WOMEN OF THE VENEZUALEN CHAOS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hot Docs 2018 Hot Pick

Through the eyes of its women, a country crumbles.

Women of the Venezuelan Chaos (2017/2018)
Dir. Margarita Cadenas

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To see a formerly progressive democratic nation crumbling under the weight of corruption, incompetence and dictatorship of Nicholas Maduro's foul reign is one thing, but to view it through the eyes of five brave women from very different walks of life is something else altogether. This not only provides a personal, human (and humane) perspective, but does so by creating a fascinating glimpse into the realities of a gender that is clearly on the frontline of a country's war upon its own people.

Women of the Venezuelan Chaos proves that a clear, simple approach to a complex issue is often the best way to explore it. Director Margarita Cadenas delivers a clutch of macrocosmic views that allow for a much larger bird's eye view of the current tragedy facing Venezuela, a beautiful country, rich in oil, other abundant natural resources and industry. With its 30,000,000+ population, situated at the northernmost reaches of South America, this is a country that should be thriving. These days, the only people who are flourishing seem to be the deeply corrupt totalitarian government that brutalizes the majority of its citizens, the corporate hogs who rape the country of its riches and an ever-exploding criminal element.

Survival is what appears to drive those who must do the real living and dying of Venezuela. For them, quality of life is existence fuelled by sheer endurance. The government spouts positive propaganda to its citizens and the rest of the world. The reality is in direct opposition to what its dictatorship wants everyone to believe.

Bookended by the simple facts of this current existence, Cadenas provides us with five stories. The first is that of Kim, a nurse who must provide for her family by working 12 back-breaking hours in a hospital everyday. Though she appears to be better off than most, she must seriously consider fleeing Venezuela in search of a better life. The threat of violence surrounds her, anything of value in her home must be hidden from thieves and worst of all, her primary job in a hospital is fraught with frustration since anyone admitted there must actually bring their own supplies with them to be treated.

María José is a community worker living in a relatively secure Caracas neighbourhood, but with one child and another on the way, she is forced to stockpile basic goods like diapers and non-perishable foods in anticipation of the new mouth to feed since basic items are scarce and can only be purchased on the black market for many times more than their actual worth.

Eva is in her early twenties and lives with her son, mother and extended family in South America's largest, most dangerous slum. The only thing that drives her is waiting in lines, often for days, to secure a number to wait in line for basic foods to live on.

Luisa is in her late 70s and lives with her husband. Both are retired police officers. Their grandson, who used to live with them, was an actual member of parliament in the opposition party who was illegally arrested and incarcerated without formal charges or a trial - for years.

Finally, we get the most harrowing story of all, that of Olga, a forty-something mother of three children whose home was illegally raided by police searching for a crime lord. She watched, with a gun shoved in her mouth, as her 16-year-old boy was shot. He slowly died before her very eyes until the cops came to the conclusion that they were in the wrong place. That the boy, a suspected "criminal", was shot, unarmed, in cold blood, is shocking and appalling. That he, and by extension the whole family, were not in any way, shape or form connected to a criminal element, is not only the height of Totalitarian stupidity, but even by Venezuela's lame standards of jurisprudence, illegal. Justice and yes, even revenge, keep her going.

Though in each story, Cadenas allows each subject to simply recount their respective stories, this is no mere "talking heads" experience. Even if it was, these are pretty compelling and forceful stories. But no, cinematographer César Briceño shoots these sequences with exquisite compositions, capturing the indelible qualities of the subjects' faces, allowing us to dive into their eyes in order to experience the pain of their existence and to get beautifully, naturally lit shots of their homes and beyond, on the highways and byways of world outside these fragile sanctuaries, the physical environments with which they live and work. This is dazzlingly-directed work by a clearly gifted filmmaker. Her subjects express deep emotion, Cadenas captures said emotion unflinchingly and we experience it. Also driving the film is a powerful and alternately passionate and dissonant score by Rémi Boubal. The editing and structure, is so simple and effective, and the film offers plenty of evocative and poetic interludes during the stories themselves and in between.

There is bravery here on two levels. Firstly, is the bravery of the filmmaking itself. Choosing this seemingly simple approach is what allows for political, social and emotional complexity. Secondly, there is the sheer bravery of the subjects - not just for their suffering, strength and ingenuity, but that they have exposed their lives and stories in a country which goes out of its way to silence those who would dare criticize it. And sometimes, the silence is permanent.

The bravery of the filmmaking and these women feels representative of the courage and fortitude of the vast majority of Venezuela's population. Even more, it is a perfect representation of the evil and cowardice of Venezuela's ruling powers. One can only hope that this is a film that will open the eyes of the world to this government's actions. That over one million people have had to flee the country is a disgrace. Yes, one hopes the rest of the world will open their collective arms to those who leave, but it would ultimately be far more advantageous for the rest of the world to pressure the country's totalitarian rulers to genuinely restore the nation to its former glory - to allow those who do most of the living and dying in Venezuela, to do so in peace and with dignity.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** Five Stars

Women of the Venezuelan Chaos enjoys its Canadian Premiere in the Oxfam Canada-sponsored "Silence Breakers" program at Hot Docs 2018.

THREADS, CHARLES - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - NFB at TIFF 2017 soars with joy and sadness

Life leads us from the frogs.

Charles (2017)
Dir. Dominic Etienne Simard

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In a mostly monochrome world, doughy lad Charles tends to his gargantuan lolly-gagging mother in a squalid flat. There are simple joys, of course, his beloved frogs, school and dips in the nearby lake. Dollops of colour, albeit pale and/or muted keep threatening to bring joy and solace, but they are fleeting.

Colour eventually explodes in the form of rising blue waters threatening to drown him. Will he be rescued? And whom or what will rescue him? Will it indeed be life itself? And oh, when it rains, what will rain down? Frogs? Kitty cats? Doggies? Big pudgy baby bears?

And will he find happiness?

Or is it, ultimately, imagination that will provide the ultimate freedom?

In Dominic Etienne Simard's Charles (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with France), it is the waters of time and the long, slow march to adulthood and freedom that await. The journey will, like so much of our lives, prove to be bittersweet. The film's gorgeous expressive visuals fill in all the blanks and finally, we're left with a work that soars with a great, though sometimes terrible beauty.

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

Charles plays at TIFF 2017.

The ties that bind hang by a thread.

Threads (2017)
Dir. Torill Kove

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To hang by a thread usually suggests imminent danger, something unstable and/or doomed to failure. In Oscar-Winner Torill Kove's lovely and simple animated short (a National Film Board of Canada co-production with Norway), it's the ties that bind which hang by a thread; a slender thread indeed.

This delicate and moving work details the life of a young woman who grabs a thread dangling from the heavens and allows it to hoist her upwards on a journey we come to recognize as life.

When she finds another thread, it's attached to an infant. She and the little girl are inseparable. Though the child grows incrementally into adulthood, they're bound together by that mysterious thread. Even when the thread leads the child to peers on a playground and, for a time, completely out of the mother's purview, the thread remains.

But the day comes, one we all dread I think, when when her daughter must sever the tie that binds to jump up to the heavens, to clutch her own thread.

As a single Dad to a teenage daughter the film inspired so many personal memories of past and present. It provided both solace and melancholy as I, like the mother in the film, face the imminent severing of my own thread to my own child. Yes, we dread the severance, but we also accept it. Life must go on and for those we love the dearest, our children, it must move forward.

There might not be anything new revealed in the sentiments and story revealed in the film, but its visual metaphor is one I welcomed, understood and responded to on a deep emotional level.

I suspect I'll not be alone in this.

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

Threads plays at TIFF 2017.

Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Haunting portrait of French Resistance during wartime at TIFF Bell Lightbox Summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and available on the Criterion Collection.

A Nazi soliloquizes to silent listeners in Melville's debut.

Le Silence de la mer - The Silence of the Sea (1949)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Nvl. Vercors (Jean Bruder)
Starring: Howard Vernon, Nicole Stéphane, Jean-Marie Robain

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are many forms of resistance during an occupation. As Jean-Pierre Melville's debut feature film proves, the most powerful of all is silence. When an old man (Jean-Marie Robain) and his niece (Nicole Stéphane) are forced to billet Nazi officer Werner von Ebrennac (Howard Vernon) in their own home, they choose to contribute to the French resistance of German occupation by going about their lives as if their unwelcome guest doesn't exist.

Silence proves to be a formidable weapon. Le Silence de la mer is based on the secretly published novel by Jean Bruder under the nom-de-plume "Vercors", published and circulated in France during the Occupation. So horrific is the power of Melville's adaptation that the film succeeds as one of the most chilling anti-war films ever made and this from a picture that seldom leaves the confines of a cozy, bourgeois country living-room. What a gloriously mad first feature film, but one that radiates the sheer abundant cinematic glory that is Jean-Pierre Melville.

The first two-thirds of the movie involves the old man and his niece sitting quietly - the old man reading and/or smoking his pipe whilst his niece intensely embroiders. The Nazi officer pays them nightly visits. He acknowledges and respects their resistance, their cold, borderline cruel silence.

Still, this does not deter him from trying to establish a human connection. He wanders about the living-room, speaking in soliloquy. His words are always gentle, mannered and cultured. It doesn't take long to figure out he isn't the usual garden variety Nazi Officer. It seems that Werner von Ebrennac has the soul of an artist and he holds a deep love and admiration for French culture.

Many of his monologues are heart-achingly beautiful observations on art, language, music and literature. He even reveals tidbits about his life in Germany, some very personal. When he tells the story about his one great love and how he was eventually driven from her when she displayed a deep-seeded cruelty he could have never before imagined, we are allowed to see the pain and disappointment in his eyes. We are allowed to feel for him as a human being. His hosts, however, remain unmoved - at least on the surface. No matter what he says, the old man and his niece remain impassive - and, silent.

Their silence does indeed border on cruelty, though our Nazi doesn't see it that way. He acknowledges their right to silence. Astonishingly he seems to welcome it as the right of any countryman to resist their occupation at the hands of an enemy.

He occasionally veers into political territory - dangerous territory indeed since he betrays considerable naiveté and in so doing he attempts to provide a perverse justification for Germany's occupation of France. This eventually proves to be his biggest mistake because eventually he comes face-to-face with the true reality of his country's motives, their final solution.

Eventually a word will indeed be spoken from the "resistance". When it comes, it's excruciatingly painful. I personally find myself gasping and on the verge of weeping every time I experience this moment.

There's something so perfect, so indelible about this motion picture. Melville, a French Jew who was a resistance fighter during WWII, made this film not long after the war. Given the horror, danger and cruelty he experienced, one might have expected a very different film on his feature debut, but no, he is, after all Jean-Pierre Melville. Le Silence de la mer seems to set the stage perfectly for the compassion and humanity he displayed throughout his career.

He's achieved the impossible. He allows us to see cruelty in resistance and humanity in a Nazi. Just thinking about this makes me want to weep with joy.

And sadness.

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

Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea) plays at at the TIFF Bell Lightbox Summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville". It is also available on a gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray and DVD that comes complete with a new high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, Melville's first film, the short 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), a new interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, Code Name Melville (2008), a seventy-six-minute documentary on Melville’s time in the French Resistance and his films about it, Melville Steps Out of the Shadows (2010), a forty-two-minute documentary about Le silence de la mer, an interview with Melville from 1959, a new English subtitle translation, plus a booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and a selection from Rui Nogueira’s 1971 book "Melville on Melville".

L'ARGENT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Bresson's final film gets the Criterion treatment.

Robert Bresson's last film might be his greatest...
and the Dude made one great picture after another.

L'Argent (1983)
dir. Robert Bresson
Starring: Christian Patey, Caroline Lang, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Vincent Risterucci

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Robert Bresson died in 1999. During his forty years as a director, he made only 15 feature films. He was uncompromising.

On one hand, it seems disgraceful it was so difficult for him to secure financing. On the other, when one looks at filmmakers of equal genius (albeit very different filmmakers), the ease with which they were able to grind out film after film left quite a few stinkers in their canons and as their careers progressed into their august years, the work itself adhered strictly to the law of diminishing returns. For me, Ford and Capra (who, in fairness often took gun-for-hire gigs with studios) are those who fall into this category. There were exceptions to the rule like John Huston, who made his fair share of stinkers, but in his last years generated several terrific pictures and in the case of The Dead, his last film, a bonafide masterpiece.

L'Argent was Bresson's last film and made 15 years before his death. I hate to imagine what those final 15 years were like NOT making a film, but one hopes he took some solace in the fact that this was exactly the sort of final work that every artist dreams of leaving behind.

Not only is this picture the ultimate Bresson film - a culmination of his deeply original approach to cinematic storytelling - but is, in fact, a deeply important film; artistically and morally. This is a film that, on its surface seems utterly stripped of redemption for its lead character, for the world and finally, for humanity. This, I believe, IS purely surface. L'Argent may well be one of the great humanist works of the 20th century - up there with the greatest films of Jean Renoir, if not in a stratosphere far above.

While Bresson's work was always secular in its humanism, there was also an adherence to faith - lapsed or otherwise and importantly, never in the sense of religious humanism. L'Argent presents a world where any sense of faith is betrayed and/or quashed and yet, in spite of this (and in spite of the almost cold, calculatingly precise manner in which the tale is rendered), this might well be Bresson's most emotional and affecting film - his most profoundly moving work.

It should probably come as no surprise that L'Argent is based on a literary work by Leo Tolstoy - a writer who practically defined the modern art of narrative (as I'd argue Bresson did with cinema), a great thinker/philosopher (again, not unlike Bresson) and a believer in both faith and a higher power, but ultimately eschewing the corruption and hypocrisy of organized religion (and again, Bresson being cinema's Tolstoy in this regard). Where Bresson and Tolstoy appear to part, at least literally, is that Bresson chose to base his film upon only Part I of Tolstoy's novella "The Forged Coupon" and not touch Part II of the work - the part wherein redemption was sought and found.

For Bresson's great film, this was a brave, brilliant and strangely apt choice.

There is, finally, something mysteriously affecting in Bresson's almost under-a-microscope study of how one immoral action sets off a chain of events, domino-like, of one unethical act after the other until we are faced with the ultimate evil, actions of the most viciously immoral kind - conducted with no remorse, no feeling (not even hate, it seems) and certainly - no redemption.

The tale Bresson spins is relatively faithful to Tolstoy's (though updated to contemporary France). A forged bill is passed on to a hapless soul who is powerless to fight the punishment he receives after unwittingly passing on the fake money. Losing his job and any reasonable prospect of employment to support his wife and child, he takes on the job of a getaway driver during a heist. He is caught, sentenced to prison and loses his child to a fatal illness and his wife who decides to move on and begin a new life. Upon his eventual release from prison, he has nothing. His soul seems drained and his actions become increasingly violent.

Upon committing an utterly heinous and unpardonable sin/crime, he calmly turns himself in - not out of redemption or guilt or compassion, but to further an opportunity to be incarcerated with the person who passed him the bill in the first place - to exact cold, calculated revenge (and by this point, without even the extreme emotion of hatred - revenge becomes almost a base need).

It is here where Bresson offers one of the most astonishing final images and cleaves it off literally with a picture cut to black that is so exquisite, so precise, so emotionally and viscerally powerful, that experiencing it invokes a physical response that is literally breathtaking.

Tolstoy offered us redemption. Bresson denies it to us. Two different approaches to the same material, however, yield similar results. We so desperately cling to the hope that redemption will come to Bresson's central character, that it's our hope, that is, finally, the redemption. Bresson allows us to seek humanity in ourselves through the inhuman actions of another.

This is a masterpiece.

To not see it, to not acknowledge this, to not revisit this great work again and again and again is to deny cinema and the power of cinema - one that even Tolstoy himself in his final years lamented not having an opportunity to tackle.

Cinema is a great gift.

Bresson, however, was the greatest gift to cinema and L'Argent is his greatest film.

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

L'Argent is now available via the Criterion Collection with a new restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, the press conference from the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, a new video essay by film scholar James Quandt, the trailer, a new English subtitle translation, an essay by critic Adrian Martin and a newly expanded 1983 interview with director Robert Bresson.

TWO MEN IN MANHATTAN (Deux hommes dans Manhattan) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Melville in Manhattan Classic on 35mm at TIFF Bell Lightbox Summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and via the Cohen Media Group Blu-Ray

Film Noir in 50s Manhattan: The only movie to feature director Jean-Pierre Melville in a starring role.

Two Men in Manhattan - Deux hommes dans Manhattan (1959)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Starring: Jean-Pierre Melville, Pierre Grasset

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The mission is clear. France's chief representative at the United Nations has gone missing. He must be found. This, of course, is a job made for two esteemed members of the press. Their journey is going to take them deep into the underbelly of Manhattan. On the grey well-worn streets, lit by the kind of neon one can only find in the city that never sleeps, dogged French reporter Moreau (Jean-Pierre Melville) and his sleazy pal, Paris Match photographer Delmas (Pierre Grasset), are all set to visit a first-class brothel in search of their quarry.

"It doesn't get much better than this," Delmas notes.

"You can judge a civilization by its level of prostitution," Moreau cracks.

Delmas responds with a wide grin: "Who said that?"

Moreau turns. With a knowing smile, he looks straight at his old friend Delmas.

"Delmas," he quips.

Well, of course. Moreau knows Delmas all too well. When a politician disappears, only a Paris Match photographer is going to know where to go. Oh, and do they go. They go-go-go into the backstage world of Broadway, dressing rooms, a recording studio at Capitol Records, only the finest gentlemen's clubs, the apartments of kept women, a furtive visit into a hospital housing a babe who's attempted to commit suicide and, of course, brothels.

The missing diplomat is, after all, French. Where else would two French dudes find another French dude? They must visit with actresses, singers, strippers and whores (of course). Their journey goes deep into the night and what they find is definitely the kind of sleazy mess tinged with tragedy that tests their mettle as men of honour (and dishonour).

Jean-Pierre Melville knows a thing or two about honour. His previous film, Bob le flambeur (1955) was all about that. He takes it several steps further with Two Men in Manhattan.

With Bob le flambeur, Melville also pretty much defined La Nouvelle Vague and its groundbreaking use of gritty Montmartre locations. Here he solidifies the path for the likes of those who followed in his footsteps: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, et al - these guys owe everything to Melville. Here he blends his love of all things American and does it on the mean streets of New York City.

Cool guys, babes galore, rumpled trench coats, plenty of cigarette smoke and lots of hot jazz. And in Manhattan, no less. Delmas's line is prescient indeed:

"It doesn't get much better than this."

It sure doesn't.

Two Men in Manhattan is pure film noir with a twist of the French New Wave. Indeed, not too many movies can deliver on this level. A single frame of this picture puts most movies to shame.

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

Two Men in Manhattan - Deux hommes dans Manhattan plays on 35mm during the TIFF Bell Lightbox Summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and is available on a Cohen Media Group Blu-Ray that includes a conversation between critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Ignatiy Vishnvetsky and an essay by Melville scholar Ginette Vincendeau.

Bob le flambeur - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Classic Melville Heist Picture at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and via the O.O.P. Criterion Collection DVD.

Aging high-roller takes the biggest gamble of them all.

Bob le flambeur (1956)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Scr. Melville & Auguste Le Breton
Starring: Roger Duchesne, Daniel Cauchy, Isabelle Corey, Guy Decomble, Gérard Buhr

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I was 14 when I left my mother... I returned 10 years later, early one morning. I saw an old woman on her knees, scrubbing away, as she always had. That's how I recognised her. I left without a word. Then I sent her a postal order each month. One month it was sent back. She had stopped scrubbing." - Bob Montagné in Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur

In the moments between night and day, by the dawn's early light, in Montmartre, that hallowed, hilly zone of solemnity and sleaze in Paris, resting somewhere between the Heaven of the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur at its highest point and below it, the Hell of nightclubs, cheap hotels, cafes, whorehouses and gambling dens, the distinguished trench-coat-adorned silver-haired old fox Bob Montagné (Roger Duchesne) takes one last roll of the dice.

Craps.

It's been a long night and Bob's wiped out. He steps out onto the lonely morning streets, looks into a storefront reflection, straightens his tie and, taking in his weary visage, remarks aloud: "A real hood's face."

And so it is, but he's definitely not your run-of-the-mill garden variety miscreant. Bob Montagné is a class act. He's practically royalty, at least by the standards of magical Montmartre. Sure, he's been in an out of stir for most of his life, but amongst the post-war criminal class of France, he's pulled off some of the most daring heists, and as such, commands respect from thugs and cops alike.

He's a high-roller, you see, and everyone loves Bob: he's worshipped by the sweet young criminal Paulo (Daniel Cauchy), whilst the grizzled police lieutenant Ledru (Guy Decomble) considers him his best friend (and indeed owes his life to him) and, of course, there's a woman - the beautiful young Annie (Isabelle Corey), who adores him for his fatherly influence and generosity. Yes, everyone loves Bob, except for the foul pimp and stool pigeon Marc (Gérard Buhr). Bob has even less use for Marc, a piece of excrement on two legs who beats his women, sells anyone out for the right price and even tries to lure Annie into his stable.

Right from the opening frames of Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur we know we're about to enter the world of the criminal class, but for the most part, "class" is the order of the day for men like our title character. Bob's also down for the count, but he's not there for long. He springs up with one last plan to restore himself. As an inveterate gambler, he knows all too well how much dough collects in a casino after a long night and he decides to put together a crack team to pull a heist on the mighty Deauville gaming emporium.

The magical world of Montmartre:
Wet streets, nightclubs, cigarettes and dice.

Best laid plans, however, can go awry, but the manner in which Melville explores this is one of the reasons why Bob le flambeur is a masterpiece. Let's put aside the fact that the picture's sense of atmosphere is so thick you can cut it with a knife, that its touches of Neo-realism make us feel like we're living, breathing and even smelling a world most of us will never know, that its eventual and shocking bursts of violence knock us on our butts and indeed influenced every crime picture that followed in its wake.

Let's put all that aside for a moment. Let's marvel at the sheer, brilliant simplicity of one key stroke of narrative genius:

Bob le flambeur is a heist film in which part of the caper itself involves its mastermind playing the tables of the casino he's going to rob and just as he's about to risk committing a crime that might land him in the hoosegow for a very long time, his rolls of the dice start to yield him a fortune that he's never seen in his life - a fortune that might indeed exceed that of what he could ever hope to rob from the joint.

Damn, this is genius.

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

Bob le flambeur screens at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in the summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and, via the O.O.P. Criterion Collection DVD which includes an interview with Daniel Cauchy and an archival Gideon Bachman radio interview with Jean-Pierre Melville.

RIFIFI - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The greatest heist film ever made screens at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in the Summer 2017 series "Panique: French Crime Classics" and is also available on a gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray/DVD

Rififi (1955)
Dir. Jules Dassin
Scr. Dassin & René Wheeler
Nvl. Auguste Le Breton
Starring: Jean Servais, Carl Möhner,Robert Manuel,
Jules Dassin, Janine Darcey, Magali Noël, Claude Sylvain

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The major set piece of this extraordinary French crime film by blacklisted American director Jules Dassin is a breathless thirty-minute-long heist sequence that is shot with natural sound, no dialogue and no music.

It's pure cinema!

It's also one of the most nail-bitingly suspenseful scenes in movie history. We've come to know the characters, we understand the high stakes for all of them if they don't pull off the big steal and worst of all, we're well aware of what will happen if they're caught - especially the desperate old man, Tony "le Stéphanois" (Jean Servais). He's just served five years of hard time for a heist gone wrong and his only choices in life amount to petty crime, gambling and/or getting caught and being tossed back into the hoosegow until he's dead (or as close to dead as he'll ever get).

These men are criminals, but we want them to succeed. It's post-war France and the opportunities for men who've known only one way to survive are pretty much non-existent. They live by a strict code of honour and they'll steal, but they won't kill (at least until they are pushed to the limit to do so). There's clearly honour amongst these thieves (save for the slimy, greasy, lazy borderline pimps who weasel into the proceedings later on) and we never once feel like there are viable options for our main characters.

And so, we follow them willingly and almost complicitously into the breach - an insanely daring heist that requires split-second timing, impeccable teamwork and one hell of a massive whack of horseshoes worth of luck stuffed up their respective and collective keisters.

If the heist was only thing Rififi had going for it, there's no doubt the picture would be highly regarded, but that its bookends are as solid and compelling as all get out place Dassin's movie on s pedestal that holds some of the greatest crime pictures ever made. The manner in which Dassin shoots the heist is completely in keeping with his approach to the rest of the movie. Shooting almost exclusively on location captures the naturalistic feeling of the film's hard-boiled tale. Much like his groundbreaking American crime pictures (Naked City, Brute Force) which, broke American cinema out of the studio bound mould and took them onto the streets a la the Italian neorealist movement, Rififi is a glorious blend of stylized frissons within the framework of life itself.

Dassin, of course, had a tiny budget and little time to shoot the film, so he personally scouted all the locations in order to get a strong visual sense in advance to allow for impeccable planning. In many ways, Rififi is a model picture for independent, low budget approaches that are still infused with the highest degree of production value. Within Dassin's impeccable eye for visual detail, he's doubly blessed by working with the genius production designer Alexandre Trauner who manages to deliciously goose the look of the film.

Narratively, the tale is tough-minded and even romantic, but the attention to the details of the lives of the criminals and the heist itself (including the meticulous planning) give it the crank it needs to always keep us glued to the screen. As well, there's no overwhelming (and annoying) sense of the proceedings ever diving into moralistic waters. We believe in these men AND their criminal intent. We want them to succeed and if things go wrong and all becomes futile, Dassin sets the picture up in such a way that we're going to feel and care deeply about whatever plight the characters suffer. It helps, also, that the casting is impeccable - especially Servais as the world weary "le Stéphanois", Dassin himself as the funny, sprightly and finally, almost tragic figure of the ladies' man, as well as the other disparate and memorable members of the team.

The importance of Rififi as both dazzling entertainment, but as well, its place in laying the foundations for crime pictures that followed as well as the whole French New Wave that would come a few years later is, frankly, incalculable. All its historical significance aside, it's one hell of a good show! Rififi is brutal, harrowing and darkly funny and it seldom got better than this. The dames are dames, its heroes noble and the villains are pure filth. Sure, the movie trades in on the tropes of the genre, but does so expertly within its overwhelming naturalism that nothing ever feels cliched and is, in fact, far fresher than most films made today.

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

Rififi screens at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in the Summer 2017 series "Panique: French Crime Classics" and is also available on a gorgeous Criterion Collection Dual Format Blu-Ray/DVD release complete with New 2K digital restoration, my favourite uncompressed monaural soundtrack, a very inspirational interview with director Jules Dassin, set design drawings by art director Alexandre Trauner, still, trailer, an optional English-dubbed soundtrack (especially handily for additional screenings to just study Dassin's visuals and a terrific essay by Jim Hoberman.

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Louis Malle's Taut Fiction Feature Debut at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in the Summer 2017 series "Panique: French Crime Classics" and, of course, on a gorgeous Criterion Collection DVD

Babes. Hunks. Cigarettes. Murder. Paris. UNBEATABLE!!!

Elevator to the Gallows - Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958)
Dir. Louis Malle
Scr. Malle & Roger Nimier
Nvl. Noël Calef
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin,
Jean Wall, Iván Petrovich, Elga Andersen, Félix Marten, Lino Ventura, Charles Denner

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some movies demand the ingestion of popcorn. Others require mind-altering illicit substances. Louis Malle's stylish crime picture Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) makes the insistent and peremptory request that you light up the strongest cigarettes imaginable and chain smoke your way through it from beginning to end. (For anyone planning a big-screen sojourn to see the picture at TIFF Bell Lightbox, you will sadly be shit out of luck on this front due to our city's regressive anti-smoking by-laws.)

Though Louis Malle (Au revoir les enfants, My Dinner with Andre, Atlantic City, Pretty Baby) had already garnered an Academy Award for his 1956 Jacques Cousteau documentary The Silent World, the French New Wave director wisely put together a sure-fire low-budget hit with this first dramatic feature film to solidify his place as a bankable filmmaker and damn, did he dazzle everyone with this très-cool crime thriller based on the pulpy Noël Calef novel. If it's a trifle cold and bereft of some of the hallmarks of Malle's later humanity, we can easily forgive that and just sit back and enjoy this delectable, unbeatable, suspensful indulgence replete with babes, hunks, plenty of cigarettes, zippy cars, cheap motels and murder most foul.

Our movie opens with the impossibly gorgeous couple Florence Carala (Jeanne Moreau) and Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) passionately professing their love for each other over the telephone. A murder is committed, a mistake is made and our lovers are kept apart when our hero is caught in an elevator without power and the heroine is left alone waiting for him and forced to wander the streets of Paris, desperately looking for him. Tavernier's car is stolen by the impossibly handsome young thug Louis (Georges Poujoully) and his impossibly gorgeous girlfriend Véronique (Yori Bertin). The barely-out-of-their-teens couple goes on a joy ride and encounter the gregarious vacationing and champagne-armed German couple Horst (Iván Petrovich) and Frieda (Elga Andersen).

Partying and sex is assured. More murder is just round the corner.

Nail-biting suspense, mistaken identity and dogged detective work from cops Lino Ventura and Charles Denner follow in due course. Henri Decaë's gorgeous black and white cinematographic lensing of Paris and an astonishing music score by Miles Davis carry us along in one of the most delightful noir-tinged crime pictures of the period.

No need to spoil the proceedings with any further details. Just sit back with plenty of throat-shredding ciggies and enjoy!

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

Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) plays on the big screen at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in the Summer 2017 series "Panique: French Crime Classics" and, of course, on a gorgeous Criterion Collection special edition double disc DVD that includes a new interview with Jeanne Moreau, archival interviews with Malle, Ronet, Moreau and soundtrack session pianist René Urtreger, footage of Miles Davis and Louis Malle from the soundtrack recording session, a new video program about the score with jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis and critic Gary Giddins, Malle’s student film Crazeologie, featuring the title song by Charlie Parker, Theatrical trailers and a booklet featuring a Terrence Rafferty essay, Malle interview and tribute by producer Vincent Malle.

Les enfants terribles - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Melville and Cocteau make for strange bedfellows in this oddball 1950 effort at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and, via the Criterion Collection DVD.

Can too much Cocteau be too much? Perhaps.

Les enfants terribles (1950)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Scr. Jean Cocteau & Melville
Starring: Nicole Stéphane, Édouard Dermit, Jacques Bernard, Renée Cosima

Review By Greg Klymkiw

God knows I love Jean-Pierre Melville, but sitting through his gun-for-hire directorial effort Les infants terribles is a bit like what a colonoscopy used to feel like before they knocked you out with happy drugs. In fact, it's not dissimilar to suffering through any movie directed by the lumberingly precious Jean Cocteau (Le Sang d'un poète, La Belle et la Bête, Orphée). Well, surprise-surprise, Les infants terribles is based upon the novel of the same title (and co-screenwritten) by Jean Cocteau. Even more appalling is that Cocteau himself, with a nasal, mannered delivery, narrates the movie with his sarcastic, obvious, on-point jackhammered prose.

At times, the movie feels like a Gallic-tinged Howard Hawks comedy with rapid-fire delivery and a score comprised mainly of Vivaldi, which, I'll admit, makes it sound more engaging than it actually is.

But no, it's often painful.

That, however, might be the point and in spite of often detesting the movie, I found it compulsively watchable - mostly because of Melville's direction and in spite of Cocteau's writing (not so much the narrative and dialogue, but the aforementioned narration, which often serves to rip us out of the picture's forward thrust).

Things begin well enough in the opening scenes at an all-male Catholic school where a bunch of boisterous lads roughhouse after a fresh snowfall. The dashing pretty-boy Dargelos (Renée Cosima) is leading the charge and at one point, he hurls a snowball tightly packed round a stone at the fey, aquiline-featured Paul (Édouard Dermit). Smacking him in the chest, it winds him to such an extent that he crashes to the ground, rendered unconscious and suffering from bruised ribs.

Melville's direction during this sequence is dazzling. We feel like we're in the midst of a war-like skirmish on the fields of Flanders and it's as sprightly and engaging an opening as one could hope for in any movie.

Eventually we're ensconced in the cramped middle-class quarters where Paul lives with his sister Élisabeth (Nicole Stéphane) and their infirm Mother (Maria Cyliakus). It's here where the film's annoyance-meter ramped up for me.

The picture plunges us into the obsessive, seemingly incestuous sibling rivalry/love and the pair engage in a series of tête-à-têtes that eventually reveal themselves to be an ongoing, deep-seededly perverse game. Paul is ordered by the doctor to stay home and in bed and Élisabeth becomes caregiver to both him and his Mother. Needless to say, the claustrophobia of the situation allows for plenty of nasty game-playing. Obsession rules the day - Paul is obsessed with pretty-boy Dargelos and misses him desperately and one of his school chums, Gérard (Jacques Bernard) visits regularly. He's obsessed with both the brother and sister and their games, but he also provides solace to Paul with news about the naughty Dargelos.

Things perk up when Mom dies (a magnificent cut and shot, pure Melville, reveals her to us and the characters). Enter the beautiful Agathe (also played by Renée Cosima) who Paul falls madly in love with since she's a dead ringer for his beloved naughty pal Dargelos. And yes, it's here where the movie hits its stride and ploughs us into the kind of madly delirious melodrama that Melville did so beautifully in the much-better and genuinely great melodrama Le silence de la mer (1949).

It's here wherein Élisabeth becomes so terrified that her brother will eventually marry Agathe and leave her alone (and hence, without the madly incessant game-playing) that what the nutty sister does next is sheer, delicious nastiness.

And you know what? As much as I profess(ed) to hate this movie, I must humbly, shamefully admit (in spite of Cocteau's influence) that I've now seen the picture three times. Well, like the old adage goes, "third time's the charm" and I find myself wanting to see the movie again. What a journey!

Vive Melville!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Les enfants terribles screens at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in the summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and is available for home consumption via the Criterion Collection DVD which includes a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, an audio commentary by Gilbert Adair, interviews with producer Carole Weisweiller, actors Nicole Stéphane and Jacques Bernard and assistant director Claude Pinoteau, "Around Jean Cocteau", a 2003 short video by filmmaker Noel Simsolo discussing Cocteau and Melville’s creative relationship, the theatrical trailer, a gallery of behind-the-scenes stills and a booklet featuring a Gary Indiana essay, a tribute by Stéphane, an excerpt from Rui Nogueira’s "Melville on Melville" and drawings by Cocteau.

Army of Shadows (L'armée des ombres) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Grim, Haunting Portrait of Collaboration and Resistance at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and, via a gorgeous (O.O.P. limited availability) Blu_Ray/DVD via the Criterion Collection

Collaboration is a dirty business. So is Resistance.

Army of Shadows AKA L'armée des ombres (1969)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Nvl. Joseph Kessel
Starring: Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Jean-Pierre Cassel,
Christian Barbier, Paul Crauchet, Claude Mann, Paul Meurisse, Serge Reggiani

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Collaboration is a dirty business. So is resistance. In an occupied country, both will thrive, yet seldom have either been more grim, mean and downright foul than in France during World War II.

Jean-Pierre Melville's film adaptation of Joseph Kessel's fictionalized version of his own real-life experience during this shameful period of 20th Century French History is not only a masterpiece, but it might be one of the most heroic depictions of the French Resistance ever made. That said, Melville's brand of heroism is replete with relentless outrage and deep, deep anguish.

Army of Shadows (L'armée des ombres) will be a bitter pill for any audience to swallow, but its necessity might be more urgent now than ever. "Occupation" of one country by another has become especially endemic to the ongoing and mounting political strife plaguing our world in this century and has resulted in the kind of "collaboration" and "resistance" that ripped the guts out of France and so many other European countries during the Second World War. One of the most fascinating features/attributes of Melville's picture is the fact that it stands before us as a film made almost half a century ago, about events that occurred almost one quarter of a century before the film itself was made, and yet here we sit, now, looking at it, our jaws agape over the cruelties and complexities the movie depicts, and realizing, ever-sadly, how so little, how so goddamn little in our world has actually changed.

It's a movie of universal qualities. The picture comes by them due to the strange narrative and stylistic structures Melville has chosen to infuse it with, all of which place us in a world that, from beginning to end, knock us off-kilter, keep us on edge and finally instil in us a dread that its events, which once happened, are indeed happening now and will happen again and again if we do not, by both acknowledgment and action, recognize and work towards ensuring that it stops.

Melville creates a film here that rubs our noses in the fact that our very nature as human beings is highly susceptible to the damage caused by occupation and how the inevitable resulting collaboration with occupying forces yields the kind of self-serving selfishness (the selfishness of survival, if you will) which gives way to the kind of inhumanity that even resistance can engender.

So how then, does he do this?

The first thing Melville chooses to greet us with are words.

Popping up from deep black, brilliant white typeface announces:

"Unhappy memories! Yet I welcome you...You are my long lost youth..."

My God, was there ever an epigram infused with more truth?

There is no elegant fade to black from these words, no gentle dissolve. Melville jolts us with a cut and the beautifully composed long shot he bestows upon us is that of the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, that glorious symbol of France's victories over those who would dare profane French soil - a testament to the fallen warriors of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and, indeed, the resting place of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.

The Eiffel Tower might well be the ultimate symbol of Paris, but situated at one end of the Champs-Élysées, smack in the middle of the now-named Place Charles de Gaulle, but the more evocatively once-named Place de l'Étoile, the imposing Arch of Triumph remains, for most of us, the definitive apogee of France itself.

And we sense, immediately, that something is amiss. It's not the shot itself, nor is it the the drumbeats and marching feet from a line of soldiers on parade that slowly creep onto the soundtrack and intensify, but rather, it's the sky towering above the grand arch, so grey, so weirdly forbidding in the drabness of the clouds that makes us uneasy.

The camera never moves - or so it seems. Initially, the soldiers are so far away from us they're dwarfed by the Arch itself. As the parade gets closer and the music and marching become ever-cacophonous: beats, bleats, blasts and finally a blare - we're jolted into reality and the camera does indeed shift, ever-so subtly for us to realize that the soldiers are Nazis. As they get closer, filling the frame, defaming the composition of the Arch itself, our nerves are jangled.

And we are sickened.

Things don't get brighter. Melville bestows the rest of the opening of the film in swathes of dull blues, greens and greys as we're introduced to the well-groomed civil engineer Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) who is being driven to a prison camp filled with "enemies" of the collaborationist Vichy government of France, the ruling bureaucracy which has prostrated itself before the Germans who have swallowed the country whole as an occupying force.

Dirty Nazis.

Dirtier still are the French - or rather, those Frenchmen who betray their soil, their nation and their people to serve the foul occupiers.

Phillipe is treated by his captors in a relatively gentlemanly fashion. Housed in a barracks that was ironically designed by the French to house German officers, but is instead now populated by Frenchmen, the pensive, almost bookish prisoner has little regard for his fellow captives, until he takes a shine to a bright young man who proposes a brilliant plan of escape.

This will be our (and Phillipe's) first taste of betrayal in the film. The vibrant youthful co-conspirator sells out our hero to the Vichy pigs and he soon finds himself transported to a Nazi facility. Phillipe escapes (quickly, efficiently and shockingly engineered) and we eventually find him ensconced on the Riviera where he leads the French Resistance movement.

From here, the film charts a series of resistance movements - some successful, and others scuttled by either circumstance or worse (and most often), betrayal. Occupying forces count on the Judas Kiss and Melville's film doesn't spare its characters from being forced to sell out. Then again, and most tragically, the film doesn't save several other characters from refusing to turncoat, and what awaits them is torture and inevitably, agonizing death. And though we see numerous instances of characters succumbing to the equivalents of the "death-by-a-thousand-cuts", Melville conversely doesn't spare an equal number of them from being snuffed out brutally and swiftly.

Throughout his career, Melville 's approach to on-screen violence was unique in its savage efficiency and in Army of Shadows, we are "treated" to several instances of this, so ferocious in the barbarity of the acts, that we're forced to cringe and gasp through several agonizing stranglings, stabbings, beatings and shootings. From a tea towel garrotte wrenching a traitor's last gasps of air to a cold, hard pistol appearing out of nowhere, pausing to give its intended victim a few moments of recognition and then, the inevitable, the blast of a gunshot, the piercing of flesh and death that is as merciful as it is cruel.

There are, of course, moments of tenderness, love, loyalty and yes, even hope. However, the film's overall tone is one of despair. The picture begins as it ends, beginning with one thing and allowing it to transform into something quite different - jolting us out of anything resembling comfort or complacency.

Yes, amongst the army of shadows in this horrific topsy-turvy world of collaboration and resistance, there is heroism, but nobody - nobody is a winner.

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

Army of Shadows AKA L'armée des ombres is being screened during the TIFF Bell Lightbox series entitled "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and is available on the Criterion Collection in a (limited availability O.O.P.) BLU-RAY and DVD that includes an audio commentary with film historian Ginette Vincendeau, an interview with editor Françoise Bonnot, On-set footage and excerpts from archival interviews with director Jean-Pierre Melville, cast members, writer Joseph Kessel, and real-life Resistance fighters, "Jean-Pierre Melville et L’armée des ombres” (2002) and "Le journal de la Résistance" (1944), a rare short documentary shot on the front lines during the final days of German-occupied France.

Le Samouraï - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Classic crime picture (on 35mm no less) at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox in summer 2017 series "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and, of course available on a gorgeous DVD via the Criterion Collection

Contract killer played by oh-so cool Alain Delon.

Le Samouraï (1967)
Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Scr. Melville & Georges Pellegrin
Starring: Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, Cathy Rosier

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Jef Costello is a contract killer. He's clearly good at his job, but he's also inordinately, almost ferociously cool. Oh yeah, he's cool as a cucumber - when you kill for money, you've gotta be, but the "cool" I'm really talking about here is more than his solitary reserve; Jef Costello is cool, as in: he's out of sight, man!

How can he not be?

In Jean-Pierre Melville's awesome 1967 crime thriller Le Samouraï, he's played by the epitome of cool, Alain Delon. When we first meet him, the dude is relaxing in his grungy, spartan Montmartre bachelor suite, smoking a butt on his bed while his tiny pet bird tweets in its cage. Titles appear over this strangely unsettling scene of repose:

"There is no solitude greater than a samurai's,
unless perhaps it is that of a tiger in the jungle."

The quotation is attributed to the "The Book of Bushido". As it turns out, this book is non-existent. It's Melville's invention - no doubt inspired by similar tomes - but that the great auteur chooses to open his film with a manufactured quotation is telling. We're about to enter a world in which the filmmaker is going to steep us in style of the highest order - the film's mise-en-scène proves to be copiously luxuriant in Melville's mastery of technique and appearance. We're going to feel his mitts all over this picture.

Astonishingly though, this will be no mere exercise in style for its own sake. Melville also infuses the work with oddly Neo-realist properties. We know we're watching a movie, but good goddamn, at times it feels like life itself.

And so it is that Jef Costello, attired in a grey trench coat and impossibly sexy fedora, eventually enters a nightclub and guns a man down in cold blood.

Jef's made some mistakes, or so it seems. He's not only been noticed, but at one point he comes face-to-face with a witness, Valérie (Cathy Rosier) the club's gorgeous, exotic piano player. But Costello is too steely and handsome. Valérie refuses to identify him in a police lineup.

This frustrates the Superintendent (François Périer) of the investigating homicide division because his gut is telling him Jef's his killer, in spite of the fact that our icy hitman appears to have crafted a reasonably iron-clad alibi, provided in part by the gorgeous ('natch) Jane Lagrange (Nathalie Delon) his "fiancé", a beautiful hooker with a heart of gold.

The Superintendent is not going to let go. He clamps his vice-like jaws upon Jef like a pit bull. using every available resource at his disposal. To make matters worse, our sleek hero is double-crossed by the men who hired him. They're welching on payment and want to take him out.

What French crime picture doesn't have babes?

What we get is 105 relentless minutes of cat and mouse - double your pleasure, of course, since the Superintendent is stalking his quarry whilst the quarry has his own quarry to stalk.

All of this is stylishly played out upon the grey streets of "Gay Paree". La Ville-Lumière has seldom looked as bleak as it does in Le Samouraï.

In one of the greatest set-pieces in movie history, Jef wends his way through the Knossos-like labyrinth within the bowels of the ancient Paris Metro. We're on the edge of our seat and then some.

Melville dazzles - yes, with sheer cinematic aplomb, but also with a meticulous attention to detail. Every step of the way, he makes us feel like what we're watching is real; whether we wait with Jef through the tedium of having his licence plates swapped in a clandestine garage or when two detectives painstakingly enter Jef's apartment, scour it and eventually plant a bug for audio surveillance.

And for all the cool, the tough-mindedness, the violence, Melville never lets go of his characters' humanity. The film is steeped in romance, star-crossed fate and ultimately, a kind of sad, desperate sense of doom. Damned if he doesn't move us to tears with the same fervour he manages to tantalize our eyes and thrill us to bits.

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

Le Samouraï is playing in 35mm during the TIFF Bell Lightbox series entitled "Army of Shadows: The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville" and is available on the Criterion Collection in a DVD that includes video interviews with Rui Nogueira, author of "Melville on Melville" and Ginette Vincendeau, author of "Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris" plus archival interviews with Melville, Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, and Cathy Rosier.

ELLE - Review By Greg - TIFF 2016 - Verhoeven manages unimaginable, makes boring film

Elle (2016)
Dir. Paul Verhoeven
Scr. David Birke
Nvl. Philippe Djian
Starring: Isabelle Huppert

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It seems unthinkable that Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Showgirls, Total Recall) could actually make a boring movie. That he could make a film that's repugnant - in all the wrong ways - is equally shocking. He's done it with Elle, though.

Michèle LeBlanc (Isabelle Huppert) is raped by a ski-masked scumbag in her tony Paris digs, but she doesn't report it to the police. She has other ideas.

Michèle happens to be a dynamo in the world of gaming production. Failure eludes her because she makes her designers, colleagues and programmers suffer her sharp-tongued wrath. She knows what her gameboy customers want and, irony of ironies (ugh), the lads living in front of their gaming consoles want big boobs, blood and rape, especially rape.




Yes, she eventually tracks down her rapist, but not before Verhoeven can provide rape flashbacks and rape dreams. And isn't this all going to be oh-so Francais? She may or may not be out for revenge, but mostly, she seems fuelled by the cat and mouse aspects of the rapist stalking the rape victim and vice versa. Super Ugh!

Working with a ridiculous script, his first in the French language (from what must be a dreadful novel), Verhoeven has made a film that's vagina-stuffed with lame satirical jabs, mostly of the easy-poke variety against gaming and gamers to justify what turn out to be the rape fantasies of his leading lady.

The picture's not funny, nor suspenseful and worst of all, it's a mega-bore. I love Verhoeven, but this is a total misfire. I imagine most psueds and/or film critics will defend the picture and applaud its "bravery" and purported nods to "empowerment", but this is the domain of pinheads, not anyone with taste, compassion and humanity.




THE FILM CORNER RATING: Lowest Rating:
TURD DISCOVERED
BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL
AND DINING LOUNGE

Elle is a Mongrel Media Release playing TIFF 2016

I, OLGA HEPNAROVA ***** 5-Star Contemporary Masterpiece - Revised Fantasia 2016 Review By Greg Klymkiw at Electric Sheep Magazine

The astonishing young actress Michalina Olzanska delivers one of the great screen performances of the new millennium.

I, OLGA HEPNAROVA
Dir. Petr Kazda, Tomas Weinreb
Starring: Michalina Olszanska

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A grim, superbly realized feature-length dramatic biography about the last person ever executed in Czechoslovakia. Writer-directors Petr Kazda and Tomas Weinreb have crafted a compulsive, moving and shocking film about mental illness as a genuine affliction. It can result in evil actions, but the perpetrators are, more often than not, sick in mind, body and soul. Healing and caring has escaped them. I, Olga Hepnarová speaks not just for one, but all of them.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****

Read the full review at Electric Sheep HERE.

LA RAGE DU DEMON - FANTASIA 2016 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Evil Méliès Possessed?

La Rage du Démon (2016)
Dir. Fabien Delage
Starring: Christophe Gans, Alexandre Aja, Philippe Rouyer, Jean-Jacques Bernard, Christophe Lemaire

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It is said that in 1897, famed magician and father of fantastical cinema Georges Méliès (legendary director of A Trip to the Moon and dramatized in Martin Scorsese's Hugo), directed a film so horrifying and powerful that some believed it to be possessed by a demonic force so abominable that it forced audiences into rages of an unholy nature. Thought to have be lost, if not outright destroyed, a print of the film surfaced in 2012. Screened for a select audience, the film inspired similar violent outbursts.

A group of contemporary filmmakers and cineastes were assembled to provide their feedback for La Rage du Démon. Alas, it turns out to be much ado about nothing. The film is such a lame mockumentary, that most of the interviewed subjects aren't able to pull off the charade with anything resembling believability. Worse yet, the mostly dull talking heads affair reveals not much of anything. There are several Méliès clips used with some perfunctory archival footage, but we never buy any of it for a second.

There's never an attempt to provide clips from the abomination itself, presumably because they're too horrifying, but mostly because this woeful low budget affair would not have been able to afford such recreations.

What we're left with is the promise of what might have been a great horror film - a pure shuddery fiction a la Hugo, but sans anything resembling "feel good". This poor, pointless mockumentary leaves us wondering if there ever will be a great picture made within the premise of a long-dead genius having made a deal with Satan, thus delivering a film so infused with evil that its audiences become minions of the diseased pieces of light flickered upon the screen.

La Rage du Démon is not it, but we're allowed to dream about it. Maybe one of the great filmmakers forced into the mock interviews here will deliver the goods.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

La Rage du Démon enjoys its North American premiere at Fantasia 2016

IN A LONELY PLACE + LA CHIENNE - Blu-Ray/DVD Review Double Bill By Greg Klymkiw - Haunting Nicholas Ray Noir on Criterion. Haunting Jean Renoir Melodrama on Criterion. Hangdog Male Leads make perfect bedfellows. Join in, why don't you? Room for all!

Michel Simon and Humphrey Bogart
Brothers in Lost Love and MURDER!

Almost two decades separate two great male performances twixt two of the screen's greatest hangdog faces - Michel Simon in Jean Renoir's La Chienne and Humphrey Bogart in Nicholas Ray's In A Lonely Place. Both involve the least likely candidates to get mixed up in murder, yet it doesn't take long for both to become embroiled in sordid underworlds; by their own choosing, to be sure, but mostly because deep, deep down, their respective psyches demand it.

The former is one of the best French films of the 30s.

The latter is one of the best American films of the 50s.

Both are unforgettable.

Both are Criterion discs.

Make it a double bill o' delectable despair.

Note: In A Lonely Place reviewed first, just below La Chienne is reviewed.

Is Bogie a killer, or is he just lonely?
Gloria Grahame is beginning to wonder.

In A Lonely Place (1950)
Dir. Nicholas Ray
Scr. Edmund H. North, Andrew Solt
Nvl. Dorothy B. Hughes
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid,
Art Smith, Robert Warwick, Martha Stewart, Jeff Donnell, Hedda Brooks

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me.
I lived a few weeks while she loved me."

These are but a few lines from a new screenplay by writer Dixon "Dix" Steele (Humphrey Bogart), but they might as well be the story of his life in Nicholas Ray's haunting film noir classic In A Lonely Place. Easily one of the greatest films of the 50s and featuring a Bogie performance that was the pinnacle of his great career, the film is a definite must-see, but after your first viewing you'll be compelled to see it again and again and yet again.

It's a brooding thriller set against the backdrop of the studio dream factories. Dix, a scrappy drinker, brawler and writer is offered the job to adapt a novel. In a Hollywood watering hole, his harried agent Mel Lippman (Art Smith) begs him to take the job since Dix desperately needs a hit and the best-selling potboiler has huge grosses written all over it. This is exemplified by Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart), a not-too-bright coat check girl, who can barely get the book out of her face.

Dix needs to read the book overnight and render a decision by morning. A 40-watt bulb blinks on above his noggin and he invites Mildred to his pad to tell him the story so he doesn't have to waste time reading it. Mildred suspects Dix wants only to boink her, so she makes a point of mentioning she has a boyfriend. Dix assures her that he's only interested in hiring her for services rendered - she's read the book and now he doesn't have to.

Through the courtyard leading to his pad, with the still-trepidatious coat-check filly in tow, Dix meets eyes with Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), a burgeoning actress and ravishing new neighbour in the apartment complex. Once inside, Dix proves he's good to his word and clearly has no interest in seducing Mildred. She relates the book's story and he's convinced it's a piece of garbage. He shoves some cab money in Mildred's fist and sends her packing so he can get some shuteye.

Then next morning, he gets a visit from his best friend and old army buddy Brub Nicolai (Frank Lovejoy). It's not a social call. Brub is a homicide detective and asks Dix to accompany him "downtown" for an interrogation with Captain Lochner (Carl Benton Reid), a hard-nosed dick.

Mildred, the coat check girl, has been brutally murdered, her body tossed in a very "lonely place". Dix is the prime suspect. Luckily, a band-aid solution to his plight is provided by a partially believable alibi rendered by the sexy doll face Laurel Gray.

This is where In A Lonely Place solidifies its greatness. An impending murder rap places Dix in a love relationship with Laurel which, in turn, inspires him to write a great screenplay, elevating the source material to a film with the potential to be a major prestige picture.

On one hand, the film is one of the most dizzyingly romantic love stories ever made, whilst on the other, it's a genuinely suspense-filled thriller. On both fronts, the film is a compulsive, heavily atmospheric addition to the film noir movement, expertly directed by Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, Johnny Guitar, They Live by Night, Bigger Than Life, A Woman's Secret). Ray has always excelled at seeking humanity in the darkest of settings with characters who are cimmerian-to-the-max and In A Lonely Place might well be his greatest work.

He loves her?

He loves her not?

Bogart was a titan. As an actor and star, he was a true original. His performance here, though, blows everything away. Buried beneath the layers of cynicism and just plain meanness, is a man with plenty of romance, love and caring. That it's inspired by Gloria Grahame's Laurel Gray is no surprise. Grahame holds her own against Bogart. Many will remember her as the whore with a heart of gold in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and Lee Marvin's moll who's disfigured by a pot of scalding coffee tossed in her face in Lang's The Big Heat. Here, she too hits a career pinnacle.

Dix has had a history of violent behaviour. We see several examples of his hair-trigger temper and as the pressures of the homicide case against him mounts, his warm, loving demeanour, which both Laurel and his renewed faith in his writing have allowed to blossom, eventually transform into something truly malevolent.

What finally comes through so poignantly in Ray's astonishing film is just how all of his central characters are in lonely places. Our poor hat-check girl is, at it turns out, in an abusive relationship and seeks solace in cheap melodramatic potboilers. Even that loneliness doesn't save her from the fate of murder in a lonely place. Laurel who once lived a life of aimlessness in search of stardom, finds love, purpose and meaning, only to see it ripped away from her, sending her back to a place even lonelier than before.

And Dix? Struggling his whole life with what seems like a blend of a bi-polar imbalance in addition to memories of his experience in a bloody, senseless world war, have been his constant companions, no matter what brief oases appear. Loneliness is his life. What should have been a magical time, is quashed.

What's worse, I think, is that Dix knows his whole life will be relegated to despair.

All these people, in spite of the dream factories around them, face nothing but heartache. Even more telling is that we get a mirror-view sense of life through the lens of Nicholas Ray. The words Dix writes in his script might well apply to us all:

I was born when she kissed me.

I died when she left me.

I lived a few weeks while she loved me.

We should all live for a few weeks in our otherwise miserable lives.

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

The Criterion Collection edition of In A Lonely Place comes complete with a new 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray; a new audio commentary featuring film scholar Dana Polan; I’m a Stranger Here Myself, a 1975 documentary about director Nicholas Ray, slightly condensed for this release; a new interview with biographer Vincent Curcio about actor Gloria Grahame; a piece from 2002 featuring filmmaker Curtis Hanson; a radio adaptation from 1948 of the original Dorothy B. Hughes novel, broadcast on the program "Suspense"; the trailer; and an essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith.

Maurice (Michel Simon) loves Lulu (Janie Marèse). Lulu loves his money, but loves her pimp (Georges Flamant)
a whole lot more. Ain't it always the way?

La Chienne (1931)
Dir. Jean Renoir
Scr. Renoir & André Mouézy-Éon
Nvl. Georges de La Fouchardière
Starring: Michel Simon, Janie Marèse, Georges Flamant,
Magdeleine Bérubet, Roger Gaillard

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Michel Simon probably wins hand-down in the hangdog mug sweepstakes. He was also one of the greatest actors who ever lived. To director Jean Renoir, Simon was not only a close friend, but a constant presence in Renoir's work. Simon was to Renoir what DeNiro was to Scorsese or John Wayne to John Ford. Just after working together on the delightfully sordid and pain-wracked melodrama La Chienne, Simon delivered one of his most famous and beloved performances in Boudu Saved From Drowning (remade by Paul Mazursky in 1986 as Down and Out in Beverly Hills with Nick Nolte in the role of the itinerant beggar who takes over the household of a bourgeois family).

Based on the novel "La Chienne" ("The Bitch") by Georges de La Fouchardière and remade in 1945 by Fritz Lang as Scarlet Street with Edward G. Robinson in the role Simon immortalized here, Renoir's film is despair-ridden as all get-out, but features the great French auteur's mordant wit and irony within the social context of the great story. It's not by accident, but by design that Renoir frames his film within the context of a Punch and Judy-like puppet show, its tiny, box-like proscenium opening and closing upon a live-action rendering of what's essentially a morality play.

Michel Simon as the dweeby longtime hosiery cashier Maurice Legrand seems born to be under thumb of women who abuse him. His wife Adèle (Magdeleine Bérubet) constantly berates him, dismisses his only joy as an amateur painter and never fails to compare him unfavourably to her long-lost and presumed-to-be-dead husband, Sgt. Alexis Godard (Roger Gaillard), the Great Man's stern portrait erected prominently in their home. When Maurice meets the beautiful, young hooker Lulu (Janie Marèse) he's smitten, but also sees in her someone who is more abused and downtrodden than he is. He wants nothing more than to offer shelter, protection and love.

Lowly Clerk, Sleazy Pimp: Who to Choose?

When she discovers he's a painter, Dédé (Georges Flamant), her pimp and love of her life sees a great opportunity to make some easy dough. He's able to sell a couple of paintings to a gallery owner and in no time, there's considerable demand for Maurice's work. Lulu convinces Maurice to paint more and begins to take credit for the work since he never signs his paintings and eventually agrees that she should sign them.

When the long lost Sgt. appears as not dead but very much alive, Maurice sees a great opportunity to leave his horrid Adèle and move in permanently with Lulu. Things, of course, are going to go terribly wrong. On the surface, just desserts come to all involved, but there's no sweetness to temper the bitterness.

All humanity in the world of Renoir's great film are reduced to puppets on a tiny stage. Even when the film is in full-on live-action "realism" mode, Renoir so often frames in box-like, proscenium fashion as if everyone is but a player, made of wood rather than flesh and blood, exuding big emotions and meeting with ends which only could be earned in a world of morality and melodramatics.

In so doing, the film is infused with far more humanity and honesty than most pictures of its own time (or any time, for that matter). Maurice's loneliness, the vaguely cretinous "qualities" Simon brings to the role and his desperation to love (and be loved) drive him to desperate actions.

And yet, by the end of the film, our sympathies almost lie with the pimp.

Such is the greatness of Renoir. He confounds all expectations.

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

The Criterion Collection edition of La Chienne includes a new, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray; an Introduction to the film from 1961 by director Jean Renoir; a new interview with Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner; a new restoration of On purge bébé (1931), Renoir’s first sound film, also starring Michel Simon; Jean Renoir le patron: “Michel Simon” a ninety-five-minute 1967 French television program featuring a conversation between Renoir and Simon, directed by Jacques Rivette; a new English subtitle translation; an essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and an astoundingly gorgeous new cover designed by Blutch.