“I’m in love with a German film star…”

 

Only a few days remain for you to enter our Fritz Lang songwriting contest and win the film of your dreams*! To kind of get you in der mude, I’ve knocked up a jaunty little number entitled “Blue Gardenia Blues,” which goes like this ~

On Scarlet Street,
There’s a great big heat,
That warms you and me in and out.
There’s a house by the river,
That makes people shiver,
Beyond a reasonable doubt.

It’s called Moonfleet,
And it’s on Scarlet Street,
‘Neath the “M” sits the woman in the window,
With a look of contempt,
She says, “No one’s exempt,”
So you pay her and walk right on into -

The Ministry of Fear,
Where each eye has a tear,
And they number a thousand or more.
Check your cloak and your dagger,
And then you will stagger,
At the secret beyond the door.

Hangmen also die,
As the thousand eyes spy,
Chuck-a-luck is the game, you’re the loser.
Your fury is spent,
And you can’t pay the rent,
Cause the gambler’s Dr. Mabuse.

Each felicitous room,
Is an Indian tomb,
And you only live once, they say.
While the city sleeps,
And the thousand eyes weep,
And all human desire ebbs away.

*Normal dream conditions apply.

And Soon The Dotrice

 

Robert Fuest’s first film, AND SOON THE DARKNESS, starts with two Brits, Pamela Franklin and Michelle Dotrice (pronounced “dough-treece”) on the world’s most boring holiday, cycling across a totally flat stretch of French countryside. They stop at a roadside bar ~

“Did you get your bum pinched?”

“No, that’s Italy. They’ll do anything in Italy.”

“What’re we doing in France then?”

This slightly smutty, un-PC girltalk gets things off to a good start, striking one as credible and well-observed, and the actresses handle it well. Franklin had played little Flora in Jack Clayton’s THE INNOCENTS, and Dotrice went on to co-star in the hugely successful 70s sitcom SOME MOTHERS DO ‘AVE ‘EM, and both are terrific, naturalistic players, who always feel overheard rather than performative.

Fuest, fresh from designing and directing episodes of TV’s The Avengers, has a passable thriller plot by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation (both from that show — Nation also created the Daleks): Dotrice vanishes and Franklin finds the entire countryside is populated only with red herrings — and one sex-killer.

The central premise sometimes feels like an expansion of the build-up to Hitchcock’s cropduster attack in NORTH BY NORTHWEST — unseen terror in a landscape of limitless,blank horizons. Though in fact the bright flatness does yield to tangled woods, presenting a contrast between total visibility with nothing to see, and dense impenetrability where something may be lurking millimetres away.

Fuest, one of the great director-designers, has handicapped himself with a film where there seems to be nothing to design, but he exercises his eye with strong compositions and a sensitivity to objects, both the shiny kind brought by the tourists, and the rusty local equipment.

He’s also attentive enough, without being lecherous, to his leading ladies. They spend the whole film in tight, huge shorts — this is a film very much focussed on the plump white thighs of young English womanhood, and white panties hung to dry on a tree are a major plot point, but Fuest’s interest is frank rather than salacious. He doesn’t have the slightly seedy intensity of someone like Nicholas Roeg, who is rather too concerned with the passage of Jenny Agutter’s knickers up and down her thighs (Roeg was — maybe IS — a swinger, I’ve been told — parties, car keys, the whole bit — which makes total sense when you put it together with his films). Indeed, Fuest’s DR PHIBES films may be proto-slasher movies, but they’d more concerned with killing esteemed British character actors than busty dolly birds, which makes them rather refreshing in their sadism.

The plot slips into variations on THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE — of course she’s going to cold-cock a suspected killer and run smack into the waiting arms of the real killer, but it has the benefit of that compelling news story subject: something nasty happening to normal young holidaymakers, and despite the title there’s no darkness in sight — Fuest’s credit even appears over sunlight glinting through leaves, and the whole action takes place on a single day under blue skies… though a storm is predicted…

Suggested Fever Dream Double Feature: THE VANISHING (original Dutch version), or make it a Dotrice double with the mind-blowing ~

The News at Ten

Tonight’s headlines:

BONG!

Richard Attenborough arrested on roller-coaster!

BONG!

Theresa Russell dons moustache to attend opera!

BONG!

Cathy O’Donnell finds loudspeaker in chimney!

BONG!

Semi-clad stunt-woman kisses wall!

Believe it or not, non-British Shadowplayers, the ITV News At Ten really does begin like this, with dramatic news and an anchor barking out headlines in between the strokes of Big Ben. The stories might not be quite as enticing as those outlined above, but the effect is similar: everything is at once dramatized and trivialised.

The News at Tentheme is very famous here, which is why it was hilarious to us as kids when we saw a matinee at the late-lamented Odeon Clerk Street of what I think was Eddie Romero’s no-budget Dr Moreau rip-off re-imagining, THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE, and the news theme struck up as background score to a man-versus-monster fight scene. You do run this risk when you score your film with stock music: somebody might come along and make one of those themes famous.

Early Cronenberg films, their music tracks assembled by Ivan Reitman, of all people, seem to have escaped this fate — the music just sounds cheap and drippy. It was so great when Howard Shore and Michael Kamen came along to write proper scores — really good ones.

The best stock score I can think of is probably the stuff by “DeWolfe” for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, which succeeds in raising the production values whenever it comes on, which is the exact opposite of the effect stock music usually has. For ages I wondered who this great unknown film composer was. Actually, I still don’t know. I’ve stumbled across some DeWolfe company CDs in the past, but never found the HOLY GRAIL score on any of them…

It never seems possible to get stock music to fit as nicely as a well-composed score — the solution would be to select the music in advance and shoot to it and cut to it, like Leone did with Morricone’s score for ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and Powell did with BLACK NARCISSUS, and musicals directors routinely do. As our piece The Chills #1 hopefully demonstrated, moving the camera in time with a score is a powerful thing…

Heid!

 

A touching scene:

Mark Cousins bumps into Paul Thomas Anderson at the BAFTAs.

PTA: “I love your book! It’s the only book that puts everything in context!”

MC: “You’ve made the best American film since CHINATOWN!”

They rush to embrace, and accidentally head-butt each other.

The Chills #1: “You’re out of your senses!”

 

When a film hits you with such an overdose of poetry that it bends the needle on your Aesthetometer, and the part of your brain known as Fassbinder’s Eggcup starts to overflow with meaningful beauty, causing a pint of freezing cold serotonin to squirt down the back of your neck, the whole thing “kind of monkeys around with the body’s periodontal atrium,” bringing on what we at Shadowplay call THE CHILLS.

You get goosebumps, shivers, all that. You feel in danger of falling into the sky.

In celebration of this neural havoc, we present the first in an occasional series devoted to isolating those dangerous moments of sublime transcendence. Send in your nominations.

Fiona says:

As part of David’s new ‘Chills’ thread I would like to offer up a few thoughts on a specific sequence from ‘Black Narcissus’, but I would also like to talk about the outrageously neglected actress involved, Kathleen Byron. No one in the British film industry (apart from Powell) knew what to do with her gimlet-eyed, somewhat disturbing presence, and after a brief flourish, she all but disappeared from our screens. Fortunately she’s left us with some peerless screen moments, and as she’s still “very much alive” I’d like to personally congratulate her on contributing to that subtle frisson that ‘Chills’ is all about. We’re not talking about fear here. It’s all about that delicious shiver up the back of the neck that happens when you’re particularly moved by something. And this one never fails to get me, even after years of repeat viewing.

The sequence involves the now fully bonkers Sister Ruth stalking ‘our Debs’ (She was a Scot you know) through the mountaintop ex-harem, in a fabulously choreographed sequence, culminating in a murder attempt in the dawn mist. At precisely the moment Kathleen swings open the outer door and we have that astonishing CU on her face, the chills overtake me, the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I proclaim “F***ing Hell. That’s Genius!” (It’s true. Ask David)

Of course the build up to this moment is crucial — the whole thing was actually shot with Brian Easdale’s pre-recorded score played on the set to provide it with drive and rhythm. But the clincher comes when Kathleen charges through that door in her Kabuki makeup. It’s an extraordinarily stylised, overwrought moment, so unBritish in every way, and I love it for that.

Kathleen should have been a star, with that long, haughty nose, febrile intensity and unconventional beauty, but it wasn’t to be. Outside of Powell’s patronage, she failed to flourish, and that’s a damn shame. For the most part our films just weren’t daring or interesting enough to contain her. However, even her relationship with Powell wasn’t a smooth one. She was one of the few people happy to stand up to him, Powell even suggests in his autobiography the she attempted to shoot him in the nude (her not him). Kathleen refutes it. “Why would I bother to get undressed?” she asks, not unreasonably. Powell had a reputation for being ruthless. Or as our friend, his assistant Lawrie, once simply put it, “A bastard!” Lots of people might have wanted to kill him. One can imagine a whole line of naked assassins waiting to take a pop at him. (Go on, have a go. You can cast it according to your personal preferences and sexual orientation)

Anyway, I digress. Take a look at these screen grabs. They represent the many faces of Kathleen Byron:

SULTRY

DEMONIC

MENTAL

and HOMICIDAL

AND THAT’S JUST IN THE ONE FILM!

David here: legendary nonagenarian camera wizard Jack Cardiff reports that he treated the church with red light and green shadows in order to create a psychological disturbance, “as in certain of the paintings of Van Gogh.” He fought with Technicolor to use a diffusion filters for the foggy dawn scene, and Lawrie reported rising very early and going to film a real sunrise. Everybody oohed and aahed at the rushes, but Powell declared the material NG. “It’s too pretty — nobody’ll believe it. We’ll have to do it in the studio!”

Babelsberg Psychos Go America

 

A Fever Dream Double Feature.

Following in the mighty footsteps of Christoph Hubert, whose Fever Dream pairings were published hereabouts recently, I present for your delectation and sweaty perusal another brain-bending duo of movies that go together all wrong. I have selected two films, and I call them Film One and Film Two.

(Note the flag attached to David Wayne’s lamp to keep his face in shadow.)

Film One is “M”. Not the celebrated Fritz Lang-Thea Von Harbou 1931 classic, but the generally denigrated Joseph Losey remake from twenty years later. As films maudit go, the don’t come much mauditer than this. While Losey is much admired, mainly for his British films of the ’60s (the blacklist having driven him from Hollywood), his U.S. work is a mixed bunch, much of it rarely screened. The excellent noir THE PROWLER (many noirs tackle the theme of “wrong values,” but none so starkly as this) rubs shoulders with the curio that is THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR, a jejeune anti-war parable that passes the time acceptably just by being very very odd. In this company, the M remake is just one more mis-step in Losey’s shaky Hollywood career arc, but fortunately it’s a bit closer to the intensity of PROWLER than the fey loopiness of GREEN HAIR.

The perennially prissy David Wayne essays the Lorre role, doing well with the hysteria but entirely missing Lorre’s uncanny, bug-eyed froth. The script pads out the predestined devil with some unconvincing dollar book Freud cod psychology.

Losey scores a little better with his cops and crooks — one detective is a virtual fascist, with less respect for the rule of law than the “punks and tinhorns” he yearns to subject to the rubber hose treatment. Luther Adler plays an alcoholic mob lawyer (called Langley in presumed homage, though old Fritz didn’t appreciate the gesture, turning up to single-handedly picket the premiere). This figure’s presence helps set up the kangaroo court more plausibly, but he’s an annoying character wrapped around an annoying performance (dialogue scribe Waldo Salt may have to shoulder some blame here. Salt, later blacklisted himself, made a glorious comeback as writer of MIDNIGHT COWBOY in the ’70s, but his work here is mostly on a Dick Tracy level, with a few corny left-wing pretensions). The rogues’ gallery gets livelier around the intense, ferret-eyed Martin Gabel (also director of one movie, the terrific THE LOST MOMENT, a labyrinth of sinuous camera moves with a centenarian Agnes Moorehead at its heart) and his henchmen: Raymond Burr, more hench than man, doing a gravelly voice like Putney Swope; Glenn Anders, not as soapy as in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (”Just doing a little taaaaarrrget practice,”) but sort of CHUNKIER; and Norman Lloyd, always always always a reliably sneaky face to fill out a frame.

But this “M” has its greatest success in the use of locations. Losey makes fine use of Bunker Hill and outstanding use of the Bradbury Building. Best known now as the site of BLADE RUNNER’s climax, this striking construction came to its architect in a dream, and Losey captures both the sharpness and the illogic of nightmare in the clamorous conflict he stages there. Each angle provides a bizarre and startling new perspective to affront the eyes and make giddy the mind.

And Losey’s eerie mannequin warehouse is better than Kubrick’s eerie mannequin warehouse in KILLER’S KISS. In moments like this one can feel that Lang’s cautionary horror tale has found a new home in the city of angels.

Film Two is DR. CALIGARI, another U.S. remake of a German classic, this one directed by Stephen Sayadian, (A.K.A. Rinse Dream / François Délia / Sidney Falco / F.X. Pope / Ladi von Jansky) maker of the cult sci-fi porno CAFE FLESH, which I’d previously seen and failed to admire.

This struck me as much better! Sayadian, whose speciality is production design, crafts a low-budget expressionist world and stages a sort of Cartoon Network VIDEODROME ballet in it. Everything is over-stylised to the point of panic-attack claustrophobia, the movements are choreographed and the blocking avoids standard continuity and settles for a snappy succession of ruthlessly composed tableaux, shuffled like smutty playing cards in the hands of a stoned dealer. Imagery tends to the nauseating (weeping sores) and peculiar (a wall with a giant mouth) rather than the sexy, but most effective porn is totally boring as art anyway. Sayadian is probably more interested in arousing the pineal gland or something weird like that.

See this thing! It’ll make you feel weird, which you ought to enjoy if you like reading this stuff. In addition to the purely visual pleasures (and the retro fun of the ’80s synth-score), Sayadian makes the best use of porno-style acting I’ve ever seen, creating an expressionistically oneiric B-movie vibe out of his performers’ limitations, reminiscent in its delirium of Ed Wood’s avant-garde trash aesthetic.

Madeleine Reynal, with clipped Mittel-European delivery, essays the role of Caligari’s grand-daughter, following in her “grrandvasser’s vootschteps,” as the late Kenneth Mars might put it, while Laura Albert brings agreeably mannered body language, and an agreeably mannered body, to the role of science project Mrs. Van Outen. Albert slices through the film, nipples primed to at any instant pierce some unsuspecting fellow thespian and pump them full of silicone. It’s not surprising to learn that when she’s not playing characters with “names” like “Bambi” and “Strip Joint Girl” and “Whipped Cream Girl” (in the TV show Dream On — some may remember this) L.A. is a stunt artist: she has a robust physicality to her and in a way this whole performance — nay, this whole film — is a death-defying piece of stunt art.

If you see Losey’s “M”, I hope it’s the same copy I have — a glitchy AVI file of a fuzzy DVD of a chewed-up VHS of a ropey telecine of a speckly print — because you get the surreal impression that the ’50s remake is older than the ’30s original.

If you see DR. CALIGARI… say hi.

I’m quite staggeringly indebted to Shadowplayer Brandon  for providing these movies, after I mentioned having never seen the J-Lo “M”. I should mention right now that I am in no way averse to FREE STUFF. If you stay alert you may catch me dropping the occasional hint, such as “I’ve never seen this film,” which you may all take as your cue to offer me complimentary bootlegs. I promise I won’t mind.

Quote of the Day: Ban This Sick Filth!

From Tom Dewe Mathews’ Censored, The Story of Film Censorship in Britain ~

‘The various reasons cited by the board for its refusal to grant a certificate to SHOCK CORRIDOR in 1963 are confusing as well as contradictory. First of all the Board said that its depiction of conditions in an American mental asylum bore no comparison with those in hospitals within Britain. But this could equally apply to gangster films, Westerns or, for that matter, musicals. Secondly, the film could also frighten cinema-goers who had relatives in mental institutions. This had been the rationale behind the BBFC’s [British Board of Film Censors'] rather extensive cutting of the German Expressionist film THE CABINET OF DOCTOR CALIGARI back in 1928, and even then it appeared to be a catch-all excuse.

‘The last three reasons given by the Board did at least concern themselves with the film’s plot: it was irresponsible to suggest that a sane person could gain admission to a mental hospital by pretending to be insane (maybe the Board thought that this would be imitated); or to suggest that residence in a mental hospital could cause insanity; finally, it was considered that the film might have ‘bad, possibly dangerous, effects’ on film-goers who were susceptible to mental disturbance. But the charge of an irresponsible story device is merely an attack on Fuller’s ingeniousness and the last two clauses cancel each other out because, presumably, if a film can cause insanity then a mental hospital must have the same capacity.’

I remember a discussion with a fellow student when I was at art college: they had seen SHOCK CORRIDOR on T.V. and been outraged: “Whoever made this obviously knew nothing about mental illness.” My defense was that the film wasn’t truly about mental illness. The three main patients in the film are all suffering from political illnesses. If we except the hospital as a nightmare vision of America, then Fuller’s decision not to reflect the realities of psychiatric conditions as we currently understand them becomes more explicable.

(SHOCK CORRIDOR isn’t realistic, but an earlier U.S. film, THE SNAKE PIT, despite its melodramatic title, is pretty credible. I would say it gives a more accurate impression of life in a psychiatric hospital than ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, though that film captures a very authentic atmosphere, leaving aside the plot.)

In THE BIG RED ONE there’s a scene in a Walloon insane asylum which has been taken over by Nazi forces. The Americans attack, and there’s a shoot-out during which inmates, some of whom have learning difficulties and some of whom presumably have psychiatric conditions (I have no idea whether people with such disparate conditions would really have shared a Walloony-bin in the 1940s, but it does seem possible) continue to eat their lunch, unperturbed by the fire-fight raging around them. Of course, this isn’t realistic. A person with Down’s Syndrome, depression, schizophrenia or pretty much any other mental condition would be likely to react with even more alarm to such an occurrence than you or I would. Fuller’s intent is clarified when an inmate snatches up a fallen soldier’s rifle and blows away a few of his fellow diners. “I am like you — I am sane!” he asserts. The scenario is satirical, Swiftian, rather than realistic, and the idea that warfare and murder are proofs of sanity has been floated — and rendered absurd.

Censorship is always political. It’s interesting that one of the things the BBFC seems to have been afraid of is that relatives of those committed to institutes would become concerned about the well-being of their kin. The likely outcome of such a thing would be, what? They might visit their relatives to check that they’re being well looked-after, and inspect conditions in the asylum. Is that so alarming?

As to the censors’ other reasons, it has since been proved that pretty much anybody can get themselves admitted to a psych ward by reporting false symptoms (assuming there’s a spare bed). Psychiatrists have been shown to be no better than anybody else at detecting lies — judges and lawyers are equally gullible, with only professional SPIES being any better than you or I (they’re specifically TRAINED to know when they’re being bullshitted).

And could a mental hospital drive you mad? I think this idea is based on a false assumption that any one of us can be “driven mad” by stressful circumstances. But certainly psychiatric hospitals can often be depressing, and sometimes alarming places, often ill-suited settings for any kind of recovery process. Filling a large, institutional building with mentally ill people, and maintaining some kind of calm, pleasant atmosphere, is a tall order, but a civilized country ought to try a lot harder to do it than we do.

The Mario Bava Film School #1

Q: How do you light a scene taking place in a cavern at the centre of the earth with no conceivable light source?

A: Extravagantly.

But I would also accept “Jubilantly”, “Luridly”, and “With gusto”.

Quote of the Day: Punch Drunk Victory

 

Richard Lester, in 1983, on Joseph Conrad’s Victory:

‘What attracts me to the story is simply that I think it’s a marvellous piece of cinema. A man has gone through life without ever being moved by anything — his father has said, “Look on and make no sound,” and that has been his way of dealing with life. By accident he helps a young girl, they begin this marvellous love affair, and at the moment it starts to go right three total villains, by chance as it were, are set on his trail, misled by the belief that he has money. And so, as the love story flowers, you just see this boat coming and you know disaster will follow. It seems to me that this is terrific cinema and pure cinema: it’s where the images should do a lot and the emotions are there without speech.”

And when you put it like that, it’s also almost the exact plot of Paul Thomas Anderson’s PUNCH DRUNK LOVE.

In Der Mude

 

I’m still reeling at the concept of a musical version of Fritz Lang’s DER MUDE TOD / DESTINY. If you recall, this was seriously mooted by producer Arthur Brauner as a project for Lang to undertake upon his return to Germany at the end of the ’50s.

Of course, this was the great era of the East German musical, but a West German song-and-dance based on Thea Von Harbou’s original “book” would be quite something. Lang, of course, had musical experience in Hollywood, having directed YOU AND ME, with music by Kurt Weill, and I guess RANCHO NOTORIOUS is pretty tuneful.

But what would a late period musical Lang be like?

I can’t help thinking that it might be something like this:

Enter a Young Woman (Elke Sommer), bereft at her loved one’s disappearance behind a great wall with no doors.

To the tune of “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise.”

YOUNG WOMAN
I must find a way to the other side,
And get back my missing man!
Perhaps with an overdose of cyanide,
I can execute this plan!

(Takes poison, finds self in new surroundings.)

Now I’m within,
I must just have a look round,
Begin,
To get my missing man found,
I’ll climb this stairway to paradise,
And get back my missing man!

Enter Death (Gert Frobe), singing to the tune of “Hi Ho”.

DEATH
I’m death! I’m Death!
I’ll take your final breath!
I’ll take you all
Behind my wall
I’m Death, I’m Death, I’m Death!

Segues into “You’re my little Choo-chee Face,” from CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG.

YOUNG WOMAN
Destiny! Destiny!
No escaping death for me!

DEATH
And it seems to me,
You lived your life,
Like a candle in Berlin…

YOUNG WOMAN
Berlin? You take my breath away!

DEATH
Oh. Okay.

Observant readers will have noticed that these are THE WORST LYRICS EVER. Win unspecified goodies by writing better ones! Remember, DER MUDE TOD has several different storylines woven together, so there’s plenty of scope. You could wax poetic about the field with the 99-year-lease, the Chinese emperor’s fireworks display, or the baby in the burning building.

To make it even easier (not everyone has seen DER MUDE TOD) you can musicalize any Lang film. You could have M FOR MUSIC, METROPOLIS MELODY, or THE DANCING DOCTOR MABUSE (”If you knew Mabuse like I know Mabuse…”).

At least one rhyming couplet is necessary to qualify as a lyric. The German musical is an underappreciated genre, so come on, all you Irving Berliners and Helmut Kohl Porters. Don’t let your candor ebb! You may be a learner but you needn’t be low!

Deadline: one week from today.

Prize: the film of your dreams.*

*Normal dream-conditions apply.