Tag Archives: Luis Buñuel

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Welcome to Fleischer World

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The arrival of sound in the late 1920s added a new dimension to animated films.  Many of the early live-action “talkies” did virtually nothing but talk; however, the cartoon successfully combined the aural and visual without excessive dialogue. The animators most aware of this quality during the 1930s were Max and Dave Fleischer.

Produced for mainstream audiences, the early Betty Boop and Screen Song cartoons were daring, somewhat experimental works. In many ways, Fleischer classics such as Minnie the Moocher (1932), Snow White (1933), I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You (1932), I Heard (1933) and I Ain’t Got Nobody (1932) represent the first music videos with their ingenious fusion of animation and bluesy jazz. The shorts also helped promote the records and upcoming appearances of the guest performers.

Like some of the jazz artists, the Fleischer animators were gritty New Yorkers whose free-wheeling existence was reflected in their cartoons. If Disney, Warner and MGM maintained a sunny optimism in the early 1930s, Fleischer Studios took viewers on a wild ride through the Depression-era psyche.

The Fleischers’ cultural insulation was a significant factor in their best work. By embracing a world of sex, violence, hot jazz and bad times, the studio developed an absurdist vision of nonconformity that was unique in animation. The transition to sound only fueled the Fleischers’ playful anarchy. Until the Hays Office reared its head in 1934, there were no established rules for the East Coast animators to follow.

Electrocuted ghosts in Minnie the Moocher (1932).

Electrocuted ghosts in Minnie the Moocher (1932).

Perhaps the first Fleischer cartoon to seamlessly fuse its bizarre imagery with a Jazz Age bravura was Minnie the Moocher. The pairing of Betty Boop and Cab Calloway resulted in some of animation’s finest moments. In this striking display of music and movement, the rotoscoped Calloway emerges as a ghostly walrus who confronts Betty and her canine pal Bimbo in a darkened cave — singing the classic title song with its references to prostitution, cocaine addiction and venereal disease. The black-and-gray images are stunning as the Calloway walrus performs amid unusual backgrounds ranging from decayed fingers to jagged skulls.

In his 1994 book Cartoons, author Giannalberto Bendazzi singled out Minnie the Moocher as “a masterpiece of American animation” while its “visions and the allusions to danger and sex demonstrate the power of a totentanz, a dance of death.” The film also can be seen as a metaphor for the fears and uncertainties of the Depression.

Minnie the Moocher provided the framework for the dazzling Boop-Calloway masterpiece Snow White. A few historians have compared Snow White to the Salvador Dali-Luis Buñuel short Un Chien Andalou (1929) for its surreal, unconnected imagery — accompanied by Calloway’s downbeat song “St. James Infirmary Blues.”

The painted backgrounds in Snow White are dark and treacherous, particularly the “mystery cave” with its sleazy taverns and skeletal remains.  As in Minnie the Moocher, Calloway’s movements are rotoscoped; however, this time around, he is a metamorphosed Ko-Ko the Clown who leads a funeral procession through the cave with Betty literally “on ice.” In the Calloway song, the ice coffin is equated to a “long white table” in the morgue as Ko-Ko/Calloway mourns the loss of his “baby.” During the song, the evil queen transforms Ko-Ko/Calloway into an elongated ghost who visualizes the “St. James” lyrics by morphing into a “$20 gold piece” and “a shot of booze.”

A rotoscoped Cab Calloway in Snow White (1933).

A rotoscoped Cab Calloway.

In both Calloway-Boop cartoons, the animated songs evoke grim atmosphere with a plethora of throwaway gags. The Fleischers’ stream of cartoon consciousness appears limitless. Rich in detail, Minnie the Moocher and Snow White demand repeated viewings.

Featuring Louis Armstrong in one of his first film appearances, I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You swings in the best sense of the word — not only in terms of Armstrong’s music, but also in the Fleischers’  visual style. In this fast-paced Betty Boop cartoon, every aspect is in rhythmic motion:  trees, volcanoes, footprints, porcupine needles, and cannibals who transform themselves into bushes.

When Betty, Bimbo and Ko-Ko are captured by the cannibals, the latter two escape — only to be pursued by a live-action Armstrong. In fact, Ko-Ko runs so fast that his clown suit must catch up with him. Armstrong continues to chase Ko-Ko while crooning the title song, which focuses on adultery and includes the suggestive lyric “You gave my wife a bottle of Coca-Cola so you could play on her Victrola.” Welcome to Fleischer World.

Betty Boop and Bimbo go underground in I Heard (1933).

Betty Boop and Bimbo go underground in I Heard (1933).

Unlike previous Boop rhapsodies, the jaunty tone of I Heard evolves into a darkly surreal climax. Accompanied by Don Redman and His Orchestra (who introduce the cartoon in a rare film appearance), Betty delivers an infectious rendition of “How’m I Doin’?” as the workers at the “Never Mine” enjoy a hearty lunch in her tavern. The Fleischers provide a steady flow of gags to match the rhythm of Redman’s music.

After the steam whistle finishes its lunch, Betty and the coal miners discover gossip and baseball-playing ghosts down below.  One ghost hits a bomb to Betty and Bimbo — resulting in a back-and-forth escapade that leads to a mine explosion. In the bizarre closing shot, the ghosts fall into ready-made graves opened by Bimbo, who literally gets the last laugh in his final screen appearance.  Betty’s amorous co-star became a casualty of the repressive Production Code, which brought down the curtain on the “Boop-oop-a-doop” jazz extravaganzas.

Largely unavailable on home video (though resurrected on YouTube), the Fleischer Screen Song cartoons of the 1930s utilized wrap-around animation to showcase a musical performer in live action, along with the famous Bouncing Ball to lead the chorus. In some instances, the overall short truly benefited from the strength of its guest artist.

The Mills Brothers with the “Famous Bouncing Ball.”

The Mills Brothers with the famous Bouncing Ball.

I Ain’t Got Nobody, one of the finest Screen Song efforts, marked the film debut of the Mills Brothers, who are introduced as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The off-the-wall “premise” centers on a hypnotic lion who has the ability to make inanimate objects (except for a grumpy statue) sing the Mills Brothers’ hit “Tiger Rag.”  In a classic display of Fleischer animation, the entire living room harmonizes in unison — followed by a lion rug scat-singing in Mills fashion.

This inventive use of music complemented the Fleischers’ distinctive surrealism, which mirrored the Depression era better than any animation studio. If Disney’s early work revealed a rural midwestern quality, the Fleischer landscape was a black-and-white urban jungle — an ideal environment for artists such as Calloway, Armstrong, Redman and the Mills Brothers. The Betty Boop and Screen Song cartoons remain valuable cinematic records of the musical talents who accompanied Max and Dave Fleischer in their symphony of visual madness.

Inkwell

Sorcerer featured

Blu-ray Review: “Sorcerer” (1977)

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William Friedkin names 1977′s Sorcerer as his favorite among his movies. That’s possibly because he put so much blood and sweat into the show, with a grueling, disaster-plagued shoot in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, as well as Israel, Paris, New Jersey and New Mexico. Impressed by Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic The Wages of Fear, Friedkin embarked on a costly remake. In many ways it’s a beautiful show, but it lacks its director’s double-whammy of powerful filmmaking plus incredibly lucky timing. When his The French Connection became a hit in 1971, audiences were seemingly primed for a gritty & profane cop show with thrilling action scenes. In addition to its brilliant marketing campaign, 1973 The Exorcist showed Friedkin willing to pull out all the stops for a horror story that literally brutalized the audience.

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Commercially speaking, Sorcerer had big problems. The title led everyone to believe it had something to do with the supernatural, like his previous film. Roy Scheider was the only known actor in Friedkin’s excellent cast. Unrelentingly dark and pessimistic, the movie arrived in the wake of the big Spring release Star Wars, when no other film seemed to exist. As Friedkin himself explains, Sorcerer played exactly one week at Mann’s Chinese before being dropped in favor of a return of George Lucas’s film.

Most critics clobbered Sorcerer as a complete misfire. I saw it on Independence Day (in a packed Westwood theater, I must say) and felt unfulfilled by Friedkin’s suspense-challenged narrative and humorless characters. But how does it play today?

Friedkin and his screenwriter Walon Green open up Georges Arnaud’s novel La salaire de peur by showing how four men came to flee their home countries and end up trapped in a South American oil outpost. Paid assassin Nilo (Francisco Rabal) and Palestinian bomber Kassem (Amidou) flee retribution for their crimes. Caught embezzling funds, French gentleman Victor Manzon (Bruno Cremer) runs to escape public humiliation and a long prison sentence. Finally, getaway driver Jackie Scanlon (Roy Schieder) takes his one-way trip to nowhere after a botched robbery of Mob money in New Jersey.

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As in the Clouzot movie, these four and many other foreigners are struck in a wretched shack town outside an oil company outpost in a South American dictatorship. They haven’t enough money to leave the isolated location and can’t get jobs. They also lack legitimate passports. Their chance comes when rebels blow up an oil well, which must be extinguished with high explosives. The only supplies are too volatile to move by legal means, so the oil company manager Corlette (Ramon Bieri) puts out a call for experienced drivers to transport the unstable cargo 218 miles over ridiculously rugged roads. Three of our renegades make the cut, and the fourth earns his spot through murder. Yet the job is a suicide mission: the oil company is sending two trucks in the belief that at least one won’t make it.

Sorcerer looks great and contains impressive action scenes. The first time I saw the traffic accident in New Jersey I was genuinely jolted. The riot over the burned corpses in the village is also pretty strong stuff; in 1975 it seemed shockingly obvious that the mob would direct its anger at the innocent soldiers and truck drivers. In many ways Friedkin’s jungle trek improves on the first film. The rain-soaked tropical locations are more realistic than the dry mountains in the South of France (?) where Clouzot filmed. The four men endure a worse trip in this picture, that’s for sure.

The most remarkable scene is of course the near-absurd river crossing on a wind-tossed cable bridge that barely has enough wood remaining to support the trucks. The trucks inch their way across, splintering what support planks still remain and at times tilting dangerously. Friedkin judges this scene beautifully. It looks so real that we believe it could actually be done… well, we believe it long enough for the scene to work. Friedkin also can’t be faulted for not sticking to his ‘vision’: the crew tried for weeks to make the scene work in the Dominican Republic, and then had to start over in Mexico. Sorcerer ended up so costly that Friedkin knew it would have to be a big success not to cripple his directing career.

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On this truly handsome Blu-ray Sorcerer is a pleasure to watch just for its audacity and spectacular set pieces. But as a fully realized entertainment it misses the mark. Friedkin insists that the show is not a remake, yet it obviously is. The story particulars and what happens to the characters are largely the same. Friedkin and writer Green succeed in making their characters unlikeable, but the actors seem to be fighting that effort. We have naturally positive feelings toward Roy Scheider’s Scanlon, even when he roots for the other truck to blow up, so that his take-home salary will double. Likewise, we want to like the other three crooks- turned suicide drivers. The terrorist bomber’s expertise with explosives comes in handy at one point, and even the loathsome assassin Nilo has the right skill for the moment when he and Scanlon are waylaid by murderous bandits.

Friedkin refuses to give any of his adventurers a sense of humor. He apparently doesn’t want to dampen the tension, but little tension develops if we can’t identify with the characters enough to invest in their survival. That doesn’t happen here. Friedkin concentrates on his precise angles and cutting, and short-changes the human factor. Because Sorcerer is so much like The Wages of Fear we can’t help noticing that nothing that happens is as tense as in the first film. The people are credible but very thin — in the final couple of scenes Scanlon and Nilo’s acting seems to be provided by a makeup job that gives their faces a blood-drained ghost quality. Friedkin’s spooky mood and cynical throwaway finish fall very flat. We admire Sorcerer but aren’t particularly engaged by it.

Roy Scheider is well cast but isn’t given enough to build a full screen personality for Scanlon. Bruno Cremer should have been a bigger star, as he’s excellent; he has a tough face that would have looked great in a Melville-style crime picture. Here Cremer at least gets to show with his expressive eyes what he’s lost: a chateau, a fancy wife, fine cuisine. Amidou is the film’s concession to youth, even though he was 41 at the time of filming. When his Kassem almost falls through the cable bridge, we think that he might get run over, just like Charles Vanel in the original.

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Francisco Rabal’s ruthless hired killer is the most mysterious and least probed character, the one that breaks down in fear yet marshals his killer instincts to save the day for Scanlon. Friedkin wanted Rabal to play Frog One in The French Connection but was saved by a providential screw-up: he confused Rabal with his fellow Spanish actor Fernando Rey, who got the part. Rey’s magical performance opposite Gene Hackman provided the chemistry that made French Connection connect big-time with audiences. In Sorcerer no such chemistry is permitted.

Less important but still relevant is the fact that Friedkin’s remake lacks the original’s sense of political outrage, and replaces it with a dull pessimism. The original film carries a fierce anger against an economic system that dispossesses the Third World and places profits above human lives. The Sorcerer just accepts those conditions as a given. ‘Terrorists’ get the blame for the oil disaster.

Viewers may not know what a great actor Francisco Rabal was. A favorite of Luis Buñuel, he played his share of weird creeps but also embodied the movies’ most interesting religious figure, Nazarín. He played Che Guevara and Francisco Goya (twice), and was also the perverted Euro-horror movie director Máximo Espejo in Pedro Almodóvar’s ¡Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!).

Sorcerer is yet another Blu-ray release of this year to carry a music score by Tangerine Dream. In this regard William Friedkin displayed a good ear — 1977 was before Thief, Dead Kids and Risky Business.


Warner Home Video’s Blu-ray of Sorcerer is a stunning transfer, with 5.1 audio, of William Friedkin’s impressive production. After years of low-grade video presentations the color and sharpness of this encoding really stick out. Only one shot seemed bogus, an aerial angle of the jungle in which the greenery leaps out with a blast of oversaturated chroma. But Friedkin hasn’t indulged in any color experiments and the transfer overall is stunning. The bridge sequence in particular looks terrific, half obscured by curtains of pouring rain. It’s unforgettable.

There are no video extras on this presentation. In the fancy illustrated color souvenir book packaging we instead get an adapted chapter on the making of the picture from Friedkin’s book The Friedkin Connection. The director gives an exciting account of the perils of the shoot. From editing the extras for To Live and Die in L.A., I remember hearing that editor and co-producer Bud S. Smith amassed a wealth of film materials from the shoot for the express purpose of making a “Burden of Dreams”- style documentary, or at least a long-form featurette. If Sorcerer had been considered a bigger picture, it might have been possible for such a show to be made.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson


Sorcerer Blu-ray rates:

Movie: Very Good

Video: Excellent

Sound: Excellent

 

Warner Home Video

1977 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date April 22, 2014 /

Starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou, Ramon Bieri, Peter Capell, Karl John, Fredrick Ledebur, Joe Spinell.

Cinematography Dick Bush, John M. Stephens

Film Editor Bud Smith, Robert K. Lambert

Production Design John Box

Original Music Tangerine Dream

Written by Walon Green from a novel by Georges Arnaud

Produced and Directed by William Friedkin

Supplements: color illustrated souvenir book with William Friedkin essay.

Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly?
YES; Subtitles: English, Spanish, French

Packaging: 1 Blu-ray disc in plastic holder in book-style packaging

Reviewed: April 19, 2014

 

Que Viva Mexico featured

Eisenstein’s Mexican Odyssey

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Sergei Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico! (1931-32) remains among the best-known “unfinished” films. In fact, so much has been written about this visually impressive yet disaster-ridden production that it has become a cinematic legend.

The influential Russian filmmaker never was allowed to edit or complete his passionate study of Mexico’s cultural history, yet the footage survived in the form of several abridged versions. In 1979, Eisenstein’s one-time colleague, Grigori Alexandrov, produced a 90-minute re-edit based on his first-hand recollections and the director’s notes.

Released on DVD by Kino Video, Alexandrov’s reconstruction of Que Viva Mexico! exists as a compromise — evocative and dazzling at times, yet an enigmatic blueprint for a more ambitious project. It is one of cinema’s tragedies that, for political as well as financial reasons, Eisenstein was prevented from fully realizing his Mexican odyssey.

Que Viva Mexico! evolved from Eisenstein’s stay in Hollywood during 1930, where his plans to work for Paramount collapsed due to creative differences with the studio bosses. Instead, the director of Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928) sought non-studio financing for his Mexican epic. Eisenstein hoped to receive monetary assistance from Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, since they encouraged him to work in Hollywood. Despite their considerable wealth and public admiration for Eisenstein’s revolutionary films, Fairbanks and Chaplin refused to bankroll the independent production of a fellow artist.

Rather than contribute money, Chaplin suggested that his friend Upton Sinclair, the noted socialist author, might help Eisenstein in his cinematic quest. Sinclair was receptive to Que Viva Mexico! and provided the $25,000 budget. In the signed contract, Eisenstein promised Sinclair he would finish the project in four months. Sinclair maintained ownership of the negative and stipulated that his brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, serve as the film’s production manager. These factors inevitably resulted in the dissolution of Eisenstein’s work, with added pressure from the Soviets, who demanded that their famed director return home.

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The 32-year-old Eisenstein departed for Mexico in December 1930. Accompanied by Alexandrov and cinematographer Eduard Tisse, he shot 250,000 feet of footage, mostly near Tetlapayac — a Spanish plantation located southeast of Mexico City. Eisenstein likened the structure of Que Viva Mexico! to “a sequence of short novellas.” The film encompassed ritualistic bullfighting, the Day of the Dead, the Mexican Revolution and the spiritual paradise of Tetlapayac.

Eisenstein’s work on Que Viva Mexico! took considerably longer than four months. With little knowledge of film production, Sinclair believed that Eisenstein was spending too much time and money as the final shooting budget more than doubled the original amount.

On the moralistic front, Sinclair was displeased to hear from Kimbrough about Eisenstein’s alleged homosexual indiscretions. Eisenstein, in turn, accused Kimbrough of squandering the film’s budget on liquor, gambling and prostitutes. The allegations of both men never were substantiated. To further complicate matters, Sinclair received word from the Soviet government that Eisenstein had deserted his country and no longer was in favor with the Stalin regime.

Despite these troubles, Eisenstein had completed most of Que Viva Mexico! by January 1932 — all he needed was an additional $8,000 for the Mexican Revolution sequence. Sinclair, claiming “near bankruptcy,” pulled the plug on Eisenstein’s epic, but promised to ship the negative and work print to Russia for the crucial editing.

His visa expired, Eisenstein was forced to return to the Soviet Union where he suffered the consequences of his insubordination. As a result, he would not complete another project until Alexander Nevsky in 1938. Before leaving the United States permanently in April 1932, the filmmaker viewed the Que Viva Mexico! rushes in a New York screening room. Sadly, he never would see the original footage again.

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Sinclair did not keep his promise to Eisenstein. Hoping to recoup his losses, the controversial writer handed over the director’s material to Hollywood producer Sol Lesser, who had the film edited by other hands and released as Thunder Over Mexico in March 1933. Ironically, Fairbanks and Chaplin would endorse this mutilation of Eisenstein’s work. Lesser cannibalized more of the director’s footage by creating two short films in 1934, Eisenstein in Mexico and Death Day.

Back in Moscow, Eisenstein could do nothing but decry the butchering of Que Viva Mexico!  by “someone’s grubby hands.” However, the pain ran deeper. “This whole affair has broken my heart to the point where I have become disgusted with cinema and have not made a film since,” Eisenstein wrote in 1934. The director completed only three more films before his death in 1948.

Though much has been lost, the surviving images from Que Viva Mexico! linger in the memory — notably the disturbing parade of skulls and death masks in the Day of the Dead sequence. Legendary filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel (Los Olvidados), John Huston (The Night of the Iguana) and Orson Welles (the unfinished It’s All True) would benefit from Eisenstein’s exotic, surreal vision. Regardless of the controversies surrounding its making and unmaking, there is much to admire for historians and cinephiles alike.

And the odyssey is far from over.

Since 2003, the Mexican Picture Partnership Ltd. has been working on a reconstruction and restoration of Que Viva Mexico! (utilizing previously unseen footage from the Upton Sinclair estate). When completed, the contemporary project will be 30 minutes longer than the Alexandrov version.  One eagerly awaits this ambitious re-examination of Sergei Eisenstein’s love affair with Mexico.