CLASSIC FILM 101

[Bullitt68]

After Killer's Kiss premiered in 1955, it got Kubrick some real serious notice and enabled him to get real funding from a real studio and make a film with a real budget. The amount of money he had to make The Killing was a bigger budget than both of his previous two films combined, and he put the money to good use.

A lot of people consider The Killing Kubrick's first real film, and some even consider it one of his best. Me, I've never been the biggest fan. Not counting Fear and Desire, I think it's his worst film, actually. Rewatching both Killer's Kiss and The Killing so close together recently, I now consider the former to be much better. It was much freer, filmed much more brazenly, like Kubrick didn't have anything to lose. . .which he didn't.

Much like Killer's Kiss, The Killing has horrible dialogue and some terrible acting, but the screenwriting shortcomings are made up for with ambitious and inventive editing and equally ambitious cinematography.

It serves as another practice run for Kubrick, gaining him experience, confidence, and technical competency. More importantly, though, adapting the film from a novel where the story had already been laid out enabled him to really practice film structure. Unlike Killer's Kiss, which is sloppily thrown together, Kubrick paid great attention to the meticulous structuring of The Killing. The meticulousness of the robbery is mirrored by Kubrick's meticulousness putting the film together. For dialogue, he still has a long way to go, but he's becoming a much better writer and it would help him a great deal for his next film, Paths of Glory, his first masterpiece.

The Killing follows Sterling Hayden, playing a veteran criminal on parole and looking to score that big payoff before walking away and living a normal life with Coleen Gray. Like Killer's Kiss, Kubrick stays in the realm of film noir, where the hallmarks have already been laid out and the ground has already been broken.

Taking one part The Asphalt Jungle and one part The Naked City, The Killing could've very easily been as "safe" as Killer's Kiss, but I think the experience of making that film gave Kubrick some extra courage. Taking the story he had, Kubrick tells it in non-linear fashion, jumping back-and-forth in the story reminiscent of the works of Quentin Tarantino, who considers The Killing the greatest heist film ever made and one of his primary influences on Reservoir Dogs as well as Jackie Brown.

Documentary-style narration also accompanies the film, letting us now exactly who we're looking at and even the exact time of the sequence we're watching so we know where the scene fits in with the time table.

The basic set-up: Hayden and his crew are going to knock over a racetrack. During the seventh race, a hired gunman will shoot the star horse, and in the confusion, he'll steal the money and he and the boys will get out clean, split up the money, and part ways forever.

Of course, heist movies never have the heists go according to plan, and The Killing is no exception. The first hitch in the plan comes during a late-stage meeting with the crew.

The members include Hayden, the brains of the operation and the stick-up man; Ted de Corsia, a cop who needs to pay off debts; character-actor extraordinaire Elisha Cook Jr., the racetrack teller and the film's standout performer; Kola Kwariani, a real-life pro-wrestler Hayden hires in the film to start a fight with Joe Sawyer, the bartender at the track; and Timothy Carey, the gunman.

The hitch comes in the form of Cook's wife, Marie Windsor, who Kubrick saw in The Narrow Margin and immediately said, "That's my Sherry."

By far, the best scenes in the film, IMO, are the ones between her and Cook. It's not just that she doesn't love her husband, she doesn't even like him. In fact, she detests him, but he's like a little puppy dog around her. He's a pathetic insect of a man, but he's fallen ass-backwards into this robbery and he's going to make good, get some money---the only thing his gold digger wife cares about---and make his wife love him.

When he tells her about his plan, she has other ideas. Instead of living her life with a rich Cook, she tells her boyfriend, Vince Edwards, about what Cook has cooking---sorry, I couldn't pass up the pun---and convinces him to take Cook's share after the robbery so the two of them could run off together.

She wants to get Edwards some more information, though, so she tails Cook to the meeting and gets discovered.



Of course, everybody thinks Cook squealed, and they consider killing her to be safe. To protect her, Cook lies that she was just checking up on him to make sure he wasn't having an affair.

Hayden sends everyone out of the room and interrogates her himself, scaring her into silence.

After this scene, it's just more of Hayden making sure he gets all of the pieces into the right place. He looks Carey up and hires him to kill the horse.



I guess Kubrick liked Carey since he's cast---and gives one of the film's best performances---in Paths of Glory.

The morning of the heist comes, and Windsor is being unusually nice to Cook, getting up when he does and sitting with him at breakfast.



The rest of the film is pretty easy to describe: It's the heist. Kubrick charts each individual character's day as it leads to the robbery, jumping back-and-forth in the chronology quite effectively. From a technical standpoint, it's inventive and well-done, but because Kubrick still isn't a very good writer, it's all very flat and uninteresting to me.

His choice to do it like a documentary was a big mistake IMO. I liked the nightmarishly stylized NYC from Killer's Kiss. The streets of NYC in the doc-like The Killing go beyond real to just boring. I acknowledge the skill of the editing, but it's from a detached perspective. The actual enjoyment I get out of following the narrative is minimal.

Until the ending, that is. The end sequence is what keeps the film from sucking and makes it a worthy inclusion in the Kubrick canon. With the money in tow, Hayden and Gray go to the airport, ready to fly away to a new life.

First, Kubrick throws a wrench in their plans by having the suitcase full of money be too big for stowage.



It's pure Hitchcock. I mean, Kubrick must've had the Hitchcock playbook sitting beside him when he was filming this. The suspense is so simple and yet the tension is almost unbearable. Are they actually going to not let him take his money with him? Or, worse yet, are they going to open it to examine the contents?

Eventually, Hayden, wanting to cut this scene short, relents and allows the suitcase to be checked. He and Gray go out and wait with all of the other passengers, one of whom is right out of a Hitchcock film and is introduced in such a Hitchcockian manner, an old windbag with a little yappy dog. The dog jumps out of the woman's arms and runs out onto the tarmac. The guy driving the cart with all of the luggage swerves to avoid crushing it, which causes the suitcase with all of the money to fall and spill open, the money spilling out and whirling around in the air.



In every film Kubrick made before this, you see a voice and a style emerging. This end sequence from The Killing, however, is the first instance where you can say, "That's a Kubrick moment."

It's so totally Kubrick, as is the last scene. The police at the airport go after Hayden, and when Gray begs him to run away, he just looks at her and says, "What's the point?"



Like I said: Not really a fan of the film, but I think it needs to be seen for its influence on the crime genre, and for Kubrick fans especially, it follows Killer's Kiss in showcasing the emerging genius of the man who would eventually become a master filmmaker, IMO, the greatest that ever lived.

[Bullitt68]

In the spirit of Halloween, I had to give you guys a horror film, and while I'm here in the 1950s, what could be a better choice than Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The 1950s is a decade remembered for a lot of things in film. Widespread color cinematography, widescreen cinematography, the ubermelodramas a la Douglas Sirk, the juvenile delinquency films like The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause.

One thing I've yet to discuss, however, is what I'll discuss now: Science fiction. The 1950s was the most prolific decade in regards to the production of sci-fi features. From the beginning of the decade, with films like The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, and The Man from Planet X, to the mid-1950s, with films like Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Beneath the Sea, and Forbidden Planet, to the end of the decade, with films like The 27th Day, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and the hilarious "Worst Film Ever Made" Plan 9 from Outer Space, there was never a shortage of sci-fi.

A lot of filmmakers saw the genre as a great way to comment on the political and social climate of the decade, making, in the form of cheap, cheesy sci-fi entertainment, allegorical stories dealing with the fear of Communism, the escalating Cold War tensions, and the overall atmosphere of intolerance.

The greatest example, IMO, of not only very good filmmaking, but of combining the sci-fi genre with political commentary, is Don Siegel's chiller Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The Day The Earth Stood Still is close, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers still has a real firm hold on the #1 spot for me as the best sci-fi film of the decade. It perfectly captures the initial tranquility, followed by the suspicion and the fear, and then the all-out panic, all contained in small-town, anywhere, U.S.A.

The film has been seen as a comment on the Eisenhower-era notions of conformity and isolationism as well as a call to the threat of the spread of Communism. The film works both ways, but it's most effective as just a well-plotted thriller.

Kevin McCarthy stars as Dr. Miles Bennell. The opening of the film has him being restrained by medical staff as Whit Bissell arrives to question him. Desperately maintaining that he's not crazy and pleading for someone to listen to him, he tells the doctor his story, which began a few days ago in the humble [and fictional] town of Santa Mira, California, where he's a practicing doctor.

While at a conference, he's been rushed home by his nurse, who's told him that several of the townspeople have shown up at the office desperate to see him.

On their way to the office, McCarthy is forced to swerve to avoid running down a little boy, who is running away from his house. This is the first sign that something strange is going on in town. Once McCarthy and Willes get to the office, none of the patients who had scheduled appointments show up. While they were desperate to see him when he wasn't in town, now that he's there, nobody seems to need him anymore.

One patient does arrive: His former girlfriend, Dana Wynter. She informs him that her cousin, Virginia Christine, is convinced that her uncle isn't really her uncle.

His next patient is the little boy he almost ran down, who's been brought in by his grandmother. She informs McCarthy that the boy is convinced that his mother isn't really his mother.

Seeing a pattern, McCarthy decides to visit Christine and see what exactly is going on.



He asks her about her suspicions, but she can't really nail down what exactly she's perceiving. Sure, her uncle looks the same, talks the same, has the same memories, and yet she's convinced he's some kind of impostor. Relieved, in a sense, that it's just crazy talk, McCarthy tells her it's just in her head and she just needs to relax.

After the visit, he and Wynter agree to have dinner together. When they arrive, they see Larry Gates, the town psychiatrist, leaving.



McCarthy catches him as he's pulling out and asks him about what's going on with the townspeople. Gates can't really explain it and just chalks it up to "delusional paranoia" and "epidemic mass hysteria."

McCarthy still finds everything very curious, and it gets weirder real quick. Before they sit down to dinner, McCarthy is called to the home of his friend, King Donovan, and his wife, Carolyn Jones.

When he and Wynter arrive, they're taken down to the pool table, lying on top of which is a body.



It's not just any body, though. It's almost blank. There are no real features. As Donovan says, "It's like the first impression that's stamped on a coin. It isn't finished." The question then becomes: Who is this supposed to be? Well, he's about the same height and weight as Donovan.

After everybody is thoroughly creeped out, McCarthy tells Donovan to stay and keep an eye on the body. Meanwhile, he drops Wynter off at her house, where she lives with her father, Kenneth Patterson.

Back with the body, the guards aren't really paying much attention, and Donovan has even fallen asleep. Unbeknownst to them, the body on the table has now assumed total likeness to Donovan, and it has even come to life.



This is one of the best scenes in the film IMO. The framing of this shot is so great. In the foreground, you have the lifeless corpse, while, in the background, what you think are the main subjects are stirring awake. Then, all of a sudden, the eyelids begin to flicker and the fucking thing is awake.

I've said it before and I'll say it probably a million more times before I'm done with this thread: In horror, often the most simple is what ends up being the most effective, and this is a very simple and very effective scene.

They get the hell out of that house and make their way to McCarthy's. They wake him and tell him what happened. He's still shaking off the Z's when Donovan casually asks if McCarthy thinks Wynter is all right. This gives McCarthy a start, for he remembers, when he dropped Wynter off, that her father was acting a little strange.

He rushes over to Wynter's, but there's no answer when he knocks. He enters the house through the basement, where he finds another one of those lifeless corpse things, only this one has Wynter's likeness. McCarthy doesn't waste any time: He hauls ass up the stairs and gets Wynter out of the house.

Now a group---McCarthy, Wynter, Donovan, and Jones---they all decide what they should do. It's agreed upon to call Gates. They tell him about Donovan's clone, but when they go to show him the body on the pool table, it's gone. McCarthy then takes him to see Wynter's clone in her basement, but that's gone, too.

As is mandatory in these kinds of thrillers, the heroes all look foolish and borderline crazy to the skeptics in danger. Gates doesn't believe McCarthy's and Donovan's story, and sure enough, by the next day, everything seems back to normal. Christine no longer believes her uncle to be an impostor and the little boy thinks his mother is once again his mother.

Everything seems too neat and tidy to McCarthy, though, and that night, his fears are realized.

While they're all barbecuing that night, the foursome is confronted with a terrifying realization. McCarthy, while casually strolling through his greenhouse, discovers two giant seedpods. He calls the others to see and they watch as the pods burst open, nasty, bubbly fluids spewing out, along with more clone bodies.



Now this shit isn't funny anymore. No more explaining things away with mass hysteria and hallucinations brought on by stress. No matter what anyone says in town, the four of them know something really bizarre is happening. They try to piece together all of the information they have, and they come to the conclusion that these pods produce doubles, and when you're asleep, they assume your likeness and take over your mind, body, and soul.

McCarthy tells Donovan and Jones to get out of town and try to get help, meanwhile he and Wynter stay to try to contact the FBI. When he fears the telephone operator may be a pod person, McCarthy takes Wynter and they flee.

This is where, in terms of style, the film starts to go the thriller route with the chase and the persecution. McCarthy decides their first stop on their escape route should be someone he knew he could trust, and he figures Willes is his best bet. However, when he arrives at her house, he finds some of the other town residents---now pod people---preparing to plant a pod for Willes' daughter.



McCarthy and Wynter speed away, and, completely cutoff from the outside world and unable to trust anyone in town, they wind up trapped in an office, hiding out from the police---all pod cops---searching for them. They hide out in the office all night, taking pills to stay awake so as not to turn into a pod person.

The following morning, McCarthy and Wynter notice an unusual amount of activity. It seems the pod people know where to get their hands on shipments of pods, so they bring in shipments for everyone to plant, hoping to turn their friends and family until they eventually turn the entire town.

McCarthy is desperately waiting for Donovan to return with help, only when he returns, it's with Gates, the two of them now pod people.



This is the scene where everything gets explained. The pods grow from seeds that, in the recent past, "fell out of the sky," and they can transform people into emotionless pod people. This is also the scene where the first real strong connection can be made to the more allegorical elements, the notion of Communism spreading and taking over the world being mirrored by the notion of the pod people getting a hold of the entire world.

McCarthy---whose name is ironic considering his fight against such McCarthyist notions---and Wynter hate the thought of losing all emotion, of living without the capacity for love, excitement, fear, sentiment. They desperately try to think of a way to overpower Gates and Donovan, and they successfully do so. However, before they just run out and make a break for it, they need to pretend to be emotionless drones, otherwise the pod people outside will notice.

The act is pretty good, but when a dog runs out into the street and is about to get flattened by an oncoming truck, Wynter's human emotions prove too strong and she yells for the driver to look out.

This makes a pod cop suspicious, so he goes up to where Gates and Donovan were, and upon seeing them unconscious, sounds for the city alarm, and the townspeople all chase after McCarthy and Wynter.



They hide out in a small cave, dirty, sweaty, scared, and most of all, tired from more than 24 hours without sleep. McCarthy manages to tough it out, but unfortunately, Wynter succumbs to her sleepiness, and when McCarthy goes over to check on her---in one of my favorite "scare" moments in film, and, again, an example of how sometimes it's the simple things that work the most effectively---her eyes flutter before opening, just like the pod in Donovan's house, and McCarthy realizes what's happened.



Now all alone, McCarthy makes a mad dash for the highway, where he can escape the pod people in Santa Mira, and, running between traffic, the most famous scene in the film occurs, as he urgently pleads for the drivers to listen to him, that, just like the Communists, the pod people are after them.

He shouts, "Look, you fools. You're in danger. Can't you see? They're after you. They're after all of us. Our wives, our children, everyone. They're here already," then he looks directly into the camera, and, with a terrified expression and with terror perfectly audible in his words, screams, "You're next!"

The exact fears and the exact logic of people swept up in the Communist scare of the 1950s, and believe it or not, that was the original end for the film. Neither the opening scene nor the end scene---the hospital sequences that supposedly take place following McCarthy's successful escape from Santa Mira and seemingly the result of his being apprehended while running crazily on the highway---were included in the original footage shot by Siegel. The studio, however, urged him to film the prologue and epilogue to make the film happier and end on a more hopeful note.

Now, typically, I don't like studio-mandated changes, but in some cases, they're actually for the best, and I think the opening scene---which sets up the film as a flashback---and the closing scene---which concludes with the doctors believing McCarthy after another doctor talks about a car accident victim who spilled a bunch of strange looking pods---were fantastic scenes and really strengthened the film.

Films like The Day The Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet seem to have more prestige nowadays, but for my money, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is not only a cult classic of the highest order, it's also the quintessential '50s sci-fi film.

If you haven't seen it, it'd make for great Halloween viewing.

[Bullitt68]

In the career of Alfred Hitchcock, there are several themes that appear time and time again throughout his filmography. If you take everything that ever appeared in one of his films, though, you'd find nothing that he was more terrified of than the idea of an innocent man going to jail.

The infamous Hollywood story is that, as a child, Hitchcock's father sent him to the county jail with a note telling the officer at the desk to put little Alfred into a cell for five minutes. Those five minutes apparently traumatized Hitchcock to the point where the fear of having to spend time in jail ever again for any reason scared the life out of him, and that fear found its way into many of his greatest films.

None of his films, however, spotlight that particular fear of Hitchcock's more clearly than The Wrong Man. When Hitchcock learned of the terrifying true story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero, a jazz musician sent to jail and put on trial for robberies he didn't commit, he knew he had to make a film out of it. The Wrong Man was the most personal film Hitchcock had ever made, and it can be argued it remained the most personal film he was ever to make, and as such, it's very atypical, maybe the most atypical of all of his films.

First of all, he returned to black-and-white after initially moving to color for Rope, and later, for films such as Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, among others.

For The Wrong Man, he wanted the gritty black-and-white cinematography. He also went so far as to tell the story in a documentary style. Hitchcock is known for the stylization of his films, how meticulously-crafted all of his films are, the ballsy climaxes like the Statue of Liberty sequence in Saboteur or the Albert Hall portion of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Here, though, there would be no such stylization. Just straightforward, in-your-face framing, simply recording what happened to this man wrongly jailed and prosecuted.

Playing the titular wrong man is Henry Fonda, an inspired casting choice. He never worked with Hitchcock before and he never worked with him again, but he was perfect for this role. The pure goodness Fonda was known for makes his horror story all the more tortuous to watch, and his performance is one of his strongest.

The film opens simply by following Fonda as he goes about his day-to-day business. He plays music, he discusses with his wife how to pay the bills, and they talk about their rowdy boys. Like most Hitchcock films, everything starts out with you wondering how something so idyllic can get fouled up.

It happens when Fonda goes to the insurance office. His wife---future-Psycho star, Vera Miles---needs some dental work and they can't afford it at the present time. Fonda decides to see if they can borrow against her life insurance policy. When he speaks with the teller, though, she's noticeably reticent.



To buy herself time, she tells Fonda she's going back to talk to someone about the policy. When she goes over to one of her coworkers, she asks if Fonda looks like the guy who held up their offices some time ago. The two women get some more opinions and everyone is in agreement that Fonda is the robber.

They call the police and the cops go and sit on Fonda's house until he comes home. When he arrives, they stop him at the door and ask him if he'd mind coming down to the station with them.

Fonda knows he hasn't done anything illegal, so what does he care? He just wants to make sure he'll be able to tell his wife where he is. He's not thinking about being unable to prove his innocence when all of the evidence points directly at him.

At the station, he's grilled about his finances. He doesn't feel he has anything to hide, so he answers freely, telling them about his and his wife's occasional difficulties making ends meet, and this serves as motive for robbery. The cops drive Fonda around to the places that have been robbed and have him walk into the store for the clerks to identify.



I think these scenes with the police near the beginning are the best of the film. I just feel so bad for Fonda, jumping through these hoops in what is almost Kafkaesque. He has no idea why he's been arrested, he has no idea why the police are making him do this, he's just clueless, and yet he's jumping through all of the hoops just like he's been told.

Back at the station, the most incriminating piece of evidence comes when he's confronted with a letter written by the hold-up man. Evidently, when he held up the insurance office, he slid a note to the teller that read as follows:

"This is a gun I have pointing at you. Be quiet and you will not be hurt. Give me the money from the cash drawer."

To compare handwriting, Fonda is asked to write the letter twice. The second time, his nerves got to him, and he accidentally wrote "draw" instead of "drawer." Well, tough shit for him, that's the exact same mistake the robber made on his note.



When the cops realize this, it convinces them that Fonda is their man. Despite his complete innocence, proving your innocence is possibly the hardest thing to do.

Next, Fonda is forced to stand in a lineup for the two women from the insurance office.



The two women are obviously unclear on the identity of the robber, but because they remember what Fonda looks like, when they see him in the lineup, they point him out with ease.

He's then booked, printed, and put in a holding cell, where he has to wait until he's arraigned the following morning.

The sequence that follows, with its surrealistic camerawork and arresting editing, is probably the most famous in the film, and it reflects Hitchcock's own fear of being stuck in a cell, obviously calling to mind those terrifying five minutes as a child.

When Fonda sees his family the next morning in the courtroom, he's relieved beyond words. However, his jubilation lasts all of ten seconds, because reality comes crashing down again when he's informed by his lawyer that he's being remanded until his bail is put up. At the thought of spending the time between the arraignment and the trial in a cell, Fonda is almost beside himself.



The trip to the county jail back to his cell is the worst walk of his life, but since he was due for a little luck, as soon as he arrives to his cell, he's informed that his bail has been put up and he's free to go.

Fun little bit of trivia: When he's being put back into his cell, one of the real inmates yells out, "What'd they get you for, Henry?"

Either he didn't know they were shooting a movie or he just wanted to be heard on camera. Whatever the case may have been, I always find it hilarious

Once released, Fonda hugs his wife, goes home, and spends time with his kids. Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne made the point in a documentary on the film that the scene where Fonda is in his room having just gotten home from jail, and he's talking to his son, telling him how he "never realized how much [his] boys meant to [him]" until that moment, is arguably the most sentimental in the entire Hitchcock canon, and I would have to agree with that. Hitchcock obviously had emotionality, but this scene is flat-out gushy.

It works, though, and Osborne makes the assertion that it's Fonda's presence and Fonda's acting ability from which the scene came out, and with my considering Fonda one of the all-time greats, I once again agree with Mr. TCM.

After taking stock of his life having just come from imprisonment and an arraignment, Fonda and Miles get busy hiring a defense attorney and building a case. They hire Anthony Quayle, who tells the two of them to try to come up with alibis for the two dates on which the prosecuting is resting their case.



On one of the dates, they're certain they were at a vacation resort. They head out and speak to the owners, an old husband-and-wife, and they vaguely remember playing cards with them and some of the other guests. The wife gets the register and they get two of the guests' names. However, when they go to their places of residence, they learn one moved---and died---and the other is also dead.



They're starting to get the feeling like the cards are stacked against them, and despite his innocence, it's looking like Fonda's going to be going to jail.

Unfortunately, it's at this point the movie loses considerable steam. Because Hitchcock was telling the true story of Balestrero, he refused to "Hollywoodize" it and make it into a fiction story. He just put the facts on film, and part of the story is how Balestrero's wife suffered a nervous breakdown and spent time in a mental institution during her husband's trial. She felt guilty and was certain her husband was going to go to jail, and it just proved too much for her.

The Wrong Man as a film has Henry Fonda as the star, and it's his predicament that is and should be the focus, yet when the film reaches this point in the narrative, Hitchcock switches focus from Fonda and his legal troubles to Fonda and Miles' struggle with Miles' mental deterioration, and it makes for considerably less compelling viewing.

Hitchcock himself expressed regret that he had to tell that part of the story, but the problem was that he thought he had to tell that part of the story. With the nature of film allowing the filmmaker to do whatever he/she wishes in the interest of good cinema, Hitchcock had the opportunity to tell the story in whichever manner he wanted, and, in this instance, the master chose poorly IMO.

The scenes in court are decent, but certainly nowhere near as good as Hitchcock's underrated courtroom drama with Gregory Peck, The Paradine Case. Still, the scenes in court and Fonda's ultimate acquittal do keep the film from spiraling out of control into pure garbage.

With all of the robberies, store clerks in the neighborhood were taking a more vigilant approach to safety, so on the night the real robber decides to go back into action, he's overpowered by two clerks and taken into custody, where the police identify him as the true culprit, meaning Fonda is cleared.



I really love this shot. As the real robber is being taken into police custody, he walks past the wrong man, the man who had been on the hook for the crimes he'd committed.

Even better than this shot, though, was a preceding shot of the two tellers from the insurance office, who, after making a[nother] positive identification of the robber, enter the hallway and see Fonda, the man they'd initially identified. They both stop short, and the look on each woman's face is priceless.

Now cleared, Fonda goes to collect his wife. She isn't well, yet, and isn't ready to come home, but the title that appears at the end of the film tells us that, two years later, she'd return home to her family, completely well.

The title closes with a terrifically affecting line:

"What happened seems like a nightmare to them. . .but it did happen."

As opposed to Monsieur Truffaut, who reviewed the film in 1956, saying it was probably Hitchcock's best film up to that point, I think this is far from Hitchcock's best, and I feel he botched the telling of this story considerably, but the familiar wrong man angle is still powerful here in the hands of the Master of Suspense and Henry Fonda is the perfect actor for us to identify with.

Definitely worth seeing.

[Bullitt68]

The legendary director John Huston took the legendary story Moby Dick and adapted it to film in 1956. In the spirit of his earlier classic, the previously-discussed The African Queen, Huston created another thrilling adventure on the seas, IMO the definitive film version of Moby Dick.

In all of literature---really, in all of storytelling---there are few characters more famous than the psychotic Captain Ahab, hellbent on vengeance on "the white whale," the whale that took his leg and his soul. For this famous character, Huston cast Gregory Peck, and he turned in what I consider to be a powerhouse performance. However, much like Spencer Tracy in the previously-discussed 1941 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, critics and audiences weren't ready to accept Peck as this psychotic character, and even Peck felt he was being poorly cast and he forever remained uncomfortable with his performance.

Why, I have no idea, because I think he was a fantastic casting choice and I think he performed admirably. He had the forceful presence and the forceful delivery needed for this character, and he pulled it off brilliantly, becoming madder and madder as he got closer and closer to Moby Dick.

The story isn't the Captain Ahab show, though. The film begins by following Richard Basehart as he arrives in a bar in Massachusetts. There, he meets the numerous whalers that will soon be his shipmates, including Harry Andrews, one of Peck's top men and the man that officially welcomes Basehart.

Before they head out on their voyage, they attend church in the morning. This being a whaling town and all, the church is far from your typical church. Rather than stand on a pulpit, the priest stands at the bow of a ship.



Oh, and by the way: The priest is none other than Orson Welles.

After speaking of

Jonah

Jonah

, Welles' service ends and we move out to sea, where Basehart and his newest friend---Friedrich von Ledebur, playing a savage cannibal named Queequeg---become accustomed to life on the whaling ship.

For several days, however, Peck doesn't introduce himself. The only sign of his being on the ship is at night, when he walks around above the sleeping quarters, the sound of his footstep alternating with the sound of the replacement ivory leg thumping the wooden deck easily heard.

Finally, when they're cleaning the deck one day, the men all look up and see, staring down at them, the infamous Captain Ahab.



The costume design and the make-up are both great, and Peck is as menacing as he'd ever be. Huston's screenplay preserves the style of dialogue present in the book, and while some actors probably would've made it sound stupid, listening to Peck speak Ahab's lines fully illuminates the sincerity of his convictions. Peck makes for a very intimidating presence, but the intimidation doesn't keep the crew from all having the utmost respect for their captain, and when Peck asks for their promise to go with him wherever their journey may take them, they give him their promise with no hesitation.

While they're out there to kill as many whales as they can for oil, Peck's first mate, Leo Genn, learns later that killing whales for oil is merely killing time to Peck. His real mission---his only mission---is to hunt and kill Moby Dick. He informs his men that he'll give a reward to the man who spots for him the white whale.

There are several scenes devoted to the men performing their job, capturing and killing whales for oil. However, the real story is the hunt for Moby Dick, so the film really picks up steam when the men spot an approaching ship.

The captain of the ship comes aboard, and with an ivory-replaced limb himself, he discusses with his fellow captain his and his men's encounter with a "snowy white" whale "scarred like Jerusalem's hills."



Peck wasn't really paying attention to this blowhard, but you can believe he's got his full attention now. Peck asks where he was last seen, and when it's confirmed that the chart he has of Moby Dick's travels is correct, he tells his men to leave their kills in the water and to come back aboard, that they're heading out after Moby Dick.

When they arrive at the spot where Peck is expecting the whale, the wind dies down and the waters become calm. For more than a week, the ship just floats, all life seeming to be at a standstill outside. Aboard the ship, Queequeg is looking into his future and believes he can see his own death.

He asks that the ship's carpenter begin making his coffin. He then goes into this Zen state, and while the men are trying to see if he's really a zombie, they hear the, "There she blows!" that signals the presence of the white whale.

This, of course, has Peck foaming at the mouth. He orders everyone into the boats and they head out after him. He goes underwater and they lose him. As the boats float, everyone and everything silent, waiting for the reappearance of the massive beast, the tension is palpable.



The sound design is wonderful in this and a similar sequence later. Also, Huston's montage editing is great. Several montages make-up earlier portions of the film, and here, as we hear nothing but the ships floating in the water and the sounds of the circling birds above the ships, Huston alternates between close-ups of the shipmates, all of whom are swiveling their heads around, trying to anticipate from where he'll rise.

Finally, the great beast, to quote one George Costanza, appears before them. Unfortunately, their first attempt on Moby Dick is a failure. Peck isn't deterred in the least, though. He and his men return to the ship and continue after him.

While on their hunt, they are met by a ship named "Rachel," the captain of which asks Peck's cooperation in hunting the whale, who recently killed his son. Fearing the loss of valuable time and losing the trail, Peck refuses and orders his men forward.

His apparently all-consuming desire for revenge has now truly consumed him, and his madness is more evident than ever. When they again cross paths with Moby Dick, Peck is ready for the ultimate showdown, a fight to the death. It's either him or the whale.

Now, of course, since this film was made in 1956, the sequences where they battle the whale look very lame by today's standards. Because of Peck's powerful performance and the energy of the drama, however, it doesn't hinder the film, at least it doesn't for me. I'm always thoroughly engrossed in the film, regardless of the crappy effects. When the whale emerges and Peck yells, "He rises!" and the music swells and the action kicks off, I can't help but experience a spike in adrenaline. It's great.

Staying true to the novel, Peck is overcome by the whale. Stabbing the whale repeatedly with harpoons, Peck eventually climbs onto the whale and stabs him over and over, goes underwater with him only to come up again, get some air, and return to stabbing him, desperately trying to kill the big beast.



Eventually, the men watch as Moby Dick comes up with Peck now lifeless. With the way the whale is moving, though, his swimming is making Peck's lifeless arm move in a way that resembles his calling them after him, and, inspired by the sight, the men charge after Moby Dick and their dead captain.

Sadly, the great beast overcomes the entire crew, and, as prophecized at the beginning of the film, Peck would "go to his grave, but he [would] rise again, and beckon, and all save one [would] follow."

The one that survives is our narrator, Richard Basehart, who finds the coffin Queequeg had made for himself, on top of which he floats until he sees ahead the Rachel.

I really find this film to be quite underrated. By no means is it a masterpiece worthy of placement among the greatest films ever made, but it's still a very exciting adventure story and an adaptation that does the classic tale justice. Despite not giving himself the credit he deserved, Gregory Peck did a fantastic job as Captain Ahab and John Huston's considerable filmmaking prowess elevated the quality level of this film to the height it enjoys.

If you haven't seen this film, I think you'd enjoy it. Once you get past the dated effects, I think the story and Peck's quest for vengeance will take you away and you'll enjoy the journey.

[Bullitt68]

This week is a fun one for me since I get to talk about the mother of all movie soap operas. Small-town gossip, mother/daughter quarrels, out-of-wedlock pregnancy,

Oedipal

Oedipus_complex

issues, incest, rape, abortion. . .all in 1957.

That's right. The Leave it to Beaver era had one of the most controversial stories ever adapted to film, and the result isn't just an exercise in envelope pushing. Peyton Place is a well-written, well-acted, beautifully-shot film, fully deserving of its nine Oscar nominations.

Banned in some states, Peyton Place was considered by the ultra-conservatives to be the book responsible for robbing children of their innocence. The idea of bringing it to the silver screen seemed like career suicide, but hotshot producer Jerry Wald had experience in dealing with tawdry subject matter. The man responsible for bringing such films to the screen as Johnny Belinda, which centers around Jane Wyman as a deaf/mute who is raped; The Glass Menagerie, the first of many screen adaptations of the Tennessee Williams play; and the previously-discussed From Here to Eternity, another steamy literary adaptation, Wald was ready to fight tooth-and-nail to preserve the integrity of Peyton Place and bring the great, albeit controversial, story to the screen the way it deserved to be told.

His first task: Convince Lana Turner to star. Famous as the Queen of MGM through the 1940s, by 1957, the 36-year-old Turner was no longer playing the blond bombshell roles that won her fame, and taking the role of a conservative mother would be like admitting that time in her acting career was over. Wald knew she was his star, though, and he managed to convince her, and for her work in the film, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination and won legitimacy as a solid actress in the eyes of the film community.

In one scene in the film, Turner describes Peyton Place to Lee Philips.

"In Peyton Place, two people talking is a conspiracy, a meeting is an assignation, and getting to know one another is a scandal."

The town we see in the opening credits, though, is very different. The town we see seems idyllic, presented to us in a montage of gorgeousness, of beautiful landscapes and glorious cinematographic compositions.

We meet the residents of Peyton Place by first meeting the main family, mother Lana Turner and daughter Diane Varsi.

A senior at Peyton Place about to graduate, Varsi's class is presenting their teacher, Mildred Dunnock, with a present as congratulations for her forthcoming assignment to Peyton Place principal. As the students find out soon enough, the forthcoming assignment isn't forthcoming at all. It seems Peyton Place high school has sought an outsider, a younger, more progressive Lee Philips, who ultimately figures significantly in the developing story.

After school, Varsi and her best friend, Hope Lange, go to Turner's dress shop, where some of their classmates are looking for dresses for the upcoming graduation dance. Turner tells Varsi that she objects to one of the girls in particular, Terry Moore, who has a "reputation," meaning she's the town slut. Even though she actually has a very sweet relationship with Barry Coe, the town only sees what they want to see and gossip doesn't have to worry about that pesky thing known as the truth.

Turner doesn't want Varsi inviting Moore to her birthday party, but Varsi knows that if she doesn't invite the popular Moore, that soon enough, none of the popular kids from her class will come. Sick of her mother being so overprotective, she begs her mother to allow her to live a life outside of a test tube, as she accuses her mother of living, and let her have some fun.

Turner doesn't want a fight, so she goes out to the movies alone and lets her daughter have her birthday party in private. After the movies, killing time in a small diner, Turner meets Philips for the first time.



Turner is a widow, her husband having died when Varsi was only two years old, and ever since, she's lived a very sheltered life, avoiding the dating scene and living only for her dress shop and her daughter, so even though Philips is interested, Turner gives him some cold treatment.

She returns home, figuring her daughter's party is in the wind-down phase, only much to her surprise, she returns home to find the lights turned down, teen couples "necking," as the screenplay likes to call it, so she turns on the lights, only to see her daughter kissing the popular boy during a playful game.



She kicks everybody out and her and Varsi get into it. Turner is trying so hard to keep her daughter away from even the most minor scandal that she could get herself into, but all of her efforts are only further alienating her daughter, who is becoming increasingly incensed by her mother.

This being a two and a half hour adaptation of a considerably-sized novel, there are, of course, multiple story threads running through this film. Along with the family drama in the Turner/Varsi house, there's also a family drama involving Hope Lange and her abusive, alcoholic stepfather, played by Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy. The beginning of the film saw Lange's older brother leaving home to get away from Kennedy, and now, Kennedy has been focusing his attentions on Lange.

One day, when Varsi stops by to pick up Lange for church, she happens to be there just in time to break up a violent family scuffle.



The tensions between Lange and Kennedy have been escalating for the entire film, and with this explosion, we know it's only a matter of time before something really bad happens.

It's not to happen yet, however. In the meantime, Varsi, against her mother's wishes, is spending a lot of time with a shy, repressed neighborhood boy.



Russ Tamblyn plays the character Norman, who, in the book, had a much more Freudian relationship with his mother than comes across in the film. Still, though, the repression and the Oedipal overtones are easily discernible, and Varsi spends a considerable amount of time trying to pry Tamblyn out of the emotional hole his mother has buried him in.

They spend time together at the graduation dance, where a number of storylines come together. Turner and Philips are there chaperoning the dance together, and they share a dance together; Lange and her boyfriend, David Nelson, enjoy the night together and talk about their future; Moore confronts Coe about how fed up she is with the way he never stands up to his father; and then, after the dance, the most controversial storyline develops.

Once she says goodnight to Nelson, Lange goes inside her house, expecting to find everyone asleep. Unfortunately, she finds Kennedy, up, drunk, and, as it turns out, aroused.

There was a very disturbing sequence earlier in the film where he watched her put on her nylons, and here, looking at her all dressed up coming from the dance, his urges are too powerful to overcome, and he doesn't even want to overcome them. As a self-loathing bastard, Kennedy decides to treat himself, and he treats himself to his stepdaughter.



A struggle ensues, but the more powerful Kennedy overpowers his much smaller stepdaughter, and Lange suffers her stepfather's rape.

As I discussed in my reviews for A Streetcar Named Desire and The Man with the Golden Arm, the Hollywood

Production Code

Production_code

was being faced with considerable opposition by filmmakers in the 1950s, but they were confronted, in Peyton Place, with content the likes of which they'd yet to be confronted with.

The film is censored, obviously, but considering how strict the Production Code used to be and considering how salacious some of the material in Peyton Place is, Wald was able to get away with a hell of a lot, and this storyline with the rape of Hope Lange is no doubt the most controversial, and Wald was able to preserve the storyline, and screenwriter John Michael Hayes was able to get away with a lot by way of dialogue.

For me, the most disturbing line in the entire film comes when Kennedy has Lange backed up against her bedpost, and he says to her, in the role of her father and thinking of what he's about to do to her, "About time I started teaching you something."

Very creepy character, and Kennedy's performance makes him all the creepier.

After her horrible night, Lange just goes about her day-to-day business trying her best to keep up appearances. She doesn't tell anybody about what happened, and she accepts her high school diploma just like everything is all right.

Everything, of course, is far from all right, and Lange is forced to allow the real world back in when she goes to Lloyd Nolan, the town doctor, and is informed of her pregnancy.

Nolan obviously asks who the father is, but Lange refuses to tell him at first. She is unable to hold out for very long, though, and she eventually breaks down and, between anguished cries, reveals the father as being her own father.

Hearing this, Nolan makes his way out to Lange's to pay a visit to Kennedy.



This is a great scene, mainly because Nolan is acting on Lange's behalf while there was no one else to do so. He gets Kennedy to sign a confession, admitting to what he did, by threatening to call every father in Peyton Place, and once he has his signature, blackmails Kennedy by threatening to turn it over to the police unless he gets the hell out of Peyton Place.

The next time Lange and Kennedy cross paths, Kennedy chases her into the woods in a scene that calls to mind the infamous attempted rape of Mae Marsh in a film even more controversial than Peyton Place, the infamous The Birth of a Nation.

While she successfully escaped Kennedy, Lange fell down violently in her adrenaline-fueled evasion, and she suffers a miscarriage. Not wanting to add scandal to the mix, Nolan falsifies his records, documenting the operation as an appendectomy.

[Bullitt68]

With all of this drama going on with Lange's storyline, there's more drama in the Turner/Varsi struggle, too, for them as individual women as well as mother and daughter, and it all culminates with a tragic merging of storylines.

First, Turner and Philips' relationship is developing at considerable speed, much too fast for Turner. The scene where Philips professes his love to her and tells her that the way she's living her life is nothing short of a self-imposed prison sentence is not only Philips' best acting scene, it's also Turner's, likely the scene that got her the Oscar nomination for that year's Best Actress Oscar.

Philips wants desperately for Turner to accept and return his love, but she's not in the right emotional place, so Philips is forced to settle for telling Turner that, if she ever changes her mind, his offer will always be on the table.

Meanwhile, during an afternoon with Tamblyn, Varsi and he go for a swim in the lake. Coe and Moore happen to be swimming in the same lake, only they're not just swimming. Spotting the two of them in the water naked, one of the town's biggest gossips mistakes them for Varsi and Tamblyn, and when confronted with this misinformation by her mother that night, Varsi has simply had enough of her mother's accusations and chastisements.



A huge fight erupts wherein Turner reveals to her daughter the truth of her relationship with her "husband." I put that in quotes because, as it turns out, he was no such thing. Turner happened to be the man's mistress, and when he impregnated her, she lived with him until he died, at which point she returned to her hometown in Peyton Place and started lying and building around her---and later, her daughter---the protective scandal-proof bubble from which Varsi is desperately trying to escape.

Being confronted with the fact that she was an accident and that her father was little more than a sperm donor, Varsi storms upstairs. Sadly, what she finds upstairs is much, much worse.

Lange's mother happened to be in the house when Kennedy was confronted by Nolan, and she heard everything about his raping her daughter. Later, when she went to her daughter in the hospital and learned of her losing her stepfather's child, it was just too much for her, and Field commits suicide.

Running away from her mother, Varsi happens to find Field's body, and all of these storylines come crashing together in devastating fashion.



Varsi goes into a state of shock for the next few days, and when she recovers, she tells her mother bluntly that she is sick of Peyton Place, that she's leaving and never wants to see Peyton Place---or Turner---ever again.

The film is more than halfway over at this point, but I consider this the end of the first portion of the film. If you were going to divide this film into parts, I think the best way is before Varsi leaves and after.

After she leaves, Turner tries desperately to get her daughter to return her calls, but to no avail. In Varsi's absence, Lange, still working for Turner at the dress shop, sort of becomes a daughter to Turner, who looks out for her in the absence of her mother, now dead, and her stepfather, who "abandoned" his family, according to Peyton Place gossip, but whose departure was really for a whole other reason.

However, it's at this point that the scumbag returns.



It's nearing Christmas and Lange and her little brother, Joey, are fiddling around with decorations when there's a knock at the door, and who else but Kennedy, on leave from the Navy, which he apparently joined following his being run out of town by Nolan, and eager to see his family again.

His return is a hilarious scene, the way he's all [drunkenly] laughing, acting like a happy father seeing his happy family, yet Lange tries to shut the door on him, and when he messes up Joey's hair, Joey shoves his hand away.

Lange, of course, tells him to get the hell out, but Kennedy has other plans. He asks Lange not to start a fight, that the two of them "got to know each other a little too well for that," and when he moves on her, the memory of the first rape overcomes Lange and she violently fights Kennedy off, hitting him over the head with a piece of firewood, and once he's knocked down, continues to hit him, over and over and over again until she's clobbered out every last drop of life.

What the Production Code allowed by way of subject matter, they also allowed by way of visual depiction. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a more immediately violent attack that predates this film. It obviously can't compete with a scene like Bear Jew batting practice from Inglourious Basterds or anything, but it's immediate, it's visceral, and it's intense.

Lange gets rid of the body, but her troubles aren't over. One day at work, some men from the Navy show up, asking Lange if she'd seen Kennedy, who appears to have deserted. When Turner asks what's going on, Lange breaks down and tells Turner about what happened.



I like this scene a lot because you can see, in Turner, her desire to do right by Lange. After having such a falling out with her own daughter and with how she's sort of been looking out for Lange, she's now being confronted with a choice: Does she keep it a secret in the best interest for Lange or does she call the police in the best interest for Lange?

She opts for the latter, which results in Lange being put on trial for murder.

Lange's being put on trial obviously gets the whole town talking, and when Varsi reads about it in New York, she decides, no matter what she vowed, she has to return to Peyton Place for her friend.

On the train back, she bumps into Tamblyn, who is also returning to Peyton Place while on leave from the army.



They reconnect on the train, each talking about their parental issues. Tamblyn confesses to Varsi that he joined the army with a sick sort of death wish, desperately wanting to get away from his mother and really get away from himself, but once confronted with war, he learned a whole new value for self-preservation and became a decorated soldier fighting his damnedest to stay alive.

Now returning home, he plans on trying to salvage some semblance of a relationship with his mother, while Varsi, on the other hand, isn't at all looking forward to running into her mother at the trial and actually plans on avoiding her as best as she can.

In her daughter's absence, Turner was forced to take a long, hard look at herself and her life, and she realized that she needed Philips more than she was willing to admit, and in the time Varsi has been away, she and Philips have developed a strong relationship.

In the drama surrounding the trial, Lange has no thoughts of saving herself at all. As soon as she's released on bail, she goes to Nolan's to beg that he not bring up Kennedy's rape and her subsequent pregnancy and miscarriage. This confounds Nolan, since it's pretty much guaranteed to justify self-defense, but since he is, after all, a Peyton Place resident, and he understands gossip and Lange's wish to keep her dignity, if not for her sake, than at least for Nelson's sake, her innocent and ignorant boyfriend.



Nolan doesn't want to keep silent, but he promises Lange that he won't say anything. This, of course, presents the defense with a really difficult case. The simple explanation of Lange being fearful of Kennedy's violent temper and defending herself in the face of an assault leaves the defense open to attack from many sides, not the least of which being Lange's criminal behavior, hiding the body as if she were a murderess.

When the prosecutor gets Lange on the stand, he brings this very point up, and it doesn't look good for Lange. The defense attempts to counter the prosecution's arguments by making the jury see what a violent bastard Kennedy was, and one way to do this is to have Varsi testify to having seen Kennedy beat Lange.



The direct examination is pretty straightforward and it looks a little better for Lange, but the prosecutor does a great job on the cross of poking as many holes in Varsi's testimony as possible, from the way she didn't actually see Kennedy attack Lange to discussing the semantics, getting Varsi to admit that what she is referring to as a "beating" consisted of merely a slap.

Nolan, sitting idly by as a spectator, decides, once it looks like Lange will surely be convicted, that he must break his promise for the sake of saving Lange from prison.



This is easily one of the strongest scenes in the film, if not the strongest. I don't deny the possibility of someone finding the scene contrived, but I, for one, find everything Nolan says to be genuine. I believe the speech in the context of the story, and the way he not only provides testimony that easily exonerates Lange but also indicts the residents of Peyton Place on charges of poor conduct, being unfriendly, being far from neighborly, engaging in harmful gossip, and having a general indifference regarding the people in a town of which they're all a part. Nolan delivers his speech well and provides a great summation of the film.

Lange is acquitted, and after having been moved by Nolan's words, rather than judge her and look at her scornfully, the town congratulates Lange, embracing her and supporting her.

Varsi also decides that it's time to end her fight with her mother, and the final scene sees Varsi and Tamblyn catching up with Turner and Philips just as they're entering the house.



When Peyton Place was released, it was very successful, and the film was well-received with a majority of critics and audiences. However, that's not to say the praise was unanimous. Many critics voiced their dissatisfaction with the adaptation, criticizing the film for not being able to preserve a lot of the more overt sexual themes, but looking at the film from the perspective of a 2009 viewer and putting it into a historical perspective, considering the strictness of the Production Code, I think Peyton Place deserves endless praise for preserving as much as it did.

Moreover, completely ignoring book-to-film comparisons and considering the controversy that surrounded it irrelevant, when judged as merely an individual cinematic creation, I think it's a considerable achievement. Director Mark Robson had A LOT of story he had to deal with, and in two and a half hours, nothing feels rushed, no stories are handled poorly. Every character has a chance to develop, every story has a chance to run its course, and the performances of the actors and the great screenplay aid in making Peyton Place the great film that it is.

If you haven't seen it, I'm going to recommend doing so. You might find it dated, the 1950s style melodrama might not be to your taste, but I think it's an important film from both a cinematic and a cultural perspective, and with how big the film was, I think it's one that deserves to be seen by audiences today.

[Bullitt68]

When I talked about Julius Caesar, I said how I felt it was the best Hollywood adaptation of a

William Shakespeare

William_Shakespeare

story ever made, and that, in the history of film, beyond just Hollywood, there would be only one Shakespeare adaptation I'd put above it.

That film is this week's film: Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. The film is an adaptation of my favorite of Shakespeare's plays,

Macbeth

Macbeth

, but the way Kurosawa chose to adapt the story separates this film from almost every other Shakespeare adaptation.

Most filmmakers, when they set out to adapt Shakespeare, think of it as a sin to alter, in any way, the words written by Shakespeare. Some stuff might be left out, but almost nothing is ever altered, because. . .well. . .it's Shakespeare. You can't mess with it.

Kurosawa, though, did what few filmmakers have ever attempted, and, most likely, what few filmmakers would be able to do, and that's preserve the heart of a Shakespeare story but create an original story out of it. Throne of Blood is Macbeth all the way, no one can dispute that, but it's Macbeth set in feudal Japan, and the screenplay is almost a wholly original creation. Nobody talks about not being "of woman born," nobody says, "out, damned spot," but so what? Kurosawa wasn't afraid to work from the framework of Shakespeare's story rather than shoot it line-for-line, and it's in that bold move where he almost ensures from the start his film's success.

Another thing that certainly didn't hurt the film's chances of coming out fairly decent is the fact that Kurosawa cast his friend and frequent collaborator, Toshirô Mifune, as Washizu, the Japanese Macbeth. I think Mifune's performance in I Live in Fear---which happens to be one of Kurosawa's most underrated films and, IMO, one of his best---is his career-best, but his performance here in Throne of Blood is probably his second best, and of all of the other actors in the film, Isuzu Yamada, the award-winning actress who plays the Lady Macbeth character, is right on his heels with her scene-stealing performance.

Throne of Blood opens faithfully to Macbeth, with the Japanese ruler being informed by a soldier that his enemy, Inui, with aid from the traitor Fujimaki, the commander of the North Garrison, has launched an attack on the five fortresses that surround Spider's Web Castle, which, itself, is protected by the eeire, maze-like Spider's Web Forest. The soldier informs the Emperor that Mifune and Akira Kubo, commanders of the first and second fortresses, respectively, are standing their ground and putting up a great fight, and soon after, another soldier comes to inform the Emperor that Mifune and Kubo have successfully fought off the attackers.

The Emperor wants Mifune and Kubo summoned to him in order to be congratulated personally, at which point we switch to see Mifune and Kubo making their way through the infamous Spiders' Web Forest. They're having trouble finding their way out, and as they're trying to figure their best route, they hear strange noises, eerie, high-pitched laughter, and, as the sounds get nearer, singing.

As opposed to the three witches and "fire burn, and caldron bubble," we get a creepy evil spirit who tells Mifune and Kubo their respective destinies.



He tells Mifune, Commander of the First Fortress, that he will be "from this day forward, Lord of the North Garrison," and, eventually, "Sovereign over Spider Web's Castle," and he tells Kubo, Commander of the Second Fortress, that he will be "henceforward, Commander of the First Fortress," and that he will one day have a son that will rule Spider's Web Castle.

The spirit soon disappears, and Mifune and Kubo, considerably spooked, make their way out of the forest and take a breather once the castle is in sight. Sitting, pondering, they ask one another what it would mean if the spirit was telling the truth.

Sure enough, once summoned by the Emperor, they are each presented with their new ranks, identical to those prophecized by the spirit in the forest. I love this scene because it starts off with a tracking shot of Mifune and Kubo walking towards the Emperor, serious expressions on their faces, playing the role of the soldiers, but when they leave, believing that, if the spirit was right about this, surely everything he said will eventually come true, their faces register shock and confusion. It's hilariously perfect.

From this scene, we jump forward a little bit to when Mifune and his wife are settled in at the North Garrison, Mifune now the Lord.



This is the scene where Yamada starts putting in Mifune's head that he must kill the Emperor and assume power. According to her logic, it's likely that Kubo will tell the Emperor of the evil spirit's prophecy, and if he does this, the Emperor will fear Mifune and have him killed. As a sort of preemptive strike, Mifune should then kill the Emperor and both fulfill the prophecy as well as save his life.

This scene features what is possibly Mifune's best acting scene in the film. He's forced to do a lot of nonverbal acting, a lot of listening and reacting, and he's damn good at it. He goes back-and-forth in emotions, and sometimes in a span of mere seconds, he's forced to hit a dozen emotions and convince us that innumerable different thoughts are flickering through his brain at once, and he succeeds. He comes to the terrifying conclusion that his wife is speaking the truth, that he must, indeed, kill the Emperor, and fate seems to agree, for he is immediately thereafter notified by one of his men that the Emperor is approaching.

Once inside the Garrison, the Emperor informs Mifune that he's only there to prepare for an attack on Inui as retaliation for his attempted takeover, and that, while he's there, Mifune will command the Emperor's vanguard and Kubo will watch over Spider's Web Castle.



This trust and confidence in Mifune shown by the Emperor assuages any fears Mifune had as a result of his wife. He tells her that the Emperor has shown that he has no ill will towards Mifune. Yamada, however, interprets his actions as favoring Kubo, whom he has placed in the safe and far-off castle, while Mifune has the dangerous task of commanding the vanguard.

She convinces Mifune that he must act and act now, and, just as Macbeth kills Duncan, Mifune kills the Emperor. He makes it look like the Emperor's guards were traitors who, under the traitorous Takashi Shimura's orders, killed their master, and Mifune, acting honorably, thus killed them.

Shimada and the Emperor's son, the Prince, escape the North Garrison and make their way to Kubo at Spider's Web Castle. Shimada tells of what Mifune did, but nobody believes him, and instead, he and the Prince are forced to flee under fire.

Mifune then arrives with his men from the North Garrison as well as the body of the Emperor, and Kubo tells Mifune that he will go to the Council and argue for Mifune's appointment as the new Emperor, and as a show of appreciation, Mifune intends on naming Kubo's son the heir to his throne, the reason for this being that he and his wife can't conceive.

At this point in the film, Yamada is now convincing Mifune that Kubo, despite his noble posturing, is really conspiring to have his son become Emperor sooner versus later, i.e., they're not going to wait around for Mifune to die of natural causes after a long and fruitful rule over Spider's Web Castle.

Mifune doesn't want to believe this, but when Yamada tells him that she's pregnant, he fears Kubo's reaction when he tells him he'll be reneging on his promise to appoint his son as his heir, and in his state of increasing paranoia, he orders both of them to be killed.

That night, there is a feast held where Kubo and his son were to be the guests of honor. They don't show up, and Mifune and his wife know why. Yamada is okay, keeping up appearances just fine, but Mifune is starting to lose it, and on the empty space where Kubo would be sitting had he been alive to attend the dinner, Mifune sees his ghost, and he flips out.



Kurosawa shoots ghosts so well. The evil spirit from the forest and Kubo's ghost here both have this look like they swallowed a really bright light bulb and they're being illuminated from the inside. It's a really peculiar effect that works wondrously in this film.

Anyway, Yamada, in an effort to save her husband embarrassment, tells the other guests that he's just drunk and she kindly asks that they retire for the night and allow their master to get some rest.

After everybody has left, Yamada tries to talk Mifune down. Once he's more calm, he is quickly given cause for alarm. One of his men arrives with Kubo's head, but he has the unfortunate news that Kubo's son escaped.



This is horrible news for Mifune and Yamada because it means that there is more than just a slight possibility of the evil spirit's prophecy coming true, that, now with revenge in his heart, Kubo's son will not rest until he avenges his father's murder.

Here, the film moves forward in time to when Yamada is giving birth. Mifune is nervous, awaiting word on his wife and his child's condition, and when one of the servants approaches, she gives him the sad news that the child was stillborn and that Yamada's health is questionable. She doesn't tell him then, but the problem with Yamada's health is nothing physical. Rather, she's suffered from a significant break from reality, regressing to the night of the Emperor's murder, where, after taking Mifune's bloody sword from him, she washed it of blood and did the same with her hands. It's here the famous "out, damned spot" scene surfaces, only Yamada never says those exact words. She just continuously tries washing her hands of imaginary blood with imaginary water.

Mifune is advised not to see her just yet, though, so before he learns of this, he's informed by one of his men that Inui is once again attempting a takeover, having seized the First Fortress, and with Shimada leading the vanguard---swearing vengeance for the Emperor---and Kubo's son leading the rest of the men---swearing his vengeance for his father---intends on taking Spider's Web Castle.



Facing this mounting pressure, Mifune hops on his horse and makes his way into Spider's Web Forest, demanding the evil spirit show himself and answer his questions about his destiny.

When the spirit shows himself, he informs Mifune that he will not be defeated in battle "until the very trees of Spider's Web Forest rise against Spider's Web Castle."

Knowing this to be impossible, Mifune returns to his castle with supreme confidence in victory, and he tells his men of the prophecy and ensures them of victory.



This is a very rousing scene courtesy of Mifune, and when his men pledge their allegiance to him, he goes into his castle and waits for Inui's men to make their move. When they do start their advance, Mifune is called to look out at Spider's Web Forest, where it appears that the trees are moving closer and closer to the castle.

Upon seeing this sight and realizing the deceptive nature of the evil spirit's prophecy, Mifune goes back onto the balcony, urging his men to remain firm and stand with him. However, fearing certain death and a takeover in the face of an about-to-be-fulfilled prophecy, they turn on their master, showering him with arrows, killing him.



The end of Mifune's rule signals the end of this film. Since the first time I saw this film, this has been my favorite of Kurosawa's, and behind the previously-discussed Rashomon, I think it's his best. Yes, that means it's better than Ikiru, better than The Seven Samurai, better than Yojimbo, yet for how amazing I think this film is, it seems that I'm in the minority of people who laud it so.

Very rarely is Throne of Blood listed as among Kuroawa's best, but I think that's exactly where it belongs. Brilliant cinematography, an excellent screenplay adapted from one of the all-time great stories ever told, great sound design and a really good music score, and top-notch performances from the always-solid Mifune and the scene-stealing Yamada elevate this film to a status that places it among the greatest films ever made.

Akira Kurosawa seems to be a popular filmmaker even with people who don't typically enjoy foreign films, so maybe you've already seen this---in which case I would hope you agree with me and my admiration for the film---but if you haven't, definitely check it out.

[Bullitt68]

Continuing with foreign films, I now enter the tortured yet brilliant mind of Ingmar Bergman, the man I consider to be, behind Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest filmmaker that has ever lived.

My interest in Bergman is comparatively new. It's only been a couple of years that I've been under his spell, but even in such a short time, I'm thoroughly convinced of his genius, both from a conceptual perspective, i.e. his ability to conceive such amazing stories, as well as from a technical perspective, i.e. his mastery of the cinematic form.

Bergman began his film career as a screenwriter before making his directorial debut in 1946. Crisis is far from a masterpiece, but it points to the subsequent masterpieces that Bergman would make.

His first great film, IMO, is Sawdust and Tinsel, which---since I never pass up an opportunity to cut into Fellini---completely trounces the subsequently-made and somewhat similar La Strada.

Following Sawdust and Tinsel, Bergman made Smiles of a Summer Night, which was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival and which won him an award for "Best Poetic Humor" at the same festival.

That was the film that really put him on the map, and it's the film that enabled him to make what many people still consider his ultimate masterwork: The Seventh Seal.

Before even beginning with my review, I'm going to say right now that I am not one of those people. While I consider The Seventh Seal one of the greatest films ever made, it's near the end of my top 100.

The film is very episodic---calling it a "road movie" might seem to trivialize it, yet that's really what it feels like---and while that, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a bad thing, the problem with this film is that not all of the episodes are very strong. At best, The Seventh Seal is a series of some of the most powerful sequences ever filmed combined with sequences with very lackluster writing and of little to no interest whatsoever.

My biggest problem, though, is the detached vantage point from which Bergman tells his story. I think it's important to mention that I consider Bergman the most autobiographical filmmaker that's ever lived, and even if you don't give him that distinction, I don't think it can be argued that, at the very least, he's one of them. His films come directly out of his consciousness, come right out of the issues he's dealing with at the time his pen hits the paper, and during the making of The Seventh Seal, Bergman was dealing with an intense fear of death and was experiencing a considerable spiritual and religious crisis.

He dealt with these themes in The Seventh Seal, and while he did so very cinematically and very intellectually and philosophically, he didn't do so very humanistically, and that's most evident in the characterization of Antonius Block, the knight played by Max von Sydow. There's no real emotion in the character; he doesn't seem to be flesh and blood to me. Bergman uses the character merely as a tool to get across his philosophical discussion, and while it's very engaging philosophical discussion, it hurts the film.

Comparing it to the second film I'll be discussing today, that being Wild Strawberries, the companion piece to The Seventh Seal, Bergman is dealing with the same themes but he's doing so in the form of an extremely human and emotional character, and that's where I think Wild Strawberries has the advantage over The Seventh Seal.

Nevertheless, as I said, The Seventh Seal is definitely among the greatest films ever made regardless of any alleged shortcomings. It tells the story of a 14th-Century Swedish knight, played by Max von Sydow, and his squire, played by frequent Bergman collaborator Gunnar Björnstrand, who have just returned home after a decade in the crusades. In the film's opening, von Sydow is confronted by Death, who informs him that he has "been at [his] side for a long time."

Operating on instinct, von Sydow, doing what just about every person would do in such a situation, struggles to find a way to prolong his life. He does so by challenging Death to a game of chess with the stipulation that, for as long as he is able to avoid checkmate, he is allowed to continue living.



Now, right in the opening first few minutes, you realize what a command Bergman has of his film. If you were to stop, detach yourself from the film, and consider the plot---a knight challenges Death to a game of chess for his life---it's kind of stupid and would probably elicit a few giggles. However, Bergman isn't intending this to be taken literally. Right from the start, he's operating allegorically, and even viewers who aren't accustomed to the more atypical narratives that are common in foreign and/or non-Hollywood films accept this plot and accept the way Bergman presents it. He grabs you in a matter of seconds and you know you're not going anywhere until you see what the hell happens.

von Sydow and Death exchange a few moves, then Death moves on and von Sydow and Björnstrand continue on their way. Björnstrand sees a man on the beach, apparently sleeping, and he asks for directions. He's startled when, upon closer inspection, he realizes the man is dead, having died of the plague, an enemy both von Sydow and Björnstrand have encountered in their travels and now realize is present in their hometown, as well.

At this point in the film, we briefly leave von Sydow and we're introduced to the other main characters, a husband and wife---played by Nils Poppe and Bibi Andersson, respectively---who have a small son and who travel the countryside performing as actors and circus performers.



Their relationship is very sweet. Poppe is a very naive, somewhat ignorant fool, but he has a good heart and Andersson loves him very much. As they prepare to go into town for a performance, von Sydow and Björnstrand have stopped off in a small church where a man is painting the

Dance of Death

Dance_of_Death

.

While Björnstrand stays behind and talks to the painter about how he laughs off any serious concern over death, von Sydow goes to confession, where he confides in the priest, telling of his fears, his sense of hopelessness and meaninglessness in existence, and his desire to transcend the meaningnlessness of his existence and, with the reprieve he has from death while engaged in his chess match, use it for a "meaningful deed."

He talks to the priest of how he has this great strategy to prolong the game against Death, but much to his consternation, he finds he has been confessing to Death, himself, and he has just revealed to him his strategy.



Beyond the aesthetic, specifically the masterful cinematography, the scene is a great example of one of the main themes Bergman is dealing with in the film, that being the inability to cheat, outsmart, or escape death.

Fleeing from the trickster, von Sydow gathers up Björnstrand and they head out once again.

Outside, they see a young girl, who is currently in the stocks and who is to be burned at the stake the next day for having "carnal knowledge of the Evil One."



This intrigues von Sydow, and he asks her if she's really seen the Devil. She's too exhausted to answer, though, so von Sydow and Björnstrand leave. They end up at what looks to be a deserted farm. While Björnstrand is inside looking for water, he hears noises from upstairs, noises from Bertil Anderberg, who has just robbed the farm. He sees a dead woman on the floor and steals a bracelet from around her wrist. He turns around and sees Gunnel Lindblom, playing a mute servant girl, standing in the doorway.

Anderberg finds her judgmental look humorous, asking her if she's surprised that he steals from the dead. He gets up and moves towards her, telling her not to scream, that no one will hear her, but when he goes to close the door, he sees Björnstrand standing behind it.



I think, in the whole film, Björnstrand is unquestionably the standout performer. One of the best foreign actors I've come across, Björnstrand gave Bergman several of the best performances he ever got out of his actors, and his performance here in The Seventh Seal is, IMO, his career-best.

Up to this point in the film, Björnstrand has been a very smart-alicky character, not taking anything very seriously, constantly joking around, but here, when he finds a despicable looter about to rape a helpless girl, he becomes very menacing and intimidating, and to make things worse for Anderberg, Björnstrand recognizes him as a sort of con artist who, ten years earlier, persuaded von Sydow to join the Crusades across "the Holy Land."

Björnstrand lets him know that if he ever crosses paths with him again, he'll "brand [his] face as [he] deserve[s]."

Really powerful scene featuring great acting from Björnstrand.

[Bullitt68]

Having saved her life, Björnstrand "asks" Lindblom if she'd be willing to come along as his housekeeper. I have "asks" in quotations because it's more of a demand, but the genuine sincerity in Björnstrand's actions make it a considerably nice demand

Now a threesome, von Sydow, Björnstrand, and Lindblom continue their journey, and it's here where the three of them finally join up with Poppe, Andersson, and the third actor in their little performance troupe.

The performance von Sydow, Björnstrand, and Linblom happen to find underway is eventually interrupted by a group of religious fanatics.



These people believe that the plague is a form of divine punishment, and they believe that suffering as Christ suffered---carrying wooden crosses, wearing crowns of thorns, being whipped---will serve as atonement for the sins for which they believe they're being punished.

This is far and away the best scene in the film and simply one of the most powerful sequences I've ever experienced in film. The harmony of sound, cinematography, and editing makes for a profoundly emotional scene, but the tension is quickly broken when Bergman inserts Åke Fridell, a goofy blacksmith, who learns that his wife has run off with one of the actors from the performance troupe. During this period, Bergman's style consisted of juxtaposing his most intense and serious sequences with light-hearted humor. Needless to say, the overall flow and the maintaining of tone improved drastically a few years later in his career when he grew out of this habit.

Inside a tavern, we see Poppe, and we know right away that he's going to be mistaken as the one who ran off with Fridell's wife, and sure enough, that's what happens.

Björnstrand's good friend Anderberg happens to be in the tavern, and for some reason, he feels like picking on Poppe. He tries to convince Fridell that he was the one who ran off with his wife, and he proceeds to humiliate Poppe by making him act like a fool in front of the entire tavern.

Poppe is saved, however, by Björnstrand's intervention. Finding Anderberg at the center of the mayhem, he tells him he's a man of his word, and as he promised earlier, he brands Anderberg, taking his knife and cutting Anderberg's face.

Another bad ass scene from Björnstrand.

This initiates the merging of these separate group of people's storylines. The merging is cemented in the next scene, where von Sydow, sitting in front of a chess table, apparently waiting for Death to show, notices Andersson and her son. He goes over, and when Poppe and Björnstrand (with Lindblom in tow) arrive, they all share some milk and strawberries.



This is perhaps the most important scene of the film if you're looking at it as being about von Sydow. As a man suffering from a lack of faith in the divine, von Sydow, after this encounter with this nice couple with a nice little boy, now has a great faith in people. The meaningful act he wanted to accomplish becomes making sure these people can continue to live happily together.

When he next meets Death, he realizes that he plans on not only taking von Sydow, but all of them, and thus the stakes of the game have been risen considerably.

A couple of really stupid scenes follow where Bergman indulges his propensity to insert humor into his serious studies, but thankfully, the stupidity is eventually broken up, and it's broken up by, IMO, the second most powerful scene in the film, which comes when von Sydow and Björnstrand once again stumble upon the girl who is to be burned at the stake.

The scene is so great because, aside from the visceral death scene and the hauntingly-beautiful cinematography, it's also possibly the most crystallized representation of the film's main theme, that being the fear of death and questioning the nature of death. Bergman, as I said, had been experiencing a fear of death from the perspective of a non-believer, who figured that, in the absence of a God, and thus, an absence of Heaven---really any form of an afterlife---then life becomes meaningless and death becomes not a passageway into another life but merely an extinguishing of existence.

As he watches the girl burn, von Sydow wonders what's next for her. Is she passing into some sort of afterlife? Björnstrand knows what von Sydow is going through, and he urges him to look into her eyes, to recognize her realization of nothingness being her only future, of passing into a state not of new spiritual existence but of nonexistence.



Really powerful stuff. Like I said: While the film is dragged down by some shitty scenes, the great scenes, man, they're really great.

The journey that von Sydow and Björnstrand had been on was to von Sydow's castle, where he last left his wife ten years earlier, and after witnessing the young girl's death, they continue on, the end of the film seeing them arrive, only to be immediately visited by Death.

von Sydow, confronted [literally] by death, in his last moments, questions if this is really the way it is, if there's really nothing after death but nothingness. Björnstrand is busy orating about there being no God and no afterlife, that, when confronted by death, one must only feel the triumph of having lived.

There's no real "resolution," as it were, since Bergman himself felt no resolution. He didn't have a definitive feeling one way or the other, so the end of The Seventh Seal merely presents these two warring beliefs, on the one hand, wanting desperately for there to be a God, and a merciful one, at that, and one who will break his silence and give us reassurance of his existence, while, on the other, believing in the futility of such thoughts and just trying to live life to the fullest before the inevitable end comes.

The final sequence of The Seventh Seal is perhaps the most memorable, as Poppe, Andersson, and their little boy are out on the countryside, a storm having just subsided, and, outside, Poppe looks out on the horizon and believes he sees Death leading his victims in the Dance of Death.



For all of the film's shortcomings, it's still a formidable achievement, and it still stands as one of the seminal films in the evolution of the art form. Countless filmmakers over the last five decades have looked to Bergman and looked to The Seventh Seal as inspiration, and along with the filmmakers of the

French New Wave

French_New_Wave

and

Italian Neorealism

Italian_neorealism

, Bergman joined the ranks of the best and most influential foreign filmmakers of the time.

[Bullitt68]

The Seventh Seal was released in Bergman's native Sweden in February of 1957. Less than six months later, Bergman was right back at work, beginning principal photography on what would be, up to this point in his career, his greatest film, and looking at his career now, I rank it behind only Persona and Shame.

Wild Strawberries is one of the most moving and emotional films I've ever seen, and this is thanks in no small part to the heartfelt performance from the legendary Victor Sjöström.

Sjöström is a titan in Swedish film history, having made his mark with some iconic silent features such as A Man There Was and The Phantom Carriage in Sweden and The Divine Woman and The Wind in Hollywood.

After the advent of sound, he sort of faded away. Bergman always really respected him and they formed a very meaningful friendship by the time Wild Strawberries had wrapped, but even before, he'd cast Sjöström in one of his early films, To Joy.

Seven years later, when Bergman needed a man of not only considerable age but of considerable talent, he went to the master director. Much later, Bergman looked back on Wild Strawberries and, in his book, Images, said of Sjöström's performance---truly one of the greatest of all-time---the following:

"What I had not grasped [until much later in his life] was that Victor Sjöström took my text, made it his own, invested it with his own experiences---his pain, his misanthropy, his brutality, sorrow, fear, loneliness, coldness, warmth, harshness, and ennui---borrowing my father's form, he occupied my soul and made it all his own. There wasn't even a crumb left over for me. He did this with the sovereign power and passion of a gargantuan personality. I had nothing to add, not even a sensible or irrational comment. Wild Strawberries was no longer my film. It was Victor Sjöström's."

I think this says it all. The way Raging Bull is a Martin Scorsese film all the way, expressing his deep connection with physical suffering, especially as a means of atonement, it comes alive through the performance of its lead actor, in this case, the intensely personal conjuring of visceral emotion from Robert De Niro, a man very different than the film's chief author and who saw the material very differently.

Here in Wild Strawberries---which is, IMO, far and away the most personal of all of Bergman's films, which all, as I mentioned, have a touch of the autobiographical---while it's Ingmar Bergman all the way, specifically an attempt on his part to better understand his father and come to terms with the man who, at this point in 1957, he had a very deep resentment, maybe even a hate, for, while at the same time again exploring the nature of life and death, it all hinges on the performance of its lead actor, and with the personal touch Sjöström gives the main character, with the emotional baggage he brings to the sad and lonely old Dr. Isak Borg, he gives Bergman's film another texture, gives it an extremely resonant quality because he allows Bergman's material to come to life through him, and it makes for a magical viewing experience if you ask me.

Wild Strawberries begins with Sjöström writing in his diary, telling us about how and why he has "withdrawn from nearly all so-called relations" with other people, and how that's made him very lonely in his old age.



He has a loyal maid, played by Jullan Kindahl, but with a wife that's been dead for decades, a son with whom he isn't very close, and a daughter-in-law who, despite having been living with him for a month, he still hasn't gotten to know or made even the smallest effort to bond, he's still very lonely.

His personal life, as we see very clearly and quickly, leaves much to be desired. His professional life, on the other hand, is as fruitful as ever. The opening of the film has him preparing to leave his home of Stockholm to travel to Lund to receive an honorary degree. Ingrid Thulin plays his daughter-in-law, and she takes the road trip with him, planning on seeing her husband---Sjöström's son---who happens to be played by the familiar Mr. Björnstrand and who she had left after a quarrel.

The night before he is to leave, however, he has a very unsettling nightmare, and the scene is one of the best dream sequences ever filmed. Sjöström is walking down a deserted street. He looks up at a clock but notices there are no hands on the clock. He then takes out his watch, but there are no hands on his watch, either. Later in the film, this will crop up in his real life when his mother shows him a watch his father owned that no longer has the hands on it. What this may mean symbolically, you can interpret for yourself. Noted author and film historian---not to mention Bergman biographer---

Peter Cowie

Peter_Cowie

, on the Criterion Collection commentary track, offers the theory that it symbolizes that time no longer exists as a way of measuring the progression of life and that it justifies the film jumping "from one era to the next."

I, myself, don't really buy that. I see it more as Bergman asking what does time matter if you feel you're already dead? Sjöström will later make mention of how he feels like he's dead yet still alive, sort of going through the motions of life while dead inside, and if this is the way he feels, what does he care about time, the advancement of his life? He feels he's already stopped living, but that's not to say he's content in his state of emotional numbness. When confronted with the nearing of the end of his life, he goes on not only this literal journey to Lund, but a mental, emotional, and spiritual journey of self-examination, essentially a last-ditch effort to become a better person.

His first reality check, as it were, is this opening nightmare, which culminates in his seeing a carriage---no doubt homage to Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage---crash and a coffin spilling out from it.



Upon closer inspection, Sjöström sees himself inside the coffin, and as his corpse is pulling him closer and closer---i.e., as death tries to get a firmer and firmer grip on him and pull him nearer and nearer to the end---he desperately struggles to wake himself up.

After the road trip has just gotten underway, Sjöström tries to talk to Thulin about his dream, but she doesn't particularly care to hear about it.



We notice very quickly her attitude towards Sjöström. I don't want to say she's bitchy because she has very good reason to be as stand-offish as she is, considering Sjöström, in the time preceding the film's opening, has been a rather cold and harsh man; nevertheless, she is very short with him while they're driving together.

We listen to their conversation, in which Sjöström and Thulin talk about a certain debt that Björnstrand owes his father, and Thulin tells Sjöström how unfair she thinks it is that he force the payment of a debt when his son has to work so hard to pay it off and Sjöström is already "filthy rich." Sjöström has never considered his son's feelings and he's certainly never considered his daughter-in-law's, and it's obvious he has given no thought to the considerable difficulty of paying off such a meaningless debt. He just keeps repeating to Thulin how "a promise is a promise" and how he knows his son respects that. Thulin concedes that he does, but that he also hates Sjöström.

The look on Sjöström's face when she tells him that his son hates him is what great acting is all about. My heart shatters every time I watch this exchange and see that expression on his face. You need not be a father nor a son. So long as you're a human being with an ounce of feeling in you, it'll wreck you, too.

Bergman lets us off the emotional hook, if you will, by cutting to a shot of the road as it flies by under the wheels of the car. When he returns us to the car, Sjöström asks Thulin, "What do you have against me?"

She doesn't hesitate in telling Sjöström how she feels, how she thinks he's "a selfish old man" who is "utterly ruthless" and who "never listen[s] to anyone" but himself. She says he hides it all beneath his "old-world manners and charm," but that beneath his "benevolent exterior [he's] as hard as nails."

This kind of oration by another which forces Sjöström to look at and inside himself is manifested in several subsequent scenes, including in another, prolonged dream sequence, and the dissection of his nature is what serves as the heart of the film.

The scene that follows is one of the most important in understanding our main character. It's also the scene that mirrors Bergman's own identical experience, the experience, in fact, that served as the jumping off point for the idea that would lead to Wild Strawberries.

Bergman was on his own little road trip when he decided to stop off at the house where his grandmother used to live. Looking at a house from his childhood, he was struck, as he said, with the idea of being able to "just walk up in a realistic way and open a door, and then you walk into your childhood, and then you open another door and come back to reality," and this is exactly what Sjöström experiences.

Thulin goes for a swim while Sjöström wanders through a wild strawberry patch, evoking the film's title. In Sweden, wild strawberries have a special significance, a nostalgic quality, and the film's literal translation, "the wild strawberry patch," makes the scene all the more significant, because, rather than a thing---wild strawberries---the title is a place---the wild strawberry patch---and, more specifically, a place of remembrance, and when Sjöström finds the wild strawberry patch outside of the house where he spent countless summers as a boy with his family, he journeys back five decades and watches, as an invisible 76-year-old spectator, his cousins during a sunny afternoon from his childhood.

His beautiful cousin, Sara---played by another returning actor from The Seventh Seal, Bibi Andersson---who he had an immense crush on as a young lad, runs up to pick strawberries for the young Sjöström.



The old Sjöström watches as his brother joins her and the two flirt. Andersson may not love Sjöström the way he loves her, but she does feel a connection to him just based on how much he loves her. Nonetheless, she is attracted to Sjöström's brother, and he watches as his two young relatives kiss and Andersson expresses her guilt of betraying him.

They run inside to eat, and while the family is dining, two of Sjöström's relatives---pesky little twin girls---start kidding Andersson about seeing her and Sjöström's brother kissing. Andersson, embarrassed, runs out of the kitchen, followed by the returning Gunnel Lindblom, in whom she confides.



This is a great scene and yet another example of Sjöström listening to someone in his life break down his personality, forcing him to examine himself. He goes outside and he is taken away from his nostalgic remembrances by a female voice addressing him. Once he snaps out of his daydream, he realizes he's looking at a girl who reminds him very much of Sara, and coincidentally, her name is even Sara.

Some people have criticized Bergman for having Bibi Andersson play the "past" Sara as well as the "modern" Sara and criticized the overtness of the message, but I think it works tremendously here, and I think, while Bergman definitely deserves credit, Sjöström and Andersson deserve just as much, if not more, for their performances.

The present day Andersson is with two male friends, one of whom is her boyfriend, and they're looking for a ride. They join Sjöström and Thulin on the road, making for some interesting contrast in personality.

They're not on the road for long---that is, we don't watch them drive together for very long---before an oncoming car nearly smashes into them, forcing Sjöström to swerve out of the way as the speeding car passes by, flipping over a little further down the road.

The passengers---an obnoxious, bickering husband and wife, played by Gunnar Sjöberg and Gunnel Broström, respectively---also pack into the car, but Thulin eventually pulls over and, interrupting their fighting, asks if they would leave for the sake of the younger passengers, in front of whom they don't really need to be fighting.

The significance of the scene and the introduction of those two characters is in the way Sjöström---who confesses to such a feeling later---feels they remind him of his and his dead wife's relationship, implying that they didn't have a very happy marriage.

They continue on their way before stopping off to have some lunch, at which point Sjöström informs everybody that he's going to pay a visit to his mother. Thulin joins him and the two call on the 96-year-old Mrs. Borg, a cold,

Havishamian

Miss_Havisham

character. Upon leaving, Sjöström and Thulin return to find Andersson in the car, waiting for her two male escorts to stop fighting over their conflicting opinions on God.

I know what you're thinking. God shows up again? What are the chances