My Journey Through French Cinema (2016)

 

MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA  

    D: Bertrand Tavernier                            (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢

Bertrand Tavernier looks back at some of the filmmakers and some of the films that have influenced his own life and work, from Jacques Becker and Jean Renoir to Jean-Pierre Melville and Claude Sautet. The clips are wonderful and you see a lot of Jean Gabin, whose career covers roughly the same time frame the movie does. On the minus side, the talking-head witnesses are unidentified, leaving casual viewers in the dark about who they are, and reading the subtitles while Tavernier narrates in French takes your attention away from what you really want to be looking at. (I usually prefer subtitles, but this is one foreign-language film that should've been dubbed.) A documentary aimed squarely at cinemaphiles, specifically those who already know French.

Bertrand Tavernier

(1941-2021)

Play Misty For Me (1971)

 

PLAY MISTY FOR ME  (1971)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Clint Eastwood

    Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills,

    John Larch, Jack Ging, Donald Siegel 

Clint plays a whispery-voiced deejay whose bed-hopping lifestyle turns into a bloody nightmare after he picks up an obsessive fan in a bar. Eastwood's first film as a director, a combination star vehicle, psychosexual thriller and cinematic tourist brochure for Monterey and Carmel. There are a few too many idyllic shots of the star and Donna Mills walking among the cypress trees, but some key elements of Eastwood's filmmaking style are already evident: the use of dark lighting (with cinematography by Bruce Surtees), the musical accent on jazz, and the very first shot in the picture - a long, sweeping, helicopter's eye view of the California coast. A precursor to "Fatal Attraction", with a blood-chilling performance by Jessica Walter as the kind of girl you don't want to pick up in a bar. Eastwood mentor Don Siegel makes an on-screen appearance as Murph the bartender. 

Jessica Walter

(1941-2021)

The Weak and the Wicked (1954)

 

THE WEAK AND THE WICKED  (1954)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: J. Lee Thompson

    Glynis Johns, Diana Dors, John Gregson,

    Olive Sloane, Rachel Roberts, Jane Hylton,

    Athene Seyler, Sidney James, Sybil Throndyke

Glynis Johns and Diana Dors check into prison together and start paying their debt to society. They've both got boyfriends on the outside, but how long can the men be expected to wait? On the other hand, how many inmates in a women's prison ever looked like Diana Dors? In a movie like this one, probability is relative. The flashback episode featuring two scheming old women, a mean old man and a pot of tea spiked with weedkiller would've pleased Alfred Hitchcock. Alternate title: "Young and Willing".

Steamboat 'Round the Bend (1935)

 

STEAMBOAT 'ROUND THE BEND  (1935)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Ford

    Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb,

    Eugene Pallette, John McGuire, Berton Churchill,

    Francis Ford, Stepin Fetchit, Roger Imhof

Will Rogers plays a riverboat pilot out to win a race and save his nephew from being hanged. In this movie, the river people hate the swamp people, the swamp people hate the river people, everybody hates the Yankees, and a sign that reads "WHITES" over a door at the railroad depot lets you know you're in the Jim Crow South. And there's Stepin Fetchit. Rogers died in a plane crash before the picture's release. 

Yellowbeard (1983)

 

YELLOWBEARD  (1983)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Mel Damski

    Graham Chapman, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman,

    Madeline Kahn, Eric Idle, James Mason,

    John Cleese, Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong,

    Peter Cook. Michael Hordern, Kenneth Mars,

    Martin Hewitt, Beryl Reid, Susannah York,

    Spike Milligan, Ronald Lacey, Nigel Stock

A Pythonesque spoof on pirate movies. Aargh!

Thelonius Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988)

 

THELONIUS MONK: STRAIGHT, NO CHASER 

    D: Charlotte Zwerin                           (1988)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

Clint Eastwood's company produced this documentary on the brilliant, eccentric pianist, whose impact on the jazz world was profound, despite escalating mental-health issues that eventually caused him to stop playing. If Monk wasn't completely detached from the rest of the world, he was at least at odds with it. He seems to be spinning - literally and figuratively - in his own universe, touching down only when he's playing music, and even then he's in a world of his own. The movie is conspicuously nonlinear, which makes sense, and a lot of it is just Monk at the piano, which makes sense, too. Whether there needs to be footage of his girlfriend's cats (of which there are way too many), or Monk ordering liver and mashed potatoes from room service, seems questionable, but any time his fingers are stabbing at the keys, you can see what made him unique. Look for the part where Monk, playing in a club somewhere, takes a cigarette out of his mouth with one hand, uses a handkerchief to wipe his face with the other, and seemingly never misses a note. Who could do that? Only Thelonius Monk.

Un Carnet de Bal (1937)

 

UN CARNET DE BAL  (1937)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Julien Duvivier

    Marie Bell, Harry Baur, Pierre Blanchar, Fernandel,

    Louis Jouvet, Raimu, Françoise Rosay, Alfred Adam,

    Pierre-Richard Willm, Maurice Bénard, Pierre Alcover

In the wake of her husband's death, a middle-aged woman comes across her dance card from a ball she attended when she was 16. Wealthy and lost for something to do, she decides to track down the men whose names are on the card, the guys who told her they'd always love her, to see what became of them. She's chasing ghosts. The ball exists only in memory (in slow-motion flashbacks), but it haunts the woman and those long-ago suitors still. One's now a gangster. One's a priest. One's a hairdresser. One's a small-town mayor. One's a doctor on the skids, susceptible to seizures and seen only in tilt shots. One has escaped to the mountains. One's dead. She even encounters a girl who could be a ghost of herself. She finds her old partners. They all remember. And she learns something else. You can't go back to the ball.