Thursday, March 25, 2010

Blackness and oxide sixties: Funeral in Berlin with Harry Palmer. Michael Caine, the cool and the mundane spies.

Funeral in Berlin is the second appearance (and my darling, hence the election) of the mundane spy Harry Palmer after the excellent one (and already very raw in his plot of mental manipulation) Ipcress (1965) of the forgotten one gives hope to Sidney J. Furie and before to the pernicious one and stupidly paródica The brain for one trillion dollars (1967) courteousness of the hysteric Ken Russell (deducting the resurrection of the personage in the 90 with the television Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in San Petesburgo that they were recapturing to a semi-retired Palmer) and one of the works summits of the spies' movies during the fruitful 60 of the cold war. Contemporary of other splendid examples as Conspiracy in Berlin (1966) of Michael Anderson, in which George Seagal is sent to dismantle a small group neo-Nazi while very typical paranoiac of the talent is bossed around without any consideration by his Superiors in a plot for the nastiness of big writer Harold Pinter, Called for a dead person (1967), the sober one (and somewhat leaden) contribution of Sidney Lumet adapting the dark routine character of the essential one Him Carré, about the suicide of an agent and the later investigation entrusted James Mason or this abyss of to the sordidness that is The letter of the Kremlin (1969), a magisterial work of John Huston unjustly forgotten and already commented here.

The matter in this occasion is more current than that of Ipcress (splendid the meticulous care for the details on the receipts and bureaucratic permissions that they deprive of any delight to the profession) and simple order involves Palmer with one, seemingly, in Berlin: to extract to a (assumption) Soviet deserter whom an unforgettable Oskar Homolka interprets in an entertaining and sibylline personage who will unite friendship with our protagonist. But of course everything will be much more complicated and thick as it is a law in the genre. The complicated story (with changes of identities, crossed agencies and gold Nazi for the way) accuses influences of the detectives' movies (the agent seems to be on tow, experienced and shaken for the plot from one place to other and is used without any consideration) and a vitriolic sense of humor in his truthful description of an atrocious underworld, (wrecker in this sense the personage of Palmer's chief with genius interpreted again by an icy Guy Doleman who prunes, not the weeds but the flowers of his garden y) to the one of that it paints the portrait in a way as implacable as with thanks lacking in pretensions, what removes it positively from territories as leaden as that of the prestigious one The spy who arose from the frió, directed by Martin Ritt in 1965, (again an original of John Le Carré), for a terminal Richard Burton.

In any case it is with this school of dark, sarcastic movies and brilliantly cruel it is with those that it is necessary to align to the creation icónica of big Michael Caine, distilled of genuine cool with his glasses of pasta, his mackintosh and this gesture that mixes indifference, cinísmo and irony, a memorable interpretation that turned the actor into star and certified an economic interpretive style in supreme grade. And this because, although he was born undeniably like an "anti-Bond" (produced the same way by Harry Saltzman with a view to not leaving hollows without covering) it has not anything in common with any type of parody: from the descacharrantes Fruit Pastilles pop del Flint de James Coburn or Matt Helm of Dean Martin, up to the hundreds of imitations of the “movie theater encore”, with things as 3-S-3 of Sergio Sollima and Giorgio Ardison, the French OSS-17 with direction, between others of Andrè “Fantomas“ Hunebelle and leading role for the Americans Kerwin Matthews or John Gavin, the epoch more desprejuicida of Chabrol and his Tiger with Roger Hanin, the triumphant Istanbul 65 of Isasi-Isasmendi or you even would cover them pulp of Jesus Franco and Eddie Constatine between multitude of products and by-products replete with shamelessness and wittiness. Anyway … for a very advisable small panorama the article of Carlos Aguilar dedicated to the spionistico in this marvelous miniature that is Done in Europe. Well on the contrary, it is a raw demythologization, which it opposes to the stylized parallel world of cinematic James Bond, a look on the spying where the dehumanization reigns and the treachery is the official currency. But, beyond superficial humorous notes (when it triumphs it does it with an Israeli agent, Eva Renzi, and it seduces it only because this one needs pair to come to his targets) or even of aspects of “struggle of classes” (Palmer is a working cockney and Bond an Eaton son), typology faces the two in a much deeper and less obvious level: Bond as perfect machine of killing of rampante amorality and cynicism, against a Harry Palmer (whose name was invented certainly, looking also for one especially bland, for the movies since in the previous novels of Len Deighton he was lacking the same one) that not only is not glamorous, but, contrary to 007 it has an iron ethical code and a rebellious will; one of the most interesting points of the saga is that the protagonist is forced to be a spy by means of the blackmail; Palmer is a pilferer of small amount that pays his condemnation working for the MI6 and tries always to prove to be everything desganado and challenging that can. To round the kinship with the exemption Bond the manager of guiding the direction is the handmade one (and discreetly) Guy Hamilton, one of the habitual manufacturers of the endless series (perfect example of idea for and for the 60 that it must never have gone out of the epoch for which it was conceived and in which his ways and spirit turn out to be natural and not a grotesque anachronism) that here realizes his best work, with a vibrant staging (copy the coffins exchange) helped by the excellent photo of Otto Heller who had already dealt with the first delivery and also of successful Alfie (1966) of Lewis Gilbert, who also would end up directing Bond with few grace in the still nice one Only one lives two times (1967) and in the unsuitable for smoking ones The spy who loved (1977) and Moonraker (1979) to me with Roger Moore disgracing.

Funeral in Berlin (Funeral in Berlin)

The director: Guy Hamilton

Year: 1966

Country: Great Britain

102 min.

It photographs: Otto Heller

Music: Konrad Elfers

Script: Evan Jones according to the novel of Len Deighton Funeral in Berlin, 1964

I distribute: Michael Caine, Eva Renzi, Paul Hubschmid, Oskar Homolka, Guy Doleman, Hugh Burden, Rachel Gurney, Marthe Keller


Filed bajo:60's, British, Funeral in Berlin, Union of craftsmen, Guy Hamilton, I Spy, Thriller Tagged: action, Germany, anti-Bond, anti-hero, murder, cynicism, city, cool, crime, cruelty, dehumanized, spies, Funeral in Berlin, glasses, cold war, Guy Hamilton, Harry Palmer, Harry Saltzman, England, irony, Len Deighton, manipulation, Michael Caine, sixties, sordidness, spionistico, shots

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Plow You Ready To Be Heartbroken?: The people of Sunset Boulevard, a cruel farce in Cinearchivo.

“You say yoúre so happy now
You dog hardly stand”
L
loyd Cole and The Commotions

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Rescue across Cinearchivo and of his recent edition in DVD, of one of the most forgotten (when not straight unknown) jewels of the 90. Lost, perhaps for his absolute absence of authorizations and a sincere humor and verista that does not invalidate the symbolic and metatextual component.

Movies of autofiction realized from the lucidity for habitual characteristic Barry Primus, making debut here with the indispensable help of Robert De Niro like producer, in functions of scriptwriter and the director of an immodest farce, descacharrante and painful on the resignations, the defeat and the suicido (physical and vital) in the scrappings of Hollywood.


Filed bajo:90's, Barry Primus, Cinearchivo, comedy, the People of Sunset Boulevard, Satire, USA Tagged: autofiction, Barry Primus, movies, Cinearchivo, comedy, cruel, farce, defeat, the People of Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, immodest, Martin Landau, metafiction, Mistress, pathos, pessimist, Robert De Niro, Robert Wuhl, Satire, suicide

Saturday, March 20, 2010

“This poisoned rose”: The mill of the stones women. Beauty between worlds, desperate parents, feverish lovers. A small jewel of Giorgio Ferroni

“The poisoned rose
That you gave to me
It left me half alive
And half in ecstasy”
E
lvis Costello.

The mill of the stones women (Il mulino delle donne I gave pietra)

The director: Giorgio Ferroni

Year: 1960

Country: Italy / France

90 min.

It photographs: Pier Ludovico Pavoni

Music: Carlo Innocenzi

Script: Remigio Del Grosso, Giorgio Ferroni, Ugo Liberatore, Giorgio Stegani according to the story of Pieter van Weigen (?) I distribute: Pierre Brice, Scilla Gabel, Wolfgang Preiss, Dany Carrel, Herbert Böhme, Liana Orfei, Marco Guglielmi, Olga Solbelli, Alberto Archetti

The Italian Gothic is still perhaps, the most stimulant, most creative and conceptualmente dense period of the Italian fantaterror and unfortunately one of least explored or known for having remained secret under the addictive yellow loudmouth who happened to him.

Giorgio Ferroni contributed to the splendor of the first 60 a piece of the esthetic caliber and the romantic - delirious depth of this one The mill of the stones women and the same way he collaborated in the unexpected and welcome comeback of the genre more than one decade later (that more propitious moment for a genre that treats about the death to film it once died as he remained already explained here). A brief resurrection that tried to infiltrate of "goticismo" the esthetics setentera prevailing (or vice versa), impelled precisely by the original creators, Bava, Margheriti, Freda … or he itself, which contributed the recoverable one The night of the devils (1972) with Gianni Garko and disarming Agostina Belli, an adaptation of The family Vurdalack of Alexei Tolstoi who had already served from base to one of the chapters of the excellent piece "baviana" three faces of the fear in 1962.

In this case the history is not definitely of ultragrave, as it was obligatory, but the beautiful one, a Scilla Gabel that is a pure appearance, is not completely dead although his enchantment and the unhealthy affectionate drive that it activates do not suffer for it; but in some intermediate estadío between the life and the death suffering from an illness in to the blood that forces it to constant finished transfusions. A species of “vampira of the science” through that there lives a time given by other young people to whom it bleeds a medical catastrophe to his constant service to which a viscous Herbert Böhme interprets in search of a permanent remedy that never comes and that allows him to support his insane influence on a desperate father.

The sense of madness, of impossible place of cinematographic wakefulness that presides at the movie (and the genre for extension) is born in this occasion, and in his best moments, of the illusion of the fantastic thing. A recreation doubly staging during his amazing central block, in which, to a time the personages and the director put in functioning a phantasmagoric fiction and alucinatoria destined so much to the feverish lover Pierre Brice (the mythical Winnetou for romantic westerns on Karl May for Rialto who here is debated between the mundane thing and the ultraarea, between the serviceability and the rise), as to us, explicitando sofisticadamente the proper nature of magic / unreal trick of the way.

Little more can add to itself without spoiling it completely (that is not that either), beyond recounting his influences / references to The crimes of the museum of wax (1953) of André De Toth (brilliant this carousel of “stones women” who conceal the fault in his casing) and to the most curious production of Robert Baker and Monty Berman (with everything what this means as for dismal tastes and grandguignolescos) The blood of the vampire (1958) of Henry Cass under script of essential Jimmy Sangster incorporating this already present medical / sickly component earlier in the fundacional I vampiri (1956), an exceptional contemporary review of the myth of the Countess Bathory and the eternal youth begun by Freda and finished off by Bava (neither more nor less) or the tonal and thematic parallelisms (the history of a father, here a splendid Wolfgang Preiss, degraded up to the crime and the dementia for saving a daughter) with The eyes without face (1960) of Georges Franju or Screams in the night (1961) of Jesus Franco. And of course to marvel with the purity of his style, a baroque and hasty planning that will transform the horror into tragedy, with his almost tactile chromatism (these symbolic yellow and red garments that the protagonist shows) or with the party that Ferroni extracts to the practically only stage, this Mill of sober exterior appearance that conceals an internal hell, perfect metaphor of tortuous Dr. Loren Bohlem. The most beautiful movie that there deserves more than one period that deserves much more.


Filed bajo:60's, special Agent (bent The big), The mill of the stones women, Fantastique, Gothic, Giorgio Ferroni, craftsmen's Union, horror, Italy, Melodrama Tagged: to the Italian, carousel, science, crime, devotion, The mill of the stones women, Fantastique, figures, Gothic, Giorgio Feroni, daughter, horror, medicine, Melodrama, death, father, Pierre Brice, representation, romantic, blood, Scilla Gabel, ultrtumba, vampirismo, Wolfgang Preiss Download Saturday Night Live S35E17 Jude Law/Pearl Jam online

Friday, March 19, 2010

“Don't you know that it's different for girls?”:El WIP, heyday and fall of a sub-genre. Between Jesus Franco, Roger Corman and Eddie Romero, 99 mujeres/Black sucks, white it sucks

“I know, to lot of things that you don't
You wanna hear some?”
J
oe Jackson

WIP or Women In Prison (I do not believe that he needs major explanation the terminology), twisted and viscous sub-genre where they are. With origins that can be traced up to jewels as Mädchen in Uniform (1931) of Leontine Sagan (changing the prison into misses' boarding school), I sing to the freedom and the Sapphic love in a Germany at the edge of the Nazism or to be in clear prestigious precedents as Without Reference (1950), of the recoverable craftsman John Cromwell, a hard social drama written by Virginia Kellogg, one year earlier guinista of the deifying one To red I live for Raoul Walsh and this occasion treating proper experiences.

Jesus Franco gave him color and a perversity hand and re-formulated it in 1968 with this fundacional 99 women … and hence it costs below, thousand times plundered his motives (for proper Franco the first one, although they were the Japanese those who contributed real style and frenzy in things like the saga of “woman prisoner” and in much more frenzied and personalized derivatives), bouncing from Europe America with stop in the Philippines and hence throwing itself over a cliff again the Europe of Ilsa, the wolf of the SS (1975), degradation of the degeneration ambientada, paradoxically, in the death rattles of the Nazism.

99 women (99 women)

The director: Jesus Franco

Year: 1968

Country: Germany / Italy / Spain

99 min.

It photographs: Manuel Merino

Music: Bruno Nicolai

Script: Milo G. Cuccia, Carlo Fadda, Jesus Franco

I distribute: Maria Rohm, Maria Schell, Herbert Lom, Mercedes McCambridge Rosalba Neri, Elsa Montés, Luciana Paluzzi

99 women he supposes, not only one of the most satisfactory and successful qualifications of between the bad-tempered and ungovernable movies of torrential Jesus Franco, but there hoards an incalculable historical value (or this way) to the being the inventor of this feverish subgenre which this movie not only grants nature letter but there stops established a series of narrative, esthetic archetypes and tipológicos that include from the sadism the Sapphic erotísmo, of the unhealthy cruelty and pegajosamente attractive to the composition of a personages' gallery that they will reappear machaconamente in all and the every some of the declarations of the matter.

Like that we find the finished alignment of personages, a collection of samples of personal tragedies and unjust punishments of brutal lack of moderation, all of them visualized by Franco with a staging of authentically his, that is to say the freest and abstract (the violation of the personage of the Röhm), pregnant with motives appellants (Neri as erotic ballerina of impossible wardrobe) and hypnotic musician opposite to the much more suppressed staging (although the formal styling is supported, in moments as I find them erotic between the protagonists visualized with short planes and lacks of focus that decompose the bodies and the space) of the these prison or forest, given scenes for what it is expected from a professional production of low budget.

We already find the innocent person who will end up leading the group, in charge of the marvelous and habitual one of Franco of the epoch Maria Röhm (wife of the producer of the invention Harry Allan Towers), tanned veteran Elisa Montés, the young idealist with connections politician / you would revolutionize that they will make possible the attempt of flight (Valentina Godoy, who would repeat shortly with the director in The city without men), which does not support the anguish and it succumbs, the most nice Luciana Paluzzi almost like Janet Leigh in Psychosis (1960) … and of course the perfidious guardesa interpreted here with excesses big Mercedes McCambridge who is in charge of facilitating fresh meat to the repulsive local governor whom a Herbert Lom characterized with a few immortelles interprets with genius gafitas of the sun round, beard and a brown and shaved skull that collaborate to give him an unforgettable aspect of villain of tebeo (and that leads a scene purely sadiana of interposed violation and voyeurismo perversely doing that Rosalba Neri abuses Maria Röhm in the infirmary of the jail, showing this way this sense of the domain across the sexual perversity that is a genuine feature of the best Franco). The cast becomes wealthy with a pair of indispensable characters more, placed both like beatific and harmful points in opposite places of the scales: the idealistic official who comes to clean the prison and who will smash against a wall of the lucid pessimism typically franquiano and who is to charge, neither more nor less than of the glamorous Maria Schell (remembered especially by his big role in this strangest western of Delmer Daves that it is The tree of the hanged person, 1959) and finally there stays the most memorable presence of the movie, an imprisoned shepherd's staff, depredadora sexual, treacherous and dangerous (although parcilamente redeemed by the true tenderness that protagonist feels with regard wing to that corporeiza with his irresistible physicist mentioned Rosalba Neri (brilliant his presentation placing itself a few averages) with his hard condescension gesture, stealing each and everyone of the planes in which it goes out and even some of those in which it does not go out.

The result, beyond this character fundacional that I bring to the movie a few extraordinary benefits (and it opened quickly the faucet of the imitations / derivations in which the same Franco would re-affect, for example in The lovers of the island of the Devil in 1972 without going further, degrading the formula up to dispossessing of his attraction less obvious and rude attractions), turns out much benefited by the habitual roominess (inside what it fits) from the productions that it attacked for Allan Towers (between them his entertaining contributions to the Fu-Manchú saga) and especially of the splendid share-outs that he handled during the epoch. All this operates for the sake of a finished resultón of European cómic of adventures that whose interior appellants of the author shelter some of the obsessions concerning the “human servitude”, the degradation or the power, all this finished off with an inexcusably pessimistic end and desesperanzado that exhibits the component of terrible game of fighter that had the brief exploit of our heroines.

Black sucks, white it sucks

The director: Eddie Romero

Year: 1973

Country: The Close / Philippine States

87 min.

It photographs: Justo Paulino

Music: Harry Betts

Script: H.R. Christian, Joe Viola, Jonathan Demme

I distribute: Pam Grier, Margaret Markov, Sid Haig, Lynn Borden, Zaldy Zschornak, Laurie Burton, Eddie Garcia, Alona Alegre, Dindo Fernando, Vic Diaz Tras to have resisted the holder's temptation this critique “Ebony and ivory” and departing from the irrefutable premise of which alone disfrutable talks each other of a honey-coated fritter in very special conditions, to clarify that nevertheless he does not lack interest, for two I motivate, the first one for there is the terminal and deformed image of that one 99 women treated above, across that it remains well clear that the nature involutiva of the exploitation and his shining degenerative speed (between 1969 and 1973) and in the second term his value as historical piece to know the brief Philippine long journey of Roger Corman, this man who saw the grass growing.

So better to start with a small history on as it came there: at the beginning of the seventies Corman visits in the Philippines his friend John Ashley, bad actor and ancient fashion-plate / singer of the 50 settled down in the country where a producer had founded along with the director, also villain, Eddie Romero. After seeing the ready refreshment stall to roll and to roll with everything, Corman moves a produto style WIP (although with fits of the effervescent blackexploitation, which was necessary to cover well the bogey) which Jack Hill had ready to be filmed in Puerto Rico to the Philippines and this way everything begins. Hill would take charge of a pair of qualifications (The big doll house and The big bird cage in 1971 and 1972 respectively) invoiced in a consecutive way (and acceleration) and for those who would be brought to two actors of the racing team: Pam Grier and Sid Haig. The result is a financial victory (that is of what all this goes) and this way the chain of assembly follows either with the local pieceworker Rosemary directing up to 73-74 where Corman sees that that one either it declines and looks for new horizons. Of such a way this is one of the last exponents of the Philippine production of the A.I.P, what does not mean, much less that one was stopping squeezing the thing, the proper Rosemary would try to prolong the business in the same 1973 with Woman Hunt, apparently to the style evil Zaroff (1932). (For all this it turns out to be very advisable to use, as introduction the Sheer Macabre one of Pete Tombs, published in Spain in 2003 for Latin Circle and the festival of Sitges)
And now the matter in if: What it begins like a canonical piece of sub-genre (to the minute four we already have all empelotadas in the showers while one of the prison guards one is a pleasure spying) with his abuses and his sadisms (much light, of course, although the metallic box with naked them back against espalada has the alone one his that one) and his guardesas divided between the beatific and comprehensive one and the vicious pervertidilla (the onlooking one of earlier interpreted by the blonde Lynn Borden) derives quickly in crusty reformulation and despechugada of that one famous Fugitives (to which there are added not few elements of Franco's movie) of made aware drubbing Stanley Kramer with Curtis and Poitier fleeing chained. Two parts are almost equal of deplorable, but the second one the poverty in every respect already devours the whole invention (in whose script Jonathan Demme played, as it seems) that scarcely there is cheered up by the undeniable beauty of the duo protagonist (attention that each one shows braguitas of his corresponding color), round Pam Grier as hard girl and reedy Margaret Markov of pijilla revolutionist (I dress the result of this union both would repeat one year later in much more frenzied The Arena (1974), like gladiadoras in an inexcusably decadent Rome, and in that certainly, there was appearing Rosalba Neri as slaves' malignant chief. A movie reasonably nice and locatis inside his presupposed perroneros directed by Steve Carver: with help of Aristide Massaccesi, aka Joe D'Amato, beyond the photo? -, signatory of the despendolada A mom without brake in 1974 with Angie Dickinson prolonging the exploits of the anthological Bloody Mom of 1970 but with many more folleteo) that will organize the whole escape plan to help his "pseudoguevariano" noviete in his revolutionary attempts against the corrupt local government. What gives cause for a horrifying final third that tries to play the epic disappointment (sic).

The charismatic presence of Sid Haig stays (recovered by Rob Zombie in his sobrevaloradísima The house of 1000 corpses, 2003) in one of his eccentric personages, in this case a villain dressed in cowboy and lover of the country music, or a pair of repulsive moments led by Vic Díaz, there attends appellant of the Philippine infracine. This way the odyssey includes painful action, funny humor, sullen eroticism and the sultriest fight never filmed (or almost) and it is not even redeemed by his ceporra quality of irredento exploit of the exploit.


Filed bajo:60's, 70's, 99 women, action, Adventures, Black sucks white breast, Joint production, Eddie Romero, Erótika, the Philippines, Union of craftsmen, Politique give auteurs, USA Tagged: 99, I abuse, action, Germany, Adventures, Black sucks white breast, jail, punishments, cómic, cruelty, Eddie Romero, Elsa Montés, exploitation, the Philippines, gurdianas, Harry Allan Towers, Herbert Lom, flight, injustice, Italy, Jess Franco, lesbianism, Luciana Paluzzi, Margaret Markov, Maria Röhm, Maria Schell, Mercedes McCambridge, women, imprisoned women, Pam Grier, Sid Haig parodies, perversely, revolution, Roger Corman, Rosalba Neri, sadism, sex, sub-genre, violation, violence, WIP, women, women in prison Streaming Family Guy S08E13 Go, Stewie, Go! free

“The terrible children”: Wind in the sails. Surfaces and depths, the lucid movies of Alexander MacKendrick

Wind in the sails (To high wind in Jamaica)

The director: Alexander MacKendrick

Year: 1965

Country: The big Brittany / United States

103 min.

It photographs: Douglas Slocombe

Music: Larry Adler

Script: Stanley Mann, Ronald Harwood, Denis Cannan according to the novel of Richard Hughes Huracan in Jamaica, 1929

I distribute: Anthony Quinn, James Coburn, Deborah Baxter, Elizabeth Dean, Nigel Davenport, Gert Fröbe, Lille Kedrova, Dennis Price

If it had to choose governing only one to which systematically him racanea the category of “outstanding figure“ would not doubt it, immediately it would place the ensign on Alexander MacKendrick. Genuine author of short and compact career that makes his disappointed and pessimistic trace, his cruel conception of the human being printed even in more seemingly kind comedies, a movies that is like the calmed water: you do not know his depth until you get inside. And if between his splendid movies it was forced to indicate only one like perfect compendium of all his universe, that one would have to be,

Alexander MacKendrick and Edward G. Robinson during Sammy's shooting, flight towards the South in 1963

obligatorily, Wind in the sails.

On MacKendrick I have already written here, let's say than in the second grade. Two critiques for the portal Cinearchivo the same way recorded here on a pair of his works for exactly legendary (and affectionate) producer Ealing: The man of the white suit and touching Mandy (outstanding movie not only for his exceptional quality and humanity, but for presenting the first incursion in the world of the infancy, contemplated always of a way that excludes completely the condescension and the blandenguería without it does not imply lacking in tenderness and if a deep comprehension). For the British house he filmed also his début, delightful Whisky Galore! (1949), a comedy full of picturesqueness and kindheartedness ambientada in an isle that in full 2ªGM remains without " supply “of the knowledge” while a cargo ship replete with the same one sinks opposite to his coasts and another two comedies more: also islander The Maggie (1954) and the famous one The quintet of the death (1955), a memorable movie in which there is already contemplated in all his splendor one of the favorite topics of the director: the destructive capacity of the innocence. Something that was already camouflaged in The man of the white suit and that here takes the calm appearance of an adorable viejecita that is decimating a band of criminals without finding out.

The pessimistic blackness and his negative vision of the man will enter the beast his first American movie under the auspices of always attentive and anxious Burt Lancaster who produces Blackmail to him from Broadway (1957), a devastating work, on script bottomless of Clifford Odets, of a bitterness and lucidity it brings over (or with the excuse) of X-raying the mean journalistic world and the outskirts of the show business. Tony Curtis takes charge of the repulsive co-protagonist who introduces the typology of the careerist without conscience, the egoist who tries to manipulate the environment in his favor. Although in fact what it does here is rather to define it to the perfection, because the personage of Alec Guinnes in (again) The man of the white suit already presents features similar but seen from an optics of humorous cartoon and poisonous satire in the fund but kindly in the surface. Something similar to what MacKendrick would realize in the tape that it was his farewell, unsuccessful and ununderstood in due time (and today yet dependent on review) do not do waves (1967), toned portrait of the American society of the victory, coherentemente ambientada in one perpetually sunny California of beautiful and rich to that a Tony Curtis wants to gain access all cynicism.

Between averages of these works they embed themselves (in addition to several works without crediting and any premature other) two movies of infantile adventures, Sammy, flight towards the south (1963), which I regret without having seen and which is provided with always big Edward G. Robinson and this key piece that is a Wind in the sails.

And this way we come to her, but her, before beginning to review a little, the strange indifference relation is obligatory to point out that MacKendrick, a man otherwise extremely modest that importance was always coming out if the same and to his work a little like Mario Bava, he was feeling with regard to this masterpiece. In a fantastic interview realized in 1988 by Antonio Castro in the magazine Directed for … (nicely provided by Christian Aguilera, to whom I am grateful for it immensely and who also can be read in Looks of Movies) the director makes clear, with extreme crudeness, his consideration of frustrated and even frustrating movie on having moved away from the project that it had originally in mind (and that it had for many years, since it tried during 15 to take to the movies the outstanding novel of Richard Hughes), in which the narrative center, the point of view that he was guiding to the spectator was exclusively that of the children, instead of moving towards the personage of Coburn who is who contemplates the facts "from the outside". This project, which according to its own words Zanuck, which was the principal producer, he had never allowed them to film, was even cut away in the assembly table there being extirpated a prologue that realized of the life of the children in the island (one of the best parts of the novel, certainly that the state proves to be his onlooker, between the civilization and the savagery and his relation with his slaves, his parents and especially the experience of the death, something that later pirate will repeat point for point in his odyssey). Certainly if the result is impressive as it stayed, it shakes to think in what could have been a movie to which a critic of time Magazine defined at the moment of his premiere like ”… of seeing Shirley Temple singing a happy song in a ship while it carves up to a pup”.

This phrase on innocent Shirley defines with punch line wittiness the sinister heart of a movie that plays the generic agility and the sweetened poison while the desmitificador exhibits atrozmente the twilight of a genre and of a time with the free aspect of a cruel fable (it is not free detail of the villains assaulting transvestites the ship in which the children travel). A story for adults rich in unhealthy details (the children playing with the head of the figure of the figure head while the pirates remain terrified, …) and strange relations that melt / confuse the love, the obsession and the mutual fascination, inside a complex conceptual and dramatic framework that turns environment to the exchange of rolls, to the power and especially to this destructive capacity of the innocence already recounted earlier. An overthrow that makes invalidated the capacity of reaction to the imminent catastrophe and that corporeiza in this occasion in this vision personalísima of the infantile universe that does not admit anything more that the truth and that is achieved (and here me "intertextualizo" to the same) with a simplicity that it mixes of observation and deep comprehension, of which one is born a capacity of psychological penetration and an amazing, propitious sensibility to recreate and to transmit an infantile mentality without committing adultery. With all his complex form, his absurd logic and his raw beauty. A victory at present alone comparable to the teaching of Hayao Miyazaki, especially in the exciting purity of this masterpiece that is My neighbor Totoro (1988). The author does not treat the children as adult, not how to idiots. It treats them as to children. His camera obeys the prescripts of John Ford; it is placed at a height of the look. It frames them from the same plane, both physical and moral / intellectual. This way the lines between the good and evil are extremely diffuse and the conscience, more in the middle of similar ambience of barbarism and adventure, it tends to disappear replaced with well different values, the same dichotomy being reproduced on the covering of the ship between savagery and civilization that they were experiencing in the island but with the difference of the absence of the counterweight parental. Of equal way the death will be a fundamental element of the trip, so much the real one (one of the brothers will die incidentally and the destination of the captores is sealed fatally) as symbolically.

But of course all this powerful load is supported like an enriching substratum and sibilinamente nabbed under his playful aspect, his clean and simple formal beauty, his vibrant direction, his magnificent sound-track and a few big interpretations of his sensational share-out, especially of an Anthony Quinn, infantile and defeated, and a turbadora Deborah Baxter of magnetic and worrying presence, simultaneously helpless and implacable. An exciting, sincere and penetrating movie that closes with one of the most brutal ends of the history of cinema, horrifying in his absence of piety.


Filed bajo:60's, Alexander Mackendrick, Adventures, British, Union of craftsmen, Politique give auteurs, Wind in the sails Tagged: Alexander Mackendrick, Anthony Quinn, author, Aventuras, ship, kindness, civilization, comedies, cruelty, story, Deborah Baxter, disappointment, desmitificador, destructive, domain, Ealing, falsity, High wind in Jamaica, infancy, innocence, James Coburn, nastiness, manipulation, sea, death, children, west, parents, perverse, pirates, power, Richard Hughes, rolls, savagery, sequestration, Wind in the sails