Showing posts with label 1963 Films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1963 Films. Show all posts
Friday, September 21, 2018
Short Take: 8½
Monday, September 17, 2018
Short Take: La Jetée
Monday, November 28, 2016
Short Take: Charade
The 1963 comedy-thriller Charade, directed by Stanley Donen, recalls the more lighthearted films of master suspense filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. It’s not as sharp a confection as it could have been, but few films can match it for wit or glamour. An American woman in Paris (Audrey Hepburn) is suddenly widowed. Her husband has been murdered, and she finds herself a target of three of his former partners (Ned Glass, James Coburn, and George Kennedy). The men are after a fortune they and the husband helped steal, and they’re certain she’s the key to finding it. A CIA official (Walter Matthau) claims to want it back for the U. S. government, but he’s perfectly content to leave her unprotected from the trio of thugs. The wild card in the intrigue is a mysterious though charming fellow (Cary Grant), who may be working with the thugs, or a thief out for himself, or the only ally the woman has. The superbly crafted script, by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, is full of ingenious twists, surprising gags, and terrific romantic interplay between the Hepburn and Grant characters. The most refreshing aspect of the love story is that Hepburn’s character is the assertive one. Stanley Donen’s direction is somewhat uneven. The pacing is strong, the Paris locations are used well, and he brings out the glamorous charm of his two stars. But he doesn’t seem to know how to handle violence. The film is grisly when it should be discreet, and the explicitness works against the tongue-in-cheek tone. The picture quickly gets back on track after these lapses, but they may still leave one with a bad taste in one’s mouth. Yet despite the flawed moments, the picture is still one of the most entertaining Hollywood films of the early 1960s. The fine, varied score is by Henry Mancini, and Hepburn’s elegant wardrobe is courtesy of Givenchy. Charles Lang, Jr. provided the cinematography. The script is adapted from Peter Stone’s novel The Unsuspecting Wife, which was based on an earlier screenplay by Stone and Marc Behm.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Film Review: Contempt (Le Mépris)
This article was originally published at The Hooded Utilitarian on October 18, 2011.
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Contempt opens with a lovely, intimately tender moment between its two main characters. Paul (Michel Piccoli) is a playwright, novelist, and screenwriter in his mid-to-late thirties. His wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) is a former secretary in her late twenties. They lie in bed together, enjoying a rapport based on playful flattery. She takes pride in her gorgeous figure, and he indulges in his words: he tells her he loves her “totally, tenderly, tragically.” The scene was added at the insistence of the film’s producers, who wanted cheesecake footage of Bardot, the era’s reigning sex symbol. (She lies naked on her belly, her bare rump prominently displayed.) The motive for including the scene was crass, but the film is richer for it. This prologue gives the audience its one glimpse of the couple’s happiness before their relationship falls apart.
Their break-up is precipitated by Paul’s taking a job as a screenwriter on a new movie version of the Odyssey. The film’s director, Fritz Lang (who plays himself), has reached an impasse with its American producer (Jack Palance), and the producer wants Paul to do rewrite work on the script. His self-respect demands he not take the job. He’s not especially interested in screenwriting, and he’s far more simpatico with Lang than the producer, who’s a smug, quick-tempered vulgarian who reflexively seeks to humiliate everyone he deals with. The producer doesn’t even hide that part of his reason for hiring Paul is the opportunity to hit on Camille. But Paul convinces himself the money is worth it. If nothing else, he’ll be able to finish paying off his and Camille’s Rome apartment. He rationalizes that it’s all for her.
Paul is essentially declaring himself a whore, and it’s clear that his seeing it as being for Camille’s benefit leads him to blame her for the situation. He doesn’t stand in the way of the producer’s efforts to come on to her. He humiliates her further by letting his attention (and hands) wander to the producer’s pretty assistant in her presence. She drops every hint she can that she doesn’t want him to do this job. She even tells him how much happier she was when they didn’t have money, and he was hacking out crime novels for a living. But she’s relying on rapport to tell him how she feels; telling him outright means their love isn’t strong enough to do the job. His resentments stand in the way.
Godard does some of his most skillful writing and directing in this film. The middle section is especially impressive. It’s a sequence set in more or less real time in Paul and Camille’s apartment. The camera follows them while they talk and argue in the apartment’s various rooms. Godard’s writing beautifully evokes the ebb and flow of conversation between two people whose closeness has become distance. Relationships allow--and are even built on--a couple’s ability to speak indirectly to each other and still be understood. Godard shows us the tension and frustrations that come when two people go through the motions of that communication without the bond that makes it work. The skill of the direction is apparent in Godard’s ability to effectively pace this in a brilliantly sustained half-hour set piece. People talking past each other has never been handled more artfully.
The bent of Godard’s previous films was social criticism, but this venture into domestic drama doesn’t mean he’s abandoned his other themes. Contempt also features some of Godard’s most incisive criticism of one’s relationship to books, films, and other media, specifically the tendency to treat a work as an allegory for one’s own experience. Paul of course sees his circumstances in terms of the Odyssey, identifying himself with Odysseus, Camille with Penelope, and Jack Palance’s producer with both Poseidon, Odysseus’ divine nemesis, and the suitors Odysseus must fight his way through to regain his place at Penelope’s side. But as the film goes on, Paul uses his identification with Odysseus to impute motives to the character that aren’t apparent in Homer’s work> He speculates that Odysseus left Ithaca to fight in Troy in order to escape the oppressions of a bad marriage. Odysseus’ purported distaste for his relationship with Penelope is the reason he took so long to return. Godard’s point is that people read texts every which way in order to reflect their mindset at a given time. He also takes care to show that Paul’s views of the Odyssey are Paul’s, not the film’s. Godard fakes the viewer out a bit. He interpolates a shot of a statue of Poseidon to identify the Palance character with the god. But it isn’t too long before he highlights that this was a red herring, particularly when he cuts to a shot of Athene, Odysseus’ protector among the gods, for no discernible allegorical purpose. A shot of a statue is just a shot of a statue, and a text is just a text; the meaning one projects onto it is one’s own.
Is Contempt Godard’s masterpiece? It has certainly taken on that reputation in some quarters. This view of the film seems rooted in the Beat/Counterculture notion that the more “personal” the work is for the artist the better; the highest goal is “self-expression.” I don’t doubt the story material had more private resonance for Godard than, say, that of Breathless or Vivre sa vie. He was married to actress Anna Karina while he was making Contempt, and their relationship was a notoriously stormy one. It’s not a great leap to assume his distress over his own failing marriage is reflected in his portrayal of Paul and Camille. But I don’t prize self-expression for its own sake. I’m more interested in the originality and distinctiveness of what the artist brings to the table. One of the freshest elements of Godard’s work is his capacity for maintaining a coolly cerebral view of his characters while being simultaneously charmed by them. One doesn’t get that with Paul and Camille. Godard seems captivated by their relationship, and he treats them sympathetically, but he doesn’t seem entranced. Contempt, as impressive as it is, often feels like he’s picking a scab.
Reviews of other films by Jean-Luc Godard:
Their break-up is precipitated by Paul’s taking a job as a screenwriter on a new movie version of the Odyssey. The film’s director, Fritz Lang (who plays himself), has reached an impasse with its American producer (Jack Palance), and the producer wants Paul to do rewrite work on the script. His self-respect demands he not take the job. He’s not especially interested in screenwriting, and he’s far more simpatico with Lang than the producer, who’s a smug, quick-tempered vulgarian who reflexively seeks to humiliate everyone he deals with. The producer doesn’t even hide that part of his reason for hiring Paul is the opportunity to hit on Camille. But Paul convinces himself the money is worth it. If nothing else, he’ll be able to finish paying off his and Camille’s Rome apartment. He rationalizes that it’s all for her.
Paul is essentially declaring himself a whore, and it’s clear that his seeing it as being for Camille’s benefit leads him to blame her for the situation. He doesn’t stand in the way of the producer’s efforts to come on to her. He humiliates her further by letting his attention (and hands) wander to the producer’s pretty assistant in her presence. She drops every hint she can that she doesn’t want him to do this job. She even tells him how much happier she was when they didn’t have money, and he was hacking out crime novels for a living. But she’s relying on rapport to tell him how she feels; telling him outright means their love isn’t strong enough to do the job. His resentments stand in the way.
Godard does some of his most skillful writing and directing in this film. The middle section is especially impressive. It’s a sequence set in more or less real time in Paul and Camille’s apartment. The camera follows them while they talk and argue in the apartment’s various rooms. Godard’s writing beautifully evokes the ebb and flow of conversation between two people whose closeness has become distance. Relationships allow--and are even built on--a couple’s ability to speak indirectly to each other and still be understood. Godard shows us the tension and frustrations that come when two people go through the motions of that communication without the bond that makes it work. The skill of the direction is apparent in Godard’s ability to effectively pace this in a brilliantly sustained half-hour set piece. People talking past each other has never been handled more artfully.
The bent of Godard’s previous films was social criticism, but this venture into domestic drama doesn’t mean he’s abandoned his other themes. Contempt also features some of Godard’s most incisive criticism of one’s relationship to books, films, and other media, specifically the tendency to treat a work as an allegory for one’s own experience. Paul of course sees his circumstances in terms of the Odyssey, identifying himself with Odysseus, Camille with Penelope, and Jack Palance’s producer with both Poseidon, Odysseus’ divine nemesis, and the suitors Odysseus must fight his way through to regain his place at Penelope’s side. But as the film goes on, Paul uses his identification with Odysseus to impute motives to the character that aren’t apparent in Homer’s work> He speculates that Odysseus left Ithaca to fight in Troy in order to escape the oppressions of a bad marriage. Odysseus’ purported distaste for his relationship with Penelope is the reason he took so long to return. Godard’s point is that people read texts every which way in order to reflect their mindset at a given time. He also takes care to show that Paul’s views of the Odyssey are Paul’s, not the film’s. Godard fakes the viewer out a bit. He interpolates a shot of a statue of Poseidon to identify the Palance character with the god. But it isn’t too long before he highlights that this was a red herring, particularly when he cuts to a shot of Athene, Odysseus’ protector among the gods, for no discernible allegorical purpose. A shot of a statue is just a shot of a statue, and a text is just a text; the meaning one projects onto it is one’s own.
Is Contempt Godard’s masterpiece? It has certainly taken on that reputation in some quarters. This view of the film seems rooted in the Beat/Counterculture notion that the more “personal” the work is for the artist the better; the highest goal is “self-expression.” I don’t doubt the story material had more private resonance for Godard than, say, that of Breathless or Vivre sa vie. He was married to actress Anna Karina while he was making Contempt, and their relationship was a notoriously stormy one. It’s not a great leap to assume his distress over his own failing marriage is reflected in his portrayal of Paul and Camille. But I don’t prize self-expression for its own sake. I’m more interested in the originality and distinctiveness of what the artist brings to the table. One of the freshest elements of Godard’s work is his capacity for maintaining a coolly cerebral view of his characters while being simultaneously charmed by them. One doesn’t get that with Paul and Camille. Godard seems captivated by their relationship, and he treats them sympathetically, but he doesn’t seem entranced. Contempt, as impressive as it is, often feels like he’s picking a scab.
Reviews of other films by Jean-Luc Godard:
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Film Review: Les Carabiniers
This is a revised version of an article that was originally published at The Hooded Utilitarian on July 18, 2011.
No one enjoys higher stature in the contemporary arts than an accomplished film director. As such, it’s sometimes easy to forget he or she is a human being, as prone to bad days and professional misfires as the rest of us. But I still can’t bring myself to forgive Jean-Luc Godard for Les Carabiniers. The filmmaker’s first four features--Breathless, Le Petit soldat, A Woman Is a Woman, and Vivre sa vie--are all exceptional films, and all the more impressive for Godard’s venturing into new stylistic territory with each one. Les Carabiniers, his fifth feature-length effort, ventures into new territory as well--it’s a combination of satire, black comedy, and slapstick farce--but it’s a remarkably ugly-minded film. Godard reveals himself as a class bigot, and his sneering attitude towards people he regards as cultural inferiors manages to destroy one’s pleasure in his film’s better moments.
The title Les Carabiniers roughly translates as The Riflemen or The Infantrymen, but a more apt English-language title might be The Two Stooges Go to War. It takes place in an imaginary, unnamed country. Michelangelo (Albert Juross) and Ulysses (Marino Mase) are two poor farmers in the hinterlands who live with their wives Venus (Geneviève Galéa) and Cleopatra (Catherine Ribeiro). They work a small farm that’s pitiful even by the standard of Appalachian sharecroppers. They are visited one day by military recruiters who deliver a letter from the king. The letter asks the two farmers to enlist in the current war. The recruiters sweeten the request by promising the farmers will be rewarded with wealth after their service, and that while in the service they will be allowed to steal, rape, and murder to their heart’s content. Ulysses signs on because he is flattered the king considers him a friend. Michelangelo follows after confirming he will be allowed to act on his long litany of violent fantasies. We watch the two over the course of their misadventures, which they write about to their wives.
Michelangelo and Ulysses (and their wives) are idiots, and Godard uses them to reinforce just about every hostile bourgeois stereotype about the poor. They’re gullible and easily manipulated. By dint of their characters, they are chronically incapable of taking care of themselves—the shabbiness of the pair’s home and farm appears more the consequence of sloth and neglect than misfortune. They have no thoughtfulness about the future; instead of seeing the king’s reward as an opportunity to build a better life for themselves, all they can think of are the luxury items they believe the money will enable them to buy. And of course, they’re innately vicious thugs who feel no compunction about murder and are delighted by the opportunities for rape. Michelangelo particularly enjoys holding women captive; he lifts up their skirts with his rifle, and orders them at gunpoint to strip. Implicit in all this is the common upper-class prejudice that the poor, for the sake of their moral good, need to be worked to the point of collapse for minimal compensation, lest they have the freedom and money to indulge their true beastly selves. There’s no awareness whatsoever of the fact that the more affluent members of society can be at least as sociopathic as the poorer ones, or that many lower-income people are grounded, morally upright individuals with strong work ethics, and are devoted to building the best possible lives for themselves and their families. I’ve lived and worked among all classes of people, and I’ve known people without high-school diplomas who are more sensible, reliable, and intelligent than many of the millionaires and Ivy-League PhDs of my acquaintance. There’s good and bad in all walks of life.
Godard’s snobbish bigotry infects and undermines even the film’s most artful moments. In one, Michelangelo sees his first movie. It’s a short-subject of an attractive woman preparing for and taking a bath. However, it is discreetly staged and shot to avoid nudity. Michelngelo moves back and forth in the row of seats trying to see the woman after she’s walked out of the frame, and then jumps in front of the screen attempting to look down at her in the tub. He ultimately tears down the screen in frustration. When one considers this scene alongside Godard’s work in other films, it’s apparent that part of the aesthetic motive is to use Michelangelo’s reaction as an opportunity for slapstick commentary about how film redefines reality. But in the terms of this particular film, what comes across is Godard mocking the character as a pervy ignoramus who is so in thrall to lust that he’ll destroy anything in pursuit of gratifying it.
Or consider the film’s most famous scene. When Michelangelo and Ulysses return home, they show their wives the riches of the world they’ve gathered. It’s a suitcase full of postcards featuring assorted monuments, animals, and celebrities, and we’re treated to all of them in a superbly sustained ten-minute sequence. Godard is fond of inverting the Wallace Stevens notion of “not ideas about the thing but the thing itself.” With the characters in his films, it’s not the thing but ideas of the thing that are important. It’s a charming, witty social critique when applied to people played by actors with the glamour of Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, or Jean Seberg. Godard romanticizes and identifies with these figures, and the critique comes off as a perceptive acknowledgement of currents in contemporary culture. But when he applies it to dolts like these farmers and their wives, it comes across as a smirking, sneering “Ha ha ha, look at those stupid hicks.” The Coen brothers are the major purveyors of this brand of smug obnoxiousness in contemporary U.S. films, and I think even they’d find Godard’s venture into it embarrassing.
It’s worthwhile to compare Les Carabiniers to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. The two films were made at approximately the same time, and both couch their anti-war satire in the context of slapstick farce. But while Godard lampoons the soldiers, Kubrick focuses his attacks on the most powerful and privileged members of government: heads of state, generals, and other high-level figures. By portraying such people as petty buffoons, he’s implicitly questioning their fitness for their positions. Given that the film’s nightmarish nuclear-war scenario is only a small leap from the Cold-War circumstances of the time, it’s impossible not to see it as a harsh broadside against those figures’ real-life counterparts--only fools and madmen could bring us to the cusp of the situation the film depicts. Kubrick does not show enlisted soldiers in Dr. Strangelove. The closest he comes is his portrayal of the subordinate officers Captain Mandrake, Major Kong, and Colonel Guano. Mandrake is the film’s lone voice of reason, and while Kong and Guano are clowns, their clownishness is a reflection of their unquestioning subservience to the monsters above them in the chain of command. Unlike Michelangelo and Ulysses, they’re not savages in search of an outlet for their criminal tendencies. Kubrick does what any good social critic does: he afflicts the powerful. Godard, on the other hand, provides aid and comfort to their bigotries. Les Carabiniers is a contemptible piece of work, and unworthy of its maker. There are things too odious for even the excuse of a bad day.
Reviews of other films by Jean-Luc Godard:
The title Les Carabiniers roughly translates as The Riflemen or The Infantrymen, but a more apt English-language title might be The Two Stooges Go to War. It takes place in an imaginary, unnamed country. Michelangelo (Albert Juross) and Ulysses (Marino Mase) are two poor farmers in the hinterlands who live with their wives Venus (Geneviève Galéa) and Cleopatra (Catherine Ribeiro). They work a small farm that’s pitiful even by the standard of Appalachian sharecroppers. They are visited one day by military recruiters who deliver a letter from the king. The letter asks the two farmers to enlist in the current war. The recruiters sweeten the request by promising the farmers will be rewarded with wealth after their service, and that while in the service they will be allowed to steal, rape, and murder to their heart’s content. Ulysses signs on because he is flattered the king considers him a friend. Michelangelo follows after confirming he will be allowed to act on his long litany of violent fantasies. We watch the two over the course of their misadventures, which they write about to their wives.
Michelangelo and Ulysses (and their wives) are idiots, and Godard uses them to reinforce just about every hostile bourgeois stereotype about the poor. They’re gullible and easily manipulated. By dint of their characters, they are chronically incapable of taking care of themselves—the shabbiness of the pair’s home and farm appears more the consequence of sloth and neglect than misfortune. They have no thoughtfulness about the future; instead of seeing the king’s reward as an opportunity to build a better life for themselves, all they can think of are the luxury items they believe the money will enable them to buy. And of course, they’re innately vicious thugs who feel no compunction about murder and are delighted by the opportunities for rape. Michelangelo particularly enjoys holding women captive; he lifts up their skirts with his rifle, and orders them at gunpoint to strip. Implicit in all this is the common upper-class prejudice that the poor, for the sake of their moral good, need to be worked to the point of collapse for minimal compensation, lest they have the freedom and money to indulge their true beastly selves. There’s no awareness whatsoever of the fact that the more affluent members of society can be at least as sociopathic as the poorer ones, or that many lower-income people are grounded, morally upright individuals with strong work ethics, and are devoted to building the best possible lives for themselves and their families. I’ve lived and worked among all classes of people, and I’ve known people without high-school diplomas who are more sensible, reliable, and intelligent than many of the millionaires and Ivy-League PhDs of my acquaintance. There’s good and bad in all walks of life.
Godard’s snobbish bigotry infects and undermines even the film’s most artful moments. In one, Michelangelo sees his first movie. It’s a short-subject of an attractive woman preparing for and taking a bath. However, it is discreetly staged and shot to avoid nudity. Michelngelo moves back and forth in the row of seats trying to see the woman after she’s walked out of the frame, and then jumps in front of the screen attempting to look down at her in the tub. He ultimately tears down the screen in frustration. When one considers this scene alongside Godard’s work in other films, it’s apparent that part of the aesthetic motive is to use Michelangelo’s reaction as an opportunity for slapstick commentary about how film redefines reality. But in the terms of this particular film, what comes across is Godard mocking the character as a pervy ignoramus who is so in thrall to lust that he’ll destroy anything in pursuit of gratifying it.
Or consider the film’s most famous scene. When Michelangelo and Ulysses return home, they show their wives the riches of the world they’ve gathered. It’s a suitcase full of postcards featuring assorted monuments, animals, and celebrities, and we’re treated to all of them in a superbly sustained ten-minute sequence. Godard is fond of inverting the Wallace Stevens notion of “not ideas about the thing but the thing itself.” With the characters in his films, it’s not the thing but ideas of the thing that are important. It’s a charming, witty social critique when applied to people played by actors with the glamour of Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, or Jean Seberg. Godard romanticizes and identifies with these figures, and the critique comes off as a perceptive acknowledgement of currents in contemporary culture. But when he applies it to dolts like these farmers and their wives, it comes across as a smirking, sneering “Ha ha ha, look at those stupid hicks.” The Coen brothers are the major purveyors of this brand of smug obnoxiousness in contemporary U.S. films, and I think even they’d find Godard’s venture into it embarrassing.
It’s worthwhile to compare Les Carabiniers to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. The two films were made at approximately the same time, and both couch their anti-war satire in the context of slapstick farce. But while Godard lampoons the soldiers, Kubrick focuses his attacks on the most powerful and privileged members of government: heads of state, generals, and other high-level figures. By portraying such people as petty buffoons, he’s implicitly questioning their fitness for their positions. Given that the film’s nightmarish nuclear-war scenario is only a small leap from the Cold-War circumstances of the time, it’s impossible not to see it as a harsh broadside against those figures’ real-life counterparts--only fools and madmen could bring us to the cusp of the situation the film depicts. Kubrick does not show enlisted soldiers in Dr. Strangelove. The closest he comes is his portrayal of the subordinate officers Captain Mandrake, Major Kong, and Colonel Guano. Mandrake is the film’s lone voice of reason, and while Kong and Guano are clowns, their clownishness is a reflection of their unquestioning subservience to the monsters above them in the chain of command. Unlike Michelangelo and Ulysses, they’re not savages in search of an outlet for their criminal tendencies. Kubrick does what any good social critic does: he afflicts the powerful. Godard, on the other hand, provides aid and comfort to their bigotries. Les Carabiniers is a contemptible piece of work, and unworthy of its maker. There are things too odious for even the excuse of a bad day.
Reviews of other films by Jean-Luc Godard:
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Short Take: The Avengers, Season 3, Episode 12: "Don't Look Behind You"
This review was originally published on Pol Culture.
“Don’t Look Behind You,” the 12th episode from The Avengers’ third season, is one of the series’ most suspenseful. The show’s heroine, Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), is invited to spend the weekend at a country estate. But once there, she finds her host has departed. Things at the house get stranger and stranger, until it becomes clear she was lured there by a vengeful criminal who’s obsessed with her. The teleplay, by Brian Clemens, features some remarkable absurdist characters, specifically the disturbed young actress (Janine Gray) who greets Gale at the house, and an obnoxious stranded motorist (Kenneth Colley), who has fantasies of himself as celebrity filmmakers. Peter Hammond, who directed, uses the house interiors and its oddball décor for maximum atmospheric effect. The viewer is made to identify with Gale and her feeling that she’s stepped into a madhouse from which there’s no escape. Hammond also provides some striking surrealist moments in the climax. The montage of photos of Gale--some mutilated, some not--when the villain finally attacks her is especially memorable. Gale's partner John Steed (Patrick Macnee) is absent for most of the story. He appears only in the opening scenes and the finale. The episode was remade as “The Joker” in the show’s fifth season, with Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel in Cathy Gale’s place.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Short Take: The Servant
This review was originally published on Pol Culture.
The first two-thirds of The Servant (1963) is a terrific black farce: taut and marvelously droll. A young London playboy (James Fox) comes into his inheritance, buys a townhouse, and hires a “gentleman’s gentleman” (Dirk Bogarde), a live-in butler who will attend to every household need. At first, the butler proves an ideal servant: devoted to his job, an excellent cook, and he never leaves a detail out of place. The only downside is that his presence drives the playboy’s fiancée (Wendy Craig) right up the wall. Things then take a delightfully sinister turn. The butler brings his “sister” (Sarah Miles) to the house, and convinces the playboy to take her on as a maid. However, the butler’s real purpose in having her there is to undermine the playboy’s relationship with his fiancée. The director, Joseph Losey, and the screenwriter, future Nobel literature laureate Harold Pinter, are masters of both cadence and portent. They keep the viewer so attentive to nuance that the slightest discord--a misplaced word, a slight shift in voice, a stray gesture--ratchets up the suspense to thrilling levels. They take the viewer right inside the quiet hostility between the butler and the fiancée, and the sexual tension between the playboy and the “sister” is nothing less than dazzling. Dirk Bogarde is superbly unctuous in the title role--the character goes from unassuming to devious to malevolent, and the shifts feel effortless. James Fox makes the playboy the perfect foil; the fellow’s surface confidence is impeccably conveyed, but one never doubts what a weak-willed twerp he is underneath. As the “sister,” Sarah Miles is teasing, slatternly perfection. While Wendy Craig lacks the bravura of her co-stars, she isn’t diminished by them, either; she hits every note with precision. The first two acts are so strong that one may want to put the disappointment of the third out of mind. Losey and Pinter build the second act to an electrifying climax, but they never regain their momentum. The third act has the playboy becoming subordinate to the butler, and the film devolves into an uninspired theater-of-the-absurd piece. But it’s a great movie until then, and one’s inclined to say it’s a great movie regardless. Douglas Slocombe provided the excellent black-and-white cinematography. The witty art direction, which Losey uses for hilarious symbolic commentary on the characters, is by Richard Macdonald and Ted Clements. The screenplay was derived from a novella by Robin Maugham.
The first two-thirds of The Servant (1963) is a terrific black farce: taut and marvelously droll. A young London playboy (James Fox) comes into his inheritance, buys a townhouse, and hires a “gentleman’s gentleman” (Dirk Bogarde), a live-in butler who will attend to every household need. At first, the butler proves an ideal servant: devoted to his job, an excellent cook, and he never leaves a detail out of place. The only downside is that his presence drives the playboy’s fiancée (Wendy Craig) right up the wall. Things then take a delightfully sinister turn. The butler brings his “sister” (Sarah Miles) to the house, and convinces the playboy to take her on as a maid. However, the butler’s real purpose in having her there is to undermine the playboy’s relationship with his fiancée. The director, Joseph Losey, and the screenwriter, future Nobel literature laureate Harold Pinter, are masters of both cadence and portent. They keep the viewer so attentive to nuance that the slightest discord--a misplaced word, a slight shift in voice, a stray gesture--ratchets up the suspense to thrilling levels. They take the viewer right inside the quiet hostility between the butler and the fiancée, and the sexual tension between the playboy and the “sister” is nothing less than dazzling. Dirk Bogarde is superbly unctuous in the title role--the character goes from unassuming to devious to malevolent, and the shifts feel effortless. James Fox makes the playboy the perfect foil; the fellow’s surface confidence is impeccably conveyed, but one never doubts what a weak-willed twerp he is underneath. As the “sister,” Sarah Miles is teasing, slatternly perfection. While Wendy Craig lacks the bravura of her co-stars, she isn’t diminished by them, either; she hits every note with precision. The first two acts are so strong that one may want to put the disappointment of the third out of mind. Losey and Pinter build the second act to an electrifying climax, but they never regain their momentum. The third act has the playboy becoming subordinate to the butler, and the film devolves into an uninspired theater-of-the-absurd piece. But it’s a great movie until then, and one’s inclined to say it’s a great movie regardless. Douglas Slocombe provided the excellent black-and-white cinematography. The witty art direction, which Losey uses for hilarious symbolic commentary on the characters, is by Richard Macdonald and Ted Clements. The screenplay was derived from a novella by Robin Maugham.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)