Tag: film

VAMPYR (Germany, 1932)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Carl Th. Dreyer
CAST: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.


Carl Th. Dreyer’s Vampyr [pronounced “vom-PEER” in this German version] is not the scariest vampire film I’ve ever seen, but it is definitely one of the creepiest.  There’s a difference.  Dreyer’s film doesn’t move with the pacing seen in more standard horror fare.  Instead, it forsakes typical plot development for scenes that linger on the horrific or the unexplained.  In its own way, it is more directly related to the films of David Lynch than to any other contemporary monster movies of the time (Dracula or Frankenstein, for example, both 1931).

The story is fairly simple, but it belies the complex imagery that awaits the viewer.  A young drifter, Allan Grey, happens upon an inn from which he thinks he can hear animal sounds, or perhaps a young woman screaming.  The village doctor, who looks like a bespectacled long-lost relative of Doc Brown from Back to the Future, vehemently denies the presence any animals or young women on the property.  The innkeeper invites Allan to stay the night.  In the middle of the night, Allan’s sleep is interrupted by a mysterious visitor to his room who intones, “The girl must not die!”  The gentleman then leaves a package on Allan’s desk and writes a most portentous message: “TO BE OPENED ONLY UPON MY DEATH.”

What is this book?  What did Allan hear?  And how do you explain the shadows he saw on his way to the inn?  Shadows of people running along the lane – with no corresponding people attached to them?  Wouldn’t YOU like to know.

Vampyr is positively drowning in atmosphere.  Dreyer apparently shot many scenes with a piece of thin gauze over the lens, creating a misty layer that makes everything feel like a dream, even when Allan is awake.  Allan goes on frequent excursions around the inn and the surrounding property, and it’s here where most of the fantastical imagery is seen, especially when it comes to disembodied shadows.  In one mildly unsettling sequence, a shadow of a man with a peg leg descends a ladder and appears to sit on a bench…re-joining itself to a peg-legged man already sitting on the same bench.

There’s a lot more, but I don’t want to just write a list.  However, I am compelled to mention one sequence in particular that exudes as much creepiness as anything I’ve ever seen from this cinematic era.

It turns out there is, not one young woman at the inn, but two: Gisèle and Léone.  Léone is seen early on, confined to her bed with a mysterious illness, which we later learn has been brought on by her contact with a seldom-seen old woman who lurks somewhere on the property.  And there are some odd injuries on her neck…UH oh.

At one point, Léone awakes while Gisèle is alone with her.  I don’t remember what they discuss, but Léone goes into this weird sort of trance.  Without the use of any strange Chaney-esque makeup or camera tricks, Léone’s face becomes an object lesson in creepiness.  Her eyes open wide, her face breaks into a creepy grin, and she slowly moves her head from side to side, while Gisèle backs away in terror.  It might be the scariest sequence in the film, one which could easily compare to any subsequent monster or vampire movie.

Later, Dreyer throws more camera tricks at us in increasingly imaginative ways.  Allan dreams of a skeleton handing him a bottle of poison.  A dead man’s face appears in the sky during a sudden thunderstorm.  Dreyer includes camera moves that would fit right into any modern film.  And in a sequence that reminded me of Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Allan watches as his own body is sealed inside a coffin with a tiny square window for his apparently dead eyes to look out of.

If nothing else, Vampyr is an interesting artifact of cinema’s transitional era from silent to sound.  Even though there is a conventional soundtrack and we hear people’s voices as they speak, a lot of expository information is provided via title cards and long looks at passages from a book of vampire lore.  Given that the vampire mythology was then not as popular as it is today, I can forgive these beats that tend to bring the momentum to a halt.

While Nosferatu (1922) and the Bela Lugosi Dracula are much more famous, Vampyr is worth a look if you’re a horror fan.  While it doesn’t involve the kind of fear factor I tend to expect as a child of the 1970s and ‘80s, it is nevertheless creepy as hell. 

WEEKEND (France, 1967)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Jean Luc Godard
CAST: Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 93% Fresh

PLOT: A married couple go on the road trip from hell to visit the wife’s parents, intending to kill them for her inheritance.


You don’t risk the time it takes to do this…unless the act itself has meaning. – Detective Somerset, Se7en (1995)

In my personal opinion, there are few things more dangerous than a skilled director who genuinely has something to say.  Oliver Stone.  Stanley Kubrick.  Martin Scorsese.  Spike Lee.  Even Kevin Smith (Dogma, 1999), among many others you or I could name.  Give these guys a finished script and a camera and watch the fireworks from a safe distance.

In 1967, iconoclastic filmmaker Jean Luc Godard became disgusted or disillusioned or just plain pissed off about the class division in France and around the world, especially with how the middle class/bourgeoisie had forsaken human connection for the accumulation of material wealth.  So, he dashed off a screenplay, gathered up a crew and some actors (including a lead actress that he specifically did not like, because he needed her to play a CHARACTER he did not like), and made a film that defies classification or genre.  Is it a comedy?  A drama?  Satire?  I’m still not sure.  All of the above?  None of the above?  Weekend stands stubbornly apart from anything I’ve ever seen, thumbing its nose at the world with one hand while flipping the bird with the other.  It is many things, but timid it is not.

The movie begins with a simple enough scene, interrupted by title cards that say things like, “A FILM FOUND IN A DUMP”.  A husband and wife calmly discuss their plans to murder her parents so she can get her inheritance.  They might as well be talking about what movie to see tonight.  When the husband leaves the room, the wife takes a call from her lover.  In the driveway of their house, a fight breaks out among three people about…what?  Doesn’t matter, they’re never seen again, and the husband and wife observe the fight without commenting on it or making any attempt to stop it.

This is followed by an extraordinary scene, in a film full of extraordinary scenes, in which the wife, apparently speaking to her analyst, describes, in graphic detail, a sexual encounter she had with a strange man and his other mistress.  Meanwhile, Godard’s camera does a slooow zoom in to the woman’s face, then a slooow zoom out to reveal she’s in her bra and panties, then another slooow zoom in, and out, and in, and out, and you get the idea, right, wink, wink, nudge, nudge?

Is Godard being too obvious in this scene?  Clearly.  So, what is he trying to say here?  By being so blatantly obvious, is he parodying earlier French New Wave and Italian neo-realist films, some of which invested a lot of screen time in long conversations about nothing?  Sure, let’s go with that.  What’s with that in-and-out camera move that I read someone describe as “masturbatory” that occurs during the explicit discussion?  Is he also poking fun at other filmmakers who lack subtlety?  Yep, that works, too.  In a weird way, I was reminded of Tarantino’s Kill Bill cycle, movies that took every kung fu trope imaginable, turned the volume up to eleven, and then turned it up some more.  That’s what Godard is doing here.  Why?  As Robin Williams once said, “Because we’re French.”

That’s just the first two scenes.  Later, there is a justly famous tracking shot (really two or three that are spliced together) that lasts for nine minutes and covers 300 meters of ground.  It tracks past an endless traffic jam as our “heroes” try to get around them on their way to kill her parents.  The camera passes cars, convertibles, trailer trucks, a flatbed with two caged lions and a monkey on a leash, horns honking, people yelling at each other.  THIS part reminded me of some of the best “Family Guy” gags where something is spun out for a ridiculously long time, where the duration of the event becomes the gag, instead of the gag itself.  In the film, it actually did become kind of funny…until finally, nine minutes later, we see the cause of the traffic jam, and my jaw dropped.

Car accidents are a recurring motif throughout the film.  Perhaps they represent Godard’s assertion that his country was, at the time, more or less a trainwreck.  With other filmmakers, showing just one or two car wrecks would get the point across.  Not Godard.  They’re everywhere.  And you don’t get just twisted and burning metal; there’s also broken and bloody bodies adorning the wrecks and the roadside.  And through all of this (and more), our main characters walk or drive, apathetic to the chaos, asking everyone – even the dead bodies – how to get back to the main road, blind to the madness around them.

Godard adds intertitles at random intervals, some of which are laden with French cultural references that escaped me.  Some of them didn’t even get translations on my Blu Ray.  One of them says “THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL”, which is the title of a famous film by Luis Buñuel…sly wink to the cinemaniacs in the audience.  Go Godard, celebrating geek culture before it was cool.  Some of them are repeated while the film backtracks as if the projectionist is having a spasm.  At one point, the film jumps and skips forward as if there was a bad splice in the reel. At another, a scene occurs in a field full of abandoned cars. Then, JUMP CUT, and the cars are now a flock of sheep. Take THAT, audience expectations!

At every stage, Godard is constantly reminding the viewer that they’re watching a movie.  One of the characters even says, “What a rotten film, all we meet are crazy people.”  Later there are scenes that approximate some kind of revolution.  Battles are fought.  The gunplay looks curiously amateurish.  There’s a scene with a pig.  I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say that it was definitely harmed in the making of this movie.  Same with the chicken.

The chaotic nature of the movie was mesmerizing, like…a car accident that you can’t turn away from.  To fully analyze every historical, literary, and cinematic reference would be like trying to catalog every single pop culture reference in Ready Player One [2018], and that’s something for which I have neither the time, the inclination, the education, nor the space to do.  Weekend is not for everyone, he said, blatantly stating the obvious.  But I ultimately enjoyed it because it’s not that often I get to listen to the voice of a really angry filmmaker.  I may only understand the basics of what Godard is angry about, but that doesn’t diminish the power of his statement.

MONTE WALSH (1970)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: William A. Fraker
CAST: Lee Marvin, Jeanne Moreau, Jack Palance, Mitchell Ryan
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 89% Fresh

PLOT: An aging cowboy realizes that the West he knew and loved will soon be no more – and that there will be no room for him, either.


Based on this film, Monte Walsh, and the other two films he directed, A Reflection of Fear [1972] and The Legend of the Lone Ranger [1981], I think it would be charitable to say that William A. Fraker’s best films are the ones where he served instead as director of photography, such as Bullitt [1968], WarGames [1983], and Tombstone [1993], among many other notable movies.  Am I saying Monte Walsh is a bad film?  No, but it’s certainly not as bad as Gene Siskel’s 1-star rating, nor is it as stellar as Roger Ebert’s 4-star rating.  I give it a 7-out-of-10 on my scale because of the way the second half of the film builds and builds so that the outbursts of violence feel earned and motivated instead of cliched.

Monte Walsh (Lee Marvin, grizzled as ever, even with a handlebar moustache) and his friend and partner, Chet (Jack Palance in a rare non-villainous role), come down off a mountainside after a rough winter keeping watch on Mr. Brennan’s herd of cattle, only to get news that Brennan’s ranch has been purchased by a corporate entity, Consolidated Cattle.  Brennan offers them a steady job, which they reluctantly take, but deep inside they know this means their prairie-roaming way of life is coming to an end.  Chet is prepared to accept this, but Monte chafes at the idea.  “I ain’t doing nothing I can’t do from a horse,” he warns Brennan.

We get entertaining glimpses of the ranch hand life, complete with the saloon fights and the stinky cook.  Monte dallies with a French madame, Martine (played by the exotic Jeanne Moreau).  At one point, Monte and Chet ride out and meet a weathered old ranch hand who is “riding fence,” or inspecting every foot of fence around the ranch for repairs…the only work he’s cut out for anymore.  “Looks like his life is over with,” they say, and you can tell they’re looking into their own future.

The thrust of the film is one I’ve seen in many other westerns before this one: “The old West is changing, and there’s no place in it for people like us anymore, so we’d better evolve or die.”  This theme is present in Once Upon a Time in the West [1968], Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969], and especially The Wild Bunch [also 1969]…seemed to be a trend for westerns at the turn of the decade, for some reason.  Monte Walsh handles it in an episodic format, kind of like another Lee Marvin film, The Big Red One [1980].  It doesn’t quite tell a straightforward plot with a pre-determined story arc.  It skips around a little bit, painting a picture without telling a conventional story.

There can be a sense of freedom in this kind of storytelling.  Unshackled by traditional story beats – at least for the first half – the movie is laid back, asking the viewer for a little patience as it slowly lays down building blocks for the finale.  However, I must report that I found this section of the movie a little slow.  I grew impatient.  I felt I was being set up for something, but pretty soon I just wanted the movie to get on with it.  Butch Cassidy sort of works that way, but you had two of the most photogenic stars who ever lived as the two leads.  I struggled to care the same way for Jack Palance as I did for Paul Newman.

But then an unexpected scene of violence occurs, setting into motion a series of events that culminate in a tragic series of deaths that, I must admit, had me glued to the screen as they unfolded.  Because of the gangbusters nature of this section, I am inclined to forgive the film’s shortcomings in its first half.  Here, we see, yes, Monte must evolve or die, and even if it’s never in any real doubt what he will choose, it’s entertaining to watch him make that choice.

If not for the second half of the picture, I might not even be writing about Monte Walsh.  I didn’t care for the opening song (even if it WAS sung by Mama Cass), some of the movie felt ripped off from several other westerns, and I was borderline bored for the first half.  But if you stick with Monte Walsh until the end, I think you’ll agree it’s worth a look.

UMBERTO D. (Italy, 1952)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Vittorio De Sica
CAST: Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: An elderly man and his beloved pet dog struggle to survive on his government pension in Rome.


The greatness of Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. is something I was only able to appreciate after it was over.  As the film plays out, I was waiting for something more to happen, something to add to the paper-thin plot of an elderly man struggling to make ends meet in a city whose government has forsaken him and thousands or millions like him.  When the screen faded to black at the end, my first thought was, “That’s it???  Well, what happens next?”  The fact that the film prompted me, not only to ask the question, but to attempt to come up with an answer, is probably one of the reasons why this film is widely regarded as a classic.  Not many films can claim to keep the story running forward in your head after it’s over.

Umberto Domenico Ferrari is an elderly man living in post-war Rome.  The film opens with him joining a crowd protesting the city government’s policy of cutting their pensions.  Umberto is in dire straits.  He’s behind on his rent, low on cash, his landlady threatens eviction, and he must somehow still feed his beloved dog, Flike (rhymes with “like”).  The film will follow Umberto’s tribulations over the course of several days as he berates his landlady, tries to get some cash by selling some of his books and other possessions, dines at a soup kitchen while furtively feeding scraps to Flike, and befriends the young maid in his building who has problems of her own.

Umberto D. is as good an example as any, and better than most, of Italian post-war neo-realism, a cinematic movement in which Italian film directors aimed to paint the silver screen with portraits of everyday life in their country, which was wracked with poverty and unemployment at the time.  Rather than provide an escape from such hardships, these directors felt it was their civic duty to bring the everyman (or everywoman) into the spotlight, to remind the audience that movies could be more than escapist entertainment.  They felt obliged to say, “There are more stories of despair and hardship ten feet out your front door than can be imagined by any Hollywood screenwriter.”

There are pros and cons to this approach, at least in my opinion.  On one hand, the neo-realist movement created such immortal classics as La strada [1954], Bicycle Thieves [1948, also directed by De Sica], and a little later, Rocco and His Brothers [1960]; these are films that have stood the test of time and will continue to do so for decades to come.

On the other hand, a quote from Roger Ebert comes to mind: “A man goes to the movies; the critic must admit that he is this man.”  In other words, learn to say exactly what you think about a film as opposed to what you think you should think.  And when it comes to Italian neo-realism, I’ll say this: give me a choice between a De Sica retrospective and a Christopher Nolan marathon, and it’s the Nolan marathon seven days a week and twice on Sunday.  Yes, I am aware of the place that neo-realism films have in cinematic history, and I can appreciate their greatness on a cerebral level.  However, on a gut level, I can usually only watch them once or twice, with very few exceptions.  La strada, for example, is heart-wrenching, but in such a way that I want to revisit it just to relive those emotional gut-punches at the end.

Umberto D. didn’t quite deliver those gut-punches, at least not during its running time.  …okay, there IS a moment when Flike runs away, and the possibility arises that he may or may not have been put down by the local pound.  There is a cringe-inducing scene when we watch hardened men roll a cage full of stray dogs into a large box where the dogs will be gassed; we are spared the sight of the actual procedure, but we see enough of it to get the picture.  Umberto watches the box with fear in his eyes.  Another man wants to retrieve his captured pet, but he falters when he lacks the money to pay for his return.  The look on his face as he repeatedly asks, “So, if I don’t take him, you’ll kill him?”  THAT is a scene where my emotional juices where stirred up.

(Okay, there is ONE other scene that got me a little riled up emotionally, but it happens near the film’s climax, so I can’t describe it without spoiling something.)

Aside from those very rare moments of heightened emotion, the film is mostly pedestrian, giving us more details of Umberto’s daily life as he tries and tries to find a way to get enough cash to pay his rent.  In one pathetic scene, he debates whether he should resort to panhandling like so many other men he sees on the streets.  At first, he tries it himself, practicing holding out his hand on a street corner, but when someone actually turns to give him some money, Umberto pretends he was just stretching – he just can’t bring himself to accept handouts from a stranger.  He tries to enlist Flike instead, getting him to hold his hat while sitting on his hind legs, but that doesn’t work out either.  He reaches out to former friends, to no avail.

As I’ve said before, DURING the film, these scenes, and others like them, didn’t stir me up the way I felt the director was shooting for.  It was only afterwards that I found myself pondering those scenes and Umberto’s actions.  I used to own a dog, a very long time ago.  If my dog were my only remaining connection, with no family or friends to reach out to in times of need, how would I feel if I learned he might have been captured and put down?  If I suddenly had no means of income, no way to pay the rent/mortgage/whatever, and nowhere to go if I got kicked out of my apartment/house/whatever, how would I manage?  Would I manage?  Late in the film, Umberto makes a couple of hard choices.  Would I make the same choices in his position?

As FINE appears on the screen, Umberto D. invites us to wonder about Umberto’s fate.  The last scene is, on the surface, a happy one, but somber music plays over it, and the scene does not address or solve Umberto’s situation.  This is in the neo-realist tradition.  If De Sica were asked, “But what happened to him at the end?”, I can imagine him saying, “The same thing that happens to all such men.”  If he was told, “But I don’t know what happens to such men,” De Sica might say, “Well, now you have something to think about.”  Q.E.D.

[Trivia: The lead actor, Carlo Battisti, was not a professional actor, but a professor of linguistics. Umberto D. would be his only film, and not many people can claim that kind of legacy with just one film.]