8 1/2 Revisited

A friend of mine recently said, "Fellini's La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 bridge the gap between Italian neorealism and the Swingin' 60s."

My own view is that Fellini's early films were superb, and that he peaked with 8 1/2.  After that he discovered color, and with the exception of Amarcord, made one visual extravaganza after another in which there is hardly a single character to care about or a story to get involved in.  (I haven't seen Fellini's Cadanova, so that might be another exception.)  Some of the later films, like And the Ship Sailed On, are indeed boring; so much so that it took excruciating effort to sit through them to the end.  (But I admit that a minor film like Intervista is charming.)

But last night I watched 8 1/2 again, and it was just as captivating as ever.  I had no trouble discerning the dream and fantasy sequences from the "real" ones.  What struck me most strongly this time was the film's great humor.  The scene of Guido's fantasy harem is hilarious, and Mastroianni is brilliant.   Bear in mind that while shooting the film, Fellini had a signed pasted to the bottom of the camera which said THIS IS A COMEDY.

I don't agree with some of the critics that it's self-indulgent to make a film about a film director.  Remember that in 1963 it had hardly ever been done; now, with all the imitations of 8 1/2, it's commonplace.  And I don't agree that the ending is a cop-out.  It's actually brutally honest.  Guido finally accepts himself as he is, and has no intention to change.  A far cry from all the phony transformations and happy endings that conclude most films.   But Fellini managed to end the film on an upbeat note, by having everyone accept him as well in yet another fantasy, holding hands as they dance in a circle to circus music.  Julius Novick frequently said that every comedy ends in a celebration.

Some critics fail to remember that though the film has strong autobiographical elements, Guido is not Fellini.  After all, Guido never finishes his film; Fellini did.

In her review, Pauline Kael says that it's not believable that a producer would hold up a film while its director gets over his director's-block.  Talk about a spoilsport.

But the film feels liberating, one of Kael's favorite words of praise.  I suspect she was put off by the film's view of women.   But again, it's an honest portrait of a successful Italian man's attitude in 1963.

Guido says, "I have nothing to say, but I want to say it anyway."  He's still a neorealist filmmaker, who thinks about film has to have a message, to "say" something.  Fellini knows that a great film offers a compelling experience.

In short, a masterpiece, and a great experience.

The Sugarland Express (1974))

I just watched The Sugarland Express and I still have the same problem with it. While it's undoubtedly an amazing piece of filmmaking -- film critic Pauline Kael called it one of the most spectacular debuts of any director-- it's still an extended, massive car chase, and as a non-driver, I'm especially bored by car chases. The number of cars and car crashes increases as the movie continues, and my attention flagged as well. Spielberg's previous film was the TV movie Duel, which was one long chase of a car by an evil-looking truck. Spielberg topped himself with his first feature film, adding more cars, more crashes, more cups, and virtuoso camera work but since I never really cared about the two main characters, it seemed like much ado about nothing. Still, The film is evidence that the director is a highly talented man capable of orchestrating big set pieces with lots of people and vehicles (helicopters too). So in his first few films, Spielberg demonstrated his dexterity with cars trucks, sharks, and aliens. It seemed fair to assume he was uncomfortable with people, but his later work proved he was capable of filming people and human emotions well as well.

The Last Dangerous Visions

I've finally finished the long journey of reading THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS, assembled by Harlan Ellison from 1973 until his death in 2018, and finally completed by his literary executor J. Michael Straczynski.  I'm one of the people who's waited 50 years for it to appear.  So allow me to congratulate all who were involved, both living and dead, and offer this list of my favorite stories from the book.  Bear in mind that they're not necessarily the BEST stories (however that would be determined), simply the ones that moved and stimulated me the most.

1.  J. Michael Straczynski, "Ellison Exegesis."  Not a short story but a nonfiction account of Harlan's struggle with bipolar disorder.  Revelatory and heartbreaking, but ultimately an inspiring paeon to friendship.

2.  Stephen Robinett, "Assignment No. 1."  I detected a touch of Bradbury in this short but powerful tale of what all of us might face.

3.  Stephen Dedman, "The Great Forest Lawn Clearance Sale -- Hurry, Last Days!"  The final line had some of the punch of Clarke's "Billion Names of God."

4.  Cecil Castellucci, "After Taste."  Perhaps my favorite story in the book.  The shocker had some of the feeling of an EC Comcs SF tale, but goes far beyond it.

5.  Steve Herbst, "Leveled Best."  A short but powerful story touching on a classic SF theme.

6. Jonathan Fast, "The Malibu Fast."  As a New Yorker who always wanted to live in California, I naturally loved this one.

7.  Stephen Utley, "Goodbye."  Utterly original and immensely moving.

8.  Dan Simmons, "The Final Pogrom."  Timely and timeless.  As a Jew, I was particularly affected by it.

9.  Ward Moore, "Falling from Grace."  The funniest story in the book.

10.  Adrian Tchaikovsky, "First Sight."  The best "first contact" story I've ever read.

11.  Kayo Hartenvaun, "Binary System."  The author's first published story, and a memorable one.

12.  Mildred Downey Broxon, "The Danann Children Laugh."  The haunting Irish countryside atmosphere was beautifully done.

13.  Edward Bryant, "War Stories."  I confess I didn't fully understand this story, but it has some of the most powerful writing in the book.

A baker's dozen of delights.

The book is the third in a trilogy that includes DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967) and AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS (1972), two classics of cutting-edge speculative fiction.  It's very satisfying to see that the trilogy is now complete.

Universal Studios Monsters

I just finished reading Thomas Mallory's excellent book, Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror.  It's a comprehensive overview, featuring many stills and behind-the-scenes photographs I haven't seen before.  I recommend it to everyone in the group who hasn't read it already. It's well-written and quite witty, but nitpicker that I am, I found one small error in the text. It's the passage in the chapter on Dracula (1931).  "Lucy seems fascinated by Dracula, who makes her his first English victim." Actually his first English victim was the flower girl Dracula meets when first strolling the foggy streets of London at night.  Remember when he bites her on the neck? So Lucy wasn't the first.  

Someone has suggested to me that Dracula's first English victim might well be the captain of the Vesta, the ship that takes Dracula from Transylvania to London. For that matter, Renfield, the English real estate agent who meets Dracula in his castle at the beginning of the film, might well be his first English victim. But I assume Mallory was referring to Dracula's first victim on English soil.

Other than that, the book struck me as highly reliable, and a great pleasure to read. By all means, get a copy.

Halloween with The Wolf Man

I noticed an odd thing tonight while watching The Wolf Man (1941).  Early in the film, Lon Chaney visits the antique shop where Evelyn Ankers works so he can ask her out on a date. There's a sentimental piece of music playing in the background which sounded strangely familiar. Obviously many of the Universal horror films of the 1940s used the same stock music, but this sounded like a piece from a non-horror film, and I wracked my brains trying to remember which film it was. 

Finally it came to me:  Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), also released by Universal.  It's the same sentimental music used when Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane are together. But I wanted to make sure, so I went to the IMDb and looked for the composer of the original music for the Hitchcock film. Frank Skinner. Then I looked at the composers for The Wolf Man. Three names, one of them Frank Skinner. But Hitch was already too important a director to be using stock music for his films, so Skinner must have been recycling some of his sentimental romantic music for Saboteur.  At the very least, the two pieces of music are awfully similar and bear his imprint.  I'm sure a scholar of the film can flesh the details out for me.

As for the film itself, what can I say except... it's The Wolf Man! A film distinguished from other Universal horror films in my mind because of the immense sadness that hangs over the entire story. Larry Talbot doesn't want to be a werewolf, he doesn't enjoy killing people (at least when he thinks about it the morning after when he's returned to human form) and he gives his silver-topped wolf cane to his father, knowing that his dad -- the magnificent Claude Rains -- will protect himself from Larry with it. Which of course he does. Naturally, that doesn't stop Larry from coming back in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, where Chaney and Lugosi meet again. How ironic that Lugosi, as Bela the Gypsy, is the werewolf in The Wolf Man before biting Chaney and turning him into one.  Seems that Lugosi always gets the first bite.

So. A beautifully done film with an excellent script by Curt Siodmak, a superb lead and fine supporting actors, with admirable art direction and production design. Even makeup man extraordinaire Jack Pierce gets his name in the credits, even though we don't see the facial transformation of Larry into a werewolf in this particular film. But why quibble?  What's better than watching The Wolf Man on Halloween night?

A Pair of Frankensteins

Tonight I watched Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), back-to-back on Turner Classic Movies. I've seen both many times before and I'm still uncertain which is the greater film. Certainly Bride is the very rare sequel which is as good as or better than its original. Frankenstein is more of a pure horror film -- chilling, eerie, deeply unnerving, and it moves like an arrow going unerringly from beginning to end with virtually no pauses. Karloff was never scarier as the monster than in this 1931 film. It's spare and always right on target. Just think of the monster's first appearance in the doorway, turning around to face the camera as it cuts closer and closer to that inhuman face.

By contrast, Bride is a wonderful cornucopia of macabre black humor, satire, a decidedly queer subtext, more lavish production values, and digressions into all sorts of fascinating avenues for the monster to develop as a human being.  (And yes, it's hard to watch the scene with the monster and the blind hermit without thinking of Gene Hackman's hilarious turn as the hermit in Young Frankenstein). That makes it sound like I prefer it to the original, but I really can't make up my mind, and I'm sure that people will be arguing about the merits of both films in comparison to each other for many years to come. 

Suffice to say that I greatly enjoyed watching them one after the other. They seem like one unified movie, impeccably directed by James Whale with Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesinger, and marvelous character actors. Rather than argue which one is better than the other, I recommend everyone watch both films back to back the way I did tonight. The result is enormously satisfying, even if continuity is slightly strained by Henry Frankenstein's fiance played by a different actress, Valerie Hobson instead of Mae Clarke, in Bride, with different colored hair -- well, one can't be too picky about these matters.  Better to focus on a world of Gods and Monsters, and what the implications of that might be.  (NB: Has any actor ever used their few minutes on the screen more effectively than Elsa Lanchester in Bride? Admittedly, she plays two parts, both the bride and author Mary Shelley.)

In short, two masterpieces -- I almost said monsterpieces  -- of horror (or terror, the term Karloff preferred), as thrilling today as they were nearly a century ago.  "We belong dead," the monster says about Dr. Pretorius, the bride and himself at the end of Bride of Frankenstein.  But thanks to devoted fans all over the world, they live!

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

The Phantom of the Opera (1925).  I saw it again recently with the color sequence in the picture above. I was surprised to find the pace extremely brisk this time -- it didn't drag at all.  The Phantom appears early on and is present for most of the film, giving the audience a lot of Chaney's great performance. I particularly noticed the influence of German Expressionism in the lighting, photography and sets of the underground lake and lair of the phantom. After the initial shock of seeing his face, I didn't feel frightened by The Phantom but rather felt enormous pity for him this time around. He's obviously quite mad with loneliness and frustration and the burden of his hideous appearance. He's still the best Phantom of them all.