My Rival Is A Baby Blue Racing Car: Viva Las Vegas (1964)

Showmanship is somewhat of an intangible thing in a contemporary frame of reference as the performer that is all encompassing in skills, that also happens to perform the socially ascribed understanding of masculinity is somewhat rare.  While Justin Timberlake is probably the only current example of this, it was in my mind a space only reserved for the likes of Fred Astaire and a few of the other classic crooners, although there could be a slighted case made for Tom Waits falling into this equation.  Although that would result in its own rambling digression.  I say this because my encounter with Viva Las Vegas led me to an appreciation for Elvis Presley as a showman, sure he is far from the world's best actor, but he delivers his lines with just enough Robert Mitchum inspired swagger to afford himself respect, particularly when placed within the larger scope of singing and dancing.  Elvis could certainly belt out some lyrics and he was assuredly poised in his jive dancing.  Indeed, the title song for Viva Las Vegas is most well known musically, but I am somewhat certain that I will no longer find myself capable of detaching it from swaying and swinging occurring within its reprise in the film.  However, this is only one element of the film as it too proves to be a perfect consideration of how the male gaze works in film, perhaps even sufficing as the pinnacle of such occurrences.  Where Laura Mulvey to have not engaged with a critique of Classic Hollywood through the scope of River of No Return, then this romp through Vegas showgirl bars, paired with a noted fascination on the figure of Ann-Margaret.  This problem acknowledged, much like River of No Return, Viva Las Vegas is an absolute cinematic feast, one whose vibrant variant of Technicolor allows for its showy locations to glimmer and sparkle in all their neon excess, never pulling back the gaudiness during any of its 86 minute run time.  Admittedly the film does meander around a bit, particularly during the closing race scenes, but in early sixties desire for a natural order, the film does return to the highly heteronormative in the most puritanical of senses.  Be warned though, it is damn near impossible to not begin tapping one's foot during this musical.

Viva Las Vegas centers on the exploits and engagements of Lucky Jackson (Elvis Presley) an aspiring sports car racer and full-time mechanic.  With his eye on a particularly high grade engine, Lucky gambles his money at a game of craps with success.  However, even this good fortune does not prove quite enough to attain the engine instantly, particularly since the owner has yet to receive any form of compensation from Lucky.  While in the works to attain his car, Lucky encounters Italian racing phenom Count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova) whose own desires to win cause him to actively bribe Lucky into being his car-based bodyguard during the race, agreeing to lose to him in the process.  The wild Jackson refuses flat out, instead suggesting that he can only play to win.  However, understanding the power and skill present within Mancini, he asks to look under his hood to see what he is working with in terms of machinery.  During this engagement a woman named Rusty Martin (Ann-Margaret) comes with the hopes of getting her car fixed, wherein her looks lead to another form of competition between Lucky and Mancini over her attraction and admiration.  While it is rather clear that Rusty takes a liking to Lucky over Mancini, the aristocratic Italian finds ways to uses his economic wealth to his advantage, all the while Lucky is forced to work in service jobs to attain the money necessary to run in the race, a task made all the more difficult when during an encounter with Rusty he is knocked into a pool.  While swimming out of the pool he loses his cash, only to have a precocious child throw it into a water drain.  Understanding that it will take almost guile alone to win Rusty from Mancini, Lucky navigates his way into being their server during a romantic date, at which point Lucky makes Mancini out to be a fool and promotes his status as ideal in the process.  Eventually Lucky does accrue the required money and races against Mancini and others winning the race and subsequently the hand of Rusty in the process, the two, one can assume, will go onto live their youth together as a mechanic and lifeguard respectively.

This movie is about male spaces, more so even than most war films or sports movies.  This, mind you, is coming from a musical.  However, I assure that this observation is well-grounded and extends to almost every portion of the film.  This is primarily evidenced in the cinematic male gaze at play in the film, which is first realized through the legs of Ann-Margaret's Rusty as she ventures into the shop in which both Mancini and Lucky work, here the two men previously fixated on the undercarriage of a car, extend the same curious gaze outward to the physical features of Rusty, playing on the object nature of her body, particularly that thing which facilitates mobility.  However, where the mobility is frozen by the gaze and Rusty cannot move without the help of the two men, both because her car is literally broken, but her legs are figuratively rusted as her name would suggest, until they allow her movement.  This shared desire for driving and objectifying Rusty allows for a certain layer of the homosocial bond to occur, wherein both Lucky and Mancini can also objectify Rusty's otherness, particularly in contrast to their own masculine game playing.  The otherness of Rusty allows the two to fight and claw, whilst ultimately blaming it on Rusty.  Indeed, one of the earliest entries into my blog was regarding the 1926 silent film The Flesh and the Devil wherein I argued that it might be the greatest example of the homosocial bond in cinema, however, Viva Las Vegas does give it quite a run for its money.  If this were not emphasis enough the interactions between Lucky and Rusty all revolve around his still hoping to attain a spot in a race and, subsequently victory, wherein Rusty devotes a musical number to her admitting a need to compete with a car.  If the metaphor of the male space were only a mere passing though, this song and Rusty's internalization of her equating to a vehicle, assure viewers that in the world of Lucky and Mancini both women and cars are things to be driven and used for sport and leisure, indeed, the closing moments of this film revolving around a wedding would be simple and outwardly normative, the addition of the race prior only makes it a thing to be won.  Marriage is a race for Lucky and Mancini with Rusty playing the part of the veritable trophy.

Key Scene:  While it was probably not the best musical number of the entire film, I was particularly keen on The Yellow Rose of Texas as it showed the true breadth of Presley's performing chops.

This film is problematic, but it is equally watchable and worth the time of cinephiles and films theorists alike.  Furthermore, it is quite easy to come by for a cheap price.

God Sent Priests, But The Devil Sent Jesters: Andrei Rublev (1969)

Andrei Tarkovsky is a name that will eventually pop up for people entering into art house cinema.  He is one of those directors that you hear whispers about but is often overshadowed by Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa when it comes to foreign director.  However, I can attest to this fact.  Once you view a Tarkovsky film, you forever change your understanding of cinema.  I discovered this when I first viewed Ivan's Childhood, remember it when watching Solaris, and rediscovered this after my recent viewing of his black and white masterpiece Andrei Rublev.  The film while extremely slow in its pacing offers a brilliant commentary for the patient viewer and is an expertly composed film that rivals both Bergman and Kurosawa in its style and delivery.  Bested by only Sergei Eisenstein, Tarkovsky is the preeminent Russian director and created a large catalog of excellent films, despite continual censorship on the part of then Soviet government. It is an unflinching look at a significant Russian historical figure that has more to say about Russia's over-glorified past than its iconic painter.  Through a montage of scathing absurdist imagery and poetic cinematography, Tarkovsky manages to recreate medieval Russia, while also making the film blatantly pertinent to the problems facing Soviet Russia in the 1960's.

As noted, the film has as much to do with artist and monk Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsin) as it does with the people and events surrounding him.  He is accompanied throughout most of the film by his fellow monks the disillusioned Kirill (Ivan Lapikov) and the quietly pensive Danil (Nikolai Grinko).  Together they set out on an artistic endeavor to paint at a cathedral, which leads them throughout the constantly changing landscape of Russia in the 1500's.  The film begins with the monks taking refuge in a bar, only to discover a jester denouncing the church and state, which leads to the jesters denunciation and subsequent death.  What follows is a series of vignettes set to chapters with titles like The Holiday and The Silence, which involve some combination of Andrei and the other monks witnessing religious persecution, druidic rituals and mass murder in the name of the state and church, leading to various reactions amongts the monks, most notably Andrei's moment of doubt in his other wise religiously stalwart ways.  A feud arises amongst the group in their decision on how to paint a version of The Last Judgementt for a chapel, Andrei fears that a rendition of such attrocities would only scare patrons in a time when death and fire were daily realities.  Kirill disagrees with Andrei and the fellow monks have a falling out.  The film then focuses on a Tartar attack of a village, which leads Andrei to commit murder in an attempt to protect a young women from rape, leading the confused monk to partake in a vow of silence.  Andrei continues his vow of silence, despite witnessing Kirill return to the monastery and beg forgiveness.  In fact, it is not until Andrei watches a young man pretend to know the secrets to his father's bell making process that he breaks his silence and tells the boy to continue making bells, while he continues to make icons.  In a masterful conclusion, the film pans around various images of Rublev's actual paintings to remind viewers that the importance is not the artist or his artistic ability, but instead what his images represented for a specific time and place, a rather pertinent stylistic choice for a director like Tarkovsky.

Image is key to Tarkovsky, it takes only viewing a scene from any of his films to realize this, however, it is particularly relevant to a film like Andrei Rublev, because it does, in fact, focus on the life of an artist.  Although debatable, the most visceral response an individual can have to a film comes through its visual elements.  It is how the single composition of a variety of things come together on a single frame of a moving picture that catches the visual senses and captures the viewer.  Sure music, editing and narrative are important additions...to almost every other director, but not Tarkovsky.  I would go so far as to say that in terms of filmmakers Tarkovsky is an impressionist.  It is a combination of seemingly arbitrary images together which create a cohesive idea, in this case the woes of political and religious oppression.  It is easy to see why this film bothered the Soviet government, it is scathingly anti-state government, yet to the untrained eye it seems like a set of illogical images (Think Luis Bunuel's The Milky Way in black and white).  What concerns those being rebelled against are not the obvious forms of rebellion, but those subtle enough to pass under the radar undetected.  Andrei Rublev is certainly one of these films and Tarkovsky's oeuvre proves to be the same as well.  For example, his desolate landscape and distancing shots in Ivan's Childhood reflect a commentary on the effects of war on youth and a loss of innocence, while the repetition of imagery and subtle inclusion of the absurd help to drive home the sci-fi simulacrum that is the world of Solaris.  Andrei Rublev is revolutionary both figuratively and literally and it is done so through the best way possible, subversively subtle.  Which when you think about it is perhaps the best way to describe Tarkovsky as a director.

This is one of the backbones of The Criterion Collection, and is in dire need of an upgrade.  With that being said, the outdated release by the company is still far superior to its rival companies and is well worth buying if you, like me, cannot wait for a blu-ray release.

Glass Objects, Objects Still Intact, Empty Glasses: Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Avant-garde film has never been so haunting, as it is in Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad.  This film seeps of the screen with its lavish excess, repetitive symmetry and oneiric shadow play.  The dialogue occurs as a narrative that simultaneously builds coherence while deteriorating in logic.  The film is experiential as opposed to methodical, emotional as opposed to rational and somehow dangerously walks the line between expressionist grandiosity and modernist minimalism.  It is a film like no other from beginning to end, the viewer is witnessing art as it flows and is left not to comprehend, but instead to contemplate.

While the films plot is incoherent and arguably nonexistent, it is apparent that the films main character, and man simply named X (Giorgio Albertazzi), desires to convince a woman A (Delphine Seyrig) that they both shared in a fleeting romance exactly one year ago at the estate of Marienbad.  However, the film is not simply showing his rekindling of their relationship, but more tragically, how memories of love and lust can become vague and in many instances harsh when left unattended.  The film repeats motifs of vanity, games of skill and physical silence all as methods to separate past tragedies with contemporary actuality.  The film ends in a moment of shadows as lights fade away noting that no matter how ardently a person strives to recreate the past or experience the present the end is inevitably the cold and existential nothingness of death.

I cannot sing the praises of this film enough! The film is expertly made and soundly paced.  Each panning shot, jump cut, removal of sound and repetition of dialogue enhances the delirious, dreary nature of the film.  It is not so much a film about fond memories as it is one of haunting nightmares.  The angular bushes, overbearing statues and incessant reflection of mirrors become things of disdain for the films characters and the viewers, because no amount of denial or disbelief allow either to escape from their own reflection, reminding them that by simply acknowledging the past they also accept is memories, both those that are grand and those that are terrifying.  It shows that in severe instances nostalgia is not only unhealthy, but also crippling.

I can say without a doubt that this is the best Blu-ray I have seen to date and I applaud Criterion for bringing this film to a wider audience.