In 1943, Germany’s UFA stu­dios spent a gigan­tic amount of mon­ey to cre­ate a film ver­sion of the absurd fan­tasy, Adven­tures of Mun­chaussen, which is loose­ly based on the extrav­a­gant “whop­pers” attrib­uted to the real life Karl Friedrich Hierony­mus, Frei­herr von Münch­hausen (1720 –1797). The film was in colour (at that time a very expen­sive process) and the spe­cial effects where the best pos­si­ble at the time. Read­ers of this site are prob­a­bly famil­iar with the fair­ly recent Ter­ry Gilliam ver­sion of the sto­ry. The von Báky film is very good. The scenes that take place on the Moon are par­tic­u­larly charm­ing. One of the odd­est things about the film is that there were sev­eral Black actors in it. What on earth was it like to be a Black actor in Berlin in 1943? What became of them? Sure­ly there is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary that could be made on this subject.

I hear (with a shud­der of hor­ror) that an Amer­i­can remake of this clas­sic British Ham­mer Stu­dios film is in pro­duc­tion. Yet anoth­er insult to a fine film that under­went more than its share of insults. The orig­i­nal was idi­ot­i­cal­ly mar­ket­ed as a shock-hor­ror pic­ture, ensur­ing that the peo­ple who would have appre­ci­at­ed it nev­er saw it and the peo­ple who saw it hat­ed it. Then it was bru­tal­ly re-cut in such a way as to make the film incom­pre­hen­si­ble. That hatch­et-job of a print cir­cu­lat­ed for years, an embar­rass­ment to the direc­tor and the stars who per­formed bril­liant­ly in it. The direc­tor even­tu­al­ly re-acquired the rights to it, and did his best to restore the orig­i­nal cut. I was present when the restored ver­sion was pre­miered in San Fran­cis­co, with the direc­tor in atten­dance. There have been two doc­u­men­taries made about this sad chain of events, nei­ther of which I’ve seen. If you rent the film, or see it on tele­vi­sion, beware of the butchered print, which still circulates.

The plot of The Wick­er Man is unique. A police­man (Edward Wood­ward) in the Scot­tish West High­lands gets a let­ter from a small island in the Hebrides. The island, under the influ­ence of a warm cur­rent, is famous for export­ing apples. The let­ter asserts that an island girl has gone miss­ing. When the police­man arrives on the island to inves­ti­gate, he dis­cov­ers two pecu­liar things: 1) every­one on the island is try­ing to hide some­thing from him, and 2) the islanders have aban­doned Chris­tian­i­ty for a revived form of ancient pagan­ism. We are giv­en, from the begin­ning, a clear pic­ture of the policeman’s char­ac­ter. He is prig­gish, pious­ly reli­gious, and a vir­gin. He is utter­ly shocked by the hap­py-go-lucky lifestyle of the neo-pagan islanders, with their joy­ful sex­u­al­i­ty, bawdy pub songs, and chil­dren danc­ing naked. Much of the back­ground is explained in his inter­changes with the island’s Laird, bril­liant­ly played by Christo­pher Lee, and with the island school­teacher (Diane Cilen­to). The police­man suf­fers the ulti­mate temp­ta­tion to his piety (and vir­gin­i­ty) in the form of the rav­ish­ing­ly beau­ti­ful tavern-keeper’s daugh­ter (Britt Ekland), and is even­tu­al­ly drawn, step-by-step, into a trap that puts him into the Wick­er Man. The trick of the film is to take a per­son that one instant­ly feels con­tempt for, and put him into a sit­u­a­tion where, even­tu­al­ly, you come to respect his view. I will not spoil the sto­ry for those who haven’t seen it. Suf­fice it to say that the tale reca­pit­u­lates what must have hap­pened a thou­sand times in a thou­sand vil­lages of ancient Europe, as Chris­tian­i­ty moved into and dis­placed pagan com­mu­ni­ties. The pagan lore pre­sent­ed in the film is rea­son­ably authen­tic, giv­en the expla­na­tion that it is pre­sent­ed as an arti­fi­cial revival. The celtic music played in the film is wonderful.

I’m fond of this goofy 1980s com­edy about two whiz-kids who are scammed into work­ing on a mil­i­tary laser project by a mega­lo­ma­niac sci­en­tist. William Ather­ton played his patent­ed “ass­hole” vil­lain. Val Kilmer, who played the extro­verted stu­dent, went on to a high-pro­file film career. Gabriel Jar­ret, who played the intro­vert, did not (it was per­haps an omen that his name was mis­spelled in the cred­its). His role was writ­ten with a degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ism, despite the absurd com­edy plot. For once, the love inter­est isn’t a bomb­shell babe who is “plain” because she wears glass­es and ties her hair back, then sud­denly whips them off and unties her hair in the final scene. Instead, she is rep­re­sented as extreme­ly geeky. Boy geek falls for girl geek in a rel­a­tively cred­i­ble way. For that alone, the film deserves some kind of award.

Amer­i­can film­mak­er Robert Fla­her­ty found fame pro­duc­ing and direct­ing what we would today call “docu­d­ra­mas”, about peo­ple in exot­ic places. His first film, Nanook of the North (1922) about an Inuk hunter in the Cana­di­an arc­tic, was a world­wide suc­cess. The film was act­ed out and staged in a way that dis­qual­i­fies it as a “doc­u­men­tary” in the sense we use the word today — Nanook was real­ly named Allakar­i­al­lak, his “wife” was­n’t his wife, and so on, but there were no rules about such things at the time. It real­ly amount­ed to what his­tor­i­cal re-enac­tors do today. Fla­her­ty fol­lowed this suc­cess, over the years with Moana (1926), set in Poly­ne­sia, Man of Aran (1934) set on an Irish coastal island, and Ele­phant Boy (1937), which turned a young Kan­nadi­ga boy from Mysore, Sabu Dasta­gir, into a Hol­ly­wood movie star.

But to my mind, Fla­her­ty’s great­est achieve­ment was his last fea­ture film, Louisiana Sto­ry (1948). It was com­mis­sioned by the Shell Oil Com­pany to con­vey the “romance” of the intro­duc­tion of an oil rig to the Louisiana bay­ous. This is the sort of idea that would leave an audi­ence cold today, but it no doubt was com­pletely sin­cere in 1948. But Fla­herty wasn’t much inter­ested in oil rigs. He was inter­ested in the exot­ic atmos­phere of Cajun life in the bay­ous and in the inno­cent won­der­ment of the boy. Fla­herty usu­ally took real peo­ple and made movies about them. But in this case, a nar­ra­tive was con­trived, and a local boy, Joseph Boudreaux played a char­ac­ter in rea­son­ably true-to-life scenes. He was so pho­to­genic that the cam­era hard­ly ever left him. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy, by Richard Lea­cock, was crisp and evoca­tive, all the more impres­sive because the light­ing con­di­tions must have been dread­ful. The swamps of the bay­ou loomed like some fan­tas­tic, alien land­scape. A bonus was the superb music by Vir­gil Thomp­son, a com­poser who once loomed large in Amer­i­can con­cert halls, but is unfor­tu­nately neglect­ed today. Boudreaux, by the way, grew up to be an oil rigger.

Fla­her­ty prepar­ing Joseph Boudreaux for a scene.

The plot is lift­ed straight out of Wal­ter Scott’s The Tal­is­man. The char­ac­ters spout ridicu­lous speech­es, espous­ing mod­ern sen­ti­ments, which would be high­ly improb­a­ble com­ing out of the mouths of twelfth-cen­tu­ry peo­ple. But who cares? The bat­tle sequences at the end are mag­nif­i­cent. Medieval siege tech­niques, with rolling siege tow­ers and tre­buchets, were every bit as spec­tac­u­lar as mod­ern attacks with smart bombs and mis­siles. Visu­ally, the his­tor­i­cal detail seems fair­ly accu­rate to me. Rid­dley Scott always does some­thing worth look­ing at, even if he some­times has struc­tural prob­lems in sto­ry-telling. Visu­ally, his instincts are always on the mark.

(Fletch­er 1986) Black­ad­der II: Bells
(Fletch­er 1986) Black­ad­der II: Head
(Fletch­er 1986) Black­ad­der II: Potato
(Theak­son 1994) Cadfael:Ep.4 ― Monk’s Hood Read more »

I’ve nev­er under­stand why this won­der­ful film had such a poor crit­i­cal recep­tion. Crit­ics com­plained that they could not fol­low the sto­ry. In fact, this medieval mys­tery, a lov­ing trib­ute to Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries, by Umber­to Eco was very faith­ful­ly trans­lat­ed to the screen. Every­thing is per­fect­ly clear if the view­er actu­al­ly pays atten­tion (which I have not noticed film crit­ics being par­tic­u­lar­ly good at). All the per­for­mances are good, but Sean Con­nery, as the Frances­can detec­tive William of Baskerville, is superb. You can tell when an actor under­stands, not only the mean­ing and con­text of his lines, but their impli­ca­tions as well. Yes, the film is slow­ly paced, and requires some effort from the view­er to appre­ci­ate. But it has moments of great beau­ty, espe­cial­ly when William’s char­ac­ter is revealed in his inter­ac­tions with his novice, Adsel of Melk (Chris­t­ian Slater). I strong­ly rec­om­mend this film.
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Cyra McFad­den’s odd­ball satire of life in Marin Coun­ty, an afflu­ent sub­urb north of San Fran­cis­co, dur­ing the late 1970’s, was made into a film in 1980. I showed this won­der­ful lit­tle piece of cul­tur­al time-trav­el to a young friend. Noth­ing could bet­ter show how much a cul­ture can trans­form in a gen­er­a­tion or two. For him, it was a voy­age to anoth­er plan­et, with incom­pre­hen­si­ble val­ues, cus­toms and jar­gon. Even for me, who was exposed to Marin coun­ty not too many years after­ward, the movie seemed bizarre. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. The film, star­ring Mar­tin Mull in the lead role of a mid­dle-aged hus­band over­whelmed by incom­pre­hen­si­ble trends and psy­chob­a­b­ble, cap­tured the ambiance per­fect­ly. McFad­den’s work was noth­ing like the scor­pi­on vicious­ness of a New York­er’s satirist— it was pure Stephen Leacock.

I love all of the “Mid­Somer Mur­ders”. John Net­tles (as the Chief inspec­tor) and Daniel Casey (as his bone-head­ed side-kick). The pro­duc­tion val­ues are first-rate, the act­ing top-notch, the scripts are well-writ­ten. Every one of the tiny, pic­turesque vil­lages in the fic­tion­al Eng­lish coun­ty of Mid­Somer is seething with hate, jeal­ousy, secret sins, thwart­ed ambi­tions, star-crossed love, kinky sex, and mur­der, mur­der, mur­der. Detroit and South L.A. have noth­ing on Mid­Somer vil­lages like Bad­ger’s Drift, Ferne Bas­set, Aspern Tal­low, and Mid­somer Mal­low. Styl­is­ti­cal­ly, the def­i­nite­ly sits in the “cosy” tra­di­tion of Eng­lish mys­ter­ies, the her­itage of Agatha Christie. Net­tles cre­ates one of the most like­able fic­tion­al detec­tives on the screen. There are plen­ty of neat lit­er­ary ref­er­ences to catch (espe­cial­ly to Jacobean dra­ma) for those who take plea­sure in such things, and plen­ty of wit­ty jibes at con­tem­po­rary mores for those who are more present-ori­ent­ed. The mys­tery plots are absurd­ly improb­a­ble, in the best Agatha Christie tradition.