Jeanne Moreau, who appeared in over 130 films over a period of sixty-five years and was declared “the greatest actress in the world” by none other than Orson Welles, has passed away in Paris at the age of eighty-nine. She worked with Jean Gabin . . .
By Rob Hunter
The Fast & Furious franchise is currently in a downward slide after reaching the pinnacle of pop perfection with Fast Five, but that hasn’t stopped the last few from making serious coin. More power to them, but in an ideal world some of that audience goodwill would spillover to much smaller but similarly goofy action pictures featuring fast cars, flashy locales, and… Scott Eastwood (The Fate of the Furious)?
Andrew (Eastwood) and Garrett (Freddie Thorp) are half-brothers who share more than a single parent — they also share a love of expensive automobiles. That love extends beyond simply admiring them from afar though as they also have a bad habit of stealing them for personal satisfaction and the odd paycheck. Their latest score has the unintentional outcome of landing them in debt with a powerful mobster in the south of France, and as payback he tasks them with an even more elaborate theft. It’s a bigger heist than they’re used to though so the siblings build a team including their lady friends (Ana de Armas, Gaia Weiss) and a few other helping hands. Can they pull it off bad guys, cops, and more bad guys hot on their tail?
Probably.
The Fast & Furious reference above may be a bit of a reach seeing as Eastwood is only a supporting player in the most recent entry, but Overdrive‘s genre elements are the same as a family — a more consistently pale family — come together to steal things from bad people. Director Antonio Negret and writers Michael Brandt and Derek Haas deliver a stripped down take on its much bigger screen cousin, and the results are every bit as entertaining.
Brandt and Haas are no strangers to goofy action as the writers of 2 Fast 2 Furious and Wanted, but the risk here is that the film lacks the budget for big spectacle-like set-pieces that normally serve to distract viewers from script silliness. [cough] Fast & Furious films [cough] That challenge pays off though by being paired with Negret who manages some slick action — almost all of which is done practically — and views that never bore the senses. The landscapes, exorbitantly-priced automobiles, and certain cast members are gorgeous, and cinematographer Laurent Bares captures it all along with some exciting and impressive car chases.
Eastwood hasn’t had the most thrilling career so far as his plain acting style continually makes him the least interesting thing onscreen, but he succeeds a bit more here with a performance that feels as if he’s not performing at all. That’s not a dig… he’s just incredibly relaxed and casual and never feels like he’s trying, and it works for the tone of the film. It’s an endlessly casual film, one where the good guys are never really in danger and everyone’s laughing mere moments after the bad guys’ demise. Thorp is a weak spot, due more to his dialogue than his performance, but everyone else is fine and having fun. de Armas seems at first to be stuck with a thankless “girlfriend” role, but her thankfully character gets to shine as someone every bit as capable and confident as the boys.
The inherent silliness and lightweight feel of it all keep Overdrive from achieving more than simply being a “fun enough” ride, but some solid sleight of hand in the third act, attractive visuals, and impressive car action make for an enjoyable piece of entertainment. The 93 minute run-time doesn’t hurt either.
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The article Fantasia 2017 Review: If You Only See One Scott Eastwood/Fast Cars Movie, Make It ‘Overdrive’ appeared first on Film School Rejects.
By Rob Hunter
A man stumbles through the night while a woman decked head to toe in armor follows behind. She’s not alone though — she has a zombified friend on a leash with her, and the night comes to a close as she sicks her “pet” on the terrified man. The next morning sees teenage Jason (Matthew Nelson-Mahood) meeting up with his friend Colin’s (Gabriel LaBelle) family for a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods. They’re having fun, but there’s friction too — Jason not-so secretly likes Colin’s sister, Summer (Lizzie Boys), and the siblings aren’t too keen on their dad’s (Donavon Stinson) new girlfriend, Lisa (Valerie Tian).
Bored of the cabin’s austerity within minutes, the kids head out for a hike and find themselves sneaking around a neighbor’s (Lauren Holly) remote homestead. A quick peek in her window offers up a nightmare sight, and soon the kids are on the run.
Some films build to greatness while others start strong and fizzle out. Unfortunately, the new Canadian horror/comedy, Dead Shack, falls in the latter pile. The character dynamic is a tenuous mix of laughs and thrills early on, but as the minutes tick by and the action grows crueler the film struggles to keep viewers laughing. It keeps trying with diminishing returns and instead makes its characters less and less likable.
Director/co-writer Peter Ricq builds an engaging-enough setup with its unlikely killer — she at one point tells a potential victim who’s threatened to call the cops that “They’ll never suspect me. They’re all sexist.” — and her even stranger modus operandi, but the ball is dropped on the protagonist side of things. Narrative threads involving friendship, teen romance, and commentary on economic woes are scuttled by the realization that these people are all assholes.
Everyone’s mean to each other or selfish in their actions, and ongoing attempts at comedy in the face of tragedy leave audiences with neither laughs nor empathy. The not-so occasional poor decision can be forgiven, but the constant beratement and mistreatment grows tiresome, nowhere more so than with everyone’s attitude towards Lisa. It’s bad enough she’s a stereotypical Asian stepmom-to-be after nothing but money and status, but she’s treated as a punchline long past the point of “funny.” To that end, all three female characters catch the brunt of the film’s verbal mistreatment giving the impression the filmmakers never evolved beyond their pre-teen years.
It’s a shame the script betrays their characters as the cast is pretty solid throughout. Stinson has the Canadian Jake Johnson shtick down perfectly — seriously, swap him in for an episode of New Girl, and half the country won’t even notice — and all three of the youths show some comedic chops early on before things get hairy. Holly and Tian are somewhat stuck in one-note roles, but they do fine work with them.
The film does manage some fun set-pieces — the expected suiting up montage is notably silly — and delivers a few worthwhile gore gags, but ultimately Dead Shack limps across the finish line as a half-baked horror/comedy. Early potential and promise give way to a careless and unfunny sense of humor. Laughs and horrible happenings can go hand in hand, but it’s a delicate balance that they find impossible to maintain.
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The article Fantasia 2017 Review: ‘Dead Shack’ Is Fun Until It Gets Ugly appeared first on Film School Rejects.
This week, the theme is that if you make a big enough fuss you’ll get what you want. It worked for the Unabomber, whose story is dramatized in a new series, it worked for fans of the movie Wet Hot American Summer, which is finally getting the ten-years-later sequel, and it worked for fans of the Canadian comedy hit Baroness von Sketch Show, which is finally coming to America.
To help you keep track of the most important programs over the next seven days, here’s our guide to everything worth watching, whether it’s on broadcast, cable, or streaming for July 30th-August 5th (all times Eastern):
Rick and Morty (Cartoon Network, 11:30pm)Following its surprise return for a limited-time episode back in April, our favorite Adult Swim animated series is back for real with a 10-episode third season. Tonight’s episode, “Rickmancing the Stone,” is a Mad Max tribute, with the title duo plus Summer headed to a post-apocalypse wasteland. There are crazy cars, a thunderdome and everything else you could possibly want from such an idea. Fans at Comic-Con got to see the episode already, and obviously the buzz from them is great.
Also on Sunday:
Teen Wolf S6E11: “Said the Spider to the Fly” (MTV, 8pm)
Claws S1E8: “Teatro” (TNT, 9pm)
Game of Thrones S7E3: “The Queen’s Justice” (HBO, 9pm)
The Lost Tapes: Son of Sam — documentary debut (Smithsonian, 9pm)
The Nineties E3: “New World Order” (CNN, 9pm)
Power S4E6: “New Man” (Starz, 9pm)
Twin Peaks: The Return “Part 12” (Showtime, 9pm)
Ballers S3E2: “Bull Rush” (HBO, 10pm)
I’m Dying Up Here S1E8: “The Unbelievable Power of Believing” (Showtime, 10pm)
The Strain S4E3: “One Shot” (FX, 10pm)
Insecure S2E2 (HBO, 10:30pm)
Kevin Hart Presents: The Next Level S1E7: “Ray Grady: Not Afraid to Fail” — Season 1 finale (Comedy Central, 11pm)
Memories of a Penitent Heart (PBS, 10pm)This week’s installment of POV showcases the award-winning documentary Memories of a Penitent Heart, in which filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo investigates the family drama surrounding the death of her uncle Miguel. He died of AIDS years ago when it was associated with sin for his Catholic parents and siblings. Aldarondo focuses her affecting personal character study on her uncle’s longtime partner, the only person who can her all about Miguel in his final days. As usual, you may need to check local listings or see the film streaming online free on the PBS site.
Also on Monday:
The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All — special (ABC, 8pm)
Hooten & the Lady S1E4: “Bhutan” (The CW, 9pm)
Will S1E5: “The Marriage of True Minds” (TNT, 9pm)
Preacher S2E7: “Pig” (AMC, 9pm)
Teen Mom 2 (MTV, 9pm)
Manhunt: Unabomber (Discovery, 9pm)Paul Bettany portrays Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, in Discovery’s next scripted effort. The eight-episode series follows the FBI’s extensive investigation to identify and apprehend the domestic terrorist, with Sam Worthington playing an agent on the case and Jane Lynch as Attorney General Janet Reno. Other stars who make brief appearances include Mark Duplass, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Chris Noth. The premiere includes the first two episodes of the series, which like many new shows these days is an anthology, meaning the next season will follow the manhunt for another infamous criminal.
Also on Tuesday:
Max Jobrani: Immigrant — comedy special (Netflix)
Frontline: The Vaccine War — documentary premiere (PBS)
Casual S3E13: “The Hermit & the Moon” (Hulu)
The Bold Type S1E5: “No Feminism in the Champagne Room” (Freeform, 9pm)
Baroness von Sketch Show (IFC, 10pm)Of course Baroness von Sketch Show has been compared another Canadian single-gender sketch comedy series, The Kids in the Hall, if only to recall that one as having only male actors, dressed in drag whenever a female character was needed. Baroness, you see, has an all-women cast, and yes they sometimes play men. The show’s first season exclusively aired up north but became a cult hit with US audiences through sketches available online and now IFC has picked it up for stateside enjoyment, airing both the first season and new second season.
Also on Wednesday:
Catfish: The TV Show (MTV, 9pm)
Broadchurch S3E6 (BBC America, 10pm)
I’m Sorry S1E5: “Acts of Service” (truTV, 10pm)
The Sinner S1E1 — series premiere (USA, 10pm)
Snowfall S1E5: (FX, 10pm)
The Guest Book (TBS, 10pm)Anthology series are all the rage these days, but most of them are season-to-season anthologies (like Manhunt: Unabomber). Another growing trend, though, is the episode-to-episode anthology series. A more coincidental trend right now is the concept of having a show based around a hotel room with each episode having a different story set there. Last week, the Duplass brothers’ Room 104 debuted on HBO with the premise and a mix of drama and comedy stories. Now there’s TBS’s The Guest Book, which is all-comedy and actually involves some recurring characters, because it’s not restricted to the single room setting. The episode-to-episode cast includes Margo Martindale, Jenna Fischer, Danny Pudi, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Michaela Watkins, Jaime Pressly, and Stockard Channing.
Also on Thursday
The Mist S1E7: “Over the River and Through the Woods” (Spike, 10pm)
Queen of the South S2E9 (USA, 10pm)
Zoo S3E6: “Oz Is Oz” (CBS, 10pm)
Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later (Netflix)At the end of the 2001 movie Wet Hot American Summer, the camp counselor characters agree to have a reunion in 10 years. But when Netflix greenlit a follow-up series, they went with the prequel Wet Hot American Summer: First Day, which took place a few weeks before the movie. Now we get a second series living up to the promise. The funny thing is that this sequel is set 10 years later but was made 16 years later, which is fitting since the most of the ensemble was originally too old for their characters anyway. Everyone is back except Bradley Cooper, Judah Friedlander, and David Hyde Pierce. The entire series is available all at once.
Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt star as Romanian detectives in this bloody comedy series made to seem like it was made in the ’80s during the time of Ceausescu’s communist dictatorship. Created by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka (writers of the movie The Sitter) and directed by Rhys Thomas (Documentary Now!), the show co-stars Chloe Sevigny, Jenny Slate, Jason Mantzoukas, Nick Offerman, and Jake Johnson, and features guest appearances from Kim Basinger, Mahershala Ali, Richard Jenkins, Bobby Cannavale, Mark Duplass, Katie Aselton, Fred Armisen, Debra Winger, and Daniel Craig. The entire series is available all at once.
Also on Friday:
Icarus —- documentary debut (Netflix)
Message From the King — movie debut (Netflix)
The Great British Baking Show S4E9 & S4E10: “Patisserie Week” and “The Final” (PBS, 9pm)
Room 104 S1E2: “Pizza Boy” (HBO, 11:30pm)
George Lopez: The Wall, Live from Washington, DC (HBO, 10pm)Given the title, we can guess George Lopez will be addressing the promised border wall in his new comedy special, though the trailer for the stand-up program has him also teasing such topics as dogs in strollers. As for what material the show actually entails, we can’t know for sure since it’s supposed to be all-new and the special is being broadcast live from the Kennedy Center. Of course, if you’re not a fan of Lopez already, chances are you won’t think he’s funny in this, but if you are a fan or just want to hear from a guy who’s been outspoken against the Trump administration, this is a must-watch.
Also on Saturday:
Orphan Black S5E9: “One Fettered Slave” (BBC America, 10pm)
The article ‘Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later’ and More TV You Must See This Week appeared first on Film School Rejects.
By Chris Coffel
“I killed a man, when I was seventeen. Caitlin’s age. I got into a fight. Someone handed me a knife. Sometimes I dream about that night. In the dream I see myself, and I try to stop it, but I can’t. Then I wake up, and I wonder what would have happened, if no one handed me that knife. What my life, what our lives, might have been.”
Iit was only a matter of time before Nicolas Cage made a movie titled Rage. That time came about three years ago when he actually made a movie called Tokarev that was eventually re-titled as Rage. There are a lot of things about this movie that are not great — the title may be the not greatest.
Titling a movie Rage feels so lazy and generic. Action would be just as good of a title and Action would be a terrible title. There’s one scenario in which choosing Rage as a title works and that’s if the movie is off-the-wall bonkers in the vein of Crank. That would actually be pretty cool. Rage is not that.
In this movie Cage stars as Paul Maguire, an ex-con that turned his life around and became a respectable business man. Removed from his violent past, Paul now owns and operates a very successful construction business, has a beautiful wife (Rachel Nichols) and a smart teenage daughter (Aubrey Peeples). One evening Paul and his wife go out to dinner leaving his daughter home with two friends. The dinner is interrupted when a police detective (Danny Glover) brings Paul horrible news — his daughter has been kidnapped.
The theory is that someone from Paul’s shady past has resurfaced to get revenge. The problem is Paul left the game years ago, he’s gone clean. Detective Danny Glover tries to convince Paul to let the police handle this one but that won’t cut it. It’s time for Paul to get back into the game. He’s going to find the men that took his daughter and he’s going to murder them.
Eventually Paul’s daughter is discovered and it’s not good. She’s found dead in a pond and this pushes Paul over the edge. He teams up with a couple of old cronies and they begin to shakedown anyone they can think of. They soon discover that Paul’s daughter was killed with a Russian handgun — that’s where the film’s original title comes from — and so the natural conclusion is that the Russians are to blame. Paul starts killing Russians and kicks off a gang war.
I’m about to reveal a major spoiler in the film. If you’re upset with me spoiling a straight-to-video action movie that is now three years old I suggest you stop reading. Also that’s a weird thing to be upset about so why are you upset?
As it turns out the Russians didn’t kill Paul’s daughter. No enemy of his did. She was killed by accident by one of her friends and they staged it to look like a kidnapping. While Paul and his wife were out to dinner his daughter and friends got into his booze and guns. After screwing around she was accidentally shot in the head by one of Paul’s guns. It never clicked with Paul that the gun was his because when he was still in the game he preferred to use knives. As a result he knows very little about guns and when he learned the name of the gun he didn’t realize it was one he owned. No lie, that is the film’s twist.
Wait, what?
The basic premise in Rage is fine. Ex-killer’s daughter is kidnapped and he has to resort to his violent past to save her. Not the most original, but it works. I can and have been entertained by that story. I’m even down with the twist, but the execution here isn’t great. If you’re going to do this story with this twist that reveals the daughter died by accident and Paul forgot he had a gun then you have to do so in darkly humorous way. At the end of the day all the violence occurred for nothing. That should be funny in a weird Coen Brothers-esque way. It’s not.
Moving beyond the poorly executed twist we find a script that struggles with the details, most notably the dialogue. Cage, Glover and Peter Stormare — yes, Peter Stormare is in this as well — all have scenery chewing moments of meaty dialogue but it all feels like something from a first draft. Cage and Stormare have one scene together that should be great because it’s Cage and Stormare but I’ve already forgotten what they’ve talked about and I just watched this movie a few hours ago.
Despite the poor dialogue there is one amazing scene where Cage just loses it. At this point in the film things have gotten really out of hand and Paul takes it out on the screw-up of his group. The scene is embedded below and I highly suggest everyone bask in its glory. Two things to watch for — the way Cage says “head” early on and then when he goes nuts and starts screaming “Rat! Rat! Rat!” Ignore the overly dramatic music.
Rage isn’t all bad. The action sequences are handled well and with a bit of flare. This credit goes to director Paco Cabezas, who has proven over the years that he knows how to handle action. Cabezas is most known for his TV work, directing a number of episodes of shows like Penny Dreadful and Into the Badlands, but he also has a few features under his belt with his best being Neon Flesh. Neon Flesh is a wild Spanish action-comedy starring Mario Casas that put Cabezas on the map and actually caught the eye of Cage. Word on the street is that Cage liked Neon Flesh so much that he actively pushed for Cabezas to get American work and that’s how the two ended up doing Rage together.
Unfortunately Rage doesn’t take full advantage of Cabezas’ skillset. The action is good, but there isn’t nearly enough of it. How one makes a movie called Rage and doesn’t make it nonstop action is beyond me, but here we are. Another possible issue could be that Cabezas did not write the script like he did with Neon Flesh. Last week I talked about how we could get a Nic Cage renaissance if he started pairing up with the right young directors. Cabezas could be one of those directors, but I think he needs to be working with his own story and be allowed to fully spread his wings.
Rage isn’t terrible, but it’s pretty bland. It’s like cooking but failing to use salt. If chef Alex Guarnaschelli were to taste this she would lose her mind at the lack of flavor and immediately chop the contestant responsible for this plate. I’m a little nicer than Guaranschelli and I can see the potential between the Cage-Cabezas combo. I’m hopeful that the two get to work together again using a script of Cabezas own writing. If they don’t I may just react the way Cage does when he sees a Russian mobster.
The article The Tao of Nicolas Cage: Despite All His ‘Rage’ He’s Still Just Nicolas Cage appeared first on Film School Rejects.
If you recently watched Grosse Pointe Blank on my recommendation (movies to watch after you see Spider-Man: Homecoming), you probably felt some deja vu with the Atomic Blonde soundtrack. And if you recently watched True Romance on my recommendation (movies to watch after you see Baby Driver), you might have felt some deja vu with the appearance of Charlize Theron battered and bloody and wielding a corkscrew as a weapon. Well, some movies are such classics that a lot of things remind us of them.
Atomic Blonde has more obvious connections. A lot of its fans relate it to John Wick, though that makes sense since both share director David Leitch (he co-directed the first Wick). Others bring up Mad Max: Fury Road because of Theron being a badass, though that’s also linked in the fact that Theron says she was able to make Atomic Blonde due to the success of Fury Road. For this week’s list of recommendations, I’m more interested in highlighting other essentials that maybe only I thought of while watching the new action movie.
Here are eight picks plus scattered honorable mentions:
While Atomic Blonde takes place in Berlin on the eve of the Berlin Wall coming down, Billy Wilder’s Cold War comedy is set in the city on the eve of the Berlin Wall going up. Arguably the best satire of East vs. West, One, Two, Three stars James Cagney as an executive at Coca-Cola, the most perfect symbol of capitalism and Western cultural imperialism. His daughter is visiting from Atlanta, and of course, she falls for a Lenin-allegiant boy from the other side of the Brandenburg Gate. Lots of “Sabre Dance” ensues.
One, Two, Three was a big flop for Wilder, especially coming off the financial success and Best Picture-winning status of The Apartment, despite the fact that it’s one of his best movies. Apparently audiences weren’t interested in such a political farce so soon after the erection of the Wall, which happened between the start of the movie’s production and its release. I think it’s Cagney’s best performance, his last one before a 20-year retirement, and it’s at least Wilder’s most energetic effort, if not also his funniest.
Last week, I recommended another Guy Hamilton movie starring Michael Caine (Battle of Britain, one of the movies to watch after you see Dunkirk), so why not make it two in a row with this second installment of the Harry Palmer spy series? Caine reprises his role from The Ipcress Files, a British secret agent sent to Berlin to help a Soviet agent defect to the West by smuggling him in a coffin. On paper, it sounds similar to Atomic Blonde‘s Theron playing a British secret agent sent to Berlin to find a Stasi agent trying to defect to the West while also officially there to bring home another spy in a coffin.
In both movies, the main character is also working alongside another British agent stationed in Berlin and sleeps with a woman who also turns out to be a spy. And of course, there are some MacGuffin documents involved. Most importantly, the Wall is quite prominent. But obviously they’re tonally and temporally dissimilar. Funeral in Berlin being made just a couple decades after the end of World War II means it deals as much in its aftermath and secret Nazis as it does in material regarding the Cold War.
Here’s an obvious inclusion, as it actually appears in Atomic Blonde during a fight sequence at the famous Kino International cinema. But I assume a lot of people seeing the new movie aren’t familiar with Stalker, despite the Soviet sci-fi feature being Andrei Tarkovsky’s most accessible after Solaris. Is it likely to have been actually playing on the big screen in November 1989? Perhaps in East Berlin, where it didn’t open until 1982 and where there presumably wasn’t a lot of home video renting going on.
Stalker is about a forbidden zone that is heavily guarded by armed soldiers and secured by barbed wire fences. Understandably, the situation has been likened to the Wall and the East/West border in Berlin (see Jeremy Mark Robinson’s “The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky“). The plot of the movie follows a man who guides two others through the zone to reach an alien place where wishes are granted, albeit imperfectly. Couldn’t we read that metaphorically as the promises of the West?
Another good movie to watch after Atomic Blonde for the setting in particular is Wings of Desire, which Wim Wenders partly dedicated to Tarkovsky. But see Stalker first.
The opening of Atomic Blonde sees the death of a British spy named James, and while eventually we learn his last name, which isn’t Bond, I couldn’t help but first think this was a reference to 007. He’s killed off to make way for a woman spy similar to how a Bond lookalike is killed at the beginning of xXx to hint that times have changed and we need a spy more like Vin Diesel’s extreme sports athlete. The James in Atomic Blonde even looks, to me, at least in that first scene, like Timothy Dalton in his best form, mustached.
Dalton didn’t have a stache as James Bond, which is too bad. But he did “die” as Bond in 1989, as that’s when his second and final stint as the character was released, a few months ahead of the fall of the Wall. For a while, it seemed the whole franchise was done, which could have made sense for the fact that the Cold War was also ending. The gritty License to Kill, which doesn’t have anything to do with the Cold War and is barely even a spy film really, was a box office disappointment (it’s still 007’s lowest-grossing). The series went on hiatus for six years afterward, though that was partly because of legal issues. Anyway, see this one for a young Benicio Del Toro as a henchman and also to see if you’re in the camp that thinks this is one of the best or one of the worst Bonds.
The article 8 Movies to Watch After You See ‘Atomic Blonde’ appeared first on Film School Rejects.
DB here:
The newest installment of our Criterion Channel series on FilmStruck is now up. There I try to look at Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947) from a fresh perspective: as a perverse contribution to the serial-killer cycle of the 1940s.
The killers inside them
When we say that we take up a new perspective on a film, or any artwork, what are we doing? I think the process involves at least two things. First, you need categories, some fresh conceptual groupings that allow for a perspective shift. Second, you relate the film in question to other particular films—that is, you pick prototypes of the categories. People don’t realize, I believe, the extent to which picking prototypes shapes our reasoning about nearly everything. (Is your prototype of a horror film Cat People, Halloween, or Saw? You’ll think of the genre differently.)
Take film noir. The category didn’t exist in 1940s Hollywood; no producer or director or writer set out to make a noir. A film might be a thriller, crime melodrama, even a horror movie. I discuss the elasticity of these categories here. When French, then American critics started talking about film noir, they were creating a perspective shift. The new category “film noir” pulled together several aspects of films that hadn’t seemed so salient in their day: skepticism about orthodox authority, for example, or suspicion of women’s sexuality. Similarly, the critics elevated certain films, like Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep and Possessed, to the status of prototypes, and less vivid examples were situated in relation to them.
Something like this perspective shift occurred to me when I was writing my book, Reinventing Hollywood: How 1940s Filmmakers Changed Movie Storytelling. I tried to come up with some categories that could show continuity and change in film narrative of the period. I looked for strategies of plotting and narration that cut across received categories like genre. Among the categories I explored are block construction, multiple-protagonist plots, subjective viewpoint, non-chronological story sequence, voice-over narration, and others. Some had come to be associated with certain genres (thanks again to prototypes), but I found that they were quite pervasive. Several of these I’ve tried out on the blog.
Once I was peering through the lenses of these categories, my prototypes changed too. Now little-discussed films like Our Town (1940) and Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Human Comedy (1943) and The Chase (1946) became surprisingly central. I couldn’t ignore the classics, but they were now lit by a crosslight that brought out fresh aspects. And with these categories of narrative technique in mind, we can discover some new sides of well-known auteurs, like Welles, Hitchcock, Sturges, and Mankiewicz.
One broader category I tried out was that of “murder culture.” Mystery and suspense are perennial narrative appeals, but they took on new power in in fiction, film, and theatre of the Forties. (An early version of the chapter’s case is made here.) Part of murder culture was the rise of the serial-killer tale—not new in the 1940s, of course, but more common than in earlier Hollywood eras. Films like Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The Lodger (1944), Bluebeard (1944), Hangover Square (1945), Lured (1947), Follow Me Quietly (1949), and others became prototypes for my purposes.
Then Monsieur Verdoux appeared in a new light. What better evidence of the pervasiveness of murder culture than the effort by the most-loved film star in history to play a serial killer?
Landru in LA
Orson Welles and Charles Chaplin, Brown Derby restaurant, March 1947.
It was Orson Welles who prompted Chaplin to make Monsieur Verdoux. Welles was a thriller fan. He carried a trunkload of crime novels around on his travels. One of his early RKO projects was an adaptation of Nicholas Blake’s Smiler with a Knife, and after the debacle of It’s All True, his work as a freelance director consisted of thrillers (The Stranger, The Lady from Shanghai, Mr. Arkadin) and Shakespeare adaptations (Macbeth, Othello). Indeed, he treated Shakespeare’s plots as thrillers, in accord with his belief that the Bard wrote not classical tragedies but blood-and-thunder melodramas.
According to biographers, Welles wrote a screenplay based on the wife-murderer Landru and offered the role to Chaplin. Chaplin at first accepted, then decided to direct the film himself and bought the idea from Welles. There was apparently some dispute about giving Welles credit; early prints are said to have lacked acknowledgment of Welles’ idea as the source.
By late 1941, the trade press reported that Chaplin was preparing the film, then called “Lady Killer.” A year later, it was still discussed as a “plan.” Chaplin didn’t finish the screenplay until 1946, and the film was shot between May and September. By then it was entitled “A Comedy of Murders,” although Chaplin toyed with “Bluebeard” and “Bluebeard Rhapsody.” It wasn’t released until spring of 1947.
This long gestation period is significant because when Chaplin started, the idea of a comedy about killing would have been fairly fresh. By the time Verdoux was released, however, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and Murder, He Says (1945) had already shown that audiences would accept humor mixed with homicide. The original stage production of Arsenic and Old Lace had opened to great success in January of 1941, and it’s interesting to speculate that it might have encouraged Chaplin to buy Welles’ Landru idea.
Both Arsenic and Murder, He Says treat murder with a consistently farcical tone. I suggest in my FilmStruck Observations episode that Chaplin risks something more complex. For one thing, he takes the conventions of the serial-killer film more seriously than the other films do. He goes on to amplify and exaggerate those conventions in fascinating ways. For instance, he makes the policemen more or less stick figures, so we don’t care if they’re in jeopardy. In turn, Verdoux tries to win our allegiance through clumsy efforts to be debonair. (Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt is far more poised.) Chaplin’s use of the cycle’s conventions gets pretty specific. There were dead narrators in 40s films before Sunset Blvd. (1950), but we tend to forget that Chaplin uses the same device in Verdoux.
Going further, I discuss how Chaplin’s treatment of serial killing mixes different sorts of comedy—social satire and slapstick, the traditional comedy of manners and the comedy of ideas associated with George Bernard Shaw. This mix is rather discordant, and it’s responsible, I think, for much of the criticism the film attracted, then and now.
The Tramp as provocateur
Verdoux failed in the US for several reasons. Reviews were mostly unsympathetic, even harsh. Chaplin had been back in the headlines thanks to a messy paternity suit filed by Joan Barry. His reputation as a seducer of young women had unpleasant associations with Verdoux’s conquests. He was also known for his support for liberal causes and his strong stance against fascism. After the war, he was more and more reviled by right-wing politicians and activists. Chaplin’s defense of civil liberties made him seem too much a Communist dupe, or an active sympathizer. Charles Maland has suggested that the film’s promotion completely mishandled Chaplin’s star image.
He couldn’t have expected the shockingly rude, sustained impertinence of the attack that followed. Reporters were there, not discuss his work with him, but to discredit and vilify and ridicule him personally—to hound him on his own opinions and habits. Was it true that one of his good friends (I am omitting names), a great musician, was a radical? Did this mean that he, Chaplin, condoned treason to this country, since his friend’s brother was accused of being a spy? Was Chaplin a Communist? Why, then, had he shown so little regard for the United States that, although he had paid taxes here for years, he was still a British subject? Even though two of his sons fought for this country in the war, and he did war work himself, why didn’t he do more? Exactly what percentage of his vast income made in the US had gone to alleviate the suffering of humanity?
While two perambulating mikes broadcast these questions and others, a swarm of cameramen set off lights in Chaplin’s face, so that in an hour he was not only knee-deep in spent flash bulbs, but practically blinded. His patience and couresy were astounding, since his disgust must have at least compared to that of the few of us who could only be ashamed of what ugly, hostile liberties can be taken in the name of the freedom of the press.
The final scenes of Verdoux only heightened the suspicion that Chaplin was a danger to patriotic values. Soon he was subpoenaed by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, though he never testified. In 1952, after he and his new wife Oona left for Europe, his re-entry permit was rescinded. He went into exile in Switzerland.
The reviewers’ most common complaint was that the film refused to jell, but the film had eloquent defenders and brought forth some of the subtlest critical commentary of the period. James Agee, the only person to defend Chaplin during the press conference, wrote a famous three-part appeciation of the film that, I think, represents an early instance of in-depth film interpretation. Theatre historian Eric Bentley argued against those who found the movie a jumble of sentiment and slapstick. It was, he claimed, in the vein of Pirandello, where comedy gives way to the more philosophical mode, that of humor.
Reflection turns the merely funny into humor. . . . Thus, Pirandello argues, humor breaks up the normal form by interruption, interpolation, digression, and decomposition; and the critics complain of lack of unity in all humorous works from Don Quixote to Tristram Shandy—and we might add from Little Dorrit to Monsieur Verdoux.
Going still wilder, Parker Tyler speculated that in a parallel universe, Verdoux wasn’t executed. He abandoned his wife and son and took off on the road. Charlie the Tramp “had a past like anyone else. . . . Verdoux is . . . how Charlie came to be.”
Tyler’s flight of fancy isn’t surprising. This film can drive you a little nuts. It’s not ingratiating. It’s less perfect than provocative. It’s like the name itself, ver-doux, which translates as “sweet worm” or “gentle worm”—a little pleasant and a little creepy. The film is an obstinate thing that insists on being its contradictory self, not what you want it to be. For me, it’s perversely unlovable, and that unlovability is part of the Chaplin myth too. We should remember that the earliest Chaplin films show the Tramp as fairly nasty.
I suspect that Monsieur Verdoux can’t become a prototype; it flouts too many cherished categories. Or maybe the best category for it is that of experimental Hollywood movie. After all, the 1940s furnished more than its share of them.
Thanks as usual to Kim Hendrickson, Grant Delin, and Peter Becker of Criterion. Our complete Observations on Film Art Criterion series is here. (I think you need to be logged in to see it.)
Welles discusses Shakespeare as blood-and-thunder melodramatist in This Is Orson Welles (HarperCollins, 1992), 217, and in a little more detail, in audiocassette number 4 accompanying the book, side A, 18:37. I draw my information about the preparation of Verdoux from Frank Brady, Citizen Welles (Scribners, 1989), 416-417; “Chaplin Announces Bluebeard Film,” Motion Picture Herald (29 November 1941); and Glenn Mitchell, The Chaplin Encyclopedia (Batsford, 1997), 191-198. Charles Maland’s reflections on Verdoux‘s promotional problems are in Chaplin and American Culture: The Evolution of a Star Image (Princeton, 1989), 250-251. The coverage of the Monsieur Verdoux press conference is by Shirley O’Hara in “Chaplin and Hemingway,” New Republic (15 May 1947), 39. Bentley’s 1948 essay is “Monsieur Verdoux and Theater,” In Search of Theater (Vintage, 1953), 154.
I’ve argued in The Rhapsodes that Agee’s critique displays the interpretive techniques borrowed from literary New Criticism. In the same book I discuss Tyler’s Chaplin book as an ultimate flight of performative criticism. One consequence of 1940s murder culture was the crystallization of the suspense thriller, a genre that has flourished ever since, for several reasons.
There’s more on my forthcoming book on the 1940s here.
Monsieur Verdoux.
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