The Servant-1963

British films never had it so rich as when Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter decided to work together. Their collaboration began in 1963 and lasted till 1971. A Taste of Honey, Lawrence of Arabia, A Man for All Seasons, Dr.No, Gold Finger,Billy Liar, Oliver Twist, Darling, Ipcress File,The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,Far from the Madding Crowd, Women In Love and This Sporting Life all belong to this period. What rich and varied themes!   Harold Pinter’s subtle prose explored the dark alleyways so little covered before him. Pinter was interested in power relationships between people. The servant is more of a study of between individuals than between classes. Losey’s craftsmanship made the theme stand out vividly with all the nuances of the struggle for control. The Servant had much more. It had great cinematography and excellent performances by Dirk Bogarde and James Fox make it one of the Best 100 films. (The film won three BAFTA awards.)  Thereafter they went on to produce Accident(1967) and The Go-Between (1971).
Theme:
A rich privileged youngman employs a manservant who gradually takes over the household and, with the aid of his ’sister’, bring down his downfall.
The opening sequence of stark, leafless trees outlined against a cold English sky and two individuals in contrast sets the tone of something somber if not sinister manipulations that could follow. The two lead male characters are introduced straightaway in a telling fashion: the first shot of Barrett, in his jaunty no-nonsense appearance indicates he means business and he is at the door of his future employer precisely on time. Against this we get to see his employer Tony as vulnerable and asleep in a chair.

The drama revolves around issues of both class and gender, and the relationship between the master and the servant. While Barrett slowly insinuates himself in the house and manipulates his master it is because he needs that position very badly whereas the nob of the house with his upper-crust upbringing cannot care less if he could follow through his ideas of tapping wealth from the rainforests of Brazil or not. For Barrett it is vital that he stay employed. So cleverly he makes himself very useful by slyly rearranging the décor or snooping around the doings of his master. Of course he has sized up his master well enough to turn the screw one more notch that he may not be got rid of so easily. He brings his alluring and sexually permissive ’sister’, Vera (Sarah Miles) and let her find employment under the same roof. He engineers to bring them together and as he had foreseen the master is smitten by her allure and uninhibited sex drive.
Barrett knows that his master’s fiancée sees through him and therefore is a threat. So he so arranges to reveal his master’s lust for Vera in a very subtle way. After Susan leaves him Tony feebly tries to take control of his own life. He fires Barrett and Vera. Already a steady drinker, he begins hitting the bottle hard. Barrett and he meet up in the local pub and Barrett begs him for another chance. Tony, who is incapable of tending to his own needs, desperately needs a caretaker and Barrett truly is a professional gentleman’s gentleman who knows no other way of life. It’s a classic co-dependency and their positions are realigned. The master has come down to his level where he can take care of him as before.
Several scenes (particularly those between Tony, Barrett and Susan) are seen through the distortion of the big, round, convex mirror which sits on the living room wall, reflecting the unnatural, mismatched relationships between the people in the room. Each shot is directed with precision, often framing Susan or Vera between Tony and Barrett, or positioning one of the two men close to the camera while his rival lingers in the background.

Cast: Dirk Bogarde (Hugo Barrett); James Fox (Tony); Wendy Craig (Susan); Sarah Miles (Vera); Catherine Lacey (Lady Mounset)

( ack: www.epinions.com- by metalluk ’05; screenonline-Caroline Millar)
compiler:benny

Hell With It!

The news of Sharon Tate killing forty years ago made a great impact on me especially at a time I was just getting into grips with life and death. I asked myself: Does God let innocents suffer? Merely because she happened to be the wife of Roman Polanski against whom Manson had some grudge? The senselessness of life I can still see erupting at random. Do I worry over it? No. There are much more acts of kindness and purpose happening all around me so I may say that these sensible and well thought actions offset whatever occurs by chance. I would certainly worry if  I took to my head to stop being good or try at least to be nice to others. Of course I shall howl if I stopped in the process being good to myself .
I just read the news The California Board of Parole denied parole to Susan Atkins one of the Manson follower who had recounted her role in stabbing Tate. Before the parole board Steve Atkins pleaded for release and averred that they were abused when young. Susan Atkins, 60 must have had reasons that led her to the crime but forty years dying slowly and living with her guilt in a prison cell gives me the creeps. I get a fair idea what hell must be like.
It makes me also think we create our own hell or heaven here and now. When we act irresponsibly to our children or when they turn out to be monsters we have done valuable service to ‘Satan’ and extend his kingdom ever so little to this part as well. Turn out a child to do bad she shall do worse as Susan Atkins came into contact with Charles Manson for example. These are chains of events in each life that could add to the power of hell on earth or add to heaven. We alone are responsible for heaven and hell.
benny

Sleep

“ Sleep offers some breathtaking views of dreams that I can take it all in a night’s rest.”

benny

Goodbye Mr.Chips-1939

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) is a classic film looking at British school system with a rose tinted glass. It might well be for the author of the book on which the film was based was a teacher himself. Mr. Chips was modeled on W.H. Balgarnie, James Hilton’s old classics master who taught for over 50 years at The Leys public school in Cambridge. James Hilton’s short novel of the same name was first published in the British Weekly and then in The Atlantic Monthly (April 1934 issue).

The plot is simple. It traces the life of a British schoolteacher guiding many generations of schoolboys through almost 60 years of education at the fictitious Brookfield School, from his early career days as a young classic scholar to his slightly doddering old age.
For authenticity’s sake, this melodrama was filmed at the Repton School that was founded in 1557, with actual students and faculty serving as extras in the cast.
The film was remade three times and none of these is as unforgettable as the 1939 version. (Herbert Ross’ big-budget musical drama/romance Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) with Peter O’Toole as the schoolmaster in an Oscar-nominated performance (he won the Golden Globe award for Best Actor - Musical or Comedy), as a 1984 BBC-TV mini-series with Roy Marsden, and as the 2002 made-for-TV movie for Masterpiece Theatre with Martin Clunes in the title role.)
Robert Donat rightly deserved his Oscar for Best Actor in the year of the giants: Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind), James Stewart (Mr.Smith Goes To Washington) and Laurence Olivier (Wuthering Heights) were other nominees for the same category.
Film In Depth

The film opens within the quadrangle of the revered Brookfield School, founded in 1492:

…one can almost feel the centuries…Gray old age, dreaming over a crowded past.

A train whistle blows, signaling the arrival of chattering, excited boys for the beginning of the new school term. They file into a building for an all-school assembly, and they are about to fulfil the time-honored tradition of the British boys’ school called ‘call-over.’ [The film ends with the same tradition.] A master stands at the doorway with a list of the names of each pupil, and the boys file past and call out their last name.

The film opens around the late 1920s.
The story of Mr. Charles Chipping (nicknamed “Mr. Chips”) at Brookfield is told through flashback memories, as he dozes as an old codger in front of a fire at Mrs. Wickett’s (Louise Hampton) place just across from the school:

A long time ago, yes. A long time. Things are different now. (He hears other voices: “Chips at Brookfield. Discipline, Mr. Chipping, discipline,” and the last names of boys during a typical ‘call-over.’)

He remembers how he arrived in 1870 at Brookfield Boys School as a shy, withdrawn 24 year-old Latin master, wearing a bowler hat. Appearing eager but uncertain as a novice on the “Brookfield special” train full of new “stinkers,” he is an easy target for their teasing.
The hold of the film on a viewer is built gradually. In the manner the awkward and cold school master copes with his fears of failure and disappointments (of being bypassed from becoming a housemaster with the retirement benefits and loss of his wife) we see the gift of love which abounds in one so noted for lack of  warmth and vision. A traditional British school life of the time one might think is an all-male prerogative with studies and cricket predominating. Mr. Chips for all his disadvantages was lucky to find a progressive English suffragate in his first summer vacation cycling through Tyrol, Europe.
After being introduced to a new History master, a young graduate named Mr. Jackson (David Tree), Chipping remembers how it “took time - too much time” to become a beloved old schoolmaster.
Jackson:You seem to have found the secret in the end.
Chips: Hmm? What? The secret? Oh, yes, in the end. But I didn’t find it myself, Mr. Jackson. It was given to me by someone else. Someone else.
The grandeur of little people is not that they set the world on fire but they realize they could mold influences that came their way however small and make them go long way. In the present world the challenge of teaching as a profession is swamped under high paid jobs in the corporate world teachers are far less considered as a welcome choice. Mr. Chips would have lived his life without fulfilling his potential had he not that vision. It was a gift passed on by his wife, Katherine Ellis, a charming, beautiful, spunky English girl from Bloomsbury (Greer Garson in her exceptional film debut.) She makes him thaw and see what a great calling he has.
Chipping: Do you suppose a person in middle age could start life over again and make a go of it?
Katherine: I’m sure of it. Quite sure. It must be tremendously interesting to be a schoolmaster.
Chipping: I thought so once.
Katherine: To watch boys grow up and help them along. To see their characters develop and what they become when they leave school and the world gets hold of them. I don’t see how you could ever get old in a world that’s always young.
Chipping: I never really thought of it that way. When you talk about it, you make it sound exciting and heroic.
Katherine: It is.
Give this core idea of a teacher who renews himself to mold so many ‘stinkers’ to take up responsible positions later in life is inspiring. One who accepts his humble position in life and keep the gift of life through the loss of his wife ( after just one year keeps together she dies during delivery and also her infant) and loss of many other to war is touched by grandeur. Of course Robert Donat’s acting is so exceptional we are also moved to feel empathy for him as he advances well into old age.

Towards the end we see Mr.Chips ill and on his deathbed. He is  in his eighties, in response to overhearing that he was a poor chap and must have had a lonely life by himself - with regrets because he never had children of his own, Mr. Chips stirs and refutes the remark:

Doctor: Poor old chap. He must have had a lonely life all by himself.
Headmaster: Not always by himself. He married, you know.
Doctor: Did he? I never knew about that.
Headmaster: She died, a long while ago.
Doctor: Pity. Pity he never had any children.
Chips: What, what was that you were saying about me?
Headmaster: Nothing at all old man. Nothing at all. We were just wondering when you were going to wake up out of that beauty sleep of yours.
Chips: I heard you. You were talking about me.
Headmaster: Nothing of consequence, old man. I give you my word.
Chips: I thought I heard you say ’twas a pity, a pity I never had children. But you’re wrong…I have…thousands of them…thousands of them…and all boys!

With his eyes closed, he smiles as the camera rises up when he passes on. He dreamily remembers many schoolboys filing past to repeat their names at call-over, while the music of the school song swells in volume in the background. The final lad, the superimposed image of the last Peter Colley, appears and speaks directly into the camera:
Goodbye, Mr. Chips…Goodbye...

The film was voted the 72nd greatest British film ever in the BFI Top 100 British films poll.
The film was shot at Winchester College and Denham Film Studios.
Directed by     Sam Wood
Produced by     Victor Saville
Written by     R.C. Sherriff
Claudine West
Eric Maschwitz
James Hilton (novel)
Music by     Richard Addinsell
Cinematography     Freddie Young
Editing by     Charles Frend
Distributed by     MGM
Running time     114 minutes
Language     English Similar Movies
Dead Poets Society  (1989, Peter Weir)
The Browning Version  (1951, Anthony Asquith)
Mr. Holland’s Opus  (1995, Stephen Herek)
Cheers for Miss Bishop  (1941, Tay Garnett)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp  (1943, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
Good Morning, Miss Dove  (1955, Henry Koster)
L’Ecole Buissonière  (1948, Jean-Paul Le Chanois)
The Browning Version  (1994, Mike Figgis, John K. Watson)
Selskaya Uchitelnitsa  (1947, Mark Donskoy)
Merlusse  (1935, Marcel Pagnol)
Movies with the Same Personnel
Random Harvest  (1942, Mervyn LeRoy)
Forever and a Day  (1943, René Clair, Edmund Goulding, Cedric Hardwicke, Victor Saville, Kent Smith, Robert Stevenson, Herbert Wilcox, Frank Lloyd)
For Whom the Bell Tolls  (1943, Sam Wood)
Knight Without Armour  (1937, Jacques Feyder)
The Young Mr. Pitt  (1942, Carol Reed)
The Devil and Miss Jones  (1941, Sam Wood)
Kitty Foyle  (1940, Sam Wood)
Julia Misbehaves  (1948, Jack Conway)
Other Related Movies
To Sir, With Love  (1967, James Clavell)
has been remade as:      Goodbye, Mr. Chips  (1969, Herbert Ross)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips  (2002, Stuart Orme)
(Ack:filmsite, allmovie, wikipedia)
compiler: benny

Comic Verse-2

On Reading Wordsworth Again

To Lucy ‘mong the untrodden ways,
Said the lad, ‘I get a kick out of you,’-
Never mind him; let him go.
You are more of a violet
By a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye.
Here, take this shot of rye.
No motion has she now, no force
Stone drunk on my rye
Beside the springs of Dove.
benny

Comic Verses

1.

The Poet’s Corner ©

Do I write poetry?
Man, what a question!
When I see daffodils I think
Of Wordsworth for sure;
Can any maid be
Plainer than his Lucy?
As for your Alexandrine:
It can rumble all the way
To Dover Beach for all I care.
Dover! Come Arnold I know you
Spoke so truly there,-
Schwarzenegger, is the other Arnold, I know,
But does he write poetry?
benny

Viridiana-1961

For a literal minded viewer watching Buñuel’s Viridiana for its surface content is to take sanity on hands. His position in terms of moving pictures is what Dali represented in static pictures. Dali would show a limp watch to suggest persistence of time and juxtaposing it in a landscape executed with clarity (more than warranted) it sticks out incongruous. In other words its raison d’etre is as valid as the incongruity of objects one encounters in dreams. Buñuel is much more. He is a moralist but not in the manner a die-hard bourgeosie would have liked. No wonder the Catholic Church thought him blasphemous and despite the film winning  the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, it was banned in Spain for sixteen years.
The film has a strong narrative and a feel for the specific period in which it is supposed to occur. “The real purpose of Surrealism”, as he said, was “to explode the social order, to transform life itself.” Thus the young novitiate who is about to take her vows named Viridiana (Silvia Pinal), follows the advice of the Mother Superior that she should visit her uncle, Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), her only living relative. Dutifully she follows her instruction only to encounter the unexpected. It is in what constitutes the unexpected one realizes he is an anarchist as M. C. Zenner would say, ‘æsthetically or politically’.
Plot:

The film focuses on (Silvia Pinal), who before she takes vows  visits her uncle, Don Jaime (Fernando Rey), her only living relative. Not long after she is settled in his large country estate, he tries to seduce her, believing that she resembles his deceased wife. His intentions are after a fashion honorable since he dangles marriage before her. Viridiana attempts to flee the house immediately, but is subdued by Jaime and drugged with the help of his servant Ramona. He takes her to her room and considers raping her in her sleep, but no he has still his moral issues to sort out and he decides to wait and see.

The next morning he lies to her that he took her virginity. He  hopes thereby to keep her there longer. If he thought it would stop her from returning to the convent he is mistaken. Instead she is disgusted and starts to pack. He tries to rectify the situation by admitting his lie and asking forgiveness. She leaves the house. She is on the way back to the convent when the authorities stop her, telling her something terrible has happened. Back at the house, her uncle has hanged himself.

The very epitome of moral propriety, Viridiana collects the village paupers, returns to the estate, and installs them in an outbuilding. Perhaps she hopes to purge the odium of the diseased uncle with good deeds. Shunning the convent, she instead devotes herself to the moral education and feeding of the poor. The beggars are very much her ticket to a higher level of sanctity. (Perhaps Spain was a microcosm of Don Jaime’s demesene into which Franco and his men represent the motley crew?)    Meanwhile, Don Jaime’s son, Jorge (Francisco Rabal), moves into the house with his girlfriend, Lucia. He, like his father, lusts after Viridiana, who scorns him.

Viridiana however makes the best of the changed circumstances and is accepted by Jorge as one in the family. When they all leave to visit a lawyer in the town, the paupers break into the house, initially out of curiosity. But, faced with such bounty, things degenerate into a drunken, riotous orgy –all to the strains of Handel’s Messiah. Posing for a photo (sans camera) around the table, the beggars resemble Da Vinci’s Last Supper. (This scene, in particular, earned the film the Vatican’s opprobrium.)

The members of the household return earlier than expected to find the house in shambles. As Jorge and Viridiana walk around the house in shock, the beggars excuse themselves and leave without explaining their behaviour. Jorge continues to inspect the house upstairs and encounters a beggar who pulls a knife on Jorge. Another beggar comes from behind and breaks a bottle over Jorge’s head, knocking him out. When Viridiana arrives, she sees Jorge on the floor and runs to his side, but is then overpowered by the two beggars. Viridiana would surely have been raped except that Jorge, who is tied up, bribes one beggar to kill the other.

Viridiana is a changed woman as the film concludes: her crown of thorns is symbolically burnt. Wearing her hair loosely, she knocks on Jorge’s door, but finds Ramona, with Jorge in his bedroom. With “Shake Your Cares Away” on the record player, Jorge tells Viridiana that they were only playing cards, and urges her to join them, a conclusion that is often seen as implying a ménage à trois.
Directed by     Luis Buñuel
Produced by     Gustavo Alatriste
Written by     Julio Alejandro
Luis Buñuel
Distributed by     Films Sans Frontières
Running time     90 min.
Language     Spanish

Cast

* Silvia Pinal as Viridiana
* Fernando Rey as Don Jaime
* Francisco Rabal as Jorge
* Margarita Lozano as Ramona
* Victoria Zinny as Lucía
* Teresa Rabal as Rita
* Lola Gaos as Mendiga

Reception

Viridiana was the first feature film Buñuel ever made in his native Spain. After the film was completed and sent by the Spanish cinematographic authority to the Cannes Film Festival, and awarded, the government of Francisco Franco tried unsuccessfully to have the film withdrawn. The film was only released there in 1977, when Bunuel was seventy-seven years old.
(Ack:wikipedia,senseoffilm.com,imdb)
compiler:benny

Greed- 1924

Directed by Erich von Stroheim and starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Tempe Pigott, Sylvia Ashton, Chester Conklin, Joan Standing and Jack Curtis, ‘Greed’ is one of the greatest films ever made. It is a silent film and a morality play: it holds a mirror to our own psyche and though we may never play the part the shapes come to play therein, we may as well accept the truth it reveals.Truth of this film is greed and it is exclusively a human peculiarity that must make even man avowing highest ideals cringe. ‘Out, out with this damn spot,’ we may as well say and yet we shall pursue it with more resolve under some guise or other. Those who want to bring democracy into Iraq shall know that the underbelly of such risky venture only carries the ilks of Halliburton, Bechtel, KBR and what not and yet supposedly the idea ( of democracy)seems more a license than a right to fool the world.

At the opening of the film the title card reads a quote from the author of the book McTeague on which it is based: ‘I never truckled; I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. By God, I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn’t like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth; I knew it for the truth then, and I know it for the truth now.’
. FRANK NORRIS.
Frank Norris’ powerful novel McTeague first came out in 1902 and was first filmed in 1915. It is the 1924 version is that we are presently concerned with. From early on Erich von Stroheim was attracted to the book and after scoring an enormous financial hit with Foolish Wives, in 1923, he began work on what he hoped would his masterpiece.

Plot

Stripped to its bare essentials, McTeague tells the story of a brute but basically good-natured miner named McTeague (played by Gibson Gowland), his wife Trina (ZaSu Pitts) and Marcus(Jean Hersholt), his best friend who later turns out to be his nemesis.
The eponymous character finds his true calling in life by taking over the practice of a traveling dentist. Setting up shop in San Francisco, McTeague falls in love with the daughter of German immigrants. It happens that Trina is the girlfriend of  Marcus who is mildly resentful, but ultimately forgiving, when McTeague and Trina are married. Always seeking out an opportunity to better herself, Trina buys a lottery ticket. When the ticket pays off and she wins a fortune, the previously even-tempered Trina undergoes a complete personality change, metamorphosing into a grasping, greedy, miserly shrew, hoarding huge sums of money while her husband must get by on his meager earnings as a dentist. Trina’s sudden windfall sparks a change in both McTeague and Marcus, as well; driven to distraction by his wife’s avarice, McTeague turns into a violent beast, while Marcus boils with jealousy over losing the now-prosperous Trina to McTeague. Pushed too far, McTeague ultimately murders Trina and escapes to the desert with her money. Appointed a sheriff’s deputy, the envious Marcus heads out to bring McTeague in, and the two men catch up with one another in the middle of Death Valley. Their water supply gone, their packhorse dead, McTeague and Marcus begin a fight to the death. McTeague manages to shoot and kill Marcus — only to discover that Marcus has manacled himself to McTeague. Utterly defeated, he sits benumbed on the scorching rocks, awaiting madness and a horrible death.
Marcus: There’s no water… within a hundred miles o’ here!
[the two men hopelessly stand by the dead mule in the middle of the desert]
Marcus: We… are… dead… men!

Filming at actual locations (the murder scene was shot at a locale where a real murder had occurred, while the sweltering Death Valley sequence was, likewise, made there), Von Stroheim remained doggedly faithful to the Norris original, shooting every page word for word. The end result ran 40 reels, or roughly 10 hours of screen time. Production head Irving Thalberg argued logically that no audience would sit still for ten hours of unrelenting realism. Von Stroheim reluctantly responded by paring his film down to 20 reels, but it was still far too long and depressing for MGM’s taste. It was edited even more - the current release version of the film is now shown at approximately two and a quarter hours (about 10 reels), one quarter of its original length. The severe editing was completed by Joe Farnham and June Mathis, Goldwyn’s story editor, who hadn’t read either the book or the screenplay. Reportedly, the 32 reels of edited negatives were melted down by MGM to extract the valuable silver nitrate from the film stock.
Cast

* Gibson Gowland as John McTeague
* Zasu Pitts as Trina
* Jean Hersholt as Marcus
* Dale Fuller as Maria
* Tempe Pigott as McTeague’s mother
* Jack Curtis as McTeague’s father (uncredited)
* Silvia Ashton as ‘Mommer’ Sieppe
* Chester Conklin as ‘Popper’ Sieppe
* Joan Standing as Selina

Directed by     Erich von Stroheim
Produced by     Irving Thalberg
Louis B. Mayer
Written by     June Mathis
Erich von Stroheim
Frank Norris (novel)
Distributed by     Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)     December 4, 1924
Running time     140 min.
239 min. (restored)
Memorable Quote:
Trina: Let’s go sit on the sewer.
—-
Trivia:

* MGM’s first feature-length movie.

* The original 42 reel version is one of the top ten “lost films” of the American Film Institute

* Jean Hersholt was hospitalized after he lost 27 pounds during the filming of the movie’s climax in Death Valley.

* Concerning the editor hired to cut “Greed” down to 2 hours, Erich von Stroheim supposedly commented: “The only thing he had on his mind was his hat!”

* Director Cameo: [Erich von Stroheim] as a balloon vendor (although only in a deleted sequence). McTeague and Trina buy balloons from the vendor on the street.

* The filming of the climax was actually the subject of an early silent newsreel. The facts reported by the newsreel concerning the Death Valley portion of the shooting: it took a day just to reach the location from the town of Keeler, California, they rode in a combination of cars and horses (one of the cars had the word “Greed” stenciled on it), water had to be rationed and they shot in August when temperatures were over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

•    The only screening of the original complete director’s cut was for a small group of reporters. One wrote a glowing review of it, using words like “wonderful” and “brilliant” to describe it, but lamented the fact that nobody else would ever see it.
Similar Movies
29th Street  (1992, George Gallo)
The Barbary Coast  (1935, Howard Hawks)
Citizen Kane  (1941, Orson Welles)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre  (1948, John Huston)
Wall Street  (1987, Oliver Stone)
L’Argent  (1929, Marcel L’Herbier)
The Trail of ‘98  (1928, Clarence Brown)
Intolerance  (1916, D.W. Griffith)
Sátántangó  (1994, Béla Tarr)
Waking Ned Devine  (1998, Kirk Jones)
Movies with the Same Personnel
The Wedding March  (1928, Erich Von Stroheim)
Blind Husbands  (1919, Erich Von Stroheim)
Queen Kelly  (1929, Erich Von Stroheim)
Foolish Wives  (1922, Erich Von Stroheim)
The Devil’s Passkey  (1920, Erich Von Stroheim)
The Merry Widow  (1925, Erich Von Stroheim)
Grand Illusion  (1937, Jean Renoir)
Hello Sister!  (1933, Erich Von Stroheim, Alan Crosland)
Other Related Movies
Grand Illusion  (1937, Jean Renoir)
Life’s a Whirlpool  (1916, Barry O’Neill)
(Ack:filmsite.com,imdb,allmovie,wikipedia)

compiler:benny

A Place In The Sun

Bread And Circus©

A catchpenny of thoughts
Muddle through interstices of sleep
And waking stupor,-
Tightrope walkers all,
Yet with no purpose or will
Belie this make-believe demesne
Of our life proper:
These Ideas though inconsequential
Bear some kinship to causes
Which we defend with tooth and nail
Under a scorching Sun.

As reverie to our dreams at night
This sordid bread and circus of existence
Must relate somewhat with life infinite?
benny
12-27-06

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc-1928

“The close quarter combat between Joan and her judges” is how Carl Theodor Dreyer described his vision of the film. It is set in a claustrophobic space in which we feel one with the Maid of Orleans. We also get caught up in the terror her face registers in the flurry of close-ups; her tremulous face intercut with the physiognomy of her oppressors, flat and unintelligent faces  remind one of Hieronymous Bosch. ‘Christ mocked’ and ‘Christ wearing a crown of thorns ’ for example. Much has been made of the film’s unusual number of close-ups; Dreyer uses the device to drag the viewer into the psyche of the subject. Maria Falconetti’s face, with its strange luminousness and mournful looks, present an ideal map for an unequal combat the evil clerics at the behest of the English wage on an emotional plane. Close-ups serve an ideal vehicle for that. The performance of Renee Maria Falconetti has been hailed as one of cinema’s greatest.
The minions who watch over the vulnerable in a prison are often noted for sadistic streak. When the tonsured tormentors pause for thinking up a fresh stratagem these oafs takeover in subjecting her to indignities. One such insult is platting of a crown on the maid’s head and the intended comparison to the Son of Man is very telling. The Church with its unlimited power shall always crucify the one who could bring salvation. The maid of Orleans was Christlike in wanting to rid the land of foreign occupation and she must die in ignominy. Perhaps we need to put this film in historical perspective: Joan of Arc was canonized by the Catholic Church only some seven years earlier.The movie is in a way vindication of the untutored heroine who dared to do the impossible purely on the strength of her inner calling.
The film like the maid had a checquered career. French nationalists objected to the idea of a Dane, and a non-Catholic one at that, interpreting the history of their beloved Joan. After its release, English censors objected to what it saw as unacceptably negative portrayals of the English forces who were partly responsible — in alliance with the corrupt French church — for the death of Joan. The Archbishop of Paris’s demand for changes was only the beginning of a series of mutilations. In 1933, the film, which failed at the box office in spite of many glowing reviews, resurfaced in a truncated version (82 minutes cut to 61)
In a surprise discovery that parallels Joan’s resurrection (as a historical hero) and rehabilitation in the pantheon of French heroes along with Foch,Napoleon and deGaulle, a complete original print of Dreyer’s original cut was found in a Norwegian mental hospital closet in 1981. The print had apparently been ordered by a doctor there in the 1930s. This version, called the “Oslo print” to distinguish it from its many predecessors, had some damage but was digitally restored to pristine condition with 20,320 individual changes.

Dreyer drew almost entirely on transcripts of Joan’s 1429 trial for his dialogue. If Dreyer disliked being labeled  “avant garde,” he did agree with “documentary” as a description. The film supports this in many respects. Dreyer’s demand for realism dictated some bizarre strategies. Perhaps the experience was too much for Mlle. Falconetti that she never again acted in another film. The actors were signed exclusively to him for the film’s shooting time from May to November 1927, so they had to “live” their roles to the point of keeping their hair cut so it never appeared to change. This was understandable for the lower churchmen who wore visible tonsures — bald heads with a fringe of hair. But Dreyer also demanded that the higher officials keep their tonsures cut, in spite of the fact that their hair was invisible under the grandiose caps they wore throughout. The cast occasionally got back at him, at least verbally. They secretly began referring to him as “Gruyere” because the set had as many “holes” (trenches Dreyer built for making low-angle shots) as Swiss cheese.

He refused to allow his actors to use makeup, an unheard-of demand at that time. He even dropped the credits — they were later restored — in order to increase the viewer’s belief in the story. He also disavowed musical scores (though the film was presented with them) as distracting and antithetical to the reality of the onscreen world.
But the thrust of the film is the power of spiritual opposition to earthly ambition and corruption, a theme so pervasive and felt that even the architecture supports it. Joan is seen mostly in isolated shots, emblems of her lonely battle against the church and the military, but behind her the viewer is always aware of the serene, almost glowing white walls, a constant reminder of Joan’s purity and transcendence in the face of corrupt earthly forces.

Dreyer would go on to create at least three classics of world cinema (Day of Wrath, Ordet, and Gertrud), but in some ways this is his most radical film. he saw as above all a human document. It’s hard to think of a better term, however, for the film’s visual style. There’s the famous use (some said over-use) of close-ups; surprising images such as the “upside-down and backward” shot of English soldiers; and the swinging camera that makes a building appear to be moving.
The startled flight of pigeons from the Church spires as Joan is being burnt may be a cliché now but then it must have come as very refreshingly new.
The film’s realism — helped immeasurably by Rudolph Mate’s brilliant cinematography — it’s also one of the most stylized, unrealistic in the annals of cinema. Production designer Hermann Warm, famous for his expressionist sets for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, based his work here on a combination of medieval woodcuts and the then-voguish surrealist movement. This is seen in the otherworldly white architecture that recalls the still, strange world of the painter De Chirico.
Dreyer as mentioned before was always known as a controlling, dictatorial director, and with a then-vast budget of $7 million francs (which bloated to $9 million by the end of shooting), he was allowed some luxuries that few filmmakers would see, before or since. He had an enormous, expensive three-dimensional set built, almost none of which is seen in recognizable form in the movie (much to the producers’ chagrin). He shot reams of film, which unexpectedly paid off later when he was forced to construct a new negative out of the ample supply of alternate takes. The film’s over 1,300 individual shots is more than twice the number found in an average feature of the time.
Scenes from Passion appear in Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa Vie (1962), in which the protagonist Nana sees the film at a cinema and identifies with Joan. In Henry & June, Henry Miller is shown watching the last scenes of the film and in voiceover narrates a letter to Anaïs Nin comparing her to Joan and himself to the “mad monk” character played by Antonin Artaud.

The Passion of Joan of Arc has appeared on Sight & Sound’s top ten films poll three times:

* 1952: #7[5]
* 1972: #7[6]
* 1992: #10 (Critic’s List)and #6 (Director’s List)[7]

It placed 31st in the 2002 Director’s poll and 14th on the Critic’s poll. Maria Falconetti’s performance was named the 26th greatest ever on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
Memorable Quotes:
Juge(judge): How old are you?
Jeanne d’Arc: [counts on her fingers] Nineteen… I think.
—-
Juge: What is your name?
Jeanne d’Arc: In France, I am called Joan… in my village, I am called Jeanneton.
—-
Jeanne d’Arc: [talking to God] Will I be with You tonight in Paradise?
—-
Juge: Has God promised you things?
Jeanne d’Arc: That has nothing to do with this trial!
Maria Falconetti     …     Jeanne d’Arc
Eugene Silvain    …     Évêque Pierre Cauchon (Bishop Pierre Cauchon)
André Berley    …     Jean d’Estivet
Maurice Schutz    …     Nicolas Loyseleur
Antonin Artaud    …     Jean Massieu
Michel Simon    …     Jean Lemaître
Jean d’Yd    …     Guillaume Evrard
Louis Ravet    …     Jean Beaupère (as Ravet)
Armand Lurville    …     Juge (Judge) (as André Lurville)
Jacques Arnna    …     Juge (Judge)
Alexandre Mihalesco    …     Juge (Judge)
Léon Larive    …     Juge (Judge)
Trivia

* After completing the original cut of the film, director Carl Theodor Dreyer learned that the entire master print had been accidentally destroyed. With no ability to re-shoot, Dreyer re-edited the entire film from footage he had originally rejected.

* Real blood from a real puncture wound was used in the scene in which Joan’s arm is cut, but it was that of a stand-in and not Maria Falconetti.

* The film took a year and a half to complete.

Ack: www.brightlights.com Gary Morris,January 2000 | Issue 27,wikipedia,imdb.com
My special thanks go to Maid Marian classic films for letting me watch the film(with French subtitles). Share the experience and support http://www.youtube.com/maidmarian.

Compiler: benny