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Thursday, April 28, 2022

City Lights (1931)

Directed and produced by Charles Chaplin



Penniless and homeless, a Little Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) is one day instantly smitten with a blind flower-seller (Virginia Cherrill). That evening, while dreamily thinking about the girl, he saves a drunken millionaire (Harry Myers) from suicide. The Tramp is proclaimed the millionaire’s new best pal – only to be disowned when the rich man wakes, sober and forgetful, the next morning. This on-again, off-again friendship complicates the Tramp’s life and his attempts to help the girl – or does it?



From the start, City Lights is different than other movies. It was a silent film at the start of sound, the popularity of which with the public was immediate. City Lights was not made in defiance of the new trend, or in the belief that it was a passing phase. Instead, Chaplin felt, rightly so, that his character would not translate well to sound. Instead, we are given exactly what the title card states: a romantic comedy in pantomime, and, ninety years after its debut, it remains a superb film.



It is natural that some movies will date badly. This is not unique to silent films, though of course they have a built-in disadvantage, since the cinema is meant to be more realistic than the theatre. Silent films often required exaggeration in the facial expressions and actions of the performers, and these, compared to those of sound movies, especially the later ones with their close-ups and camera techniques, can be tiresome.



Chaplin eschews such grossness except when it assists drama or comedy. The humour of City Lights could fit any decade and surpasses much that came after. There aren’t many movies that make me laugh aloud, but this is one of them. There is an effortlessness to it that may have come from Chaplin’s background in the music halls. For instance, a scene in which the Little Tramp tries to remove a rope from the millionaire’s neck, only to find it around his own has a sleight-of-hand quality to it that may have come from watching magicians on stage.



As well, Chaplin knew the value of restraint, of the worth of what is implied rather than seen. At one point, the Tramp has a job which clearly involves shovelling dung - horse dung, principally - from the streets. The debris is never shown, which increases the humour when he first sees one horse go by, then a team of them, and finally a circus elephant trot down the lane.



The acting is very good, not what is frequently expected in silent films. Myers is a particular asset; his morose expression when the millionaire is depressed is priceless. Cherrill is suitably sweet as the object of the Tramp’s love. Even those playing the minor characters do well, such as Hank Mann as a boxer.



The writing is also excellent. Much is contrived, as comedic situations often are, but even if we think we know how the Tramp will be able to help the girl, we can’t be sure, and we don’t foresee all the complications that are thrown in his path, or how he will surmount them. There are little moments that are gems, such as when another hobo (John Rand) dives for a discarded cigar but is beaten to the prize by Chaplin’s Tramp - who has just emerged from a Rolls Royce.



Silent films may offer the best example in cinema of how acting, writing and directing come together to create a whole. This is especially true of the poignant moments in City Lights, such as the when we see the Tramp’s longing for the girl, or when he is hauled off to jail (flippancy in the face of injustice can often be poignant.) And of course there is the ending, in both the double meaning of the girl’s last line and the face of the Tramp.



This scene epitomizes, I think, why City Lights, and Chaplin’s enduring and endearing character of the Little Tramp, are justly celebrated. He has nothing – he’s a moneyless ex-convict in rags – yet his joy is unbounded and unalloyed at seeing someone else have everything. In that moment, Chaplin expresses altruism in its purest form.



There is not much to fault in City Lights, from its semi-allegoric beginning to its sublime ending. This is one of cinema’s masterpieces.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

T-Men (1947)

Directed by Anthony Mann; produced by Aubrey Schenck

The U.S. Treasury Department learns that a successful counterfeiting gang, and their successful counterfeit money, is based on having the right kind of paper on which to print bills. Two agents (Dennis O’Keefe, Alfred Ryder) are dispatched to the west coast to find the gang, infiltrate it, and break it up. But the criminals are smart, using the same methods as government law enforcement – background checks, surveillance, strong security – and attacking them from within may prove not only impossible, but deadly.

T-Men tries to go the route many British crime and war films of the era travelled, using the semi-documentary style that brought extra realism to the movies. Though the British didn’t have a monopoly on the sub-genre, T-Men’s use of it is flawed, and contributes to a mediocre result.

The movie starts out with a prologue given by Elmer Lincoln Irey, real-life head of all the Treasury Department’s investigation branches for four years before his retirement in 1941. This is no doubt intended to give extra authority to the words read during the prologue. Unfortunately, they are clearly ‘read’, Irey’s eyes rarely lifting from the papers in front of him. This detracts from, rather than builds on, the realism.

The bulk of the story is adequate. The infiltration of the gang, starting as far away as Detroit, is given plenty of time, though one wonders about the much-vaunted methods of the criminals in not properly vetting the new crooks who are looking for places in the gang. As well, when one of the agents’ fake identity is revealed, there should have been more suspicion falling on the other; he continued to be accepted, though warily.

The performances are very good (aside from Irey’s), with a number of veteran film noir actors at play here. Aside from O’Keefe, Charles McGraw plays the gang’s main thug, with a brain as well as muscle; Wallace Ford has a good role as a crook on the margins of the counterfeiters’ mob, who has schemes above his abilities, and June Lockhart has a very small role as the wife of one of the good guys.

Not a bad picture over all, T-Men nonetheless falls short of being more than routine. It benefits from Mann’s direction (as most of Mann’s movies do), which provides some tense scenes. But T-Men doesn’t stick to the semi-documentary style it starts with; as drama it doesn’t break any new ground, and the old ground it travels over is rather plain.

 

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Hugo (2011)

Directed by Martin Scorsese; produced by Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp, Tim Headington, Graham King

In 1920s Paris, twelve year old orphan Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives secretly in the attics and walls of the Montparnasse railway station, keeping the clocks working and on time. Meanwhile he is stealing mechanical parts to repair an automaton left to him by his father (Jude Law). This leads him to meet a bitter old toyshop-owner (Ben Kingsley), an acquaintance that will change the lives of the boy, the man, and all who know them.

A most unusual movie for the director, Hugo is largely child-oriented, with a dose of fantasy, quite removed from Scorsese’s normal realism and human drama. Nonetheless, it is easy to see it as something important to him, for it is in great part a tribute to the early days of his beloved profession, that of making motion pictures.

Yet while that is its goal, I am sure, it takes a long time to reveal it, not mentioning films until almost half-way through its run. That is one of its problems: Hugo seems almost not to know where it is going until it finds its feet – and then it is off and running. Since it was adapted from a very popular book, and seems to have followed the book’s plot closely, the aimlessness of the first part was probably not intended.

The initial hour, dealing with the boy, his first, hostile encounter with Kingsley’s character and the introduction of other habitués of the railway station, is also heavy with computer graphics. I cannot think that Scorsese is at his best in such a milieu; the depictions of giant clocks and gears and pendula are, perhaps, necessary for the atmosphere of machinery and invention, but don’t quite fit with the rest of the movie.

Another problem is the adult characters who, at least as they are first and, admittedly, superficially revealed, are almost uniformly unpleasant. The worst is the station’s resident policeman (Sacha Baron Cohen), a repulsive human being whose war-wound is alternately meant to be the cause of amusement and pity. I suspect that these personalities are intended to show that the world is an untrustworthy and aggressive place for the children, Hugo and his new friend, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), who are thrown on to their own resources because of its nature. But, though such a hazardous setting is sometimes very effective for children’s stories (eg. Peter Pan), here, anger and resentment seem to be governing emotions among many of the grown-ups. There is also a rather embarrassing series of jokes referring to the paternity of a policeman’s son, which is inappropriate for children and unfunny for adults.

Once the film hits a kind of stride, with elements of a mystery and certain revelations regarding some characters, Hugo becomes more interesting. This change comes at exactly the point, I think, at which Scorsese’s true interest in the premise of the movie becomes apparent. I could almost see him rub his hands together and say, “All right, now we get to the good stuff.” The manner in which a fictional version of the life of Georges Méliès is woven into the story, and how it corresponds very closely with reality, is well done and, is, in effect, the heart of the film.

The performances are very good, especially from the two children, who have to have been nearly perfect not to ruin the movie. Kingsley, as well, is excellent, with good support from Helen McCrory and Michael Stuhlbarg; also involved are a number of well-known British actors in very minor parts, such as Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour and Emily Mortimer. Scorsese appears briefly as a photographer.

Then there is the strange case of Christopher Lee. I do not know if his character, a bookshop-owner, is in the original story from which the film was adapted, but his scenes come across as inserts, added after the fact. Isabelle is a young bibliophile, reading all the time, and her introduction to motion pictures is important to Hugo’s plot. I wonder if someone worried that this would be seen as suggesting that books were inferior to movies. Personally, I don’t feel that praising one item is denigrating another, but then I wasn’t raised in the twenty-first century. In any case, Lee’s scenes are pointless.

Hugo, then, is, I think, a good movie, in which the more significant second half could have used some prominent foreshadowing in the first. Not without its flaws, it does redeem itself somewhat as the true nature of the story is revealed. The fact that true interest in the film may also take time to build almost ruins it, however.

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

North Sea Hijack (a.k.a. ffolkes) (1980)

Directed by Andrew V McLaglen; produced by Elliott Kastner



When a small group of murderous extortionists take over a North Sea oil rig and threaten to destroy it unless paid a huge sum of money, the British Government call in a private anti-terrorist team headed by the eccentric Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Roger Moore) to recapture the installation. But ffolkes’s intelligence and preparation come up against the cunning and instinct of the gang’s leader (Anthony Perkins), and it’s an open question as to who will prevail.



In the midst of his run as James Bond, Moore took time for this light-weight and light-hearted adventure film. It’s a contrast to the Bond movies in many ways, most notably in the principal character. The action makes the picture a bit of a throw-back. In the age of bigger-and-better, just getting under way in the early ‘80s, the action in North Sea Hijack is on a small-scale. This of course does not make it bad; the short, sharp application of violence is as effective in the cinema as it can be in real life.



The direction is good, and provides some tense moments. The writing is adequate: it has some good lines, almost all delivered by Moore, and the story will keep the viewer interested. It throws some spanners into the plans of both the heroes and the villains, which is always nice to see: chance can be the most realistic turn of events in fiction, yet it can also come across as unrealistic. Here it is well handled. The main stumbling block is that the bad guys’ scheme seems half-baked, or at least only half conceived. With no apparent escape plan, one wonders what the villains intend to do once they have their money.



In terms of acting, this is Moore’s show. Perkins adds his usual nervousness to his role; in this case, it suits his character, a ruthless, loud, violent man with a hair-trigger temper. He tends to over-do the part at times, however, and there is no third dimension to any of the villains. Likewise, the supporting good guys (James Mason as an admiral, David Hedison as the manager of the oil rigs and Jeremy Clyde as a cabinet minister) have little to do but react to Moore.



Moore’s Rufus ffolkes is an interesting character, a hard-drinking misogynist cat-fancier who doesn’t suffer fools happily, and doesn’t really like smart people, either. His contempt for women comes from his own neuroses rather than from women themselves and, to be fair, he appears to have an equally low regard for men.



His characteristics are clearly additives, those traits that make ‘quirky’ characters, a description beloved of publicists who want their movies or tv series to stand out. These are contrivances, clearly, but Moore puts life into them, and, while I usually find irascibility and ego tolerable only in very small doses, they are entertaining here, perhaps because ffolkes seems genuinely to dislike evil-doers even more than he does everything else, and takes the situation seriously. Besides, it’s hard for me to dismiss entirely someone who says, “I like cats, and I don’t like people who don’t.”



While it may be easily ignored as drama, North Sea Hijack is nonetheless a fun, uncomplicated adventure flick, driven principally by the star.