Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba)

Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)

Presenting the Cuban revolution with the angle of the Soviet propaganda films, Mikhail Kalatozov’s filmmaking techniques overlays on its actual subject and shadows his storytelling. The sumptuous and extraordinary tracking shots of this visual masterpiece present four vignettes on the people of Cuba and how it led them to a revolt. Shot during the Cuban Missile crisis, Soy Cuba plays more like a documentary than a fiction. Manipulative and objective as it can be, the outstanding cinematography isn’t the only thing to notice.

Marnie

Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964)

Mark marries Marnie although she is a habitual thief and has serious psychological problems, and tries to help her confront and resolve them.

Starring Tippi Hedren as the title role and Sean Connery has Mark the man who falls in love with her and wants to “cure” her, Marnie is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most psycho sexual Freudian challenges. Lately, I’ve had a conversation with John LaRue of The Droid You’re looking For about Hitch’s misogynist approach to women. As an explanation of this conception of Hitchcock I recalled many elements that may have inclined him to be that way. As John recalled me he mentioned the mommy factor which is omnipresent in the films of Hitchcock.

With Marnie, we rediscover lots of recurring themes of Hitchcock’s obsessions: the cold blond woman stealing from her bosses and escaping (Psycho), the private detective who looks into the past of the woman (Vertigo), the final confrontation with the mother (Psycho again). The character of Mark is very interesting in the fact that he thinks he can cure Marnie, love her, and make her love him back. By forcing their marriage and the consumption of it Mark thinks Marnie will be “normal”. But the simplicity of his interventions can’t pair the deep psychological scars she wears.

While the Freudian analysis are used as plot points it accentuated the flaws of the film and the second half mainly represents the view of Hollywoodian simplicity on psychoanalysis. Hitchcock wanted so much to master the Freud material that he got caught up in his strange film. The setting of the first half and the tension of the opening evokes something that the story doesn’t finally delivers. Hopefully, Hitchcock handles like the master he is the elements aforementioned that he is comfortable with. On the down side, it’s once again the Freudian themes that fails on him just like his other film Spellbound.

Following a masterpiece like The Birds isn’t an easy task. It was even harder since the 1963 film was a genre movie and Marnie felt more on the psycho drama of Hitchcock revisiting is recurrent themes. However, the over atmosphere and feeling around Marnie is pretty unique and far from being a bland film from Hitch it is still one his finest approach to melodrama and the repressed problems of childhood.

On a more gossiping note, it is widely known that after Grace Kelly left the show-business to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco Hitchcock was looking for her replacement because the lady Kelly has been the perfect Hitchcock blond. When he discovered Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock supposedly felt deeply in love with her. She however, repelled him because she wasn’t interested at all. It is also a fact that Hitchcock told the bird trainer that he needed the birds to practically attack Tippi to get the most genuine feeling of fear from her. It was a revenge from Hitchcock who was re known to be a strong practical joker. So the story of Marnie, a woman who repels men and won’t have sex with them otherwise being forced might represent a subconscious desire of Hitchcock after his previous humiliation from his star.

Finally, this lesser appreciated film has somewhat earned its letters of noblesse amongst the Hitchcock enthusiasts including this reviewer. It takes rank number 17 (not intentionally here) in my personal top of Hitch's films I think this is an interesting Hitchcockian melodrama. I recommend this film.

Une femme mariée

Une femme mariée (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)

The 1960’s have been Jean-Luc Godard’s most productive decade. In 1964, he made La bande à part, Une femme mariée, a segment in Les plus belle escroqueries du monde, the short documentary Reportage sur Orly. As stated in many subsequent reviews of his films on Le Mot du Cinephiliaque, Godard is a revolutionary filmmaker with whom’s work I have some kind of love/hate relationship. His early films are fresh arrogant and inspiring as his later work even more arrogant and caracterized in the intentionnal lack of narratives.


Strangely, Une femme mariée, stands apart in the long filmography of the master. Closer to a Michelangelo Antonioni or an Ingmar Bergman picture than to a Samuel Fuller, this film with beautiful close ups and many sumptuous movement of camera, tells a simple story in a glossy black and white that accentuates the beautiful forms of the naked bodies of the lovers. At some point, Une femme mariée doesn’t look like a Godard film. It’s the dialogues that recalls his rich literal background and his “aisance” to play with the words. The kind of story reminds me of the great films by Bergman where a married man consumes his love for a mistress. The moments of the couple and the moments of conjugal life where the married woman lies to her husband about her liaison and her deep involvement with him recalls those doomed marriage that Bergman often portrayed in his films. The Antonioni touch is more on the visual aspect of Une femme mariée, in its highly contrasted black and white picture and the way the bodies are erotically shot. I cited Fuller, because his films of the 1950’s were a considerable influence on Godard’s films of the 1960’s. His raw camera work and his in your face attitude towards Cinema is palpable in films like La bande à part or À bout de souffle.

As an unconditional fan of Jean-Luc Godard’s films, even if some of his films deranged me, they are work of one of the most important figure of the French New Wave and it should be regarded as an important heritage of the coming of age of modern Cinema. Une femme mariée is oft overlooked and probably because of its unGodardian approach or because of its experimental (funny to think that Godard isn’t experimental) cinematography that isn’t shot in the same approach as his other films of this era. One thing is sure about Une femme mariée, this is truly a film of its time.

The Naked Kiss (1964)

The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller, 1964)

Directed by Samuel Fuller, The Naked Kiss is an amazing film for its time and its modernity. The themes treated are serious and mature. They surprised me like some elements of the plot of Anatomy of a Murder's sexual references and subjects.

The films begins with Kelly (Constance Towers) giving a series of hits towards the moving and shaking camera. We understand that she is assulting a man but for which reason? She only is in her bra and she losses her wig and we see that she is completely bald. With these first minutes and with even the first image of the film the viewer is involved in the story. The scene tells us that she is a prostitute and the man being savagely hit is her "pimp". Tired of this life of degradation and abnormality, Kelly moves to Grantville or if you prefer Anytown USA*. After one last job as "selling champagne", she decides to start a new life. Kelly becomes a nurse at the well-known hospital for handicaped children of Grantville. Her devotion to the children and her love for them is very maternal. All along the movie this is the feeling that Kelly needs to fulfill a void of being childless. Kelly's deiser is to get a "normal" life and be a better person. At the hospital she gets involved with Dr. Grant and they planned to get married, but a tragic event will force Kelly to change her plans and learned another lesson on maternal instinct.

Samuel Fuller has been knowed for his style categorized has "Cinema fist", it came from a shot in one of his films where the actor punches directly into the camera and breaks it. He makes tough movies and looking at The Steel Helmet or The Big Red One we feel that Fuller is a real man with raw shots and sometimes weirdly framed images that fit surprisingly well together. Anyhow, he can direct some very sentimental scenes, especially in The Naked Kiss when all the children are singing together with Kelly. This scene is very efficient and the children loooked straight into the camera in plain shot. A moment after the tape of the song is used again in a whole other situation and the song has a whole other dramatic effect on the audience. Fuller demonstrate a strong use of music and he is not afraid to put more than once the same song in the movie and transpose it in another context to suggest different emotions with the same tune.

This is no surprise that the French New Wave love his films; they are true and they represent filmmaking like it should be; propose multiple emotions and feelings to the public. The Naked Kiss is a little American Film Noir gem that deserves way more recognition that it actually has. I hope that it's reedition by Criterion (18 January 2011) will get him a wider audience.

Here they are The Beatles!

TSPDT Greatest Films #422 A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester, 1964) - Retrospective/1001 Movies You Must See

Does this film really needs a presentation? I don't think so, but just for the context let's do it anyway.

The Beatles; the greatest band in the history of music, four of the most prolific musicians of their time. Every member brought something unique to the sound of the band form George to Ringo and passing by John and Paul. Four names, that will always be related with The Beatles. The band lasted only a decade, the 1960's but they redefined the face of it. Their sound from rockabilly to experimental Indian sounds has done so much for the Rock that today thousands and thousands of bands are still inspired by them.

A Hard Day's Night was like a promotionnal video that showed "a day in the life" of The Beatles... Unlike the videos of today that feels forced and only made to sell albums, A Hard Day's Night has that feeling that The Beatles wanted to do Cinema and not just get onto the wave... The plot of the film is pretty simple. It's the gags and the creation around it that makes it more than just a promotionnal movie for an album. We feel a Chaplin vibe watching Ringo getting into trouble and going to jail for loitering. Well, the whole movie feels very cinematic and with the liberation of the 1960's it has a very artistic touch that completely feels right with the music of the Beatles.

For the fans of The Beatles, this is a must see and to any other music lover this is an interesting piece of music history. Finally, for the cinephile this is one of the best film of The Beatles and it's on every list of films to see.

A Review by Michaël Parent