'Tokyo Olympiad'

It’s a bit of poetry that the two state-sanctioned documentary films about the Olympics came with Leni Riefensthal’s bombastic Olympia chronicling the 1936 Berlin games and Kon Ichikawa’s film about the 1964 Tokyo games.

The former showed power and force: Germany on the brink of turning the world on its head. It’s manipulative and in concert with the Nazis’ ideas about pomp, circumstance and a good show.

The later caught back up with the Axis powers. Decimated by years of war, the sons and fathers in graves and countries on the brink, Tokyo, by 1964, was on its own brink: From being a financial and cultural stalwart of the east and certainly a world power under very different circumstances.

Japan had pegged famed director Akira Kurosawa for the task. He proved unamenable to suggestion and – being that he was undoubtedly popular – was his own power. So Japan sacked him and hired Kon Ichikawa. He does a beautiful job of focusing less on the medal stands and tote boards, and more on the triumph of the will (so to speak) of the athletes and the stories behind the world’s best.

'Me and My Girl'

One of the few films on the 1,001 list that unintentionally flopped at the box office. By the mid-30s, Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett were well into their acting careers, but neither had tipped the scales.

There’s no real gargantuan impact on the film industry here. Raoul Walsh directed and other than being prolific as a director, his greatest hits include portraying John Wilkes Booth in Birth of a Nation and discovering John Wayne.

The film is nice and easy, though. Just 79, it flies through witty dialogue and a pretty entertaining, but simple plot. If for no other reason, revel in the glory that is Spencer Tracy in a comedic role.

'Letter From an Unknown Woman'

Notable only because it was directed by Max Ophüls, a German Jew who fled his homeland in 1933 as the Nazis started rattling the cage. He fled again, this time from France, in 1938 and finally landing in the United States. Letter from an Unknown Woman was the second of Ophüls’ Hollywood productions, one of four he completed in the United States before going back to France to finish his life.

Before Letter from an Unknown Woman, Ophüls’ was fired from the film Vendetta by Howard Hughes for either being a foreigner in Hollywood or his slow shooting pace. Or both. This firing came after four years of waiting to get a shot in the United States.

After returning to France in 1950, he never did another Hollywood film. And after leaving, he never filmed in Germany.

'Salt Of The Earth'

As I get older, I find it funny how humans are OK with stripping others of their dignity. I find it funny how principles generally are leaned upon when it’s convenient.

In our grandparents’ lifetime – not 50-75 years ago – Americans were not only irresistibly hateful, but uncompromisingly scared shitless of treating people above anything of that of a bug.

Salt of the Earth is groundbreaking. “Released” in 1954, it captures the struggle of not only union miners in New Mexico, but Mexican workers, and not only Mexican union minors, but the females, the women behind the workers. It’s progressive in so many ways because it was all taboo, it was all anti-American that it wasn’t appropriately released only being shown in 12 theaters in the United States for 10 years after its production. By the way, the production was done by all blacklisted film makers and starred only four trained actors, none of which played major roles.

The same folks that decry the influence of unions are the same that hold the Constitution in such high regard particularly when it comes to the right to bear arms. However, freedoms of speech and assembly are nominal allowances. The pursuit of happiness and equality are reserved for Fourth of July parades and grandstanding.

The deplorable way minorities (ethnic or racial) were treated is hard to swallow. The treatment of women is unconscionable. But the basic right for humans to assembly and demand a better work environment or more pay is as capitalistic as you can possibly get. The fact that unionization and withholding a workforce to affect production (and thus profits) is a means to that end is irrelevant.

The “not in my backyard” mentality kills us as a nation. 

'Ring'

A horror film about a ghoul that scares people to death. The victims aren't eaten or beaten. They see what they see and their heart stops with fear.

Now that's a horror film.

'The Woman In The Dunes'

I tried to find a still from one of the tremendous close ups this film had. I found these significant because it's about a school teacher who gets caught up living in this set inside a dune pit, where sand works itself into every nook and cranny of their bodies, clothes and lives.

Some of the shots really showcase the bodies -- often naked, because sand in your clothes is the worst -- encased in this sand. This is the best photo I could find.

Anyway, in his review of the film, critic Roger Ebert compared it to the myth of Sisyphus, who is damned to roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down. And he must do this for enternity.

I would agree only if part of the story was that Sisyphus had a tiny rock in his shoe the entire time. The sand in this film makes you want to shower afterwards.

'The Big Parade'

Utterly shocked to see how King Vidor portrayed war in this film. Especially for the time (released in 1925 .. seven years after World War I ended), that big battle scene is as terrifying as you'll find on the big screen.

Outside of the first five minutes of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan I don't remember a better full-on battle scene and a more realistic vision of war. As it should be.

'The Mortal Storm'

Sometimes you find a film with a little guts and no matter what you find yourself enjoying it more than you typically would. The Mortal Storm is one of those films.

It's not an alien story. A happy Bavarian family celebrate the birthday of their father, a noted university professor of science (chemistry or eugenics or something ... although it's intimated that he's also non-Aryan although they never call him a Jew). The next minute Adolf Hitler is elected German chancellor and their lives are thrown into tumult.

The two elder sons and the daughter's boyfriend quickly celebrate the Third Reich of the German empire by joining the Nazis. Meanwhile, family friend played by Jimmy Stewart, a farmer, fights assimilation as he foretells the policies of the Nazis including the annihilation of party opponents, intelligentsia and prejudices untold.

Soon relationships unravel as Stewart's character is bullied and the father is imprisoned and later dies under questionable circumstances. The remaining family attempts to leave the country via train. The youngest son and mother flee. The daughter is detained upon suspicion of being an enemy of the state.

She and Stewart's character attempt emigration by skis and she is murdered upon command of her former fiancé.

Why does any of this matter? What makes it any different than any other Nazi film?

This was released in 1940. A full year-and-a-half before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Here is Jimmy Stewart telling everyone what was going on and still we found ourselves shocked at the atrocities of the Nazis.

If the Nazis are banning your films, you are probably doing things right.

'The Mad Masters'

A very difficult documentary short about the Hauka movement in central and western Africa.

Hauka was a spiritual/ritual/farcical act that involved young African men dancing and mimicking administrators in the colonizing British army and bureaucracy.

I call it a spiritual/ritual/farcical because I can't make heads or tails of it. At times it appears to be just a bunch of deadbeat African guys wasting time. Then you see them frothing at the mouth, drinking the blood of a freshly slaughtered dog and digging their hands into a cauldron of boiling water to pick at pieces of the cooking dog.

Their eyes roll into the back of their head and their bodies take unnatural shapes that would be unreasonable should these men be conscious. They act in some sort of trance because even if they wanted to really fake what they were doing it'd be impossible for anyone with a clear mind.

Still, there's something stupid about the entire thing. The men consider it a protest of the colonizers. Others consider it a sort of tribute to the white conquerers as a means of becoming more like them.

I don't know if there's any more answers as there are questions once you finish.

'Marketa Lazarová'

All I could think about while watching this Czech film set during the ruthless and unforgiving Middle Ages is how North America never had a time like this. Also, how has that shaped the United States.

Sub-sub-question, is it possible that right now is the United States' Middle Ages and we've simply swapped out savage violence … well, for savage violence (that by gangs in Chicago or teenagers on video game consoles).

Are there ages any more? Ages always recorded some advancement in culture. Point being, is the United States in one age and will that transition to a new age where things are better, where science and understanding rule? Or, are we beyond ages? As things evolve they also tend to devolve in a lot of ways.

There is no real history of North America in the Middle Ages. The Europeans hadn't come over yet except for some Vikings. Otherwise, the indigenous peoples that traveled over the Bering land bridge centuries inhabited the free land. It would take several lifetimes for anyone of a  different skin tone to set foot on the continent and begin to really screw shit up.

There were North Americans during the Middle Ages, but it takes fragments of pottery and weapons to really understand a fragment of their culture. We don't know their lives quite like we know that of the Europeans. Chances are, the lives of the North Americans during the Middle Ages probably wasn't too drastically different than those centuries before or centuries after.

Let's hope that the worst of the Middle Ages is Facebook.
d

'Les Vampires'

A 10-part series of episodes that runs just under seven hours total. It's a messy confluence and often hard to watch. I often found the action confusing, I mixed up characters jumping from episode to episode and it was a very complex plot for it being 1915.

I kept thinking, however, that all these people are dead. And that depressed me. Even the little boy, Eustache Mazamette. René Poyen played the boy and he was seven when he did Les Vampires. He was out of the film business when he was 24 and he died at 59. 

But he made his name as Poyen appeared in dozens of short films before doing Les Vampires starting at age four. 

The most interesting plot point of Les Vampires is that it's not about the mythical, blood-sucking immortal demons, but instead an Apache gang, which I had no idea about. These were violent roving packs of gangs that terrorized members of the middle and upper class in Paris during the early part of the 20th century. 

They were known for their violence and for using an "Apache revolver," which was a third knife, a third revolver and a third brass knuckles. 

'Peking Opera Blues'

An odd film because it's pretty foreign-film wacky with all sorts of Chinese tomfoolery, which probably  drew a billion laughs back in 1986 from repressed young Chinese kids. Then, suddenly it turns into this very bloody, dark shoot-em-out action movie.

they hold nothing back. They have a girl getting whipped nearly to death and strapped to a bed, we assume, to be raped by a general. She is saved when a friend acts to seduce the general to create a means of murdering him, which she does and the two girls pull a "Weekend at Bernies" in order to appease the guards.

The only real interesting part of the film is the kabuki actors in the ornate face paint screaming into the camera.

'Pandora And The Flying Dutchman'

My only real remark on this film is why the graphic artists were intent on making Ava Gardner as wholly unattractive as possible on just about every poster for this film.

At times she looks fat. Others her body and face are so distorted that it looks unequivocally like someone else, someone less attractive. Even in the poster here James Mason looks like a retarded James Dean.

Generally though, the hideous posters basically are the only interesting tidbit of a pretty boring movie. I mean, she was his wife reincarnated. It’d been better if she had left him and let him roam for eternity upon the high seas. Because, you know, he murdered her in a jealous rage 500 years earlier.

'A Man Escaped' & 'The Hole'

Because you can't have enough French prison-escape movies. Although not connected in the least, both  have a lot of common threads outside of being tremendous films.

A Man Escaped was about a French Resistance fighter caught by the Nazis during World War II and imprisoned in Fort Montluc. The film was based on the memoirs of Andre Devigny, who basically lived everything in the film including the escape from Montluc.

Director Jacques Becker also was imprisoned by the Nazis due to his activism in film after serving as an assistant to Jean Renoir. 

After the war, his own film career started and in 1960, four years after A Man Escaped, he released The Hole, which was based on Jose Giovanni's book, which featured Jean Keraudy, who was cast to portray Roland in the film (he also introduces the film after being shown working on a car. 


The Hole is far superior, I think. Mostly due to the excellent performances from the small main cast of five guys, who basically had zero acting experiences. For the most part, The Hole was each of their first performances. 

Becker died just weeks after the conclusion of filming.