Most Meaningful First Viewings and Re-Evaluations of 2013 Part 7: The "K"s and "L"s

Kagemusha  [International Cut] (Akira Kurosawa, 1980)
Just the international cut, but even in the edited form it stand up incredibly. I sadly neglected Kurosawa last year; I hope to rectify it in this one. 

Karel Zeman
(A Deadly Invention (1958), Baron Prásil (1961), On The Comet (1970))
To try and describe Zeman's style of combining live action actors and animators is impossible to fully describe without at least images. But the results create new worlds, period adventure combining with a childish sense of imagination to create spectacular results. The filmography is not available in English speaking countries to see easily...although I've heard rumblings of the ever reliable Second Run releasing one on DVD, unless I've imagining rumours in hope someone does release Zeman's films one day. Just for an excuse to watch giant squids, dinosaurs on the moon, and steam powered vehicles. A mini-review of On The Comet is available here.

Ken Russell
(Dance of the Seven Veils (1970), The Music Lovers (1970), Savage Messiah (1972),
Altered States (1980), The Lair of the White Worm (1988))
All hail Russell. He should be celebrated as one of the most memorable and interesting British directors we've had despite. His ability to take the biopic, which is usually a generic bread crumb trail through a person's life without depth, and infuse it with that needed depth was a great virtue. His decisions to take these films and turn them into surreal dreams filled with high art and vulgarity breathed the stories with life, more so when he took the material seriously no matter how absurd the content was. In terms of fictional stories, Altered States shines and the intentional cheesiness of The Lair of the White Worm has stayed with me since seeing it. People have called him overindulgent and perverted, but this willingness to mix the crass and sombre is far more realistic of how life is. Its also more closer to how the British actually are contrary to other opinions.

Keoma (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976)
An utter surprise. The moment when the first flashback takes place, existing within the same reality as the protagonist (Franco Nero) to view his own life for a moment, the film jumps up as an inspired take on a genre that wouldn't last in the Italian film industry against horror and sci-fi. It can be seen as taking some questionable turns, especially in the score, but all these risks are what makes it stand up as a good and inspired western. Suddenly I realised I really like the films of Castellari immensely as much for their technical depth alongside the entertainment in them. 

The Key/All Ladies Do It (Tinto Brass, 1983-1992)
I'll defend Brass. Softcore both films may be, they at least celebrate sexuality rather than making it eye rolling, or diseased and sick like in many nihilistic, and more approved of, art films. Even if All Ladies Do It has dated immensely, it's not the sexuality, fake penis and all, that's tacky but just the music.

Key Largo (John Huston, 1948)
Think Humphrey Bogart. Think Edward G. Robinson. Think of being trapped in a location unable to leave. Think being stuck with individuals with volatile tempers and frayed emotions. Think of failed masculinity. Think of wanting to see more John Huston films.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
Even if the acts are not good, you desire for strip club owner Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) to succeed because you fall in love with his kindness and charisma. He wants to give a show for his customers, even if they're ill-advised art performances, and the performers try their hardest to do something memorable for the patrons, and they are all human beings with more to them then their work. They're all the underdogs, and being able to follow them this intimately, you see the world from their eyes. A crime film mixes with a drama, with no distinction in either side, a character study that just happens to have Cosmo having to clear his debts to the mob if he can kill a Chinese bookie for them. You can see the potential in cinema to expand itself into new lights and perspectives. You could rearrange genre tropes into reflective, quiet moments, this being one of the most accessible of Cassavetes' work. And you could concern yourself to prolonged moments of dialogue, especially as seeing this version allows me to see Timothy Carey's unpredictability able to add more life to these characters' onscreen. It's a beautiful film in fact, that just happens to be melancholic and deeply sad by the end. Far from mere talking, it's a film about talking where the director is just as concerned with how it was set up and framed, putting to shame examples of pointless dialogue exchanges in American indie films I've had to put up with. The extended improvisation was to extend the characters, not to merely be realistic.

Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
I find myself still as lost with this film, returning to Marienbad, but compelled by the visit to it. And really, it feels like being within the central hotel, as lost as others in there as you follow behind the camera down corridors full of elaborate decor. You'll lose the game of what it "means", like the game of match sticks played repeatedly, but it's clear this was the wrong way to go about understanding the environment and the people within it. The issue is not whether you were at Marienbad before or not, but to realise that the existing time frame as much as the reality is up for question, folding forwards and backwards into itself causing you to repeatedly question yourself. A link to a review of mine can be found here, but my opinion on the film has likely as altered as much as the memories of the characters, loving the film even if its confused me.

The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn, 1958)
The western as interpreted as a serious character drama. You may find Paul Newman's twitching, mentally unstable interpretation of Billy the Kid strange, but it's a drastic and interesting change to the legend, the portrait a compelling one of someone who really was not in control and was inevitable going to be damned for his willingness to make incredible mistakes. Around him is a well made, distinct work that backs him up.

Legend of a Fighter/Iron Monkey (Woo-ping Yuen, 1982/1993)
I don't just like d-movie martial arts films. The genre can be as much of an art, and even if there are films I feel are superior to these two, they show the evidence that Woo-ping Yuen is as celebrated in the West as he is, and requested to work on Western films as a fight choreographer, for a reason. As a director, Woo-ping is just as concerned with setting up the film narratives around the great fight sequences so that the characters and their tales are both compelling and add to the spectacle of those fight scenes. This is cinema that celebrates the wonders of real human physicality, the body allowed to be a breathing object celebrated as the actors both act and show their abilities.

Leonardo Favio
(Chronicle of a Boy Alone (1965), The Dependent (1969),
Nazarene Cruz and The Wolf (1975))
Another discovery that widens my knowledge of South American cinema, this time an Argentinean director of immense talent who has never been mentioned in any of film history materials I've read, and is almost impossible to see the work of. These three films, the best, are so drastically different from each other. Chronicle..., a beautiful looking monochrome film about an isolated boy, making a potent pairing with the equally great Maurice Pialat film L'Enfance nue (1968). The Dependent, an unnerving odd black comedy which you're hesitant to laugh at, evoking David Lynch before he even got to making a feature length film. And Nazarene Cruz..., reviewed here, a glossy but humanist werewolf tale whose greatest virtue is that it concern itself with the characters' emotions even when it gets melodramatic and montage heavy. Together, these three films make for a fascinating image of a filmmaker who should have his day internationally for one of these films, if not all, at some point.

Louis Malle
(Murmur of the Heart (1971), Lacombe Lucien (1974), Black Moon (1975),
Au revoir les enfants (1987), Milou en mai (1990))
This year I was introduced to Louis Malle. A second hand DVD box set caught my eye, and all five films from it are here. Four of them I adore, although my favourite is Murmur of the Heart, for its frankness, honesty and a brave ending that wouldn't be allowed to happen in today's culture as it did, with the little talked about Milou en mai following behind for being playful, fun, and co-written by Jean-Claude Carrière, suddenly becoming a Luis Buñuel film even if it's too sweet to have teeth. Even Black Moon, the one so out-of-place in the group at first, the "failure" for being too random, is still such a great film for being so intentionally random and making sense all together (read a review of it from me here). I want to see more of Malle's films, falling in love with him already. There's another box set that was released in the UK, and I hope to find it second hand (or cheap) at some time as well.

Lucio Fulci
(Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), The Beyond (1981),
House by the Cemetery (1981), The Black Cat (1981), Manhattan Baby (1981))
I was already in the Fulci fan camp by the end of 2012, but in 2013 this factor was solidified. It's strange that he hated making horror films in his famous later career of the early eighties, because for the potential criticisms of plot structure with his work, films like The Beyond stand up as superior to more logical and carefully structured horror films for the oppressive mood and dread that is felt in his movies. They are unsettling, strange and death in them is felt through decay and gristly gore effects. The slowness of his work added to this mood, and the dreamlike logic of the films made them legitimately feel like nightmares. Manhattan Baby is dismissed as a terrible film, but it startled me in how dread inducing and unnervingly weird it is, leaving a hair raising image in my mind still of taxidermy birds that freaks me out despite having only seen the film once back in January. Even if he was a director for hire, hated some of the work too, it was clear he was still ready to do his job and do it well. With the people behind the camera working on the films as there was in the boom of Italian genre cinema too, the films have a craftsmanship that raises them above the dismissing views of them they got, and make them vastly superior from "smarter" horror films from now that lack of the aesthetics and sense of real eeriness to them.

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Going through meaty, cinematic films with the images from the following:

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