BEST FILMS OF 1964
by Mike Lorefice

Band of Outsiders
Jean-Luc Godard

***

Blood & Black Lace
Mario Bava

***

Cheyenne Autumn
John Ford

***1/2

Dead Ringer
Paul Henreid

***

Dog Star Man
Stan Brakhage

***

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Stanley Kubrick

****

Fail Safe
Sidney Lumet

***1/2

The Fall of the Roman Empire
Anthony Mann

***

A Fistful of Dollars
Sergio Leone

***1/2

El Gallo De Oro
Roberto Gavaldon

***

Gertrud
Carl Theodor Dreyer

***1/2

I Am Cuba
Mikheil Kalatozov

***

Full Movie Review

Kwaidan
Masaki Kobayashi

In the days when Japanese horror movies were known for pitiful rubber monsters and cheesy effects, master director Masaki Kobayashi seemingly switched gears by elegantly delivering four literate tales of the supernatural. Kobayashi's moral tales deal with the problems humans face, in this case our material nature tends to squash our spiritual and emotional sides, crushing us in ways so amazingly predictable the ending is often obvious from the outset. Perhaps he's a bit less socially conscious and more into punishment in these life lessons, but I consider Kwaidan far less of a thematic departure than it's normally billed as. The pain these characters cause is happening everywhere everyday, but for the fun of these fables their missteps manifest themselves into ghosts that tend to penalize. Kwaidan is scary because it exploits human frailty so well; apparitions may be involved but memories and past failures haunt. The difference is Kobayashi scrapped almost all sense of realism in order to reach the pinnacle of studio artistry. Kobayashi understands how to use the entire frame so well, spacing the characters properly to capture the action and inaction, keeping us at the proper distance throughout and showing the emptiness of the money driven existence in the first story. The expert color patterns and lighting schemes are arguably most effective during the second tale. Pale blues help add to the icy feeling of being stranded in the forest during a blizzard, and are later contrasted by the golden sky that's seemingly brought on by finding a new love. Kobayashi's film is like a series of paintings, you could isolate any frame and use it for a textbook of framing, angle, or color, but together they flow and set the otherworldly mood. He not only has a ton of fun showing remarkably beautiful versions of Japan throughout the ages, but his meticulously designed studio sets, painterly framing and glorious use of lavish color surpass even the great Michael Powell. That said, the real achievement of this masterpiece might be the way the formal beauty works hand in hand with the creepy otherworldly tales. Kobayashi's horror is of the subtle haunting variety. The terror sets in over time, unfolding as mistakes and missed opportunities ultimately, inevitably, and relentlessly lead to tragedy. Lengthy intros with some narration but no dialogue from the characters set the stage for the events for come. Brilliant widescreen photography builds anticipation through static shots, while lengthy snail paced tracking shots create tension. Toru Takemitsu might be the greatest film composer of all time, and his spare avant-garde scores for Kobayashi such as Seppuku are his most experimental. Kwaidan is horror in stealth mode, creeping up without a sound then making its presence felt through alternately understated and jolting sound effects that have a huge effect on the mood. Dead calm gives way to the unsettling, but then the eerie quiet once again allows you to relax. [1/18/07] ****

Marnie
Alfred Hitchcock

***1/2

The Masque of the Red Death
Roger Corman

***

The Naked Kiss
Samuel Fuller

***1/2

The Pawnbroker
Sidney Lumet

***

Scorpio Rising
Kenneth Anger

The genesis of the modern music video came two decades before no Music Television. A decade before even Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, Kenneth Anger used (wall to wall) pop songs to provide ironic counterpoint to his otherwise silent voyeuristic documentary style look at the lifestyle of a biker gang. The influence on Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell (who later acted in Anger's Lucifer Rising), who used their editing skill to turn an original plot related song from their star Mick Jagger into a music video type of segment in the midst of their classic Performance, seems even more profound. Anger also uses crosscutting to link and counterpoint, starting by equating a grownup fixing his motorcycle to a kid playing with a wind up toy version (Roeg took it a step further by simply having Christopher Lloyd by obsessed with toy trains in his underrated Track 29), and getting into less obvious connections through found footage of Hitler & Jesus. The subliminal rapid-fire montage is tremendous, showing not only an understanding of, but in some ways an improvement upon Sergei Eisenstein. Anger may not fully develop most of his points, but he brings up more in a wordless half hour than most commercial film directors do in a half century of pushing product. This is an outsider film looking at a specific culture - nihilistic machine worshipping motorcycle gang - and viewing overall pop culture from their perspective, showing how one perverts the other to the point both result in their form of perversion. Nazi, gay, religious, rebel, and pop culture, sex, drugs, rock & roll, and death all add up to the decline of the Christian age, but fear not there will always be a sappy upbeat paean to nothing to cheer us up. Anger's experimental short is broke down into three segments, preparation, ritual, and destruction. The first, which somewhat approximates a gay version of Robert Bresson, is shown through tight focus on body parts to convey precisely how every aspect is achieved. The explicit detail distracts us from the initial slow speed, which rhythmically builds throughout until the frenzied death laden finale. Anger breaks down the myth of biker toughness, eroticising every shot, and constantly showing their stylings and camaraderie to be gay. This is one of those ironic films that appeals to people in the lifestyle because they see themselves depicted on the screen for once, so they don't mind or at least can overlook the fact that Anger seems to be depicting them as a homosexual death cult, as well as those who want nothing to do with the lifestyle because they see the folly of it. Anger seduces us with his spectacle, and even though aspects of his work have been co-opted in so many different forms of visual entertainment and media, Anger's intense, hypnotic, and unsettling images retain much of their power. [5/4/07] ***1/2

Seance on a Wet Afternoon
Bryan Forbes

***1/2

Seven Days in May
John Frankenheimer

***1/2

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Sergei Parajanov

Sergei Parajanov's first feature could be described as neo interior realism. The alternately mythological and ethnographical tale of mid 1800's Huzul culture is brought to life through their day to day events. They fight over religion and kill back and forth for reasons long forgotten like everyone else, but when their daily rituals of working the land are finished the lack of technology leads to them gathering to entertain each other through singing, playing instruments, dancing, and so on. Though period details including dialect, costumes, music, ceremony, and lack of hygiene seem credible, one look at their wedding ceremony is enough to tell we've never seen these people on screen before. Parajanov does a masterful job of utilizing the Carpathian mountain landscapes and weather to evoke the moods and relate the feelings of the characters. His use of the color palate and varying film stocks to depict the emotions and moods of the symbolic film is memorable, especially the application of muted color contrasted by rich oversaturated reds and yellows. This is not a postcard film; the toil of day to day existence is caused by as much as contrasted with the lovely settings. It's a vibrant work combining realistic depictions of peasant life with surreal depictions of interior reality. The basis is a simplistic forbidden then lost love story, but it never seems slight because the folklore, culture, and ritual make up the majority of the film. The photography is stunning. Cinematographer and future director Yuri Illyenko's camera is so agile with quick pans and difficult tracking and crane shots through the woods. My favorite shot has Ivan bending over to kiss the water, shot with the camera underwater looking straight up at him. Ukrainian Parajanov studied under the great silent master Aleksandr Dovzhenko, among others, and makes several nods to his work. Though folk songs, chants, woodwinds, and string instruments are ever present, the characters rarely converse. The acting is often in the silent mode, and the film sometimes uses intertitles, particularly since it's broken up into thematic sections. Though set in the past, one wonders how much is autobiographical. Parajanov certainly knows about forbidden love given his first wife was a Muslim Tatar who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity to marry him, only to eventually be murdered by relatives who opposed the defection. [6/1/07] ****

Tomb of Ligeia
Roger Corman

***

Full Movie Review

The Train
John Frankenheimer

***

The Visit
Bernhard Wicki

***

The World of Henry Orient
George Roy Hill

***

Woman in the Dunes
Hiroshi Teshigahara

****