Month: February 2021

  • Ce soir, je dors chez toi (2007)

    Ce soir, je dors chez toi (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) When it comes to romantic comedies, two attractive leads can do a lot to compensate for script problems if they’re likable and interesting enough. But there are limits to what they can do, and when it comes to Ce soir, je dors chez toi, neither the likable Jean-Paul Rouve nor the very cute Mélanie Doutey can help salvage the film from banality. It does start promisingly, though, as a commitment-phobic writer fears his girlfriend moving in with him. Convinced that living together means the end of romance, he convinces his editor to move in on spurious pretences and block her from executing her plans. Predictably enough, the lies and misunderstandings only spin out from there, leading to a second half in which even viewers will grow unconvinced that they’re meant to be together. From a relatively solid opening, the film spins out of control. Some of it is intentional—Being French, Ce soir, je dors chez toi has little qualms about breaking staid Hollywood conventions—by mid-film, the characters have graphically described affairs with others, and the ending has the protagonist discovering his ex in a relationship with another man. But there’s a price to pay in playing with romantic comedy expectations, and that price here is a lack of trust in the suddenly happy finale. We somehow go from a protagonist being spurned by his ex-girlfriend to them getting back together — but since the film is largely from his perspective than hers, the change of heart remains ill-motivated. Various other tangents and subplots don’t necessarily add up to much (such as an abrupt trip to Manhattan, in the mirror image of New York City movies ending in Paris for a romantic climax), and the result is a bit of a mess, barely held together by Rouve’s jeune premier charm and Doutey’s attractive looks, even in a script determined to turn her into an antagonist. Too bad — and let that be a lesson to anyone deviating from the tried-and-true formula for romantic comedies.

  • Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I don’t think I’ll ever lose my sense of amazement at what can come up once you start poking through movie archives. Battle Beneath the Earth, produced in Great Britain by Irish director Montgomery Tully, is not a good movie—but it does have the kind of premise that sticks in mind: nothing less than the invasion of the United States by Chinese renegades through tunnels dug under the Pacific, and then in three tunnels spanning the United States. To say that it’s a crazy premise is understating things, but to its credit, the film does work overtime in trying to provide a halfway-plausible rationale. It also manages to tweak its premise in such as way that we get a warning from a scientist who’s not as crazy as everyone else thinks, early spectacular sequence and (thanks to a Hawaiian volcano and nuclear weapons) a way to end the threat in time for the end credit. No one will be surprised to realize that the film is incredibly racist in a variety of ways. Never mind the identity of the invaders when their leaders are played by actors in unconvincing makeup, and the film repeatedly lingers ominously on Asian extras. Paranoid doesn’t begin to describe the attitude of the film when it openly screams that invading hordes could literally spring from the ground. Battle Beneath the Earth is quite terrible and slightly enjoyable at once: the entire thing is just crazy enough to be interesting, and while it’s no surprise if the film has largely been forgotten today, it’s also a bit amusing to rediscover as a relic from an earlier time.

  • Test Pilot (1938)

    Test Pilot (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s interesting to note that movies predate aviation by only a few years — the medium was there to chronicle the way humans learned to fly, and even by 1938, aviation was barely in its third decade as more than a research endeavour. For some reason, I have an enduring fascination for aviation movies, especially the heroic age of aviation. That would be reason enough to watch Test Pilot, which is still widely hailed for its mostly realistic treatment of its subject. But then there’s the classic Hollywood touch: The film features no less than Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy, in addition to being built as a classic melodramatic blockbuster according to the timeless standards of the genre. (Fittingly, it was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award.)  The result is not exactly the most unpredictable of movies: As our cocky protagonist (Gable) keeps getting into self-inflicted trouble, barely held back by the intervention of his level-headed friend (Tracy) and the love of a good woman (Loy), it’s not astonishing when he ends the picture a changed, more responsible man. Test Pilot may have been directed by Victor Fleming, but the script is recognizably from Howard Hawks. In between, well, we get a good look at the state of late-1930s American aviation, with bullet-shaped barnstormers and a peek at the B-17 bomber about to get good use during WW2. The special effects still come across as credible. The result is about as old-school Hollywood as can be imagined, but not in a bad way: high technology, melodrama, manly men, and a sex symbol… who could ask for more?

  • La mala educación [Bad Education] (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, February 2021) While I wouldn’t call myself a fan of writer-director Pedro Almodóvar’s work, I rarely miss a chance to see movies of his — he can usually be relied upon to show us something new, interesting and provocative every time. There are few boring Almodovar films, and Bad Education is not of them. The story of a director reuniting with a past flame soon turns to cross-dressing, impersonation, murder and melodramatic confessions. There’s seldom a dull moment along the way, and Almodovar keeps us on our toes with a non-chronologic structure that may simply be excerpts of the film being made along the way (echoing his later Pain and Glory). The film relies on the performances of Gael García Bernal and Fele Martinez and both actors prove up to the challenge. The cinematography is very colourful and, as usual, the film mercifully does not stick to a formulaic narrative. Bad Education may feel a lot like other Almodóvar movies, but like all of them, it’s also a voyage of discovery in what he can do with a film.

  • The Chase (1966)

    The Chase (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) As much as I like to point at 1967 as the year during which Hollywood changed, there were plenty of warning shots prior to Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate — the 1960s are filled with movies pushing the envelope of what was previously allowable by the Production Code, and exploring gritty filmmaking before New Hollywood ran with it. The Chase strikes me as one of those forebears: a low-energy drama with a downbeat conclusion, featuring grimy naturalistic cinematography and several stars that we would later associate with the 1970s. The core of the film looks a lot like a crime thriller, what with a convict escaping prison and his hometown steeling itself for his return. But as the dramatic non-criminal subplots accumulate, it becomes more obvious that the film is more interested in the hidden depravity of its characters, the small town’s accumulated secrets, and a refusal to bow to conventional values in wrapping up the film. The ensemble cast is stellar, in-between Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson and a small early role for Robert Duvall. But the result is not quite up to its own goals. Never mind the dark-and-depressive anticipation of the soul-killing 1970s: The Chase delights in upending audience expectations and settling for a nihilistic conclusion. No one is a hero, everyone is terrible and we viewers are stuck with the results. Neither seeking satisfaction as a crime story nor able to deliver enlightenment as a small-town drama, The Chase seems stuck in-between what it would take to be effective one way or the other. We can either see it as a disappointment, or as a stepping stone to the better movies that would follow.

  • A Woman’s Face (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s easy to see in bits and pieces what makes A Woman’s Face a bit better than most melodramas of the time. Despite a fundamentally unlikely premise blending organized crime, blackmail, disfigurement, child murder and a framing device set in a courtroom, the film gets quite a bit of mileage from Joan Crawford’s convincing performance in facial scarring makeup. The film wrings extra tension from the back-and-forth between the events of the story and the courtroom framing device, while George Cukor keeps things grounded despite the unlikely narrative and the Swedish setting. (But then again, the film is a remake of a Swedish original starring Ingrid Bergman.)  While I’m not much of a Crawford fan, she’s quite good here and A Woman’s Face remains an above-average 1940s melodrama.

  • Trapeze (1956)

    Trapeze (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) There are a few good reasons to have a look at Trapeze, but almost all of them start with the casting: Burt Lancaster as a crippled trapeze artist, Tony Curtis as an up-and-comer seeking guidance, and the deliciously-named Lola Lollobrigida as (obviously) the woman that comes between them. Probably the next-best reason is the trapeze footage, still impressive today due to the impressive physicality of the performers (some of it without stunt doubles), and the apparent danger of some of the acts. Considering that the story is about the pursuit of the elusive and dangerous triple somersault, visual danger appropriately reflects the stakes at play here. Otherwise, much of Trapeze runs along familiar tracks once you exclude the (rather impressive) Parisian circus aspect of the story: a veteran, an up-and-comer and the love triangle that takes place once a woman comes along. Director Carol Reed does his best in the circus ring, with the rest of the film being along more familiar lines. Still, the Lancaster/Curtis pairing is interesting as a preview to their far better-known Sweet Smell of Success, and Lancaster notches another film in a more interesting filmography than you’d expect from a multi-decade leading man.

  • Racetime aka La Course des Tuques (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In English, On Cable TV, February 2021) Interestingly enough, you can make a case that sequel Racetime is in a better position to impress than its predecessor Snowtime. The earlier film, after all, was an animated remake of an all-time classic of French-Canadian family cinema — expectations about it ran high and were not necessarily fulfilled. Racetime, by striking out on its own with its renewed approach and cast of characters, is a bit freer to make its own mark as something more than a remake. While the result is not all that great, it’s not bad. Taking the fantastic engineering conceit of the series farther and farther, the film boils down to the mechanical achievements that a group of kids must accomplish in order to win a race that will determine the fate of the building they’ve rebuilt to their wishes. Good nerd vs. bad nerd is a big conflict this time around, and the film lets loose during the climactic race sequence that it builds to during the entire running time of the film. Aesthetically, it’s very much of a piece with its predecessor, which will make some viewers happy and others not so much. The morals are obvious, the pacing is a bit slack and the character work is generally unsurprising. I liked the result without being overwhelmed by it: as far as family films go, Racetime is adequate without being particularly good. But at least it’s not hampered by comparisons to a 1980s original.

  • Clash by Night (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) On paper, Clash by Night feels like a must-see film: An intense small-town drama directed by Fritz Lang, featuring a late-career performance from Barbara Stanwyck and one of the first featured turns from Marilyn Monroe? Who can resist that? Alas, the film itself is not quite as gripping. While the drama’s bubbling into melodrama can be momentarily intense, the film feels poorly paced, with numerous lulls, overdone moments and an unsatisfying conclusion. The relatively small stakes (in a small coastal town setting) don’t add much more, and you can almost feel Lang itching to take the film firmly into noir crime thriller territory, while being held back by the material stemming from a realistic Broadway play. In other words, Clash by Night feels far from being even the sum of its parts — not a particular highlight for its time, and a minor entry in everyone’s filmography.

  • Bright Lights (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I find it comforting that even a few years in my exploration of Hollywood history, I still find out unusually gifted actors worth a look. The big revelation of Bright Lights is Joe E. Brown, a vaudeville comedian who reached the peak of his movie stardom in the mid-1930s. This comedy makes great use of his comedic talents, showcasing him as a small-circuit vaudevillian lured to the big city. His showcase act is a drunken heckler routine alongside his wife and stage partner. Their loving relationship is threatened when he (but not she) is brought to the big city stages and a rich heiress enters the picture. There’s an element of showbiz comedy here, but Wilson’s distinctive style (with his impossibly wide mouth) is better suited to more ridiculous moments, including a chase after a hastily mailed letter that goes from Manhattan to Milwaukee. The heckling routine is repeated three times: once as a small-town showcase, another as a Manhattan sensation and finally as a heartfelt reconciliation. Still, the best reason to watch Bright Lights is not just the very funny material, but Brown himself as a prototypical vaudevillian, instantly distinctive and funny. I’m glad I had a look, if only because Brown has entered my list of actors I should be paying attention to. (Fittingly, nearly everyone remembers one of his last performances, considering that he delivers the punchline of Some Like it Hot: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”)

  • Show Boat (1951)

    Show Boat (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s not unfair to criticize a film for shortcomings external to the film itself. If you accept that a good chunk of criticism is assessing if a film meets its own objectives, it becomes fair game to explore the production history for the film to explain on-screen issues — and assess whether the filmmakers were on an impossible mission. On a surface level, Show Boat feels a lot like the pinnacle of the MGM musical circa 1950. The original Broadway show is reportedly a landmark in American musical history, being the first to combine serious dramatic themes in a musical form until then used for more comic pursuits. The big-budget production re-creates the Mississippi on the MGM backlot, along with a show boat that has little basis in reality. The visual sheen of the production is immensely colourful, with dozens of extras milling through the musical sequences as the film re-creates the lifestyle of a travelling troupe of actors making their way up and down the river. So far so good — I really enjoyed Show Boat when it focused on those elements, and would have given high marks to the film had it stuck to that. But there’s a lot more on Show Boat’s mind than what I’ve described so far — in addition to doomed romance between mismatched partners, it makes quite a bit of a subplot featuring a half-black character passing as white, and the impossibility of any interracial relationship at the time the film is set. Unfortunately, Show Boat self-destructs on that subplot: The half-black character is played by the very white (and not-a-singer) Ava Gardner, and a peek at the production history of the film reveals that no less than the divine Lena Horne was considered then rejected for the role, reportedly because her very blackness went against the Hays Code’s ban on interracial relationship on-screen. This is infuriating enough, but it’s even worse considering that the re-creation of the musical in Till the Clouds Roll By did include Lena Horne in that role. It doesn’t help that much of Show Boat, as presented here, is a bit dull — the comedy of the film quickly disappears, and the more dramatic material seems kneecapped by the film’s own production constraints. The only sequence that I completely enjoyed is the acknowledged highlight of the film — William Warfield’s fantastic take on “Ol’ Man River” — an anthology piece if the film has one. I find it telling that while Show Boat was meant to be MGM’s big musical of 1951 and was initially a solid box-office success, contemporary audiences only have eyes for that other mildly successful MGM musical of 1951: Singin’ in the Rain.

  • The Four Musketeers (1974)

    The Four Musketeers (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) There are informal series of remakes out there that become generational touch points of sorts. Well-known stories are reinterpreted every few years with a new crop of actors, giving us a glimpse at how each era makes its movies. The generational updates to dramas such as Little Women and A Star is Born certainly count, but Alexandre Dumas’ Les Trois Mousquetaires is in a category of its own. As an adventure with strong dramatic content, the Musketeers story can be adapted to a variety of contexts, either as out-and-out action spectacles, as costume dramas, or as classic swashbuckling adventures. Actors as different as Douglas Fairbanks, Gene Kelly and Luke Evans have played in well-known versions of The Three Musketeers, and the 1974 version fits right in the middle of 1970s Hollywood. To be fair, this is the second half of a story begun with 1973’s The Three Musketeers, so the comparisons are not exact — this film covers the second half of the Dumas novel that often gets short thrift in other adaptations. (Something not apparent to viewers is how both movies were originally conceived as one and led to movie contract history — with producers splitting the film in two during production, and getting in such incredible judicial problems regarding the cast and crew contracts that the film led to the imposition of the SAG’s “Salkind Clause” to prevent such shenanigans from happening again.)  Watching The Four Musketeers isn’t as much about the story as it is about how they made mid-budget adventure spectacles in the 1970s — with an all-star cast of actors such as Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee and Raquel Welch (!!!), a director like Richard Lester (who was still a few years away from superstardom as Superman director) and expansive European on-location shooting. Alas, movies from the 1970s also share the putrid cinematography of the time, with flat colours, dull images and perfunctory sets. I’m not interested in whether the entire shoot was done under overcast weather — I’m interested in the results, and they are as gray and featureless as the story should be vivacious and fun. Some biting dialogue and voice-overs make the film almost as interesting as the Dumas original, but the impression left by this film is one of heaviness and gracelessness: the action sequences pale in comparison to other adaptions of the story, and even the star-power can’t quite elevate the material. I may, however, be interested in watching the film again as part of a double feature with the original. While it’s fun to watch a musketeer film that pays attention to the often-neglected second half of the novel, I probably would have had more fun in watching the introduction first. Still, I did like to see that cast with that story, and in this regard The Four Musketeers does achieve its goal of being one more entry in a century-old conversation between Hollywood and Dumas’ novel.

  • Two Rode Together (1961)

    Two Rode Together (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Considering my lack of affection for westerns and my Canadian citizenship, it’s probably no accident if I don’t have much fascination for director John Ford, nor his seemingly endless list of westerns. But I do like James Stewart, and his starring role in Two Rode Together was worth a look. The story is immediately reminiscent of the much superior The Searchers, as the protagonist goes looking for settlers “kidnapped” by Native Americans. Of course, there’s little heroism here, as the revisionist westerns take hold over a new decade (after Hollywood’s severe overdose of westerns in the 1950s) and Stewart seems only too happy to keep going in the same misanthropic streak he enjoyed in the films he shot with Anthony Mann. His mercenary lawman isn’t admirable, although he does get the girl (against all odds) and the happy-ish ending. I didn’t like much of Two Rode Together: the script is an ambitious mess going in far too many directions than strictly necessary, and the film (despite being shot in colour) is a somewhat downbeat carnival of dashed expectations and overturned presumptions. Whatever humour remains seems curiously glum or immediately dashed by far more sombre material. Even the relatively complex treatment of its Native American character seems hampered by the director’s old-fashioned shooting techniques. While Two Rode Together is worth a look if you’re interested in Stewart’s western oeuvre, or Ford’s touch on material he didn’t believe in (he famously directed the film for money and a personal favour, believing that the material strayed too close to The Searchers). The best scene, amazingly enough, is just Stewart and Richard Widmark chatting away about various things while the camera remains locked on them — it does suggest a far more avant-garde western made entirely of casual conversations and static camera shots à la early Kevin Smith. But not really. Two Rode Together ends up being an unwieldy collection of elements that don’t necessarily fit together, indifferently directed albeit with capable actors and the saving grace of a half-optimistic ending. That’s not much, though… even for Stewart fans.

  • Mouchette (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) As much as there are directors out there with whom I seem to share a considerable amount of affection even for their most ordinary movies, the converse is true and I suspect that Robert Bresson is one of those. With Mouchette, I’m one-for-three for his movies, except that the lone film I like from him (Un Condamné à mort s’est échappé) I liked despite Bresson’s usual minimalist style and because it wasn’t as intensely depressing as his other two. Mouchette combines my profound opposition to Bresson’s style with a just as exceptional distaste for stories of continuous suffering. Here, Nadine Nortier plays the title role, a young girl whose entire lot in life seems to be suffering at the hands of others: overworked and underappreciated at home, bullied at school, dismissed by fellow villagers, raped by an alcoholic and orphaned, her life just keeps getting worse and worse every single minute of the film, and the ending is no exception. Bresson being Bresson, this horrid tale takes place in minimalist black-and-white cinematography, with emotionally muted performances by non-actors and low-end production values. Mouchette isn’t any fun to watch by any stretch of the imagination, and quickly grows exasperating if you care too much about it. Alas, it looks as if Bresson is well regarded and directed a number of titles on the various must-see lists I’m using as a guide to cinema I don’t like. I’m not looking forward to his next films.

  • My Reputation (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) Barbara Stanwyck’s chameleonic persona as an actress meant that she could play in anything from drama to comedy and elevate the level of the production almost singlehandedly. In My Reputation, she leans almost exclusively on the dramatic side, as she plays a WW2 widow who comes to love another man, much to everyone’s dismay and disapproval. This being a wartime picture, the second man is a soldier, and the ending stops short of providing immediate gratification to anyone. The film itself is rather ordinary — not bad in its depiction of a long-married woman trying to find a life for herself, and not bad either at tackling the complications of a widow getting back in a relationship relatively soon after the death of her husband. There’s some diffuse criticism of the way she gets treated (married men make passes at her; married women don’t know what to do with her while disapproving anyway) but it’s Stanwyck who proves to be the film’s single best asset, anchoring the heavy-handed drama with her skills as a versatile actress. There isn’t much to be said about My Reputation’s utilitarian approach to sets, cinematography or direction — it keeps the romantic potboiler warm enough to make audiences satisfied and nothing more. As I said: forgettable without Stanwyck.