HARLAN: In the Shadow of Jew Süss - DVD Review by Greg Klymkiw - TV styled presentation disappoints, but there's no denying the power of this documentary about a brilliant filmmaker who directed one of the most hateful anti-semitic films of all time.

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss (2008) **1/2
dir. Felix Moeller
Starring: Thomas Harlan, Christiane Kubrick (nee Harlan), Jan Harlan, Stefan Drosler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Veit Harlan was the director of a dreadful picture called Jew Süss.

His movie is dreadful on two counts.

Firstly, it’s no good – awful, in fact. It creaks and groans with storytelling techniques from another age and renders melodrama in ways that allow detractors of the genre to level their knee-jerk criticism at even the genre’s best work because movies like Jew Süss are, simply and purely, BAD MELODRAMA.

Secondly, the picture is the vilest, most hateful, prejudicial anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda ever made. The picture was such a huge hit upon its first release that Jew Süss is credited with inspiring pogroms, became required viewing for the S.S. and took its rightful place in the Final Solution as the film equivalent of a murder weapon. The movie was commissioned by Josef Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda under the Nazi regime. Released in 1940, this disgusting and poorly made piece of trash told the story of a Jew who rises to power, rapes a Gentile woman (instigating her suicide) until his actions eventually result in all the Jews of the region being run out on a rail - "triumphantly" , no less - by all the non-Jews. And I reiterate, the picture was a HUGE success at the box office in Germany.

And yet, perhaps because of the movie's success, one is shocked at how utterly execrable the picture is as a movie. If you could, for only a moment (God forbid) look past its anti-Semitism and try to assess it as a film, you'll find it works neither as fiction, nor does it APPEAR to even be good propaganda. Sure, bad movies have often been hits in all countries all over the world, but Jew Süss is not just bad, it's a total clunker of a movie. In spite of this, and sadly, even the most cursory analysis of the historical events surrounding the time this picture was made yields complete and total understanding of the picture’s power.

So many examples of propaganda, especially of the dramatic variety (not just in Nazi Germany), are inevitably replete with all the hallmarks of moronic incompetence. [It is, I think, worth mentioning that an earlier draft of this review bore a weird Spell-check-generated typographical error and produced the word “incontinence” rather than “incompetence”.] In essence, effective propaganda is, more often than not, the artistry of the obvious and aimed at the lowest common denominator. That said, Jew Süss, as cinema is in complete contrast to the work of another filmmaker who was working under the same regime, Leni Riefenstahl.

Jew Süss is clearly without the style, artistry and slow burn intensity of Riefenstahl’s great work, The Triumph Of The Will, which, no doubt, brought more than a few Germans on board Hitler’s bandwagon of evil as Der Fuhrer descended from the Heavens to deliver his evil plan to the masses at the Nuremberg rally.

Even now, though, unlike Jew Süss, Triumph still has the power to GENUINELY stun, shock, thrill and even (dare I say it?) enchant – simply and almost profoundly on the basis of its sheer cinematic virtuosity. Riefenstahl, the Adolph Mädchenname des Kinos of Nazi Germany was not simply a blonde, beautiful dancer and actress, she was one of the 20th century’s most dazzling filmmakers.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Arnold Fanck, the mad master of German mountaineering melodramas, Riefenstahl was, I’d say, a born filmmaker and a great one at that who, in spite of making Triumph should have been allowed to keep making movies with the same level of support Veit Harlan received – not just during the war, but AFTER, as well.

Riefenstahl’s pariah status after the war was truly lamentable – shameful, in fact.

Not so lamentable in Veit Harlan’s case. Jew Süss might well have been made by Ed Wood (if he’d been an inbred totalitarian nincompoop) as a sort of period Plan 9 From Outer Space, or if you will, Plan Jew From the Middle East.

Pariah? Yes. Working filmmaker? Veit Harlan? Absolutely yes! This is what's even more extraordinary. Harlan kept making movies. Then again, call me a Bleeding Heart Liberal if you will, but I must admit I've always been against the notion of blacklisting any artists for anything, and that includes perpetrating propaganda. So many American films include(d) hateful propaganda at various points throughout its history and in the former Soviet Union, Sergei Eisenstein extolled the virtues of a regime that butchered millions of people in the pre-Stalin era. Once Stalin was in power, Eisenstein, save perhaps for his last film, Ivan the Terrible II and the unfinished Ivan the Terrible III, continued - much like Veit Harlan in Nazi Germany - to strap on the kneepads before his totalitarian boss and extoll HIS "virtues". Stalin murdered many more millions in the former Soviet Union including the Ukrainian Holocaust - the forced starvation of millions of nationalist peasants. Stalin's purges murdered even more.

Certainly Riefenstahl should not have been blacklisted and, I'd argue that maybe even Harlan should not have been made a pariah - a laughing stock for just how dreadful Jew Süss is as a movie, would not have been out of line.

Harlan and his place in both the Nazi regime and in cinema always seemed like natural subject matter for a movie and it’s odd it took so long for a documentary on Jew Süss and its maker to materialize, but that it now exists, is cause for some kind of celebration.

Alas, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss is in that horrible never-never land of “it’ll have to do for now“. Director Felix Moeller doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on the story he wants to tell and by covering too much in too short a running time, the movie leaves one with far too many questions – not questions of the philosophical variety, but more along the lines of wanting to simply know more within the context of the material presented. Sadly, the movie lacks a clear focus.

There is, however, a fascinating tale buried in this flawed, half-hearted TV-style feature length documentary. The movie not only focuses on Harlan’s career as a filmmaker in the pre-and-post Jew Süss period, but it includes numerous interviews with his family – children (the great political filmmaker and author Thomas Harlan), grandchildren, nieces, nephews and, I might add, one fairly prominent niece, Christiane Kubrick, the widow of the great filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (and executor of his estate) and her brother, an equally prominent nephew, Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s long-time producer.

On one hand, Moeller seems intent on telling the story of a family and how they’re connected to a legacy of evil. On the other, Moeller seems equally interested in delving into the career of Harlan himself. Pick one, already, Felix - or if you want the whole boatload of bananas, choose that and do it properly. Oddly, the story of Jew Süss itself, feels almost like an afterthought in this documentary.

Moeller’s movie is a mixed bag.

This, of course, is what makes it the most frustrating type of documentary – its filmmaker has no voice. He has great subject matter, terrific interview subjects (the surviving family who run the gamut of defending, demonizing and being indifferent towards Harlan), carte blanche access to family home movies and photos, rare archival footage and scenes – not just from Jew Süss, but from all of Harlan’s films. While we watch with fascination because of all the elements listed above, the experience and overall impact of this documentary seems lacking.

Just as Harlan’s Jew Süss pales in comparison to Riefenstahl’s The Triumph Of The Will in the Nazi propaganda sweepstakes, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss pales in comparison to Ray Muller’s brilliant documentary, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. With the latter film, Muller sought to provide balance to his cinematic perspective of Riefenstahl’s life and in so doing, he was compelled to infuse the picture with an epic scope. It is this sense of sweep and the presence of a filmmaker’s voice that makes it work. Moeller, on the other, has great material, but has no real idea what to do with it. The picture, and as its title asserts, seems to be more about a family living in the shadow of one picture.

Well I, along with Peggy Lee, must ask, “Is that all there is?”

There’s nothing wrong with the surviving family thrust, but their perspectives don’t have the power they need to because one feels there’s simply not enough focus placed on Harlan himself – his life, his work and finally, why he chose to remain unrepentant.

Perhaps, it was enough that he was the only filmmaker from Nazi Germany to be tried for war crimes (for making Jew Süss in particular) and that he endured two trials and was acquitted both times.

This, however, is one of many maddening aspects of Moeller’s documentary. I longed to get more details about these trials – clearly the materials exist as public record. As well, I wanted to know more about Harlan and what his state of mind might have been before, during, between and after the trials. Surely enough people have thoughts on the matter.

Interestingly enough, the clips used from Harlan’s other films that pre and post date Jew Süss look great – so great I want to see as many of them now as possible. The clips suggest Harlan was a master of melodrama – perhaps even an inspiration to Douglas Sirk – and weirdly, their use in the documentary serves to suggest that he was a great artist in his own right.

Even more weirdly, they lend credence to Harlan’s firm insistence that he was coerced into making Jew Süss and furthermore, my own assumption based upon the documentary’s use of these clips that Harlan perhaps intentionally made a bad picture.

Moeller's film, like so many documentaries these days, has not been created by a real filmmaker. It’s been cobbled together by a camera jockey with great subject matter and finally, he manages to deliver a picture that is still worth seeing because it addresses issues surrounding what might be the most notorious, evil and artistically lamentable film of the 20th century.

For me, Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss was and still is a must-see film. Even if it doesn’t quite do what it should, it’s better than nothing at all. And that is something.

"Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss" is available on DVD from Zeitgeist Films. It’s a fine transfer and includes a few superb extra features that certainly supplement what’s lacking in the film itself. Definitely worth renting for anyone interested in the subject matter and of special interest to any Kubrick fans in light of the major release of the Kubrick Blu-ray box set. Scholars of this material may be better off buying the film since it has some excellent footage in spite of the film's lack of clear focus.

6/15/11

THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK - DVD review by Greg Klymkiw - Low budget, independently produced film noir thriller blends plague and crime.

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) ***
dir. Earl McEvoy
Starring Evelyn Keyes, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, Charles Korvin, William Bishop and Barry Kelley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Within the course of day-to-day existence, crime itself can be perceived as an epidemic - it takes root and spreads like wildfire. And so it is in the movies. There's nothing quite like mixing illegal anti-social behaviour with the emergence of a deadly plague.

In 1950, two pictures managed to blend these elements in very interesting and entertaining ways. The most prominent of this odd sub-genre was Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets, a 20th Century Fox release which featured Richard Widmark as a Public Health officer in pursuit of a pair of criminals (Jack Palance and Zero Mostel) afflicted with the deadly pneunomic plague.

Complimenting Kazan's high-profile item is an almost-forgotten entry in the post-war noir blend of threats to health and public safety, The Killer That Stalked New York, a low budget, independently produced picture. The former title is clearly the better film of the two, but the latter is not without merit, and seeing as it's been so rare, the picture is especially worth looking at.

One of the weirder aspects of this lesser-known crime melodrama is the central figure - a female character who is, by no means a traditional bottle-blonde bad girl. She's desperate, love-stricken, decidedly older and, I might add, vaguely pathetic - not a traditional hardboiled female heroine in the least. While cinema has had its share of suffering women, they always suffered gorgeously, and often, triumphantly, but here, we are shoved face-to-face with the 34-year-old-and-rather-long-in-tooth Evelyn Keyes (Scarlett O'Hara's sister Sue Ellen in Gone With The Wind).

She's not especially well-costumed, nor made-up and lit in a manner befitting a leading lady. (In fairness to Keyes, though, she's definitely in the realm of MILF-dom, just not in a traditionally glamourous Garbo-Crawford-Dietrich manner.) This is something that makes her performance a lot more interesting, but there is also the nagging reality that Keyes was cast in such a low budget picture PRECISELY because she was affordable and that the poverty-row of the production didn't allow for the grooming and lighting NORMALLY afforded to a leading lady.

Playing the title role, we first discover Keyes stepping off a Cuban boat and onto the harbour platforms of New York. Having smuggled $50k worth of diamonds into the country for her smarmy, no-good, foreign accented boyfriend (Charles Korvin) - we know he's rotten to the core because this is America in the 50s and he sure doesn't sound American at all. He's also oily.

In American cinema - especially during this period - oily men are always evil. Visiting a doctor, Keyes meets and briefly befriends a little girl who, as it turns out, is afflicted with smallpox. And before you can say "epidemic," Keyes desperately wanders the city, spreading plague and out-running law enforcement and public health investigators.

Proficiently directed by Earl McEvoy (he worked primarily as an assistant and second unit director), it's a picture that, even for it's relatively short running time, feels about 20 minutes too long. In spite of this, it still delivers the goods as an entertaining and intriguing dark melodrama, especially because of its excellent use of actual New York locations for much of the film.

Most notably, the movie is blessed with a talented and delectable trio of leading ladies. In fairness to the once-radiant Keyes (and director), part of her frumpy, haggish appearance could be chalked up to the filmmakers (and Keyes) trying to be realistic about portraying a desperate, over-the-hill moll with smallpox. That said, Keyes is buoyed by the appearance and performances of Dorothy Malone (hubba-hubba) as a nurse and the yummy Lola Albright as Keyes's little sister who is having a torrid, shameful, guilt-ridden affair with the handsome slimebag Korvin.

Another oddball aspect of the picture is how our leading lady Keyes is so dour. She suffers through the picture to a point where she begins to look and feel almost cretinous. Whereas Palance and Mostel in the similar roles in Panic in the Streets are so manic and over-the-top that they elicit a lot of (intentional) laughs in addition to their malevolence. There is, ultimately, nothing malevolent about Keyes and she's humourless to boot.

We're basically forced to watch a pathetic frump flailing about. That said, there IS a bit of sadomasochistic pleasure in witnessing her performance, and that's nothing to sneeze (and/or cough up bloody phlegm) at.

"The Killer That Stalked New York" is available on DVD via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in Volume 1 of the two volume series "The Bad Girls of Film Noir".

THE TIN DRUM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Schlöndorff's Oscar-winning adaptation of the great Günter Grass novel given deluxe treatment on Criterion BluRay/DVD

OSKAR BANGS HIS DRUM

The Tin Drum (1979) ***
dir. Volker Schlöndorff
Starring: David Bennett,
Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf,
Daniel Olbrychski, Charles Aznavour

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There are many reasons why this film adaptation of the Günter Grass novel was a critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning box office smash in 1979 and stayed at the top for many years as the go-to-must-see rep-cinema darling of the early-to-mid-80s, just as there are explanations why it's lost some lustre over the last 30 years and why, in spite of this, the picture is still compelling viewing.



At the age of three, little Oskar Matzerath (David Bennett) decides not to grow. Believing a tiny physical stature will maintain childhood innocence, he violently tosses himself down the basement stairs and onto the concrete below. It works. Though his mind grows, he remains exactly the same height for the rest of his life and to the family and outside world, he's happily allowed to be three years old forever.

Living in the pre-WWII independent free city Danzig, Oskar'a maternal bloodline hails from the Kashubia region of northern Poland. Here, Poles and Germans live together in relative harmony - so much so that Oskar's mother (Angela Winkler) has concurrent mutual love affairs with a German (Mario Adorf) and a Pole (Daniel Olbrchski) and though it's the former who marries Mom to give Oskar a "name", it seems obvious that the latter is his biological Dad.

Oskar's most prized possession is the tin drum his mother purchases from the kindly Jewish Toy Shop dealer (Charles Aznavour) who sadly holds an unrequited torch for her. Oskar seldom lets go of the drum and he develops a unique talent. When he's displeased, he bangs his drum and lets out a piercing scream that is powerful enough to shatter glass.

Once Poland in conquered by Germany, the world changes, though Oskar remains a dwarf. This semi-childlike creature with the uncanny gift finds even more in the world to be dissatisfied about - especially now that he is developing the internal desires of manhood, but looked upon as a child.

It's a great story. Unfortunately, the years have not been kind to the movie, in spite of this being a new director's cut that adds 20 minutes to the running time. Much of the footage fleshes out what once seemed like a choppy, though eminently fascinating and grotesque movie.

In spite of this, the film's inherent flaws have not been eradicated by this new cut. Schlöndorff's erratic direction is still maddeningly all over the place. When the camera is trained on Oskar and the young David Bennett's great performance (coupled with the intensity of his sharply angular face and piercing eyes), the movie is certainly a strange and worthy look at war through the eyes of a child who refuses to grow up, but sadly does so beneath his outer physical appearance.

Schlöndorff errs, however, since he wants to have his cake and eat it too. Much of the film is played straight with a formal, classical structure whilst a variety of grotesqueries parade in front of the lens. I have no objection to this, but he never quite hits the right balance between playing the tale "straight" and injecting numerous hackneyed pseudo-hip touches like speeding up the camera at the beginning of the film to mime the period of cinema in which the action occurs. He just doesn't go the distance. The silent movie pastiche is inadequately rendered. It feels like lame parody rather than satire and sets the movie off on the wrong foot.

Some of the more magic-realist elements DO work - an astonishing within the womb shot of Oskar and a couple of perverse dream sequences are indelibly rendered. Others, however, fall flat on their face. The famous sequence in the book where Oskar manipulates a Nuremberg-styled rally is handled in such a straight forward and rather dull manner that the sequence feels more like a good idea gone bad rather than the sublime qualities of the same sequence in the book which, demanded a cinematic evocation with a delicately perverse touch.

Still and all, this is a film that demands being seen. The Criterion Collection edition expertly includes a series of extra features that do enhance one's appreciation for Schlöndorff's approach, but somewhat brilliantly display why much of his direction falters. The most telling added value bonus is seeing the aforementioned rally sequence with novelist Günter Grass reading the same sequence from the novel. The sheer poetic and lyrical qualities of the prose contrast wildly with the choppy, literal-minded rendering of the same sequence.

What the film needed was, if anything, delicacy - not a cudgel - which, more often than not is what Schlöndorff wields with a madness, even when he's resorting to straight-up by-the-numbers directorial approaches.

We're likely to never see another film adaptation of this astonishing book and as this is all we have, and because it's as well-intentioned and sometimes effective as much as it is annoyingly disappointing is reason enough to see it and embrace it as one would a ne'er do well blood relative. Blood is thick. And it must be acknowledged.

But oh, to think of how Andrei Tarkovsky or Ulrich Seidl or even (I kid you not) Steven Spielberg might have wrought a work of magic, of utter perfection; a work infused with uncompromising poetic qualities are some of the things that will always haunt me whenever I continue to watch this wholly worthy, yet oddly inadequate cinematic rendering of the great Grass novel. This most recent viewing made me even think about a movie that never was, but should have been - one in which the style of Ingmar Bergman's miscued Nazi horror film The Serpent's Egg could have been married to the same Grass-approved screenplay Schlöndorff worked from. What glorious imaginings.

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray is more than worth seeing and because of its attributes on the level of the disc's production value (including the stunning remastering of the picture's look) offers yet another great home entertainment item also worth owning.

GREG KLYMKIW's 2nd ANNUAL TOP 10 HEROES OF CANADIAN CINEMA (2012 EDITION)

The
2nd
Annual
Klymkiw
Film Corner
TOP TEN
HEROES
of
CANADIAN
CINEMA (2012)

in alphabetical order
by first letter
of first name or company

 

By Greg Klymkiw

DAVE BARBER

Dave Barber - He is legendary. Since 1982, Dave Barber has served as one of the country's chief advocates for the exhibition of Canadian Cinema as the Coordinator of the home away from home to 'Peg cineastes, the Winnipeg Film Group Cinematheque. His first love has always been to champion homegrown product generated in the City of Winnipeg, giving full support to some of the country's most visionary filmmakers and being a vital part of the product's penetration into the national and international marketplace. His second love is Canadian Cinema - period, and he's sought to provide a theatrical home for a myriad of films generated domestically in formats ranging from training/workshop opportunities to retrospectives and last, but not least, as full-fledged theatrical releases. His third love is cinema and he has tirelessly championed the theatrical exhibition of the finest films made internationally that would otherwise have no theatrical home. One of his earliest successes was being the first advocate of Francis Coppola's One From The Heart and providing a theatrical venue for it when the film was ignored by mainstream exhibitors. Since that time he's repeatedly sought out the most challenging cinema to present to movie-lovers in Winnipeg from all over the world. Importantly, Barber's devotion to all the aforementioned remains a chief influence upon several generations of important filmmakers who, from Winnipeg, have taken the world by storm. Everybody knows and loves Dave from all over the world - filmmakers, other exhibitors, programmers, distributors and pretty much anyone who loves and cares deeply about cinema. For decades, Barber was a fixture the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and while he still attends the Hot Docs Film Festival, he has been sadly missing for a couple of years at TIFF. This, frankly, has created a huge void for filmmakers in Winnipeg in addition to the hundreds of international guests who descend upon TIFF. Even though I haven't lived in Winnipeg for over 20 years, exhibitors, distributors, programmers, curators and filmmakers still look upon me as a 'Pegger and pepper me with questions like, "I've been looking for Dave Barber, where's he staying?" [OR] "Where's Dave Barber? Isn't he coming to Toronto this year?" [OR] "What do you mean they've stopped him from coming? I wanted him to see my movie." Sadly, budget "appears" to be the excuse for his absence outside of Winnipeg. As far as I'm concerned, his importance to cinema in Winnipeg (and by extension to the rest of the country) is so integral, that I'd not only have him representing the Winnipeg Film Group and its important place in the theatrical exhibition of domestic and international product at BOTH Hot Docs and TIFF, but I'd be finding any means necessary to scrape together the pittance that would ultimately be required to have him attend Images, the Toronto Gay and Lesbian Festival, the ImagineNative festival, the FantAsia festival, Toronto After Dark Film Festival, the Montreal Festival of Nouveau Cinema and the Vancouver International Film Festival. He needs to be out of the city, out of the office and out in the field. Barber is the lifeblood of cinema in Winnipeg and frankly, his presence is missed outside of the city. This is abominable and frankly, he not only needs to be reinstated to being able to scour for product amongst his old haunts, but to reiterate my aforementioned point, expanded even further. There are few who'd disagree. In fact, anyone who would disagree is full of shit. Then again, I can't frankly imagine anyone being that stupid. So, come on Winnipeg! Barber is important to both Canadian Cinema and the birthplace of Prairie Post-Modernism as an advocate, promoter and exhibitor. Now's the time to reinstate and expand his gifts as an ambassador from Winnipeg, one of the the most historically vibrant regions of independent cinematic voices in the country. As the hit man at the end of Scorsese's Mean Streets says before shoving his gun out the window of a speeding car and blasting away: "NOW'S THE TIME!!!"

ED BARREVELD

Ed Barreveld - 2012 was a banner year for Ed Barreveld and his visionary documentary production company Storyline Entertainment. This is a great thing for a great guy. I met Ed in the 90s when he was the Studio Administrator of the Ontario Office of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). In those halcyon days, Ed was the man who truly held the purse strings and vetted every element of a film's production. Many administrators in similar positions, especially within the context of government agencies, fit the term "petty bureaucrat" like a glove. Not Ed. He made it his priority to do whatever he had to do to make the lives of the filmmakers at the NFB smooth as silk so they could do what they had to do - create cinema. If you had a problem or needed something, most bureaucrats looked for excuses to say "no" and/or delay stuff to make sure their stinking assholes resting in their feathered nests were secure until every "t" was crossed and every "i" was dotted. With Ed, the films and the filmmakers were always the most important thing. His answer to everything was,"Hmmm, let me see what I can do." And DO, he did. Since the turn of the new century, Ed's been an indie producer of documentary product. This year, his company Storyline Entertainment was tied to 4 tremendous pictures (2 stellar features, The World Before Her and Herman's House) and two very cool TV docs for History (The Real Inglorious Basterds and The Real Sherlock Holmes). He supports gifted filmmakers (Min Sook Lee) and socially committed artists (Angad Singh Bhalla), has a small core of magnificent talent in his office, production coordinator Shasha Nakhai and producer Lisa Valencia-Svensson and on Storyline's most feted picture, he committed himself to helping The World Before Her get off the ground whilst eventually partnering with director Nisha Pahuja's longtime producing partner Cornelia Principe who brilliantly fuelled the creative and logistical engine when the movie was shooting in India. Ed is all about great ideas, partnerships and collaboration. He's bright, funny, generous, kind and passionate. I could probably go on for about another 2000 words, but you'll have to wait for the next issue of POV Magazine for that.

GEOFF PEVERE

Geoff Pevere - When people ask me what film critics I read and why, the numbers have dwindled over the years to those I can count on two hands (well, one and a half hands). Thankfully this clutch of scribes continues to deliver incisive, humorous writing and perhaps for me, most importantly, THEY TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW (or something I DO know, but need pointed cajoling to wholly embrace and/or build upon) and as such, engage me in the sort of stimulating dialogue I demand when reading said criticism. One of the digits on my hand (the right hand, to be precise) is a movie-nut spawned in Ottawa, our fair nation's capitol. From his earliest days as a contributor to the now-defunct Cinema Canada, through his superb program notes when he was the Canuck programming guru at the Toronto International Film Festival and of course, the myriad of freelance pieces he contributed over the years to Take One, The Globe and Mail, etc., as well as the seminal best-seller, the Can-pop-culture history Mondo Canuck (co-written with Grieg Diamond), it was Pevere - more so than the traditional Maple-flavoured bastion of mainstream movie criticism that always reminded me WHY cinema had become the most important mode of cultural expression in all of modern history. Frankly, Pevere spoke to me with the authority of one whose literacy in cinema from all periods was unimpeachable and who generated copy that sang the body electric. When he joined the Toronto Star as a staff movie critic I actually bought the newspaper to read his reviews and frankly, his pieces were the ONLY thing I bothered to read in that bloated advertising rag aimed at inner-city-pseudo lefties and brain-dead suburbanites. Then I started to notice a huge decline in the Star's entertainment pages. Pevere continued to keep up his end of the bargain, but frankly, even his pieces seemed to get shorter and fewer. The Star was one of the quickest to adopt the lowest common denominator approach to cultural reportage/commentary - especially in film: 500 words, a bit of opinion and lots of plot summary, thank you, muchly. Once Pevere took over the Book columnist position, I stopped buying the paper and sneaking looks at Pevere online. When The Star dumped the book column and relegated one of this country's great movie critics to general entertainment reporting, I still did byline searches online, but aside from an occasional think piece on movies or some other pop culture subject, there became even less Pevere to read. When I had the opportunity, along with a select number of folks, to read a brilliant multi-part series of features on alcoholism in the cinema and within culture in general, I was astounded to learn The Star had NO PLACE for this great writing. Pathetic! Pevere is one of Canadian Cinema's great heroes because his writing and passion for cinema in general, places him in a position as lofty as the best of the best. More importantly, and MORE THAN ANY OTHER WRITER in this country (including all the puffery slobbered upon the late, though great, Jay Scott), Pevere created an important body of writing on Canadian Cinema - some of which, and I'm being self-serving here - managed to place an entire body of work I was a part of, in a critical context that could ONLY have made sense to a critic like Pevere rather than the actual filmmakers. In recent times, his writing has dotted numerous literary journals and he wrote what is still and no doubt, will be the seminal book on Don Shebib's Goin' Down Tbe Road. These days, The Globe and Mail has wisely asked him to contribute occasional freelance pieces on film and he's launched a website of new writings on the cinema, The Blessed Diversion Network. Blessed, indeed!

HUSSAIN AMARSHI

Hussain Amarshi - Many Canadian film distribution companies have come and gone, or worse, been swallowed up into a variety of ever-morphing conglomerates. Mongrel survives because it is a company with true vision. Founded by the passionate cineaste Hussain Amarshi in 1994, Mongrel has always set its sights upon vibrant, original and independent work that has a passionate audience out there in the world, but one that many distribution entities were either too lazy, ill-equipped and/or not interested in serving properly. I recall meeting Amarshi in those halcyon days at the beginnings of that exciting New Wave of English Canadian Cinema when he worked on the Atom Egoyan and Jeremy Podeswa films of legendary Canadian producer Camelia Frieburg. What I remember most fondly were conversations that were almost impossible to have with most people in the business - a discourse that seamlessly wove its way through a passion for cinema as art and industry. Many of the glorified used-car hucksters and/or glorified secretaries/bureaucrats in the Canadian film industry who purported and continue to purport being blessed with this gift are little more than masters of lip-service. Not Amarshi - he's always been endowed with the truly magic blend of cinematic aesthetics and business - coursing through his veins like the Congo River's Gates of Hell. The power within, however, manifests itself on the surface with the cultured, erudite and charming persona that's all Amarshi (all the time). One needs only look at the properties Mongrel backs and distributes to get a gander at Amarshi's vision. And his support for the best in Canadian cinema is an unparalleled reflection of good taste. The past year alone saw works as diverse as Peter Mettler's The End of Time, Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell and Deepha Mehta's Midnight's Children - all bearing an unquestionable Canadian pedigree, but with an international flavour. And Mongrel's high levels of great taste are reflected in the superb work they pick up directly and/or the first-rate Sony Pictures Classics they unleash upon the Canadian marketplace. Again, in the past year, Mongrel released the epitome of COOL!!! Witness: A Late Quartet, Amour, Citadel, Holy Motors, Searching For Sugar Man - the list goes on. And lest we forget, Mongrel is distributing the extraordinary Canadian film War Witch (Rebelle), a 2013 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film. Truly great, visionary leaders surround themselves with only the best. Sadly, the Canadian film industry is replete with too many leaders who buffer themselves with milquetoast butt-lickers to satisfy the Status Quo. Again, not Amarshi. He's one of our country's true kick-ass, take-no-prisoners visionaries whose loyalty and belief in assembling and nurturing a great team is one of the ways in which Mongrel stays at the top of the heap. Witness: Tom Alexander, Mongrel's Director of Theatrical Releasing - the only MBA I know who has the makings of a first-rate film critic and instead hustles great product for a great company. Mongrel also has the great taste to utilize the inimitable veteran publicist Bonne Smith of Star PR to hustle the theatrical product to the media. The list, frankly, could go on - Amarshi's team is a veritable Round Table of Canadian Cinema's Knights. Amarshi is, of course, King. Mongrel Media, unlike the ostentatious Camelot, hovers inconspicuously (though impeccably interior designed) on Queen Street West, overlooking the rebuilt asylum across the street. Yes, I know it's politically incorrect to refer to these joints as asylums, but you know what? Mongrel on the home entertainment front also handles Kino Lorber product and as Mongrel was responsible for hustling a whack of first-rate Mario Bava pictures, I'm sticking to the word "Asylum". When you're the coolest of the cool, that's a view worth looking at.

IGOR DRLJACA

Igor Drljaca: Igor Drljaca and his family lived in Sarajevo. Then the Bosnian War started. Shells and missiles went off constantly. Tanks rolled through the city. The ground rumbled and shook like an earthquake. Communism kept Yugoslavia together. Communism was dead. The country was torn apart. Igor and his little brother were children when a view out their window could be deadly and peeking out from within framed a war that left its mark on millions. Weeks of terror instilled itself upon the Drljaca family until they escaped the country and fled to Canada. Young Igor was always an artist and when the time came, he studied film at York University. He made a clutch of phenomenal short films and this year, he unleashed his first feature film Krivina upon the world. Igor is Canadian - through and through. This is the country of his family's salvation, but it's also the country with which Igor discovered artistic freedom and the opportunity to make movies his way - movies that captured life in both Sarajevo and life in Canada. Igor's feature is perhaps one of the most powerful dramatic explorations of the experience of the diaspora uprooted by the Baltic and Eastern European conflicts of the 90s and their lives here in Canada. His acclaimed short film The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar was honoured as one of TIFF's Canadian Top Ten and most recently was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. Krivina enjoyed its world premier at TIFF 2012 and has secured Canadian Distribution via legendary programmer Stacey Donen's brand new College Street Pictures. It has been selected to participate in the prestigious Rotterdam International Film Festival where it will represent Canada, a country that should be proud of this glorious film and this achievement. It is, after all, a Canadian Film, by a Canadian Filmmaker that deals with the despair suffered by the Bosnian diaspora as new citizens of Canada. It even shares the stylistic extension of a great tradition of Canadian Cinema that typified so much of the country's classic output during the 60s and 70s at the dawn of our feature film industry. Shamefully and almost embarrassingly, Drljaca's great film was invited by Telefilm Canada to apply for marketing assistance to reprsent our country in Rotterdam, only to be rejected on the grounds that the film is not in the English, French or Aboriginal languages. This appalling, short sighted and frankly, ethnocentric stand taken by the Federal agency responsible for assisting Canadian cinema is representative of this country's pathetic ignorance of the fact that there are (and have been since the earliest days of immigration) huge numbers of New Canadians who barely speak the official languages. This, however, is not a disgrace on the part of the diaspora of countries seeking a new life here - it's a reality and a vital part of the country's multicultural tradition. Multiculturalism via the late Prime Minister Trudeau was an official and important policy and is what makes Canada a leader in civil and human rights. Clearly, the federal agency that denied this film funding it deserved (and I reiterate, was invited to apply for) is not only unfair, IT IS DISCRIMINATORY. Some petty bureaucrat(s) looked at their idiotic rules and instead of taking the sort of brave chance one expects from those in the civil service who are there to serve ALL Canadians, they did the usual cowardly ass-covering and said, "Sorry, folks." There are, of course, many examples of civil servants who look at the idiotic guidelines of all sorts of things and make exceptions. These people are the real Canadians, like all those brave boys in the World Wars who didn't bury their heads in the sand and risked everything. When a bureaucrat takes a risk, they're hardly risking their life. In spite of this insult, Drljaca is clearly a proud Canadian filmmaker who has proudly made a genuinely great Canadian film and hopefully will continue to do so. I think we'll be seeing more and more Cultural Heroes like Drljaca in this country who are not going to be stopped by some of the pettiness of this country. They love this country and they will continue to make movies in this country we can all be proud of. Igor is a young, vibrant Canadian filmmaker. He's already delivered great work. This is one hero whose only limit will be the sky.

INGRID HAMILTON

Ingrid Hamilton - I love a great publicist, especially when they blend classic, old-style approaches with current, cutting-edge approaches and, frankly, forward thinking. Maybe it's my obsession with Sweet Smell of Success, having a Father who was a kickass, hands-on promotions and public relations guy, plus my own predilections as a promoter through much of my existence as a producer - whatever it is, I know a GREAT publicist when I see one and Ingrid Hamilton of GAT PR is nothing if not a great publicist. Most importantly: She loves movies. Loves them to death. She KNOWS cinema. Like the back of her hand. She also knows her clients' needs so well, she can take them on and run with them - far beyond anywhere they'd expect. She knows writers, too. She lets them do their thing, provides what they need and hangs back, BUT, she has an uncanny sense of certain writers' tastes and she'll subtly and helpfully, draw their attention to material they WILL enjoy writing about. This should come as no surprise to anyone who read Ingrid when she was a scribe for the inimitable Toronto Sun. I always believed the best journalists made great publicists or screenwriters. She's currently the former, but who knows what rabbits she'll continue to pull out of her hat. Versatility is the strongest suit in this crazy business - especially in Canada. Amazingly, Ingrid also toiled at CTV and more than ably handled their national publicity. Why, amazing? CTV has always been the most un-cool web in Canada and her golden touch brought the unheard of word "hip" to the stodgy old boys' network. Most notably, in recent years, she's been the PR mouthpiece for every great Canadian film type who is doing cool shit - Ingrid Veninger, Kinosmith, The Toronto Jewish Film Festival, the ImagineNative Film Festival, VSC, Indie-Can Entertainment, the new College Street Pictures - the list goes on and on and on - people and organizations that are cooler than cool, and Ingrid knows how to make even cooler. That, my friends is a GREAT publicist. And that is very, very cool indeed.

MICHAEL DOWSE

Michael Dowse - Dowse is a Canadian director who can do no wrong. He's a born filmmaker with the very art of cinema hard-wired into his DNA. His work is Canadian in the best sense of the word. He proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Canadian culture IS a thing unto itself, while at the same time, injecting the work with a humour and entertainment value that's universal. From his FUBAR hoser epics right through to GOON, his magnificent ode to hockey, Dowse is, quite simply OUR storyteller. His buckshot sprays effectively upon several generations in this country and try as we might, it's firmly lodged within us - a constant reminder of who we were, are and will be. Dowse is the real thing, and then some.

SARAH POLLEY

Sarah Polley - It's the second year in a row and Canada's true national treasure holds onto the throne (a Muskoka Chair) in my own privately declared Kingdom of Canadian Cultural Heroism. She's smart, funny, cool and three words ultimately suggest all one needs to know why this brave, brilliant writer, director, producer, actor, Mom and activist is a genuine hero of Canadian Cinema. Those three simple words are:

STORIES WE TELL

'Nuff said.

STEVE GRAVESTOCK

Steve Gravestock - If looks were everything, this bespectacled, ball-cap-adorned, goatee-sporting long-hair might be mistaken for a denizen of the InnTowner Hotel in Thunder Bay - sitting sagely in a dark corner of its infamous bar, an abacus on the round table to calculate "tributes" from the "soldiers", wearing the colours of T-Bay's Spartans biker gang (and bearing the monicker of "Professor"), sipping straight from a can of Labatt's 50, nodding in time to the beat of a grinding metal band and surrounded by adoring tight-jeaned, big-haired blondes whose tresses are infused with so much hairspray that they glow like the light emanating from a nuclear reactor. Yes, while he'd definitely be at home in this environment, his talents are ultimately best served as a Senior Programmer with the Toronto International Film Festival Group where for years he has presided over the organization's representation of Canadian Cinema. A tireless devotee to the Nation's celluloid output, Gravestock continues to preside over all matters Canuckian including Festival and Lightbox showcases, special presentations, retrospectives, TIFF's monograph program in association with the University of Toronto Press and the Über-Important  TIFF Canadian Top Ten. People will always whine about awards and Top Ten lists, but let it be said that Gravestock and his Über-Colleague Lisa Goldberg run one of the best organized and superbly designed jury systems in the country. Yes, juries reflect the opinions of the jurors, but Gravestock makes sure those chosen for the task have informed opinions (like, for example, oh, I don't know . . . me? Maybe?) and then the jurors have no idea who each other are and must separately submit their numeric choices in secret. These are tabulated and . . . WOW! My recent experience as a jury member on the CTT yielded the most amazing results - I figured my own tastes would be short shrifted, but in fact, an extremely diverse group of people voted upon most of the films at the TOP of my list, while the others, to my mind, made total sense to be there. My personal favourite Gravestock activity of the Heroic Kind is the vital, ongoing initiative, the Canadian Open Vault series that resurrects and screens genuine classics of early Canadian Cinema. A recent screening of The Hard Part Begins starring Donnelly Rhodes, a gritty 70s beautiful loser drama set against the backdrop of small-town country and western taverns and replete with the decade's trademark existential male angst is one of my favourite examples of this series. It's an important showcase of the astounding parallel work going on in Canuckville during the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls period of cinema. Coolsville, Daddio, Coolsville!!! There are, to my knowledge, no Canadian filmmakers who don't have the highest fondness, respect and downright regard for Gravestock. He's all Canadian, all film loving and all supportive. Most of all, he's a rarity in the rarified film festival world - he's a mensch!

SOSKA TWINS

Soska Twins - Jen and Sylvia Soska might represent one of the most exciting breakthroughs for female filmmaking in Canada since Patricia Rozema dazzled the world with I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing. Sporting the monicker "Twisted Twins", the identical Vancouver sisters with the exotic blend of Hungarian and First Nations blood, looks and cross-pollinated sensibilities blasted onto the scream-screen-scene with the outrageous no-budget Dead Hooker in a Trunk. This year, they upped their game and delivered the best horror film of the year (from any country I might add) - the utterly, insanely, brilliantly creepy American Mary. Under the mentorship of Eli Roth, they're poised to hit the stratosphere. With a uniquely feminist sensibility, a delectable sense of black humour, a superb sense of time and place and a knack for delving into the darker recesses of humanity, the twins have knocked two out of the park. Next up - a Grand Slam. They're currently galavanting across the globe promoting the hell out of American Mary with companies as diverse and powerful as Universal, Anchor Bay and many others. While making their films they continued to work as bartenders/serving wenches in Vancouver's ever-so-cooler-than-cool watering holes. They're hands-on total filmmakers - auteurs in the best sense of the word since they gratefully accept the assistance and input from a clutch of Canada's best actors and artisans. They're down to earth, bereft (thank Christ!) of pretension and yes, they finish each other's sentences.

BETWEEN BOUNDARIES - THE SHORT FILMS OF IGOR DRLJACA including: "The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar" (TIFF 2011 TOP 10, CSA - Canadian Screen Award Nominee for Best Short Documentary), "Battery Powered Duckling", "Mobile Dreams", "On a Lonely Drive" and "Woman in Purple" - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Igor Drljaca's Krivina is one of the most important films about identity and war made during the past 20 years. That it's a debut feature is even more extraordinary. Before Krivina (Klymkiw Film Corner TEN BEST LIST and Klymkiw's TOP TEN CANADIAN FILMS) begins its theatrical run at Toronto's Royal Cinema on January 25 via Stacey Donen's newly unveiled and more-necessary-than-ever film distribution company College Street Pictures, I hereby DEMAND that you RUN, DO NOT WALK to a screening of Between Boundaries: The Short Films Of Igor Drljaca playing at the Royal January 17, 2013 at 7pm. Tickets are available at the door for $5 smackers. It'll be the best fin you've parted with in a long time.

The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar ****
(2011) dir. Igor Drljaca

Mobile Dreams ****
(2008) dir. Igor Drljaca

On a Lonely Drive ****
(2009) dir. Igor Drljaca

Woman in Purple ****
(2010) dir. Igor Drljaca

Battery Powered Duckling ***
(2006) dir. Igor Drljaca

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Given the fact that our screens are inundated with American propaganda all connected in one way or the other with war - one great (Zero Dark Thirty), one neither here nor there (Lincoln), one mediocre (ARGO) and the latter two being ludicrously overrated - the appearance of Sarajevo-born Canadian filmmaker Igor Drljaca and his extraordinary work couldn't be coming at a better time.

Drljaca was a child during the Bosnian War of 1992 and fled to Canada with his family. Always artistically inclined, he studied film at Toronto's York University and created an impressive body of work prior to shooting his first feature Krivina.

Given his own personal experiences, it's no surprise that the work on display in this program of short films focuses upon the effects of war upon children - works that are filtered through memory and often presented with healthy dollops of actual footage of the war in Bosnia.

There is, of course, an astounding tradition of cinema that deals with children during wartime and in terms of exposing the utter idiocy of war, what always strikes me is how war affects the innocent - adults, yes - but children even more. Children somehow represent an eternal hope for the future and to see depictions of their innocence stripped from them by the greed and stupidity of people who should know better is heart-wrenching.

Some of the great works include Rene Clement's Forbidden Games with a tiny Brigitte Fossey searching for family, any family, after watching her own family gunned down, Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants, the autobiographical portrait of his tragically shortened friendship with a young Jewish boy and last, but not least, Steven Spielberg's greatest film, Empire of the Sun, the adaptation of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel which features a very young Christian Bale as a child who goes - quite literally - insane during the Japanese occupation of China.

Drljaca continues this tradition with his own unique style - a strange blend of Neo-realism with the sheer poetic power he shares with many Central and Eastern European filmmakers - most notably Alexander Dovzhenko and Sergei Paradjanov. Drljaca's work is infused with a purity, if you will, of poetic realism.

The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar is considered to be a documentary portrait of Drljaca's experiences during the outbreak of the Bosnian War, but it's crafted with such exquisite attention to narrative detail that until the final credits, I thought I had been watching an astounding recreation of home movie footage blending real video footage from the war.

It's not, but it might as well be, because the footage Drljaca uses plunges the picture into some mighty cool post-modernist territory.

The simple tale involves a young boy who receives a school assignment to paint a picture representing the coming of spring. He runs out of the proper paint and uses what he has. He's dissatisfied with his work because he fears the picture will now represent the Fall. He spends the entire Spring Break worrying about displeasing his teacher and receiving a poor mark.

And then, war strikes and the film veers into territory that will move you beyond words. There's one shot on the street after a massive shelling in the boy's neighbourhood that's as devastating as an early moment in Clement's Forbidden Games. Realizing that this is a documentary, using actual footage, it is an image that would have haunted me anyway. but knowing it's the real thing, puts it on another level altogether.

The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar is playing with four other Drljaca shorts.

Mobile Dreams features some of Drljaca's stunningly composed long takes in this profoundly moving tale of an old couple who fit each other like a glove in spite of their seeming non-communicative relationship. When the old man brings his wife a gift that will presumably keep them in touch, the inevitable amusingly and touchingly takes place.

On a Lonely Drive will rip your guts out. It depicts a lonely drive, indeed, just after a domestic altercation and, with tragic results.

Woman in Purple opens with a stunning shot of high rise buildings full of shell and bullet holes. It's post war and Drljaca follows the J.G. Ballard-like adventures of an orphaned boy who engages in criminal activity - seeking freedom through illicit means, but also struggling for dignity. Yet another perfect short that will knock you on your ass.

Battery Powered Duckling is a clever, ambitious dystopian SF drama. It's always engaging and while not quite as accomplished as the others, you'll recognize Drljaca's burgeoning style and wonder if a feature length version will ever exist.

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THE PENALTY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lon Chaney is one of the best screen actors of all time. His performance as the deformed Blizzard is preserved on this gorgeous BluRay/DVD by KinoLorber

"Crying won't help, talking might."

The Penalty (1920) *****
dir. Wallace Worsley
Starring: Lon Chaney, Claire Adams, Charles Clary, Ethel Grey Terry

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Imagine the horror.

One day you're a happy-go-lucky kid from a well-to-do San Francisco family and the next you wake up from an anesthetic-induced slumber to discover you've been transformed into a deformed, legless freak. This is what they call a living nightmare - one that will last the rest of your life. Even worse, you overhear the senior surgeon chastising the junior surgeon for accidentally performing unnecessary amputations.

"Good God, you should not have operated," the senior doctor says to the flabbergasted young surgeon. "You've mangled this child for life."

Now you know for sure.

Your legs could and indeed SHOULD have been spared.

What happens to you, now?

Many years later, far from the hearth of your family's home, you live amidst the squalor of seedy bars and whorehouses within a radius of several city blocks, the notorious Pacific Avenue leading directly from the waterfront to provide a myriad of opportunities for sailors and dock workers to engage in all manner of sinful and sordid activities. However, unlike the shady denizens of the Barbary Coast you now call home, you wear only the finest tailored clothes and in spite of the knurled stumps below your thighs, jammed into a pair of steel legs, you've clearly acquired considerable power and respect - even though it's amongst the scum of the Earth.

Your name is now Blizzard (Lon Chaney) and you're hellbent on both revenge and masterminding a massive criminal coup to bring the City of San Francisco to its knees. You're one mean, downright reprehensible son of a bitch. Every woman you cast your eyes upon, no matter what their station, become your whore and anyone - ANYONE!!! - who dares cross you or fuck you up will die.

"Laughter burns a cripple like acid."

The Penalty, directed by Wallace Worsley (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Ace of Hearts) and co-written by Gouverneur Morris (adapted from his famous and utterly insane novel) with ace adaptation specialist Charles Kenyon (A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Petrified Forest, The Iron Horse), is one lollapalooza of a crime picture.

Sumptuously shot and cut with a blistering pace, it's not only a movie that knocks you on your duff, chills you to the bone and at times, totally creeps you out, but is infused with elements of tragedy that even move you. Though Blizzard is one of the most foul creatures put on celluloid, the astonishing performance by Lon Chaney, Worsley's terse, brilliant direction and a screenplay that takes one unpredictable turn after another ultimately yields a picture that manages to rip humanity out of the soul of its main character.

While you're not necessarily rooting for him, you come to recognize elements of redemption dangling in front of him and you're riveted by the hope (against hope) that he'll grab one of the olive branches extended by the universe to lift him out of the grime to remove even one or two black spots on his tortured soul.

And what a tortured soul Chaney creates. When a young artist seeks the ultimate model for a sculpture of "Satan After The Fall", she takes one look at Blizzard's mug with its horrendous sneer and eyes radiating a mixture of hatred and agony, and knows instantly, he's the one.

She sees him as a "model". We, however, have already seen several instances of Blizzard conducting himself with Satanic gusto during the perpetration of cruel and criminal actions. In fact, his treatment of a woman who betrays him, but realizes too late that she loves him is akin to a psychologically abusive pulling the wings off a fly until finally, he warns his slaves (yes, slaves!) that she "now sleeps on a marble slab".

Chaney as Blizzard is no mere movie villain. He infuses the role with pure, unadulterated evil and hatred. He's beyond bad, beyond creepy, beyond villainous - he's fucking scary. And finally, what makes him scary is the humanity he pulls from the depths of the character.

When Blizzard declares that "Laughter burns a cripple like acid," we're alternately moved and horrified. We dare not doubt for a second that he's been the target of endless derision and at the same time, we know what lengths he'll go to in order to avenge the butchery perpetrated upon him - first with the literal butcher and then with the whole world.

Murderer, thief, pimp and white slaver. Blizzard's body is not only twisted, so is his soul.

And the sheer physicality of the role is a marvel to behold. We have no doubt Blizzard is legless. Chaney clearly underwent endless pain to keep both legs tucked and burrowed deep into the steel legs. Every move, every breath and every step he takes seems genuinely wracked with utter agony. Even more tragic are the very few moments where Chaney's eyes reveal brief sadness, regret and yes, even a deep-seeded tenderness that creeps out from within his soul.

Chaney really was a great actor and he had so much to offer in film after film. For me, he truly is one of the actors who defines the very notion of what it is to deliver a full-on, full-blown screen performance. Known as the "Man of a Thousand Faces", Chaney used his astounding prowess with makeup effects to apply physical manifestations to his "look" for every role so he could go a few steps further to embody whatever character he played.

The Penalty is a bonafide classic of cinema. The picture is so riveting and skilfully wrought that at times, it's hard to fathom that the movie is over 90-years-old. Though the film is silent (this should be enough to betray its age), the expert storytelling, the crazily inspired writing and Worsley's superb direction all conspire to render a picture that feels far ahead of its time.

So much of this feeling comes from Chaney himself.

The camera loved him.

More importantly, Chaney loved the camera.

"The Penalty" is available on Kino-Lorber. Mastered in HD from a 35mm restoration by the George Eastman House Motion Picture Department and featuring an astounding new musical score by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, this is a Blu-Ray to cherish. It also includes surviving footage of Chaney's now-lost "The Miracle Man". "By the Sun's Rays", a very cool 1914 one-reel western with Chaney as an unlikely thief is on the disc as well as vintage original trailers from "The Big City" and "While The City Sleeps". Feel free to order the film from the handy links below. Great prices and you'll also be supporting the maintenance of this site if you do so.

THE PATRON SAINTS - Review By Greg Klymkiw

"WHAT AM I DOING HERE?"

The
Patron
Saints
(2011) ****
dir. Brian M. Cassidy, Melanie Shatzky
Review
By Greg
Klymkiw


"What am I doing here? Please tell me." says the old woman. She wants to know why she isn't home with her mother. She wonders if she'll ever go home to be with her mother ever again. And then, "I don't know where I am. I don't know how I got here."

The old woman is in a nursing home, of course. She's not going home. She's there until she dies.

"All around this place are these hills with trees on them and they're so nice to look at," says a fat, seemingly punch-drunk old goodfella from the bed he never seems to leave. He's been institutionalized for most of his life - from foster homes to prison and now a nursing home. A bit of nature, even though it's in the distance, is just what the doctor ordered for a man whose only freedom were those ever-so brief moments when he held a gun in his massive fists while striding into liquor marts, convenience stores or banks to hold them up. At least, that's what we imagine.

The joy those distant hills give him is short-lived. The sentimental symbol of escape into the natural world yields slightly cynical and forced laughter. The hills, he explains, are really piles of garbage that could be stacked no higher and were covered over with sod and seed, resulting in trees sprouting to the heavens from mounds of filth.

"I believe in God. He wants me to lose a little more wright and He's going to get me up walking. I don't pray for nothing. I pray to get out of here." says the old goodfella. "God's got a plan for all of us. Though I'm really not sure what He's got planned for all of us in this nursing home."

His question is no doubt on the minds of most of the nursing home's residents - at least those who have something resembling their faculties. Looking at one resident, a blind, twisted, toothless and bed-ridden old woman, one can only guess what God's plan is for her. Spending a lifetime of rape and abuse at the hands of her brother, a brother who is still allowed supervised visits to the sister he brutalized, one can only imagine what plan God has for her?

And what, God forbid, does she dream about? What will be those final images flashing in her mind before she's enveloped in the darkness and light of death?

The Patron Saints is an unremittingly agonizing documentary film by Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky that focuses its lenses upon the residents of a nursing home for the aged. As harrowing as the experience is, the filmmakers employ a strange amalgam of fly-on-the-wall direct cinema techniques with a dash of cinéma vérité. In the former documentary style, the lives of the inmates are presented without narration, no questions, no overt manipulation and seemingly no intrusion on the part of the filmmakers. To the latter style, however, there are subtle, skillfully engineered aspects to the process in that one can recall nary a single shot that is not stunningly, gorgeously, sumptuously composed.

The filmmakers not only point their cameras in the direction of the inmates. We are shown the dedication and compassion of those who try to make the lives of these people better. And yet, for all these affirmations of man's kindness to man, the filmmakers punctuate many sequences with exterior images of airplanes flying endlessly over the facility, the weeds sprouting like an ocean around the institution itself and yes, those mounds of garbage in the distance, adorned with flora to hide the filth beneath.

And if we do get images of flight, of escape, they're presented from within the back of an ambulance, a motionless body strapped to a gurney, leaving its place of incarceration, its spirit hopefully journeying to some better place.

There's a strong sense that the camera, like those forests touching the skies whilst rooted within the filth of the landfill below, perform a similar service. In fact, I'd say the filmmakers provide a twofold service. The camera, through the eyes of the artists, captures the last days, weeks and/or months of this mass of forgotten humanity - sometimes with humour, but mostly through an unremitting sadness which, in direct cinema terms is completely and utterly unavoidable given the circumstances. Much as we might want to repress it, what the cameras expose is the reality of where ALL of our lives are headed, unless of course we mercifully die before. As life itself is dichotomous, so too is the reality as presented by the film. In a sense, the cameras provide these people, in spite of the aforementioned bleakness and whether they're aware of it or not, a voice and a presence in the outside world. Most importantly, though, the beauty and artistry of the compositions provides a kind of love and compassion - the eyes of the artists deliver a terrible beauty to these peoples' lives and in so doing, force us, the audience, to do the same.

No matter how dire and desperate the final days of these people are, it is finally cinema that speaks for them.

This is the power of movies and ultimately, thanks to the talent and sensitivity of the filmmakers, it is why The Patron Saints is one of the most haunting, moving, original and important documentary portraits of the elderly ever committed to film.

"The Patron Saints" is currently unspooling at Toronto's Royal Cinema via Vagrant Films and will roll out on a platform release prior to a variety of home entertainment formats. It's a big-screen experience. Intimacy on this level deserves more than watching it on a small screen.