It’s been a while since I’ve done Tuesday Rhapsodies. I’d mostly used up all of my possibilities and got tired of scraping the barrel trying to find new ones. Having said that, after hearing so many versions of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody, I can’t believe I never heard of an orchestral version!
So here it is courtesy of The Philharmonia Orchestra, led by Herbert Von Karajan. It looks like I’ve found a reason to start the hunt for new Rhapsodies again!
This week I watched artistic thrillers about serial killers.
ones that were stylistic enough that it’s hard to call them horror films, no
matter how hard you try.
The first film on my list. Charles Laughton’s“The Night of the Hunter,” tells the story of John, a boy who has been told by his father to hide his stollen money and give his word never to tell anyone. This is made all the harder when his father’s cellmate the Reverand Harry Powell, Robert Mitchum, a conman, murderer and definitely not a holy man, comes looking for the money.
Powell marries John’s now widowed mother, taking control of both her and the town with his preaching. Now it is a cat and mouse game for John to keep his word and to keep himself and his sister Pearl alive.
Night of the Hunter was the only film Laughton ever directed, and I see this as one of the great tragedies in the history of film. It is visually brilliant with some of the camera shots feel like illustrations. My favorite being the reveal of the fate of one of John and Pearl’s mother drifting underwater, which is as beautiful as it is horrific.
Just as great as Mitcham’s performance as the preacher. He plays Powell as charming, charismatic and driven as he gaslights his flock and relentlessly hunts John and Pearl as they escape down the river. It’s easy to say without too much hyperbole to consider fun one of film’s great monsters. Almost as good is Lilian Gish as Rachel Cooper. The woman who takes John and Pearl in and stops Powell once and for all.
The next film on my list Michael Powell‘s Peeping Tom tells the story of Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) a voyeur Filmmaker who prefers to look at the world through his camera. Even when he’s killing prostitutes.
This was a difficult film to watch. Powell makes us identify with Mark as much as his victims. And we find ours ourselves fearing for anyone who interacts with him be it Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) his downstairs neighbor who befriends him or her blind mother (Maxine Audley) who confronts him.
Aesthetically this film was fascinating I don’t know if it was on purpose or a limitation of the technology, but the high contrast colors especially the reds were, incredibly effective.
A little side note. It feels like one heck of a coincidence that the director of the second film I watched has the same last name as the villain in the first.
I’ve always enjoyed modern folklore involving UFOs and related esoterica. Because of this, for this week’s selection, I chose films featuring the beings referred to as Men in Black. Keep in mind, when I say Men in Black, I’m not talking about agents of a shadowy secret government so popular in conspiracy theories, but the original versions where these are shadowy, mysterious, beings who are definitely not human.
The first film on my list, Alex ProyasKnowing, tells the story of a time capsule that contains a sheet of numbers written by Lucinda Embry, a disturbed young girl, fifty years ago. This is brought home by Caleb the nine-year-old son of the widowed MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) Koestler finds that the sheet is a list of dates and locations of the greatest disasters in the last fifty years. To make matters worse there are several dates on the art that haven’t happened yet. As he tries to get to the bottom of this he finds that he is being watched. By… People who seem to want things to continue on schedule.
. This was pretty much a by the numbers Nicolas Cage film, with Cage being paranoid and helpless for most of the Film. The disaster effects were impressive but that was pretty much all it had going for it.
The next film on my list, George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau, tells the story of Congressman David Norris, (Matt Damon) an up and coming politician who, after his campaign for Senator crash and burns meets the love of his life, Elise Sellas, (Emily Blunt), inspiring him to move forward. However, he finds himself being constantly pushed away from her and his life being adjusted by a mysterious agency who controls human destiny for, what they claim, is the greater good.
Ultimately I found this film disappointing. I liked the concept, and execution was okay but ultimately, I found the bureau itself far more interesting than its protagonists and found myself wishing the story was completely about them and their operatives. Also, the ending seemed to consist of the writers forgetting all of the rules they’d written for the rest of the film.
As a long time anime fan, I’m very familiar with the trope of magical girlfriends. Because of this, I thought I’d look at examples in western films. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. For one thing, I’ve seen a whole lot of them. with a remarkable number of these films were about vampires, which I would have to save for Halloween. So I decided to narrow my search a little bit and go with angels.
The first on my list Luc Besson‘s Angel-A features Andre (Jamel Debbouze) a down on his luck American in Paris. He has failed in just about every business venture and owes money to just about every thug around. When every last hope fails he decides to end it all by jumping off a bridge into the Sienne. But just as he does he sees a beautiful statuesque woman (Rie Rasmussen) named Angela who is about to do the same thing. He tries to save her by jumping in after her, and afterward, tries to convince her there are causes that can make life worth living. To his surprise she decides to make him her cause and do whatever she can to help him, no questions asked. If that wasn’t weird enough she is very good at it since she reveals she is an Angel
Beyond seeing a very pretty trailer was there was a rumor at I’m not sure what I thought of it. It was certainly fun Rie Rasmussen has great stage presence, and the best parts of the film involve her effortlessly dancing through a crowd, but otherwise, beyond being an interesting tour of the underside of Paris there really wasn’t much to say about it.
The next film on my list Date with an Angel tells about Jim Sanders Michael E. Knight an executive who is engaged to his boss’s spoiled daughter, Patty Phoebe Cates. After his roommates throw a prank “kidnapping” him from his own engagement party, He’s drunk with his fiancé and future in-laws furious at him. And just then something crashes in his swimming pool, a beautiful blonde woman with wings.
This film was a mess even by the standards of the 80s comedy, virtually serving as a list of every cliche in bad romantic comedies. There are a few good slapstick bits but otherwise, at it’s best it comes off like a bad Splash! ripoff.
Continuing my world war I theme, I watched French world war I films. Considering France was one of the countries hardest hit by the war, l thought that perspective would be especially interesting.
The first film on my list, Jean Renoir’s Grand Ilusion, tells the story of two French pilots who are shot down during a reconnaissancemission. They are taken to a POW camp where they wait for their chance to escape, or for the war to end, whichever comes first. This was a wonderful film that looks at human nature, the end of an era and how war pulls away all illusions.
The next film on my list Jean-Pierre Jeunet‘s A Very Long Engagement. Tells the story of Five soldiers sentenced to death for self mutilation. However rather than being executed, they out of the trenches into no man’s land where they will either freeze, starve or get shot by the Germans
Because of the nature of their deaths, it is unclear whether all of them died or not. Because of this, Mathilda,Audrey Tautou, one of the solders’ fiancee, begins an investigation to find him.
When I heard that there was a film by one of my favorite directors I hadn’t heard of or seen, I knew I had to correct that. This was a great film that was up to Jeunet’s usual standards as a director. The one thing I’d nitpic about is I found a strange disconnect between Jeunet’s whimsical style and the extremely serious subject matter.
