The Current Cinema - Max Berghouse reviews BLOOD FATHER

Blood Father (2016) Jean-Francois Richet (Director), Chris Briggs, Pascal Caucheteux (Producers), Jennifer Roth (Executive Producer), Peter Craig and Andrea Berloff (Screenwriters, based on a novel by Peter Craig), Robert Gantz (Director of Photography) and Sven Faulconer (Film Score).

Releases around Australia on 1 September 2016

During the course of the recent Sydney Film Festival (2016) I committed to the editor of this blog to review each film I saw. I believed that I had done that. Done and dusted. I now realise that I had forgotten that I had seen Blood Father. The fact that I had forgotten the film is probably a shorthand sense of my estimate of the film. Now however I'm trying to untangle my feelings and to be sensible. I was certainly disappointed on viewing but I think that relates to my expectation that at a film festival, one sees the new and the challenging and generally speaking, non-commercial films, because commercial films are likely to be seen in normal release. Secondly Mel Gibson who is only about two years my junior, looks absolutely frightful: bloated and deeply wrinkled and completely unshaven; if the very handsome Mel Gibson of his youth in Australia, now looks like this, what must I, who never started out with much, look like?

Stripped of intellectual pretense (if any) this is a replay of a 1940s B-movie chase, updated for the more coarsened sensibilities of the 21st-century. Mr Gibson plays John Link, a gnarled and world-weary ex-addict (alcohol or drugs or both) earning a precarious living as a tattoo artist in his bedraggled caravan home in the middle of the California desert. There is not the slightest intimation that as an ex-convict, he is innocent of anything he has been punished for, his living conditions are foul or that the way he makes his living is other than "cheap and nasty". There is no glossing over the fact that he is literally and metaphorically "trailer trash".

The regularity of Link's life which mainly concerns sitting around with his best friend and Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor Kirby (William H Macy) is disrupted by his long estranged daughter Lydia who herself is on the run from Mexican drug lords, all of whom are portrayed as repellent, ugly (because of tats) psychopathic killers. Link and Lydia go on the run, Link to save Lydia, and all hell breaks loose. Pretty much everyone knows what follows: people and property, including valuable property, are all destroyed and so far as all of this goes, it's a great show. Yet at this level, which is the level most people will view it at, it does little more than pass the time.

I have noticed that a number of reviews in commending the performance of Mr Gibson have indicated that he drew on his own immediate prior history of drugs and the booze to find the character of Link. That may be so, in which case the active theatrical creation is not so difficult. But I well remember Mr Gibson as a young actor in Sydney and his creativity, even then, was pretty much unrivalled on the Sydney stage. I see no reason to believe that he did otherwise than work his very refined acting chops to produce a near flawless performance in what is necessarily a fairly limited character. Incidentally the performance of the other two main actors, Mr Macy and Ms Erin Moriarty as Lydia, are also faultless. No surprise that in relation to Mr Macy, but some surprise in relation to Ms Moriarty.

At another level which may only reflect my personal predilections, it is an engrossing study of failure or of the lives of those who are left behind in the great American success story. While the film has all the superficial gloss and all the values of a Hollywood production, it does not and doesn't appear to try to gloss over the poverty, including of spirit, of all the main characters. This I suggest comes from the input of the largely European production staff. Europeans especially French intellectuals, retain more than a passing devotion to Marxism and one can see this in the film: circumstances, more than individual choice, have put the characters, especially father and daughter, where there is really no long-term escape. I have frequently before commented that America in its films is largely concerned with the wealthy east and west coasts and ignores "the poor" in for example the South and the heartland of the Midwest. This aspect of the film is quite disheartening, because it's accurate. Needless to say if too many viewers concentrate on this, it probably will be to the detriment of the film as an actioner. People who like B-movie entertainment don't like originality, they like their trash straight up and down.

I think the complete absence of originality ultimately damns the film for me, but it passed the time. Different strokes for different folks!

On Blu-ray - Rod Bishop uncovers one of the great but near forgotten noirs TOO LATE FOR TEARS

Too Late For Tears (Byron Haskin, USA, 1949)

An impeccably restored blu-ray of “the best unknown American film noir of the classic era” has arrived courtesy of the UCLA Film Archives, the Film Noir Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Charitable Trust (bless them all).

Long in the public domain, access to the film has been restricted to dodgy DVDs and You Tube releases, but here UCLA and its partners have restored the film from a 35mm nitrate French dupe negative and two reissue prints, one 35 mm, the other 16mm.

Too Late For Tears (aka Killer Bait) shows a post-war world of left-over gangsters from the 1930s, femme fatales imported by German ex-pats and World War 2 veterans once described by Paul Schrader as returning from the war to find “the whole society something less than worth fighting for.”

They inhabit a dark Los Angeles and live mostly at night. Jan (Lizabeth Scott) and Alan (Arthur Kennedy) are on their way to a friend’s for dinner when a bag containing $60,000 in unmarked bills is mistakenly thrown into their convertible. Jane wants to keep the money and will do anything, even murder, to have her way. Guilt-struck Alan just wants to hand it over to the cops.

An insurance blackmailer (Dan Duryea), Alan’s sister (Kristine Miller) and someone claiming to have flown missions out of England with Alan during the war (Don DeFore) all become intrinsically linked into maneuvers over the bag of cash.

The fear of becoming sucked into the prison of suburban life, another trope of noir’s classic period, is heavily underscored here: “We were white collar poor. Middle class poor. The kind of people who can’t keep up with the Joneses and die a little every day because they can’t.”

The mesmerizing performance comes from Lizabeth Scott. Hungry to transcend her middle class poverty, she’s submissive when it suits her bigger game, she’s charming to win confidences and she’s ruthless when cornered. Scott carries the film, her face flickering with emotive reactions, hard to read for the other characters but not for the audience who have little doubt about her true nature.

Screenplay by Roy Huggins from his novel; a writer who made his name in subsequent years in television as the creator of Cheyenne, Maverick, The Fugitive and The Rockford Files; cinematography from William Mellor (The Naked Spur, Giant) and directed by Byron Haskin (The War of the Worlds, 1953).

It’s not a noir masterpiece like Out of the Past (1947), but it comes close and it comes straight from the same disillusioned post-war America. Of particular fascination is the horror that drives the central character and her compelling revulsion at the rapidly approaching middle class conformity of the 1950s.

Vale Jock Levy - A pioneer of Australian radical film-making. Graham Shirley writes...

This is to let you know about the passing of filmmaker, stage actor and film actor Abraham Jerome (‘Jock’) Levy OAM, who died on Saturday at 100 years of age.  Along with Keith Gow and Norma Disher, Jock was a pivotal contributor to the activities of the 1950s-era Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit, which made 19 films between 1953 and 1958.  

Here is a press release from the Maritime Union of Australia -     

http://www.mua.org.au/vale_jock_levy

And here is Lisa Milner’s comprehensive piece on the Wharfies’ Film Unit, for Dictionary of Sydney.

http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_wharfies_film_unit

I first encountered Jock Levy’s film work when impressed by his skilled, finely-judged, semi-comedic performance as a Depression-era road worker in the Load of Wood segment in Cecil Holmes’ landmark film, Three in One (1957).  

Jock, Keith and Norma were of great help to John Hughes when he first recorded an oral history with them and then made his documentary Film Work (1981) about the Wharfies’ Film Unit. As an actor and producer, Jock was also long-term contributor to the achievements of Sydney’s New Theatre.

As well as being interviewed by John Hughes for NFSA, Jock was interviewed for the NLA, and further detail of his work can be found here - http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3802249

Finally, here is the ‘SMH’ notice that first alerted me to Jock’s passing 

http://tributes.smh.com.au/obituaries/smh-au/obituary.aspx?pid=180853007&fhid=16393

On DVD - renewing acquaintance with Blake Edwards

This started with a throwaway line on a Facebook post drawing attention to a review  by  David Hare of the new Blu-ray of Blake Edwards Victor/Victoria (USA, 1982). I suggested Edwards was the great comedy director of the second half of the Twentieth century. This drew a response  from the esteemed professional Eddie Cockrell which suggested I might be somewhat over-enthusiastic on Edwards’ behalf. Eddie suggested a bunch of alternate selections for the title of ‘greatest’ and as well suggested that Edwards’ ‘great’ comedies consisted of just four movies- VICTOR/VICTORIA and S.O.B., the first PINK PANTHER film and THE PARTY. Which left out BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS plus a whole host of others that clearly aren’t held in universal high regard. For starters there is A SHOT IN THE DARK (better than the first Pink Panther film) and the other PINK PANTHERS which are potboilers but which have the value of relying ever more on repetitive bits of comic business with the supporting players most notably Herbert Lom and Burt Kwouk where slow burns work just as much as mayhem.

So, what was sitting on the shelves just waiting for attention? Four films all up including two for which I had to take the cellophane off so purchase had been followed by distinct lack of interest. They were Blind Date (USA, 1987) and What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (USA, 1966). Then there was Darling Lili (USA, 1970) and one of the designated hits The Party (USA, 1968). I’m not likely to change anybody’s mind as to whether The Party is funny, whether the joke stretches out too long as Tom Milne advised in The Time Out Film Guide, (the only critical manual close at hand and much lamented since its cessation) or whether it’s a timeless comic masterpiece. The DVD I own also has a second disc and for the first time I ran through its contents as well. Therein, mostly from recordings made in 2004, are some most insightful commentary from Edwards himself, from his Associate Producer Ken Wales, from the great comic actor Steve Franken and most especially from Walter Mirisch, one of the three brothers who were The Mirisch Corporation and who, according to Walter’s most articulate responses, ran the company like some cultured salon where Hollywood’s elite directors just got to make films their own way without studio bureaucracies interfering. Mirisch talks of his stable of talent, very impressive and lead by Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Robert Wise and John Huston, his working methods and most particularly the fact that the company had its own dining room where the talent assembled simply for the pleasure of each other’s company.  Who knew Hollywood could be so civilized.

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? is another of Edwards’ military comedies. His first big hit, he explains on the other disc, was Operation Petticoat, a movie produced by and starring Cary Grant, and he returned to the subject on several occasions. Daddy  was a flop and no amount of support will ever resurrect it to the front line of the director’s achievements. Still it has its moments and Edwards and his scriptwriter, the youngish pre-The Exorcist William Peter Blatty did some inventive stuff. Blatty worked with Edwards on four movies, or at least four that were made. Most of the invention revolves around the last third of the picture when the various elements have been assembled inside the Italian town - Americans, Italians, Germans, the locals including the mayor and his luscious daughter, and American officer Harry Morgan who has been imprisoned in the town’s catacombs and has gone troppo after he escapes. Meanwhile two local reprobates have spent the entire picture ignoring the military manoeuvres outside, prowling the catacombs trying to get a fix on the floor of the local bank so that they can detonate it and make off with the contents.

I looked especially here for what Eddie calls Edwards’ leering take on women and sex. I guess what some call bawdy comedy is a leering take but I didn’t get it here.

Which brings Blind Date front and centre. Edwards comic specialty is calamity comedy where things go bad and the audience’s expectation is met only for events to get worse…and worse….and worse. His ability, and that of his writers, is to pile on escalating humiliations. Blind Date seems exemplary in this respect alone. Early on, it sets up Kim Basinger’s Nadia as dangerous when drunk. As we all know, a single drink sets an alcoholic off but nobody suspects how quickly she degenerates into total vulgarity and total loss of dignity. It manifests itself first in brutal honesty. A workmate of her date, the put upon Walter (Bruce Willis), hits on her in a restaurant when she’s already drunk and her response starts a chain reaction of humiliation and then mayhem. From there she remains drunk for much of the next hour or so, ultimately transferring her humiliation to Walter who succumbs into a psychotic episode. Funny. Yes, very and Edwards timing, particularly with the appearances of Nadia’s ex-fiance (John Laroquette) who manically pursues her and makes it known on every occasion that he is not happy at the prospect of Walter ‘drilling’ his old girlfriend. The ex-boyfriend’s several car crashes into shop frontages are funny. Or, I guess some may find in them a leaden approach to slapstick. So, yes, among the smaller movies that Edwards has made, this one is good, funny and not a little touching.

Blind Date also has another of those set-pieces that Edwards does well. Here, as per usual trailing all the way back to Feydeau, is another of his sequences where large numbers of characters are trailing through large houses, keeping out of sight, diving into hiding places, slipping on roofs or trellises and in this case making slapstick gags, after a long set up, with stray golf balls. The opening sequence in A Shot in the Dark is a high class exemplar of the art.

Which brings me to Darling Lili, a big budget musical starring the director’s wife Julie Andrews, a frequent casting decision which even Edwards aficionados generally regret. David Hare finds it of some interest in Victor/Victoria but in general Andrews sweet expressionlessness and perfect but bland voice, does not serve the director well. Compare her alone with the luminous Gloria Paul in Darling Lili, the latter having a single sequence as the gorgeous Crepe Suzette, and you get the idea of just how bland Andrews is. Compare her to Marlene Dietrich in Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg, USA, 1931) and you understand how ineffective Andrews can be. This is despite the one really brilliant moment of the film, the Oscar-nominated opening song which you can find here on Youtube, a  single shot sequence involving Andrews moving in and out of shadows and light, dancing a few steps, before revealing her on the stage of a large Edwardian theatre in war time.

Andrews presence is not aided by male lead Rock Hudson at his most wooden and unconvincing as the American airman Larrabee. I wondered what casting might have made a difference and produced some erotic fizz. Maybe a major script rethink before casting Alain Delon and Romy Schneider. (In case you worry about Schneider’s musical abilities, Marnie Nixon was still alive and well at the time the film was made.) So, big budget but clunky and no indication at all that Edwards would later make one of the great Hollywood musicals, something to rival the achievements of the Arthur Freed factory at MGM.

I’m still thinking that Edwards is the man of comedy for the second half of the Twentieth century. More to come….