Month: June 2020

  • The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955)

    The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) It’s hard to resist the appeal of a title like The Man Who Loved Redheads (I feel called out), but there is something quite unusual about the film. It’s about one man’s life-long obsession with a specific woman (a redhead, obviously), so much so that, even as a married man, he keeps having affairs with women who remind him of her. Where it gets interesting is that the four women he woos over the film’s decades are all played by Moira Shearer. What’s more, the film has a very present narrator (one who asks questions to passersbys, and who tells us that there’s nothing to know if he doesn’t know) as well as a sense of wry humour that gets pretty funny at times, even despite the film’s frequent slow patches and immoral centre. Amusingly enough, one of the characters played by former ballerina Shearer is… a ballet dancer, which gives director Harold French an opportunity to stage an out-of-place ballet paying homage to her previous role in the classic The Red Shoes. Despite running the risk of turning into a shaggy dog story, The Man Who Loved Redheads’ ending is interesting from a narrative perspective — as a way to exorcise the protagonist’s obsession but also to show how meaningless it was.

  • Volition (2019)

    Volition (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) I do believe in being a little bit more indulgent with low-budget genre films—they’re not competing on the same level as the blockbusters, and the good ones try to excel within their own ambitions, according to the means at their disposal. So it is that Canadian low-budget science fiction film Volition does start with the clever concept of having someone see flashes of their future and act accordingly. Although our protagonist, who has become a small-time criminal, believes that there’s nothing he can do to avoid the flashes he’s shown. Never mind the “huh, he never seriously tried to change it?” angle—elementary movie literacy is enough to have a good idea of where this is all going. Once the shooting and the dying start, our protagonist gets additional motivation and revelations. Unfortunately, Volition becomes a far more standard time-travel film once it leaves the carefully restrained clairvoyance angle behind and starts meddling with bigger ideas. Then it becomes another time-travel thriller about fighting predestination, and retreats in pretty much every time-travel cliché in the book—albeit with a moderate amount of wit along the way. I wish it all led to a better or more remarkable result, but Volition can’t escape its own slight disappointment: It’s not bad, but there’s less to impress here than was suggested at first.

  • Mil gritos tiene la noche [Pieces] (1982)

    Mil gritos tiene la noche [Pieces] (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2020) There were a lot of slasher movies in the early 1980s, and most of them were unmitigated garbage, ripping off a trend with so little distinction that they become undistinguishable from one another. Pieces is one of those—yet another slasher set on campus, this time with a chainsaw as the showpiece murder weapon. Multiple clichés abound, with perhaps the only thing distinguishing this film from so many others being the stronger-than-usual giallo influence (the film is Italian, but set on an American campus with American actors) leading to a result that’s slightly crazier and self-aware than many other similar films. Pieces certainly doesn’t waste any time nor subtlety in establishing and maintaining the psychosexual aspect of the killer’s motivations—killing your mom with an axe because she threw away your porno puzzle does seem excessive, but I’m clearly not the kind of person who would write a slasher in the first place. The film ultimately veers toward body horror rather than “simple” kills, but the constant misogyny is even more pronounced than usual for slashers, and the execution is really nothing worth noticing. Pieces can be of historical interest if you’re looking to perfect any understanding of early-1980s slashers and their hybridization with giallo, but otherwise it’s not worth it.

  • … E tu vivrai nel terrore! L’aldilà [The Beyond] (1981)

    … E tu vivrai nel terrore! L’aldilà [The Beyond] (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2020) While American horror movies of the early 1980s were too often stuck with knife-wielding psycho slashers, you could look at Europe and often Italy for variety—for better or for worse! Often set in the United States, Italian horror movies went crazy in ways that could be disgusting or entertaining, often in the same movie. In The Beyond’s case, writer-director Lucio Fulci goes to New Orleans in order to deliver a haunted house story that easily bubbles in all directions to include ghouls, a cursed book, sacrifices to a painting, and a portal to hell. Narratively, it’s a mess—a wild mishmash of nightmarish set-pieces loosely strung together along a haunted-hotel premise. It’s not a tight movie nor a very good one (spiders don’t work that way!), but it’s far more interesting than the psycho slasher movies or the era. More care has been spent on the gore effects (including a surprising number of people melting) than the plot, but even with the hooey that doesn’t fit together, The Beyond does create an interesting surprise-bag atmosphere where anything and everything can happen next. Despite a few strong female characters, don’t get attached to any of them—they’re not well developed, and the unusually haunting ending does them no favours. Normally, I wouldn’t like something like The Beyond—too scattered, too gory, too focused on visual shocks than narration. But I happened to see it after too many identical early-1980s American slashers, and it certainly feels more imaginative than other films of the time without quite falling into the nihilistic meanness of some other Italian horror films of the period (specifically the zombie films)—it’s not much, but it’s better.

  • Secret Beyond the Door… (1947)

    Secret Beyond the Door… (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) Fritz Lang directed many thrillers during his Hollywood career, and while there are better ones than Secret Beyond the Door…, it’s a film that mashes together some very interesting influences. The link between the Bluebeard legend and the domestic thrillers of the 1940s seemed inevitable, considering the peril that a new husband may represent for his new wife. The result is far more melodramatic than many of Lang’s more straightforward thrillers, what with the overdramatic narration, strong musical cues and an undisguised subject matter. Stylistically, it tries to blend together the soft touch of domestic thrillers of earlier years (Suspicion, Rebecca) while going to noirish stylistic elements. It does get almost ridiculously intense, as the woman (and the audience!) is absolutely completely resolutely certain that the husband is out to kill his new wife like his previous ones. But calm down—it’s not going to go there, not really. The ending provides the thrills and the romantic resolution, wrapping up a movie that may be just a touch too strident along the way, but still manages a rather good impression.

  • Three Coins in a Fountain (1954)

    Three Coins in a Fountain (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) From roughly 1951 to 1965, the American movie industry frequently headed to Rome as part of “Hollywood on the Tiber” era—motivated by financial incentives and the presence of a decent studio complex, Hollywood churned out a bunch of sword-and-sandal historical epics… and a few contemporary movies set in Rome as well. Three Coins in a Fountain isn’t the first or most famous of those (Roman Holiday got there a year earlier and remains better known) but it does offer an entertaining look at the love life of a trio of expatriate Americans in Rome, as fate -or the Trévi fountain- has very different plans from what they have in mind. This is a romantic comedy, so you have to go along with the overwrought complications and contrivances of the form. Fortunately, the gorgeous colourful atmosphere of early-1950s Rome—especially set against romance—is well worth a look beyond the plot: thanks to director Jean Negulesco, there’s an atmosphere quite unlike any other here, and it’s like taking a trip back in time and place to drink it all in. The treatment of the expatriate life remains credible and not always all that common. It’s all rather charming, even if calling it a “comedy” has more to do with the upbeat ending than any kinds of jokes and laughs along the way.