Category: 1965

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Orson Welles
CAST: Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud, Keith Baxter, Fernando Rey (!), Ralph Richardson
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Certified Fresh

PLOT: King Henry IV’s heir, the Prince of Wales, is befriended by Sir John Falstaff, an old, overweight, fun-loving habitual liar. Through Falstaff’s eyes we see the reign of King Henry IV and eventual ascendancy of Henry V.


[This review contains mild spoilers.]

There are so many layers to Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight that I had trouble figuring out how to start this review.

For starters, putting aside the significance of this film’s subject matter and where it falls in its legendary director’s body of work, it’s Shakespeare, and I have a spotty record when it comes to enjoying films of Shakespeare’s plays.  The only ones I’ve every been truly entertained by were the semi-recent The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, and – God help me – Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996).  With the Macbeth film, I was transfixed by the performances from two of the best actors of their generation, and with Luhrmann’s film, what can I say?  The deliriously over-the-top visual style frames the over-the-top performances perfectly.

With every other Shakespeare film I’ve seen, the language has very nearly put me to sleep, not because it was delivered poorly, but because it has always been difficult for me wrap my brain around the Bard’s syntax, occasionally so tortured and roundabout that even Yoda would ask, “Say what did he?”  Such is the case with quite a bit of Chimes at Midnight.  Watching Welles and Gielgud act are the highlights of the film, but after about 15-20 minutes, I had to put on the subtitles so I could pick up on the nuances of the language.

Can you follow the plot of the film without subtitles?  Yes, to a degree, but it was difficult for me to keep track of the numerous side characters: Hotspur, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Worcester, Percy (who is also Hotspur, didn’t put that together until late in the film), etc.  But I concede that, yes, without understanding every single word, it is possible to follow the broad strokes of the story, much like you might be able to follow E.T. with the sound off.  Don’t know why that’s the comparison my mind jumped to, but I’m sticking to it.

So, as pure entertainment, Chimes at Midnight suffers, through no fault of its own, from a lack of comprehension on my part, except for the extensive battle scene at about midpoint and the emotionally shattering finale, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Now.  If we set aside the pure entertainment value and look at Chimes at Midnight a little more analytically, there is a gold mine of information here, especially for dedicated Wellesians like my good friend, Anthony…hope you’re reading, bro.

First, there’s the production itself.  Chimes was the last non-documentary film Welles completed in his lifetime.  On the Blu-ray Criterion disc, Simon Callow, himself a Welles fan and biographer, makes the observation that, prior to Citizen Kane, Welles had nothing but a string of great good luck, and nothing but atrociously bad luck afterwards, almost as if Welles had struck some kind of Faustian bargain to get Kane made.  The lost footage and criminal re-editing of The Magnificent Ambersons, studio interference with Touch of Evil…the list goes on.  To get funding for this film, which had been a passion project of his for years, he had to go to Spain, and even then, he had to pinch pennies.  (The film is officially a Franco-Swiss production and never received a full American release due to the film’s ownership that was bought and sold, or something like that…watch the interviews on the Blu-ray for the whole story.)

But even on such a limited budget, Chimes at Midnight looks like a million bucks.  There’s nothing overly flashy about the camerawork, and there is a low-budget vibe to some of the scenes that reminded me of Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which I mean as a compliment to both films.  I specifically noticed scenes shot with Gielgud as King Henry IV in his castle, with cathedral ceilings and high windows casting shafts of sunlight into the vast space like an Ansel Adams photograph.  The battle at the center of the film looks and feels like something out of Kurosawa, but even more chaotic, which was Welles’s intention.  He specifically wanted a non-glamourous battle to evoke the passing of English history from an age of gentility to one of barbarism.

It’s the towering performance by Welles as Falstaff, though, that elevates this film past my issues with its entertainment value.  I know relatively little of Shakespeare’s plays, but I knew the name of Falstaff before going in.  I knew that he was a larger-than-life figure…I always pictured Brian Blessed or Robbie Coltrane when I pictured him in my head.  After seeing Chimes at Midnight, I will only see Welles’s version.  Wearing a fat suit to give him even more girth, until he looks like a caricature, Welles brings a sense of nobility to Falstaff’s shenanigans.  He is utterly devoted to young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), whom he knows will one day be king.  He spins tall tales, sometimes it seems just to give Hal pleasure in catching him out in a lie.  There is a charming scene where they do a little playacting: Falstaff pretends to be Hal’s father, sitting on a makeshift throne and using a cooking pot as a crown.  He makes solemn proclamations with a sour face and a twinkling eye, like a soused Santa Claus indulging his elves at the North Pole.

But it’s the film’s climactic scene at Hal’s coronation that really makes my quibbles with the language seem superfluous.  Up till now, Hal has spent virtually all of the preceding film carousing with Falstaff and his cronies, faking robberies, wooing women, thumbing his nose at his father, and so on.  But by this time, Hal has stood at his father’s side as he watched him die, and the awesome responsibilities of the kingdom have settled on his shoulders, willing or not, and he has become a changed man.

So, when aged, corpulent Falstaff more or less crashes the coronation and cries out, “My king!  My Jove!  I speak to thee my heart!”…and Hal, now King Henry V, faces away from his former mentor and says, “I know thee not, old man.” … I mean, I was devastated.  And watch Falstaff’s face, as Welles displays a succession of emotions, each individually definable, each one lasting for just a second or two: surprise, disbelief, shame, puzzlement, and finally realization.  I won’t lay out the rest of Hal’s rebuke to Falstaff here, but it contains some of the most cutting language that Shakespeare ever wrote.

Added to all this is the fact that Welles was in the last phase of his career, that he perhaps realized it, and he was playing a character who, towards the end of his life, was being shut out by a man who once loved him like an uncle, perhaps even a father.  Much like the Hollywood industry, after giving him his big break, had essentially shut Welles out after Kane?  That might be an oversimplification, but it feels accurate.

Welles was always full of ideas, always experimenting.  What if…we made a movie about the life of a media mogul, told backwards, then forwards, then backwards again, with a mysterious code word that the characters never solve?  What if…we open this crime thriller with a long uncut take following a car bomb through a Mexican border town?  What if…we adapted Shakespeare to follow just Falstaff through all the different plays he appears in?

Welles was never content with the conventional.  Chimes at Midnight may feel conventional at first – and if you’re not a fan of Shakespeare to begin with, it might even seem a little boring.  But there is treasure to be found here for those willing to take a chance on it.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (Czechoslovakia, 1965)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos
CAST: Ida Kaminska, Jozek Kroner
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: During World War II, a carpenter in the Fascist Slovak State is appointed “Aryan controller” of a Jewish widow’s store.


The first hour or so of the 1983 TV movie The Day After features some of the tensest filmmaking I’ve ever seen.  There is something terrifying about how these people go about their normal lives as their world spirals towards Armageddon.  As the sirens begin, the tension reaches a breaking point when you realize it’s only a matter of a few unstoppable minutes before the literal apocalypse.

Oddly enough, that movie came to mind as I watched the Czech film The Shop on Main Street from 1965.  Set around the year 1942, it takes place in a small town in Fascist-controlled Slovakia.  Tono Brtko is a poor, timid carpenter with a nagging, avaricious wife whose sister is married to a high-ranking official in the local Fascist government.  Tono is not a fan of the Fascists, not for any overtly political reasons, but because he doesn’t like his brother-in-law, who has always treated him as a peasant, even before he was a local bigwig.

One drunken night, the brother-in-law, Markus, gives him some news: as part of a new law, Tono has been appointed as the “Aryan controller” of a small shop owned and operated by an elderly Jewish woman, Rozalia.  It’s now Tono’s job to take over the shop until the government figures out exactly what to do with Rozalia and the other local Jews.

(Interestingly, the Nazi swastika is not seen until the film’s closing sequences, but the Third Reich crouches just out of sight.)

What happens next is a curiously effective combination of suspenseful drama and outright comedy, approaching farce.  In that sense, it’s tempting to compare this movie to Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, but the tones are very different from each other.  In Benigni’s film, the main character was impish and clownish, an Italian Marx brother.  In The Shop on Main Street, Tono’s dimwittedness leads more organically to scenes of comic misunderstanding between him and the hard-of-hearing Rozalia.  When he tries to explain the situation to her, she believes he’s been hired to be her assistant.  When he arrives to the shop on Saturday morning, he can’t understand why the shutters are still closed well past opening hours.  “It’s the Sabbath,” she says simply as she potters around the back room where she lives.

The comedy of these situations made me laugh, but the underlying seriousness of the plot snuffed it out.  Tono’s wife is constantly nagging him to find out where the old lady has hidden her wealth, since everyone knows Jews are miserly and stingy.  Tono and some of his friends talk about being careful not to be branded as a “Jew lover.”  Tono, to his partial credit, is not as gung-ho as some of his other friends or his wife.  He even mocks Hitler in a strangely tense scene, using a comb as the infamous moustache.  But his conscience only goes so far, and he does his best to just stay under the radar.

Meanwhile, a tower is being built at the center of town to celebrate the Fascist government, and Tono’s Jewish friends can see where this is going and have started packing.  Tono remains certain that, surely, things won’t get TOO bad.  A loudspeaker is installed near the town square.  And then every Jewish citizen receives a notice in the mail…

Beneath the comic personalities and situations, the looming threat of something even worse than run-of-the-mill fascism hovers over the town.  Tono wages a constant war with his conscience.  He’s unable to flout the law by simply refusing to take over Rozalia’s shop because that would mean possible arrest.  But he has no interest in forcing this elderly woman out on the street.  (He’s like me in the early days of Covid: things just can’t POSSIBLY get THAT bad…can they?)

I was riveted by this film.  It felt shorter than its 2-hour-plus running time because of the tension running under everything like a thrumming power line.  In that way, it’s almost Hitchcockian.  And to top it off, this movie had to pass Soviet censors before being released, which absolutely blows my mind for some reason.  The Shop on Main Street plays like a scaled-down version of Schindler’s List, or maybe more like a prologue.  By focusing on a tree instead of the forest, this small-scale movie makes its point just as eloquently and as powerfully as Spielberg’s masterpiece.

WAR AND PEACE (Soviet Union, 1965)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Sergey Bondarchuk
CAST: Sergey Bondarchuk, Lyudmila Saveleva, Vyacheslav Tikhonov
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: The Russian aristocracy prepares for the French invasion on the eve of 1812 in one of the most ambitious epic films ever made.


The “Why” of Sergey Bondarchuk’s mammoth War and Peace is key to understanding the “What” and “How” of it.

In 1960, the citizens of Soviet Russia fell wildly in love with another version of War and Peace, directed by King Vidor and starring Audrey Hepburn, Henry Fonda, and Mel Ferrer.  It was notable for its extravagant scope, but also for its myriad historical inaccuracies and departures from Tolstoy’s text.  The Soviet government was unhappy with its popularity, so they commissioned their country’s film industry to create their own adaptation, with the full cooperation of the government, the Red Army, and the citizens of Moscow.  Basically, it was a case of, “Anything you can do, I can do better.”  Director Sergey Bondarchuk was tapped to direct.  Five years (and two strokes) later, this gloriously Russian version of War and Peace would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

The scale of this film is mindboggling.  Clocking in at an intimidating seven hours, War and Peace is divided, like Tolstoy’s novel, into four chapters…basically four movies intended to be viewed one after the other.  That might seem daunting at first, but how many of us have binged a streaming show all at once, or an entire miniseries in one day?  Same difference.  Anyway, three of the chapters focus on one of the principal trio of characters: Pierre Bezukhov, a timid aristocrat; Natasha Rostova, a tempestuous young woman whose emotional output puts modern soap operas to shame; and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, a sober-minded aristocrat/soldier who woos Natasha despite a substantial age gap.  The remaining film (which is actually third in the chronology) details the French invasion of Moscow in 1812, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, with the spectacular Battle of Borodino as its centerpiece.

I’ll get to that battle in a second, but it must be noted that I went into this film aware of its reputation, but prepared to be absolutely bored out of my skull.  I have not seen very many Russian films, but my favorite by far is Come and See (1985), and I was certain this movie would not be anywhere near as compelling.  However, Bondarchuk’s expressionistic style kept me interested the entire time.  I was never truly bored…well, I tell a lie, the fourth chapter felt a little drawn out to me, but aside from that, the camera tricks on display – as well as the lavish and elaborate costumes and set pieces – were a constant source of surprise.

One highlight of Bondarchuk’s method is his liberal use of what I call a subjective camera.  There may be another word for what I’m describing, but that’s what I’m sticking with.  There is narration throughout the film that clues us in occasionally to what someone is thinking, but sometimes, instead of narration, the camera will give us the character’s POV along with a stylistic embellishment like a swaying motion, or giving everything a kind of blur, or enhanced lighting, or even what appears to be water being poured directly onto the lens to simulate tears or dizziness.  (At one point, during a battle sequence, we even get a CANNONBALL’S-eye view as it crashes to the ground amid friendly troops…kinda neat, especially for the 1960s.)  There are WAY more examples that I could point to, but ain’t nobody got time for that.  Visually, this movie is a feast.

But all of that is nothing – NOTHING compared to the titanic Battle of Borodino featured in film three.  Since Bondarchuk had access to as many troops and extras as he needed, this battle contains camera shots that would have made Kurosawa or Kubrick green with envy.  In any given shot, look at the backgrounds toward the horizon, and you’ll see hundreds, thousands of fully costumed extras marching in formation, stretching literally as far as the eye can see.  No cardboard cutouts, no matte paintings (as far as I could tell), no masses of CGI soldiers.  I can’t imagine what it must have taken to coordinate that many people for any given single shot, let alone a battle that takes up nearly an entire chapter of the movie.

I realize I haven’t said much about the STORY of the film.  (What can I say, the technical achievement really floored me.)  I have never read Tolstoy’s novel, but it’s been said that this is the most faithful adaptation likely to ever be made.  I believe it.  Including the three principals, there are over three hundred speaking roles in the film.  There were times during the first film, and maybe half of the second, when names were being mentioned, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember who they were.  “Wait, who’s Maria again?  Or Ilya?  Or Kuragin?  Is that Pierre or Nikolai?”  But, around the halfway mark of the second film, I got my footing and was able to keep track of all the moving pieces.  This movie does not reward passive viewing, just as the novel is not something you would pick up for some light reading.  But these characters are compelling.

To try to summarize the plot is a fool’s errand.  Love is found, lost, found again; soldiers go off to fight, some return, some don’t; and the aristocratic class of Tsarist Russia gets some jabs for supporting the war effort with “thoughts and prayers” rather than actions.  Lyudmila Saveleva, who plays Natasha Rostova, looks like she was cast after winning an Audrey Hepburn look-alike contest.  Her huge eyes and expressive face get us on her side, even when she makes a truly boneheaded decision in the middle of her chapter.  True, she was misled and emotionally manipulated, but I said I wouldn’t summarize the story, so…

Am I glad I watched War and Peace?  Absolutely.  Will I watch it again?  I think so, yes, although I couldn’t tell you when that will be.  Not next week, not next year, but yes.  I want to admire Bondarchuk’s bold cinematic choices again.  It’s beautiful to look at.  Some of it resembles the old Technicolor films, giving the whole enterprise an air of nostalgia, which is appropriate.  And it’s worth watching again for those epic battle scenes which have to be seen to be believed.  War and Peace lives up to the sobering title of its source material, and then some.

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE

By Marc S. Sanders

The bloody landscape of the Wild West continued in Sergio Leone’s second chapter of his Dollars trilogy. For A Few Dollars More improves upon the first installment, A Fistful Of Dollars. The plot is cleaner and joining Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name is a very cool fellow bounty hunter dressed in black. Lee Van Cleef plays Colonel Mortimer, a former soldier armed with an array of weapons.

Mortimer and the Man form an uneasy alliance in order to track down the vicious Indio and his gang. The prize $10,000 for just Indio; a whole lot more for the entire gang.

Leone reminds audiences of the techniques he used in the first film. Yet he makes the tension grander with cut away close ups at his gunslingers’ eyes before a quick draw. A great middle moment occurs with a bank robbery. Leone strategically uses sharp edits on Eastwood, Van Cleef, Indio’s gang, the exteriors of the bank and the precious vault inside. Accompanied with Ennio Morricone’s whistler ballads, Leone continues his back and forth close ups of all involved in the scene only he speeds up the edits to build more tension and suspense. Finally, the scene is blown wide open with a moment I never expected. Great fun.

Eastwood does not invent anything new here. His costume is even the same as before. That’s the legendary image and that’s fine by me. Van Cleef is especially good. A real scene stealer with his crackling voice that tells of a past where his Mortimer character protected his boundaries by being the sharpshooter that he is.

Watching this for the first time only tells me that action films today work too hard throwing everything at you. Films today often don’t give enough about the character or the heroes. You don’t see what makes them tick. You don’t see a raw talent to the character. In this film, it is quick draw gunslinging. Look for a great scene where The Man and Mortimer meet for the first time in a quick draw duel of wits at night in the center of town. When you see how good they are with a six shooter, you believe it all.

Today, a hero’s talent is inherited by something gone awry normally. Leone leaves the mystery open as to how guys like Mortimer and The Man With No Name acquired their abilities. Why waste time on character background? Let’s just see what these cowboys can do.

THE CINCINNATI KID

By Marc S. Sanders

I never learned how to play poker.  I’ve hardly ever stepped foot in a casino.  I played a slot machine once, at the encouragement of my wife and lost $2.63.  It nearly ended our marriage. I know I can have an addictive personality.  Therefore, I opted to steer clear of the tables and hold on to the funds I earned, thereby respecting my limitations.  Nevertheless, I always get a kick out of watching a gambling movie.  Give me any film set in Vegas or Atlantic City, and I’ll get hooked on watching the actors sitting around the smoke-filled tables while putting down the wildest and craziest hands imaginable.  New Orleans during the Depression also makes for a great setting for Steve McQueen as The Cincinnati Kid.

Norman Jewison took over directing duties following the firing of Sam Peckinpaugh.  Jewison has been more inventive in other films like The Thomas Crown Affair, In The Heat Of The Night or Moonstruck (maybe his best film).  Yet, what he lacks in by the book filmmaking, he makes up for in embracing his colorful collection of actors beyond straight man McQueen.  Joan Blondell is exceptionally fun as the buxom drag smoking, card dealing Lady Fingers. Karl Malden is fine as the weak sidekick/would have been mentor to The Kid, Rip Torn is a good behind the scenes villain looking to fix a high stakes game to make himself whole, while getting some vengeance.  The one player you love to watch though, is Edward G. Robinson as The Man to beat; strike that, call him The Man that anyone would love to sit at a table if only to just play his game.  He is the regally clad Lancey Howard and he’s the elder one, The Number One, to beat.  Confident with street swagger, Steve McQueen leads this film as the kid who knows he can beat Lancey, but he’s got to beat him fairly.  No help from anyone who is looking to fix the match for their own personal stake in the game.

Two women also highlight this film wonderfully, Ann Margaret and Tuesday Weld.  Both have a sexy style to them, but their performances vary based on their character backgrounds.  McQueen is positioned between them.  Margaret portrays Melba, as Malden’s dame on the side.  She’s the gal who likes to go to the cock fights and hop in bed with an available man nearby.  Weld aptly plays the innocent farm girl, Christian.  I like to view the red head and the blond as angel and devil on the shoulders of the protagonist.

Again, there’s nothing so eyepopping here, but the cast is entirely engaging.  It’s the film’s second act that lays on the excitement as The Kid, Lancey and a host of other players, like a sloppy card shark played by Jack Weston and an elegant Cab Calloway participate in a binge til your broke stud game in a smokey hotel room.  Bills are tossed into the center of the green velvet covered table.  The smoke gets thicker.  The ties get looser, and the fun is watching everyone else get undone while McQueen and Robinson maintain their cool.  The hands that are played are always the biggest, most unlikely hands to match one another, over and over again, but then again in a movie there’s really nothing fun about a club, spade, heart and two diamonds of different denominations.  The suspense builds in Hal Ashby’s editing of the one-on-one climatic match as thousands upon thousands are nonchalantly tossed in the pot before that fifth card on each side of the table is ultimately revealed.  Will The Kid reign supreme or will Lancey uphold his reputation?  This is what going to the movies are all about. You’ll appreciate the ending to The Cincinnati Kid is not all that obvious as you get closer and closer to its finish.