Ingmar Bergman, o grande realizador sueco cujo desaparecimento já se aproxima de um ano (30 de julho de 2007), como grande autor de filmes, à exceção de alguns atípicos, construiu uma filmografia que se poderia dizer composta de uma única obra, o "macrofilme", e os filmes singulares apenas se constituem em variações sobre um mesmo tema. Um verdadeiro autor de filmes, na exata acepção da palavra, a possuir um universo ficcional próprio e um estilo marcante, a rigor realiza sempre um "macrofilme", a exemplo de tantos outros (Antonioni, Welles, Carl Dreyer, Hitchcock, Chaplin, et caterva).

Bergman, por exemplo, utilizava-se do veículo cinematográfico para expressar a sua filosofia de vida e visão do mundo. Suas constantes temáticas mais explícitas giram em torno do silêncio de Deus, que, segundo ele, se existe realmente, abandonou suas criaturas num mundo miserável e hostil do qual a única saída possível, para a possibilidade de momentos de felicidade, está no amor e na arte.

Leia o texto completo clicando no post A morte, esta implacável.

Cast & Credits

Directed by John Huston. Written by Tony Huston; based on the story Dubliners by James Joyce. MPAA: Rated PG. Runtime: 83 min.

1974 - Director: Roman Polanski
Screenplay: Robert Towne
Genre: Crime/Detective/Murder Mystery/Thriller
Classic American Cinema

Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway headline a great cast in this memorable Roman Polanski film - the first he made after the infamous brutal Manson slaying of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate.

Set in 1933 Los Angles, Nicholson is Jake Gittes, a detective who's hired by a woman who calls herself Mrs. Mulwray to spy on her husband, whom she suspects of cheating.

When a second Mrs. Mulwray appears on the scene, ordering Jake to drop the case, he finds he can't. The trail he follows leads to major conspiracy, corruption, incest and murder.

Polanski himself makes a cameo appearance as the "man with knife" and John Huston is a terrific villain. Arguably, one of the best American films ever made, one of Nicholson's finest performances - and, like all good cinema, it withstands the test of time.

Chinatown Part I

Chinatown Part II

Not really, of course. Joseph Losey's pseudonymously-directed 1956 mystery was released as THE INTIMATE STRANGER (great title, and apt!) in the UK, and FINGER OF GUILT (sappy, generic title) in the US. So I've simply combined the two titles into one SUPER-TITLE. Richard Basehart plays the titular finger.

For its blacklisted director (working as "Joseph Walton" in the UK version, using producer Alec C Snowden as a front for the US release) and writer (the celebrated Howard Koch, writing as "Peter Howard") it was a payday and a chance to establish themselves in the UK film industry. Koch dismissed the result as entirely undistinguished, but it led to better things.

I'd never taken notice of Richard Basehart much before except in IL BIDONE, where he's dubbed. Here it was a shock to hear him sounding like John Huston -- since Basehart played Ishmael in Huston's MOBY DICK the same year, I'm assuming this is a deliberate impersonation, decades before Daniel Day-Lewis made off with Huston's gravelly purr for THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

One thing that's fascinated me about all the Losey films I've run recently is the element of autobiography. From Michael Redgrave's alcoholism in TIME WITHOUT PITY to the tortured father-son relations in THE BIG NIGHT, each Losey film seems to declare some personal significance. Most blatantly of all, FINGER-STRANGER deals with a blacklisted filmmaker driven out of the US and targeted by a conspiracy in a British studio. The atmosphere of paranoia and persecution must have been something both Losey and Koch could relate to.

STRANGER-FINGER begins with an eye examination, the bright light being something which will return at the climax:

At the start.

And at the end.

Basehart begins to tell his life story and we delve into flashback, and eventually wonder "Hang on, why is he sharing all this guff with his OPTICIAN?" then we realise that the eye-man must actually be a head-shrinker only the film just kinda forgot to mention it. The framing structure is wholly unnecessary anyway, but as with Losey's earlier THE SLEEPING TIGER, it takes us back to that innocent '50s faith in psycho-analysis -- a lot of the lefties who got drummed out of Ho'wood had the same trust in Freud they showed in Stalin, but then Freud was huge all over tinseltown, where the Big Lie is what business is founded on, and all the couch-space in town is eaten up by rich fruit-loops.

The story gimmick -- young exec is tormented by mysterious letters, recalls the opening of Altman's THE PLAYER, but this one develops differently: a young woman writes to Basehart and his wife (daughter of studio boss Roger Livesey) claiming to have had an affair with Basehart. He has no memory of her, yet she's insistent, and seems sincere.

Alas, the first half is quite unbelievably stately, with the editor lingering on every scene after the protagonist has left. Maybe the movie was too short? Losey's filming is fluid, but rarely provides the flash of Hollywood excitement he brought to the best bits of SLEEPING TIGER.

All that holds the attention during this opening trundle is the central question -- who the hell is this girl and what is she all about? -- OK, two questions -- plus some spectacularly inappropriate and loud stock music. All early British Losey films seem to feature scenes where women put on loud records then attempt to talk. At times the score here is effective, as it must be: if you play tender moments with CRIME JAZZ and suspense bits with Liberace schmaltz, it WILL WORK at times, and when it does it'll be better than if you did it the sane way round. Half the time here it doesn't work at all, and drunkenly pulls you out of the film, but there's one romantic clinch where the timpani freak-out accompaniment fairly gets your pulse going and you think, "Golly, THIS IS CINEMA!" for maybe the only time.

So, the police attempt to cherchez la femme fatale, but she keeps her cool and doesn't change her story, and they wind up doubting Basehart. For a moment it looks like her long recitation of her imaginary past life with Basehart is going to lead into a flashback, which would give us a flashback within a flashback within an opticians, but she cuts it short and saves us the detour.

There's a heavy spoiler alert now, because if I give away the ending then there's no real reason to see this underwhelming effort, which might be a good thing, but it's your choice, OK?

Basehart finds out that the whole thing was a set-up. His boss's assistant, played by diminutive Welsh house-elf Mervyn Johns, resenting Basehart's ascendancy, has hired an actress to destroy his life. That's studio politics for you.There's a tiresome false ending where Basehart thinks Livesey was behind the frame-up, then Johns gives himself away by repeating the whole plot in a dubbing booth with the mic on and broadcasting his (finger of) guilt to the whole sound stage -- oops! Then Basehart persecutes his nemesis with an arc light (like all Celts, he instinctively fears bright illumination) before clubbing him to the studio floor with his powerful Richard Basehart fists. Regrettably, a climax where a muscular young man beats up an elderly, out of shape guy half his height into a tiny, defenseless Welsh pulp is not exactly a nail-biting suspenser.

Now the film pauses yet again to admire sultry Mary Murphy (from THE WILD ONE), who has been enticingly cool throughout, then reunites Basehart with his estranged wife, who somehow got the news he's innocent before anybody else knew.

Not a great film, but a great central enigma, and the blacklisting angle (not explicitly political -- Basehart had a fling with a studio boss's wife) is enticing. At the end, Basehart furiously calls Johns "an informer", and the rage in that scene feels... personal.

The producers would like to thank Fiona Watson for the phrase "tiny, defenseless Welsh pulp."

John Huston's 1948 treasure-hunt classic begins as drifter Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), down and out in Tampico, Mexico, impulsively spends his last bit of dough on a lottery ticket. Later on, Dobbs and fellow indigent Curtin (Tim Holt) seek shelter in a cheap flophouse and meet Howard (Walter Huston), a toothless, garrulous old coot who regales them with stories about prospecting for gold. Forcibly collecting their pay from their shifty boss, Dobbs and Curtin combine this money with Dobbs's unexpected windfall from a lottery ticket and, together with Howard, buy the tools for a prospecting expedition. Dobbs has pledged that anything they dig up will be split three ways, but Howard, who's heard that song before, doesn't quite swallow this. As the gold is mined and measured, Dobbs grows increasingly paranoid and distrustful, and the men gradually turn against each other on the way toward a bitterly ironic conclusion. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a superior morality play and one of the best movie treatments of the corrosiveness of greed. Huston keeps a typically light and entertaining touch despite the strong theme, for which he won Oscars for both Director and Screenplay, as well as a supporting award for his father Walter, making Walter, John, and Anjelica Huston the only three generations of one family all to win Oscars.
DVD Releases
Similar Movies
Black Water Gold (1969, Alan Landsburg)
Greed (1924, Erich Von Stroheim)
Legend of the Lost (1957, Henry Hathaway)
MacKenna's Gold (1969, J. Lee Thompson)
Trespass (1992, Walter Hill)
Plunder of the Sun (1953, John Farrow)
The Trail of '98 (1928, Clarence Brown)
The Last Posse (1953, Alfred L. Werker)
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Movies with the Same Personnel
The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)
The African Queen (1951, John Huston)
Key Largo (1948, John Huston)
The Red Badge of Courage (1951, John Huston)
Beat the Devil (1953, John Huston)
High Sierra (1941, Raoul Walsh)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975, John Huston)
Across the Pacific (1942, John Huston)
Other Related Movies
is related to: Across the Pacific (1942, John Huston)
The African Queen (1951, John Huston)
Beat the Devil (1953, John Huston)
Key Largo (1948, John Huston)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston
Ack: www.allmovies.com

compiler:benny

Huston speaks lovingly of working with Humphrey Bogart, saying that "he was the first choice for all the pictures I did with him and is still my first choice in pictures...I only wish he were here to do them today." The irony that Huston heartily puffs away on a giant cigar while eulogizing Bogart and writer James Agee (The African Queen), both of whom died from smoking-related illnesses is hard to miss.

"People who know him, or who have drunk with him, or who have worked with him, say that he's about the best company you can get, if you can stand the pace."

When we started this blog last month I made a point of mentioning There Will Be Blood as an example of how so much modern film criticism has become bandwagon-driven and ill-considered besides. So with its somewhat hurried release to DVD this week the time seems right to explain what we're thinking.

As I said then, the film is not a bad movie, but it is not a good one, either. In fact much of it screams "journeyman effort." Director P.T. Anderson has made four films before this, one very good (Boogie Nights), two good (Magnolia and Sidney), and one intriguing misfire (Punch Drunk Love). If nothing else, his films have always been ambitious, and perhaps his greatest fault is a grasp that outdistances his talented reach.

This film is masterfully visualized and expertly shot, so that almost every frame is meticulously composed. The craftsmanship is not at issue: the problem is that the story does not add up to anything coherent while the characters' motivations remain maddeningly opaque. The audience understands that Day-Lewis' Daniel Plainview is a conflicted individual with an Ayn Randian drive towards wealth and power. But the reasons are left ambivalent: worse, his antagonism for Paul Dano's clay-footed preacher Eli Sunday is never fleshed-out besides an impatience with Sunday's meddling. In crafting the images, Anderson forgot to fill them with ideas, so the end result is a shell - a lovely shell, but like the Grecian urn all the running around on its surface is ultimately pointless.

In attempting to make an American epic that explores the uneasy relationship between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of money, Anderson might have addressed why Protestant Christianity, particularly its twin lures of salvation and eventual afterlife, played a vital part of frontier society. Briefly, the thought of a Heaven to come made the grinding poverty and hardship tolerable.

Yet There Will Be Blood almost visibly cringes anytime a hint of complexity bubbles to its rugged surface. Especially in our own time, when religion is an actively divisive force in much of American culture and politics, such an examination might help the film transcend its limitations. But such ideas are difficult to translate into pretty images. Worse, they're hard to act very loud about (more on that in a second.) Religion itself is instead reduced to a shallow conceit of the selfish, a clumsy flimflammery ideal for the venal and foolish. Such generalizations are expedient, but they're not accurate nor are they intelligent. They're also not fair.

It's very likely Anderson didn't mean to be so dogmatic, that he was instead interested in adapting a work and creating a film worthy of its esteemed influences, which include the works of Terrence Malick, George Stevens, and of course John Huston. But to confuse the intention with achievement is to endorse style over substance, and to confuse mimicry with competence. As a filmmaker, he's lip-syncing. And speaking of the triumph of style over depth...

Day-Lewis does not inhabit Plalnview so much as he swallows the character whole, and his celebrated decision to "channel" Huston leaves little room for actually giving dimension to his fretting and strutting around. When you start with larger than life, there's little room to build from there, and he goes loud rather than deep. Besides which, the choice of Huston as role model for this kind of character is sort of obvious. 

Day-Lewis is not a bad actor, but like Anthony Hopkins or even Richard Burton he's not above giving a lazy performance, either. With this and his similar damn-the-torpedoes turn in Gangs of New York (another hysterically overrated film), a pattern's emerging of overacting disguised as intensity, a self-insistence that would seem megalomaniacal if it wasn't soft-pedaled by the endorsement of too many film critics. Well, enough is enough. Day-Lewis' acting has become much like the heavy metal played at air shows and truck and tractor pulls. Egregiously loud, and compelling enough within the confines of its setting, but of little substance when considered in any other context. Unfortunately, like Hopkins his prestige seems to rise the shallower his acting becomes.

Probably in an awards season less starved for quality material There Will Be Blood would have been disregarded as an earnest misstep. Maybe not. Several months after its theatrical release, however, it's time to call the publicity department's bluff and see through the hype. It is a mediocre film by a good director who, now that the rancorous praise has subsided, might yet learn from his mistakes.

- Michael Kabel

Pasado

Durante su campaña en las elecciones de 2004, la guerra en oriente era una de las grandes preocupaciones del candidato George W. Bush, quien en su primer período como presidente había ordenado la invasión a Afganistán en octubre de 2001. Bush tenía miedo de terminar igual que su padre en los noventa: victorioso fuera de casa, pero derrotado en ella.

Presente

Hoy hubo otro atentado en Afganistán. Su objetivo era un convoy de tropas de la OTAN. Hubo al menos ocho muertos y 22 heridos, todos civiles, según informa el diario Clarín.

Mientras tanto, en Estados Unidos, continúa la disputa por las próximas elecciones: en la esquina derecha, John McCain; en la esquina izquierda (que desde nuestra ubicación en la última fila de la platea sur se parece bastante a la otra), Hillary Clinton y Barack Obama compiten por saber quién irá por la gloria al centro del ring y quién se quedará afuera con el banquito y la toalla, esperando otra oportunidad.

Futuro

Según noticia de la agencia AFP (reproducida el 4 de abril en el diario El Comercio, de Ecuador), Estados Unidos planea enviar más tropas a Afganistán en 2009. El ministro de defensa, Robert Gates, opinó que esto sucederá sin importar quién resulte elegido presidente en las elecciones de noviembre próximo, ya que cualquiera que triunfe “querrá tener éxito en Afganistán".

Eternidad

En Estados Unidos, elecciones muy disputadas; en la otra punta del mundo, guerra y muerte. Y mientras tanto, gente inocente que vive su pequeña vida, la cual se filtra entre los grandes sucesos de la Historia.

Algo como esto ya estaba escrito en Moby Dick, cuya actualidad resulta sorprendente. En el Capítulo 1 —uno de los mejores comienzos de la literatura universal—, el protagonista, Ismael, nos cuenta sus razones para hacerse a la mar en un barco ballenero:

Pero, ¿por qué razón después de haber olido tantas veces el mar como marinero mercante, se me habrá metido en la cabeza la idea de zarpar en un ballenero? Esto podrá explicarlo mejor que nadie el invisible oficial de policía de los Hados, que me vigila sin cesar, me acosa en secreto e influye sobre mí de modo inexplicable. Y sin duda, este viaje mío en un ballenero formaba parte del gran programa que la Providencia organizó hace mucho tiempo. Surgió como una especie de breve interludio, un solo, entre los números más importantes. Imagino que esa parte del programa debió de sonar más o menos así:

GRAN LUCHA ELECTORAL
POR LA PRESIDENCIA DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS
Un individuo de nombre Ismael viaja en un ballenero
SANGRIENTA BATALLA EN AFGANISTÁN

No puedo decir el motivo exacto por el cual esos directores de escena que son los Hados me adjudicaron este papel tan deslucido del viaje en un ballenero [...]

Moby Dick, o la ballena blanca, de Herman Melville, obra cumbre de la narrativa norteamericana, se publicó en el año 1851. Los grandes hechos de la Historia siguen siendo los mismos: batallas de votos y de sangre. Decir que no hay nada nuevo bajo el sol tampoco sería decir algo nuevo.

_______
Imagen: Gregory Peck como el Capitán Ahab, obsesionado por la ballena blanca en la versión cinematográfica de John Huston (1956).

Cast & Credits

Directed by John Huston. Written by Guy Gallo; based on the novel by Malcolm Lowry. MPAA: Rated R. Runtime: 112 min.

Retratos, Truman Capote.

Cast & Credits

Directed by John Huston. Screenplay by Ben Maddow and John Huston; based on the novel by W.R. Burnett. MPAA: Approved. Runtime: 112 min.

40. FREDDY KRUGER (Robert Englund)

Este tipo de cara deformada jersey rayado y con cuchillas en las manos (era el reverso tenebroso de Eduardo Manostijeras) se dedicaba a amenazarte en tus sueños en la saga de “Pesadilla en Elm Street” aunque al final terminó dando más pena que otra cosa.

39. TOMMY DE VITO (Joe Pesci)

Mafiosillo gracioso de la tribu de “Uno de los Nuestros” pequeño y peligroso al mismo tiempo no dudaba en contarte un chiste y matarte inmediatamente si pensaba que te estabas riendo de él.

38. AURIC GOLDFINGER (Gert Fröbe)

De todos los villanos que se enfrentaron con James Bond, este sin lugar a dudas fue el más carismático y el primero de todos los que tenía los mayores avances tecnológicos para dominar el planeta (Argumento bastante socorrido en la saga). Película: “Goldfinger”

37. JESÚS QUINTANA (John Turturro)

De acuerdo que no es villano más poderoso pero a El Nota en “El Gran Lebowski” le saca de quicio mientras baila al son de los Gipsy Kings mientras juegan a los bolos. Walter dice de él que además de esto es un pederasta.

36. HANS GRUBER (Alan Rickman)

Tuvo la osadía de enfrentarse a Bruce Willis en “La Jungla de Cristal” y por lo tanto ser víctima de una serie importante de humillaciones a cargo del Sargento John McLane, desde quedar en evidencia su cultura cinematográfica, ser insultado como “Yippie Ka Yeah Hijo de Puta” para terminar siendo arrojado por la ventana de un rascacielos.

35. SR. POTTER (Lionel Barrymore)

Malo malísimo sin un atisbo de bondad capaz de amargarle las navidades a George Bailey en “¡Qué Bello es Vivir! y de paso a todas las televisiones que la programan navidad tras navidad.

34. ANNIE WILESKY (Kathy Bates)

Mala por amor al arte que obliga a su escritor favorito a elaborar una gran novela a riesgo de partirle las piernas en “Misery”.

33. JASON VOORHEES

Se  ocultaba  tras  una  máscara  de  hockey  y  mataba  a  quien  encontrara  por  delante. Sin  más.

32. ORDELL ROBBIE (Samuel L. Jackson)

El antagonista más molón del Blackspotation de LA. Sabe mucho sobre armas de fuego y ante la duda de que un trabajador del hampa pueda delatarle le liquida en Jackie Brown.

31. NOAH CROSS (John Huston)

Político deshonesto como tantos otros que busca desesperadamente a su nieta fruto de la relación incestuosa con su hija.

30. BABY JANE (Bette Davis)

Con  una  infancia  muy  mal  digerida  se  dedicará  a  amargar  la  vida  a  su hermana  Joan  Crawford  a  cada  cual  más  patéticas  en “¿Qué Fue de Baby Jane?”

29. MICHAEL MYERS

Otro de los asesinos sin id