I watched parts of
Le Doulos (1962) and
Sword of Doom (1966), but I need to see them wide awake and in their entirety to discuss them. I did see some other films though...
Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960)
Macario is a beautiful Mexican fantasy film which tells the story of a poor woodcutter (Ignacio López Tarso) who on the Day of the Dead decides that he will never eat again because his life is miserable. He has a wife and two kids, but he laments that "we spend a lot more time dead than alive", so when his wife (Pina Pellicer,
One-Eyed Jacks) connives a turkey from a neighbor and cooks it for Macario, he decides to take it out into the forest and eat it all by himself, or so he thinks... Macario comes across a tricky Devil, the Lord God Himself and Death, and all three want a piece of turkey. Macario finally allows Death to share some and in return, Macario receives a healing potion which brings him fame and fortune, but alas, he also comes to the attention of the ruling Spanish Inquisator whose son is dying.
Adapted from a B.Traven (
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) novel and photographed in spectacular black-and-white by Gabriel Figueroa (
The Pearl, John Ford's
The Fugitive, Los olvidados, El, The Exterminating Angel, Night of the Iguana,
Under the Volcano),
Macario comes off as a cross between a Bergman and a Buñuel film. It is both stark and simple, yet is almost playful in its presentation of Macario's strange circumstances which also take on an almost
A Christmas Carol quality. One thing is for certain, at least to me, and that is by the time the film reaches its supercool twist ending, I was just as knocked out this time as I was when I first saw it about 35 years ago.
Electra (Mihalis Kakogiannis, 1962)
A couple of years before he made the smash hit
Zorba the Greek, the director of that film made his version of Euripides' classic tragedy for only $30,000 while shooting on classic Greek locations where some of Euripides' plays were first staged. It's one of the most-striking-looking $30,000 films you'll ever see with a powerful performance by Irene Papas as Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, who returns from the Trojan War only to be murdered by his wife and her lover. Electra and her young brother Orestes (played by Giannis Fertis when older) vow to avenge that death when the time is right and they mature. The film is quite intense and powerful although Kakogiannis actually made a more-intense version of Euripides' prequel
Iphigenia (
) in 1977. For anyone who has never seen a Greek Tragedy (with capital letters), these two films are among the very best of their kind.
Les Biches (Claude Chabrol, 1968)
+
One of Chabrol's many enigmatic films,
Les Biches (which doesn't mean what you think but rather means "The Does", as in Deers) is something along the lines of a cat-and-mouse game, but it's really more of a hunter-and-the-hunted film, and the mystery is who is it that ultimately catches their prey. The film begins with a rich woman (Stéphane Audran) with the seemingly-masculine name Frédérique picking up a street artist (Jacqueline Sassard) who may or may not be named Why and taking her back to her St. Tropez villa where they begin an affair and share the place with Frédérique's two gay male friends (Henri Attal and Dominique Zardi). Frédérique is an avid hunter and Why is fascinated with drawing does, and all seems quite happy between them until they both fall for architect Paul (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Why starts out with Paul, but Frédérique ends up with him, and he too moves into the villa, and the relationships begin to morph.
It isn't especially difficult to determine what happens in
Les Biches, but the "Whys", both the reason and the character, are a bit denser to comprehend. Sarah actually asked me if I thought the film was reminiscent of
Persona, and although it didn't strike me that much at the time, I believe that she is on to something there. Good for her.
Che: Part One (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)
You can never accuse Soderbergh of doing anything easy. Last year, he made a four-and-one-half hour epic, based on two autobigraphies of Che Guevara (played excellently by Benicio Del Toro), divided into two parts and released them well-knowing that he could never recoup the investment. Soderbergh also used a fractured storytelling approach which cuts back and forth in time and tone, changing from color to black-and-white, and often making it difficult for the film to gain any momentum or dramatic power. However, mostly due to Del Toro, the film does eventually prove worthy of the time and attention paid to it by the viewer. I have Part Two, but I haven't watched it yet, but I know that it's set in a different locale and uses different cinematic techniques, so we'll see about that one. But Part One is reminiscent at times of Oliver Stone's
JFK, Salvador and
Platoon, as well as biographies of seemingly-radical figures such as Spike Lee's
Malcolm X. Most of the film leaves the storytelling to the mid 1950s-mid 1960s, but there are a few times where the material seems to have been tweaked a bit to relate to our current political situations, involving both Cuba and Venezuela. Once again, I'll have to wait to see what appears in Part Two which is mostly set in Bolivia, but Part One is a somewhat difficult but rewarding watch. I just wish that there were a few less cigars doing some major acting, but that's a minor quibble. I know that Mrs. Darcy and Holden saw the film at the theatre, but did anybody else? You know who you are, you Del Toro lover.
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