Author: Christian Sauvé

  • Kismet (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) As far as remake crazes go, the brief subgenre of 1950s musical remakes has much to go for it – At their best, Silk Stockings, High Society and A Song is Born didn’t necessarily improve upon their inspirations, but presented something different enough to be enjoyable in their own right. Add 1955’s Kismet to that list – while it’s nowhere as good as those three films, it’s significantly more interesting as a musical than its original was as a tepid Arabian-Night-style drama. That a relative assessment, obviously – more interesting than a dull original doesn’t necessarily make Kismet all that worthwhile compared with the towering classics of the musical genre that were released throughout the 1950s. But I’ll take what I can, and watching this Kismet musical comedy right after the 1944 version was like a breath of redeeming fresh air for the double bill. (The relationship between the two films isn’t as direct as you’d think – This 1955 version of Kismet is far more closely associated with the 1953 Broadway musical than the 1944 film, or the three previous versions of the story brought to the big screen.)  Directed by Vincente Minelli, this Kismet features good production values (under the influence of producer Arthur Freed) a semi-decent male lead in Howard Keel and a good-looking Ann Blyth as the female lead (even if co-star Dolores Gray looks livelier – her take on “Not Since Nineveh” is a highlight). Some of the songs aren’t too bad, and there’s something comfortable in watching a Freed-unit MGM musical right past the very peak of the form. But Kismet’s effectiveness is more temporary (or relative!) than lasting – after an acceptable opening, the film struggles to keep an even rhythm, hampered by a curiously flat and ponderous direction that lets neither comedy nor music shine all that brightly. Oh, it’s still better than the 1944 film – but there’s a real sense of missed opportunities and botched execution to the results.

  • Kismet (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Lavish and expansive, the 1940s version of Kismet nonetheless fails to take off. Clearly meant to be a big-budget colour production (it was eventually nominated for four technical Academy Awards) and act as a late-career showcase for MGM’s beloved Marlene Dietrich as a harem queen supporting role (alongside Ronald Coleman playing a “King of the Beggars”), the film nonetheless feels ungainly and ineffective. Set against a non-fantastic Arabian-Night-style backdrop of long-ago Bagdad, the film will strike many twenty-first century viewers as a proto-Aladdin, and as pure cultural appropriation with little regard as to accuracy or respect for the other culture. It’s not terrible, but once again – for all of the big-budget care given to the production’s technical qualities and its escapist intentions in the middle of World War II, Kismet isn’t that much fun to watch. As much as I don’t like to highlight it, the one part of the film worth watching has Dietrich “dancing” (with a body double) with gold-painted legs. Otherwise, well, Kismet does the bare minimum that could be expected of a Hollywood-style Arabian epic (especially considering its pedigree as the fourth movie adaptation of the same original story), but fails to impress as much as earlier or later productions in the same ballpark. (It’s no Thief of Baghdad, for instance – although the thought of having Dietrich in that other film is interesting enough.) This 1944 Kismet even pales in comparison to its own musical 1955 remake… but that’s another review.

  • Procès de Jeanne d’Arc [The Trial of Joan of Arc] (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Some viewers will be able to approach writer-director Robert Bresson’s docufictive Procès de Jeanne d’Arc as its own thing, but I can’t help but see it largely in comparison to other Jeanne d’Arc movies. There’s obviously a kinship between it and the earlier 1928 classic film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc written-directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer – like the earlier film, Bresson seems to be building a script as directly as possible from historical documentation, and his sparse style feels like a close match to Dreyer’s stripped-down aesthetics. Given the near-legendary stature of the silent film and its portrayal of Jeanne d’Arc, it would have been impossible for Bresson not to tailor his film in opposition or reinforcement to the original. But I can’t help but measure Procès de Jeanne d’Arc against other, newer depictions of the historical character – and specifically Luc Besson’s (not Bresson!) 1999 maximalist approach to The Messenger: The Story of Jeanne d’Arc, which showed an exemplary demonstration of how far the state of the art in cinema had evolved in the decades between silent cinema and the turn of the millennium. In this three-way comparison, Bresson ends up feeling like a barely updated version of the silent film – with sound, sure, but not much else – and a lead performance that can’t possibly measure up to the still incredible performance by Renée Jeanne Falconetti. Oh, on a basic level, it fulfills its basic task: Jean d’Arc’s trial is presented properly, and you can even argue that the film doesn’t go quite as hard on its religious themes as its predecessor. But it’s still a sparse, austere piece of cinema that barely reflects what else the medium was able to do after thirty-five years of progress. I’m not much of a Bresson fan either, so saying that the film is “fine” is already a step up from some of his more irritating works. No wonder I’m having more fun comparing it to other similar films than taking it on its own.

  • She Freak (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If you think that She Freak is an ungainly mixture of a trite story with a fascinating atmosphere, well, you’re not wrong – meant as a pure exploitation film reprising the classic 1932 Freaks, it’s meant to titillate on a small budget and run roughshod over verisimilitude or even basic human psychology. Our lead (gone-too-soon exploitation player Claire Brennen) is a waitress stuck in the worst roadside restaurant ever presented on film, to the point that signing up to do exactly the same job at a travelling carnival is a step up. But as exploitation films need at least a simple morality tale to justify their plotting, escaping is not enough: seducing the carnival owner is the next step, and as the power of that success goes to her head, she starts making enemies in the carnival crew. Since you’re probably aware of how its inspiration ends (“One of us! One of us!”), then you’re probably comfortable knowing that She Freak goes the same way. The fun here (and I use “fun “loosely) is not really in going through a stretched-out paper-thin narrative over 87 minutes, but taking in the colour cinematography of footage shot in a real carnival, sometimes interminably featured as atmosphere. There’s a real quasi-documentary time-and-place quality to She Freak, especially when it seems to pause its plotting in order to showcase its carnival. Then it’s up to viewers to wait until the final meant-to-be-horrifying shot as a cap on the whole thing. I wouldn’t call She Freak good, but considering that it was an ultra-cheap production meant to rake in easy dollars, the results went far beyond expectations. The fact that it’s still available (even restored!) today is a hint that there’s something memorable to the result. Yes, She Freak could have been sexier, bloodier, freakier, faster-paced or more than utilitarian in its basic filmmaking qualities. But it still leaves a mark when so many much better films fail to do so, and that’s something worth noticing.

  • Big Business Girl (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If you’re looking for a defining trope of the pre-Code era, it’s difficult to find better than ambitious, sexually independent women. Not yet restrained by the enforced tut-tutting of the Production Code, early-1930s female characters were free to use their intelligence and sex appeal in order to get what they wanted. Big Business Girl bakes in that concept right in its title, as the story follows a young university graduate (played by an equally young Loretta Young) as she threads a fine line between seducing business clients and keeping the affection of her romantic partner. It’s not that progressive by today’s standards (she’s far too subservient to her man’s wishes), but it’s often better than much of the later decades of neutered Production Code nonsense. Joan Blondell briefly pops up, but this is Young’s show and she does rather well even if the film itself doesn’t quite measure up to other independent-women pictures of the same time. Still, Big Business Girl is just salacious enough to be interesting to watch, and it does exemplify, even in a muted way, why the brief years of Pre-Code Hollywood still resonate better with today’s audiences than later films unable to make even semi-daring points.

  • Halloween Kills (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I’m done with slashers, done with Halloween movies, done with endless meaningless remakes of the same garbage that was repellent in the first place. Middle instalment of what’s threatened to be a three-film final trilogy, Halloween Kills picks up moments after 2018’s Halloween reboot (the third, sixth or tenth such reboot, depending on how you count – and I’m not even including the incomparable Season of the Witch in that higher number) to show what else happened on that Halloween night. This time, the focus thankfully shifts a bit from the psycho killer to the citizens of the town he’s terrorizing, leading to the film’s best bits (I use the term loosely) as vigilante justice ends up being almost as frightening as the nut with a knife. Alas, writer-director David Gordon Green flirts but does not commit to a more grounded and ironic take – boogeyman Michael Myers is just as supernaturally immortal here, and any attempt at social commentary on mob justice is immediately undone by the film’s gleeful slaughter of its victims in so-called inventive and gory ways. I thought I would have been disturbed by the death of a returning character played by an actress I quite like, but that would presume that I had any attachment whatsoever. The truth is that any character in any Halloween movie is mere meat to be butchered in the quest for cheap thrills. Jamie Lee Curtis once again plays a survivor and gamely commits to the role, but at this point – who cares? The next instalment is supposed to be a conclusion of sorts but we all know what that means: Impervious to bullets, guns and nuclear explosions, Myers can only be killed by poor box-office returns.

  • The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) If there’s one adjective that I don’t often use in talking about film, it’s “monumental” – but it fits unusually well in describing The Greatest Story Ever Told, a staggering three-hour-plus epic film tackling the biggest topic in Christianity: the story of Jesus, seemingly unabridged. Writer-director George Stevens spent years getting this film completed and was rewarded with five Academy Awards nominations for his efforts – and you’re going to feel every minute of the film’s production history, as it unhurriedly (even in the now-abridged version cut down from an original four-hour running time) paces through Jesus’ life in the most pedantic, obvious way. If you know about circa-1962ish Hollywood, one of the film’s attractions lies in spotting celebrity cameos, big and small (such as John Wayne’s infamous “Truly, he is the son of God”) from a star-studded cast of supporting characters. You don’t watch The Greatest Story Ever Told as much as you let it impose itself as the blandest take possible on the story of Jesus from birth to resurrection. If that feels like a backhanded document, it’s because it is: this thing is impossible to watch for fun. It’s too long, meandering, unfocused. It’s the epitome of the 1950s religious epic, and audiences at the time weren’t any more receptive to it than modern audiences: it flopped hard at the box office (enough to kill the religious epic genre) and got uniformly bored reviews. It shows up at Easter as a kind of station of the cross for viewers, but there’s a reason why it’s rarely trotted out at other times of the year. I might have seen it once or twice in Catholic grade school, projected in the auditorium around Easter time, but I would not be surprised to find out that it was the shorter King of Kings we saw instead. In any case – it’s a monumental film for all of the right and wrong reasons: it’s lavishly produced, deliberately paced and more readily admired than enjoyed. You don’t go to monuments to be entertained but rather to be impressed.

  • Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) Jack Lemmon played his share of cads, but he really pushed the line between daring and detestable in Under the Yum Yum Tree, a sex comedy that features him as the landlord of an apartment building who only rents to young women, helping him to find his next romantic conquest. What was probably obnoxious in 1963 (as per some supporting characters’ reactions to his scheme) does feel far more noxious today, and that may explain why the film struggles to gather any chuckles for a very long time. Even by the standards of early-1960s sex comedies (both innocent and sleazy), having Lemmon’s character demonstrate how his bachelor pad is fully automated for seduction feels a step too far – there’s a lot of unexamined background in the lead character’s pathologies, and it’s a fair bet that the film would have been flat-out repellent had anyone else but the amiable Lemmon had starred. It certainly helps that much of the film shows the limitations of his approach whenever a new female renter shows up and (through misunderstandings and gender assumptions) gets her boyfriend included in the apartment occupancy – the fun lies in seeing a seasoned predator getting his comeuppance from both the object of his affection and his enablers (notably one played by Imogene Coca) suddenly unwilling to participate in the schemes. Still, there are far better films in the same subgenre, and most of them are far less irritating than Under the Yum Yum Tree. Maybe you’ll be able to tolerate a first viewing of the film, but this is one of those 1960s “comedies” that turns to borderline horror the more you contemplate it.

  • Zazie dans le métro (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) It’s always thrilling to find an older movie that plays like a far more recent one, and it would be easy to assume that Zazie dans le métro is much more modern than its 1960 copyright date. An all-out comedy that is never afraid to be absurd or nonsensical in its pursuit of laughs, it features a foul-mouthed ten-year-old girl as she travels around Paris, wreaking havoc alongside an ensemble cast of characters. But no mere plot summary can do justice to the fast-paced, anarchic gags that pepper the film. Owing as much to Looney Tunes cartoons as any other film tradition, Zazie dans le métro reaches a comic peak in a foot chase sequence in which the young Zazie tries to escape a pedophile (yes, you read that right – and it’s funny) while the film goes crazy around them, with a zippy succession of gags that escape physics and logic just for jokes. Not that the rest of the film is a slouch, with sequences set at the Eiffel Tower, or a slapstick fight destroying not just a restaurant, but the set of the restaurant. Louis Malle’s direction is self-assured and crazy at the same time, with a succession of short quick cuts that do much to make this film an honorary precursor of the spoof comedy genre of the 1980s. Catherine Demongeot is quite good and game as the titular Zazie, while an incredibly young Phillipe Noiret (unrecognizable without moustache if it wasn’t for the distinctive voice) is having a lot of fun monologuing atop the Eiffel Tower. Zazie dans le métro is a pure joy to watch, especially if you go into it expecting some kind of dull French Nouvelle Vague forerunner – it’s more Zucker-Abrams-Zucker than Truffaut-Godard. I expect to rewatch it soon.

  • The Horizontal Lieutenant (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) As the tallest contract players in the MGM stable, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton were a frequent on-screen romantic pair, appearing in four films from 1960 to 1962 (leading many to erroneously assume that they were a real-life couple). The Horizontal Lieutenant is the last of those four films, and perhaps the weakest. Set during WW2, it’s a comedy in which Hutton plays a lieutenant recovering from a concussion on a small island in the Pacific, with Prentiss as a nurse who may or may not be on her way to becoming a romantic interest. But much of the film downplays that romance in order to take a look at some slight comedic back-line drama of apprehending a Japanese thief pilfering American supplies on a liberated island. Prentiss and Hutton don’t have that much time together, and the film suffers from that deficiency, and it’s not the stereotypical portrayal of Japanese characters that makes up for it. The amiable but unmemorable comedy of the film doesn’t really help – there’s none of the bite or sexiness of their previous three films, and the very limited objectives of the film don’t do much to help elevate the rest. But The Horizontal Lieutenant is significantly better when Prentiss and Hutton are on-screen together, so at least there’s that. But don’t start with this one if you want to see what made MGM pair up those two so often, or why people liked them as a couple so much.

  • La signora senza camelie [The Lady Without Camelias] (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I repeat myself, but here goes: Italian neorealism boo; Italian expressionism yay. (Or, in other words: Early Fellini zzzz, later Fellini woo-hoo.) Given that prejudice, The Lady Without Camelias had a hill to climb before I started enjoying myself… but it did. Sort of. While it’s clearly a work of mimetic realism (sigh), it does have the added appeal of taking place in the early-1950s Italian cinema industry, offering a passing glimpse at filmmakers while showing the various problems of a beautiful woman trying to build a career as an actress. Writer-director Michelangelo Antonioni does have an undeniable asset in Lucia Bosé, as she plays a young woman swept up in the movie business for her looks, but having to deal with the vagaries of producers trying to mould her into something specific, men vying for her affection and the passing of time and hype. Anyone curious about getting a glimpse of Cinecitta before the Hollywood-on-the-Tiber era will get at least one good panning shot of the studio. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get enthusiastic about much of the rest of the film, which treads more familiar grounds. Still, the meta-movie aspect of The Lady Without Camelias is undeniable, and distinguishes the film from its contemporaries.

  • Clean and Sober (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) Michael Keaton spent most of the 1980s working as a comic actor, so it was really clever for him to use Clean and Sober as his breakout dramatic role. The genius of it was picking a dramatic role that relied a lot on the instincts he developed as a comedian: his easily likable demeanour, fast-talking patter, and comic timing all come into play in the role of a real estate agent with an addiction issue who thinks he can trick the judicial system by faking his way through a recovery program. The protagonist has no intention of committing to the process – he just wants people to think he does, and he’ll use his charm to fool others. It’s a good plan, even one with good comic potential – but Clean and Sober is written from the trenches of addiction recovery, and both the script and its characters are there to remind us that it’s not an easy process and that it’s designed to take into account those who don’t really want to get sober. There are many interesting names in the case, from Morgan Freeman (already old in his earliest roles!) as a tough addiction counsellor, M. Emmet Walsh as an impossibly wise ex-addict mentor, and Claudia Christian in a small but striking role as a fellow addict. The film, like many of the 1980s best dramas, feels lived in with credible performances yet packed with compelling narrative hooks. Directed transparently by Ron Howard, Clean and Sober implausibly crams a year’s worth of events into a mere month, and does reach for a sombre finale on the way to the protagonist’s recovery –capping a superfluous romantic subplot that is increasingly at odds with the main theme of the film. Still, it marks an enjoyable turning point in Keaton’s career. (Word on the street was that this is the film that led to him getting the lead in Batman, with the rest of his career being subsequent history.)  It’s surprisingly compelling even in dealing with such downbeat themes, and it makes for an engrossing viewing even if you think you’re familiar with what the film has to say about addiction and recovery.

  • Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga [Baron Blood] (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, April 2022) There’s not a while lot to say about the unremarkable Baron Blood. It has its points of interest: If you’re looking for Joseph Cotten’s late-career 1970s horror film (as most classic Hollywood stars seem to have one), then this it. If you can’t get enough of Elke Sommer for whatever reason (I find her rather dull), then this is your chance to see her screaming for minutes on end. If you’re tracking Italian horror director Mario Bava’s career, then this is unarguably one of his movies. But as far as what these people do when they work together, well, Baron Blood feels about as median-quality as possible. The story has one American young man accidentally resurrecting his murderous vampiric ancestor, and a castle acting as a very gothic setting for the ensuing mayhem. It’s directed by Bava with professional aplomb, but the result is more efficient than effective. In the end, it’s more fun to see Cotten cackling and Sommer running through the castle’s corridors than anything else. A film with very specific appeal, then – even I, as a fan of haunted castle stories, can’t quite bring myself to recommend it.

  • The Lost Squadron (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) The 1920s were a wild time for movies, and you get a strong flavour of that in The Lost Squadron, a rather unusual film that takes WW1 aviators, then has them confront their return to civil society by landing them jobs as Hollywood stunt flyers — where they get to participate in the making of a war epic very much à la Hell’s Angels or Wings. There’s a meta-referential aspect to the film that’s more fun than a pure war film could have been, even if, at the end of the day, we’re there to watch the aerial stunts more than anything else. This early sound film does feature such notables as Mary Astor, Joel McCrea in an early role, and Erich von Stroheim cast rather well as a tyrannical film director. I’m not going to exaggerate the appeal of the film – it can feel repetitive at times, and perhaps a bit too glum to be fully enjoyable – but there’s something unique about The Lost Squadron and the glimpse it gives into those quasi-madmen who were inventing the discipline of stunts at the dawn of big-budget movie-making.

  • Undercover Brother 2 (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, April 2022) My first and probably biggest laugh of Undercover Brother 2 came from its TV Guide listing, which (instead of the usual plot blurb) read – in its entirety – “A sequel to the 2002 comedy Undercover Brother.”  It’s blunt, descriptive, and probably the best thing anyone can say about the film. (It’s also the current description of the film on IMDB, which tells you something about the care and enthusiasm through which the film was released and greeted.)  Considering the high regard in which I hold the original film (which must be widespread considering that they green-lit a sequel), my expectations for the sequel were certainly too high. Eddie Griffin is not only replaced by Michael Jai White as the titular character, but he himself is put out of action for most of the film’s duration, as the plot instead focuses on his younger, lesser brother. (Yes, that means “Undercover Brother’s Brother,” which probably would have been a better title for it.)  Otherwise, we are in frank low-budget sequel territory here: unconvincing sets, substandard actors, paper-thin plot (albeit with a fun twist or two) and an overall feeling of everyone simply getting through the entire thing to collect their paycheque. Wit and style are largely optional here, although the film does take a surprising aim at the so-called woke culture of outrage along the way. (It’s all co-opted by The Man anyway.)  While not intolerable per se, Undercover Brother 2 is a much lesser film than the original by all measures. It occasionally works its way to a chuckle, but at that point we’re more pitying the film for being unable to meet its objectives than anything else. I don’t exactly regret my time watching it because I would have been curious about it anyway. But I can’t say that the viewing gave me much. If I’m to watch substandard all-black cast films, I might as well go for the gonzo plotting, earnest limitations and cute actresses of BET Original films. It is indeed “A sequel to the 2002 comedy Undercover Brother,” but nothing more.