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Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

THE FILMS OF MARK ROBSON AND VAL LEWTON

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By general consensus, director Mark Robson’s films for are considered to be the weakest of the famous producer’s RKO Pictures output. However, one of them, The Seventh Victim (1943) has garnered a posthumous critical reputation.

Few would dispute the excellence of the /Val Lewton collaborations for RKO, which stand-apart in aesthetics, comparable to ‘s stand-apart films for  (or ‘s stand-apart films for ). Yet, despite the drop off in quality, the Robson entries in the Lewton canon could hardly be compared to the execrable lows that Universal and Hammer achieved through hack directors like Erle C. Kenton (1945’s House of Dracula) or Alan Gibson (Dracula A.D. 1972).

Robson’s post-Lewton films validate the claim that he was little more than an assignment director. The nadir of Robson’s directorial career might have been Earthquake (1974). With one or two possible exceptions, Robson’s post-Lewton work was unremarkable, climaxing with the pedestrian action-oater Avalanche Express (1979). This imminently forgettable swan song is only memorable for being a cursed production, during which both Robson and star Robert Shaw died.

Robson would earn a flippant dismissal in the annals of film history, were it not for his collaborations with Lewton. The higher quality of Robson’s work with Lewton strongly indicates that the producer was collaboratively engaged with his directors. Both Lewton and Robson benefited from that partnership. Unfortunately, after Lewton, Robson would never again be afforded such an opportunity.

Still from The Seventh Victim (1943)The Seventh Victim was the first and best of the Robson/Lewton films. Drenched in a noir sheen, it is also the bleakest movie in Lewton’s RKO cannon.The film has an exceptional cast: Kim Hunter as Mary, Tom Conway as Dr. Judd, and Jean Brooks as Jacqueline. As excellent as Hunter and Conway are here, it is Brooks’ raven-like, hypnotic, fiercely haunting performance, exuding a Montgomery Clift-like fragility, which vividly lingers. RKO had no appreciation for such an individualistic, interiorized actor, and unceremoniously released her. She died of extreme malnutrition and alcoholism at the age of 47.

Mary (Hunter) leaves her boarding school to search for her missing sister Jacqueline (Brooks). Jacqueline’s disappearance is linked to her membership in a Satanic cult and her efforts to flee it. Six previous members of the cult have tried to leave, all meeting violent ends. Jacqueline is their potential seventh victim.

The film is awash in doom-laden relentlessness. Unlike many Lewton films, it’s literary references are minimal, although it begins with a quote from a poem by John Dunne. Satan worship, adultery, hints of incest and lesbianism, and suicide merge in the film’s abundant shadows. It’s a miracle the film made it past the Breen office. Continue reading THE FILMS OF MARK ROBSON AND VAL LEWTON →

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE DAY HE ARRIVES (2011)

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DIRECTED BY: Sang-soo Hong

FEATURING: Jun-Sang Yu, Bo-kyung Kim, Sang Jung Kim

PLOT: A director who no longer makes movies arrives in Seoul to touch bases with an old friend; he gets drunk, meets various acquaintances and colleagues, and then situations start to repeat themselves, with variations.

Still from The Day He Arrives (2011)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s got a subtly weird edge to it, but like its protagonist the film is too meandering and listless to demand more than our temporary interest.

COMMENTS: The Day He Arrives probably resembles nothing so much as a series of hazy recollections of a blackout drinking binge, where events keep getting jumbled up and you can’t remember whether it was Monday of Tuesday night when you mashed faces with that waitress in the alley, or even whether it really happened or you just wanted it to. The story starts with film director Sungjoon arriving in Seoul to meet an old friend; he’s stood up, but he encounters an actress he used to know, spends an evening getting drunk with three films students, then makes his way to the apartment of an ex-girlfriend to make a pathetic, teary pass at her. The next day (at least, we assume its the next day) he meets the same actress again, then meets up with his friend. They go to a bar with the friend’s girlfriend for a night of drinking, and are joined by the bar’s owner, who looks exactly like the girlfriend whose apartment the director just left the night before with promises that they would never meet again. From this point on, events in the story begin repeating themselves, but with variations. Every day, Sungjoon runs into the actress again on the street, and every night he and his friend return to the bar (ironically called “Novel”), sometimes joined by a new companion. Lines of dialogue and events repeat themselves, and characters we’ve seen interacting together before act as if they’ve never met. Each time Sungoon accidentally bumps into the actress on the street, however, they remember their last conversation, implying a chronologically continuity at odds with the fugue-like repetitions of the barroom scenes. After going on like this for a little while, the film ends arbitraily. Overall, Day paints a portrait of a man adrift in the world, a man who’s smart and observant yet doomed to make the same mistakes over and over. He’s a lost soul, but in an extremely polite and genteel way. The Day He Arrives is unique, but it inevitably evokes comparisons to many previous movies, from Last Year in Marienbad to Groundhog Day to (thanks to the actress playing dual roles) Vertigo. With its dramatic relationship basis enhanced by curious narrative experiments whose significance is not at all clear, it’s also reminiscent of Abbas Kiarostami’s recent Certified Copy.  Of those two films, I preferred Day, because it’s more economical (i.e. shorter) and it has a better sense of humor than the often self-important Copy. I suspect anyone who liked the one will respond well to the other. Both movies appear aimed at sophisticated viewers who consider subtlety an unconditional virtue. I can’t say I subscribe to that view: I prefer movies that transcend the mundane rather than wallowing in it, movies with a “wow” factor. Lacking that, a movie should at least offer an engaging plot, characters I can care about, or a stimulating intellectual idea to mull over; this movie makes a stab only at the last of these criteria. The Day He Arrives never gets around to suggesting what it’s about (which isn’t necessarily a problem); it also never makes a case as to why we should care (which is a problem).

Sang-soo Hong’s movies all feature lots and lots of drinking. If his hour-long interview included on the Day He Arrives is to be believed, his cinematic depictions of marathon drinking bouts come from personal experience.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Hong offers a strange mixture of magic, mystery, rueful melodrama and dry comedy that’s like absolutely nothing else.”–Andre O’Hehir, Salon.com (contemporaneous)

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S THE GOLD RUSH (1925) CRITERION COLLECTION

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The Criterion Collection’s remastered The Gold Rush (1925) is undoubtedly the Charlie Chaplin release of 2012. For years, the prevailing critical consensus was that Gold Rush was Chaplin’s feature film masterpiece. However, a newer generation of critics have since argued that honor should go instead to City Lights (1931). The Gold Rush receives criticism for its episodic structure; however, all of Chaplin’s features, including City Lights, are episodic to a degree. This is not necessarily a bad thing, making that a moot critique.

The Criterion Collection release features the 1925 original, along with the 1942 re-edit that omitted the intertitles in favor of narration (by Chaplin) and economically trimmed down of some excess plot developments. While the 1942 version does look better and the editing is better paced, Chaplin’s voice-over actually dates the film far worse than the silent original.

Chaplin had a voice which carried well into the sound era. He intuitively knew that silent film was a different art form, however. Thinking about marketing, he seemed to have forgotten that fact. The 1942 version illustrates the artist’s discomfort with sound. Chaplin never could wrap his art around the new sound medium, and he pointlessly tells us what we are already seeing. Some may prefer the 1942 version, but my concentration will be on the superior, original version that audiences of 1925 saw.

While The Gold Rush exhibits Chaplin’s characteristic pathos, here it is far better balanced with his brand of comedy than any of his other features (when the pathos, often, nearly soaked the films).

Chaplin’s increasing need for audience sympathy marred may of his later features. Here, he keeps that need in check, and all for the better. Chaplin’s Mutual shorts are considered by many (including Chaplin) to be his best work. One of the reasons for that is the presence of his best nemesis in Eric Campbell. But, when Campbell was killed in an automobile accident in 1917, Chaplin was left without a great heavy. His first feature film, The Kid (1921) was able to bypass that. For this, Chaplin’s second Tramp feature, two villains were needed: the bonafide villain Black Larson (Tom Murray) and reformed villain Big Jim McCay (Mack Swain). While neither Swain nor Murray could replace Campbell, they were aptly cast and give the film needed tension.

The Gold Rush‘s most discussed scene is the dance of the dinner rolls, often imitated (and usually badly—Chaplin was a master at utilizing props for something other than their intended use).  What may be the most compelling scene, however, is the surreal chicken hallucination. Everyone has seen this scene spoofed in countless Looney Tune shorts. The starving villain (Swain) imagines his buddy (Chaplin) to be a walking meal (in this case, a plump chicken). Chaplin’s shoe-eating scene (complete with shoe laces substituting for noodles) and the rocking house at the edge of the cliff are additional surreal vignettes.

Still from The Gold Rush (1925)While Chaplin was never a Surrealist, many of his films contained surreal vignettes. The Kid had the dream of heaven, Sunnyside (1919) has the Tramp frolicking in a ballet with hill nymphs. Perhaps it was Chaplin’s occasional, natural elements of Surrealism which endeared him to the movements luminaries, such as André Breton. Next to and Buster Keaton, Chaplin was the filmmaker most cited by the Surrealists.

As The Gold Rush progresses, hunger, the struggle for survival, and harsh elements give way to a soapy romance with the dance hall girl Georgia (Georgia Hale). Chaplin had originally cast 15 year-old Lita Grey in the role, but his getting her pregnant necessitated a new lead actress. While Chaplin does milk sympathy as a rejected lover, he never does it (here) at the expense of the film’s comedic tone.

As to be expected, the Criterion extras are abundant: both film versions, a 15 minute short (Presenting The Gold Rush), audio commentary, booklet, a look at Chaplin the composer, and James Agee’s famous 1942 review of the film.

 

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

JACQUES TOURNEUR’S THE LEOPARD MAN (1943)

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The Leopard Man (1943) is the third and final collaboration between producer and his best director, . It is also, erroneously, often considered their least effort. The Leopard Man was clearly RKO’s attempt to cash in on Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941). But, instead of a wolf turning into a man, we’ll have a leopard! Real clever, imaginative types, these 1940s execs were (of course, now that breed has devolved into the independent trailer trash horror film scene).

Based on a book by Cornell Woolrich (who also wrote the story that inspired Hitchcock’s Rear Window), The Leopard Man is a lucid example of how to produce something worthwhile, even when saddled with a studio-mandated drek title. Perhaps somebody with guts and resources enough will round up the countless perpetrators of low budget horror porn and force a Val Lewton festival upon them. The Leopard Man would be a good starting point.

Like Cat People (1942), The Leopard Man has elements of noir. Set in a sleepy New Mexico town, it’s a film soaked in shadows. A black leopard from a night club act escapes from its leash and runs loose in the town.

Young Teresa Delgado (Margaret Landry) has heard about the leopard on the loose and is afraid. Her mother (Kate Lawson) needs cornmeal. Despite Teresa’s impassioned pleas and objections, Ma Delgado forces her daughter out into the night and deadlocks the door behind her. Cut off from maternal arms, Teresa, cornmeal in hand, is returning to the desired safety of her home. Tourneuer’s use of shadow and light to convey tension and dread is as expert here as in Cat People. It is an extended scene. The callous treatment of Teresa by her mother sows a blackened nightmare. Teresa’s frantic knock on the door, begging for sanctuary from the leopard’s death claws, falls on deaf ears. Ma Delgado’s only concern is the needed ingredient for her meal. By the time Ma realizes that, indeed, her daughter is in danger, the blood, trickling in from under the door, reveals that misplaced priorities and apathy has reaped a slaughter. Teresa is killed off-screen. Instead, Tourneur’s focus is on the most frightening monster of The Leopard Man: a cold parent.

Still from The Leopard Man (1943)The murders are the film’s focus, which was daring for its time. In that, The Leopard Man may lack the poetic qualities of Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie (1943), but it evokes a unique quality of terror.

The second murder takes place in a cemetery. Consuelo is visiting her father’s grave. She is also planning a clandestine meeting with her boyfriend. She promises the keeper that she will not stay long. In looking for her boyfriend, Consuelo instead finds her end. This suspense is heightened and conveyed through the rising sound of rustling branches.

The third murder involves the dancer Clo Clo (Margo) who was responsible for unleashing the beast. A dropped lipstick case and a half-smoked cigarette reveal that she has paid the price, evoking far more horror than a machete-yielding serial killer.

And, as it turns out, there is indeed a serial killer on the loose. The sleuthing is less interesting, as are the men in the film. In this, there is a consistency in Lewton: the heroes are usually, and considerably, duller than the heroines.

Unfortunately, the collaboration between Lewton and Tourneur ended here. Tourneur went onto direct the superb Out of the Past (1947) and Curse of the Demon (1957). Lewton would continue with good, but lesser, directors.

We will pick back up on the remaining Lewton films in three weeks. Next week, we will diverge with the first of a three-part look behind the scenes of John Semper’s Creeporia (2012).