The 39 Steps is a 1935 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the adventure novel The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan. The film stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll.
There have been four major film versions of the book. Hitchcock's original has been the most acclaimed, and remains so today: in 2004 Total Film named it the 21st greatest British movie of all time.
In this nicely paced thriller, Canadian Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is at a London music hall theatre, watching a demonstration of the superlative powers of recall of "Mr. Memory" (Wylie Watson) when shots are fired. ( Shades of The Man Who knew Too Much!) In the ensuing panic, he finds himself holding a frightened Annabella Smith (Lucie Mannheim), who talks him into taking her back to his flat. There, she tells him that she is a spy, being chased by assassins. She claims to have uncovered a plot to steal vital British military secrets, masterminded by a man with the top joint missing from one of his fingers. She mentions the "thirty-nine steps", but does not explain its meaning. Only Hitchcock can spin a web of intrigue out of some dry as dust ‘steps’ and seem like cotton candy in a child’s hand. Of course in the best Hitchcockian manner she is murdered and the police suspect Hannay.
Alfred Hitchcock directed many memorable movies over his long career, but one of his most charming remains his 1935 film The 39 Steps, and to me Donat’s light touch came as a surprise in comparison with his many other movies. Pity that such a talented actor died so young(at the age of 53).
Hannay decides to travel to Scotland and try to figure out what's going on, and during his journey he learns from newspapers that the police have identified him as the prime suspect in the murder. He also meets a good-looking icy blonde named Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), and she reluctantly becomes his traveling companion. At one point, Hannay and Pamela become handcuffed together and wind up bedding down in a room in a country inn that way!
The film follows Hannay as he goes through a series of dangerous adventures, and at the same time it shows the development of his romantic relationship with Pamela. There's plenty of humor in the movie, too, as when a crass salesman of women's underwear displays and discusses his products on a train. Or when Hannay asks a milkman if he's married and gets the response, "Yes, but don't rub it in."
The film departs substantially from Buchan's novel, introducing a love interest. In this film, The 39 Steps refers to the clandestine organisation itself, whereas in the book and in the other film versions, it refers to physical steps, albeit located in different places and with different significances to the plots. When in the film Annabella (who is a man called "Franklin P. Scudder" in the novel) tells Hannay she is travelling to meet a man in Scotland, Hitchcock is avoiding one of Buchan's wild, unexplained implausibilities: the way in which Hannay, with the whole country to hide in, chances to walk into the one house where the spy ringleader lives.
Hitchcockian elements
The 39 Steps is the first in a line of Hitchcock films based upon the idea of an innocent man on the run, including Saboteur (1942) and North by Northwest (1959).
Alfred Hitchcock cameo: A signature occurrence in almost all of Hitchcock's films, he can be seen tossing some litter while Robert Donat and Lucie Mannheim run from the theatre at the beginning of the film.
Run time:86 minutes.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Ivan the Terrible-1944
Ivan The Terrible (written Иван Грозный in Russian, pronounced Ivan Groznyy) is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia. During World War II, with the German army approaching Moscow, Stalin wanted Eisenstein to undertake a film on nationalistic subject. With the success of Alexander Nevsky behind him the subject was in a manner of speaking was chosen for him. Joseph Stalin admired the first Tsar, seeing him as the same kind of brilliant, decisive, successful leader that Stalin aspired to be. Russian director Sergei Eisenstein conceived as a triology, but Eisenstein died before filming of the third part could be finished.
Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship.
Part I begins with Ivan's coronation as Tsar of all the Russias, amid grumbling from the boyars. Ivan makes a speech proclaiming his intent to unite and protect Russia against the foreign armies outside her borders and the enemies within. Shortly after, the scene changes to Ivan's wedding celebration in which he marries Anastasia Romanovna. This causes him to lose the friendship of his two best friends, Prince Andrei Kurbsky and Fyodor Kolychev. The latter receives Ivan's permission to retire to a monastery, while Kurbsky attempts to resume his romance with the Tsarina, who repels his advances.
The marriage feast is interrupted by news of the burning of several boyar palaces, carried into the Tsar's palace by a mob of the common people and a war with Kazan.
The city of Kazan falls to the Russian army.
During his return from Kazan, Ivan falls seriously ill and is thought to be on his deathbed; the court intrigue begins to work. Ivan’s aunt Efrosinia Staritska wants the people to swear allegiance to her son, Vladimir the "boyar tsar" instead of the infant Dmitri, Tsar’s choice. Kurbsky is uncertain of his own loyalty, trying to decide between the two sides. However, when the Tsarina says, "Do not bury a man before he is dead," Kurbsky realizes that Ivan is still alive, and hurriedly swears his allegiance to Ivan's infant son, Dmitri.
The Tsarina now falls ill, and while Ivan is receiving bad news from all fronts, the boyars plot to kill her. Efrosinia comes into the palace with a cup of wine hidden in her robes, in which she has put poison. Just as the royal couple receives word that Kurbsky has defected to the Livonians, Efrosinia slips the cup of wine into the room and listens from behind a wall. The Tsarina has a convulsion and Ivan, looking around for a drink to calm her, takes the poisoned wine and gives it to her.
The scene changes to show the dead Tsarina lying in state in the cathedral, with Ivan mourning beside her bier. While a monk reads biblical verses over the body, Ivan questions his own justifications and ability to rule, wondering if his wife's death is God's punishment on him. However, he pulls himself out of it, and sends for Kolychev. At this point, Alexei Basmanov arrives, suggesting that Ivan surround himself with men he can trust - "iron men," the Oprichnina - and offers his (rather startled) son, Fyodor, for service. Ivan accepts, and sets about recouping his losses. He abdicates and leaves Moscow, waiting until the people beg him to return, saying that he now rules with absolute power by the will of the people.
Part 2
Part II picks up where Part I left off, at Ivan's return to Moscow. He begins by reforming the land distribution: he takes the boyars' lands, then reinstalls them as managers, increasing his own power at their expense. His friend, Kolychev, arrives, now the monk Philip; after a heated debate, Philip agrees to become metropolitan of Moscow, if Ivan gives him the right to intercede for condemned men. This is mutually agreed upon. But as soon as it is settled, Ivan, propelled by Malyuta, finds a way around this: he executes condemned men quickly, before Philip can use his right. In this way he has three of Philip's kinsmen executed.
Fyodor Basmanov, the first of the Oprichnina, helps Ivan figure out that the Tsarina was poisoned, and both suspect Efrosinia of poisoning the cup of wine. Ivan orders Fyodor not to say anything about it until he (Ivan) is certain beyond doubt of her guilt.
The boyars, close to desperation, plead their case to Philip and eventually win him over. He vows to block Ivan's abuse of power, and confronts him in the cathedral while a miracle play is being presented. As the argument heats up, Ivan, angry, proclaims that he will be exactly what the boyars call him - terrible - and has Philip seized. The boyars now decide that their only option is to assassinate Ivan, and the novice Pyotr is selected to wield the knife.
Ivan, now certain of Efrosinia's guilt, invites Vladimir to a banquet with the Oprichnina. Ivan gets Vladimir drunk while the Oprichnina sing and dance around them; Vladimir mentions that there is a plot to kill Ivan, and he (Vladimir) is to replace him as Tsar. Fyodor Basmanov notices the assassin leaving, and signals Ivan, who, pretending surprise at Vladimir's revelation, suggests Vladimir try being Tsar for a while, and has the Oprichnina bring throne, orb, scepter, crown and royal robes, and they all bow down to "Tsar Vladimir." Then Ivan tells Vladimir to lead them to the cathedral in prayer, as a Tsar should lead. Hesitantly, Vladimir does.
In the cathedral, the assassin runs up and stabs the mock Tsar, and is immediately seized by the Basmanovs. Ivan orders them to release Pyotr, and thanks him for killing the tsar's worst enemy. Efrosinia arrives, jubilant at the apparent death of Ivan, until she sees Ivan alive; rolling the corpse over, she realizes it is her own son. Ivan sentences her and then relaxes, proclaiming that all his enemies within Moscow are vanquished and he can turn to those outside.
Parallels drawn between Stalin and Ivan the terrible agree since struggle for power or establishing central authority over various power centres are as old as the first man who founded a city. Echoes of Tsarist Russia of the sixteenth century and Russia of the 20th century are about the same issues. Kulaks whom Stalin liquidated in the 30s were a thorn on his side as Boyars was to Ivan. Eisenstein may have presented a truthful examination of the life of Ivan the Terrible as cinematic art would allow and it so happened that Stalin found some parallels pleasing while other that he found troublesome. (Eisenstein was forced to offer the most abject of apologies: “The sense of historical truth was betrayed by me in the second part of Ivan.”)
One may either love or hate the film as one may respond to an opera. The style of acting is like that in silent film and, also as in opera gestures and expressions are exaggerated. Prokofiev's music heightens the emotional intensity. Some will find the highly stylized quality of this film annoying. Here we see Eisenstein’s visual vocabulary has come of age that for a student of film something to learn from. Ivan the Terrible has been voted onto several lists of the top ten films ever and at least one list of the worst fifty!
Cast:
Nikolai Cherkasov ... Czar Ivan IV
Lyudmila Tselikovskaya ... Czarina Anastasia Romanovna
Serafima Birman ... Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya
Mikhail Nazvanov ... Prince Andrei Kurbsky
Mikhail Zharov ... Czar's Guard Malyuta Skuratov
Amvrosi Buchma ... Czar's Guard Aleksei Basmanov
Mikhail Kuznetsov ... Fyodor Basmanov
Pavel Kadochnikov ... Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky
Andrei Abrikosov ... Boyar Fyodor Kolychev
Aleksandr Mgebrov ... Novgorod's Archbishop Pimen
Maksim Mikhajlov ... Archdeacon
Vsevolod Pudovkin ... Nikola, Simpleton Beggar
benny
Part 1 was released in 1944 but Part 2 was not released until 1958 due to political censorship.
Part I begins with Ivan's coronation as Tsar of all the Russias, amid grumbling from the boyars. Ivan makes a speech proclaiming his intent to unite and protect Russia against the foreign armies outside her borders and the enemies within. Shortly after, the scene changes to Ivan's wedding celebration in which he marries Anastasia Romanovna. This causes him to lose the friendship of his two best friends, Prince Andrei Kurbsky and Fyodor Kolychev. The latter receives Ivan's permission to retire to a monastery, while Kurbsky attempts to resume his romance with the Tsarina, who repels his advances.
The marriage feast is interrupted by news of the burning of several boyar palaces, carried into the Tsar's palace by a mob of the common people and a war with Kazan.
The city of Kazan falls to the Russian army.
During his return from Kazan, Ivan falls seriously ill and is thought to be on his deathbed; the court intrigue begins to work. Ivan’s aunt Efrosinia Staritska wants the people to swear allegiance to her son, Vladimir the "boyar tsar" instead of the infant Dmitri, Tsar’s choice. Kurbsky is uncertain of his own loyalty, trying to decide between the two sides. However, when the Tsarina says, "Do not bury a man before he is dead," Kurbsky realizes that Ivan is still alive, and hurriedly swears his allegiance to Ivan's infant son, Dmitri.
The Tsarina now falls ill, and while Ivan is receiving bad news from all fronts, the boyars plot to kill her. Efrosinia comes into the palace with a cup of wine hidden in her robes, in which she has put poison. Just as the royal couple receives word that Kurbsky has defected to the Livonians, Efrosinia slips the cup of wine into the room and listens from behind a wall. The Tsarina has a convulsion and Ivan, looking around for a drink to calm her, takes the poisoned wine and gives it to her.
The scene changes to show the dead Tsarina lying in state in the cathedral, with Ivan mourning beside her bier. While a monk reads biblical verses over the body, Ivan questions his own justifications and ability to rule, wondering if his wife's death is God's punishment on him. However, he pulls himself out of it, and sends for Kolychev. At this point, Alexei Basmanov arrives, suggesting that Ivan surround himself with men he can trust - "iron men," the Oprichnina - and offers his (rather startled) son, Fyodor, for service. Ivan accepts, and sets about recouping his losses. He abdicates and leaves Moscow, waiting until the people beg him to return, saying that he now rules with absolute power by the will of the people.
Part 2
Part II picks up where Part I left off, at Ivan's return to Moscow. He begins by reforming the land distribution: he takes the boyars' lands, then reinstalls them as managers, increasing his own power at their expense. His friend, Kolychev, arrives, now the monk Philip; after a heated debate, Philip agrees to become metropolitan of Moscow, if Ivan gives him the right to intercede for condemned men. This is mutually agreed upon. But as soon as it is settled, Ivan, propelled by Malyuta, finds a way around this: he executes condemned men quickly, before Philip can use his right. In this way he has three of Philip's kinsmen executed.
Fyodor Basmanov, the first of the Oprichnina, helps Ivan figure out that the Tsarina was poisoned, and both suspect Efrosinia of poisoning the cup of wine. Ivan orders Fyodor not to say anything about it until he (Ivan) is certain beyond doubt of her guilt.
The boyars, close to desperation, plead their case to Philip and eventually win him over. He vows to block Ivan's abuse of power, and confronts him in the cathedral while a miracle play is being presented. As the argument heats up, Ivan, angry, proclaims that he will be exactly what the boyars call him - terrible - and has Philip seized. The boyars now decide that their only option is to assassinate Ivan, and the novice Pyotr is selected to wield the knife.
Ivan, now certain of Efrosinia's guilt, invites Vladimir to a banquet with the Oprichnina. Ivan gets Vladimir drunk while the Oprichnina sing and dance around them; Vladimir mentions that there is a plot to kill Ivan, and he (Vladimir) is to replace him as Tsar. Fyodor Basmanov notices the assassin leaving, and signals Ivan, who, pretending surprise at Vladimir's revelation, suggests Vladimir try being Tsar for a while, and has the Oprichnina bring throne, orb, scepter, crown and royal robes, and they all bow down to "Tsar Vladimir." Then Ivan tells Vladimir to lead them to the cathedral in prayer, as a Tsar should lead. Hesitantly, Vladimir does.
In the cathedral, the assassin runs up and stabs the mock Tsar, and is immediately seized by the Basmanovs. Ivan orders them to release Pyotr, and thanks him for killing the tsar's worst enemy. Efrosinia arrives, jubilant at the apparent death of Ivan, until she sees Ivan alive; rolling the corpse over, she realizes it is her own son. Ivan sentences her and then relaxes, proclaiming that all his enemies within Moscow are vanquished and he can turn to those outside.
Parallels drawn between Stalin and Ivan the terrible agree since struggle for power or establishing central authority over various power centres are as old as the first man who founded a city. Echoes of Tsarist Russia of the sixteenth century and Russia of the 20th century are about the same issues. Kulaks whom Stalin liquidated in the 30s were a thorn on his side as Boyars was to Ivan. Eisenstein may have presented a truthful examination of the life of Ivan the Terrible as cinematic art would allow and it so happened that Stalin found some parallels pleasing while other that he found troublesome. (Eisenstein was forced to offer the most abject of apologies: “The sense of historical truth was betrayed by me in the second part of Ivan.”)
One may either love or hate the film as one may respond to an opera. The style of acting is like that in silent film and, also as in opera gestures and expressions are exaggerated. Prokofiev's music heightens the emotional intensity. Some will find the highly stylized quality of this film annoying. Here we see Eisenstein’s visual vocabulary has come of age that for a student of film something to learn from. Ivan the Terrible has been voted onto several lists of the top ten films ever and at least one list of the worst fifty!
Cast:
Nikolai Cherkasov ... Czar Ivan IV
Lyudmila Tselikovskaya ... Czarina Anastasia Romanovna
Serafima Birman ... Boyarina Efrosinia Staritskaya
Mikhail Nazvanov ... Prince Andrei Kurbsky
Mikhail Zharov ... Czar's Guard Malyuta Skuratov
Amvrosi Buchma ... Czar's Guard Aleksei Basmanov
Mikhail Kuznetsov ... Fyodor Basmanov
Pavel Kadochnikov ... Vladimir Andreyevich Staritsky
Andrei Abrikosov ... Boyar Fyodor Kolychev
Aleksandr Mgebrov ... Novgorod's Archbishop Pimen
Maksim Mikhajlov ... Archdeacon
Vsevolod Pudovkin ... Nikola, Simpleton Beggar
benny
Friday, 8 January 2010
A Double Life-1947
This film tells the story of an actor whose mind becomes affected by the character he portrays. The role of Othello is not what every actor can bring off so easily knowing he is only play-acting. Much less can, however talented put on the role of the Moor night and after night without paying the price. It is like going through the revolving doors so often and and not knowing at a given point of time if he is coming or going. Anthony John (Colman) is a successful actor who has a problem, an occupational hazard, and becomes increasingly out of touch with reality. He has so convincingly got inside his role so much so he cannot distinguish the role with the real. Originally written for Laurence Olivier, A Double Life ultimately served as the vehicle, which brought Ronald Colman his only Oscar.
The award was a well deserved one, and his voice one of his chief assets is described as "a bewitching, finely-modulated, resonant voice." The descending madness like the avenging angel tips the thespian over the edge in the very success (in movie, Anthony John stars in a Broadway production of Othello, that plays more than 300 performances and runs over a year.) and as we see his personal life is in doldrums and must cope with his sanity even as he speaks set speeches so convincingly. The shadow of madness, the frenzy, the fight for sanity are all portrayed in an electrifying manner. Colman makes this man both monstrous and appealing.
In a fit of delirium, he strangles his casual mistress, Pat (Shelley Winters), but retains no memory of the awful crime. Press agent Bill Friend (Edmond O'Brien), unaware that Anthony is the killer, uses Pat's murder as publicity for Othello. Anthony becomes enraged at this cheap ploy, and attacks Friend. At this point, Anthony realizes that he has been living "a double life" and is in fact Pat's murderer. This duality of the central character is visually impacted in the viewers mind by mirrors and reflection, somewhat remniscent of films as diverse as M or The Servant.
A Double Life was written for the screen by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
Directed by George Cukor the film brings out creditable performance from all and especially a convincing and vulnerable performance from Shelley Winters. (Hal Erickson, Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Cast
* Whit Bissell - Dr. Stauffer
* Ronald Colman - Anthony John
* Betsy Blair - Girl in Wig Shop
* Signe Hasso - Brita
* Edmond O'Brien - Bill Friend
* David Bond - ["othello" Sequence]
* Harlan Briggs - Oscar Bemard
* Shelley Winters - Pat Kroll
* Georgia Caine - [A Gentleman's Gentleman Sequence]
* Ray Collins - Victor Donlan
Julie Kirgo wrote that A Double Life is truly a picture of opposing forces, mirror images and deadly doubles: "Anthony John is at war with Othello, the elegant world of the theater is opposed to the squalid existence of Shelley Winters' Pat Kroll, and illusion versus reality are all conveyed in opposing lights and darks of Krasner's luminous photography."
Music by Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography Milton R. Krasner
Similar Movies
Carnival (1931, Herbert Wilcox)
The Glass Web (1953, Jack Arnold)
The Gang of Four (1988, Jacques Rivette)
Carmen (1983, Carlos Saura)
Curtains (1983, Richard Ciupka, Jonathan Stryker)
Perfect Strangers (2003, Gaylene Preston)
Movies with the Same Personnel
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937, John Cromwell, George Cukor, W.S. Van Dyke)
The Seventh Cross (1944, Fred Zinnemann)
The Racket (1951, John Cromwell, Nicholas Ray)
Winchester '73 (1950, Anthony Mann)
The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947, George S. Kaufman)
The Gangster (1947, Gordon Wiles)
Fear in the Night (1947, Maxwell Shane)
Pat and Mike (1952, George Cukor)
Other Related Movies
is related to: Othello (1952, Orson Welles)
Who Am I This Time? (1982, Jonathan Demme)
I Love a Man in Uniform (1993, David Wellington)
* Run Time: 103 minutes
benny
The award was a well deserved one, and his voice one of his chief assets is described as "a bewitching, finely-modulated, resonant voice." The descending madness like the avenging angel tips the thespian over the edge in the very success (in movie, Anthony John stars in a Broadway production of Othello, that plays more than 300 performances and runs over a year.) and as we see his personal life is in doldrums and must cope with his sanity even as he speaks set speeches so convincingly. The shadow of madness, the frenzy, the fight for sanity are all portrayed in an electrifying manner. Colman makes this man both monstrous and appealing.
In a fit of delirium, he strangles his casual mistress, Pat (Shelley Winters), but retains no memory of the awful crime. Press agent Bill Friend (Edmond O'Brien), unaware that Anthony is the killer, uses Pat's murder as publicity for Othello. Anthony becomes enraged at this cheap ploy, and attacks Friend. At this point, Anthony realizes that he has been living "a double life" and is in fact Pat's murderer. This duality of the central character is visually impacted in the viewers mind by mirrors and reflection, somewhat remniscent of films as diverse as M or The Servant.
A Double Life was written for the screen by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
Directed by George Cukor the film brings out creditable performance from all and especially a convincing and vulnerable performance from Shelley Winters. (Hal Erickson, Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Cast
* Whit Bissell - Dr. Stauffer
* Ronald Colman - Anthony John
* Betsy Blair - Girl in Wig Shop
* Signe Hasso - Brita
* Edmond O'Brien - Bill Friend
* David Bond - ["othello" Sequence]
* Harlan Briggs - Oscar Bemard
* Shelley Winters - Pat Kroll
* Georgia Caine - [A Gentleman's Gentleman Sequence]
* Ray Collins - Victor Donlan
Julie Kirgo wrote that A Double Life is truly a picture of opposing forces, mirror images and deadly doubles: "Anthony John is at war with Othello, the elegant world of the theater is opposed to the squalid existence of Shelley Winters' Pat Kroll, and illusion versus reality are all conveyed in opposing lights and darks of Krasner's luminous photography."
Music by Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography Milton R. Krasner
Similar Movies
Carnival (1931, Herbert Wilcox)
The Glass Web (1953, Jack Arnold)
The Gang of Four (1988, Jacques Rivette)
Carmen (1983, Carlos Saura)
Curtains (1983, Richard Ciupka, Jonathan Stryker)
Perfect Strangers (2003, Gaylene Preston)
Movies with the Same Personnel
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937, John Cromwell, George Cukor, W.S. Van Dyke)
The Seventh Cross (1944, Fred Zinnemann)
The Racket (1951, John Cromwell, Nicholas Ray)
Winchester '73 (1950, Anthony Mann)
The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947, George S. Kaufman)
The Gangster (1947, Gordon Wiles)
Fear in the Night (1947, Maxwell Shane)
Pat and Mike (1952, George Cukor)
Other Related Movies
is related to: Othello (1952, Orson Welles)
Who Am I This Time? (1982, Jonathan Demme)
I Love a Man in Uniform (1993, David Wellington)
* Run Time: 103 minutes
benny
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Les Visiteurs du Soir-1942
The film (aka: The Devil's Envoys)
is unquestionably a masterpiece that came out of France under the most trying conditions. Despite the Nazi Occupation with the restrictions on materials and media we have two films that have achieved high watermark in the history of French cinema. Les vistieurs is one film and Les Enfants du Paradis is another (1945). Both are backward looking in the sense one appears to be a simple romantic fable set in a fairy tale castle with demons, knights and princesses while the 1945 film deals with the theatrical world of a century before. Both came out of the fruitful collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The film was hailed as a major cinematographic achievement upon its release in 1942 and remained one of the most popular films made under the Nazi Occupation.
The film begins with the title: in this lovely month of May 1485 Messire Satan on earth sent two of his creatures to despair men ..."
Summary
In the 15th Century, two traveling musicians named Gilles and Dominique arrive at the castle of Baron Hugues, amid celebrations for the impending marriage between Hugues’ daughter Anne and a knight Renaud. The two musicians are in truth emissaries of the Devil, sent to disrupt the wedding for their own amusement. Whilst Dominique seduces Renaud, Gilles makes an easy conquest of Anne. However, Anne’s purity overwhelms Gilles and he in turn falls in love with her. This unexpected turn of events forces the Devil into making a personal appearance...
On the surface, the film appears to be a simple romantic fable but there is clearly more to this film than first meets the eye. Many have seen an allegorical sub-text in this seemingly innocuous romantic fable. The reluctance of the two lovers Gilles and Anne to separate in the second half of the film, despite the best efforts of man and Devil, can be understood as a covert message to the French nation to hold out against the German overlords. Historically we may see the parable as apt. The Third Republic may be an edifice in stone stripped of marble and gold by the fall of France but there shall still beat the Gallic spirit as the pair of lovers in the film.
One feature from the film that stands out even after so many decades is its cinematography. Not content with conventional photographic techniques, Carné developed some new methods for creating just the effect he was after as In Les Enfants. (In the latter Carné was particular of giving the shirt front of the notorious thief and murderer Lacenaire an unnatural luminosity contrasted with Baptiste the man in white.) In Les Visiteurs he makes the dance scene memorable, where the film is slowed to give the impression of time coming to a halt, allowing the two Devil’s emissaries to commence their evil machinations. Later on, a similar trick allows Carné to transport his fated lovers to a dreamlike garden. The arrival of the Devil in the second half of the film is no less impressive, using a combination of noise and lighting to conjure up an instant sense of drama and anticipation.
A combination of an excellent script, creditable acting from Jules Berry and Arletty sets this film apart from many other of the 40s French films. Berry is at his best playing the role of the Devil with a burlesque relish, and with villainous charm.
* Director: Marcel Carné
* Script: Jacques Prévert, Pierre Laroche
* Music: Maurice Thiriet
* Cast: Arletty (Dominique), Marie Déa (Anne), Fernand Ledoux (Le baron Hugues), Alain Cuny (Gilles), Pierre Labry (Le seigneur), Jean d'Yd (Le baladin), Roger Blin (Le montreur de monstres), Gabriel Gabrio (Le bourreau), Marcel Herrand (Le baron Renaud), Jules Berry (Le diable)
* Runtime: 120 min; B&W
benny
is unquestionably a masterpiece that came out of France under the most trying conditions. Despite the Nazi Occupation with the restrictions on materials and media we have two films that have achieved high watermark in the history of French cinema. Les vistieurs is one film and Les Enfants du Paradis is another (1945). Both are backward looking in the sense one appears to be a simple romantic fable set in a fairy tale castle with demons, knights and princesses while the 1945 film deals with the theatrical world of a century before. Both came out of the fruitful collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The film was hailed as a major cinematographic achievement upon its release in 1942 and remained one of the most popular films made under the Nazi Occupation.
The film begins with the title: in this lovely month of May 1485 Messire Satan on earth sent two of his creatures to despair men ..."
Summary
In the 15th Century, two traveling musicians named Gilles and Dominique arrive at the castle of Baron Hugues, amid celebrations for the impending marriage between Hugues’ daughter Anne and a knight Renaud. The two musicians are in truth emissaries of the Devil, sent to disrupt the wedding for their own amusement. Whilst Dominique seduces Renaud, Gilles makes an easy conquest of Anne. However, Anne’s purity overwhelms Gilles and he in turn falls in love with her. This unexpected turn of events forces the Devil into making a personal appearance...
On the surface, the film appears to be a simple romantic fable but there is clearly more to this film than first meets the eye. Many have seen an allegorical sub-text in this seemingly innocuous romantic fable. The reluctance of the two lovers Gilles and Anne to separate in the second half of the film, despite the best efforts of man and Devil, can be understood as a covert message to the French nation to hold out against the German overlords. Historically we may see the parable as apt. The Third Republic may be an edifice in stone stripped of marble and gold by the fall of France but there shall still beat the Gallic spirit as the pair of lovers in the film.
One feature from the film that stands out even after so many decades is its cinematography. Not content with conventional photographic techniques, Carné developed some new methods for creating just the effect he was after as In Les Enfants. (In the latter Carné was particular of giving the shirt front of the notorious thief and murderer Lacenaire an unnatural luminosity contrasted with Baptiste the man in white.) In Les Visiteurs he makes the dance scene memorable, where the film is slowed to give the impression of time coming to a halt, allowing the two Devil’s emissaries to commence their evil machinations. Later on, a similar trick allows Carné to transport his fated lovers to a dreamlike garden. The arrival of the Devil in the second half of the film is no less impressive, using a combination of noise and lighting to conjure up an instant sense of drama and anticipation.
A combination of an excellent script, creditable acting from Jules Berry and Arletty sets this film apart from many other of the 40s French films. Berry is at his best playing the role of the Devil with a burlesque relish, and with villainous charm.
* Director: Marcel Carné
* Script: Jacques Prévert, Pierre Laroche
* Music: Maurice Thiriet
* Cast: Arletty (Dominique), Marie Déa (Anne), Fernand Ledoux (Le baron Hugues), Alain Cuny (Gilles), Pierre Labry (Le seigneur), Jean d'Yd (Le baladin), Roger Blin (Le montreur de monstres), Gabriel Gabrio (Le bourreau), Marcel Herrand (Le baron Renaud), Jules Berry (Le diable)
* Runtime: 120 min; B&W
benny
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Pépé Le Moko-1937
In 1931, the year France celebrated the centenary of the conquest of Algeria Pépé Le Moko, a thriller written by “Détective Ashelbé” (a pseudonym for Henri La Barthe – Ashelbé is a homophone for the initials H.L.B.), was published. The Exposition coloniale staged in Paris was the culmination of the celebration of French colonialism. Designed to “give the French an awareness of their Empire,” the exhibiton reconstructed habitats, and displayed folkloric dances, artifacts and merchandise, from North and West Africa, Indochina. Colonialism is dead and gone which is a good thing. The film is to be seen as a souvenir that one might every now and then pick up with nostalgia.
Directed by Julien Duvivier in 1936, with a prestigious technical crew and starry cast headed by Jean Gabin, Pépé Le Moko came out on January 23, 1937. It was a box office and critical success which on release was described by Jean Cocteau as “a masterpiece” and by Graham Greene as “one of the most exciting and moving films I can remember seeing.” ( According to a BBC documentary, it served as inspiration for Greene's acclaimed novel, The Third Man.)
Pépé Le Moko has since continued to fascinate. The film was remade twice in Hollywood, as Algiers in 1938 and Casbah in 1948. There were other echoes, tributes and parodies to the spoof Toto le Moko (1949), which now gives its name to a Roman pizzeria. (Morrissey uses excerpts of the film in the song You Were Good in Your Time of his 2009 album Years of Refusal.)
The book is by Ashelbé who is a contemporary of Georges Simenon and wrote at a time when the thriller was undergoing a spectacular boom in France. His contemporary published his first Maigret books also in 1931. Unfortunately the book has not worn well with time as the film has.
It is a tale of French petty criminals sheltering in the Casbah at Algiers. Pépé Le Moko ('Moko' is slang for a man from Marseilles) unlike Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, which also appeared in 1937, is not a classic in the sense as the Renoir film touching greatness thematically or technically. Pépé Le Moko despite its unsavory world and common style, transcends its pulp fiction material, and turns it into a powerful emotional statement on identity, desire and loss.
Pépé Le Moko is a classic because it is key to the French film noir tradition of the 1930s. As T.S. Eliot put it in a different context, it “represents the perfection of the common style.” Lastly of course it stars Jean Gabin.
Plot
Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) is a well-known criminal mastermind who eludes the French police by hiding in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows he is safe in this labyrinthine netherworld, where he is surrounded by his fellow thieves and cutthroats. Police inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), who has developed a grudging respect for Pepe, bides his time, waiting for Pepe to try to leave the Casbah. When Gaby Gould (Mirielle Balin), a Parisian tourist, falls in love with Pepe, the inspector hopes to use this relationship to his advantage. He tells Gaby that Pepe has been killed, knowing that the heartbroken girl will return to Paris -- and that Pepe will risk everything to go after her. The part where the ship takes to sea with the foghorn tooting signals the poignant resolution to a love story that is too gossamer thin to be real.
Similar Works
Le Grand Jeu (1934, Jacques Feyder)
Moontide (1942, Fritz Lang, Archie Mayo)
Port of Shadows (1938, Marcel Carné)
Au-Dela Des Grilles (1948, René Clément)
La Bandera (1935, Julien Duvivier)
Le Jour Se Lève (1939, Marcel Carné)
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
The Conspirators (1944, Jean Negulesco)
Other Related Works
Is related to: Casbah (1948, John Berry)
Is spoofed in: Totò le Moko (1949, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia)
Has been remade as: Algiers (1938, John Cromwell)
(Ack: Hal Erickson-allmovie., Ginette Vincendeau, from the introduction to Pépé Le Moko , a monograph published by the British Film Institute-1998., www.Filmforum.org)
benny
Directed by Julien Duvivier in 1936, with a prestigious technical crew and starry cast headed by Jean Gabin, Pépé Le Moko came out on January 23, 1937. It was a box office and critical success which on release was described by Jean Cocteau as “a masterpiece” and by Graham Greene as “one of the most exciting and moving films I can remember seeing.” ( According to a BBC documentary, it served as inspiration for Greene's acclaimed novel, The Third Man.)
Pépé Le Moko has since continued to fascinate. The film was remade twice in Hollywood, as Algiers in 1938 and Casbah in 1948. There were other echoes, tributes and parodies to the spoof Toto le Moko (1949), which now gives its name to a Roman pizzeria. (Morrissey uses excerpts of the film in the song You Were Good in Your Time of his 2009 album Years of Refusal.)
The book is by Ashelbé who is a contemporary of Georges Simenon and wrote at a time when the thriller was undergoing a spectacular boom in France. His contemporary published his first Maigret books also in 1931. Unfortunately the book has not worn well with time as the film has.
It is a tale of French petty criminals sheltering in the Casbah at Algiers. Pépé Le Moko ('Moko' is slang for a man from Marseilles) unlike Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, which also appeared in 1937, is not a classic in the sense as the Renoir film touching greatness thematically or technically. Pépé Le Moko despite its unsavory world and common style, transcends its pulp fiction material, and turns it into a powerful emotional statement on identity, desire and loss.
Pépé Le Moko is a classic because it is key to the French film noir tradition of the 1930s. As T.S. Eliot put it in a different context, it “represents the perfection of the common style.” Lastly of course it stars Jean Gabin.
Plot
Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin) is a well-known criminal mastermind who eludes the French police by hiding in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows he is safe in this labyrinthine netherworld, where he is surrounded by his fellow thieves and cutthroats. Police inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), who has developed a grudging respect for Pepe, bides his time, waiting for Pepe to try to leave the Casbah. When Gaby Gould (Mirielle Balin), a Parisian tourist, falls in love with Pepe, the inspector hopes to use this relationship to his advantage. He tells Gaby that Pepe has been killed, knowing that the heartbroken girl will return to Paris -- and that Pepe will risk everything to go after her. The part where the ship takes to sea with the foghorn tooting signals the poignant resolution to a love story that is too gossamer thin to be real.
Similar Works
Le Grand Jeu (1934, Jacques Feyder)
Moontide (1942, Fritz Lang, Archie Mayo)
Port of Shadows (1938, Marcel Carné)
Au-Dela Des Grilles (1948, René Clément)
La Bandera (1935, Julien Duvivier)
Le Jour Se Lève (1939, Marcel Carné)
Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)
The Conspirators (1944, Jean Negulesco)
Other Related Works
Is related to: Casbah (1948, John Berry)
Is spoofed in: Totò le Moko (1949, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia)
Has been remade as: Algiers (1938, John Cromwell)
(Ack: Hal Erickson-allmovie., Ginette Vincendeau, from the introduction to Pépé Le Moko , a monograph published by the British Film Institute-1998., www.Filmforum.org)
benny
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Films of Ingmar Bergman
One feature of Bergman films is an unconscious acknowledgment of personal influences of his world on him. Bergman was working for Svensk Filmindustri while Alf Sjöberg made The Road to Heaven (1942), a stark medieval allegory, hints of which we can see in The Seventh Seal. The fact that he went on to put Miss Julie, the film that established the reputation of Sjöberg on the boards after his death, cannot be coincidental. If Bergman has found relentless use of close-up of the face a technique to reinforce the existential and moral problems of his characters we may find in Carl Dreyer’s use of such close-ups as forerunner. In citing these in no way detracts the artistic excellence of this Swedish filmmaker. Another feature of Bergman’s subject matter is his introspective quality derived of course from his childhood memories, adolescence and personality. The Seventh Seal for example is his search for faith in the absence of a personal God. In a way he repudiates the faith of his fathers and in its place coalesce certain existential sureties from his own a clue of which in his film Persona (1966).
"Today I feel that in Persona — and later in Cries and Whispers — I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover." If we consider this film in particular we see it as self-revelatory as to his interior life. Take for example the images of Elizabet Vogler and Alma merging as one. This shot is a follow up of the birth of Elizabet’s son and it is narrated by her nurse. It is a painful memory for the actress and she hates herself and her baby. In merging the two faces of the nurse and the patient, Bergman is merely reliving his own condition. It is the reverse of the son towards his father. What spiritual baggage that he is left holding is anathema considering circumstances of its birth. The child- parent relationship must have been traumatic that it is explored in his movies again and again like a melody that one cannot get rid of. His Autumn Sonata (1978) and Fanny and Alexander (1982) are cases in point.
This rather obsessive aspect of Bergman where he would rather get rid of the world and its uses on which politics, commerce and culture gather strength (and by which nations may trade their tawdry goods across,) he would confront his viewer and also himself by deep concerns that his own countrymen found as excesses. Consider ‘Bergman's tight use of a 1.33:1 frame which often excludes any clear glimpses of the world beyond a face which finds no up, down, left or right in which to direct its gaze’. (The radical intimacy of Bergman-Hamish Ford) I for myself cannot think Bergman could pull off a film like say Ophul’s ‘The earrings of Madame de…’ or Fassbinder’s Lola. His metaphysical make-up is too ingrained in him to let him get into a serious business of commenting on political or social concerns of his day.
His first success came with Port of Call (1948).
In telling the love story of Gösta a seaman who saves a girl from drowning and keeping her by his side Bergman resorts to rather straightforward narrative. Berit has a terrible past and she would rather risk telling it before she commits herself to Gösta. In resolving their differences and mutual acceptance he touches upon social themes like failed parents sending their daughters to reformatories, the reliance of working class women on back-street abortions. We see him more as a disengaged filmmaker from polemics. I mentioned this film to show Bergman, as he has himself admitted at the time, was heavily influenced by Italian neo-realism. ‘The is most apparent in the stunning location sequences of Port of Call, where the influence of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica can be seen in virtually every shot. Some of these sequences have a raw documentary-feel… that is lacking in virtually all of Bergman’s other films’. (James travers-2007)
Take a film like Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) where love, marriage and infidelity angle of the film is of a different league than the lighthearted touch of Renoir (The Rules of the Game) for instance. The aging Egermann takes his young wife to the theater to see his former mistress. His directorial touch doesn’t bring out anything new in their three-way confrontation except some heavy observations. The three actresses on stage mock men, love and marriage. One of them says that a woman can do anything she wants to a man as long as she doesn’t hurt his dignity. Bergman won a jury prize at Cannes for the film (1955). His handling of the comedy of romantic entanglements was as different from his Magic Flute or the Silence. With films as disparate as the Magician or So Close to Life he showed that he was not confined to any particular style as his genius to put on what he had thematically chalked out. The subject matter determined the style. It could have come only from his intuitive understanding of various modes and viewpoints of filmmakers of his age.
Critical acclaim of his films have waxed and waned. Bergman’s status in late 50’s and in the 90s are light years away. Ingmar Bergman is not to be judged by films per se but in the way he opened us to appreciate the shared condition of life and film art beyond the fads and polemics. It is purely an internal experience. Elizabet, his character in Persona stopped speaking unable to respond effectively with ‘large catastrophes’ such as Holocaust or Vietnam War. Bergman was also confronted by catastrophes that in his case were private. Luckily for us he responded with films.(Ack: James Travers, Hamish ford, Pedro Blas Gonzalez.)
Benny
"Today I feel that in Persona — and later in Cries and Whispers — I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover." If we consider this film in particular we see it as self-revelatory as to his interior life. Take for example the images of Elizabet Vogler and Alma merging as one. This shot is a follow up of the birth of Elizabet’s son and it is narrated by her nurse. It is a painful memory for the actress and she hates herself and her baby. In merging the two faces of the nurse and the patient, Bergman is merely reliving his own condition. It is the reverse of the son towards his father. What spiritual baggage that he is left holding is anathema considering circumstances of its birth. The child- parent relationship must have been traumatic that it is explored in his movies again and again like a melody that one cannot get rid of. His Autumn Sonata (1978) and Fanny and Alexander (1982) are cases in point.
This rather obsessive aspect of Bergman where he would rather get rid of the world and its uses on which politics, commerce and culture gather strength (and by which nations may trade their tawdry goods across,) he would confront his viewer and also himself by deep concerns that his own countrymen found as excesses. Consider ‘Bergman's tight use of a 1.33:1 frame which often excludes any clear glimpses of the world beyond a face which finds no up, down, left or right in which to direct its gaze’. (The radical intimacy of Bergman-Hamish Ford) I for myself cannot think Bergman could pull off a film like say Ophul’s ‘The earrings of Madame de…’ or Fassbinder’s Lola. His metaphysical make-up is too ingrained in him to let him get into a serious business of commenting on political or social concerns of his day.
His first success came with Port of Call (1948).
In telling the love story of Gösta a seaman who saves a girl from drowning and keeping her by his side Bergman resorts to rather straightforward narrative. Berit has a terrible past and she would rather risk telling it before she commits herself to Gösta. In resolving their differences and mutual acceptance he touches upon social themes like failed parents sending their daughters to reformatories, the reliance of working class women on back-street abortions. We see him more as a disengaged filmmaker from polemics. I mentioned this film to show Bergman, as he has himself admitted at the time, was heavily influenced by Italian neo-realism. ‘The is most apparent in the stunning location sequences of Port of Call, where the influence of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica can be seen in virtually every shot. Some of these sequences have a raw documentary-feel… that is lacking in virtually all of Bergman’s other films’. (James travers-2007)
Take a film like Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) where love, marriage and infidelity angle of the film is of a different league than the lighthearted touch of Renoir (The Rules of the Game) for instance. The aging Egermann takes his young wife to the theater to see his former mistress. His directorial touch doesn’t bring out anything new in their three-way confrontation except some heavy observations. The three actresses on stage mock men, love and marriage. One of them says that a woman can do anything she wants to a man as long as she doesn’t hurt his dignity. Bergman won a jury prize at Cannes for the film (1955). His handling of the comedy of romantic entanglements was as different from his Magic Flute or the Silence. With films as disparate as the Magician or So Close to Life he showed that he was not confined to any particular style as his genius to put on what he had thematically chalked out. The subject matter determined the style. It could have come only from his intuitive understanding of various modes and viewpoints of filmmakers of his age.
Critical acclaim of his films have waxed and waned. Bergman’s status in late 50’s and in the 90s are light years away. Ingmar Bergman is not to be judged by films per se but in the way he opened us to appreciate the shared condition of life and film art beyond the fads and polemics. It is purely an internal experience. Elizabet, his character in Persona stopped speaking unable to respond effectively with ‘large catastrophes’ such as Holocaust or Vietnam War. Bergman was also confronted by catastrophes that in his case were private. Luckily for us he responded with films.(Ack: James Travers, Hamish ford, Pedro Blas Gonzalez.)
Benny
Monday, 4 January 2010
Miss Julie-1951
According to film scholar Peter Cowie, Alf Sjöberg’s boldly experimental 1951 adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie inaugurated “a new cinematic language”. Alf Sjöberg one of the brightest stars in Scandinavian film scene in the ‘40s and ‘50s, is now rather overlooked for the simple reason Ingmar Bergman is far greater draw than he. (see Sjöberg, Bergman and Swedish films). Of his oeuvres Miss Julie is a classic. Alf Sjöberg won the Grand Prix du Festival at the Cannes Film Festival twice: in 1946 for Torment (Swedish: Hets) (part of an eleven-way tie), and in 1951 for Miss Julie (Swedish: Fröken Julie)
August Strindberg owed much to Émile Zola’s “Le naturalism au théâtre” and in the works of the Goncourt brothers. This 1888 play belongs to the period of naturalism in theater begun around 1880. Their dictum was to depict life through a temperament and to maintain a strict dramatic form resting on the three unities of time, place, and action. In Miss Julie, for instance, Strindberg confines the entire action to the estate kitchen, the conflict takes place in a short time span during Midsummer’s Eve, and dramatic potential of power play is delineated by three characters: Julie, the twenty-five-year-old countess; Jean, her father’s valet; and Jean’s fiancé, the robust cook Kristin. Naturalism also decreed that a drama demonstrate a law of nature—in this case it was the survival of the fittest: the likes of Jean will live on while Julie, the product of an effete aristocratic family, will succumb.
Two different mediums
Before I get on with the details of the film proper let me point out a few points that distinguish film treatment of a play as ground breaking as that of Strindberg. In the manner film exploits the basic theme more trenchantly Sjöberg shows his superlative talent. He came originally from the stage and showed his genius could transcend the limits of theater by letting the camera to explore the nuances of self destructive love as essayed by willful countess and her valet.
The film opens as in the play on midsummer night of 1874 on the estate of a Count in Sweden. The film roams freely over the grounds of the count’s estate, unlike the claustrophobic mood of the theater. The evocative mood awakened by the festive atmosphere of solstice, the torpor and heat in which inhibitions are lowered, only film can bring about effectively. One may compare it with Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955).
In theater the directness of actors and speech must work despite of a confined architecture and painted scenery; the all- enveloping intimacy in which the actors create reality is all that they have in order to succeed. Their stylized gestures and rhythmic speech are their props. Whether it is an Ibsen or Pinter play, speech and truth of action in stylized acting or natural, reality is in carrying the audience along till the very end. In the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes cleverness of the makers of Emperor’s new clothes succeeded. In such immediacy of a make- believe world, reality was broken by the child who shouted, ‘the emperor is naked’. In short reality of the theater doesn’t suffer audience to drift into fantasy or introspection. Not so with cinema. To quote
‘Cinema is peopled with ghosts and chimeras who weightlessly defy the boundaries of space and time. This abrogation of external laws pulls the medium into the realm of introspection, imagination, and dreams.’(Peter Matthews-criterion 21 Jan’08)
Basic themes
The film as with the play essays power play of power, class and gender. The frolic of the lower classes typified by the solstice is a counterpoint to the hidebound social mores under which Miss Julie exists. This underlying tension runs throughout in visual terms as well as in the development of two protagonists. Julie takes added delight in playing her games with Jean, seeing fit to consistently demean this servant through such acts as forcing him to shine her boots. He submits to her will since his station requires it.
Taught by her mother to hold all men in contempt, Miss Julie nonetheless gives herself to him and it is a point where balance of power shifts. The affair with valet Jean (Ulf Palme) shows what is her future. He wants her to elope with him to Switzerland where he expects her to entice customers to the inn that he intends to set up. His victory over her can never be that of one of an equal to her either in class or in aristocratic unflappability. Only he needs hear the ring of two bells and in Pavlovian reflex he reverts to his servile upbringing.
The tension of their doomed romance is revealing in in their dreams: Jean speaks of a recurring dream where he is ever trying to climb a tree and the countess is free falling. Such contrasts, in Sjoberg’s handling render disparity of their childhood, taking us into the past, illustrating the events and people who came to shape both Julie and Jean’s disparate outlooks on life. Raised a servant’s son and scorned by those above him, Jean is subjected to cruel humiliations early on in life which has the dual effects of both fostering contempt for the ruling class he lives under but also shapes him into a poltroon. And with Julie, her life is genuinely shaped by the sins of the father and mother; in her case, an emotionally weak father and psychologically unbalanced mother’s own war of attrition shaped and trained the young girl to distrust all men. (Strindberg points out with painful clarity the ways in which children become the weapons through which their parents can strike hardest and deepest at each other.)
‘The chief innovation that Sjöberg brings to his Miss Julie is the seamless way in which he presents both main characters’ past and present in a unified whole; as Julie begins to reminisce over her own childhood, the camera pans away and we are taken into the past only to be brought back into the uncomfortable present in one continuous motion, which speaks to the ever-present nature of memory in our lives as we live out in real time. This seamlessness injects a dreamy surrealism into an otherwise, caustic realism as well as foreshadows Bergman’s own use of this approach in films like Wild Strawberries.
However, the film’s dramatic core is sustained by Bjork and Palme’s performances as the main characters. Powerfully open emotionally, Bjork is expert at imposing the character’s will believably in the first half as well as transitioning into the shattered psyche that exposes her vulnerability and leads her to the tale’s tragic denouement'.
Cast:
Anita Björk ... Miss Julie
Ulf Palme ... Jean
Märta Dorff ... Kristin, cook
Lissi Alandh ... Countess Berta, Julie's mother
Anders Henrikson ... Count Carl, Julie's father
Inga Gill ... Viola
Åke Fridell ... Robert
Kurt-Olof Sundström ... Julie's Fiancé
Max von Sydow ... Hand
Margaretha Krook ... Governess (as Margareta Krook)
Åke Claesson ... Doctor
Inger Norberg ... Julie as a child
Jan Hagerman ... Jean as a child
Technical
Produced by
Rune Waldekranz .... producer (uncredited)
Original Music and arranged by
Dag Wirén
Cinematography by
Göran Strindberg
Film Editing by
Lennart Wallén
Art Direction by
Bibi Lindström
Bergman and Sjöberg, Swedish films
Alf Sjöberg (21 June 1903 – 16 April 1980) was a Swedish theatre and film director.
Born in 1903, Sjöberg was in the thick of artistic developments of new medium of cinema. Victor Sjöström( The Outlaw and His Wife-1918) and Mauritz Stiller( Sir Arne’s Treasure-1919) were engaged in making Swedish cinema a force to reckon with. Hollywood sensing threat bought over Sjöström and Stiller along with his protégé Greta Garbo to MGM. Into this breach stepped in Alf Sjöberg, trained at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, and he caused a sensation with his very first work, The Strongest (1929), an intense fable of seal hunters in Greenland. But the mortal blow to the industry had been struck, and he retreated to the boards, mounting acclaimed, innovative productions of Strindberg and Shakespeare through the 1930s. Meanwhile, Swedish cinema entered a struggling, populist phase. The smash of the decade was Gustaf Molander’s glossy soap Intermezzo (1936), soon to be remade for David Selznick -( once again,this time plundering its ingenue star, Ingrid Bergman).
Ironically, Sweden’s neutrality during the Second World War turned the grim situation around. A ban on foreign imports deemed propaganda (that is, nearly everything from the Axis or the Allies) gave domestic filmmaking a sudden shot in the arm. Determined on a renaissance, the visionary head of Svensk Filmindustri, Carl Anders Dymling, symbolically enthroned a repatriated Sjöström as the company’s artistic supervisor, then wooed another indispensable auteur. Sjöberg had been tempted back to cinema for an urgent, antifascist melodrama, They Staked Their Lives (1940), and consolidated his prestige with The Road to Heaven (1942), a stark medieval allegory that holds more than an embryonic hint of a later folktale about a certain chess-playing knight. At the time, the author of that classic was a hustling junior in the script department of SF, and Dymling had an inspiration: why not arrange a creative marriage between this whiz kid Bergman and the veteran Sjöberg? The result was Torment (1944) The young Bergman came to represent the youth and Sjöberg, the Establishment. In Sweden as elsewhere, the war’s trauma had propelled youth culture—and though Bergman could be profitably sold as a rebel than Sjöberg.
Whatever might be said of Bergman’s burgeoning talent it was unlike that of Sjöberg who had cut his teeth on 1920s German expressionism. His camera mobility and deep-focus framing is evident in Torment.
Bergman would absorb some aspect of his technique for Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) and The Silence (1963), eventually conceding that “Alf Sjöberg . . . taught me a great deal.” If it was a case of oedipal rivalry, then momentarily the father outpaced the son. Screwed over on Torment, Sjöberg recouped with Iris and the Lieutenant (1946) and Only a Mother (1949). Despite his success with films Torment (1944) and Miss Julie, Alf Sjöberg was above all, and foremost, a stage director; perhaps the greatest at Dramaten (alongside, first, Olof Molander and, later, Ingmar Bergman). He was a First Director of Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre in the years 1930-1980, where he staged a large number of remarkable and historic productions. Sjöberg was also a pioneer director for early Swedish TV theatre (his 1955 TV theatre production of Hamlet is a national milestone).
A clue to the weight of two directors one only needs to watch Torment where Bergamn’s part only called for script and some four days shooting towards the end. Yet Bergman has become saleable and his name appears more striking than that of Sjöberg.
Sjöberg died in a car accident on his way to rehearsal at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
Versions of Miss Julie
* The first, Fröken Julie by the Swedish director, Alf Sjöberg in 1951.
* Another version was produced in 1971 by Tigon British Film Productions. It starred Helen Mirren as Miss Julie.
* A version was directed by Mike Figgis with Saffron Burrows in the role of Miss Julie and Peter Mullan in the role of Jean in 1999.
(Ack: independentfilmquarterly, Brigitta Steene, Miss Julie: The Three Bergs-peter Matthews, criterion collection
answers.com, wikipedia,)
benny
August Strindberg owed much to Émile Zola’s “Le naturalism au théâtre” and in the works of the Goncourt brothers. This 1888 play belongs to the period of naturalism in theater begun around 1880. Their dictum was to depict life through a temperament and to maintain a strict dramatic form resting on the three unities of time, place, and action. In Miss Julie, for instance, Strindberg confines the entire action to the estate kitchen, the conflict takes place in a short time span during Midsummer’s Eve, and dramatic potential of power play is delineated by three characters: Julie, the twenty-five-year-old countess; Jean, her father’s valet; and Jean’s fiancé, the robust cook Kristin. Naturalism also decreed that a drama demonstrate a law of nature—in this case it was the survival of the fittest: the likes of Jean will live on while Julie, the product of an effete aristocratic family, will succumb.
Two different mediums
Before I get on with the details of the film proper let me point out a few points that distinguish film treatment of a play as ground breaking as that of Strindberg. In the manner film exploits the basic theme more trenchantly Sjöberg shows his superlative talent. He came originally from the stage and showed his genius could transcend the limits of theater by letting the camera to explore the nuances of self destructive love as essayed by willful countess and her valet.
The film opens as in the play on midsummer night of 1874 on the estate of a Count in Sweden. The film roams freely over the grounds of the count’s estate, unlike the claustrophobic mood of the theater. The evocative mood awakened by the festive atmosphere of solstice, the torpor and heat in which inhibitions are lowered, only film can bring about effectively. One may compare it with Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955).
In theater the directness of actors and speech must work despite of a confined architecture and painted scenery; the all- enveloping intimacy in which the actors create reality is all that they have in order to succeed. Their stylized gestures and rhythmic speech are their props. Whether it is an Ibsen or Pinter play, speech and truth of action in stylized acting or natural, reality is in carrying the audience along till the very end. In the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes cleverness of the makers of Emperor’s new clothes succeeded. In such immediacy of a make- believe world, reality was broken by the child who shouted, ‘the emperor is naked’. In short reality of the theater doesn’t suffer audience to drift into fantasy or introspection. Not so with cinema. To quote
‘Cinema is peopled with ghosts and chimeras who weightlessly defy the boundaries of space and time. This abrogation of external laws pulls the medium into the realm of introspection, imagination, and dreams.’(Peter Matthews-criterion 21 Jan’08)
Basic themes
The film as with the play essays power play of power, class and gender. The frolic of the lower classes typified by the solstice is a counterpoint to the hidebound social mores under which Miss Julie exists. This underlying tension runs throughout in visual terms as well as in the development of two protagonists. Julie takes added delight in playing her games with Jean, seeing fit to consistently demean this servant through such acts as forcing him to shine her boots. He submits to her will since his station requires it.
Taught by her mother to hold all men in contempt, Miss Julie nonetheless gives herself to him and it is a point where balance of power shifts. The affair with valet Jean (Ulf Palme) shows what is her future. He wants her to elope with him to Switzerland where he expects her to entice customers to the inn that he intends to set up. His victory over her can never be that of one of an equal to her either in class or in aristocratic unflappability. Only he needs hear the ring of two bells and in Pavlovian reflex he reverts to his servile upbringing.
The tension of their doomed romance is revealing in in their dreams: Jean speaks of a recurring dream where he is ever trying to climb a tree and the countess is free falling. Such contrasts, in Sjoberg’s handling render disparity of their childhood, taking us into the past, illustrating the events and people who came to shape both Julie and Jean’s disparate outlooks on life. Raised a servant’s son and scorned by those above him, Jean is subjected to cruel humiliations early on in life which has the dual effects of both fostering contempt for the ruling class he lives under but also shapes him into a poltroon. And with Julie, her life is genuinely shaped by the sins of the father and mother; in her case, an emotionally weak father and psychologically unbalanced mother’s own war of attrition shaped and trained the young girl to distrust all men. (Strindberg points out with painful clarity the ways in which children become the weapons through which their parents can strike hardest and deepest at each other.)
‘The chief innovation that Sjöberg brings to his Miss Julie is the seamless way in which he presents both main characters’ past and present in a unified whole; as Julie begins to reminisce over her own childhood, the camera pans away and we are taken into the past only to be brought back into the uncomfortable present in one continuous motion, which speaks to the ever-present nature of memory in our lives as we live out in real time. This seamlessness injects a dreamy surrealism into an otherwise, caustic realism as well as foreshadows Bergman’s own use of this approach in films like Wild Strawberries.
However, the film’s dramatic core is sustained by Bjork and Palme’s performances as the main characters. Powerfully open emotionally, Bjork is expert at imposing the character’s will believably in the first half as well as transitioning into the shattered psyche that exposes her vulnerability and leads her to the tale’s tragic denouement'.
Cast:
Anita Björk ... Miss Julie
Ulf Palme ... Jean
Märta Dorff ... Kristin, cook
Lissi Alandh ... Countess Berta, Julie's mother
Anders Henrikson ... Count Carl, Julie's father
Inga Gill ... Viola
Åke Fridell ... Robert
Kurt-Olof Sundström ... Julie's Fiancé
Max von Sydow ... Hand
Margaretha Krook ... Governess (as Margareta Krook)
Åke Claesson ... Doctor
Inger Norberg ... Julie as a child
Jan Hagerman ... Jean as a child
Technical
Produced by
Rune Waldekranz .... producer (uncredited)
Original Music and arranged by
Dag Wirén
Cinematography by
Göran Strindberg
Film Editing by
Lennart Wallén
Art Direction by
Bibi Lindström
Bergman and Sjöberg, Swedish films
Alf Sjöberg (21 June 1903 – 16 April 1980) was a Swedish theatre and film director.
Born in 1903, Sjöberg was in the thick of artistic developments of new medium of cinema. Victor Sjöström( The Outlaw and His Wife-1918) and Mauritz Stiller( Sir Arne’s Treasure-1919) were engaged in making Swedish cinema a force to reckon with. Hollywood sensing threat bought over Sjöström and Stiller along with his protégé Greta Garbo to MGM. Into this breach stepped in Alf Sjöberg, trained at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, and he caused a sensation with his very first work, The Strongest (1929), an intense fable of seal hunters in Greenland. But the mortal blow to the industry had been struck, and he retreated to the boards, mounting acclaimed, innovative productions of Strindberg and Shakespeare through the 1930s. Meanwhile, Swedish cinema entered a struggling, populist phase. The smash of the decade was Gustaf Molander’s glossy soap Intermezzo (1936), soon to be remade for David Selznick -( once again,this time plundering its ingenue star, Ingrid Bergman).
Ironically, Sweden’s neutrality during the Second World War turned the grim situation around. A ban on foreign imports deemed propaganda (that is, nearly everything from the Axis or the Allies) gave domestic filmmaking a sudden shot in the arm. Determined on a renaissance, the visionary head of Svensk Filmindustri, Carl Anders Dymling, symbolically enthroned a repatriated Sjöström as the company’s artistic supervisor, then wooed another indispensable auteur. Sjöberg had been tempted back to cinema for an urgent, antifascist melodrama, They Staked Their Lives (1940), and consolidated his prestige with The Road to Heaven (1942), a stark medieval allegory that holds more than an embryonic hint of a later folktale about a certain chess-playing knight. At the time, the author of that classic was a hustling junior in the script department of SF, and Dymling had an inspiration: why not arrange a creative marriage between this whiz kid Bergman and the veteran Sjöberg? The result was Torment (1944) The young Bergman came to represent the youth and Sjöberg, the Establishment. In Sweden as elsewhere, the war’s trauma had propelled youth culture—and though Bergman could be profitably sold as a rebel than Sjöberg.
Whatever might be said of Bergman’s burgeoning talent it was unlike that of Sjöberg who had cut his teeth on 1920s German expressionism. His camera mobility and deep-focus framing is evident in Torment.
Bergman would absorb some aspect of his technique for Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) and The Silence (1963), eventually conceding that “Alf Sjöberg . . . taught me a great deal.” If it was a case of oedipal rivalry, then momentarily the father outpaced the son. Screwed over on Torment, Sjöberg recouped with Iris and the Lieutenant (1946) and Only a Mother (1949). Despite his success with films Torment (1944) and Miss Julie, Alf Sjöberg was above all, and foremost, a stage director; perhaps the greatest at Dramaten (alongside, first, Olof Molander and, later, Ingmar Bergman). He was a First Director of Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre in the years 1930-1980, where he staged a large number of remarkable and historic productions. Sjöberg was also a pioneer director for early Swedish TV theatre (his 1955 TV theatre production of Hamlet is a national milestone).
A clue to the weight of two directors one only needs to watch Torment where Bergamn’s part only called for script and some four days shooting towards the end. Yet Bergman has become saleable and his name appears more striking than that of Sjöberg.
Sjöberg died in a car accident on his way to rehearsal at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm.
Versions of Miss Julie
* The first, Fröken Julie by the Swedish director, Alf Sjöberg in 1951.
* Another version was produced in 1971 by Tigon British Film Productions. It starred Helen Mirren as Miss Julie.
* A version was directed by Mike Figgis with Saffron Burrows in the role of Miss Julie and Peter Mullan in the role of Jean in 1999.
(Ack: independentfilmquarterly, Brigitta Steene, Miss Julie: The Three Bergs-peter Matthews, criterion collection
answers.com, wikipedia,)
benny
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