REBECCA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hitchcock/Selznick Classic on the Criterion Collection

Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson
in creepy crawly Hitchcock/Selznick romance.

Rebecca (1940)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Prd. David O. Selznick
Nvl. Daphne du Maurier
Scr. Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson,
George Sanders, Gladys Cooper, Nigel Bruce

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"She was incapable of love or tenderness or decency." - Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca

Rebecca is a creepy-crawly romance. Make no mistake, though - it is indeed a romance, but damn (!), the picture makes your flesh squirm and the cherry on the sundae is that it's often so suspenseful that you occasionally feel like being one big screaming-sissy-pants-baby.

There aren't many American feature films as great as this one - it's in a class all its own. The finished product is the result of easily the most combustible producer-director partnerships in movie history. Auteur American producer David O. Selznick (Gone With The Wind) teamed up with auteur British director Alfred Hitchcock to adapt the wildly best-selling gothic romance novel by Daphne du Maurier and in so doing, yielded a film that was as modern and sophisticated for its period that has also stood the test of time - so well, that it's still more dazzlingly original than most films made these days, or for that matter - ever!

Hitchcock, however, seemed to downplay the worth of Rebecca, going so far as to say that "it's not really a Hitchcock film", but rather David O. Selznick's picture. Hitch couldn't have been more wrong, though. The movie is pure Hitchcock. He just didn't realize it.

The story that unfurls is one of obsession and on the surface, pure gothic romance. When the ultra-rich widower Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meets a plain, nameless (yes, nameless!) travelling companion (Joan Fontaine) at a Mediterranean seaside resort, he falls madly in love with her and whisks the young woman off to be his wife and preside over his mansion Manderley. Of course, the rambling old estate is haunted - mostly by the lingering memories (and perhaps even the ghost) of de Winter's dead first wife Rebecca.

Once ensconced in the stately manse, Max is often busy with business matters and it's up to his fresh new wife to take up her duties as "lady of the house". This is easier said than done. The house is still adorned with all the touches bestowed upon it by the late Rebecca (who died tragically in a boating accident on the raging seas that the mansion overlooks). Even her bedroom, with all its clothing and accoutrements has been preserved as she left it the night she died.

The creepy old housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (the chillingly dour Judith Anderson) does everything she can to remind the young woman what a pale shade she is to the deceased former lady of the house. The new bride assumes Max wants her to replace Rebecca, but in actuality, the title character, as we are reminded constantly, can never really be replaced. If the young bride is to keep both her sanity and her new husband, she needs to create herself in her own image, not that of a dead woman.

As the film progresses, more and more hints are dropped that things, as they so often are in life, are never what they seem. Madness, infidelity and, perhaps, murder most foul lurk in ever dark corner and the picture stealthily makes its way to a climax that is as nail-bitingly suspenseful as it is wildly and gloriously romantic.

This was indeed a great producer-director collaboration. Many of Selznick's instincts about the material were right and he insisted upon fidelity to the original writing of Daphne Du Maurier - something Hitchcock had a clear distaste for, but ultimately acquiesced to. Good thing. What this resulted in was not only a great picture, but whether Hitchcock could ever admit it or not, Rebecca proved to be an important transition picture in his development as a filmmaker and led the way to his rich period during the 50s and eventually gave way to the other great and perfect tale of obsession, Vertigo. I'd go so far as to suggest that without Selznick, Vertigo might have never eventually happened, or at least not as successfully.

Selznick was a filmmaker. A real filmmaker. So too was Hitchcock. The combination was explosive, but yielded a work of lasting value.

Rebecca is available on a new Criterion Collection Blu-Ray/DVD and easily one of the greatest home entertainment triumphs in years. This stunning new 4K digital restoration of the Hitchcock/Selznick classic features an audio commentary from 1990 featuring film scholar Leonard J. Leff, an isolated music and effects track, a new conversation between film critic and author Molly Haskell and scholar Patricia White, a new interview with film historian Craig Barron on Rebecca’s visual effects, Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of “Rebecca,” an extraordinary 2016 French television documentary, a making-of documentary from 2007, footage of screen, hair, makeup, and costume tests for actors Joan Fontaine, Anne Baxter, Vivien Leigh, Margaret Sullavan and Loretta Young, a casting gallery with notes by director Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick, Hitchcock interviewed by Tom Snyder on a 1973 episode of NBC’s Tomorrow, a Tomorrow interview with Fontaine from 1980, audio interviews from 1986 with actor Judith Anderson and Fontaine, three radio versions of Rebecca, from 1938, 1941, and 1950, including Orson Welles’s adaptation of the novel for the Mercury Theatre, the theatrical rerelease trailer, an essay by critic and Selznick biographer David Thomson and selected Selznick production correspondence, including with Hitchcock and on the box, a gorgeous cover painting by Robert Hunt.

THE TRANSFIGURATION - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The tragedy of adolescent vampirism (and another reason why Toronto's The Royal Cinema is the best indie theatre in Canada).

Teen lovers in dangerous times.

The Transfiguration (2016)
Dir. Michael O'Shea
Starring: Eric Ruffin, Chloe Levine, Aaron Clifton Moten

Review By Greg Klymkiw

We've all found ourselves in public washrooms when, whilst relieving ourselves, we hear the sounds of voracious sucking and slurping coming from within the hidden sanctity of a closed-door stall. Our thoughts turn to all manner of carnal activity, but never do we imagine that a vampire is dining upon the jugular of a victim. Well, it is indeed the activities of a supernatural bloodsucker revealed to us at the beginning of The Transfiguration.

The Nosferatu in question turns out to be the sweet-faced 14-year-old Milo (Eric Ruffin), a frequently bullied introvert who lives in a Queen's high rise housing project with his older brother Lewis (Aaron Clifton Moten), a PTSD-suffering veteran of the Middle East conflicts and shattered by the tragic death of the boys' mother. Milo loves vampire movies and he definitely qualifies as a movie geek of the highest order since he collects all his favourites (Martin, Near Dark, Let the Right One In, etc.) on - I kid you not - VHS dupes. When he meets Sophie (Chloe Levine), a fellow teen resident of the complex, they hit it off big-time and for a first official date, he takes her to a Manhattan revival house to see F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu on the silver screen.

In spite of the film's supernatural element - Milo is, after all a genuine vampire - I find it difficult to classify the picture as a horror movie. Yes, it has dollops of tension and suspense throughout, but if anything, it's a deeply moving love story about two lonely kids in New York who develop a very special bond. Director Michael O'Shea's screenplay is fuelled by humanity. He addresses the loss of parents, loneliness, bullying, life in the inner city projects, gang culture and even ethnocentrism/racism by way of rich kids coming into the neighbourhood to buy drugs, assuming they can approach a teen for these purposes just because he's African-American.

Most of all, though, the film explores the hopes and dreams of the young lovers and sensitively delves into the ultimate tragedy of their love.

O'Shea's film is a deliberately paced, beautifully observed take on vampire lore that's replete with appealing, natural performances and a bevy of touches that are occasionally in the realm of Neo-realism. We see a New York we seldom experience - even plenty of ocean views via the Queens neighbourhood of Rockaway Beach. The movie pulsates with life and if Vittorio De Sica had ever thought about making a vampire movie, it would probably have resembled The Transfiguration.

My only warning to viewers is this: Bring Kleenex and lots of it. As I sat shuddering and sobbing during the end title credits, I was sure glad I had plenty of tissue on my person.

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

The Transfiguration9to plays theatrically in Canada at The Royal Cinema in Toronto via Strand Releasing.

McCABE & MRS. MILLER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Heartbreaking Altman on Criterion Blu

Booze, brothels, love and tragedy in the Old West.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Dir. Robert Altman
Nvl. Edmund Naughton
Scr. Altman and Brian McKay
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, René Auberjonois, Michael Murphy,
Antony Holland, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, William Devane,
John Schuck, Hugh Millais, Jace Van Der Veen, Manfred Schulz, Corey Fischer

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Under the big grey skies of Washington State, a stranger slowly rides from out of the wet greenery of a boreal forest and heads straight for the tiny, squalid, muddy little mining town of Presbyterian Church. His name is John McCabe (Warren Beatty). On the outskirts, away from prying eyes, he removes the bulky fur coat he's been wearing to shield himself from the damp cold of the Pacific Northwest. He's all about appearances, you see. As soon as he reveals what's beneath the fur we know this all too well. Wearing a clean burgundy sport jacket, crisp white shirt, handsome black diamond-shaped tie and grey vest, he pops a smart bowler hat on his head - all in marked contrast to the grimy attire of the town's denizens.

In the old west, when a stranger rides into town, people notice. Anonymity becomes just a fleeting memory. John McCabe is a gambler, businessman and, it is whispered, a gunfighter. He wants to make an impression and he wants it to stick, like flies to shit, like peanut butter in the craw and the ties that bind.

Though his entrance is adorned with the surface tropes of the genre, director Robert Altman, like his protagonist McCabe, is all about appearances too. He wants us to know we're watching a western, but good goddamn, it's not going to be like any western we've ever seen.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a true original - the kind of movie we seldom see anymore, at least not from any major Hollywood studio. Ah, but it was 1971 when this picture first rode into town and it was, for all its bold, fresh innovation, a movie that was produced under the aegis of Warner Brothers, a studio which, up to that point always broke molds (think: the first major sound picture The Jazz Singer, Busby Berkeley, gritty dirty 30s crime pictures and, uh, Casablanca anyone?). These days we're more likely to see the Warners' banner in front of machine-tooled Harry Potter movies, the turgid Dark Knight turds of Christopher Nolan and (God Help Us!!!), Peter Jackson's unwatchable Hobbit series. (In fairness to the studio, they have, of late, delivered the unique Zack Snyder and David Ayer re-imaginings of the DC comic book universe, though all of those pictures have been panned by most of the contemporary scribes purporting to be "critics".)

Oh, but this was the 70s, the greatest decade in movie history and Warner Bros. (my personal favourite of all the studios) green-lit McCabe & Mrs. Miller, a haunting, leisurely-paced and decidedly elegiac western. I had, of course, seen several million westerns in movie theatres with my Dad, but at the age of twelve, as I sat in a first-run movie theatre (a 1500-seat picture palace, no less), positioned next to dear Pater, I knew, I knew even then, at that tender age, based solely on the aforementioned first few minutes, that I was watching something I'd never seen before and now, so many decades later, as I sat in front of my Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Robert Altman's movie, I thought, "You know, I've not seen anything like this since".

Of course it's different. These are not wide open dusty spaces with the phallic ancient outcroppings of Monument Valley rock under sunny skies. We're surrounded by mist, virtually claustrophobic greenery and most of all, as Vilmos Zsigmond's floating camera captures the rain intermittently pouring, streets filled with murky pools of water, soupy streets of mud, somber, peppery clouds above a ramshackle village, the soundtrack is neither Elmer Bernstein bombast nor, even, Ennio Morricone whistles and twangs.

We hear, Leonard Cohen.

"It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender. And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger"

Cohen's "The Stranger Song" is not only the opening theme music of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, but its haunting lyrics and melody become a main theme throughout the picture. Along with other great works by the late Canadian troubadour, we hear lively fiddles as source music played by Presbyterian Church local musicians and a series of haunting guitar riffs performed by Cohen. Most notable is the location sound and very subtle foley, capturing the unique aural qualities of life in an isolated community during the latter part of 19th century America, but lest we forget, there is the unique Altman dialogue recording. When people speak, we hear what we'd hear in any crowded room - the blend of voices, overlapping conversations and the only time any words are crystal clear is when we absolutely need to hear them.

Mumbling is also a recurring auditory motif, but brilliantly, Altman uses it mostly for McCabe himself as a delightful character trait. McCabe mumbles - only when he's alone. He's a man used to being alone for large periods of his life and as such, he thinks aloud. (The first time McCabe speaks he's alone, on the periphery of the town and yes, mumbling to himself.)

Yes, this is a western. On the surface we've seen this story many times. A stranger comes to a small town, immediately spots the burgeoning glory of opportunity, sets up a successful business, spurns the advances of corrupt powerful corporate interests to buy him out and is then swiftly assailed by hired killers, their goal to rub him out permanently and secure his valuable holdings for zilch.

Ah, but that's merely the outward narrative coat hanger. The picture is so, so much more than this simple exterior. The heart and soul of the movie is a love story. After all, Altman has chosen to eschew the simple "McCabe" title of the Edmund Naughton novel the film is based on and append the "& Mrs. Miller" to the title of the movie itself. And then there are the songs by Leonard Cohen. In addition to "The Stranger Song" we also get to hear "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady" (all three released in 1971 as a 7" single on vinyl which, I still own). Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) is the gorgeous, classy (in spite of her Cockney accent) prostitute/madame who goes into business with McCabe, helping him wrangle a stable of women. Like the song says:

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.

Indeed, it is the whores who offer McCabe some fleeting glory and solace and in turn serve the needs of men in the village - those who stay, and those who pass through. Inevitably, and perhaps most sadly of all, it is the sisters of mercy who remain a constant presence. Others might come, and others, most notably McCabe himself, may go. The women, however, are ever-present.

Mrs. Miller, the "Winter Lady" of Cohen's song, will indeed remain.

Trav'ling lady, stay awhile
Until the night is over.
I'm just a station on your way,
I know I'm not your lover.

Ah, but he is her lover. Though they are business partners and though Mrs. Miller charges McCabe for all their evenings of bedroom gymnastics, she indeed experiences a love she's never known. The sorrow she eventually will feel is so devastating that she will be drawn to the mind numbing properties of opium. The town is misty, not just with the fog of the Pacific Northwest, but the haze of poppy seeds.

This is a movie that seems fuel-injected with sorrow and though it's set in a time and place so long ago and far away, Robert Altman has crafted a film that is not only perfect in every respect, but is as universal in its exploration of both corporate exploitation and humanity (specifically in the complexities of love) - now, as much as it was in 1971.

The character trait of McCabe mumbling to himself is not only a wonderful "quirk", but it's used to great effect in one of the most moving and tragic on-screen monologues in movie history. After McCabe has attempted to "reason" with one of the assassins, we find him in the deep darkness of an early morning winter, burning the midnight oil. Downing a few shots of booze, putting some final grooming touches to his appearance and slowly loading bullets into his gun before handily affixing his holster, he looks out his window and notices the warm glow coming from across the way at the whorehouse where Mrs. Miller is servicing a client.

Whilst performing his ablutions and the rituals of preparing for what will, no doubt, be a series of urgent encounters, McCabe does indeed mumble to himself, maybe for the last time:

"I tell ya', sometimes, sometimes when I take a look at you, I just keep lookin' and a'lookin' so I won't feel your little body up against me so bad I think I'm gonna bust. I keep trying' to tell ya' in a lotta different ways... well I'll tell ya' something, I got poetry in me, I do, I got poetry in me, but I ain't gonna put it down on paper. I ain't no educated man. I got sense enough not to try."

Eventually, Altman expertly stages one of cinema's most tense western showdowns. The church is burning down. The whole town is empty and desperately trying to quell the flames. Snow is falling heavily. Three armed dangerous killers are on the hunt. McCabe is alone. Guns will blast and blood will spill, spattering crimson upon the white blanket resting heavily upon the ground of Presbyterian Church, Washington.

There is no urgent musical score; only the sounds of breathing, footsteps upon the snow and the wind - oh, the howling wind. And every so often, we are jolted with shotgun blasts and the sickening sounds of shattering glass.

Mrs. Miller is nowhere to be seen. There is, you see, an opium den in town.

Well I lived with a child of snow
When I was a soldier,
And I fought every man for her
Until the nights grew colder.

A man of poetry is fighting for his life. A sister of mercy wants to forget.

Life is just like that sometimes.

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

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is available on the Criterion Collection and includes a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a 2002 commentary with Altman and producer David Foster, new making-of documentary, new conversation about the film and Altman’s career between film historians Cari Beauchamp and Rick Jewell, 1970 production featurette, 1999 Art Directors Guild Film Society Q&A with production designer Leon Ericksen, excerpts from archival interviews with Vilmos Zsigmond, gallery of on-set stills, excerpts from 1971 episodes of "The Dick Cavett Show" featuring Altman and film critic Pauline Kael, the trailer and an essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich.

THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MAKI - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Finnish Boxing

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (2016)
Dir. Juho Kuosmanen
Scr. Kuosmanen and Mikko Myllylahti
Starring: Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, Eero Milonoff, John Bosco Jr.

Review By Greg Klymkiw




Is it possible for anyone to have a happy day in Finland? Well, amateur boxer and former Olympic champ Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) hopes so. It's 1962 and his friend, manager and former boxer Elis Ask (Eero Milonoff) is not only counting on it, but he comes close to promising that Olli will indeed experience the happiest day in his life - if Olli works for it, harder than ever before. Olli's no slouch in the pugilistic sweepstakes. His record is impressive, but now the stakes are going to be very high because he's been entered into a professional bout in Helsinki against the formidable American fighter Davey Moore (John Bosco Jr.), a lean, mean boxer with over 60 wins behind him.

Can a sweet, young fighter from the sticks really hold his own in a bout touted as Finland's big shot at boxing supremacy on the world stage? For all intents and purposes, Olli is Finland's "Great White Hope" and the pressures placed upon him seem insurmountable.

Worst of all, Olli is severely distracted. He's falling in love.

The love of Olli's life is Raija (Oona Airola), a vivacious, gorgeous, fresh-faced beauty from his hometown. Manager Elis is understandably concerned. The only love Olli should keep in his heart is boxing and the will to win. Olli has other priorities. He's shy, humble and just wants to do his best, but in the world of professional sports, best isn't good enough. He's got to be the best of the best.

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki is one of the best boxing films ever made. Kuosmanen's direction is infused with attention to the smallest details and results in a picture where the stuff of life provides indelible moments of dramatic and emotional resonance far beyond the cliches which litter so many sports films. The love story itself is wildly, deliriously romantic to the point of instilling the most delightful frissons of loving goooseflesh. It's one of the few movies I've seen which manages to create a feeling of butterflies in the tummy which only mad, passionate love can inspire.




Kuosmanen's cast hits all the right notes while cinematographer J-P Passi’s monochrome images carry us back to a time of simplicity, beauty and the promise the early 60s offered, in spite of the Cold-War, which tried to overshadow basic elements of humanity, but lost out to the decency of the hearts and minds of simple men the world over. The period details in the film are first-rate, but never stand out like glistening sore thumbs. They're inextricably linked to character and drama.

And if you don't know the true story of Olli Mäki, avoid looking it up before seeing the picture. Your experience will be blessed with added profundity and joy.

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

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, a Norther Banner release, plays at TIFF 2016

THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Turgid Tedium Rules Romance

The Light Between Oceans (2016)
Dir. Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander,
Rachel Weisz, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Early into this historical romance, the two lovers-to-be (Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander) go for an extra-long picnic, walking and talking ad nauseum through hilly, seemingly treeless and wide-open Aussie wilderness until, settling several hours later on a cliff overlooking a gorgeous sunset on the ocean, they kiss and profess their love for each other. As Alexandre Desplat's ludicrously lush score throbs over cinematographer Adam Arkapaw's dull picture-postcard images, all I could think about was when, where and for how long did our lovebirds relieve themselves of waste matter. Worse yet, I wondered about how the two deposited heavier loads with no apparent evidence of toilet paper.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last thing one should be thinking about in any romance are bowel movements, but think about them, I did - long and hard. And as the film plodded along, I thought about my own need to relieve myself. Thank heaven for tender mercies.

The Light Between Oceans had plenty of potential to be a weepy in the 40s Warner Bros. tradition, but alas it suffers from a horrendously miscast leading lady and worse yet, plods along to a relatively safe denouement.

Fassbender and Vikander play a newly married couple living an Eden-like existence on a remote island - its only practical reason for being is to provide a lighthouse to guide ships from its rocky shores and towards the safe harbours about 100 miles away. We watch them boink like minks, but their attempts to generate progeny result in not one, but two - count 'em - still births. Vikander takes it especially badly. When a small boat washes ashore with a dead man and a living, breathing newborn baby, she petulantly, selfishly insists that Fassbender bury the evidence of the obviously real Daddy and keep the child for themselves.

For what seems like several hours of running time, we watch our couple raise the child as if it were their own. Alas, back on shore, there is the baby's real grieving mother. Rachel Weisz suffers quite magnificently in this role - so much so that occasional sojourns to the mainland by our baby-napping couple inspire Fassbender's guilt to overwhelm him.

Needless to say, things will probably not turn out too well. Unfortunately, instead of some really unbearable suffering, we're dealt the unkindest cut of all, a relatively happy ending tinged with bittersweetness. Some of the melodramatic elements in the movie do indeed work in a rudimentary sledgehammer fashion, but neither the screenplay nor the direction take brave enough steps into completely ludicrous tear-wrenching territory - it's all eventually so bloody tasteful.

Under the circumstances, Fassbender and Weisz acquit themselves nicely and it's great seeing Aussie stalwarts like Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson in top form, but the ubiquitous Alicia Vikander pretty much upends the whole picture. She seldom wipes the dimple-inducing smile from her face and even when she expresses sadness or desperation, there's more giddiness in her visage than anything remotely real or harrowing. In fact, her dimples become so bothersome, one wants to pave them over with cement. Most embarrassing are her line-readings which seem oddly anachronistic. Ultimately, Vikander galumphs her way through the proceedings with such misplaced intensity that the movie galumphs alongside her.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **

The Light Between Oceans opened the 2016 Venice Film Festival and is now in wide release via Disney.

THE NEW WORLD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Malick's Last Real Movie on Criterion Blu-Ray

Terrence Malick's last real movie.

The New World (2005)
Dir. Terrence Malick
Starring: Colin Farrell, Q'orianka Kilcher, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale,
August Schellenberg, Wes Studi, David Thewlis, Yorick van Wageningen, John Savage

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The New World is the last real movie made by Terrence Malick prior to descending into his "I Talk To The Trees" cinematic dementia which began with the pretentious The Tree of Life and followed by the risible To The Wonder, Knight of Cups (Malick's nadir) and Voyage of Time (it has two versions, both awful, though happily the IMAX edition is very short). For this reason, one must be truly thankful to the Criterion Collection for issuing the gobsmackingly gorgeous "Director-Approved Special Edition" (3-Disc Blu-Ray, 4-Disc DVD) of Malick's haunting and moving take on the Pocahontas story. (This edition includes a terrific documentary by Austin Jack Lynch, especially illuminating in the sections devoted to training the indigenous Native actors in period body language.)

The New World has had a curious release pattern with no less than three different versions of the film. There is a 150-minute cut which played briefly in America to qualify for Oscars (and long available on an Italian DVD), then the contractually-obligated 135-minute cut which was the only one most of us saw for awhile and finally, a 172-minute extended cut that has never been theatrically released.

Luckily, this lovely box set (with gorgeous new cover artwork by Robert Hunt) has all three cuts. I like them all, frankly. The shortest version was all I knew for awhile and it's the sleekest of the lot, while the slightly longer version expands on both poetic qualities and sharpens narrative clarity. The longest is a real treat. Though it has far more early hints of Malick's tree-staring and soulful voiceovers, they are all in service to a compelling narrative.

Pocahontas: Lost in Love.

Many of us are familiar with the historically-rooted story of Native Princess Pocahontas via any number of literary and film renderings (the most horrendous being the animated Disney musical), but Malick has definitely delivered the most vital and successful dramatic look at this fascinating figure.

After some lovely underwater nude swimming shots of the gorgeous Pocahontas, we're introduced to the dashing figure of military man John Smith (Colin Farrell) who arrives, in chains, with a boatload of various rough-and-tumble types from England, all selected to establish the colony of Jamestown, Virginia and to set up a tobacco trade on the rich, fertile expanse of land in America. Smith is about to be executed for insubordination, but saved by the kindly (and in his own way, equally dashing) Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer).

To the dismay of Wingfield (David Thewlis), a snooty bureaucratic martinet with a major hate-on for our hero, Smith is promoted in rank and charged with overseeing the colony. As the new settlers are beleagured with a lack of food supplies, Smith journeys deep into the wilderness to establish positive relations and trade with the Algonquian "naturals".

Enter Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), Princess and favourite daughter of the tribe's Chief Powhatan (August Schellenberg). She not only saves Smith's life, but engages in much cavorting through nature with him as they fall madly in love. This allows Malick plenty of opportunity for shots of nature, sky and trees.

There's a whole lotta voice-over goin' on, too.

As Smith "goes Native" and learns the ways of the "naturals", there's a whack o' delicious romance and humour in the proceedings.

There is portent, too.

Powhatan warns Pocahontas to never take sides with the colonists, not even Smith. He fears they are all wolves in sheep's clothing (which, uh, they ultimately are). Smith, though, seems true to his commitment to the "naturals" and between he and Pocahontas, both sides are well served.

Until, there is war.

The dashing Captain John Smith.

Smith is eventually charged with leaving on a long, perilous expedition. The glories of exploration are dangled before him by kindly Cappy Newport and he takes the bait. Smith feels, in his heart of hearts, that his destiny is greater than his happiness. Knowing he'll never return, he asks a trusted associate to eventually lie to Pocahontas that he has died at sea so she can move on without him.

When she is informed of his death, she plunges into a grief that borders on madness. She's "rescued" by the ladies of Fort James who begin a process of colonization in earnest and she's transformed into a "proper" Englishwoman. She eventually meets John Rolfe (Christian Bale), a sweet, gentle and oh-so handsome tobacco plantation magnate. He's smitten with her, but she's still pining for the "dead" Captain John Smith. Eventually she acquiesces to Rolfe's marriage proposal.

When Rolfe and his "Indian Princess" bride are invited to England in order to meet royalty and high society, they journey across the pond. Accompanied by her Uncle Opechancanough (Wes Studi), they become the toast of Dear Old Blighty. Whilst gambolling on manicured British lawns, an old flame from her past materializes. John Smith, it seems, is not dead. Will the peace and love she's come to know with Rolfe now crash and burn?

Malick's screenplay, for all the film's poetic meanderings, carries a surprisingly solid romantic narrative arc and the whole experience of watching the film is filled with genuine wonder. The political implications of colonization and indeed, the gradual assimilation forced upon Pocahontas are always present, even though Malick's approach is never political.

He is clearly at the peak of his powers here as a Master Filmmaker and he's smart enough not to let politics get in the way of spiritual rumination on the beauty of nature, the power of love and creating a world that is richly steeped in history. All of this is bathed in cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's stunning work (he paints with what appears to mostly be natural light), ace production designer Jack Fisk's muscular work creating both the colonial and old world settings of the early 17th Century and James Horner's lushly romantic score (nicely supplemented with plenty of Wagner and Mozart).

The greatness of The New World is paralleled only by the greatness of Malick's best work. It soars with a most remarkable spirit and it's dappled with more than its fair share of pure passion.

And yeah, the picture gives us an amazing opportunity at the end to squirt copious tears, ever-so Old-Faithful-like upon the screen. When he made real movies, Malick sure knew how to move us.

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

The New World is available on a sumptuous Criterion Collection 3-Disc DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION Blu-Ray with a new 4K digital restoration of the 172-minute extended cut of the film, supervised by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and director Terrence Malick and featuring material not released in theaters, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-rays. Included are high-definition digital transfers of the 135-minute theatrical cut and the 150-minute first cut of the film, supervised by Lubezki, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks on the Blu-rays. PLUS: new interviews with actors Colin Farrell and Q’orianka Kilcher, new program about the making of the film, featuring interviews with producer Sarah Green, production designer Jack Fisk, and costume designer Jacqueline West, Making “The New World,” a documentary shot during the production of the film in 2004, directed and edited by Austin Jack Lynch (this is especially illuminating in the sections devoted to training the indigenous Native actors in period body language), a new program about the process of cutting The New World and its various versions, featuring interviews with editors Hank Corwin, Saar Klein, and Mark Yoshikawa, Trailers, A book featuring an essay by film scholar Tom Gunning, a 2006 interview with Lubezki from American Cinematographer, and a selection of materials that inspired the production.

TO LIFE (À la vie) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Auschwitz survivors get some fun in the sun.

Sand, surf and fun in the sun
await this trio of MILF Holocaust survivors.

To Life (aka À la vie) (2014)
Dir. Jean-Jacques Zilbermann
Scr. Zilbermann, Danièle D'Antoni, Odile Barski
Starring: Julie Depardieu, Suzanne Clement, Johanna ter Steege,
Hippolyte Girardot, Mathias Mlekuz, Benjamin Wangermee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I suspect I'm going to burn in hell for this, but about thirty minutes into the ludicrous post-holocaust melodrama À la vie, a most (shall we say?) unusual notion crept into my brain, thus making the entire turgid affair watchable without having to nail my feet to the floor. My thoughts began swirling with possibilities when it occurred to me that Three MILFs from Auschwitz might be the more appropriate title for this abomination and its tag-line could be something like: "Hot MILFs at the Beach! They've survived the Holocaust and now they're gonna: Live! Laugh! Cry! Most of all, though, these girls just wanna have fun!"

Ugh! That's really what the picture boils down to.

15 years after meeting, befriending and caring for each other in Auschwitz, three plucky MILFs: Helene from Paris (Julie Depardieu, yes, she's the daughter of Big Daddy Gerard Depardieu), Lily (Johanna her Steege) from Amsterdam and Montreal-based Rose (Suzanne Clement), get together for some sun, fun and frolics on the beaches of the northern French coast town Berck-sur-mer. (Uh, for the uninitiated a MILF is a "Mother I'd Like to Fuck" and the soon-to-be-utlized FILF is a "Father I'd Like to Fuck".)

"Mais oui, but I am a castrato, and you're not!"

Our MILFs are staying in the resort town gratis thanks to the largesse of handsome FILF Raymond (Mathias Mlekuz). He's well aware of the special nature of this reunion and donates the use of his rental property. It doesn't hurt that Raymond still carries a torch for Helene (she turned down his marriage proposal years ago, but they've maintained a close friendship). Instead of a potential union between this perfectly matched couple, Helene married her sad-sack childhood sweetheart Henri (Hippolyte Girardot). Why is he so dour? Well, in Auschwitz, his testes were blasted with radiation, then snipped off.

In a nutshell (so to speak), Helene has been married to a castrato for fifteen years. He can't get it up and is only able to provide kissing, cuddling and caressing. No matter. She loves him dearly. In spite of this undying love, Helene confides to her fellow MILF Holocaust survivors that this state of affairs has been depressing the living crap out of her, especially since she is still a virgin and longs for schwance instead of the (no-doubt) nimble digits drilling into her needy, greedy mutersheyd. Like some MILF Holocaust Survivor version of Porky's, the gals make it their business to get Helene laid.

As luck would have it, klafte-pronging is just around the corner. Jilted hubbie-to-never-be Raymond introduces the gals to the buff figure of Pierre (Benjamin Wangermee), proprietor of Club Mickey, the local beach day camp for kids. This 20-something God of Love turns out to be an Algerian orphan who lived in state care most of his life - it wasn't quite Auschwitz, but traumatic enough to give him some cred in the suffering sweepstakes.

Luckily, he's got a raging hard-on due to being a virgin and he's so smitten with virginal Helene that she is on the verge of getting some strokin' from a bonafide MILF lover.

A young, buff virgin Algerian orphan looking for MILF.

Of course, as this is a film about Holocaust survivors, there's plenty of serious issues to be dealt with. Alas, they're handled very clumsily and rife with cliches. All three women have deep secrets they want to reveal and the screenplay too conveniently allows each woman a shot at spilling the goods which have haunted them for fifteen years.

Everything about the picture is by rote and nothing ever rings true - so much so, that one wonders why director Zilbermann even bothered. Ah, he bothered because this is A TRUE STORY, based upon his own mother and her two friends. "Based on" seems to be the operative phrase to apply here. This is clearly a fictionalized version of the events. Though I've not seen it, Zilbermann has already made a documentary about his mom called Irene and Her Sisters. As it deals with the real subjects, I suspect it's not as ludicrously dappled in the perverse fluorescent colour scheme he employs to capture this empty fictional rendering.

In addition to the dreadful script, lacking as it is in genuine shadings of character, complexity and genuine emotion, the production design goes out of its way to be as accurate as possible in capturing period detail, but nothing ever seems to be "lived in". One of the more egregious elements soiling the picture is the jauntily horrendous ooh-la-la score which makes the film far too similar to a horrendous Claude Lelouch affair with music (if one can call it that) by the (mostly) insufferable accordionist Francis Lai.

About the only positive note is that the performance of Depardieu is extraordinary enough to evoke a genuine tear or two. One scene where she first discovers that one of her friends in Auschwitz is not dead is pretty extraordinary. Sadly, she struggles with attempting to find a character amidst the film's dross.

MILFs have secrets. Whaddya say they're gonna share a few?

Nothing in the film rings true.

"But it's a true story," you say.

I say, "So what?" If a movie can't make itself truthful, then it betrays all tenets of good storytelling.

The most disappointing aspect of the film is dashed when the MILFS declare they will meet regularly every year at the same resort. Damn! There goes the potential for a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "on the road" franchise (albeit with MILF Holocaust survivors, 'natch). All through this wretched excuse for a movie, I kept imagining different locales for our girls to cavort about in endless sequels. Disappointingly we'll never get to see what shenanigans these wacky MILFs from Auschwitz could have had in Bali, Waikiki and Morocco. The list is endless, but merely relegated to my feverish imagination.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

TO LIFE (À la vie) is an Unobstructed View release which opens May 20 in Canada.

SUNSET SONG - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Oh Dear, Another Terence Davies Masterpiece. What else is new? UK's Greatest Living Director Serves Up Epic of Romance and War.

Sunset Song (2015)
Dir. Terence Davies
Nvl. Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Starring: Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie, Jack Greenlees, Daniela Nardini, Douglas Rankine, Ian Pirie, Linda Duncan McLaughlin, Mark Bonnar

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To my mind, Terence Davies is a National Treasure and easily the United Kingdom's greatest living director. Over the course of 30+ years, he's brought us eight feature length diamonds. Some have been exquisitely in the rough like 1983's The Terence Davies Trilogy of short films, the 1993 Southern Gothic of The Neon Bible and the shimmering 2008 Liverpool documentary Of Time and the City.

The carefully hewn diamonds are something else altogether - one picture after another to take their rightful place as cinematic equivalents to the priceless Persian Koh-I-Noor diamond. Blending painterly tableaux, to-die-for lighting, sweetly breathtaking camera moves (often slow and subtle), replete with Davies's virtually trademark recurring themes of time and memory, are, with few peers, amongst the best films of all time.

The masterpieces include 1988's Distant Voices, Still Lives, the gulp-and-tear-inducing exploration of a family seeking solace in "old songs" at the local pub to allay the constant physical, verbal and psychological assaults from a brutal patriarch, 1992's The Long Day Closes, a ravishing ode to movies in post-war Britain, 2000's The House of Mirth, the finest Edith Wharton film adaptation anyone will ever make, and 2011's The Deep Blue Sea, the finest film adaptation of any Terence Rattigan play that (you guessed it) anyone will ever make. (That said, Anthony Asquith's adaptation of The Browning Version with Michael Redgrave is a pubic-hair-close-second in the Rattigan movie sweepstakes.)

And now, a new masterpiece can be added to the pile.

Sunset Song is the ravishing, romantic story of a young woman who gives up her dreams of a higher education to care for farm and family. Her father is a brute who physically abuses his eldest son and demands constant sex from his wife, turning her into a breeding machine long after she is physically able to handle it. Upon the matriarch's death, Daddy Dearest gets a stroke and attempts to demand sexual favours from his only daughter. As she always has, she fights back against the unfairness and evil of patriarchy. Though her dreams of teacher's college were dashed, she discovers that her real dream consists of a deep love for the land, its people and the sweet-faced kindness offered by marrying a handsome, caring young man.

All seems well and then, war.

What's precious about her life is about to flip topsy turvy, but her strength, indomitable courage and intelligence will constantly be set upon the greatest of life's challenges. Davies charges this simple, yet complex tale with an astonishing mise en scène. Never has an on-screen courtship been sweeter and the love experienced by the young man and woman beats its heart constantly through joyous events, strife and hardships of the most devastating order and beyond.

We're faced with a myriad of life's moments with Davies's masterly direction: a deliriously romantic exchange amidst a sea of sheep, a glorious wedding sequence and barn dance, the cruelties of shell shock and the horrors of war.

There's a sequence in Sunset Song which is blessed with one of the most moving series of images and sounds that you're likely to see in any films - period. It's pure Terence Davies, yet also worthy of the very best of John Ford. The sequence is especially reminiscent of those stirring moments from Ford's screen adaptation of novelist Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley - a cornucopia of knockout moments wherein Welsh miners sing songs of sadness and joy at key points in Ford/Llewellyn's narrative of the land and its people.

Davies, of course, is not in Ford's Wales, but delivers his narrative of the land and people of Scotland in this heartbreaking, but ultimately moving and soaring film adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's immortal book "Sunset Song", the first in his important trilogy, "A Scots Quair".

As this is a Terence Davies film, music and song carry us to euphoric and elegiac heights. Using what might be the ultimate contemporary recording of Hugh Robertson's arrangement of Katherine Tynan's gut wrenching "All in the April Evening" (performed by The Glasgow Orpheus Choir), Davies and cinematographer Michael (Winter's Bone) McDonough's dazzling camera follow the people of the Estate of Kinraddie in Kincardineshire Mearns of northeastern Scotland as they slowly make their way over the rolling fields of yellow grasses until they converge upon the parish cathedral to prepare for a very solemn Sunday Service.

As beautiful and rich as the images are, along the country road and past the ancient rock buttressing the House of God, the camera, then dollying slowly backwards inside the cathedral as the townsfolk sit whilst sun streams through the majestic windows, waiting for the words of Reverend Gibbon (Mark Bonnar), there is a portent we cannot help but feel to our very core. It doesn't seem lost upon the townspeople either - what begins as a happy parade to worship, soon betrays visages of both melancholy and trepidation and the gait of the assembled, is ultimately not unlike a funeral march.

Tynan's song tells the tale of Christ's Passion, but given that Scotland has been corralled into war by England against The Hun, we cannot help but ascribe the meaning of the lyrics to reflect what really awaits the folk of Kinraddie:

The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road;
All in an April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry;
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

As the camera passes by the newly, happily married couple, Chris (Agyness Deyn) and Ewan (Kevin Guthrie), the lyrics are timed thusly:

. . . but for the lamb, The Lamb of God
Up on the hill-top green;

Here, Davies and McDonough reverse the angle upon the pulpit as the grim-faced Reverend slowly makes his way to the "holy" perch above the people. And the lyrics lament:

. . .Only a cross, a cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.

The Reverend ascends the stairs to his lectern of doom, lowers his head, then raises it, staring straight out at the congregation as the final lyrics hang in the air like a harbinger of death:

I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

The light then shines upon the suitably creepy Reverend as if it's been cranked-up by God Himself. Taking its place amongst such hellfire and brimstone cinematic sermons like John Gielgud in Joseph Strick's 1977 film of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Orson Welles in John Huston's film of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Davies is blessed with the casting of Mark Bonnar to have us (and the congregation), quaking with horror.

With his brogue pitched to hysteria and meanness, Bonnar's rendering of the sermon seems to be the very core of the film (even though the picture is essentially a grand coming of age story). It goes thusly:

"As you know, we are now at war with Germany. This NEW BABYLON has as many corruption as the old one. How long it will rage is what God in His wisdom will only know. But it's a chastisement by blood and fire that the nations must arise and prevail against this enemy. And Scotland, not the least of these, in its ancient health and humility to tread again the path of peace and courage that will ultimately lead to our victory.

Their King, which they also call Kaiser, is the Antichrist - a foul evil upon this Earth that must be swept away by the righteous.

Those who will not fight to defend their country, must be exposed for that they truly are.

Cowards. And pro-German cowards at that."

History proves that the needs of the state are always bolstered by organized religion. Worse yet, World War I notoriously sacrificed the youngest and largest number of men from Scotland, Ireland and the colonies (including Canada, Australia, etc.) to ensure victory. Whole swaths of generational promise were sacrificed in this dirty war fought between the "ruling classes".

God forbid Davies should ever be politically obvious in a didactic fashion, but in so far as he chooses his material and presents it, he still exposes as many terrible truths about humanity as only the best filmmakers/artists do. Sunset Song is a love story, a coming-of-age story, but most of all, it serves as one of the most heartbreaking and potent antiwar films of the new millennium.

And here's my guarantee, you will shed copious tears.

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

Sunset Song Opens in Canada via Unobstructed View:
May 13: Toronto, Cineplex Cinemas Varsity and VIP (55 Bloor St. W)
Toronto Holdover, Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas
May 27: Vancouver, Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour St.)
May 28: Winnipeg, Cinematheque (100 Arthur St.)
June 3: Calgary, Globe Cinema (617 8 Ave SW)
June 3: Waterloo, Princess Twin (46 King St. N)
June 17: Montréal, Cinéma du Parc (3575, av. du Parc)
Cinéma Beaubien (2396, rue Beaubien Est)
June 17: Ottawa, ByTowne Cinema (325 Rideau St.)
June 17: Québec City, Cinéma Le Clap (2360, chemin Sainte-Foy)
June 17: Cobourg, The Loft Cinema (201 Division St.)

CAROL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Cucumber-cold adaptation of Highsmith sapphic romance

"Oh Harge, my quim belongs to another."

Carol (2015)
Dir. Todd Haynes
Scr. Phyllis Nagy
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Carol and its title star Cate Blanchett have one thing in common - they're both cool as cucumbers. Alas, this doesn't mean we're going to see any cucumber-action in this turgidly hollow, grossly disappointing and wildly overrated Todd Haynes misfire. Given the Cantonese Groin qualities of a waxy cuke straight from the Frigidaire crisper and the sapphic pedigree of the underlying romance which drives the picture, we're served up a thin gruel of pudendal interruptus. In other words, no dipping Johnson Bar cukes in hot, steamy luke, just the inner temperature of a new Frigidaire, filling every nook and cranny of this wonky adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's autobiographical novel "The Price of Salt".

In an oyster shell, we follow the predilections of the well-dressed Carol Aird (Blanchett, the coldest actress of her generation). Having married the filthy-rich Harge (Kyle Chandler), their union baked a glorious bun to pop from Carol's oven, a sweet daughter whom both love dearly. Alas, Harge (was there ever a better name for any character?) has caught wind of his wifey's preference for beef curtains after a long, torrid affair she's had with childhood chum Abby (Sarah Paulson). Though the ladies' rug munching days are long behind them, they still have a mutually dependent friendship. Harge keeps a close eye on Carol's rug doctoring tendencies since they'll soon be divorced and he's sure Carol's greedily insatiable taste for quim will make her an unfit mother.

Enter cutie-pie department store clerk and aspiring photographer Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara). When her elfin eyes lock with Carol's in the toy section, it's obvious we're in store for some lusciously lappin' luvvin' with, perhaps, a satisfying queef or two and a bevy of sex toys (perhaps even a Hitachi Magic Wand).

But no, before we get to the shenanigans de la pudenda, we're forced to sit through plenty of dour moping about, looks of lust, quiet moments of inner passion and a decided lack of anything resembling fun, sexiness and/or excitement. Even a nicely smarmy Kyle Chandler performance is undone by the attempts at humanizing him and in spite of a lush Carter Burwell score and (as always) gorgeous Ed Lachman cinematography, you'd think the entire movie was set in a leaky, old mausoleum. The picture is that cold. Much of its chilliness is due to Blanchett, of course, who becomes more unwatchable with every picture (save for her campy turn in Hanna and Woody Allen's perfect use of her tense frigidity in Blue Jasmine).

Not that I'd wish for Haynes to keep repeating himself, but he's already been in similar territory with the harrowingly magnificent Douglas Sirk-inspired Far From Heaven (an unofficial remake of All That Heaven Allows) and his approach there might have been as well served here. He's one of the few contemporary directors who understands melodrama as a legitimate genre and form of storytelling and he's certainly made it work before, but other than some proficient blocking here and there, a number of original camera moves and setups, plus an almost obsessive attention to period detail, Carol is still bereft of any real passion. Yes, we see the work of a genuine film artist here, but all of it is sadly misplaced.

"Well, at least I have something resembling a personality."

Haynes is one of the best of the best! Even when he occasionally missteps into some oddball Cloud Cuckoo Land like I'm Not There, he's nothing short of brilliant and, of course, his greatest work in Safe, Velvet Goldmine and the aforementioned Far From Heaven (not to mention his cutting edge early work with Poison and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story) makes him a filmmaker whose work will resonate for decades, if not longer.

Carol feels closest to his TV adaptation of Mildred Pierce - cold, but bereft of passion. There he had James M. Cain's novel as source material, but the series lacked any of the genuine snap, crackle and pop of Cain's prose style (not a difficult thing for someone like Haynes to have achieved cinematically, if, however, his head had been screwed on properly). Here he has Highsmith's novel as the source, but in spite of the challenges it might have posed in terms of its stunningly original and thrilling POV, Haynes appears to have gobbled up screenwriter Phyllis Nagy's proficiently middle of the road and rather dull re-working of the novel. Given that co-star Rooney Mara has screen presence to burn, the far more obsessive and mysterious qualities of Highsmith's approach could have, especially in Haynes's hands, been a movie for the ages.

Instead, we get a picture that feels to many (and wrongly so) as a picture for the ages. Alas, it's strictly ephemeral and will, no doubt, be reassessed in later years as a flawed, misstep in the Haynes canon.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *½ One and a half Stars

Carol is in platform release, then wide release via The Weinstein Company

A SPECIAL DAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Italian Kitchen-Sink Love Story now on Criterion

A gay dissident. An overworked housewife.
Can happiness, no matter how brief, be far behind?

A Special Day (1977)
Dir. Ettore Scola
Starring: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, John Vernon, Françoise Berd

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Writing about A Special Day is a somewhat bittersweet experience for me. Until watching the gorgeously transferred Criterion Collection Blu-Ray, I hadn't laid eyes upon the picture since 1977 when I saw it first-run on a big screen.

I saw it with my late mother. She loved Sophia Loren and was really looking forward to the movie. It didn't disappoint. It became one of her favourite movies. From time to time she'd mention it agreeably, almost wistfully. I offered, on several occasions, to get it on home video for her, but she always declined. She wasn't one to see movies more than once, even if she loved them. (Her exception to this rule was Gone With The Wind.)

For me, I recall enjoying it well enough in 1977, but I was eventually swayed by Pauline Kael's hilarious pan in The New Yorker. She referred to it as "a strenuous exercise in sensitivity" and described director Ettore Scola's style as "genteel shamelessness". In spite of my Kael-influenced position on the picture, I always maintained a positive stance whenever my mother brought it up. I tried not being a pretentious smart-ass with her.

Seeing it again, I marvelled at what an exquisitely crafted love story it really is. Yes, the picture wears its emotions on its sleeve and the political backdrop now seems somewhat obvious in how it front loads the love story which transpires twixt Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. But, on this viewing, none of these almost-machine-tooled elements mattered to me. I appreciated Scola's genuine artistry and the film's obvious merits as a first-rate weepy.

All through this screening, though, I couldn't help but think about my Mom.

I think this is a valid critical response to the film. Good movies almost always hit one on a personal level and what I admired, beyond reflecting upon my late Mother's love for it, is what a superb star vehicle it was for its leads and how the film must have resonated with audiences all over the world - especially all those Moms who related to the character Loren played so exquisitely.

The kitchen sink, laundry and Hitler
are powerless against two lonely people
finding happiness, no matter how brief.

Sophia is cast against type as Antonietta, a traditional housewife living in poverty with her brutish husband (John Vernon) and slaving over her six kids (of all ages) whilst living a life of drudgery and servitude - cooking and cleaning ad infinitum. Of course, like star vehicles the world over, Sophia's not really cast against type in the sense that she's the most gorgeous drudge in the history of movies - even without makeup. Why should it be any other way? I imagine my own Mother seeing aspects of herself in the film, but being able to do so with Sophia Loren standing up on the silver screen in her stead.

As the title tells us, the film is set during that very special day in 1938 when Adolph Hitler came to Rome in order to celebrate Totalitarian collaboration with Benito Mussolini. Loudspeakers have been set up in every nook and cranny of the city to broadcast the events of the day, even though virtually every home and business has been drained of humanity to fill the streets for Hitler.

Antonietta is home alone. There's plenty of wifely duties for her to perform - Hitler or no Hitler. When her mynah bird escapes its cage and flies across the courtyard, it lands at the window of Gabriele (Marcello Mastroianni). With his help, the bird is rescued. Alas, all this activity has interrupted Gabriele's plans to commit suicide.

I'd assert that this might be the ultimate meet-cute.

In any event, we discover Gabriele is a former household name - a radio commentator who has been fired for his liberal views and who will, no doubt, be carried off by the Black Shirt Police to rot in prison. Antonietta is charmed off her feet by the dapper intellectual. He treats her with respect and encourages her to find time to exercise her mind with reading books. He's also a homosexual. This doesn't phase Antonietta. She's bound and determined to seduce him.

This is a special day in more ways than one. Two sad, lonely people make a connection. Come what may, for several hours they discover some glimmer of happiness in their momentary closeness. Though director Scola has visually etched a borderline neorealist world, he eventually builds to a fifty-hanky tear gusher. There's no mistaking that A Special Day is anything other than what it is; a touching, sentimental, gorgeously-wrought melodrama.

And yeah, I did shed more than a few tears on this go-round. I acknowledge many of them were probably in memory of my late Mom, but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that the skillful manner in which the film wrenches emotion also worked its magic upon me. It's the same magic that worked on my Mom, sitting in a movie theatre on a Sunday afternoon with her teenage son some thirty eight years ago.

I suspect the picture will move whole new generations of movie lovers, thanks to the painstaking restoration efforts of Criterion. Like any well crafted love story, Scola did indeed create a picture of lasting value.

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

A Special Day is available on the Criterion Collection with to-die-for supplements including: a new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Ettore Scola, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray; Human Voice, a 2014 short film starring Sophia Loren and directed by Edoardo Ponti; new interviews with Scola and Loren; two 1977 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Loren and actor Marcello Mastroianni (a mega-treat); the trailer; a new English subtitle translation; and an essay by critic Deborah Young.

BROOKLYN - Review By Greg Klymkiw *****TIFF 2015 MUST-NOT-SEE*****

As you can see, impish colleen immigrants
do not require hands to provide good service
in the better department stores of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn (2015)
Dir. John Crowley
Scr. Nick Hornby
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen,
Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters, Jessie Paré

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Save for the pleasing cast of babes (Saoirse Ronan, Jessie Paré) and hunks (Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson) providing ample scenery (in addition to the general period production design) and a couple of old Brit stalwarts (Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters) ham-boning to the hilt, about the best I can say about Brooklyn is that my Mother (God rest her soul) would have enjoyed it thoroughly. She was, however, uh, like, old.

The aforementioned are what the film has going for it. I was less inclined to favour the alternately sad and jaunty Irish folk music elements of the syrupy score, the dull, style-bereft miniseries camera-jockey direction and a screenplay playing out like a muted soap opera with about as much conflict as having to choose twixt Aunt Jemima pancakes and Rice Crispies at breakfast time.

Gorgeous Saoirse Ronan, with the help of her big sister and Jim Broadbent's Father Flanagan-like priest, leaves behind the lack of opportunities in Ireland and hits the big boat for the wide-open shores of America. The good Father sets her up in a lovely boarding house for young ladies run by an endlessly quipping Julie Walters, then he gets her a good job in a nice department store where she's mentored by the STUNNINGLY gorgeous Jessica Paré and, Faith and Begorrah, our jovial, benevolent man of the cloth pays for her tuition at business college.

Sounds like being a gorgeous Irish immigrant of the female persuasion is a good deal. Oh sure, you have to go to endless dances to land a prospective husband and quite often, you get homesick for Ireland, but truth be told, it's a cakewalk. Hell, Saoirse even falls in love with a mouth-wateringly handsome Italian stud-muffin (Emory Cohen) in Brooklyn and upon visiting her old Irish home, she meets a yummy prim and proper rich boy (Domhnall Gleeson).

And here you have it, ladies and gents, the only conflict in the whole movie.

Must be nice.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2-Stars

Brooklyn is a TIFF 2015 Special Presentation. For dates, times and tix, visit the TIFF website HERE.