Why not try these troubled double bills?

 

I was going to give up the comedy double bill thing, honest I was, BEFORE grinding it into the ground, but then I happened to read Donald Westlake’s Nobody’s Perfect. In this middling entry in the Dortmunder comic crime series (great first half, declines slightly towards the end, even though it’s set in SCOTLAND), Westlake postulates a cinema marquee which is in the midst of a changeover — in this unlikely scenario, the letters from one title are being removed as the new title is going up, so we get THE CHARGE OF THE SEVEN DWARFS.

Westlake being a careful writer, I’m sure he considered and rejected many inferior possibilities for this gag. My only advantage is that I can draw upon more obscure titles to create my film title telepod mash-ups.

DIRTY MARY, CROUCHING TIGER

SEX, LIES AND THE UGLY

THE UMBRELLAS OF TELEMARK

THE NUTTY LIEUTENANT

THE ABSENT-MINDED LIEUTENANT

THE UNSINKABLE SNOWMAN

THE BAD LIETENANT’S WOMAN

BUFFALO 22

A BRIDGE TOO MUCH

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO FAR

OKLAHOMA, MON AMOUR

GONE WITH THE WAVES

BREAKING THE WIND

A HARD DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

THE WIND CANNOT CARRY ON CAMPING

THE BITTER TEA OF COLONEL BLIMP

HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE PONY

2001 DALMATIONS

THE THOUSAND EYES OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

(Since we know that it’s “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred,” then to make an even thousand eyes we must assume that two hundred of the celebrated horsemen wore eye-patches or glass eyes. Or else some of them had NO eyes.)

Quote of the Day: good stuff

 

Customer gasps in discomfort after drinking bootleg liquor.

Waiter: “Good stuff, huh, bud?”

Customer: “I suppose it’s right off the boat, eh?”

Waiter: “Yeah, they scraped it off.”

Two unknown bit-players in MR. SKEFFINGTON, written by Julius and Philip Epstein, from the novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim. Directed by Vincent Sherman.

LOTS of good lines in this!

Mad Mad Mad Mademoiselle

 

‘MADEMOISELLE was the most beautiful black-and-white film I have ever, ever seen. It was staggering. [...] It’s black-and-white ’scope and they were using different stocks which had different flare factors and different qualities of the way the blacks and greys played for each scene. You were choosing stock to make something look great. It was very experimental and it was quite wonderful and it is not a distinguished film.’

~ Richard Lester talking to Steven Soderbergh about Tony Richardson and Jean Genet’s MADEMOISELLE.

I was inclined to agree with the above after my first viewing — that was a fuzzy VHS pan-and-scan but the film was still clearly gorgeous. Now I’ve seen the DVD I think the film IS distinguished. It’s a study in the psychopathology of evil (feminine and masculine varieties) and almost stands as a companion to Clouzot’s LE CORBEAU — except it’s defiantly NOT a thriller. In both films a sleepy French village is decimated by random, insane attacks (poison pen letters in the Clouzot, arson, flooding and poisoning in the Richardson). In both films the mob seeks convenient scapegoats based on passion and prejudice rather than reasoning.

But the textures and sounds of Richardson’s films are wholly unique. The late David Watkin’s photography is seductive and icy and erotic and oneiric. Jeanne Moreau’s mesmeric performance is placed under a microscope, and the Panavision lenses practically drool over the man she lusts after. Kevin Connor’s sound montage replaces music score with the chirrups and lowings of rural life, creating a strange, floaty time-scape almost wholly devoid of narrative tension but lambent with unfocused menace and desire.

The peculiar psychopathology uncovered through a somewhat somnambular narrative and a long flashback sequence is positively Ballardian — a series of mental associations formed at a moment of passionate intensity have set Moreau’s schoolmarm on a path of destruction, assuaging her sexual frustration with meaningless acts of cruelty (for which she must put on her high heels and make-up). It’s verging on misogyny, though I’m sure we can think of numerous films where male characters act in an equally vicious fashion due to thwarted desire.

Watkin and Richardson delight in cramming their characters into the farthest corners of the frame.

‘MADEMOISELLE was ludicrous, made worse by the fact that Franju had been deprived of the chance of filming Genet’s original with Anouk Aimée.’ ~ David Thomson.

While admitting that the prospect of a Franju version is enticing, unless Richardson actually stepped in and squashed that production, I can’t see he’s to blame for making his own version. And I find the film rather alluring, and certainly not ludicrous — although it’s utterly devoid of humour, which can certainly be risky. 

No humour, no music, so I SHOULDN’T like this film, and the fact that I do must be highly significant.