The Knack To See White When It Is Black: The Tales Of Hoffman (1951)

I am constantly amazed by certain directors when each time I unpack a work of theirs for the first time I find myself captivated and moved in new ways, showing that their cinematic abilities transcend singular feats or ideas, able to appropriate various genres, stylistic choices and ideas into deeply moving and wholly encompassing films.  When I think of directors that this statement holds true for, although they are not given equal credit to Kubrick or the Welles, my mind immediately wanders to the work of Agnes Varda and Paul Thomas Anderson.  Each time I find one of their films anew, or sit down and earnestly revisit their works it is as engaging, if not more moving than the first time, and, fortunately, for the both of them there are still films in their respective oeuvres that have yet to be viewed.  I am adding the directing team of Powell and Pressburger to this list, because they could very well prove the dynamic duo that are in possession of two films in my top ten film discoveries of the last year when I compose such a list on Letterboxd in the upcoming months.  While quite familiar with them years ago, I have only started to chip away at much of their collective works in the past year, one being the absolutely perfect The Red Shoes.  However, it is not this film that moved me in a new cinematic way, but was instead A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) which helped me to understand new cinematic conventions and exactly how powerful a shift one can evoke simply by moving between color and black and white.  As such, stepping into their 1951 film The Tales of Hoffman was initially more of a checklist activity that happened to coincide with my month of musicals than an actual desire, thinking that it would not even come close to A Matter of Life and Death.  While this is true, because the former is traipsing around in top ten films of all time territory for me, The Tales of Hoffman is still an absolutely exception and realized work of art.  I found myself yelling expletives at the screen not out of disdain, but out of earnest confusion as to how such magic could be achieved and how even two directors could deliver such consistency for a two hour film.  This is the magic of the moviegoing experience so many speak of and wax poetic about in interviews and text.  This film was ahead of its time and frankly is still quite ahead of its time.  Nothing works on the visceral viewer quite like the lavish, lush landscapes of a Powell and Pressburger musical.  Nothing.

The Tales of Hoffman is a pseudo-omnibus film in that it is a collection of short narratives all centering around the literary figure of Hoffman (Robert Rounseville).  This man, a poet of sorts navigates the spaces of various tales as a poet and observer to some rather curious occurrences, the first taking place in the laboratory of scientist and engineer of sorts.  In this laboratory the scientist is noted for his ability to create automatons that replicate human movement and behavior, having particular success with the Olympia (Moira Sheerer) whose lifelike movements become a thing of longing for various persons.  Indeed, when donning a special pair of glasses the person looking at the various automatons, including Olympia come to realize that they replicate human behavior on far more than a marionette level.  The second story centers on the travels of Hoffman through Venice where he meats a sultry courtesan named Giulietta (Ludmilla Tchérina).  The bejeweled woman while incredibly attractive and clearly curious about Hoffman, becomes indifferent to his ways when she comes to understand him as nothing more than a trickster, emphasized by his attempts to fabricate various jewels out of colored candle wax.  The final and perhaps most evocative of the three stories centers on the relationship between Antonia Crespel (Ann Ayars) a sickly opera singer who simply wants to be with her partner who is once again Hoffman.  However, the love is made to be stifled by Antonia's father and stickler for formalities and class separation Spalanzi (Léonide Massine) thus making their relationship an impossibility.  These stories are, of course, all woven together by the narration of Hoffman who explains to those listening to, or rather attending, the ballet that the stories are all intended to represent aspects of a ballet dancer named Stella (Moira Sheerer) who is decidedly his muse.  Yet when, one of Hoffman's advisors and confidants explains that this is problematic, doubled by Stella's own refusal of his advances, Hoffman is left with nothing more to do than to sulk at a bar that fills with young patrons.

Meta.  It is a thing that I will admit to throwing around rather hap hazardously, if not outwardly ironically here on the blog, suggesting that films often take on a meta level that is, if anything, purely incidental.  In regards to The Tales of Hoffman, however, this is meta-narrative, meta-cinema and probably other forms of meta that I could not even begin to unpack.  Tales of Hoffman, is already setting itself up as an adaptation, borrowing form Jacques Offenbach's opera of the same name, however, it becomes fascinating when one considers that the story is about a group of people attending an opera, wherein Hoffman is the focus of the story, yet within the very focus of the story, it is Hoffman telling a further series of stories.  The viewer of this film is asked to watch a film about a group of people watching a play about a man telling stories.  That might be as deep a layer of metafiction as I have encountered and one would assume that such structures would be stacked in such a way as to cause the narrative to implode within itself.  Not in the world of Powell and Pressburger, however, this sort of narrative richness is their expertise and one becomes so aware of the sense of scale both in its grandness, emphasized during the Antonia sequence, when the two lovers are attempting to unite and an image of theatre seating is layered to appear as though it is celestial in composition, only to be double by a kaleidoscopic image of the scowling Spalanzi.  Yet the sense of grandiosity is not the real fascination here, as it is a thing that is often achieved to great ends within cinema.  The real curiosity her comes in the way of Powell and Pressburger devoting an equal level of attention to the most minor of spaces. Indeed, the already expansive narrative delves into the microscopic by allowing the etchings on the side of beer steins to take on their own dance number, moving into the space of art in such a simple way as to show and interconnectedness that New Age thinkers could only hope to express in their faux-intellecutal sermons.  Few films move through space in such a moving way, but even fewer do so with such exuberance.

Key Scene:  For all the real ballet going on in this film, the marionette sequence is absolutely stunning.

This film is sadly OOP and while I have been lucky enough to attain a Criterion disc copy, I would suggest finding a means with which to rent it as its price tag is steadily rising.

Ol' Man River, He Just Keeps Rollin' Along: Show Boat (1936)

Appropriation is a real tricky thing in popular culture.  While music did, for obvious reasons, lift heavily from African-American folk songs and performances the result has been highly rewarding and helped to cement the likes of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday the American collective memory.  Show Boat includes one of the most stirring musical compositions ever realized in Paul Robeson's version of "Ol' Man River," however, this is only a singular element within the larger narrative of appropriation.  Musical performances during this era, as well as decades earlier pulled quite gladly from minstrelsy and thus found no trouble performing numbers in blackface, even when there were characters within the narrative that also are clearly black themselves.  It is rare for me that the inclusion of a minstrel performance, particularly one with such intense racial elements manages to not make me hate the movie, even if its inclusion is momentary and decidedly arbitrary to the larger narrative.  However, as much as I adore Paul Robeson and even a few of the other musical numbers in this Hammerstein driven musical, it's use of minstrelsy, even if minor proves to reflect a larger issue within the narrative, one that both appropriates black culture and uses it as a stepping stone geographically to set up a narrative that focuses instead on struggles of white persons who simply want to be in love.  As showy and performative as the film may be, Show Boat manages to revert its possibilities for cinematic consideration of the layers of racial identity, by again, making race merely a part of the narrative which must be acknowledged, as opposed to being dealt with in an intense and inquisitive manner.  Employing some of the most prolific African-American actors of the time in Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniels it is amazing that TCM has not pushed it to the forefront on its screening times, but then again this is the same company that often edited out these very performances to placate audiences not wanting to confront a problematic past.  Show Boat is both a time capsule regarding the racial indifference in Classic Hollywood, as well as an enigma as to how a film could both concern itself with passing and also pass as something completely detached from racial considerations.

Show Boat is narratively set over a forty year span, beginning with the arrival of a boat based revue to a nondescript town on the Mississippi River.  The boat The Cotton Palace is known for a variety of plays, musical numbers and even comedic bits all intended to pull upon the dreary and uneventful lives of the persons existing in the spaces.  Of course, since the space is in the antebellum South, it is also occupied by African-American workers, most notably the Queenie (Hattie McDaniel) and her husband Joe (Paul Robeson) whose backbreaking work provides the livelihood of an otherwise transitory space.  The narrative is also troubled by issues of miscegenation when the leading lady is shown to be of mixed blood and a rumor that she is married to a man who is wholly white causes them to be suspect to breaking the law.  Although the couple is capable of tricking officials into believing that they are not involved in miscegenation, it does require that they step away from the show.  In this moment, aspiring actress and daughter of the river boat captain Magnolia Hawks (Irene Dunne) is able to take the stage, only in need of a new leading man to stand next to her.  In a stroke of pure luck a wandering debonair named Gaylord Ravendal (Allan Jones) serves the part his dashing looks and genuine adoration for Magnolia proving more than enough to make their acting work.  The two quickly hit it off and eventually marry, even having a child.  It is, however, during this time that the Hawks family discovers Gaylord's past as a gambler, even committing a murder although apparently in self-defense.  Becoming a point of frustration, Gaylord and Magnolia move away to Chicago, wherein they live for a considerable amount of time off of Gaylord's gambling winnings.  Tragically, however, Gaylord hits a series of bad luck and loses almost all of his finances.  Julie (Helen Morgan) the very woman who was charged with having mixed blood has managed to remain successful, although also a bit of a lush, still managing to revive Magnolia's career when her and Gaylord part.  In the closing moments of the film, when Magnolia seems content to live a somewhat tragic life, she attends the performance of her daughter, only to have Gaylord arrive and in a show of admiration their daughter asks them to sing a duet to closeout the film, followed all to problematically by Robeson's humming of "Ol' Man River" in the closing moments of the film.

As I noted Show Boat is a performance and should certainly be considered as such.  Indeed, the opening moments of the film have the camera panning into the stage of a play, complete with the title cards as part of the diegetic world, therefore, allowing the possibility that this version of Show Boat is also a metanarrative, or a series of performances within a performance.  This includes the staging of a play as part of the larger play, an occurrence that happens on multiple times.  Take for example the song between Gaylord and Magnolia called "I Have the Room Above Her," by its physical existence it should not serve as a division as in most any apartment setting, a man whaling at the top of his lungs would cause another to hear them and likely inquiring as to why they are singing, particularly if the song is about said person listening.  Yet, assuming Show Boat to exist within a theatrical staging it allows not only Gaylord to sing such a song, but for Magnolia to provide responding melodies completely detached from an awareness that he too is singing.  It is something essentially only possible within the metaperformance.  This would make the film wildly intriguing and worth embracing where this layered performance not also extended to include issues of racial performance as well.  Indeed, the actress playing Julie is white and to suggest her as a mulatto (a person mixed race) character implies a racial performance even if only in narrative.  It is blackface, in that it denies the role to a woman of color and is made all the more an absurd performance in contrast to the blackface number led by Irenne Dunne and a series of minstrel singers and dancers.  This is all in contrast to the staging the film, at least initially, within the rural South, wherein racial elements are at their highest intensity and rather openly confronted via Robeson's singing.  Indeed, while I would never knock what Robeson is doing in this moment, his stirring rendition reflecting the confusion and frustrations at play in race relations, it becomes exploitative in the larger frame of the narrative, one whose closing embraces forgiveness to a river boat gambler, while only marginally acknowledging the previous elements of race.

Key Scene:  "I'm sick of living and scared of dying."

This film is certainly of historical importance and Paul Robeson's singing is enough to be intrigued, but, honestly, you could just watch his section on YouTube and be all the better for it without having to sit through the remainder of this frustrating film.

Dirty, Stinkin, Slimy Gators!: The Alligator People (1959)

It is quite the challenge to make an engaging film without throwing away any concern whatsoever for giving the narrative any semblance of moral seriousness or weight.  Indeed, this has always proved particularly problematic when considering genre films who in their traditional sense negate any possibility of high brow criticism.  This is not to say that on various occasions the narrative elements of a genre film cannot transcend their low-culture status and become profound considerations of societal issues.  It is merely a matter of understanding that there is a very delicate line between being subtly condemning and belligerently on the nose.  For example, much of George A. Romero's early output focuses on these issues by merely making them a fact from the opening of the film, casting black men and women in lead roles, thus subverting the tradition and making a classic work in zombie horror in the process. However, most of the output is not this masterful, instead the attempts at commentaries on racial issues or class access become lost in a hopes that a crazy looking creature or beast will lull viewers into the nature of the spectacle.  Tragically this is very much the case for The Alligator People, a work whose special affects, albeit glaringly low-budget still manage to create a sense of dread and creepy ambience, aided almost entirely by its bayou setting, one whose shadows and general mugginess do extend beyond the screen.  Yet, given the storied and very troubled history of slavery and racism in these spaces the film finds no shame in exploiting these narratives to their fullest, without ever suggesting a means to undermine oppression or challenge the very issue with which it metaphorically situates its film.  Lon Chaney Jr., the other man of many faces, does his best to add a new layer to the film, occupying his bizarre mutant creature in a way to bring humanity to an otherwise monstrous figure, yet by the end of the film his association with the animalistic is so ingrained in viewers frame of reference that attempts to humanize him, or relate to the "hysterical" woman's narrative that situate the film become almost impossible.

Joyce Webster, and or Jane Marvin (Beverly Garland) is a woman who manages to hold down a rather respectable job as a nurse for her boss and doctor Erik Lorimer (Bruce Bennett), but as he shows another colleague, when given a particular sleep including drug, Joyce/Jane recalls events she experienced while traveling with her fiance Paul (Richard Crane).  During their travels Paul leaves their cart to answer a telegram, at which point Joyce/Jane loses track of him, only to discover that he has inexplicably gone missing.  Stepping of the train to iscover a crate of radioactive cobalt, Joyce/Jane meets Mannon (Lon Chaney Jr.) a servant for the Cypress family and seemingly likable individual.  At this point, given her confusion, Joyce/Jane tags along with Mannon to the nearest house in hopes of finding her fiance, only to discover that the maniacal Mannon enjoys trying to kill alligators, attempting to run one over on the way home and later drunkenly tries to shoot a handful.  During the night, Joyce/Jane hears the rings of a piano, only to discover a misshapen Paul playing the piano, his skin reflective of that of an alligators, scaly and dry.  As things unfold, Joyce/Jane learns of Paul's troubles with radioactive chemicals and the manner in which they have caused him to become a hybrid of a alligator and a human, constantly shifting between both, but never finding a point of complete stasis.  Through the help of his family and a set of local doctors, Paul hopes to reverse the process of his mutation in one last blast of cobalt radiation.  However, it is during the final test that the mutation takes its most drastic turn, causing the already disfigured Paul to become almost entirely alligator, taking on the entire head and tail of the reptile, while still possessing the limbs of a human.  In his fit of rage and confusion, Paul wanders into a lake and begins wrestling with an alligator, losing out and sinking with the creature to the bottom of the thick bayou.  At this point, the narrative returns to Joyce/Jane's contemporary state, wherein awake she has completely forgotten about her dire experiences, only now curious as to why the doctors have begun treating her slightly different.  The two, hoping to allow her some semblance of normalcy, simply chose not to acknowledge her story again and move on with their drug testing accordingly.

The trick of making a social critique within a genre film is the awareness that there is a very thin line between subtly and overdoing it, which is not necessarily as restrictive within the more traditional film genres, particularly something like the social drama or the melodrama.  Given the context of absurdity and impossibility that exists within the genre of horror specifically, things are in a constant state of juxtaposition between self and other that makes all other dichotomies become extremely apparent.  Take for example the traditional teen slasher film, wherein it is a group of teenagers taking on some weapon wielding psychopath, in these scenarios it is a group versus a singular figure mentality that affords a considerable continuation of the traditional heteronormative divide between male/female and any attempts at blurring this prove damn near impossible.  Of course, there are exceptions to this notion, when the thing of horror is contagious or decidedly insurmountable, either zombies, swarms of say, shark wielding tornadoes, or even the mega monsters of kaiju films.  The Alligator People is deceptive in its name, one that suggests a large group of mutated humanoids, wherein the narrative is more so concerned with one man and his navigation between the space of human and alligator.  As such, the back drop of racial dichotomies within the film become glaringly and troublingly apparent wherein the oppression of the servants goes unchecked and unchallenged, more so serving as figures of cautionary speech to Joyce/Jane than an actual group moving towards some degree of transcendence.  Indeed, where the film to be about the raiding of the Cypress estate by a large scape Alligator People attack then maybe these racial divides would be undermined or altogether destroyed in the realization that genetically speaking there is a distinct divide between man and not man, one which is not at all predicated upon the color of one's skin.  Of course, the film was made in 1959 so progressive racial commentary is far from the expected norm, but one often wonders why, in a genre expressly influenced by the ability to bend the rules, such an egregiously offensive use of race was allowed.  Metaphor be damned, The Alligator People simply fails to engage with social critiques in any transgressive or revolutionary manner.

Key Scene:  Alligator man versus alligator is kind of cool I guess.

There are other movies worth bothering with and this one can easily be passed over at no cost to your cinematic evolution.

What He Did To Shakespeare We Are Now Doing To Poland: To Be Or Not To Be (1942)

It is no small feat to create a narrative that is anything but dreary and preoccupied with loss and death during a war time era, this proves true for the previous post regarding A Matter of Life and Death which situates itself as a romance story amidst the death of war.  I assumed that comedy, while certainly present within the era would find itself entirely relegated to efforts relating to the warfront or training buddy films, never to step foot onto the fields of battle where such levity would invariably be misguided and executed poorly.  More so, I entirely dismissed the possibility that a film could emerge from  a setting involving any sort of concentration camp/occupied country space, specifically Poland.  However, Ernst Lubitsch's uproariously funny and poignantly serious To Be or Not To Be manages to be exactly the film to prove that when considering comedy, almost anything is fair game as long as those creating the jokes and humor know what they are doing and execute it with the appropriate respect and understanding it deserves.  On paper, nothing about To Be or No To Be should really work, between Polish citizens passing as Hitler and a oft-repeated joke involving infidelity and Shakespearian monologues, the film, one would assume, would either become heavily dated or better be served as a contemporary remake (Mel Brooks actually remade this film later in his career, which makes complete sense considering the subject matter and degree of serious commentary underlying the jokes).  Of course, cinematic history is filled with a ton of examples of unexpected moments in a movement, films that disregard the expectations or demands of the time to create something truly though-provoking and challenging, while also affording the moviegoer the desired escapism necessary for a great piece of non-experimental cinema.  It should me noted that To Be or Not To Be indeed has moments in which the gravitas of Nazi occupation invades the narrative, and deservedly so since it was an event that occurred and negatively affected whole nations, however, it is also worth considering that to people experience the real traumas, both abroad and personally, finding humor where possible proved greater a good than initially imaginable.

To Be or Not To Be focuses on the experiences of a Polish theater group at the onset of Hitler's moving through Europe, in which the troupe, full of idealistic actors attempt to provide escapism to their community by putting classic works like Hamlet, as well as plays parodying the infamous leader.  Although the group of actors are not particularly brilliant at their work, especially the leading couple Joseph (Jack Benny) and Maria Tura (Carole Lombard) who spend far more time bickering than they do assuring their success, in fact, their constant feuding comes to heightened state when Joseph realizes that Maria is talking with a young officer who constantly visits her during his performance of Hamlet's most famous lines, from where the film draws its title.  Hoping to catch her in the act, his attempt is halted by the announcement that Hitler has just invaded the border of Poland and, therefore, leads the group to refocusing their efforts on resistance.  This resistance proves well-organized and relatively efficient, although the power of the German army is far too great and Poland eventually succumbs to Nazi rule, much to the disconcertion of those still living there, particularly Joseph and Maria.  When the young soldier with whom Maria has taken a liking one Stobinski (Robert Stack) attempts to send a message to his new love via Professor Salinsky (Stanley Ridges) an assumed ally to the Polish, he is put off by Salinsky's complete ignorance to the famous Maria.  This information leads to suspicions of Salinksy being a spy and the resistance takes up a counter-intelligence movement in the hopes of trapping Salinsky and preventing him from betraying Stobinski and the other members of the town.  Considering that the group is a set of actors, they find their best course of action to be pretending to be high ranking SS officials, to which Salinsky has no knowledge of in physical terms.  This ruse works, until the set of actors go a bit overboard with their performance, ultimately, leading to their killing Salinsky in an ultimate form of silence.  At this point Joseph undertakes the role of Salisnky, now hoping to trick the Nazis a feat the works for length enough to extract the resistance from Poland, but not after one of the members passes as Hitler.  The group escapes to Scotland where their story is revered and Joseph earns the ability to play Hamlet, although in a clever final twist, another young man steps away amidst his monologue, fueling yet another layer of suspicion for the overly sensitive actor.

It is no difficult task to suggest that To Be or Not To Be is a film that is expressly concerned with performance, in fact, the performing of a theater troupe always influences the narrative, even in its more emotionally heightened moments, where their resistance movement acts take on a political level, most powerfully captured in their graffiti of Hitler hanging from the gallows.  However, I mean to refer to the notion of performing power, or at the very least appropriating the images of authority to pass as knowledgable in a moment of fear and ignorance.  Professor Salinsky, one of the characters decided villains arguably betrays others in the vain hopes that it will afford him safety against the ever encroaching armies of Germany.  It is fair to say that he is performing betrayal, because he sees it as a means to save his own skin, not so much as a genuine act of loathing.  He has no power within the Nazi army, evidenced by his inability to identify fake versions of key figures.  Furthermore, his own foolish belief that he can perform properly allows him to place a problematically high amount of trust in Maria who he convinces to be a spy.  Maria eternally tied to the resistance, nonetheless, performs the role of support to Salinsky, a illogical move in the eyes of others not because she would chose to side with Germany, but because she would be swayed in her decision by such an unattractive man.  Joseph arguably has the most to lose or gain from each performance, taking the risks of passing as people in the face of immediate danger, whether pretending to be Colonel Erhardt when Salinksy initially returns to Poland or reversing the process by pretending to Salisnky when he meets with Erhardt (Sig Rugman) played up humorously when the conversations seem to mirror one another.  Passing, in the case of this film requires a heavy degree of audacity and willingness to stretch beyond comfort, an act made possible perhaps by the very real threat failure assures.  However, it is also contingent on a power dynamic that is predicated upon blind obedience, affirmed by a fear of Hitler emerging, and, ultimately, a cowering of his fake presence, even by the most trusted of his advisors.  Infamy allows for silence, which for the most part is problematic, but when tested it can allow for those oppressed to earn safety.  Yet Lubitsch reminds people that a certain degree of performance pulls from reality and the Shylock part that draws the group its final bit of safety is as much pretend as it is is enflamed by a real question of suffering in the face of evil.

Key Scene:  For a decidedly comedic film the maddening imagery of the initial resistance acts and the Nazi occupation might be some of the most intense of the entire World War II era.

I watched this completely unaware of an upcoming Criterion release, I would suggest holding off until that bluray comes about, it is certain to be visually stunning.