Captain Spaulding's Cinematic Catalogue

Frenzy
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1972)
(Starring: Jon Finch; Barry Foster; Alec McCowen)





Maybe Alfred Hitchcock was scarred as a kid from always taking the blame for his siblings' misdoings, or maybe he just had an irrational fear of being falsely accused of a crime, but the innocent-man-found-guilty is a recurring motif that he explored in several films (The 39 Steps, The Wrong Man, North by Northwest, among others), and, in my opinion, much more effectively in previous films than in the uneven Frenzy. The lead character, due to his relationship with two of the victims and the fact that he's last seen near the scene of a crime, becomes the prime suspect in the ongoing hunt for a serial killer who rapes and strangles his victims with a necktie. The movie takes awhile to get going, but once the manhunt begins in the second half, things become much more compelling. Hitchcock, being the Master of Suspense, milks the tension and dread in a few key scenes, like the excellent sequence where the killer boards the back of a delivery truck to recover a piece of incriminating evidence, which is easily the highlight of the film.

No longer bound by the moral restrictions of earlier decades, Hitchcock is allowed a greater freedom to explore the perverse depths of the sexually deviant serial killer. The scene involving an attempted rape and the ensuing murder is appropriately disturbing. The camera doesn't shy away from the nudity or the heinousness of the act. Once we've seen the killer in action, however, Hitchcock makes the wise decision to allow the audience's imagination to fill in the ugliness about to befall his next victim. As the killer leads a woman into his apartment and delivers his ominous line ("You're my type of woman"), the camera slowly backtracks down the stairs and out of the building. The effect is chilling, since we know of the horrible deed that's taking place inside the building while everyone else in the vicinity remains oblivious.

On the downside, Frenzy lacks the focus and polish that I've come to expect from Hitchcock. I don't usually notice goofs, but there's an early scene in the movie where the lead actor, Jon Finch, is smoking a cigarette while engaged in conversation. Within the same scene, the cigarette changes length multiple times and constantly jumps from his mouth to his hand. The cigarette even disappears once or twice to magically reappear the next second. It's distracting and amateurish to see such jarring editing mistakes in any film, let alone a film by an all-time great like Hitchcock. Also, the last act of the film feels rushed. The lead detective in the case makes a surprising, unjustified turnabout in his suspicions. He spends three-fourths of the film convinced that Finch's character is the perpetrator, then, without seeing any reason for his change of thought, is suddenly convinced that Finch is innocent after all. For a movie that occasionally drags its feet in the first hour, it ends up feeling like several key scenes were either glossed over or omitted entirely, all at the sacrifice of the story.

Of the sixteen Hitchcock films I've seen, Frenzy definitely ranks near the bottom. But even if the movie fails to reach Hitchcock's usual heights, there's still plenty of good to be gleaned from it. After all, Hitchcock is arguably the greatest director of all time, so even his weaker efforts are worth watching.

Le Cercle Rouge
(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)
(Starring: Alain Delon; Bourvil; Gian Maria Volonté; Yves Montand)





There are many reasons to fall in love with a movie. Maybe you're able to relate to the characters on a deeply personal level. Maybe the movie stimulates you intellectually or emotionally. Maybe, like a ride at a carnival, you find the movie enormously entertaining and fun. Or maybe, in the case of Le Cercle Rouge, the movie is so effortlessly cool, so assured and stylish and elegant in its approach, that you feel more like a badass just for watching it.

In many ways, Le Cercle Rouge reminds me of what the Italians did to the Western. By transporting a genre that was so traditionally American across the pond and filtering it through the eyes of Italians like Sergio Leone, the old-western mythology was heightened, the gunslinger was transformed into an almost mythic figure, the duels were elevated to epic showdowns of skill and tension and suspense; slap an iconic Ennio Morricone score onto the proceedings and you've just transformed a decades-old genre into something completely new and game-changing. Melville, by approaching the material from a different heritage and culture and adding his unique perspective to the traditionally American tropes, did the same thing to the old-school noir and gangster flicks typically seen in the 40's and 50's. The result is something that looks familiar from a distance, with its fedoras and trench coats and scenes of people being held at gunpoint or meeting at nightclubs, but on closer examination is wholly original. This is pure cinema through and through. If the Italians' re-imagining of the Western was called a Spaghetti Western, then I guess Le Cercle Rouge could be called a . . . Well, I don't know what kind of food the French are famous for, so I'll just call Le Cercle Rouge an Eiffel Noir, in reference to the Eiffel Tower.



In keeping with the Spaghetti Western comparisons, Alain Delon is to Melville what Clint Eastwood is to Sergio Leone: a reverential badass of few words and fewer emotions, who is magnetic, mysterious, compelling and charismatic. The same can be said for Volonté's escaped criminal and Montand's demon-ridden sharpshooter. It's impossible to imagine these characters performing the kind of mundane tasks that you and I do every day. They exist solely to look cool, smoke cigarettes, plan heists and evade the cops. And speaking of cops, Bourvil's veteran of the police force feels more villainous than the criminals, willing to extort and blackmail and break any laws that stand between him and the so-called "bad guys." This isn't black vs white, but gray vs. gray: a morally ambiguous world where the line between right and wrong is non-existent. Every character, regardless of which side of the law they preside, is tormented in some aspect.

The characters rarely get in a hurry, performing their duties with painstaking precision and finesse, which is indicative of the movie's leisurely pace. Scenes unfold slowly and quietly. The musical score is rarely present and operates at the level of a whisper when it is. This works to the movie's benefit, especially during the phenomenal heist sequence, which lasts nearly thirty minutes and is filmed in almost complete silence. Most directors would speed up the proceedings and slap a song over the scenes and feature the actors talking to one another as they make off with the jewels, but these characters are professional criminals, and Melville shows every step of their process, emphasizing the tension until it is almost unbearable. I was so caught up in the heist sequence that I had to remind myself to breathe during it, fearing that I would somehow set off an alarm if I made too much noise. The performances, the cinematography, the shot composition, the editing, the minimal use of dialogue--- everything about this movie feels like the work of a consummate artist. Le Cercle Rouge oozes coolness from every pore of its celluloid being. It is my first encounter with Melville. I guarantee that it won't be my last.

Husbands
(John Cassavetes, 1970)

It always annoys me when people criticize a film for not having likable or relatable characters. All that should matter is if the characters are interesting. Unfortunately, like every other Cassavetes film I've seen so far, the characters in Husbands are neither interesting, likable or relatable. Instead they stumble and bumble along for an excruciatingly long two-and-a-half hours, spouting pointless, inane, obviously ad-libbed dialogue while in no way resembling actual human beings. Ten minutes of this movie feels like an eternity, as scenes draaaaaag and drrrraaaaaaaggg and drrrraaaaaaaaggggg some more. Is Cassavetes making a statement on friendship or grief or mid-life crisis? Who knows? Who cares? You know as little about these characters by the end as you did in the beginning. All that changes is your overwhelming desire to punch each of them in the face. Cassavetes remains my least favorite "important" director. Watching Husbands is as enjoyable as getting a colonoscopy.



Tango & Cash
(Andrei Konchalovsky, 1989)

In 1989, it was probably a big deal to see Rambo and Snake Plissken share the screen. I've never been a big Kurt Russell fan, so the pairing did nothing for me, but the chemistry between the two actors and their constant quips back and forth are the best part of the movie. Stallone seems like an odd choice for his character: a spectacled, bookish, neatly-dressed cop, but I assume it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek, just like seeing Kurt Russell dress in drag later in the movie. The plot is formulaic and predictable with an overblown finale featuring eighteen explosions and a bad guy-in-the-mirror-OMG-which-one-do-we-shoot? ending, but the movie is marginally entertaining, despite the overwhelming amount of 80's cheese.


Cry-Baby
(John Waters, 1990)

Ever since watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show a few weeks ago and loving it, I've felt a desire to check out more atypical musicals. Prior to Cry-Baby, the only other John Waters film I'd seen was Pecker, which I hated, but Johnny Depp is my favorite actor, so that was reason enough for me to give this movie a chance. Now I'm crying because I wasted an hour-and-a-half of my life. The musical numbers are nothing special or catchy, but at least they're better than the dreck that surrounds them. Waters tries to hide his lack of talent as a director by piling ugly character on top of ugly character and then injecting his movies with an anarchistic sense of perversity. Cry-Baby aims to spoof Grease and old prison musicals. Instead it's just a spoof of filmmaking.

Greed
(Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
(Starring: Gibson Gowland; ZaSu Pitts; Jean Hersholt)



"I intended to show men and women as they are all over the world, none of them perfect, with their good and bad qualities, their noble and idealistic sides and their jealous, vicious, mean and greedy sides. I was not going to compromise."
--- Erich von Stroheim



Many modern filmmakers ignore the "picture" part of motion pictures, instead relying on lazy voice-over narrations and on-the-nose dialogue that tells the audience everything they need to know about the plot and the characters instead of showing them. But in 1924, long before directors had dialogue or special-effects or voice-over narrations in their toolbox, a movie had to rely solely on imagery to convey its stories to the audience. Sure, there were occasional placards to explain a transition or a character's background or an important line of speech, as well an accompanying musical score to match the emotions on screen, but everything else had to be accomplished through a visual palette of imagery and symbolism and metaphor.

As Norma Desmond says in Sunset Boulevard, "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!" And it's those wonderfully expressive, emotive faces from the silent era that served as a character's canvas. Actors and actresses--- such as Gibson Gowland and ZaSu Pitts in Greed--- embodied their roles, using only their faces and their bodies to convey the inner-workings of their characters. And directors like Erich von Stroheim (who, coincidentally, played Norma Desmond's butler in the aforementioned Sunset Boulevard) had to inject meaning, subtext and depth into every scene if they were going to maximize the potential of their visual medium. This is why Greed, despite being ninety-years-old(!), remains one of the most powerful and masterful works of cinema that I've ever seen.



Greed illustrates that no matter how hard we chase success, we are ultimately slaves to fate and circumstance. And no matter how hard we strive to do good, to be reliable and to be morally upright, our animalistic urges and our basest desires occasionally get in the way, corrupting our minds in a moment of passion and causing us to do things that we later regret. The characters in Greed are flawed, but normal. Eventually, however, an unkind twist of fate, along with an unforgiving environment and the "demons" in their blood, ultimately take their toll. Each character becomes infected with a cancer of the soul--- symbolized by the color gold (which was hand-colored onto certain scenes, allowing the golden glow to radiate from the black-and-white surroundings like a poisonous toxin)--- and their downward spiral begins.

We are introduced to McTeague, the main character, as he takes a break from mining to pick up a small, injured bird. He nuzzles the bird against his face and kisses it on the head, then another miner slaps the bird out of McTeague's hand. In an act of brute strength, McTeague, consumed with rage, lifts the man over his head and throws him off the bridge. In later scenes, when we see the caged canaries that McTeague keeps as pets, the birds serve as a reminder of McTeague's conflicted nature: his compassion, which we learn he inherited from his mother, as well as his violent temper, which he inherited from his father. It is an internal tug-of-war that wages inside of his character for the duration of the movie, until one side eventually triumphs.



During the wedding sequence, in an example of the multi-layered depth that director Erich von Stroheim adds to every scene, we see through the window a funeral procession that is taking place outside on the street below. Many viewers might not notice such a detail, since the camera doesn't focus on the funeral procession or draw attention to it, but for observant viewers the funeral procession gives the wedding sequence an ominous tone, signifying the eventual demise of our bride and groom. When Trina, McTeague's wife, wins the lottery shortly afterwards, she slowly changes from a meek, wide-eyed woman to a lying, conniving, mean-spirited wench, hoarding her winnings despite the couple's eventual struggles. Her gradual deterioration, both physically and mentally, is startling, and it is a testament to ZaSu Pitts's phenomenal performance. The change in Marcus Schouler, however, McTeague's friend and Trina's cousin, is less a transformation than a revelation, as his overwhelming jealousy and hatred unveil his true persona. During his supposed "farewell," when the camera cuts to a cat in the room flicking its tail in agitation, and then later shows the same cat attack the pet canaries just before McTeague receives bad news, we don't need to be told who has reported McTeague's unlicensed dental practice to know that Marcus is responsible.

There is nothing Hollywood about Greed, no happy endings or easy answers or saccharine manipulations, which is probably why it was so poorly received by the public upon its release in 1924. Greed is unafraid of exploring the ugly depths of humanity. When McTeague and Marcus wander into the desert---- which von Stroheim filmed on location in the harsh, unforgiving conditions of Death Valley, resulting in numerous crew members being hospitalized for heat exhaustion--- the bleak landscape, with its parched earth and searing sun, is symbolic of how far our characters have fallen. They've lost everything, tangible and intangible, and their souls lay barren and exposed. It is a powerful, uncompromising ending to a powerful, uncompromising film. Not only has Greed surpassed Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans as the best film I've seen from the silent era, it can proudly stand alongside the greatest films of all-time. Greed is, simply put, a masterpiece.