Welcome back to the Dailies. Another few weeks, another few movies. Let’s begin by taking a quick look at a couple of films I watched since the last column, in a section of the Dailies I like to call “Trailerz”.
Trailerz
Stardust Memories (1980) – Dir: Woody Allen. Principles: Woody Allen, Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, Marie-Christine Barrault
Woody Allen’s tribute to a movie that was featured in the Trailerz from two columns ago, 8 ½, is a fine take on Fellini’s classic. It follows many of the same conventions, with a storyline about an unhappy director (Allen) struggling to put together a new film. As with most Allen films, he plays a neurotic, ever-worrying womanizer constantly both questioning and bemoaning his existence. The way Allen implements quick cuts to various talking heads his character encounters helps create a rich assortment of characters who are all fun in their own way, but the story falls flat and Stardust Memories lacks the heart of the Fellini film. In 8 ½, the director character (played by Marcello Mastroianni) is undergoing a complete and total meltdown, questioning his livelihood, his future, his friendships, and the loves in his life. In Stardust Memories, Allen’s character is solely concerned with love, but more specifically which of the many beautiful women in his life he wants to end up with. It’s “8 ½ lite”, and though Allen is certainly a gifted filmmaker (and he has said this is his favorite work), perhaps he aimed a bit high by trying to emulate such great source material. B-.
Bruno (2009) – Dir: Larry Charles. Principles: Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf Hammarsten, various people being duped by Cohen
Continuing his shtick of playing up a ridiculous character to ridiculous lengths and screwing with both celebrities and everyday dopes, Sacha Baron Cohen follows the highly successful Borat (2006) with this gem. I always thought that Bruno, Cohen’s overly gay character, provided the best skits on his HBO series, and this film is consistently and thoroughly hilarious. Whereas the Borat character allowed Cohen to examine America from the point of view of a naïve Kazakh, Bruno allows him to do the same from the eyes of an extremely flamboyant Austrian. He goes to Hollywood, attempts to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians, visits rural Alabama and goes hunting with some “sons of the soil”, and generally upsets and offends everyone he comes into contact with. Bruno is not a storyline-driven film, but the character’s charming and innocent idiocy, Cohen’s gift of making his subjects extremely uncomfortable, and the constant barrage of off-color jokes makes the film more than worthwhile. B+.
Feature Presentation
Army of Shadows (1969)
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Principle Actors: Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Christian Barbier, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Army of Shadows is a French film about the resistance movement that opposed the Nazi puppet state that controlled France in World War II. It can be called a “spy film”, but James Bond and other smooth-talking, well dressed secret agents are nowhere to be found. Army of Shadows takes a deep look at espionage and how missions are prepared, what’s at stake, and the toll on those participating.
The film’s director, Jean-Pierre Melville, does a fantastic job explaining the idea of espionage and showing just how delicate the nature of it is. Everything needs to be perfect and everyone involved needs to carry out their job perfectly. If anyone slips up, if the timing of the plan is off, or if the slightest thing goes wrong with the mission, the whole resistance movement is compromised. In Army of Shadows, the spies aren’t able to compensate for a botched job by shooting their way out of trouble. The Germans execute them.
Melville is able to articulate the incredible risk that the participants take for relatively small gain. One member of the resistance is tasked with bringing supplies to a colleague in Paris. He gets off his train with his suitcase to find a wall of Nazi inspectors checking people’s luggage. He manages to get past the first set of inspectors, but another group interrupts him and demands that he opens his suitcase. Inside is a simple radio that, unbeknownst to the Nazi officers, is needed by the French resistance in Paris. The guards accept his explanation and let him pass, but the idea that lives are at risk for such a menial task as transporting a radio is a facet of resistance and espionage that Melville displays wonderfully.
The portrayal of the Germans is not cartoonishly sadistic; they’re not crazed maniacs or one-dimensional evil killers. They’re simply omnipresent. The Germans are everywhere, and the members of the resistance are constantly trying to evade, trick and elude them. The Nazis don’t really have a human face in Army of Shadows. Melville is able to build them as a genuine threat because we know that they exist, and we know that they’ll capitalize if the spies make any kind of mistake.
Army of Shadows does contain a few caper scenes that liven up the film and provide some action. In one scene, three French spies dress as Germans and attempt to rescue a comrade who has been captured and tortured. In another, a member of the resistance is tasked with bring the movement’s chief architect to a rendezvous with a submarine so that he can secretly go to England. These scenes provide a nice balance to the film and show the spies doing some actual “spy stuff”.
But by and large, Army of Shadows presents espionage in a practical and human way. These missions are life and death for their participants, but they’re also more than that. The fate of the French resistance, and by extension, the French way of life, is at stake for those involved. Success is mandatory; it’s good against evil. Towards the beginning of the film, its main character, Philippe Gerbier (Ventura) and his associates are forced to kill an informant who sold Gerbier and the resistance out to the Germans. They bring him to a secret house that they rented and find that a family has rented the house next door, making shooting him or killing him by any non-silent method an impossibility. They gag him and strangle him, while one of the participants breaks down and weeps. Espionage and resistance are often necessary, but never glamorous or fun.
A-
John Lacey
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