1950-1959

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

André Crous

USA
3.5*

Director:
Billy Wilder
Screenwriters:
Billy Wilder
Harry Kurnitz
Director of Photography:
Russell Harlan

Running time: 116 minutes

It’s all about the ending. Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution, based on the Agatha Christie play with the same title, was a landmark film in the sense that it was one of the first films whose main attraction was a final plot twist. Before The Sixth Sense, before House of Games and even before Psycho, there was Witness for the Prosecution, and, just like Hitchcock, who launched a marketing campaign to ensure people don’t give away the ending (nor the beginning), Wilder’s film ends with a voice-over asking the audience to please keep silent about the film’s last-minute coup de théâtre.

Unfortunately, this is by far the film’s most interesting aspect, and this is what saves it from mediocrity. Charles Laughton delivers a wonderful performance as the stubborn barrister who is convinced of his client’s innocence, despite the lack of tangible proof and the decision of the defendant’s wife (or, ex-wife) to be the titular witness for the prosecution, and he knows how to undermine proceedings when they do not seem to be progressing in his favour. But the screenplay, co-written by Wilder, does not possess the same verve that one generally associates with his work, and the dialogue in particular is merely functional where it should have delivered more punch.

Set in London in 1952, the film was shot exclusively in a studio and in fact, nearly the entire second half of the film takes place in the courtroom (the Old Bailey). From the title one can already surmise that this will be a courtroom drama, and of course one has the expectation of discovering who the “witness for the prosecution” will be. It is indeed a courtroom drama, but Laughton, starring as Sir Wilfred Robarts, plays it as comedy, shifting his weight around to make an entrance, keeping brandy in a flask that ought to be for his warm cocoa, and trading jabs with his nurse, the high-strung Miss Plimsoll.

Shortly after his release from the hospital, Sir Wilfred is paid a visit by a man named Leonard Vole, who has been accused of murdering the elderly, very wealthy Miss Emily French (whom I considered a bit of an excitable blabbermouth). Sir Wilfred is intrigued by the case, especially when Vole’s German wife, Christine (a wonderful job by Marlene Dietrich), seems not at all convinced about her own husband’s innocence. Sir Wilfred decides not to use her as a witness, but before long she is recruited by the prosecution, who alleges that Mrs Vole was already married when she first met Leonard and therefore is allowed to testify against her own husband.

Sir Wilfred easily discredits Mrs Vole, but he is not entirely happy with the way the case has proceeded, and frankly, neither was I. Compared with today’s courtroom dramas, or even Judgment at Nuremberg, released in 1961, this film is incredibly simplistic, and it would seem that the case is decided within two days. But then there is a deus ex machina that appears in the form of a drunk in a bar at Euston Station, and before we know it, things take a pleasant and wholly surprising turn.

It would seem that the case is open and shut, but Sir Wilfred still waits for the banana peel, and when we get this information, in the film’s final minutes, it turns the whole case upside down, with remarkable adroitness. The film is all about the ending, and it is a pity we have to wait two relatively tepid hours for the finale, but when it does come, it strikes a thunderous blow to our preconceived notions.

Pather Panchali (1955)

André Crous

India
4*

Director:
Satyajit Ray
Screenwriter: 
Satyajit Ray
Director of Photography:
Subrata Mitra

Running time: 115 minutes

Original title: পথের পাঁচালী

This review is part of a series on the Apu Trilogy that also includes:
– Aparajito
– The World of Apu

This has to be one of the best debut films ever shot. Based on a Bengali novel by writer Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (try saying that three times in a row), it was adapted for the screen and directed by Satyajit Ray, a man in his early thirties who had had no formal training in film making, but who had a passion for cinema and had founded the Calcutta Film Club in 1947. The other crew members were equally inexperienced, and Ray’s director of photography, Subrata Mitra, had barely turned 21. Many of the actors, including the young boy, Apu, hadn’t acted before either.

This was the start of the Indian New Wave, also known under the moniker “Parallel Cinema”, because the films were being produced in India as an alternative to their better known musicals. Similar in kind to the social realist Italian New Wave of the time, it also came about in part thanks to Ray’s involvement in Jean Renoir’s The River, released in 1951, for which Ray had met with Renoir and assisted during the shoot.

But Pather Panchali is much more gritty than the superproduction that was Renoir’s film, and it has certainly dated much better, primarily because the acting is more sincere and it does not contain any heavy-handed narration. The film is the first instalment in a series that would later be known as the “Apu Trilogy”, after the main character, whose life as a boy is portrayed in the first film; in the second film, Aparajito, we see him as a young man; and in the third film, The World of Apu, he has grown up and has to take responsibility for his choices earlier in life.

Pather Panchali seems like a very rough-and-tumble film, with little going for it as far as the plot is concerned, but the film’s memorable characters are all introduced very early in the film in such a way that we are immediately attached to them. The setting is equally difficult to pinpoint: We see crumbling houses in a big forest and an open field with tall grass that leads to the railway tracks, but that is the extent of the locations. And yet, it is enough: Ray finds beauty in everyday objects and has a very acute sensibility for composition that ensures our interest in the visuals as well as the narrative.

In one of the film’s most strikingly beautiful shots, we see Apu and his sister Durga following the sweet-seller. The camera shoots their reflections in the shallow pond next to them, as their movements are accompanied, as is so often the case, by the sitar music of Ravi Shankar. His music is used repeatedly throughout the film and the only time that it seems strained is during the scene when a parent finds out that his daughter has died.

While the film is clearly the beginning of a journey for young Apu, whose big, black curious eyes are impossible to overlook, almost all of the characters have something unique by which we can identify them and that serves the narrative in a very powerful way. The train is also a symbol that is hard to miss and it is interesting to note the scenes in which a train can be heard in the distance: at night, when Apu’s father mentions his desire to write and sell plays, and when his wife discusses her wish to move out of his ancestral home and let them settle in Benares (Varanasi). For the moment, these desires are unfulfilled, but as the seasons change, people’s eyes open to the possibilities that are available to them, and Apu’s eternally optimist father has to make up his mind about the way forward.

Speaking of eyes – another shot that will make an impression on the viewer is the introduction of Apu. Unlike the other characters, who simply appear in a shot, Apu is clearly introduced: His sister pulls open his eyelid through a hole in the cloth covering his face and when his eye is suddenly visible, this image, framed by the cloth around his eye, receives backing on the soundtrack with loud sitar music.

The entire family of characters, including the slightly senile grandmother, is a wonderful mix of people who cope as best they can with their abject poverty, and the small scenes that Ray has strung together form a very colourful impression that will stay with the viewer for a long time after the credits roll.

The African Queen (1951)

André Crous

USA
4.5*

Director:
John Huston
Screenwriters:
James Agee
John Huston
Director of Photography:
Jack Cardiff

Running time: 104 minutes

Today, John Huston’s African Queen might seem tame and innocent, but I can imagine that it was quite a different story when it was released in 1951. It tells the story of a very tightly wound church organist in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda), a woman named Rose Sayer, who in 1914, on the eve of the First World War, flees her small village in the jungle when the Germans are rounding up the villagers with a scorched-earth policy to turn them into soldiers and thus protect the area from outside forces.

The only way out is with Charlie Allnut, a Canadian mailman who is used to travelling from one village to the next on his little fishing boat, the “African Queen”. He is played by Humphrey Bogart, and Katharine Hepburn stars as Rose Sayer. In the very first scene of the film, during a service at the church of Rose’s brother, it is made clear that Allnut and Rose are quite different. While she plays the organ, dressed like something out of a Victorian novel, and sings with her brother, who tries to conduct the congregation from the pulpit, the villagers merely mumble along. The service is crudely interrupted by the loud steam whistle of Allnut’s boat, and we see him interacting with the locals in their native tongue.

So, when these two board the same boat, it seems unlikely that it would be the start of a beautiful friendship. And yet, soon enough, we discover that they both have strong, assertive characters that are nonetheless willing to compromise. Most importantly, they are both very likeable. Rose refuses to stay hidden in the forest until the war is over and insists that they make their way downriver to a large lake, where they would blow up the “Louisa”, the German ship patrolling the body of water, and thus make their escape.

Much of the film was shot on location, a remarkable feat for the time – as it would still be today. The cinematography is gorgeous, as is to be expected from Jack Cardiff; the rivers are either sapphire-blue or pitch-black, and the greens of the lush forest foliage are spectacular. For some of the more animated scenes on the river, such as those in which Charlie and Rose have to make their way across the rapids, rear projection was used, making for a less than credible combination of real and staged materials, but luckily these scenes are kept to a minimum. Rather, our attention is directed at Rose, who surprises (and is surprised herself at this revelation) with genuine excitement at the dangers they face together: “I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!”

How she deals with the river and the quirks of her companion, especially his fondness for Gordon’s Gin, is entertaining because we like to see what conflict results from their inescapably intimate living conditions on the boat. While I didn’t much care for the brief scene in which they are apparently “drunk on love”, including Charlie’s imitation of the animals in and out of the water, their romantic camaraderie is rather affecting.

It was a pleasant surprise to find Peter Bull, who starred as the Russian Ambassador in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, as the German captain of the “Louisa”. His deadpan delivery of very contrasting ideas are hilarious and fit in superbly with the kind of humour that Hepburn and Bogart do so well, and it is a testament to the acting ability of Hepburn and Bogart that they leisurely carry almost the entire film on their own.

With the exception of the rear projection, which is below par, as well as a scene in which the main characters are attacked by buzzing insects, both scenes visibly more defective because of the film’s use of colour, The African Queen receives full marks in every aspect of the film’s production and entertainment potential. Hepburn’s tongue is not as sharp as in some of her other films (such as Bringing Up Baby, and The Philadelphia Story in particular), but while she certainly stands her ground against the dry wit of Humphrey Bogart, she does not overpower him, which makes the romantic union all the more convincing.

Tokyo Story (1953)

André Crous

Japan
4.5*

Director:
Yasujiro Ozu
Screenwriters: 
Kōgo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu
Director of Photography:
Atsuta Yuharu

Running time: 130 minutes

Original Title: 東京物語
Transliterated title: Tōkyō Monogatari

In the films of Yasujiro Ozu, people go about their business in an orderly fashion, and when the main characters are a geriatric couple from the countryside who go to Tokyo to see how their children are getting on, they really do take their time.  Most of the time, they sit around the house, chatting or doing needlework, but if you looked closely, you’d see that they would rather be doing something else. And it is this subtle point that ultimately makes the film pack a powerful punch.

Widely considered to be one of the best films ever made, Tokyo Story is much more accessible than one would expect, despite the prevailing opinion that his films are slow and that his technique – his so-called “tatami” shots are taken from the position of someone seated on a small straw mat, and the camera is almost always static – might be alien to a Western viewer.

Tokyo Story impresses itself upon the viewer because the story, presented in a very straightforward manner (one could argue the camera’s distance and immobility give a sense of objectivity), seems to be very simple, when in fact the multitude of emotions is only gauged upon close examination of the film. Very little seems to happen, but our response to the events onscreen, and in particular the rather odious behaviour of the children (and grandchildren), would no doubt elicit strong reactions from most viewers.

The film is about an elderly couple, Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama, from the rural town of Onomichi, who goes to visit two of their children and their families in Tokyo. This is before the days of the bullet train, and the 600 km (370 miles) journey takes them almost a full day. But they are excited to see their children (and their grandchildren), whom they haven’t seen in a very long time, and explore the big city.

Even before their arrival, we can see tension at the home of their eldest son, Koichi, whose wife, Fumiko, is having trouble disciplining Minoru, her rebellious young boy, who has a temper tantrum whenever he doesn’t get his way. His reaction to his mother prepares the viewer to some extent for the relationship between his grandparents, for whom he shows the same kind of disdain, and their children.

Shukichi and Tomi have four children: Besides Koichi, they also have a daughter in Tokyo, called Shiage (a hairdresser who cares only about herself), a son in Osaka and a daughter who is about to leave home. Koichi and Shiage are both married to spouses who seem much more willing to care for and help out their in-laws than the couple’s own children. It also transpires that they had another son, Shoji, but he was killed during the war. However, Shoji’s widow, Noriko (played by Setsuko Hara), treats them like real family.

Noriko makes an indelible impression on the viewer. She is kindhearted, makes time to show the elderly couple around, always has a smile on her face and joins them at the drop of a hat. Of course, this happy-go-lucky exterior masks some deep-rooted heartache, and by the time the film addresses these emotions, she has already crept into our hearts.

By contrast, the four remaining children, with the exception of Kyoko, the youngest daughter, all behave rather despicably, and I can imagine that the film would be a challenge for most parents, who would prefer to think that their children would make time for them if they had to and not spend the bare minimum on them when they come for a visit.  Shukichi and Tomi grin and bear their children’s alienating behaviour, and while Shukichi, in a very touching moment, admits his surprise at how much his children have changed (and not in a good way), he also tries to be pragmatic about the changes and says that parents should learn that their children don’t always live up to the expectations they had for them.

The film is incredibly moving, despite its very simple visuals and a camera that moves only twice in the entire film: once at the train station, when Shukichi and Tomi are moving along the platform and about to board the train, and once a few moments earlier, when they make the decision to spend their last evening in Tokyo separately. Although we don’t learn much about the two main characters, beyond the smiles on their faces we do realise that they are much sharper than they seem at first. Certain moments, like Tomi’s recognition that her son and his family live far from the station, meaning they don’t live in a very good district, conveys a certain veiled concern on her part that reveals her care for her children.

And ultimately that is why her children’s ignorance of their parents’ love for them is so discomfiting and makes this quiet film so perceptive and powerful.

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

André Crous

USA
5*

Director:
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Screenwriters:
Gore Vidal
Tennessee Williams
Director of Photography:
Jack Hildyard

Running time: 114 minutes

It is truly remarkable that this film, whose subject is always implied but never mentioned by name, can have such a strong impact on a viewer who has grown up in a much less restricted era of movie-going. I knew this film from a Gore Vidal interview in The Celluloid Closet, in which he, the screenwriter, admitted that the finale was overblown, and the very visible reference to the demise of Frankenstein’s monster in the film by director James Whale was a bit over-the-top. I knew that the unseen protagonist was gay and killed because of his sexuality, so I did go into the film suspicious of the words about him, wary of things said and particularly of things unsaid. Perhaps this knowledge made me susceptible to a positive bias towards the film. On the other hand, the film pretends to look for the truth and yet persists in obscuring this most basic component of the story, always putting up a smokescreen in front of the viewer. And nonetheless, the film is intriguing from beginning to end.

A young woman named Catherine Holly has been diagnosed with dementia praecox following the death of her cousin, Sebastian Venable, at the hands of a street mob in Cabeza de Lobo, Spain, the previous summer. The reason for the death and the exact way in which he died remain a mystery until the very end, but our suspicions grow about the exact nature of the relationship between the two cousins when Sebastian’s overprotective mother, Violet, wants to have Catherine lobotomised for “babbling” about the events of Sebastian’s final hours. The doctor who is to perform this operation is Cukrowicz, who tries to piece together the puzzle from the fragments given to him by the supposedly insane Catherine and Sebastian’s snobbish mother.

While the screenwriters were obliged to remove references to homosexuality, it is significant that Montgomery Clift was chosen to play Dr Cukrowicz, whom Violet mistakes for her own son. Clift was gay, and even though nothing is intimated about his character’s sexuality, his casting could not have been unrelated to his sexuality. Perhaps that is a sweeping statement, but it makes perfect sense in this film where so much had to be suggestive rather than overt.

By means of imagery such as the Venus flytrap and the painting of Saint Sebastian, the film prepares us for the swallowing of poor Sebastian by the angry mob in the film’s final act. “Nature is not created in the image of man’s compassion”, says Dr Cukrowicz, and this statement, made early in the film, after Violet’s account of the “flesh-eating birds” that ravage the young sea turtles on the Galápagos Islands, paints a truthful though ominous picture of the world that will be revealed to us. “[T]he ones who eat flesh, the killers, inherited the earth. But then, they always do, don’t they?”

Cukrowicz is a serious man who barely ever blinks and is aware of the experimental nature of the work he does. In his very first scene, in the hospital’s operating room, director Mankiewicz heightens the tension with small details, both visual and auditory, that include a constant buzzing in the background. Katherine Hepburn is marvellously stiff-upper-lip as Violet Venable, who has a borderline incestuous obsession with her late son. The character of Catherine is the only place where the film and the story trips up, ever so slightly: She is put, under Cukrowicz’s care, in what seems to be the least protected mental institution in the world, where she roams freely, provoking all kinds of riots among both male and female patients. Elizabeth Taylor, who plays this role, is also in the unenviable position of appearing onscreen for the first time after we have spent a long and poignant scene in the company of Clift and Hepburn, and her acting (or her character) is no match for theirs.

Suddenly, Last Summer is a joy to behold, even more so today, because the care with which Vidal (and Williams, although he distanced himself from the film) removed the references to Sebastian’s homosexuality while leaving in just enough to make us wonder. The casting of Clift and the image of Sebastian being devoured by a mob of young men are equally impressive and give ample food for thought, as they imply what could not be said outright.

Vertigo (1958)

André Crous

VertigoUSA
3.5*

Director:
Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriters: 
Alec Coppel
Samuel A. Taylor
Director of Photography: 
Robert Burks

Running time: 128 minutes

I’ve always considered Vertigo to be one of those acclaimed works of art that are accessible and even enjoyable from a distance, like James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but if you try to approach them from the beginning and have an immersive experience, the effect is often frustration.

I understand the film. It is about obsession. But Hitchcock doesn’t approach his material with the intention of having us share the experience of the main character, Scottie, and obsessing with him; rather, he chooses to subtly warn us of the dangers that lie ahead if Scottie stubbornly proceeds along this path. We know that things won’t end well, because the whole atmosphere of the film is indicative of this inevitability.

Now, I realise that many viewers would disapprove of my slight dissing of one of Hitchcock’s best-known films, a film that even managed to reach the No. 2 spot on the coveted Critics’ Top 10 Poll of the British film magazine, Sight and Sound, in 2002, but let me tell you why the film doesn’t work for me.

In this film about obsession and illusion, Hitchcock’s primary concern should have been the viewer’s identification with Scottie, played by Jimmy Stewart, including his point of view. Unfortunately, the issue of point of view is the film’s big flaw.

Consider the following scenes and the shots out of which they consist:

1) The famous restaurant scene, where Scottie sees Madeleine for the first time. He is seated at the bar and looks to his far right, where Madeleine is seated at a table, her back turned towards him. Hitchcock introduces Madeleine by first focusing on Scottie, then panning to her and physically tracking in onto her. This shot is intercut with a shot of Scottie at the bar, followed by his point of view – a shot that contains Madeleine, filmed from his position. Later in the scene, when Madeleine leaves the restaurant, she pauses behind Scottie, whose face is turned away from her. Her face is framed from the side, we only see the right side of her face against the red backdrop of the wall behind her, but Scottie doesn’t see anything.

2) In the moments before Madeleine’s apparent suicide, Scottie runs after her. At first, he looks up at the Mission’s bell tower and we get a shot that we perceive to be his point of view. Madeleine runs into the church, followed by Scottie. There is a chase up the staircase, but Scottie looks down and is struck by his acrophobia (vertigo). Madeleine leaves through a trapdoor at the top and we see her, through an opening in the wall, falling back down to earth, having supposedly jumped to her death.

The first scene, as I described it, is mostly from an external perspective, except for the one or two brief shots taken from Scottie’s position at the bar, which may be labelled his point-of-view shots. But in a later scene in Scottie’s car, he flips through the museum catalogue and while looking at the painting of Carlotta Valdes, there is a flash, very clearly meant to be subjective, of Madeleine’s face as she stood behind him. This shot is impossible since he could not witness this particular image, having had his face turned away when it happened.

After Scottie’s first visit to Judy, the actress who played Madeleine, Judy, has a flashback to the events at the Mission. She “sees” the same shot that we had attributed to Scottie, namely the bell tower, and there are other external shots that seem altogether inappropriate in a flashback scene that ultimately ought to be very subjective.

Hitchcock’s failure to orientate his film successfully with regard to its presentation of perspective creates fluidity that does not allow the viewer to align himself/herself with the character of Scottie. However, one scene that is successful in this respect is the scene at the cemetery, in which Hitchcock often intercuts a lateral tracking shot, meant to indicate Scottie’s trajectory, with a reverse tracking shot that frames Scottie himself moving forward, towards us.

The film’s obsession with power and death, especially towards the end of the story, becomes a bit tedious, and while Scottie’s intentions are quite clear (he wants to get the woman back whom he loved and for whose death he feels responsible – even though he’s not responsible and calling their relationship “love” is a bit grand), Judy seems masochistically determined to endure Scottie’s near-abusive behaviour when he restricts her choices in clothes, hairstyles, and so on. This aspect of the film alienates the viewer from both characters because the idea of “conditional love” is very unappealing.

I found one particular scene’s editing frustratingly bad, namely the scene in which Scottie, in his car, pursues Madeleine’s car through San Francisco. There is a very clear lack of continuity from one shot to the next and generally feels like a choppy editing job, with the car turning in one direction while the driver is clearly turning the steering wheel in the opposite direction. Jimmy Stewart has a less pathetic character than in many of his other films, but he still seems to be one step behind the viewer. Also, being a former policeman, Scottie should be able to follow someone (in the cemetery, in an art museum) without being spotted. But the only reason he didn’t seem to be spotted is that Madeleine/Judy knew he was there and pretended not to notice. Such bad tailing diminished his value as a character in my eyes.

But the film will be praised for its meticulous attention to detail, and the choice of colour (in particular, the various traces of green) the film is beyond reproach. My favourite scene, in terms of the character’s interaction with the soundtrack, is the scene with the sequoias: Bernard Herrman’s music is almost distressingly calm and quiet, even though Scottie is aggressively interrogating Madeleine. But in a film of this kind, dealing with real and illusory psychological problems, his music is at times unnecessarily loud and screeching – just consider the moment when Madeleine leaps into San Francisco Bay.

Vertigo is cold and analytical; a more immersive approach would have suited the material better, especially as a film. Kim Novak is wonderful, and the design of the film is well-chosen (the many instances of rear projection may be read as another hint at the real/illusory dichotomy of Madeleine’s character). But it is far less enjoyable than Hitchcock’s other great films, and for me, Vertigo will always be more of a cerebral joy than an engaging work of fiction.