GOTTA SEE IT # 4 - "LE CHIGNON D'OLGA"

"Le Chignon D’Olga"

Starring: Hubert Benhamdine, Nathalie Boutefeu, Florence Loiret, Serge Riaboukine, Marc Citti, Antoine Goldet, Valerie Stroh, Clotilde Hesme. Jean-Michel Portal.
Written by: Jerome Bonnell
Directed by: Jerome Bonnell
Colour – 2002
89 mins.

This film is a ghost story – though not in the way you would expect. There are no scenes of doors mysteriously closing or of otherworldly voices warning of impending doom, but this low-key French gem about emotional, creative and physical paralysis is haunted by a character who’s never physically present and is only mentioned in one short scene.

Gilles (Serge Riaboukine), Julien (Hubert Benhamdine) and Emma (Florence Loiret) are a family coping with the loss of a wife and mother. She’s gone and, yet, she’s not gone. Gilles and his kids rarely, if ever, talk of her, specifically, yet her presence is undeniable. She exists in the things that Gilles, Julien and Emma don’t say to one another. She is felt in the looks they give one another, in the subtext of their conversations, in their silences.

Each one of their lives has been stopped in its’ tracks by this loss - Gilles, a children’s novelist, is suffering a serious creative block; Emma has dropped out of school; Julien, a gifted concert pianist, no longer even plays. These moments are so casually mentioned that if you weren’t paying close attention, you’d miss them. There are also odd, yet moving moments that also speak to their loss – Gilles breaking down at a costume party, Julien momentarily losing it and chasing some sheep around their farm and Emma coming across pictures of her mother while searching for a new photo to use for re-registering at school. They are small, brief yet touching moments that catch you by surprise.

Bonnell’s writing/directing style is minimalist. His scenes are sketches – brief moments that always hint at something bigger without necessarily delivering on it. He’s restrained, in that particular French filmmaking way, and by being so, he leaves space for us to wander and wonder. He captures the awkward rhythms of life – its’ confusion, its’ start-stop nature. He creates the sense that we are truly peeking in on real people who are not at all certain of how to deal with what has so cruelly been delivered upon them.

Lest I leave you with the sense that “Le Chignon D’Olga” is all sadness, there are moments of real humour - particularly one scene where Julien tries to play hero to get the attention of a woman with whom he’s obsessed. The woman is Olga and she works at a book store that Julien frequents. She’s beautiful, elegant, and though she is a secondary character, her name is the only one to appear in the film’s title. There’s good reason. Bonnell doesn’t spell it out, but there is a scene later on in the film where she appears to Julien and it’s this brief flicker of a moment that solidifies her role in the film.

Bonnell is a director who trusts and respects his audience. It’s all there and he knows that if we are game, we will search and find the connections and make sense of it all. Another example of this first appears to be a subplot involving Julien’s attempts to help his friend Alice (Nathalie Boutefeu) deal with her emotional mess of a boyfriend. It is in the playing out of this story thread and its’ contrast to the Olga thread where Bonnell weaves his subtle emotional magic. This portion of the film is moving and simple and brilliant - it lingers in the mind and heart for days. This movie will too, that is, if you’re game.

GOTTA SEE IT # 3 - "IL BIDONE"

“IL BIDONE”

Starring: Broderick Crawford, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Franco Fabrizi, Sue Ellen Blake, Irene Cefaro, Alberto De Amicis, Lorella De Luca.
Written by: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli.
Directed by: Federico Fellini
B & W – 1955
91 mins.

Buried treasure – it’s the central prop in the opening scam deftly pulled off by three con men in this sad and haunting Federico Fellini film from 1955. It’s also an apt description for the film itself, which followed and preceded two much more celebrated Fellini films - “La Strada” and “Nights Of Cabiria.”

Three con men – a slick playboy named Roberto (Franco Fabrizi), a childish family man named Picasso (Richard Basehart), and aging and desperate Augusto (Broderick Crawford), make an effective team running elaborate and cruel cons on the peasants of the Italian countryside.

Fellini and collaborators Ennio Flaiano (La Dolce Vita, The Tenth Victim) and Tullio Pinelli (The White Sheik, Boccaccio ’70) invest their three central characters with varying amounts of humanity – from the least, Roberto, to the most, Augusto – and in doing so bring sadness and poignancy to otherwise cheap, pathetic lives. In the end it is Crawford’s film, as his aching, world weary mug pulls you in and makes you care for a man whose humanity is something he keeps locked away until it is too late. Crawford plays Augusto with broken intensity - he’s all sad faces and pained expressions. He’s a lion who has grown too old and heartsick for the jungle he, nevertheless, continues to roam.

There are several beautifully constructed and executed scenes, but the highlight is a New Year’s Eve party thrown by an old con colleague of Augusto’s named Rinaldo (played with nihilistic oiliness by Alberto De Amicis) who has made it big and is now rubbing his old friend’s face in it. Few filmmakers were as good as Fellini at shooting large gatherings. Here, in a spacious and crowded apartment, his camera is always moving, always capturing the contained chaos of the revelers as well as a few choice contrasting moments – couples having a blast while Rinaldo and his mistress fight; Picasso and his wife Iris (Giulietta Masina) sharing a kiss at the stroke of midnight while Augusto stands painfully and awkwardly alone. The scene ends on an embarrassing and defining note that stings our trio of tricksters - most especially Augusto.

Fellini went on to bigger budgets, more complex narratives and images that presented remarkable, dense, dream-like worlds where seemingly anything was possible. Here, though, in this harsh sketch of a film, he contrasts the selfish, cruel world of the con and the humble, hardworking life of the peasant with moving results. As the final moments slip by, when redemption seems only a car ride away, cruelty is no longer an elaborate con, but, instead, it is a dirt road and an honorable life just out of reach.

GOTTA SEE IT # 2 - "THE SWIMMER"

“THE SWIMMER”

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Janet Langford, Janice Rule, Tony Bickley
Written by: John Cheever (story), Eleanor Perry (screenplay)
Directed by: Frank Perry
Colour - 1968
96 mins.

A companion piece to “Seconds”, this late sixties stunner dazzles the mind and heart in equal measure as it, once and for all, slams the door shut on the “Father Knows Best” generation.

Burt Lancaster plays Ned Merrill, a middle aged business man, who surprises a group of well-off friends - whom he hasn’t seen in a while - by using each of their pools to "swim home."

Both literally and figuratively an attempt to go home again, Ned Merrill’s journey slowly pulls back the curtain on mid 20th century American fatherhood to reveal the flawed, scared, and in-denial boy-man behind it. In doing so, director Frank Perry (David and Lisa, Rancho Deluxe) and writers John Cheever (Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and Eleanor Perry (Diary of a Mad Housewife) create a character who is no likeable slam dunk. Ned's charismatic and full of life, yet also desperate and pathetic – a man taking bows to a chorus of boos he cannot hear. He’s suffering from a severe mental block, yes, but it is entirely self-serving, as it shields him from dealing with those around him – especially the ones he’s hurt.

To Ned, a swimming pool is not just a hole in the ground filled with water - it’s a river leading home; a destination in and of itself; a womb; an escape from reality; a reminder of a long since evaporated childhood. A swimming pool soothes and re-energizes him - it’s a place of refuge. His connection to it is authentic and emotional. On the other hand, his friends - who own the very pools in which he swims - treat them as nothing more than status symbols. It is telling that none of them are actually shown swimming in their own pools.

Though filled with fine actors, this is a one man show with Lancaster mobilizing his trademark cheer and vigour as a kind of last front in a war against Ned’s quickly encroaching reality. Lancaster holds nothing back – shattering to a million pieces his usual assuredness and macho bravado. Allowing himself to be seen as physically and mentally weak, he melts the metal armour of American manhood and, in doing so, gives a performance of stunning naked intensity.

Somewhat visually embracing the spirit of the times, “The Swimmer” swirls with vibrant colours, lens flares, lap dissolves, and one remarkable slow motion sequence. The music, by Marvin Hamlisch (Ordinary People, Sophie’s Choice), is conventional Hollywood, but its’ perfect – so sad, so romantic and so wistful.

Ultimately, “The Swimmer” is a film about a man who’s drowning in his own illusions and he doesn’t even know it.

GOTTA SEE IT # 1 - "SECONDS"

“SECONDS”

Starring: Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph, Wil Geer, Jeff Corey, Frances Reid
Written by: David Ely (novel), Lewis John Carlino (screenplay)
Directed by: John Frankenheimer
B&W – 1966
107 mins.

Call it “It’s A Wonderful Life” redux or John Frankenheimer’s French New Wave film, or resist all temptations of labeling and just sit back and marvel at this mid-sixties mind bender about a man who falls victim to a secret corporation’s promise of rejuvenation.

Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is a middle-aged suburbanite loan’s officer who is adrift. No longer able to show anything but cold detachment to his wife Emily (Frances Reid) and looking like a poster boy for the American Dream gone sad, Arthur receives a call one night from an old friend. Arthur’s upset and thinks it’s a bad joke because, you see, his friend is supposed to be dead. From this intriguing, Rod Serling-like opening, “Seconds” staggers forward in strange, hallucinatory steps towards an ending as fitting and profound as any in the history of film.

Director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May) and writer Lewis John Carlino (working from a novel by David Ely) echo Frank Capra’s celebrated ode to the common good in man, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, but come to some very different conclusions. Whereas IAWL was ultimately optimistic, “Seconds” is thoroughly pessimistic. Whereas IAWL ended with a concrete and closed ending which promised genuine, sustainable happiness and self-satisfaction, “Seconds” picks the story up some twenty years later and suggests that it was all just a passing illusion. The film also contains the equivalent of the Peter Bailey character in the form of a kindly old man (brilliantly played by Will Geer as half grandfather/half casually ruthless CEO) and Arthur Hamilton himself, like George Bailey, is a loan’s officer. In fact, the differences in the two films can be summed up by a brief early scene where Arthur rejects a loan application. As we know, much to Potter’s dismay, George Bailey never turned anyone down for a loan.

The performances are remarkable and strange – from John Randolph’s pitch perfect rendering of a man at the end of his rope to Salome Jens’ kooky turn as the wild and earthy Nora Marcus. Oh, yeah, and Rock Hudson is in the film as well. Lest I spoil anymore plot, let’s just say he grabs the baton and runs with it - giving a performance that reveals both his limitations as an actor and a previously untapped emotional power.

On the technical side, famed cinematographer James Wong Howe (Body and Soul, Sweet Smell of Success, Hud) plays around with fish-eye lenses, uses suitcases as dollies and mounts cameras on the actors to create a disorienting and playfully warped look. Composer Jerry Goldsmith (Lilies of the Field, Planet of the Apes, Poltergeist) matches the bold images with a full-blooded score that is equal parts loud, aggressive, intimidating and quiet, gentle and haunting.

“Seconds” is a film about greed, not in the financial sense, but in the mortal and spiritual sense. The clever title spells out Arthur’s problem – he is an unsatisfied man who is lead to believe that all can be corrected with one more helping. It’s also about vulnerability and how the great, amoral machine of American Capitalism races forward to exploit it. Above all it’s a cautionary tale for anyone who seeks a cosmetic solution to a deep emotional problem.