Monthly Archives: August 2018

An Innocent Witch
Directed by Heinosuke Gosho
Written by Hideo Horie from a novel by Hajime Ogawa
1965/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/FilmStruck

Possession and exorcism is something that’s in every religion and every culture. It’s a real primal fear: Is the body a vessel for our spirits? What happens if something else takes over it? Where does the spirit go? — Eli Roth

Story of the “possession” of a young prostitute provides some compelling drama.

The film is set in the early days of WWII.  Teenager Ayako (Jitsuko Yoshimura – Onibaba) works cheerfully with her parents in a dirt poor fishing village.  Dad has become disabled and mother sells Ayako to a brothel to feed the family.  She loses her virginity to Yamasan, a wealthy industrialist and he becomes her regular client.  As time passes Ayako goes from being a terrified little girl to the most popular prostitute at the brothel.

One day, a group of young men graduating from military academy come in looking for a good time.  One hangs back and Ayako takes charge of him.  They eventually fall in love. Unbeknownst to her, he is the estranged son of Yamasan.  It is very bad mojo to sleep with both father and son in Japan.  First Yamasan and later the son die unexpectly in Ayako’s presence.  Things go downhill from there as rumors spread that Ayako is possessed.

This is a well-made movie that kept my interest all the way through.  Don’t know that it will be vivid in my memory for long though.

Io la conoscevo bene (I Knew Her Well)
Directed by Antonio Petrangeli
Written by Antonio Petrangeli, Ruggero Maccari, and Ettore Scola
1965/Italy/France/West Germany
Ultra Film/Les films du siecle/Roxy Film
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] The Writer: Yesterday and tomorrow don’t exist for her. Even living for today would mean too much planning, so she lives for the moment. Sunbathing, listening to records, and dancing are her sole activities. The rest of the time she’s mercurial and capricious, always needing brief new encounters with anyone at all… just never with herself.

Adriana Astarelli: I’m Milena, right? Is that what I’m like? Some sort of dimwit?

The Writer: On the contrary. You may be the wisest of all.[/box]

This time a woman gets stuck in a dolce vita turned sour.

Adriana Astarelli (Stefania Sandrellii – Divorce Italian Style) is a beautiful good-hearted but naive young country woman who moves to Rome in search of stardom.  What awaits her is a bunch of wolves and the casting couch.  Meanwhile she enjoys the high life of swinging 60’s Rome.

After having been let down by numerous men and humiliated by those who promise fame, what is a girl to do?

This is a savage send-up of the Italian film industry and machismo.  It started out reminding me strongly of a Fellini film but turns darker and more heart-felt as it progresses. I ended up loving it.  Recommended.

Le bonheur (Happiness)
Directed by Agnes Varda
Written by Agnes Varda
1965/France
Parc Film
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] François Chevalier: I love you. Look at me. I love you. It’s like if I had ten arms to hug you and you had ten arms for me. We’re all mixed together. But I found myself with extra arms. I’m taking nothing from you, see?[/box]

Varda has a little poison dart hidden behind all the pretty images in this beautiful and thought-provoking film.

Francois Chevalier is a young married man with a wife, Therese, and two adorable toddlers.  (These are played by Jean-Claude Druout and his real life wife and children). The couple are very much in love and enjoy the simple happiness of a well-ordered daily life and idyllic weekends in the gorgeous countryside of what looks like the South of France.

One day, Francois meets gorgeous young post mistress Emelie (Marie-France Boyer).  It is lust at first site for both of them and they soon declare their love for each other.  She is totally accepting of his marriage and his love for his wife.  They begin an affair.  Francois figures that he is not hurting anyone but only increasing his own happiness.  I will not spoil the subversive ending to this film.

The cinematography is completely gorgeous with a Van Gogh-like palette of colors.  Life simply could not look more idyllic that what is portrayed in this movie.  Yet beneath all the beauty and sensual contentment, Varda has quite a lot to say about male entitlement and folly.  I’ll be thinking about this for a while.  I wouldn’t mind watching again.  Highly recommended.

The Naked Prey
Directed by Cornel Wilde
Written by Clint Johnston and Don Peters
1965/USA
Sven Persson Films/Theorora Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. Ernest Hemingway

Almost dialogue-free movie is completely absorbing with gorgeous views of Africa and its wildlife.

Director Wilde plays a character credited only as “Man” and I will refer to as “Wilde”.  He is guiding a hunting party going after ivory-bearing elephants in Southern Africa.  The guests who are paying for the trek refuse to give a tribe of natives the traditional payment for hunting on their lands over the objections of Wilde.  The natives who far outnumber the party execute all in a variety of inventive and gruesome ways.  As a sign of respect, they give Wilde “the lions chance”.  He is stripped naked and given a head start before he is hunted down like wild game.

A combination of desperation and luck helps Wilde escape his pursuers.  Along the way he must not only outrun the locals but survive off the land.  Toward the the end of the movie he also confronts a group of Arab slave traders that are decimating a village.

English is spoken only at the very beginning of the film.  Almost all the additional dialogue is in a local language which is not sub-titled.  I thought the film gave a very balanced view of African culture showing both its brutality and the very human emotions of the people.  The nature photography is outstanding, showing many scenes of animal predation and the beautiful local scenery.  I sat rapt throughout.  Highly recommended.

The Naked Prey was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen.

Trailers from Hell

The Hill
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Ray Rigby from a play by Rigby and R.S. Allen
1965/UK
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Seventh Art Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Trooper Joe Roberts: We’re all doing time. Even the screws.[/box]

A POW film with a difference – both the prisoners and guards are British soldiers.  Strong cast makes for a powerful picture.

The British have built a camp in the Libyan desert to deal with deserters, thieves and other criminals among the ranks in the North African campaign of WWII.  The commandant is a figure head.  The real power at the camp is brutal R.S.M. Wilson (Harry Andrews). Wilson’s aim is to use grueling punishment to turn his charges into real soldiers.  As the story starts, a new guard, Staff Sergeant Williams (Ian Hendry), reports for duty.  Williams is just a sadist.

Five new prisoners have also reported.  Among them are Jacko King (Ossie Davis) who must deal with Williams’ racial hatred and Joe Roberts (Sean Connery), whose crime was to physically attack a superior who insisted on sending his men into a hopeless battle.  The most dreaded punishment at the camp is to force men to run up and down a man-made hill carrying heavy packs in the blazing sun and heat.  Williams does this with such gusto that he kills a man.  The rest of the film deals with the rebellion of the prisoners, led by Roberts.  With Michael Redgrave as the medical officer.

This is strong stuff, expertly directed by Lumet.  I wasn’t expecting the ending.  All the performances are excellent.  Recommended.

Despite the film’s lack of commercial success, Sean Connery considered it a personal triumph, as it led to more challenging acting roles in the future.  The actor was always concerned that he would be typecast as James Bond.

Samurai Spy (Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke)
Directed by Masahiro Shinoda
Written by Yoshiyuki Fukuda from a novel by Koji Nakada
1965/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] “Ninjas don’t wish upon a star, they throw them.” ― Jarius Raphel[/box]

Beautiful imagery and ninja action keep totally befuddling plot interesting.

The setting is early 17th Century Japan.  Fourteen years previous, there was a war between two rival clans, with lesser clans forced to choose sides.  Now an uneasy peace prevails with spies from all sides scouring the countryside for information.  Our hero Sarutobi Sasuke is a member of a neutral clan.  He abhors war.  Nonetheless, he is constantly drawn into violence to protect himself or his friends.

The characters in this film fight more with knives and death stars than they do with swords. There’s also a fair amount of wire work.  Shinoda is a master at composition and lighting and the film is beautiful to look at.  Just don’t ask me who was on whose side or what in the hell these people were ultimately fighting about.  Narrator does an information dump at the beginning of the movie and there were just too many names and complications for my poor brain to absorb

Return from the Ashes
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Written by Julius J. Epstein from a novel by Hubert Monteilhet
1965/UK/USA
Orchard Productions/The Mirisch Corporation
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Stanislaus Pilgrin: If there is no God, no devil, no heaven, no hell, and no immortality, then anything is permissible.[/box]

“Diabolique” wannabe doesn’t quite cut it but does offer a few thrills.

The story starts in Paris just prior to the outbreak of WWII.  Polish chess master Stanislaus Pilgrin (Maximilian Schell) is thoroughly amoral.  Despite this and her sense that he may be incapable of love, he gains the love of beautiful rich Jewish doctor Michele “Mischa” Wolf (Indrid Thulin).  When war is declared Stanislaus breaks down and marries Mischa.  She is later hauled off to Dachau and is assumed dead after her failure to return for several years after the end of the war.  Stanislaus begins an affair with Mischa’s unstable young stepdaughter Fabi (Samantha Eggar).

Mischa does eventually return to Paris but assumes another name and hairstyle.  She does not want to reveal herself to Stanislaus until she has regained her former beauty. However, Fabi spots her unexpectedly and notes the resemblance to her stepmother.  This launches a plot to persuade the woman to impersonate Mischa so that the three can claim Mischa’s huge inheritance.  Eventually Mischa admits to her real identity and then things get really complicated …  With Herbert Lom as Mischa’s friend.

Before I watched this I thought the story might stress the Holocaust elements but no.  It is played strictly for suspense and thrills.  Schell and Eiger are admirably evil and Thulin suitably touching.  The problem is the script could have been considerably tightened.  The story drags such that I found the pay-off to be strangely anti-climactic. Your mileage may vary.

No clip or trailer

The Loved One
Directed by Tony Richardson
Written by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood from a novel by Evelyn Waugh
1965/UK/USA
Filmways Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Dennis Barlow: They gave me this ticket, so I thought I’d come here. I mean it was either Los Angeles or Calcutta and I thought, what the hell.[/box]

The “Dr. Strangelove” of funeral industry spoofs also takes on Hollywood.  A cast of thousands provides the laughs.

Dennis Barlow (Robert Morse) is a naive young British poet who wins an airline ticket to Los Angeles.  He plans to stay with his uncle Sir Francis Hensley (John Gielgud), portrait painter to the stars.  When Sir Francis is fired after 30 years faithful service to the movie industry, he hangs himself.  Dennis finds himself in charge of funeral arrangements and approaches Whispering Glades Funeral Home (a clear send-up of Forest Lawn Cemetery).

After Sir Francis’s bizarre funeral, Dennis gets a job there and falls in love with Aimee Thanotagenous (Anjanette Comer), a make-up artist whose ambition is to become the nation’s first female embalmer. This set up provides limitless opportunity to skewer funeral practices in America in some of the most outrageous ways possible.  With Jonathan Winters in a dual role, Rod Steiger, Liberace, Dana Andrews, Tab Hunter, Milton Berle, Robert Morley, and Roddy MacDowell in roles big and small.

Robert Morse could have done a better job with his English accent but this is a pretty funny satire of an easy target.  I particularly enjoyed John Gielgud both as a live actor and as a corpse.  The scene in which Rod Steiger manipulates his face while applying the funeral make-up is hilarious.  The movie overstays its welcome to some extent but is well worth seeing.  Recommended.