BY SIDNEY LUMET - Review By Greg Klymkiw - AllLumetAllaTime@TorontoJewishFilmFestival(TJFF 2016)

I'M MAD AS HELL
I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE
SIDNEY LUMET - AN AMERICAN MASTER 

By Sidney Lumet (2015)
Dir. Nancy Buirski

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Though By Sidney Lumet might not have the Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow ultra-geek imprimatur at its helm like De Palma did, director Nancy Buirski holds her own quite artfully with an extended interview shot three years before its subject's death in 2011. She crafts a sterling documentary portrait of the late American master-filmmaker who gave the world Network, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, Serpico, 12 Angry Men, The Hill, The Pawnbroker, Prince of the City, Daniel, Long Day's Journey Into Night and some 60+ other movie and television productions.

Like De Palma, By Sidney Lumet has only one voice. Buirski's terrific film is ALL Lumet, ALL the time and what a marvellous gift that she (and Lumet) have bestowed upon the world. And Lumet, like De Palma, talks straight to the camera.

Father and Son: Lives in the theatre
Fathers and Sons: Recurring theme in Lumet's Films

In a series of warmly lit and sumptuously, evocatively composed head and shoulders shots (accompanied by archival film, photos and film clips) he delivers fascinating biographical details of his life before the movies, a narrative of his family's involvement in Yiddish theatre in New York, Lumet's career as a successful child actor, his expulsion from the Actors' Studio after one day and then, a series of blow-by-blow reminiscences about many of his pictures.

There's no denying the appeal of Lumet's early days. His father, Baruch Lumet was a successful working actor in Yiddish theatre. Lumet recounts that his first exposure to William Shakespeare was in Yiddish. Baruch was lucky enough to land a radio drama which he wrote, directed and starred in (along with young Sidney and his Mother). The program was so popular that the $35 per week it paid was more than enough to allow the family to survive throughout the depression. Baruch even rented huge theatres and mounted live theatrical adaptations of his radio show which, more often than not, packed the house.

When Yiddish theatre began to dry up, Baruch introduced Sidney to a few leading lights on Broadway and he became one of the most successful child actors on New York's Great White Way, appearing in 14 Broadway shows including Sidney Kingsley's immortal "Dead End" (the precursor to a number of Bogart/Cagney gangster and juvenile delinquent pictures at Warner Bros as well as the long running comedy movie franchises of The Dead End Kids and The Bowery Boys).

The film brilliantly follows Lumet's philosophies of both life and art - alternating between subtlety and on-pointedness when either approach is most necessary to the film's narrative and pedagogical journey. This is no mere anecdotal exploration of his life and work, but rather, a vitally practical one. The generous clips from his top-drawer pictures not only remind us of just how great a filmmaker Lumet was, but are always rooted in the narrative he provides, which Buirski and her creative team follow religiously, but with deft variations to never instil sameness to the proceedings.

Especially poignant are Lumet's memories of his father and their special relationship. These memories are hammered home with clips from Lumet's later films which dealt with father-son relationships like Long Day's Journey Into Night, Daniel, Running On Empty and Before The Devil Knows You're Dead.

Lumet and Fonda: To do the right thing. Or not.

Buirski wisely chooses to begin the film proper with the great scene from 12 Angry Men wherein a seemingly privileged, well-to-do all-White male jury quickly dispenses with their first vote in a murder trial in which a guilty verdict will bring an automatic death sentence to the accused, a young man from the deepest, darkest, dirtiest slums of New York. Only one man, Henry Fonda ('natch) adheres to the basic principles of the law and votes not guilty as he believes there is reasonable doubt. Buirski ends the clip on a haunting image of Fonda, with one of the eeriest half-smiles of benevolence any actor has ever had to deliver, which she freezes, then fades to black.

We then find ourselves on Sidney Lumet, deep in reflection. He begins to recount the horrific story about something he witnessed in a post-war Calcutta train station. A 12-year-old girl on the platform is dragged into a train compartment by a burly American G.I. Lumet is stunned by this and can't even believe it's just happened in plain view and ignored by the throngs.

He musters enough fortitude, marches to the compartment and knocks on the door. When it opens, he realizes the G.I. has taken on the role of a pimp and is charging other soldiers an entrance fee for the pleasure of fucking the little girl. It's clear they're tossing her between them like a rag doll, viciously, callously, greedily pulling train on this child. The soldier asks Lumet if he wants a piece of the action, for a price, of course. He refuses to partake.

It is at this moment when he is seriously faced with a dilemma that's clearly haunted him his whole life. Does he say something, do something, do anything to stop this gang-rape upon a child by his fellow American soldiers?

The aforementioned clip from 12 Angry Men, so infused with the question of doing the right thing and linked to this shocking real-life situation in Lumet's own life, is what informs the rest of the picture, as well as laying out both the structure and mise en scène of the documentary itself.

"I'm not directing the moral message," Lumet offers after this harrowing introduction. He then becomes especially succinct and emphatic on his statement: "I'm directing that piece and those people. If I do it well, the moral message will come through . . . you say it's a conscious choice, I say it's an unconscious choice."

"Guess who got shot? Serpico."
"You think a cop did it?"
"I know six cops who said they'd like to."

Choices, of the "unconscious" variety comprise a great deal of Lumet's analyses of his own work and it all appears to be rooted in his childhood memories of growing up poor. To his way of thinking, being poor and having fun were not mutually exclusive because of the fact that as a kid, he only knew one way of life. It was just the way it was. As the documentary progresses, it becomes apparent just how rooted Lumet's films actually were because of the reality of his childhood - growing up in New York in cramped apartments, neighbourhoods boxed in by multi-tenant dwellings and the sheer vibrancy of always being surrounded by throngs of people.

This brilliantly explains how Lumet had a genuinely distinctive voice as a filmmaker. He seemed to always go out of his way to set films or to shoot scenes in the most constricted locations and, of course his love affair with the grime and boxed-in qualities of living in New York. He even admits how in life and his art, being anywhere but New York caused him a great deal of anxiety.

That the documentary places huge emphasis upon the seeming constrictions of Lumet's long career as a television director is especially telling. In the clips and in Lumet's own words, we experience how he was able to move quickly and effectively, bringing an innate cinematic eye to his television drama and continuing on a larger scale with feature films.

And film after film, By Sidnet Lumet charts a world of humanity and vibrancy within world which, for the most part, are closed in. If anything, Sidney Lumet thrived on claustrophobia. Furthermore, it was this sense of claustrophobia which resulted in cinematic two-by-fours to one's senses whenever his pictures exploded fro within tight confines into the wider world. Network, with its boardrooms and television control rooms are always vibrant, but whenever he whips us out of doors - think Peter Finch in closeup in the TV studio delivering his "mad as Hell" speech, juxtaposed with smash cuts to the outside world as people fling open the windows upon the streets to do the mad news-anchor's bidding, screaming out to the world, "I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

This incredible mise en scène in film after film is what tantalizes us, excites us, presents the moral message and, in many cases, elicits huge laughs and feelings of elation on our part. Who will ever forget the hot, sweaty confines of a bank under siege, juxtaposed with Al Pacino leaping onto the streets screaming: "Attica! Attica! Attica!"

We also get a sense of how Lumet's cinematic renderings of words, dialogue and monologue continually flew in the face of what had become common wisdom in film. One picture after another has characters dominating scenes they're in with some of the most astonishing, heart-wrenching monologues. His adaptations of theatre were especially brave as he sought to not "open-up" the properties, just for the sake of moving us out of the "stage bound" settings. In Lumet's deft hands, the phrase "stage bound" never existed. All he cared about was creating drama on film, placing his subjects directly in the eye of the storm of his eyes.

Most of all, the nice thing about Buirski's film is that she never lets's us forget any moments of Lumet's filmmaking genius. They're inextricably linked to Lumet's words and both are proof that sometimes, silence is not golden.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

By Sidney Lumet can be seen at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival (TJFF 2016).

I, DALIO - OR THE RULES OF THE GAME - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Kudos to Toronto's Jewish Film Festival (TJFF16) presenting the NorthAmerican Premiere of one of the best portraits of acting in film in years, maybe ever! A startling portrait of racism in casting.

To be a great Jewish actor like Marcel Dalio
in Pre-War Paris meant to always play a Jew or Arab
and in either ethnicity, play a pimp, snitch, woman-beater,
gun-runner, smuggler, usurer, killer or coward.

I, Dalio - or the Rules of the Game (2015)
Dir. Mark Rappaport
Starring: Voice of Tito De Pinho as Marcel Dalio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To be a great actor in pre-war France meant you were marginalized in ways that today's diversity-in-film whiners can't even begin to imagine.

I, Dalio - or the Rules of the Game is so damn wonderful. The picture completely immerses you the world of French actor Marcel Dalio and though it runs a mere 33 minutes, the picture never feels rushed and yet, when it's over, one feels replete in all the good ways movies should make you feel. You hope, youou wish it could keep going. Director Mark (Rock Hudson's Home Movies, From the Journals of Jean Seberg) Rappaport achieves what all filmmakers really want and that's to leave their audiences wanting more.

Meticulously, lovingly researched, we hear Dalio as a "character" telling his experiences as an actor in pre-war France, wartime America and postwar France and America. Dalio's "voice" is superbly rendered by Tito De Pinho with such passion and verve, we feel no doubt that the words are literally diary/journal/autobiography writings.

Using generous film clips, we discover how antisemitic France was. Dalio's looks forced him to play the Jew, or in some cases, the Arab. In every case he was portrayed as a snivelling pimp, black marketeer, snitch, gun-runner, petty criminal, usurer, killer and coward. Though his characters were never directly referred to as "a dirty Jew" (or Arab). In one film he is described as France's most successful usurer which was tantamount to saying he was a Jew.

Dalio as "Frenchy" in To Have and Have Not.
Dalio in Casablanca: "Your winnings, sir."

The only role he played in which he was allowed to be a Jew, but with a fully fleshed-out character and a positive spin in France was in Jean Renoir's WWI prison war drama, La Grande Illusion, and years later in Renoir's The Rules of the Game.

Leaving France for America, just prior to the Nazi occupation, Dalio was no longer singled out to be cast as a Jew or Arab. He became the dashing "Frenchman". In Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not, Dalio played the heroic resistance smuggler "Frenchy". Inexplicably uncredited, Dalio gets one of the best moments in Casablanca when he approaches local constabulary Renault (Claude Rains) after the Vichy cop complains about the illegal gambling in Rick's Café Américain and Dalio, immediately shoving a wad of cash into Renault's hand, utters the immortal line, "Your winnings, Captain."

Dalio in the title role of Rabbi Jacob!

Post-war France brought somewhat less racist roles, but again, he was better cast in American cinema, once again, as a charming Frenchman. Finally, in France during the 1970s, Dalio was cast in the great comedic role of Rabbi Jacob

Rappaport's film is an exquisite memory piece and blessed with a very cool narrative structure. Ultimately, we see the story of a great actor, Jew or not, eventually playing what he was more than qualified to play - a romantic figure and a Frenchman. The whole affair, though, is played with a heartbreaking blend of triumph and sadness.

And I reiterate, what the great Dalio went through, makes contemporary "Oscars so White" actors in comparison, sound like mere killjoy crybabies.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

I, Dalio - or the Rules of the Game makes its North American premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival 2016. Try to see it on a big screen, preferably on a programme featuring Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion and The Rules of the Game, but if the opportunity does not arise, you can watch it on Fandor.

GIUSEPPE MAKES A MOVIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - HOT DOCS 2014 - Ed Wood + John Waters = Giuseppe "Detroit Rock City" director Adam Rifkin captures the workings of a genuine underground filmmaker. This surefire Film Corner HOT DOCS 2014 MUST-SEE is replete with infectious joy, sadness, hope and desperation.

When Giuseppe makes a movie, he prides himself on doing it all. This includes wiping the bum of his elderly incontinent leading man, "Grandpa" Tyree.

The simple math of Garbanzo Gas
COWS EXPLOITED = COW VIGILANTE

Giuseppe Makes A Movie (2014)
Dir. Adam Rifkin *****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Preamble -
Discovering the Mad Genius
of Ed Wood and John Waters.

When I was about eight or nine-years-old, I first saw Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space and not long after, Bride of the Monster. Keep in mind that this was the late 60s and even though I was a super precocious know-it-all movie nut, it took a second viewing of Plan 9 to identify that Ed Wood was not only the same guy who did Bride of the Monster, but that he was someone with the kind of distinct approach to movies that I was already starting to develop for much more stellar filmmakers as John Ford, Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock. I knew he wasn't in their league, but I distinctly remember thinking Wood's films were cool anyway, for one simple reason. I could tell there was something not quite right about them, but whatever that thing was, it didn't necessarily seem wrong either.

Whenever either film popped up on television, I'd watch them and in my mid-teens I finally saw Jail Bait. Its discovery thrilled me at the time because I had been wondering if Wood ever made more than the two aforementioned horror pictures and now I knew about three of them. Keep in mind, there was no such thing as the internet in the 60s and 70s, hence no imdb or wikipedia to look that sort of thing up. Even the original Forrest J. Ackerman "Famous Monsters of Filmland" only ever referred to Plan 9 and Bride of the Monster and, to my recollection, never with derision.

In 1975, I discovered John Waters via his cult masterpiece Pink Flamingos which not only shocked me with its utterly delicious depravity, but at the time, I recall thinking it too, had the same kind of "homemade" quality as Ed Wood's films and, in its very own way, it also didn't seem quite right, but that this was what made it so great. Though it's hard to argue Wood was an "underground" filmmaker like Waters would have been considered at the time, he was enough on the extremities of Hollywood that he sure felt like it. When I caught up with Waters' Female Trouble that same year, I recall noting how both Wood and Waters used a regular company of actors.

By the time Michael and Harry Medved released their famous 1980 book "The Golden Turkey Awards", I was shocked to learn that, by ballot no less, readers of their previous book "The Fifty Worst Film of All Time" voted Plan 9 From Outer Space as the "worst film of all time" and that the Medved boys personally chose Ed Wood as the "worst director of all time." To this day, I vociferously disagree. Once I caught up with other Wood pictures (especially Glen Or Glenda), I was convinced he was, in his own way, as mad a genius as John Waters. It was way back then that I started developing a severe distaste for the expression "guilty pleasure". I've never felt guilty taking pleasure in any of Wood's films nor, for that matter, in any number of titles cited as being "so bad they're good". I also appreciated Tim Burton's loving biopic tribute Ed Wood, a movie that still rates higher in my books than any others as a picture that perfectly captures the sheer infectious joy and obsession with movie-making.

An independent auteur like
no other before him. Iconoclasm Rules.

The Film - Giuseppe Makes A Movie
Giuseppe Andrews makes Ed Wood and early John Waters look completely mainstream, but like them, he's a true original. Nobody, but nobody will ever make films like his. Closer, perhaps, to the spirit of Ed Wood, albeit with a great deal more artistic aplomb, he makes movies with his own brand of joy and obsession. To say it's infectious is an understatement. A doff of my hat in Adam Rifkin's direction is in order for taking time away from his prolific family-movie screenwriting career (Small Soldiers, Underdog) to craft this wild, wooly and supremely entertaining documentary on Andrews. The sometime actor who appeared as a kld in Rifkin's own Detroit Rock City as well as bits in Independence Day, Pleasantville, American History X, Never Been Kissed and the first two Cabin Fever movies, eventually opened to a new chapter in his book of life as steady acting gigs got fewer and far-betweener.

Giuseppe's real claim to fame is having directed over 30 micro-budgeted underground films. Andrews is a fringe-player of the highest order. Out of his fevered imagination, he crafts work that captures a very desperate, real and sad truth about America's fringes that are, frankly, not so outside the Status Quo as the country descends even deeper into a kind of Third World divide twixt rich and poor. Through Rifkin's lens we see America according to Andrews, a country rife with abject poverty, alcoholism, exploitation, cruelty and violence. Trailer parks and cheap motels provide the visual backdrop by which Andrews etches his original portraits of depravity (but always tinged with humanity).

Giuseppe Makes a Movie focuses on the making of his 1K-budgeted 2007 film Garbanzo Gas, the tender tale of a cow sent on an all-expenses-paid trip by a slaughterhouse to a sleazy motel in order to have one last fling at life before being dragged back to be butchered. Rifkin's doc gives us a full picture of Andrews' creative process from script writing to production and it's a joy to behold.

He writes some of the richest dialogue I've ever heard. It's the grittiest, most musical gutter poetry imaginable and it's all about sex (often inextricably linked to violence). He casts his films with a regular company of actors who are, for all intents and purposes, homeless men of varying ages and all suffering from a variety of booze and drug addictions. Some of them want cash, but most of them are happy to work for beer and/or rotgut. On occasion he'll literally drag people off the street.

The Bottom line? His actors all seem like they're having one hell of a good time. Aside from the booze perks, acting in Giuseppe's movies offers them an alternative outlet to express themselves, but also, given the ferocity of the dialogue, one senses they also get a charge out of venting whatever they must vent via the florid vulgarity of his words.

Andrews' excitement is infectious.

He gets his cast to reel off these cool lines of dialogue by first barking the lines out himself as the gentlemen (and one lady) repeat them again and again until they nail what the mad auteur is looking for. This is electric stuff and the movie is often charged with its own kinetic energy, fuelled by Andrews' own implosions and explosions.

At times, these drunk, stoned and/or incontinent actors spout the tough-minded, richly purple and often hilarious monologues that reminded me, and indeed rival some of the best dialogue from Russ Meyer's equally purple-prose-worthy bag of tricks. Meyer, like Wood, early Waters and, of course, Giuseppe Andrews, all exemplify pure independence.

Giuseppe has help to do all this. His Dad, whom he lives with in a trailer park, is a part-time session musician who worked for years as the lead guitarist for The Bee Gees. He's the money-bags and all-round producer. They make a great team and it's especially touching to see their clear love and respect for each other even when they have disagreements. The two men are separated by generations, but linked by blood and creativity. They also know, after 30 films together, how to make movies for virtually nothing - it's complete and total DIY. No job is too small or dirty for these guys, though Giuseppe appears to have the regular honour of cleaning the soiled ass of his favourite actor, an incontinent old drunk named Tyree.

Rifkin wisely doesn't go out of his way to editorialize. He pretty much shoots what he sees and assembles it into its own unique fever dream of Andrews' life. For his part, Giuseppe is clearly a committed artist. He loves certain filmmakers like Pasolini, Fassbinder and Godard, then mercilessly craps on "fake" indie filmmakers. He displays disdain for cinematic storytelling convention (though he clearly seems to understand it) and most fascinating of all, he works completely on impulse but at the same time remains true to his language, themes and initial goals.

He admits to going through a patch of depression when it looked like his acting career was going nowhere, but no further probing on that front seems necessary. Giuseppe is clearly ill, but he's equipped with the ultimate anti-depressant, filmmaking. And look, I'm no psychiatrist, but I have a funny feeling that he clearly exhibits signs of mood states not unlike hypomania which include huge highs and lows plus a heightened sense of disinhibition. Many artists experience this and if, indeed, Giuseppe is going through a series of hypo-manic episodes (or something close to it) throughout the making of Garbanzo Gas, we get a rare, unbridled glimpse into that inner spirit, that flame burning within his synapses and how it yields creativity unbound.

Rifkin remain respectfully detached - as he should be. Too many filmmakers would be tempted to do one of those offensive, condescending and easy "Oh, let's make fun of this nutcase" style of film. Obviously there are plenty of talentless Status Quo hacks out there who could and would do that, but it would be a loss to the rest of us and Giuseppe. Frankly, to toss off someone like Giuseppe Andrews as an oddball, an eccentric or a quirky goof would display a complete lack of understanding, imagination, feeling and appreciation for what makes a true artist.

Yes, he might be quite insane, but he is an artist, for Christ's Sake and a damn fine one at that. Our world would be a much better place with more people like Giuseppe Andrews. Maybe someday we'll see a movie from him that nails all the boring buggers to the crucifix they deserve to be affixed to. If he does it, you can bet it will be rife with the humanity that pulsates through his work and courses through his veins until it spurts like geysers of gorgeously glistening viscous fluids upon the boundless tapestry that IS cinema.

Giuseppe Makes a Movie is playing at Hot Docs 2014 in Toronto. Get further info HERE.