Ônibus 174 (Bus 174)

Directed by José Padilha and Felipe Lacerda
Brazil
2002



On June 12, 2000, a homeless man named Sandro Rosa do Nascimento boarded a public bus in Jardim Botânico, Rio de Janeiro with the intention of robbing its passengers. Armed with a .38 caliber revolver, Sandro found himself in the middle of a hostage situation when one of the passengers managed to signal the Brazilian military police. What followed was a media circus as reporters swarmed the bus, transmitting the entire crisis on Brazilian television. As the day turned to night, Sandro became irritated and began to threaten the lives of his ten hostages. Finally, at 6:50 PM, Sandro exited the bus using one of his hostages, a pregnant schoolteacher named Geisa Firmo Gonçalves, as a human shield. Tragically, a bungled effort by local special ops to disarm Sandro led to Gonçalves being shot several times. As Gonçalves died in the street, the police forced Sandro into the back of a police vehicle where he died of asphyxiation. The entire event was a monumental disaster. Stubborn higher-ups in the police force insisted on taking Sandro alive, resulting in multiple missed opportunities to neutral him with a sniper. The law enforcement acted indecisively as a result of the local media coverage, not wanting to lose face by taking him in on live television. Miscommunication between the various law enforcement branches led to the disastrous attempt to subdue Sandro when he exited the bus, directly leading to Gonçalves’ death. And finally, it is rumored that the police murdered Sandro in the back of the police vehicle as revenge for humiliating the entire department on national television. The officers who took Sandro into custody were tried in court and found not guilty.

The entire affair was later documented and partially recreated in the superb Brazilian documentary Bus 174, named after the specific route advertised on the bus that Sandro unintentionally hijacked (in November 2001 it was renamed as route 158). It creates a visceral and devastating examination of Brazilian law enforcement, media politics, life for homeless orphans, and street crime. But at its heart is Sandro: his life, his struggles, and his unintentional martyrdom. Yes, martyrdom is the right word to use. For Sandro used the event to cry out against social injustices. Screaming at the video cameras that surrounded him, Sandro struck back at the criminal elements that led to his mother being murdered in front of his eyes, the system that prosecutes and mistreats young street orphans, and the apathetic public who, when polled, revealed that they were in favor of killing the orphans in order to clean the city up. Some may say that the death of Gonçalves nullifies all chances of him being a martyr. But let me point out that Gonçalves was shot four times and three of those bullets came from the police officers who were supposed to rescue her.



Directors Padilha and Felipe Lacerda recognized that the Bus 174 incident was a symptom of a much more devastating illness. So they spend much of the film exploring the criminal element of Brazilian society. What we find is a torturous portrait of young children forced to live and steal on the streets. These children, it is explained, are literally invisible to passersby who ignore them as they go about their daily routines. Their lives are worth less than nothing, as they are rounded up, thrown in jails with subhuman conditions, and literally left to rot. Sandro himself was a survivor of legendary Candelaria church massacre of July 23, 1993 where Brazilian policeman murdered seven homeless children and injured several others. We meet a bevy of experts and psychologists who postulate that Sandro was psychologically scarred by the event and may have led to his holding up Bus 174.

As Padilha and Felipe Lacerda dive deeper and deeper into the social ills of Brazilian society, disturbing trend begins to appear. As can be expected, there are several convicted criminals and street orphans who are interviewed. They all mask their identities, either out of fear of losing street cred or facing retribution for squealing. But soon the police officers and law officials that they interview begin to wear masks and disguise their voices as well. One would think that they would have nothing to fear from testifying about a public police action. But it slowly becomes apparent that these men have as much to fear as the street criminals that they attack. Clearly, they face prospects of retribution from inside their own departments. After all, the Bus 174 was a colossal embarrassment for the local law enforcement. In one of the most corrupt police departments in the developing world, is it any surprise that those who remind them of one of their greatest failures would be in danger for their lives?

After all, we are talking about a police department that not only allows, but in a sense depends on corruption and graft to survive. My mother used to work as a missionary in Brazil. She explained to me one day that most Brazilian policemen are severely underpaid by the government. In order to feed their families, officers are literally forced to survive on what they can manage to extort from the public. Bogus traffic violations, spurious parking tickets, and other illegal methods of extortion are the name of the game. When I asked why people didn’t stand up to them, she explained that such a reaction would lead to being put in jail. And the last thing you want, according to my mother, is to end up in a Brazilian jail.

In addition to being forced to operate in a system that requires corruption, Bus 174 explains that many, if not most, policemen are critically under-trained. Experts in the film explain that the mentality among most police officers is that they exist to enforce the law and kill those who stand in their way. Most of the time, it is the homeless who find themselves in such predicaments. In hindsight, it is a miracle that only two people were killed as a result of the standoff.



To watch Bus 174 is to witness a sad implosion of Brazilian society. The end, when it comes, is tragic, but we ultimately don’t expect anything else. What else could happen in such a situation? But Bus 174’s greatest strength is not in what it says, but in what is doesn’t say. A lesser documentary would chastise the local law enforcement and the complacent public that allowed such a tragedy to happen. A lesser documentary would grandstand itself and demand social change. Bus 174 doesn’t. It regards its material with a sad sense of resignation. It bestows Sandro with a sense of dignity and understanding that he probably never received in his life. Ultimately, Bus 174 presents a system in desperate need of change. One can only light a candle for orphans like Sandro, so mistreated, so exploited, so destined for tragedy.

Out of respect for my Brazilian readers, I have removed some lines from this review that may be misconstrued as hurtful or insensitive. As one of my readers pointed out, many of these social ills discussed in this review are being diligently resolved. For that I am extremely thankful.

Part 1/12 of Bus 174

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_174
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Summer_Olympics#Security_Concerns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Rosa_do_Nascimento
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340468/

Love and Death

Directed by Woody Allen
1975
The United States of America


Editor's Note: I would strongly recommend for you to read this article with this playing in the background. When the music stops, just restart it from the beginning.

Boris: I have no fear of the gallows.
Father: No?
Boris: No. Why should I? They're going to shoot me.

Woody Allen’s films have always been relatively easy to categorize. You have your screwball romcoms (Annie Hall, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Dream, The Purple Rose of Cairo), your more subdued dramedies (Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Broadway Danny Rose), and even starkly serious dramas inspired by his idol Ingmar Bergman (Interiors, September, Another Woman). And yet throughout all of these films, the persona of Woody Allen dominates. Even in films where he doesn’t act, you can feel him nervously twitching and wringing his hands somewhere closely off-screen. To see his films is to share in his neuroses, his thoughts, his anxieties, and his fears. Some of his films don’t feel like entertainments, but cries for help. But things were not always that way. There was a time when Allen didn’t bring his problems to the front of his work. There was actually a time when his only goal was to entertain and make the audience laugh.

In the late 60s and early 70s, Allen wrote and directed a number of comedic spoofs that represented the purest concentration of his comedic talents and acerbic wit. Inspired by the works of the Marx Brothers and Bob Hope, they were free-form comedies that didn’t so much have a plot, but merely a sparse storyline that allowed Allen to progress from joke to gag. The first, Take the Money and Run (1969), was a mockumentary of the life of a notorious, and yet painfully incompetent, petty criminal. The plot was straightforward enough and the humor seemed to come naturally (if not a tad surreally) from the subject matter. Then you had such notorious films as Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972) and Sleeper (1973) which resembled what might have happened if Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali ever did comedy. Overall, they were funny, but uneven, casually cluttered messes of one-liners and gags. The movies were entertaining, all right, but they felt like movies made by a comedian, not a comedic filmmaker. The movies worked as long as Allen’s gags held up. Perhaps that is why in hindsight they may not have aged quite as well as his later work.

Then came 1975 and Allen’s film Love and Death. Easily his best early work, it also is easily the funniest of his entire career. A calculated balance of gags, character and plot development, and emotional whimsy made Love and Death his first genuine masterpiece. It would later be forgotten when Allen released his next, and arguably his greatest, film Annie Hall (1977) which won him critical acclaim, Oscars, box office success, and an adoring fan base. But to those in the know, Love and Death was where Allen’s true career as a filmmaker started. It was the film that saw him embrace his role as not just a comedian, but also as a director.

Looking back over the film, I estimate that only about a paragraph is needed to explain the plot.

It follows as such: Allen plays Boris Grushenko, a cowardly Russian peasant who is forced to enlist in the army along with his brothers after Napoleon invades their country. Through a series of mishaps, he becomes a decorated war hero, marries his childhood sweetheart and cousin, the lovely Sonja (Diane Keaton), and settles down. But it isn’t long before he becomes involved in a plot to assassinate Napoleon. He is captured, tried, and executed. The end.



Do you feel like I spoiled the movie? Trust me, I didn’t. What matters are the jokes, puns, setups, and payoffs. As long as I don’t give them all away, your experience watching the film will not be diminished.

Those familiar with Allen’s oeuvre know that he is an avid fan of philosophy. This predilection shines brightly in this movie. The plot itself is a conglomeration of various philosophical Russian epic novels by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Allen indulges in several tongue-and-cheek conversations with Keaton where they spout off meaningless philosophical techno-babble like college professors on caffeine. Take the following exchange:

Sonja: Judgment of any system, or a priori relationship or phenomenon exists in an irrational, or metaphysical, or at least epistemological contradiction to an abstract empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself.

Boris: [Deadpan] Yes, I've said that many times.

We aren’t meant to follow it, but simply to marvel. And what else can you do in such a film? Allen keeps the one liners coming as fast as he can think them up. Even Groucho would have trouble keeping up with Allen in this film. Take the following examples:

Countess Alexandrovna: You are the greatest lover I've ever had.
Boris: Well, I practice a lot when I'm alone.

Boris: Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed? The difference is that all men go eventually, but I go six o'clock tomorrow morning. I was supposed to go at five o'clock, but I have a smart lawyer. Got leniency.

Sonja: There are many different kinds of love, Boris. There's love between a man and a woman; between a mother and son...
Boris: Two women. Let's not forget my favorite.

Anton Inbedkov: Shall we say pistols at dawn?
Boris Grushenko: Well, we can say it. I don't know what it means, but we can say it.

Sonja: Oh don't, Boris, please. Sex without love is an empty experience.
Boris: Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.

Sonja: What are you suggesting, passive resistance?
Boris: No, I'm suggesting active fleeing.

Sonja: Boris is trying to commit suicide - last week he contemplated inhaling next to an Armenian.

But Love and Death does not merely rely on fancy wordplay. Five years before Airplane! (1980), Allen was inventing and perfecting the art of the spoof with witty one-liners, blatant historical anachronisms, and unrestrained absurdity. Whether he is ordering red hots from a vendor in the middle of a battle or watching a public service announcement skit on venereal diseases, Allen breezes through more comedic setups in fifteen minutes than most films do within their entire duration.



But remember, I said that this was more than just a comedic smorgasbord. It was the dawning of a new age of Woody Allen. Suddenly, he wasn’t just about the jokes anymore. Philosophy and insights on the human condition (some of which are startlingly beautiful) creep into the film. For perhaps the first time we see glimpses of Ingmar Bergman’s influence creeping into Allen’s work. Take an early scene where a child version of Boris is walking in the woods and has a holy vision of Death. Cloaked in a white robe and carrying a vicious scythe, the figure is an obvious tribute to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). But pay attention, dear readers. There are many other sly references scattered through-out. A duel scene between Boris and a rival play out like a similar scene from Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). And in one scene Sonja converses with a woman servant and suddenly positions her face perpendicular to the other, creating an unmistakable reference to Persona (1966).

But Allen did more than just homage Bergman’s work. For the first time, his characters began to suffer conflicts that arose from internal dilemmas. For example, it is well established that Boris is a coward and doesn’t want to go off to war. But notice that he spends his precious leave time going to the opera. Could it be that Boris does not fear death as much as he fears missing out on life and all its beauty? It’s not that he is afraid of dying (although he most certainly is). He is afraid of not living. When Boris wins a duel for Sonja’s hand in marriage, she is originally opposed to it. This provides many funny gags representing their early home life. But eventually Sonja develops love for Boris. In another comedy by another director, Sonja would hate Boris up until the credits. But not here. Although the situations they become involved in are absurd, although they represent comedic extremes, the characters here are Characters with a capital C. They are people, not just crash test dummies designed for bouncing joke after joke on.

At heart, Love and Death is a comedy of the highest pedigree. It represents Allen at the height of his comedic genius. His films would get more serious in the following years, and it is generally agreed that he became a better filmmaker for it. But Love and Death gives us a glimpse at a young director coming to terms with his own creative forces.

Let me leave you with one last thought. The last scene of the film has Boris returning as a ghost (he was executed, remember?) to Sonja. He is accompanied once again by the spectre of Death. Of course, Allen manages to pull some laughs from the scene:

Sonja: You were my one great love.
Boris: Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm dead.
Sonja: What's it like?
Boris: What's it like? You know the chicken at Tresky's Restaurant? It's worse.

That exchange alone is funny enough, but notice that Allen doesn’t end the film there. He ends it with this soliloquy:

Boris: The question is have I learned anything about life. Only that human being are divided into mind and body. The mind embraces all the nobler aspirations, like poetry and philosophy, but the body has all the fun. The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns out that there IS a God, I don't think that He's evil. I think that the worst you can say about Him is that basically He's an underachiever. After all, there are worse things in life than death. If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know what I'm talking about. The key is, to not think of death as an end, but as more of a very effective way to cut down on your expenses. Regarding love, heh, what can you say? It's not the quantity of your sexual relations that counts. It's the quality. On the other hand if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into. Well, that's about it for me folks. Goodbye.




I think that quote speaks for itself. It contains an unbelievable balance of humor, introspection, and insight. Not content to leave us like that, Allen then dances down a lane surrounded by flowering trees to the triumphant tune of Prokofiev’s Troika. Truly, this was a man who had not yet been consumed by the neuroses that would trouble him for the rest of his life. He knew that his whole career was ahead of him and that he could afford to be optimistic. Never again would Woody Allen be so charming, so delightful, so funny, and so hopeful for the future.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Death

Bad Day at Black Rock

Directed by John Sturges
1955
The United States of America



The last thing you would expect to think of while watching a Western would be an Eighteenth century Irish statesman. And yet, for the entirety of Bad Day at Black Rock by John Sturges, one thought dominated my mind. It was a quote by the great Edmund Burke that went, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” How relevant was that quote, how relevant was that piercing statement on morality while watching this phenomenal film. For the main theme of Bad Day at Black Rock is a common one in Westerns: one man must stand alone against insurmountable evil. We have seen it dozens of times in countless varieties in films as varied as High Noon (1952), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Magnificent Seven (1960). Yet the evil in Bad Day at Black Rock is not the average fare for Westerns. Instead of evil being represented by bad men with guns, it is chiefly represented by good men who refuse stand up for what is right. Complacency, resignation, and denial are the true villains in this film.

Bad Day at Black Rock starts like so many other Westerns: a lone law man comes riding into a desolate, near deserted town. But something is different here. Instead of riding in on a horse, the law man rides a Southern Pacific passenger train. Instead of a dashing and handsome champion, we get a one-armed, handicapped veteran named John J. Macreedy. Instead of a ruthless masculine bravado, he operates using a calm, almost absent-minded listlessness. And finally, instead of a rough-and-tough personification of the Wild West like John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, or James Coburn, we get soft-spoken Spencer Tracy. Yes, the man whose claim to fame was playing Catholic priests and Portuguese fishermen is the hero of this picture. But don’t be fooled. In Bad Day at Black Rock, Tracy creates one of the greatest heroes that the West has ever seen.


Immediately, Macreedy senses that something is…amiss…in the town. The people are all surprised to have a visitor. The train hasn’t stopped in the town for four years, one of the townsfolk tells him. It appears that they preferred it that way. Here is a town with a dark secret. Macreedy seems dead-set on discovering it. He bums around town like Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade as he searches for answers and explanations. The comparison to film noir is not unwarranted. Indeed, Bad Day at Black Rock is nothing less than a synthesis of the Western and film noir genres. Like film noir, dread and gloom permeate the people and setting. Like all classic film noir protagonists, they have something from their past that they are running from. Macreedy too, has his own secrets which motivate him. After all, why would he come to a hell-hole like Black Rock in the first place?

Much like in film noir, Macreedy starts to make acquaintances with the local color. There’s Pete Wirth, the young hotel desk clerk who always seems to have something on the tip of his tongue burning a hole in his mouth. Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) plays the incompetent authority figure. Blurred with alcohol and scared of his own citizens, he advises Macreedy to leave. Liz Wirth, Pete’s sister, is the resident dame (possible femme fatale?) and indeed appears to be the only woman in town. Ernest Borgnine plays the local neighborhood bully named Coley Trimble who at one point assaults Macreedy by trying to drive him off the road. The great character actor Walter Brennan plays Doc Velie, the town’s resident physician and undertaker. And then there’s Reno Smith, played by the indomitable Lee Marvin. Although he carries no badge, it’s obvious that he is the de facto ruler of Black Rock.



All of these characters react uneasily to Macreedy’s presence. He shouldn’t be there. He especially shouldn’t be asking so many questions. Like film noir, motivations are not immediately revealed. It is only after a sufficient amount of prodding that Macreedy reveals that he is searching for a Japanese-American farmer named Komoko. Being 1945, the townspeople are quick to say that Komoko was interned in a camp shortly after Pearl Harbor. But Macreedy isn’t so sure. After all, it wasn’t the policy of the United States government to burn down Japanese-American property after they were interned…

With all the timing and execution of an expert thriller, Macreedy lets on that he knows that the townspeople are lying. Even worse, he knows that Komoko wasn’t interned. To the townspeople’s horror, he lets on that he has guessed Komoko’s true fate: that he was lynched in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. It turns out that Macreedy had a reason to sport a missing arm: he had lost it invading Italy. And while he was in Italy, his life was saved by none other than Komoko’s son. Sadly, he was killed in combat. So Macreedy had planned to return his son’s medal to Komoko. Now that he knows Komoko’s fate, Macreedy plans on having those responsible arrested and brought to justice.

But the townspeople think otherwise. As soon as they discover that Macreedy knows about their past, they no longer want him to leave. In fact, they now want nothing other than for Macreedy to join Komoko. See, Komoko’s death did something scary to the townspeople: it revealed their own cowardice. Most of the townsfolk literally stood back and did nothing while Komoko was killed. And now, the idea that they will not only be punished, but be forced to confront their own actions, proves to be too much. The answer to the townspeople is simple: kill Macreedy, act like nothing ever happened, and pray to God that everyone will forget that there was ever a man named Komoko.

One by one, individual members of the community stand up with Macreedy. Eventually, they tell him the story of Komoko’s death and reveal the name of his killer. They even try to help him get out of town. Call the police, they say. But the operator says the lines are “busy.” Take another train out, they say. But the next one isn’t scheduled until tomorrow morning. Take the spare jeep, they say. But somebody has ripped all of the wires out of the engine….


Folks, I’d love to divulge more of the plot to you. I really would. But it would be like giving away the ending to a Hitchcock or Clouzot thriller. Rest assured that once Macreedy realizes that he can’t leave the town alive, the movie morphs into a suspenseful powerhouse. Suddenly, every person is a potential killer, every plot of earth or abandoned well a potential grave. All that keeps Macreedy alive is the sun. Once it disappears beyond the horizon…well…I don’t think I need to go on.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a film of the highest caliber. A film noir dressed like a Western, it combines genres and breaks stereotypes. It plays with all the intrigue of a thriller of the finest caliber. In a time when Westerns dealt with moral absolutes, where good guys wore white hats and bad guys wore black hats, here is a film that dares to delve into the foundations of right and wrong. Submerged in moral ambiguity, in the town of Black Rock, nobody is innocent. And they don’t like being reminded of it.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_day_at_black_rock

Sugar

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
2008
The United States of America



I can literally point my finger to the exact moment when I knew that Sugar would be a great film. It was a scene about 20-30 minutes into the film where the protagonist, a Dominican baseball player named Miguel “Sugar” Santos, sits alone at a diner in the wee hours of the morning. Equipped with only a few clumsy words of English, Sugar tries to order eggs. The waitress asks how he would like them. Fried? Scrambled? Sunny side up? Not understanding, Sugar bows his head and quietly asks for the only item on the menu that he is familiar with: French toast. Having worked in the food industry for several years, I thought to myself, “A real waitress would understand and bring him eggs anyway.” And what do you know, she did! Gobsmacked, I sat and watched as she brought Sugar three different kinds of eggs and taught him how to order them. It was as if the film had literally read my mind.

It was right there that I realized that I was not watching an average film. From there on I started watching a little bit more closely. I was amazed to realize that not a single character, no matter how small, was one-dimensional or flat. These were real humans with genuine motivations, hopes, dreams, and fears. They were not just mannequins designed to spout dialogue or progress the plot. The people in this film were not characters, they were human beings.

Perhaps you may think that I am over-reacting. I disagree. As I look out over the state of popular cinema these days, I am disappointed to find that more and more films are content to let stereotypes and archetypes define their characters and their actions. It has gotten to a point where you can predict how characters will react to certain situations. But in Sugar, we don’t know what the characters will do next. They aren’t preordained to succeed or fail. Instead, we are given the pleasure of watching them interact with their world, make decisions, and develop.

We first meet our protagonist Sugar as a young Dominican baseball pitcher trying to get signed by an American baseball team. Dreaming of one day playing for the New York Yankees, Sugar attends a baseball training camp where he learns such essentials as how to say “You’re out” in English. But Sugar is not alone. He is surrounded by dozens upon dozens of other hopefuls with dreams of purple waves of grain. After all, to the young men of the Dominican Republic, getting signed represents one of the only guaranteed sources of upward social mobility. One wonders if half of them even enjoy playing baseball. For Sugar, the siren call of the United States is a piercing shriek. Miraculously, Sugar is invited to spring training in the states, courtesy of the Kansas City Knights.



It isn’t long before Sugar gets noticed for his devastating knuckle curve and is signed for a Single A affiliate in Iowa. The wide plains of Middle America are as foreign as the surface of Mars to Sugar, having grown up in crowded, urban squalor. Even more bizarre is his foster family who takes him in, the Higgins. Sugar would be hard pressed to find a more red-meat-and-potatoes, salt of the earth American family even if he dived into a Norman Rockwell painting. While they desperately try to be loving and accommodating, the language and cultural gap only serve to increase Sugar’s uncontrollable sense of isolation.



Indeed, in his pursuit of the American Dream, Sugar falls into the American Wasteland. He watches as one by one his friends are cut from the team and sent back to the Dominican Republic. When he injures himself during a game, a new Dominican pitcher almost immediately pops up to take his place. He finds himself attracted to the Higgin’s grand-daughter, who encapsulates everything that American women are renowned for. But her staunch conservative values prevent her from pursuing a pre-marital relationship. He comes to rely on drugs to give him the edge needed to overcome his injury and pitch.

Eventually, he realizes that he is living the American Nightmare. So one day he jumps off the team bus and travels to New York City. As he careens from one hotel to another, he slowly starts to rebuild his life, first taking a job at a dinner before gaining a better job as a carpenter. As he reconstructs his life from the ground up, he comes to realize true personal fulfillment. Is it any surprise that at the end of the film he picks up baseball again? He joins up with a league of immigrants who had all come to the States with dreams of playing baseball, only to be cut. He becomes one more face in the crowd of baseball’s rejects. And yet, in doing so he finds a new place in life. This time, he plays because he wants to.



Sugar is a true gem of a film. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who both wrote and directed the film, based the film off the experiences of real Dominican immigrants who came to the States to play baseball. They said, “The stories we heard were so fascinating that it became what we were writing before we'd even decided it was our next project.” Perhaps that is why the universe of the film feels so real and alive. Or perhaps it has something to do with the design of the film itself. Much like Bresson and Ozu, the film seems interested in the character and inner humanity of its titular character. It seems to almost disregard the plot in preference of focusing on his inner struggles and turmoil. The film is more interested in how difficult it is for him to order breakfast in English than it is for him to succeed in the Minors. And much like Bresson and Ozu, Sugar is not afraid to take its time. The film is two hours long and let me tell say, you feel every one of those minutes. But that isn’t a bad thing. Here is a movie that is unafraid of boring its audience. It has a story to tell and it is going to tell it on its own terms. If you don’t like it then you can leave.

But for those of you who wish to stay and watch, you will be treated to one of the greatest films of the last ten years that nobody has seen. Perhaps its unwillingness to compromise its artistic integrity in favor of audience-oriented flair and style was responsible for its poor distribution. Outside of a few film festivals, almost nobody has heard of it. And that is a true shame. Sugar hearkens back to a time when directors and storytellers actually had something that they wanted to say. It single-handedly defies the concept that they don’t make them like they used to.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_%282008_film%29#Production

Dancer in the Dark

Directed by Lars von Trier
2000
Denmark



In a dark theater, a pair of middle aged women sit and watch the classic Busby Berkeley musical Gold Diggers of 1933. In the midst of the infamous Pettin’ in the Park sequence, one of the women leans over and takes her friend’s hand. She starts to reenact the dancing with two fingers upon her friend’s open palm. For her friend, this is the closest she will get to experiencing the wonders illuminating the screen. Almost completely blind, she relies on her friend to narrate the film. One may wonder why bother? The answer is that the music and dancing is the only comfort that this woman can find in the cruel world of America. It’s getting harder and harder to do her job at an industrial factory when she can’t see which machine she is working at. A Czech immigrant, she is finding that the American dream is more elusive than she ever could have imagined. And to her horror, her only son, already constrained by a pair of coke-bottle glasses, is having more and more trouble seeing…



Such is the world of Selma Ježková, the tragic heroine of Lars von Trier’s devastatingly powerful Dancer in the Dark. A bizarre departure from the majority of Trier’s oeuvre, Dancer in the Dark is a harrowing film of unimaginable depth and emotion. One may ask what could possibly differentiate this particular film from the rest of Trier’s eclectic catalog. The answer is simple: for all his diverse exploits, this remains Trier’s only musical. Let me say that again. Lars von Trier, founder and poster child of the Dogma 95 movement, creator of some of the most shocking and challenging films of the late 20th and early 21st century, directed a musical. As in, a film where the narrative is broken up by songs and choreographed dancing numbers.

Surprised? Confused? Don’t be. While the film may look like a musical and quack like a musical, it is a singular, independent entity among the ranks of musical productions. The songs aren’t particularly catchy (they are usually dominated by one or two musical themes that are repeated over and over again). The lyrics are choppy and irregular (many times a single phrase is repeated for almost the entire song). And the dancing frequently looks robotic and artificial. But to understand the film, you must first understand that the nearly amateurish music and dancing were designed to look that way. And to understand why, you must first understand the character of Selma Ježková.

Selma is an occupant of two different worlds. In the first, she is a poor single mother who must work grueling shifts at a factory. In time, she will get fired because she almost cannot see her machines anymore. She finds solace by going to the movies with her friend Kathy (whom she nicknames Cvalda) and participating in an amateur production of The Sound of Music. The other world is a land of fantasy. As the film progresses, she delves into fantastic daydreams where the people around her break out into song and dance. Much like the Academy award winning musical Chicago (2002), all of the grand song and dance numbers take place inside the character’s mind. Location and circumstances are irrelevant to Selma. When the urge to escape hits her, the world explodes into song. When she is on a train, a band of hobos stealing a ride becomes an impromptu dance company. When she is toiling away at her soulless job, the machines start to beat in time and the workers begin to jump in frolic to their beat. And finally, on death row, her own footsteps as she makes that final, solemn march to the noose count out the time to a final swan song.



It occurs to me that I have perhaps gotten a little ahead of myself. Maybe I should explain the plot before I give the ending away. But in retrospect it doesn’t really matter. This is a film by Lars von Trier. Would you expect anything else? But perhaps an explanation is in order. After Selma gets fired from her job at the factory for breaking an expensive piece of machinery, she is beseeched by her friend Bill for a loan. She declines, as she saves every penny that she can spare for an operation that will save her son’s eyesight. Desperate for money, Bill steals Selma’s savings. When she confronts him at his house, a struggle breaks out as he pulls a gun on her. In the ensuing chaos, Selma accidentally injures Bill as his wife, Linda, flees the house seeking help. In his final moments, Bill begs Selma to finish him off. Clearly in a state of shock, a terrified Selma complies. After the deed is done, Selma slips into a trance where she imagines Bill’s body coming back to life and dancing a slow dirge with her. He encourages her to run for freedom. After the last note dies off, she complies. She rushes to an Institute for the Blind and spends every last cent on paying for her son’s operation.

She is then picked up by the police and taken to jail. A kangaroo court awaits her as she is mercilessly accused of being a Communist. I’m sorry, did I forget to mention that this film takes place in the Fifties? Well, it does. But you would never guess that from watching the movie. The entire film seems timeless as it is bereft of period clothes or any other indicators of the era. In fact, the only time when we are reminded of the year is when Selma is accused of being a Godless Commie. Does it come off as a bit random? Perhaps. But maybe that was the only way that the Dutch von Trier could think of creating a situation where his character couldn’t escape a conviction within the American court system.

Her fate sealed, she rebukes one last effort from her friends to help her escape her fate. They take the money that she tried to spend on her son’s operation and hire a big city lawyer. The second that she finds out, she fires him and demands a refund. In a stunning scene, she is confronted by her new lawyer who bluntly asks her if she realizes what will happen to her if she fires him. She smiles weakly and responds that she does. And so we find her walking the Green Mile towards her doom. I could tell you how the film’s most powerful moments play out at the end of the film, but that would be tantamount to theft. Let’s just say that you cannot imagine the horror and the power of the film’s closing scenes.

Some may scratch their heads and wonder how such a bizarre film could work. To them, I raise my hand and simply answer, “Björk.” In Dancer in the Dark, Selma is played by Icelandic superstar Björk Guðmundsdóttir. To watch her is to witness a revelation of true, unbridled talent. Never once do we fail to believe in Selma’s character or feel anything but the utmost love and sympathy for her. Björk seems to channel a beaten puppy as she navigates her way through an uncaring society. And yet, her painfully introverted performance explodes in a phantasmagoria of energy and emotion during her musical numbers. Remember how I said that the songs weren’t particularly well written or well composed? I think that von Trier did that on purpose. After all, they are the extensions of a foreigner’s mind. Selma probably doesn’t know how to construct shimmering lyrics or pleasing melodies in her adopted language and culture. Instead, they cut right to the core of what Selma thinks and experiences. And Björk makes them work, transforming each note into a devastating scream of beauty and each lyric into a trembling cry for recognition and acceptance.

Watching her perform, it seems only natural that she would have won so many accolades for her performance, including the Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress. So it is a tragedy that afterward Björk swore never to appear in another film. Apparently, working for one of the most demanding and innovative directors in the world was a taxing and emotionally devastating experience. Don’t mistake that last sentence as a statement born of cynicism or sarcasm. It was a serious observation. It must have been next to impossible to channel so much energy into each shot. And so, we must be eternally grateful that Björk blessed the world with even one performance. I would almost feel greedy asking her to commit to another role…

Critics and audiences must have agreed with me that Dancer in the Dark was one of Lars von Trier’s greatest works. After all, the film won the 2000 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Some might be surprised that I would mention a winner of the Golden Palm on a site designed for under-appreciated films. My answer is simple: yes it won one of the most prestigious awards that a film can receive in the world. But really, how many people know about it? When people talk about Lars von Trier, they tend to think of his earlier work when he was involved with Dogma 95 or his more recent films that have redefined the terms “visceral” and “shocking.” Few have seen, or even heard of this great film. And so I write about it. It deserves not only to be seen, but to be cherished. Is it difficult to watch? Yes. It can be a grueling experience that yanks at the exposed nerve endings of your comfort zone. But I would argue that many great works of art do the same. The original performance of Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring caused fights to break out. During an author’s reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl the audience almost revolted. And let’s not forget that Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin literally compelled its audiences to riot. And so I return to Dancer in the Dark. It is not just a good film. It is not just a great film. It is a transcendent film. It provides one of those rare experiences that shake you to your core.

Just thank God that at least you got a couple of musical numbers out of it.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancer_in_the_dark#Awards

Here is a clip of the Academy Award nominated song "I've Seen it All."

Editor's Note: Good News and Bad News

Well, hello faithful readers (there have to be at least a couple of you out there...)!

I'm here to depart two very important pieces of news. I have good news and bad news. First, the bad news.

Tomorrow I will be starting the fall semester of my senior year of college. I will be juggling six classes and my graduation project. Yes, I said SIX classes. Don't ask...

As a result, I will not be able to do as many reviews a month. Since the inception of this blog, I have made it a personal goal to do at least six entries a month. I have always been able to keep up with this goal. But with my new schedule and work load, doing six reviews will be impossible. So, I will reduce the number of reviews a month down to only four.

But now the good news! With my work load reduced to only four reviews a month, I will be able to provide something that I have never been able to before: a consistent schedule.

You heard me.

A single, reliable update schedule.

I will post a new review every Saturday afternoon. Scout's honor.

To all the great readers out there who have read and supported my blog for so long, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please, please, PLEASE leave comments so that I can know you are there and I can gauge what kind of reviews you all like. Please feel free to leave suggestions, recommendations, or even critiques and insults in the comments section. I appreciate every and any kind of feedback.

With any luck, I will still be able to write about great, under-appreciated movies for a long time to come.

Thank you again!

Nathanael Hood
Editor and Writer

The Snake Pit

Directed by Anatole Litvak
1948
The United States of America



Hollywood has always had a tenuous grasp of subjects dealing with mental illnesses. Sure, they herald those films that deal with the insane and disabled as ground-breaking and monumental. An old Hollywood joke is that the only guaranteed way to win an Oscar in to play a retard. And yet, Hollywood, and the world film community at large, never really seems to agree how mental illness should be depicted. Some films, like Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963) and François Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H (1975) operated under the fallacy that sufferers of mental illness could turn “the crazy” on and off as the plot saw fit. Other films, usually character studies like The Rain Man (1988) and A Beautiful Mind (2001), exploit their mentally challenged characters for laughs or tears. By and large, what most film-makers don’t realize is that the mentally ill do not, and cannot, comprehend the world the same way sane people do. It’s easier to examine mental patients from the outside looking in. So film-makers treat the mentally ill as spectacles to observe and study.

The best films about mental illness are those that model themselves after the characters that they portray. One of the greatest of these is Lodge Kerrigan’s Clean, Shaven (1994), a film that was shot from the perspective of a schizophrenic. Every shot, every angle, and every edit reinforced the idea that we were intruding into the schizophrenic’s world and seeing things the way that he did. But because it didn’t exploit its main character and instead tried to view things from an objective standpoint, it did not receive the acclaim that other films in its sub-genre did. In other words, it did not win any Oscars.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the public just were not ready for a film that dealt so objectively with mental illness. There have been other films to explore insanity in the same manner long before Clean, Shaven. One of the first, and one of the greatest, was Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit. Based off the novel by real life psychiatric patient Mary Jane Ward, The Snake Pit was a daring exploration of the depths of one woman’s madness and the cruelty of the system to which she had been committed.



We are introduced to a young married woman named Virginia Cunningham (Olivia de Havilland) who has been committed to a mental hospital after suffering a serious mental breakdown. We follow her as she attempts to regain her sanity and her memory from before the breakdown. At the start, she cannot even remember who she is, where she is, and even how she got there. She is forced to share accommodations with other, sicker, patients. Some are amiable and easy to get along with, like the old woman who lives under the delusion that she is a wealthy debutante. Others are more violent and terrifying, like the woman named Marty who strangles anyone who touches her.

Incredibly, none of the actresses in the film were real inmates. The patients were played by expert character actors who had studied real patients in mental institutions for a period of three months prior to filming. Nobody took their research more seriously than Havilland who sat in on lengthy therapy sessions, watched hydrotherapy and electric shock treatments, and attended social functions held for the patients. The effect in the film is so realistic that if not for the non-linear storytelling, The Snake Pit could almost be confused with a dramatized documentary. The effect was so powerful that during the film’s release in Britain, the local censors added a forward to the movie that guaranteed the audiences that everyone involved in the film were actors, not actual patients.

The censors were also quick to add that British mental hospitals were very different from the ones depicted in the film. After all, Virginia’s stay was not a pleasant one. Although her sessions with kind Dr. Mark Kik are helpful and soothing, she is always callously dismissed to return to the mercies of the attending nurses. Using the term “mercy” is too generous for the sadistic nurses of the asylum. Some take obvious pleasure in administering painful treatments to Virginia. In one devastating scene they lure her out of her cell with promises of seeing her husband only to ambush her and submit her to electroshock therapy (a treatment which, since its inception, was illegal to perform without the patient’s consent). But the worst punishment of all is the threat of the “snake pit,” an open room where the worst cases are corralled and left to their own devices. The idea behind the sinister treatment was the belief that just as a normal person could be shocked into insanity, an insane person can be shocked back into sanity if placed in an environment that was hostile enough…



Relief for Virginia comes in brief breaks between the dual nightmares of incarceration in the asylum and her own mind. As her therapy progresses, the source behind Virginia’s illness are revealed. When she was young she was involved in a car accident that killed her father, leaving her to be raised by her strict and virtually uncaring mother. Virginia feels great guilt over the accident because she was the one who asked her dad to take her for a drive. When she was approached by her boyfriend with a marriage proposal, her deep-seated grief and guilt drove her to madness. Only when she accepts her role as a mother and wife does her life regain some semblance of normalcy. Some would argue that the film’s subtext suggests that the root of Virginia’s insanity was the desire to be independent of dependency on a man. Therefore, the film makes a powerful statement that only those who act the way society wants us to can be considered sane. It’s a powerful interpretation. But remember that The Snake Pit was filmed in 1948 when psychiatric cures were still relatively crude. In that time, the film’s proposed cure would probably have been accepted as medically sound.

But the film isn’t concerned with the fine print of Virginia’s mental illness. Instead, it focuses on seeing things through Virginia’s eyes. The plot advances in fragments of non-linear flashbacks which provide exposition and character histories, reflecting the state of Virginia’s warped mind and perception of the outside world. In moments of pain or psychotic intensity, the camera becomes more violent and wild. The music reaches a fevered, blistering pace (the film’s only Oscar win was for Best Sound Recording). For instance, the scene when Virginia has a relapse and is cruelly thrust into the snake pit is a masterpiece of timing, editing, and shot construction. At first, the camera follows Virginia around as she weaves in and out of the deliriously insane, trying feebly to escape their torment. Slowly, as the sound becomes louder and more unbearable, the camera slowly starts to move up from the ground until it is suspended from above, giving the viewer a bird’s eye view of the room. As the camera pulls further back, the patients shrink until they are tiny dots ripping each other apart in an inescapable confinement. Without using a single special effect or trick shot, a room of living human beings is literally transformed into a snake pit.



Just as movies usually had to back in the Forties, there is a happy ending. Virginia is cured, reunited with her husband, and leaves the cursed institution. But the film’s story doesn’t end with the last shot. The film was such an eye-opener to the public that it launched reform movements to change conditions in mental hospitals in twenty-six states. Therein lays the testament to the film’s power. Using what knowledge they had available at the time, Anatole Litvak and his colleagues created a genre defining film that caused positive change throughout society. Few films have ever achieved an impact so pronounced. Maybe that is why it has fallen by the wayside over the years. After all, who wants to see the reality behind mental illness and its treatment? It’s much too unpleasant. It's more fun to watch Dustin Hoffman recite Who’s on First to a weary Tom Cruise.

Sources:
http://twentyfourframes.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/the-snake-pit-1948-anatole-litvak/
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/45324/The-Snake-Pit/overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snake_Pit#Impact
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040806/trivia

Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage)

Directed by Victor Sjöström
1921
Sweden



Woe to those whose lives are mired in sin! For we all must face a terrible reckoning at the twilight of our lives. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, we face one final journey, one final voyage to that eternal palace, or to that infernal pit. But to those who fear the road before them, fear not! For the road will not be a lonely one. Accompanying us on that grim passage is a guide garbed in black who has made the trip countless times. Do not mistake him for his dour master known simply as Death, for he is just a servant. Cloaked in black and carrying a sinister scythe, this chauffeur drives a decrepit carriage pulled by a tireless horse. For him, an hour on earth becomes a hundred years. What crime, what terrible deed must he have committed to be tasked with this terrible employ? Simply being a victim of the tyranny of the clock. For every New Year’s Eve, the last unfortunate soul to die before the stroke of midnight must become Death’s valet for the New Year, and the driver of the Phantom Carriage.



First told in 1912 by Nobel-prize winning Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf, the story of the Phantom Carriage has been told several times in the history of cinema. But no adaptation has been as stunning, and as vital, as the 1921 version directed by and starring Victor Sjöström. A truly revolutionary film, The Phantom Carriage takes its place alongside the other great silent horror films, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1921), and Faust (1926). Like its compatriots, The Phantom Carriage is a moody, sinisterly atmospheric film. But unlike the other films mentioned which liberally created new universes out of expressionist sets and painted shadows, The Phantom Carriage takes place in a grimly realistic world filled with broken, yet believable characters. When Sjöström thrusts the audiences into the realms of the unreal, the audience shivers, for they see a haunted reflection of the world around them.

The story centers on a drunkard named David Holm (Victor Sjöström), a once respectable family man who fell into a bottle and never crawled out. Once a proud husband and father, he has been reduced to a derelict content to drown his sorrows with his fellow miscreants. On a cold New Year’s Eve, he sits in a graveyard and tells his friends the tale of the Phantom Carriage. But once the story ends, a fight breaks out and David is struck down dead in the street. To his horror, his astral form sits up from his body and watches as an ancient carriage pulls up beside him. Its driver looms over him and pulls off his hood, revealing himself to be his old friend Georges who had died the previous New Year’s Eve.



David regards his old friend with shock and dismay for his poor fortune. But Georges has no time for pleasantries. Georges is on a mission to take David on a tour through his life and show him how he has fallen from grace. Much like Jacob Marley, he will carry his Scrooge through the halls of the past to face ancient sins and transgressions. David is forced to watch how he abandoned his dear wife Anna for drink. In one terrible scene, we watch as Anna locks him in a small room to keep him from infecting their children with tuberculosis. In a terrible rage, he chops the door down with an axe and pounces on his family.



He must watch as he is jailed for drunkenness. Even worse, he is forced to relive his friendship with a young Salvation Army girl named Edit who introduced him to Anna and later took care of him after falling out with Anna. In his delirious state, he infected her with tuberculosis and abused her. Now dying, Georges takes David to her bedside. The poor girl had always blamed herself for David’s misfortune. After all, she was the one who introduced him to Anna. But in a moment of mercy, David kisses her hands and tells her that he is okay. Relieved, Anna peacefully drifts off to her final sleep.

But David’s trip is not over. Georges takes him to his old house where they encounter Anna getting ready to kill herself and their children. David begs Georges to stop her, but he responds that he has no power over the living. In a moment of desperation, David cries out to Georges and God to have mercy on his poor soul and let him interfere. He is miraculously restored to life and humbles himself to Anna, begs for her forgiveness, and swears to be a better man. In this scene, Sjöström reveals his film to be a grim, supernatural morality tale for all poor sinners.

In watching The Phantom Carriage, it is impossible to both be unaffected by the story and unimpressed by the sheer scope of Sjöström’s craftsmanship. Filmed in only three months with a script that took only eight days to write, The Phantom Carriage was a watershed film for both narrative structuralism and the use of special effects. The film is filled with flashbacks, a technique that was revolutionary for its time. In fact, there are even scenes where there are flashbacks within flashbacks, creating three levels of narrative for the audience to follow.

But what the film is most remembered for is its eerie special effects. As mentioned before, The Phantom Carriage did not use German Expressionistic sets. Instead, when they needed to hearken the audience towards the supernatural, they would frequently use superimposition to place make figures and objects appear ghostly. Take the scene early on where the driver of the carriage collects the soul of a man who committed suicide: a transparent figure walks to the still body, pulls the man’s soul out, and escorts him back to the carriage with his body still on the floor. Or how about another ghastly scene where the carriage rides over an ocean and the driver descends to the bottom of the ocean to harvest a drowned sailor? Watching the carriage draw itself slowly over the tossed surf is as haunting an image as ever created by the German Expressionists.



Much of the credit for these effects must go to the cinematographer Julius Jaenzon and his lab assistant Eugén Hellman. The post-production of the film was a lengthy and difficult task. They would have to constantly juggle with superimpositions and double exposures. Such techniques were notorious for being challenging to pull off, since they used hand-waved cameras that needed to be operated at exactly the same speeds each time that they superimposed an image. But the end result is a convincing and unsettling effect.

The Phantom Carriage is easily one of the most important silent horror films ever made. Its influence has been felt for generations. Ingmar Bergman, one of the film’s biggest fans, claimed to watch it every year on New Year’s Eve. Its influence becomes apparent when you examine the character of Death in his seminal The Seventh Seal (1957). It has even been said that Stanley Kubrick modeled the famous scene in The Shining (1980) where Jack Nicholson chops through a wooden door with an axe after the similar scene in The Phantom Carriage. But despite its importance and influence, it has remained poorly distributed and generally unseen by most moviegoers. I will not attempt to explain why, but instead bemoan the depreciation of this classic film. It remains a silent miracle, a dark triumph, and chilling warning to all those who hear the call of the ghostly rider and the Phantom Carriage.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Carriage
http://wondersinthedark.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/the-phantom-carriage-no-38/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0012364/

The Bitter Tea of General Yen

Directed by Frank Capra
1933
The United States of America



There is an old Chinese saying that goes, “May you live in an interesting time.” This seemingly innocuous statement is not a blessing, but a curse. In a society that so values balance and stability, to live in a time of change and upheaval is to live in a time of great loss and hardship. As a character in Frank Capra’s forgotten The Bitter Tea of General Yen explains, “Life is cheap in China.” Set against the backdrop of the Chinese Civil War in the early 1930s, such is the situation that the characters in Capra’s film find themselves thrust into. But The Bitter Tea of General Yen does not limit itself to being set in a time of great upheaval. In fact, the film itself represented a monumental paradigm shift in the way that Hollywood approached interracial relationships. As one of the first films to depict interracial sexual attraction, it originally tanked at the box office. The public was not ready, or not willing, to entertain the idea that people of different races could fall in love, or lust. Since its release, Capra would go on to direct many great American classics, such as It Happened One Night (1934) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). But to those who know, The Bitter Tea of General Yen is one of Capra best, and most daring, films.

The film opens on a tumultuous night in a Chinese city being ravaged by war. As the troops from both sides move in to attack, the civilians struggle to escape the city. But amidst the chaos and confusion of a full scale urban evacuation, a group of foreigners gather together in their best suits and dresses and exchange pleasantries. These are the missionaries who have come to do the Lord’s work in the land of the heathen. On this night of death and destruction, they have gathered for the wedding of one of their most prominent members. The betrothed missionary is set to marry Miss Megan Davis (Barbara Stanwyck), a fresh face from the states eager to help in the Lord’s work. But before they can be married, the couple announces that they must enter the war zone to rescue a group of orphans.

To get the orphans to safety, they need a travel permit from a local general. The only one in the area is the ruthless General Yen (played in yellowface by Swedish actor Nils Asther). A cruel man, he laughs at the idea of rescuing orphans because they are worthless. When they convince him to write a pass, he writes a fake one in Chinese that insults them. As they rush to the orphanage, oblivious to the danger that they face with a fake pass, they become separated. Davis is then kidnapped by General Yen and taken aboard his military train.

She awakes in his summer palace to the sound of prisoners being executed by a firing squad outside her window. When she tells General Yen to stop, he responds by telling his men to take the prisoners down the road where the noise won’t bother her. Clearly, General Yen is a man whose values are opposed to Davis’. In fact, General Yen despises missionaries. But for some reason, the two slowly become attracted to each other.



To Davis, there is something seductive about General Yen. Although the film establishes that she is being drawn to him, it keeps the cause of her affection ambiguous. She spends the entire movie trying to make him change his ways. Could it be that she sees him as just another possible convert? Or does she see him as something exotic and exciting to her puritanical New England sensitivities? In one of the film’s most famous sequences, she dreams of a stereotypical evil Chinaman lunging at her. She is saved at the last moment by a man dressed in Western style clothes who knocks the Chinaman away. When she embraces her rescuer, he rips off his clothes and reveals himself to be none other than General Yen. Such powerful psychodrama was practically unheard of in pre-Code Hollywood. The sequence establishes that General Yen has infected her mind.

But what of General Yen? He holds Davis’ beliefs in contempt. So why does he become so enraptured with her? Maybe by seducing Davis, General Yen is passive aggressively attacking the Western culture that he despises so much. Could it be that he sees Davis as a challenge? After all, as a general, he has everything his heart could desire: women, money, and an army of men willing to give their lives for him. Perhaps he sees Davis as a final conquest.

Whatever the reason, their relationship is thought provoking on two different levels. The first is in the psychological ramifications of their forbidden love. The second is in the cultural clash that the two create. Davis is a beacon of Western Christian morality; chaste, forgiving, selfless. General Yen represents the Chinese Hollywood stereotypes of the early 1930s; greedy, conniving, and ruthless. Davis is an idealist who believes that with God’s help any problem can be resolved. General Yen is a callous pragmatist who understands that whoever has the money and the weapons has the power. Throughout the film they try to convert each other to their own ways of thinking. But each instance fails.

Things come to a head when General Yen discovers that one of his concubines is an enemy spy. Davis, who had befriended the woman, goes on a long tirade where she begs him to forgive her and let her live. General Yen acquiesces and pardons her. But he knows that she will betray them both. His rational for giving in to Davis’ demands was to make a point. General Yen had no intentions but to “convert a missionary.” For the concubine does exactly what General Yen expected: she sells him out to the enemy.

As the film ends, his enemies have discovered the stash of his money (the only thing keeping his men loyal to him). As they approach, General Yen drinks a cup of poisoned tea in his empty chambers. At his side, wearing a bridal gown meant for his future wife, Davis sits and kisses his hand. Besides the stirring artistry of the scene and the rest of the film (courtesy of photographer Joseph Walker who shot it through filters and used highly textured shadows), this sequence provides several paradoxical interpretations. It was Davis’ naivety in both her faith and the powers of forgiveness that doomed the man that she loved. The idea of a film that subversively argues against the teachings and practicality of religion was unheard of in those days.



Despite the film’s institutionalized racism (having the lead actor perform in yellowface), The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a powerful and critical film in the development of race relations in the cinema. Ignoring the psychoanalytical interpretations, the core story is of an American woman and a Chinaman falling in love. It was for this very reason that the film bombed. Audiences rejected it, women’s clubs condemned it, and it was denied a rerelease by the Production Code Administration. In Britain, the film was banned in several areas for miscegenation. Capra was forced to abandon serious dramas and direct screwball comedies and more inspirational films. For many years, the film was forgotten.

But thankfully, today we can marvel at The Bitter Tea of General Yen and recognize it as the masterpiece that it is. Stanwyck and Asther give powerful performances that rock the film to its core. Frank Capra showed an uncanny ability to control and choreograph gigantic crowds of extras, making the scenes where people flee from the city seem like footage from a newsreel or documentary. The film is early Hollywood melodrama at its height accompanied by brash psychological implications that were ahead of its time. A moody examination of forbidden love and its consequences, The Bitter Tea of General Yen is Frank Capra’s most underappreciated film. A bitter film with a bitter climax and a cynical attitude, it is nonetheless one of the sweetest films of the early 1930s.

Sources:
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/05/37/bitter_tea.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bitter_Tea_of_General_Yen
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023814/

Angels with Dirty Faces

Directed by Michael Curtiz
1938
The United States of America



Once upon a time, there were two best friends growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in New York City. One day when they were down on their luck, they robbed a rail-car only to be caught by to police. As they fled, one of them got knocked down in front of an oncoming train. Facing impending death, the other friend saved him in the nick of time, only to be captured by the police. The one boy got sent to reform school and then prison while the other got the luxury of a normal, if not difficult, childhood. In their adulthood, they would both become angels. Rocky, the jailbird, would become an angel of the streets, becoming a notorious and well respected gangster well educated in earthly pleasures and vices. Jerry, the one who got away, would become an angel of the pew and pulpit, becoming the Catholic priest known as Father Connolly, intent on cleaning up his old neighborhood and keeping the new generation of young men on the straight and narrow. Despite being the products of two different systems and two different lives, both angels reunite one day to catch up on old times. Though different, they love and care for each other. That is the key to the doom that stalks the two throughout the entire film entitled Angels with Dirty Faces. A devastatingly powerful meditation on the forces of faith and loyalty, Angels with Dirty Faces is a cinematic proverb that still shines brightly over seventy years later.

To watch the film is to witness the complete transformation of its two main actors into their respective roles. Pat O’Brien embodies the persona of the virtuous Catholic priest offering guidance to lost souls. Much like his dear friend Spencer Tracy’s character in Boys Town (1938), O’Brien’s Father Jerry Connolly spends his days looking after a group of delinquent young boys. In particular, he has trouble with six local boys who constantly teeter on the precipice of a life of crime. Despite their wild and disruptive antics (in reality they were played by members of The Dead End Kids, a group of streetwise young actors from New York who would go on to star in several other films), Father Connolly exerts a strange power over them. He needs to only enter the room and they will immediately fall silent, staring at their toes. O’Brien maintains a firm, yet gentle calm all throughout the film. He rarely raises his voice because he doesn’t need to. When he talks, people quiet down to listen. It’s clear that the boys revere (and maybe fear) him. The only problem is that they don’t respect him. Despite Father Connolly’s efforts, they remain a bunch of hooligans.

To the boys, Rocky Sullivan is the prophet they have waited their entire lives for. Unlike Father Connolly who soaks up their rambunctious antics and punishment like a pacifistic sponge, Rocky is content to hit them right back. In one key scene, Rocky tries to teach the boys how to properly play basketball. The boys, never having been ruled by authority before on the court, have only the faintest grasp of the machinations of basketball. To them, you need to take the ball from the other team and put it in the hoop by any means necessary. Notice how the boys react when Rocky interrupts the game to correct bad playing or ignored rules. He doesn’t just correct them, he roughs them up to get their attention. If a boy ignores him, it is met with a slap across the face. Jeers are responded to with devastating insults and comebacks. By asserting himself like the alpha male in a pack of dogs, the basketball game is running like clockwork.



These scenes are effective because as the audience, we never doubt Rocky’s authority for a second. This can be easily attributed to James Cagney’s astonishing performance. Having grown up in New York’s Yorkville, an ethnic neighborhood on the upper east side, Cagney came armed with a thick skin and smarts that only the streets can provide. Perhaps that’s why he became as renowned for his performances as Hollywood tough guys. He fit the role of gangsters and mobsters so well that one might believe that he invented method acting. Rocky Sullivan may very well be the definitive Cagney tough guy. Cagney based his mannerisms and street slang for the role (including the infamous “Whadda ya hear! Whadda ya say!”) from a drug-addicted pimp that lived in his neighborhood growing up. Though Cagney would go on to do more famous roles in more popular films (including an Academy Award winning turn as a song and dance man in 1942’s Yankee Doodle Dandy) his turn as Rocky would define him for the rest of his career.

Despite Rocky’s best intentions of straightening the boys out, it becomes obvious that he is doing little to help. How is he supposed to keep the boys from a life of crime when they respect him primarily for being a criminal? Things are made even worse when Rocky discovers the wicked machinations dictated by his crooked lawyer Frazier and municipal contractor and businessman Keefer. Frazier, played by a pre-1941 Humphrey Bogart more type-casted as a tough guy than even Cagney, has been bribing city officials behind Rocky’s back. When Rocky finds out, their prompt response is to have him assassinated. When this fails, they turn their guns toward Father Connolly who had spoken out against the corrupt government. Rocky, who had made pretenses of getting his act back together, makes the devastating decision to kill both Frazier and Keefer.

Rocky’s murder of Frazier and Keefer mark a stark turning point for Rocky and Father Connolly’s relationship. Rocky knows that he must leave Father Connolly in order to protect him. But Father Connolly will hear none of it. He goes so far as to walk into the middle of a shootout involving Rocky and the authorities in an attempt to make him surrender peacefully. Why does he do this? Is it because as a priest he wanted to end the conflict without a further loss of life? Is it because he doesn’t want to lose the one authority figure that his beloved boys respect? Was it out of concern for Rocky’s soul? I like to think that in those deadly moments with guns pointing towards him from all angles, Father Connolly could only think about the time that scrappy kid saved his life in the train yard.

With Rocky in irons and sitting on death row, Father Connolly visits his friend one last time. Rocky refuses salvation but wants him close by in his final moments. But before he can die, Father Connolly makes one last request of his life-long friend: to die a coward. By begging for mercy and acting like a coward before he dies, Father Connolly explains that it will break the spell that he cast over the boys, thereby saving them from emulating him and pursuing a life of crime. In a sense, he asks Rocky to betray everything that he has accomplished in his life; a complete humiliation and refund of all street cred and respect.



I won’t spoil Rocky’s decision for you. I won’t spoil his reasoning for his actions either, primarily because I can’t. The film doesn’t explain why Rocky dies the way that he does. For the man who lived with his whole personality on his sleeve, his final actions will remain an enigma. All I will say is that his performance in his last minutes was some of the best in Cagney’s entire career.

Now comes the time to end the review. It occurs to me that I can’t end this review the way I would others. I like to leave plots fairly ambiguous so that my readers will be encouraged to watch the films. But I have spelled out almost the entire film for you. What incentive do you have to watch it? All I can say is that it is one of the most touching films concerning friendship that I have ever seen. The bond shared between Rocky and Father Connolly is one of the most profound in the early years of cinema. To watch them is to remember your own tight friendships and the sacrifices and struggles that either enriched them or broke them. It also helps that Cagney and O’Brien’s performances inhabit a universe expertly imagined by director Michael Curtiz. Curtiz, the always reliable director who brought the world such classics as Casablanca (1942) and White Christmas (1954), breathed life into the sets and streets of the film. Never for a moment do we doubt that we have been transported to 1930s New York. After a while, we can almost smell the peanut vendors and the drying laundry. But I’m rambling now. The film is an incredible achievement. It moves with a deft warmth and humor that many filmmakers spend their entire careers trying to invoke. All that I can do now is simply quote the good Father Connolly: "All right, fellas... let's go say a prayer for a boy that couldn't run as fast as I could." I hope to meet you in that little chapel tucked away in that tough neighborhood where the sinners are saints and the criminals martyrs.



Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_with_Dirty_Faces
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029870/trivia