30X30: Finally, done with the Wind

Jessica Harper is a young ballet student who discovers what she thought was a prestigious dance academy is actually a killing ground in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977).
Jessica Harper is a young ballet student who discovers what she thought was a prestigious dance academy is actually a killing ground in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977).

Still playing catch-up from last week's tech meltdown (so long, Sony, and welcome to the family, Samsung!), I opted to take on some of the longer films on my list, including all 3 hours, 58 minutes of Gone With the Wind, a film my mother has been demanding I see for nigh upon three decades.

Watching a pair of Fellini films in as many days left me speaking gibberish Italian to my labradoodle, but a sobering bout with Bergman knocked any residual silliness straight out of me.

To repeat: Just to keep things relative, I am awarding a score on a 10 scale at the end, along with what I'm calling a Relevancy score out of five stars. In other words, even if I wasn't wild about the picture, I am still of the belief that it is an important film for me to have seen. Expect a lot of fives on that category.

1. 8 1/2 (1963): Federico Fellini's kitchen-sink-of-the-psyche film eschews linearity in favor of a mental fantasia that digs into the work flow of an artist. Following world-famous director Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) who has completely lost his way en route to making his ninth film (hence the title's reference), as he "rests" at a nearby Roman spa, the film spins in and out of fantasy, memory, and the director's frequently slipping muse to create a sort of psychological jambalaya, with everything intersecting and tumbling over everything else.

The energy and vitality are palpable, as Guido is besieged on all sides by his producer (Guido Alberti), his crew, the press, his wife (Anouk Aimee), his mistress (Sandra Milo), a withering film critic (Jean Rougeul) and his scattered cast members, none of whom seem to know the roles they are meant to play.

Fellini, who famously often shot without a completed script in hand, uses that nervy energy to perfect effect here, utilizing layers of memory -- including himself as a young boy, getting a bath of red wine (what could be more Italian?) -- and elaborate fantasies until it builds into a crescendo of chaos during an impromptu press conference on a massive beach set, culminating with the director hiding under a table and shooting himself in the head.

As an examination of the artistic psyche, it's notable, but its real power comes from the openness of Fellini's tortured consciousness, pulled in so many directions at once, often in ridiculous and, as the critic keeps proclaiming, "pretentious" ways -- a neat trick to subvert critical analysis by already announcing the film's inherent weaknesses.

This is to say nothing of the gorgeous camera work from DP Gianni Di Venanzo (who also worked with Antonioni and Rosi), who anchors even Fellini's most whimsical visions with stunning composition and framing.

Score: 9.3/10

Relevancy: 5/5

2. Gone With the Wind (1939): At long last, I have fulfilled my mother's desire to see this sprawling, Southern epic and, as could have been predicted, my reaction is split.

Based on the equally sprawling Margaret Mitchell novel, the film's initial premise -- that the "Old South" was somehow a Camelot-like time of gallantry, courage, and sweet prosperity for all (white) gentry folk, only to be broken apart in the course of the Civil War and flailed by the cruel Yankee conquerors -- naturally doesn't take into account the lives of the African people upon whose whipped and battered shoulders and broken souls all this wealth was dependent upon.

Worse yet, the film takes pains to show how many of the Tara plantation house slaves, including Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), and Pork (Oscar Polk), seemed altogether happy to serve the shrewd-but-heartless Scarlett (Vivien Leigh), and the O'Hara family. The endlessly grinding plot takes us from just before the outbreak of the Civil War, where the Southern gentlemen were all too happy to go heedlessly into battle in order to show the insufferable Yanks their mettle.

That is, except for the cunning Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), who sees the South's folly, and plans to make a huge profit on it. Then it's on to the post-war Restoration malaise, leaving Scarlett scrambling to keep her beloved Tara afloat, while harboring a not-so-secret love for the married Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), whose beatific wife, Melanie (Olivia de Havilland), shows kindness and grace to all.

Still, the fact of the matter is, Scarlett, with her ruthless manipulations and haughty disdain, is a fascinating anti-heroine; and watching her morph from spoiled brat, to pitiless matriarch and businesswoman, back to spoiled brat again, is certainly worth watching. It does feel long -- Lord, does it -- but as an iconic bit of cinematic history, I would have to agree it's essential viewing.

Score: 6.7/10

Relevancy: 5/5

3. La Strada (1954): My second Fellini in as many days, and likely the one I should have watched first: It was this 1954 film, his fourth feature, whose immense popularity helped make it possible for him to make such an internal, self-referential film as 8 ½ nearly a decade later.

Unlike that film's dreamscape construction, this film works as a straightforward linear narrative: a brutish circus strongman, Zampano (Anthony Quinn), returns to the poor family from which he plucked his first female assistant/partner after she dies, and takes the next oldest, the spacey, ethereal Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife) on the road with him from gig to gig.

It features more of the sorts of imagery (circus performers, clowns, marching bands, rag-tag communities) for which Fellini would very often refer back to in his subsequent catalog. Quinn makes an imposing Kowalski-type figure, dense and explosive, a man whom pointedly eschews "thinking" about anything other than the next meal, the next carafe of wine, and the next gig (an act utterly devoid of deviation or creativity over many years).

When a moment of bestial savagery finally takes place, the sensitive, delicate Gelsomina can't reconcile it; and we come to find out, mighty Zampano might not be able to deal with the fall-out either. Masina, for her part, with her kindly, rounded countenance, makes for a perfect foil to the swarthy giant she dedicates her life to, despite various options suggesting a better opportunity would await her if only she could act on her own behalf.

With her baleful smile, and Chaplin-esque manner -- when, in one scene, she tries on a bowler, the resemblance to the Tramp is unmistakable, even sans moustache -- Masina brings a deep sympathy to Gelsomina, who would appear to be suffering from battered wife syndrome, even though Zampano never bothers to marry her.

Score: 8.5/10

Relevancy: 5/5

4. The Virgin Spring (1960): Bleak and harrowing stuff from Ingmar Bergman, a director who certainly knows his way around such material. Playing like a biblical allegory, it's a bit like a Swedish Rashomon, only instead of questioning exactly what happened, the film asks instead who was actually responsible.

A young maiden (Birgitta Pettersson) is raped and murdered in the woods by a pair of herdsman (Axel Duberg, Tor Isedal) as she's delivering sacred candles to her local parish, traveling along with a bitter servant girl (Gunnel Lindblom) who watches the violence happen, but does nothing to intervene. The wretched pair strip the dead girl of her finery, grab their younger brother, and go on the lam, only to unwittingly end up at the farm of the victim's parents (Max von Sydow and Birgetta Valberg), where an eventual reckoning comes to them.

Bergman, ever obsessed with the idea of religion as a force of order and chaos, lets his drama play out, recording the distraught reactions of everyone involved (even the perpetrators) and the subsequent wave of self-blame -- the servant girl feels she willed it to happen; the mother believes it was her fault because she was jealous of her husband's closer relationship to their daughter; the father sees himself as an instrument of God, who has committed a mortal sin; even the youngest herdsman, who took no part in the attack, cannot eat or forgive himself as a result of what he has seen.

There is blame to be parceled out -- even to the maiden herself, who was repeatedly warned not to go into the woods with such little regard for her safety, and who is virtually blind to the danger she's in from the herdsman until it's far too late -- but at the end, Bergman allows a small trickle of hope and repentance, as if to suggest, maybe we're not that far off after all. Also featuring typically stunning camera work from longtime Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist.

Score: 8.6/10

Relevancy: 5/5

5. Suspiria (1977): A '70s-era Italian genre flick from Dario Argento, and still considered a classic of modernist terror. As with many such genre pictures, one is asked to overlook wretched acting, ridiculous dialogue, and an insistent soundtrack asked to provide much in the way of establishing an unsettling mood.

Fortunately, Argento is also an accomplished visual stylist, so the imagery, and the mise en scene are effective enough to keep the film interesting and relevant despite its more obvious failings (apart from everything else, it's the kind of slasher film where even the copious blood -- one of the single most celebrated elements! -- looks as if from a bucket of Sherwin Williams).

Jessica Harper plays young ballet student Suzy Bannion, who arrives in Germany from New York in order to attend what she believes to be a prestigious dance academy in Freiburg. Instead, to her horror, she discovers that the school is actually a front for something decidedly evil, leaving many of her fellow students murdered in particularly gruesome ways.

Reportedly, Argento asked his cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, to study Disney's Snow White for the color palette, which is represented all too well by the film's near constant use of primary colors (generally involving a whole bunch of red and green glowing lights). Subtle it ain't, but the visual flair includes more than a few memorable shots (a drinking-wine cam; a shot through a clear light bulb) and some strong editing sequences, as when the academy's blind piano player (Flavio Bucci) meets his untimely end in the middle of a deserted Roman piazza.

Despite these highlights, however, I'm at something of a loss to explain its sterling reputation. Somewhere in Queens, I have a friend who will absolutely kill me for this (and many more all over the country, for that matter), but while I can appreciate the film's visual motifs, I can't say I found it scary, or remarkable in any particular way beyond the limits of its genre. A new "reimagining" of the film from director Luca Guadagnino, starring Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton, is due this November, so we can see what that yields.

Score: 6/10

Relevancy: 3/5

photo

Sandra Milo and Marcello Mastroianni star in Federico Fellini’s “mental fantasia” 8½ (1963).

MovieStyle on 07/06/2018

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