious scene in a nightclub where Montgomery pretends to be chatting up a woman other than the one he was supposed to be seen with.

I should summarize the plot a bit. The Smiths discover, through an odd technicality, that they're not married at all, right after Mr. Smith confesses to the Mrs. that he might not have married her at all had he the chance to do it over again. When he doesn't rush to marry her again after the technicality is discovered, she assumes the worst, and the war begins. The war lasts until about the final ten seconds of the movie.

While there is a bit of humor here and there, the movie certainly doesn't fit into the Lombard "screwball" category. It's okay, but I consider it the very definition of a "trifle." (By the way, the 2005 film with Pitt and Jolie is not a remake of this film....previously, I thought it was.)

Jean Vigo

Continuing on the ol' French movie watching trail....Criterion put out "The Complete Jean Vigo" about four years ago, and I've recently viewed it all. "Viewed it all" sounds like a monumental achievenment, but the "all" is one 90-minute feature, one 45-minute sorta-feature and two shorts of 23 and 10 minutes. All of it is worthwhile, particularly the main feature "L'Atalante." That film shows up on best-of lists all the time, so it was good to finally see it. The films were made from 1930-4, so you could best describe the work here as highly influential, which it was while "L'Atalante" is just flat out a good movie. Vigo died of tuberculosis shortly after shooting "L'Atalante," and it's pretty apparent that he would have become known as one of the masters had he lived longer.

The first short is "À Propos de Nice," and that's credited as a co-direction between Vigo and his only cinematographer Boris Kaufman. It's silent and consists of what seem to be random shots of people in Nice, doing whatever it is they're doing. The editing is what makes this one more than even the sum of its parts....the order everything's assembled, as you see everything from the well-to-do out on the Riviera to poor folks scratching it out.

The second short is "Taris"....although on the actual title screen is more verbiage; I forget what it is. This one's only ten minutes and features a champion French swimmer. What makes this one interesting is the experimentation with photographic technique. Fun stuff.

The third film is the almost-feature "Zéro de Conduite." It's said that François Truffaut was really inspired by this one, and well, if you've seen "The 400 Blows," you'll get that immediately. It's basically a bunch of students acting up in different, often funny, ways. There are also fantasy elements to the film, including an obviously impossible handstand by a teacher (monitor here) and a brief animation of a pencil drawing coming to life. Again, fun stuff.

And then "L'Atalante." I won't go on much about this one, as there's plenty on the web about it already, but suffice it to say that it's a clear winner. I watched it a second time to hear the commentary track and enjoyed it even more. There's not a whole lot to the story; this one's in the telling. And the performance by Michel Simon as Père Jules is pretty unforgettable. Plus there are cats. And they multiply during the course of the runtime. Also....the female lead is played by Dita Parlo, also of "La Grande Illusion." My curiosity made me look up her name, and yes, Madonna used the name "Dita" in her "Sex" book as an homage. Also, noted burlesque artist Dita von Teese named herself after Ms. Parlo. That's your trivia for today.

A clear win for this box set. Ahh.....

"Donkey Skin"/"Une Chambre en Ville"

Okay, folks, yours truly has finished the Jacques Demy box set. Movies, anyway....there are a few documentaries and short films to go. In the meantime, what did I think about the last two films in the set?

"Donkey Skin," from 1970, is a live-action fairy tale musical. Yep, that's what it is. Music by Michel Legrand again, and once again starring Catherine Deneuve (and Jean Marais, for you "Beauty and the Beast" fans). Most reviews I've read of this set are much less enthusiastic about the last two movies in the box, but I liked this one as much as the previous ones. True, the story comes from a children's fairy tale, so it's fairly predictable, and there's a simplistic air to the whole construction. Still, I was completely involved in it start to finish. I kept thinking of "The Princess Bride," which I think is a superior movie to this one, but the attitude about a lot of "Donkey Skin" is the same. The music here isn't nearly as memorable as the songs in the previous musicals, but it still works well. I won't go into a plot synopsis, as.....well, it's a fairy tale.

Which brings us to "Une Chambre en Ville," the final film in the set. This one was released in 1982, and yet stylistically it's not much different than "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." The music is constant, and all dialogue is sung. While I liked it, I do see why people are less enthusiastic about this one. For one thing, the music this time is by Michel Colombier, instead of Legrand. The music is good enough but lacks the magic of Legrand's themes.

The plot of this movie is much darker than all of the other movies in the box (well, maybe not "Bay of Angels"), and presenting it as a pop opera seems a bit odd. But it does work. It might not be a highly-rewatchable movie, though. The sets are as garishly colorful as in any of Demy's previous color films. I'll call this one a winner, but less of a winner than the previous five films. How's that?

Time to move on.....