JonathanRosenbaum.com

Some Brief Reflections on A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG

One of my reasons for recently revisiting Chaplin’s last feature, while preparing to teach a ten-hour course about him in Brazil, was trying to figure out why it’s so bad. There are other examples one could cite of unredeemably bad films by great filmmakers, but this one seems to belong in a category all its own. I certainly wouldn’t confuse it with his previous three features, some or all of which are considered bad by many of my colleagues but all of which I consider great in different ways (and to different degrees), even when they’re at their most distasteful. A Countess from Hong Kong is never distasteful in the various ways that A King in New York, Limelight, and Monsieur Verdoux can be at times, but it also never comes close to being revelatory in any profound way, as they continue to be.

Here is one possible explanation: Chaplin’s greatness as a director doesn’t invariably depend on his presence as the central star attraction, as A Woman of Paris amply demonstrated. But a major part of his greatness is still tied to a kind of dialogue he (mainly) had or (less often) attempted to have with his public throughout his career, most of which was tied in one fashion or another to his physical presence and/or his personal autobiography. And the autobiographical resonances of Countess, while certainly present — such as his mother’s experiences as a prostitute with vast social-climbing ambitions and/or fantasies, his father’s frequent drunkenness, and his own social standing in the latter part of his career as a kind of statesman (which A King in New York also alludes to, even more directly) — are emotionally superficial compared with those of his other films.

More importantly, the kind of ongoing dialogue that Chaplin had with his public, which veered closer and closer to monologue in Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, and A King in New York as he gradually lost his audience, ceased to be any form of dialogue afterwards. Countess is a light comedy that depends on some contact and complicity (that is to say, dialogue) with the audience of 1967 in order to function; unlike the preceding features, it doesn’t accept the terms of a monologue, even by default. So at most one can smile or laugh at some of the slapstick, but not with any of the investments that one had towards any of the characters in the earlier films. Brando’s acute discomfort in his part — which Chaplin described as his lack of a sense of humor, which he said was an intentional reason for casting him, perhaps attempting to rationalize the stiff results (which overlooks the comic flair and grace Brando could show in, say, Guys and Dolls) — tends to discourage this, and Loren’s more comfortable assumption of her own role as the Tramp never attains the pathos that would have given her character some resonance. All that remains, alas, is a kind of shadow play performed for Calvero’s absent audience. [7/27/12]

Richard Linklater as Global Regionalist [on BERNIE]

My 27th column for Caiman Cuadernos de Cine, formerly known as Cahiers du Cinéma España, which appeared, I believe, in their July issue. — J.R.

I have a habit as a critic that I suspect irritates some of my readers. When I find that my opinion about a new film differs substantially from that of the mainstream, I sometimes theorize that the reasons for this must be ideological. In this manner, I speculated that the immoderate fascination of other Americans with the mad serial killers of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and No   Country for Old Men (2007), which somehow seemed motivated by a twisted identification with them -– and especially with the capacity and eagerness of these psychotics to kill innocent people without any compunctions — were related to the fact that these films came out during the first  and second Gulf wars, when Americans were killing innocent people with no compunctions at all, and sometimes even exhibiting comparable displays of glee about this mindless activity.

More recently, I’ve been puzzling over the fact that Richard Linklater’s latest feature, Bernie, a masterpiece that has been clearly delighting many of the audiences that come to see it, was only released after many delays, wasn’t sent to Cannes, and has been doing poorly at the box office —  a fate similar to that of Linklater’s previous feature, Me and Orson Welles (2011), another treasured project which took him many years to finance, and one also dominated by a remarkable central performance (Christian McKay as Orson Welles, Jack Black as Bernie Tiede).

Although I’m still unclear about why Me and Orson Welles wasn’t more successful — apart from  a strange reluctance of the public to go to any films by or about Orson Welles, despite an    enduring fascination with him as a mythical figure — the commercial problems with Bernie may relate once more to a feeling of ambivalence about its own central figure, also modeled on a real person. Bernie Tiede — a former assistant funeral director in a small town in East Texas, not far from where Linklater himself grew up — is currently serving a life term in prison for having murdered Marjorie Nugent, roughly twice his age, the wealthiest widow in town (played in the film by Shirley MacLaine), whom he was living with, and whose body he chopped up and stored in a freezer. What makes this familiar-sounding crime story unusual is that Tiede, despite the fact that he was actively gay, was the most beloved figure in his community for his generous philanthropy, while Nugent was the most hated for her mean-spirited selfishness. Tiede’s trial  even had to take place in another country in order to ensure an “impartial” jury.

Without ever establishing conclusively whether its protagonist is gay (which it implicitly and plausibly treats as irrelevant). Bernie mainly recounts this story through members of this community, played by a mix of real locals and actors, and emerges, improbably, as an affectionate celebration of small-town life — a position that could not be more politically incorrect nowadays, especially coming from a politically progressive filmmaker during a period of American history  that seems so reactionary that a major political candidate for U.S. President (Rick Santorum) could recently remark, “Europeans have no reason to live.” Remaining fully aware of this contradiction, Linklater even suggests that Tiede may have been found guilty in part because he knew more about French wine than most of his neighbors .

Without being at all blind to these people’s absurdities, Linklater never treats them with any trace of snobbish superiority, and this may be his most audacious form of tragicomic enlightenment. (Some American critics have even complained about the film’s lack of malice — wishing it were more sarcastic, like the Coen brothers.) Like William Faulkner, Richard Linklater somehow remains both a small-town regionalist and a highly sophisticated universal humanist, which  almost sounds today like a contradiction in terms.

IL CINEMA RITROVATO DVD AWARDS 2012

IL CINEMA RITROVATO

DVD AWARDS 2012

IX edition

Jurors: Lorenzo Codelli, Alexander Horwath, Mark

McElhatten, Paolo Mereghetti, Jonathan Rosenbaum

BEST DVD 2011 / 2012

THE COMPLETE HUMPHREY JENNINGS (BFI). An ongoing series that has recently released the second of its three prefigured volumes. Jennings was the documentarian who witnessed British history with a deep and poetic gaze during the 30s and the 40s. *** BEST BLU-RAY 2011 / 2012 A HOLLIS FRAMPTON ODYSSEY (Criterion). Including early films from 1966 to 1969, films from 1966 to 1969, films from HAPAX LEGOMENA, and selected films from the unfinished MAGELLAN series. *** BEST SPECIAL FEATURES (BONUS) GODZILLA (Criterion), for its historical contextualization. MOSES UND ARON (New Yorker Video), especially for inclusion of the libretto in German and English). THE DEVILS (BFI), for documentation of the various controversies surrounding the film. *** BEST REDISCOVERIES PROVOKING REALITY: DIE “OBERHAUSENER” (Editions Filmmuseum München), for a “famous” moment in film history –- The Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 –- a presentation of 19 forgotten shorts made by artists who signed this manifesto. LANDSCAPE OF POSTWAR PERIOD (Korean Film Archive), for four Korean features (THE WIDOW, THE FLOWER IN HELL, THE MONEY, A DRIFTING STORY) by four major directors during a very troubled era–an era which is analyzed in the accompanying booklet. *** BEST DVD SERIES/BEST BOX SET TREASURES 5: THE WEST 1898-1938 (National Film Preservation Foundation), for its exceptional creative scholarship in presenting and annotating many neglected films by or with Broncho Billy Anderson, Clara Bow, Victor Fleming, D.W. Griffith, Thomas Ince, Gregory La Cava, Tom Mix, and Mack Sennett, among others. WORLD CINEMA FOUNDATION BOX SET (Carlotta Films), for resurrecting major works from neglected national cinemas: THE WAVE (1936) from Mexico, TOUKI BOUKI (1973) from Senegal, TRANCES (1981) from Morocco, and THE RED FLUTE (1989 from Kazakhstan. *** Because the jurors would like to stress that none of us is in a position to know all the important DVD releases, even though all of us have encountered important examples, some of which were not nominated for awards but deserve in any case to be far better known, each of us has selected a personal favorite that he would like to recommend: Lorenzo Codelli would like to call attention to Renown Pictures, a British company which releases extremely rare British movies:http://www.renownpicturesltd.com/ Alexander Horwath has selected THE COMPLETE JEAN VIGO on Criterion, for its brilliant, multifaceted reconstruction of a great filmmaker’s cosmos via essays, commentaries, documentaries, conversations, alternate edits, and, of  course, beautiful transfers of the films themselves. Mark McElhatten cites MYSTERIES OF LISBON (Music Box Films Home Entertainment), the late Raúl Ruiz’s labyrinthine adaption of a 19th century novel shot digitally, available here in its four hour and 17 minute theatrical version in a stunning Blu-ray rendition. Paolo Mereghetti has selected William Dieterle’s VULCANO (Ripley’s Home Video), which finally offers the possibility to see in a superb restoration the film with Anna Magnani that was made specifically “against” the STROMBOLI of Roberto Rossellini. Jonathan Rosenbaum has picked THE BIG TRAIL (20th Century-Fox), a two-disc Blu-Ray and DVD set devoted to Raoul Walsh’s 1930 masterpiece, captured in much of its original splendor and chronicled in considerable detail. [7-1-12]