L'armee des ombres (Army of Shadows) [1969]

All to often the popular conception of resistance movements can be rose-tinted. We imagine elaborate hide-outs printing propaganda, daring midnight assassinations, cycles through tranquil French countryside with a radio transmitter in the basket, etc. In L'armee des Ombres Melville presents a portrait of the resistance cell as mafia. It is an analogy that initially doesn't make sense but becomes increasingly clear as you progress through this long, immaculately paced and stylish thriller.

Melville is best known for his gangster films - beautiful, fatalistic experiments in crime ennui, shot through with raincoats, trilbies, muscle cars and a love for classic film noir. It is not surprising then that L'armee  des ombres can be seen as one with his other films in its preoccupation with honour and its tense set pieces of thoroughly planned and quickly enacted action. The decision to mold the resistance members in the shape of gangsters may have something to do with Melville's own personal experience of the resistance movement - did he see actions and events that didn't fit in with the glamour? Or was he merely viewing his surrounding through the lens of a American film aficionado, unable to separate the acts of desperation and resistance from those portrayed on screen.

The film follows the fates of a resistance cell based in Vichy France through 1942-1943. The cell is led by Lino Ventura's Phillipe, a calm unassuming looking man capable of great feats of coldness and exactitude. The film begins with Phillipe in a prison camp, being booked in by a collaborator and spending time with the inmates, each of whom have been imprisoned for minor acts of defiance. Phillipe remains distant throughout. It is here that we first see the ambiguity of his character. Is he distant because he doesn't want to make himself a target - is he biding his time? Or does he feel he is more important than these small-fry prisoners? Is he just interested in 'the business' of the resistance. There is a lot to suggest the latter.

As in all of Melville's films Phillipe lives by a code, of which everything else (friendship, compassion) comes secondary. It is due to strict compliance to this code that we see Phillipe perform some of his most despicable acts. A young member of the resistance is strangled to death in painstaking close up with a shocking fatalism. Objections are raised but quickly waved away as adherence to the code of honour that binds the cell together takes precedence. Phillipe seems pained by the death and promises the young man that it will be a quick death, but he still holds his legs down as the boy's last breaths are expelled. Melville shoots such scenes with a formalistic calm, each shot framed like a Vermeer painting.

The code of honour amongst the resistance members seems to consume them all. Apart from one scene where Phillipe kills a German guard in order to escape certain execution, we never witness the assassination of a German military figure or Vichy collaborator. Indeed collaborators in general are conspicuously absent from most of the film: strange considering the Vichy France setting. Most of the action concerns the rescue of imprisoned members, or the assassination of traitors: it is a hermetic worldview and one that seems self-destructive. The final scene is one of the most pessimistic in cinema. The camera focuses on each member of the cell, steely eyed and determined, repressing all emotions after a distasteful but necessary act of violence as title cards explain the bloody fate that awaits them.

Upon its original release the film was derided for its Gaullist perspective, and whilst that reaction may have been mostly due to the politics of 1969 France the film still leaves you questioning the 'heroics' of the resistance. Viewed now the film can be seen as a superb, ambiguous examination of heroics and what it takes to make a stand of defiance.

Lolita [1962]

 
Nearly finished Kubrick's filmography now - just Killer's Kiss and Eyes Wide Shut to go.


This was brilliant, early, restrained Kubrick, just as he was about to turn into brilliant, later, over-the-top Kubrick. I've never read the book, so couldn't compare the two, but the screenplay was written by Nabokov anyway so it has to be authentic.


Famously shot - again - in Britain, Kubrick does a decent job of pretending to be in middle America, except for the exterior scenes of pebble dashed detached house that are unmistakably English. Never mind.

James Mason was astonishing. He must have relished this role, something to get his teeth into with Humbert Humbert's particular brand of desperate depravity. I love James Mason at the best of times (and agree with Eddie Izzard that God MUST have Mason's voice) but he was a real treat to watch here, veering from aloof and respectful, to cunning and manipulative. You feel at once sickened and sorry for the man, given that happiness could be his except happiness is in the shape of a young - too young - girl.

Seller's play Quilty, and when you booked Seller's you really got Seller's. The Rough Guide to film states his performance  had "all the nuanced subleties of a Looney Tunes cartoon". Harsh, but true. Regardless I like Sellers and never have a problem with his over the top performances, often finding his desperate gurning and mania can veer into something truly pathetic... in a good way.

Kubrick had a particular fascination with casting comedic/manic actors in his films: the sergeant in full metal jacket, Jack, Alex, all 3 versions of Seller's in Dr Strangelove, Leonard Rossiter in Barry Lyndon. Its easy for accusations of coldness to stick when one's film career has a vein of unhinged characters running through it, but Sellers brought an unearthly third party into Humbert's solopsism which was entirely necessary to the film.

My Night At Maud's [1969]

First Rohmer film, and one that I have been waiting to watch for years. Managed to catch it at the Manchester Cornerhouse's Sunday Matinee which is always worth keeping an eye on.

Jean Louis Trintignant is a wound up Catholic with something against Pascal, and he has to stay the night in Francois Fabian's bed - only he has promised to remain celibate until he marries the pretty blonde who he has been checking out at Sunday Mass.

Pretty weird set up, but an enjoyable film nonetheless. Unrepentantly intellectual, I'll admit most of the discussions on Pascal went over my head. However, after a bit of post film explantion from S I started to understand the plot's analogies with Pascal's wager: Trintignant saw that he had everything to gain and nothing to lose by devoting himself to marriage with the pretty blonde, but I'm not quite he was convinced of this, especially considering the brief coda to the film when his memories and regrets seemed to wash over him like the nearby tide.

A beautifully photographed film (courtesy of Nestor Almendros, who also shot Days of Heaven - one of my personal favourites), every frame seemed to evoke repression (cold landscapes, icy streets) or clarity (simple interiors, the warmth of the church) - a reflection of Trintignant's emotions? Trintignant again displays his mastery of repressed urges: not as creepy as The Conformist or Three Colours: Red, but a calm, gentle and assured performance.

Heavy on the dialogue as it is, one never feels short changed by the film - this isn't a staged script, but a demonstration of how discussion and spoken thought can be cinematic when done properly.

Ride The High Country (1962)

Like most Peckinpah films Ride The High Country was concerned with men of action unable to come to terms with a changing world. Much like The Wild Bunch it was set at the beginning of the 20th century when the West had been won and law and order were becoming regulated. The opening scenes neatly sum up the changes as Joel McCrea rides in to town, only to be hurried along by a uniformed policeman and nearly ran over by a 'horseless carriage'. The West is starting to mythologise itself:, demostrated by Randolph Scott,  dressed up like Wild Bill Hickock and running a fixed shooting gallery. The two heroes are all but relics, trying to make a dollar any way they can.

The film was shot 7 years before The Wild Bunch. As such there is not as much glorious, vibrant violence in the film and the story is a more recognisable western - two heroic riders, one young greenhorn, riding through the high country to a dangerous big payoff. The themes and motifs that make you feel comfortable are here, but there is a definite sense of loss and unease at the way things now are. The mining town scenes are ingrained with dirt and hedonism, the treatment of women is harsh and misogynistic. Peckinpah always leaves a bitter taste after his scenes with women - was he merely showing us what it would have been like, or were his misogynistic characters a sign of a deeper contempt in the director?

Definitely one of the more thoughtful westerns with a script loaded with nostalgia and questions of morality and heroism. Scott's old timer is still drawn to money, especially after decades in the wilderness, his sentiment of 'You can't take pride with you to the grave' contrasting sharply with McCrea's statement that all he wants is to "enter my home justified". Its also a very beautiful film, shot in a big, wide, heavily wooded country and filled with memorably dramatic scenes of nature - especially the windswept, hillside shootout.

There is a lot to Peckinpah. Indeed there is a wealth of literature to read up on, most of it raising very valid points. One of the more pithy and to the point examples is Christine Gledhill's appraisal of the film in The Cinema Book (BFI, 2007):

"The question [Peckinpah] poses is, how can the traditional code of the western survive into an era when the certainties that underpin it have been eroded?  Individual morality has been replaced by corporatism, greed and cynicism [...] in Peckinpah's films, the white male hero is subjected to a series of ordeals, moral and physical that test to the full his ability to retain his integrity and sense of self. Typically, Peckinpah's heroes cannot adjust to a world that has overtaken them. There is no community that they can relate to, only, if they are lucky, a few kindred souls, doomed like them to assert their defiance in acts of heroic resistance."

A nice explanation. But I was wondering what she meant by "an era when the certainties that underpin it have eroded". Does she mean the era represented in the film, or the era of the audience? This started me thinking: has our perception of the hero changed, or have the movies simply stopped showing us these modest men and women? Read my next entry....

Bonnie & Clyde (1967)

Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde takes off from the first frame, taking the viewer with it, and doesn't come back down until the the last scene when we come crashing back to Earth, just like the rag doll corpses of our heroes.

This film shows us so much. Thinking back on it now I am astounded at how perfect it was in telling its story without actually telling us anything. An example? The opening scene: Bonnie, naked, pouting in front of a mirror, writhing on her bed and banging the head board with her fist. Immediately we know she is yearning for more, a way out of her dead-end life, her dead end town, her sexual frustration. A lesser film would need an explanatory conversation, a voice-over even: "I was sick of this life and boy did I need a good lay".

Then Clyde walks by, sharp in a tailored suit and fedora. Does this film need a 'cute-meet' as Billy Wilder would say? No, a glimpse of Bonnie through a window suffices for the story to begin.

They rob a grocery store and take off into the country. Upon parking (no pun intended) Bonnie pounces on Clyde but is cast aside. You see Clyde can't get it up - its never explained why this is so, and it certainly doesn't look like a conscious effort on his behalf. Its like their exploits in general: the bank jobs keep adding to their excitement, their driving gets faster, more erratic, their murders more frequent, but there is never a big payoff - where is this all leading to? You feel that if they actually got round to finally having sex then the killing spree might end. But there isn't any climax to this film, just a short sharp let down, the deafening roar of machine gun fire ripping us out of our reverie.

Too many articles focus on how Bonnie & Clyde changed American cinema, a history lesson through celluloid. You could sit through this film and really study its impact on the industry and write a thesis about how the 60s and the bloodletting in Vietnam at the time were as much a part of the film as the dustbowl. But that would be to miss out on what is such a vital film, such entertainment.

You can immerse yourself in the beauty of it, at the nostalgia of the back projection in the cars, at the golden hues of Burnett Guffrey's cinematography, at the chemistry between the two leads - Warren Beatty's goofy smiles, Faye Dunaways childish, glowering moods - the attention to detail (see those corn crops they're running through when Bonnie goes missing? They're poor crops - it's the depression after all), at the whip-crack humour and bawdiness of it all.

Of course there is so much artistic licence in the film - this isn't reality. Bonnie & Clyde apparently met at a friend's house, far less romantic than a glimpse on the street; according to most accounts Bonnie never got into the thick of a fire fight during the life-span of the gang; and the character of Hamer was never captured and humiliated by the gang before he finally managed to gun them down. All this is interesting trivia but pointless criticism. Bonnie & Clyde isn't reality, even though its intensity and passion make us feel that it can only be real life we are watching. Bonnie & Clyde isn't reality- it is pure cinema.