Blast of Silence.

Review #2334: Blast of Silence.

Cast:

Allen Baron (Frank Bono), Molly McCarthy (Lorrie), Larry Tucker (Big Ralph), Peter H. Clune (Troiano), Danny Meehan (Petey), Howard Mann (Bodyguard), Charles Creasap (Contact man), with Bill DePrato (Joe Boniface), and Lionel Stander (Narrator) Written and Directed by Allen Baron.

Review: 

Admittedly, some movies are picked not so much for their great status but because you have to admire the tenacity to get something done in the hopes that somebody, anybody, could watch it and either be entertained or learn something different in perspective. It is the work of a man who directed just three other movies but was never too far without work. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he dropped out of high school at 16 to look for work. Three years later, he studied at the School of Visual Arts and later worked in freelance art and cabdriving. Evidently, an invite to visit onto a Paramount sound stage in 1951 interested in filmmaking. When working, he was approached into working on a low-budget film with some friends...in Cuba. One can only wonder what type of omen comes with that movie being Barry Mahon's Cuban Rebel Girls (1959). But Baron had such an interesting time (well, if "accidentally firing a shotgun and getting arrested before escaping Cuba" is interesting) that he ended up wanting to do his own independent film. Gradually, with the help of taxi-driving and the help of acquiring equipment (such as "short ends" of film at discount price, or, um, going back to Cuba to recover equipment), a movie eventually came into focus. Baron was basically forced to star in the movie (starting with the test footage) when he could not get his summer stock friend to appear (Peter Falk, interestingly enough). Shot in guerilla fashion in New York City for about $50,000 (as shot and produced by Merrill Brody), the movie even managed to find a place for release with Universal Pictures. The movie actually had its climax filmed during a hurricane (in late September 1960, the East Coast got hit with a storm, strangely enough). While Baron wrote the film, Will Sparks was a "story consultant". The narration for the film was provided after production, as written by Waldo Salt and narrated by Lionel Stander. Both were not given proper credit due being on the blacklist (Salt would later recover and win two Academy Awards for his scripts on Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home while Stander settled in Europe for many years and maintained work). Baron directed three other films, Terror in the City (1964; also known as "Pie in the Sky"), Outside In (1972), and Foxfire Light (1982), but he maintained a much steadier career with hundreds of episodes on TV, most notably with The Love Boat and Charlie's Angels. In steady retirement from filmmaking for many years, Baron apparently paints regularly into his nineties.

There is something quite fascinating in the gloomy skies that come from such a raw movie presented here. It is a swiftly black-hearted movie that grinds 77 minutes in the strangest ways possible for a noir that really is in a strange place when it comes to "the times". It features a shell for a lead character to follow to go with, well, not the greatest performances to back that up, but it has a strangely alluring sense of self in terms of urban loneliness and a captivating narration that seems to engulf the viewer each time words get uttered, one that finds terror in the awakening of old haunting grounds to see, complete with a Christmastime setting to stick the knife in further. The movie starts with a scream and ends with the stench of death that makes for a cut-and-dry metaphor of someone who just couldn't handle being a man with people to think about beyond who goes in the box next. Baron may not have been a force of nature for acting beyond a particular cadence fit for small-time gangster roles, but you can still see a curious performance mined in the realm of desperation. This is a man grinded into being a certain type of tool that can be used and disposed of just as quickly as another can take one's place in the great circle of relevancy. Anybody could be a cog to be thrown away into the dustbin to a quiet disposal, really, but it is especially apparent to see it play out with a movie that does not lend much to its own proceedings. Of course, Tucker and his unsavory timing fit the movie to a T in invoking visceral malaise (interestingly, he would later become a screenwriter, co-writing such works as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice). McCarthy is fine as a mere ordinary pawn, one who differs from the creature we see in the film as our lead. As a whole, the sum of the parts makes for a curious result here, with Baron and company having crafted a raw and gloomy feature that endears itself to the ones who encounter it for the blunt execution that comes from its result of a man who can only be seen by others as either death or just a face in the crowd that gets whacked with fate just as everyone.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

High Fidelity.

Review #2333: High Fidelity.

Cast

John Cusack (Rob Gordon), Iben Hjejle (Laura), Jack Black (Barry Judd), Todd Louiso (Dick), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Charlie Nicholson), Lisa Bonet (Marie DeSalle), Sara Gilbert (Anaugh Moss), Chris Bauer (Paul), Lili Taylor (Sarah Kendrew), Joan Cusack (Liz), Tim Robbins (Ian "Ray" Raymond), and Joelle Carter (Penny Hardwick) Directed by Stephen Frears.

Review: 

“I liked the idea of it being in America. It had a sort of, this sort of more optimistic way in which Americans live, seemed to me to add something to it, rather than taking it away. So it lost some of its stoicism and became slightly more romantic.”

Yes, movies from the new millennium are soon to turn 25 years old, so it seemed apt to cover a movie just as much a result of the writers as it is the director. In 1995, essayist Nick Hornby (probably best known already for his 1995 memoir Fever Pitch), had his first novel come out to the frenzied attention of British audiences who apparently found something in themselves with a setting at a London record shop and a distinct inner monologue. There were rumblings of doing a film as soon as the book came out, with plans ranging from having a draft script done by Scott Rosenberg set in Boston or having Mike Newell involved as a director. Eventually, it was sprung to have John Cusack take a crack at writing a film screenplay, one done in collaboration with D. V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink, who each had worked on Grosse Pointe Blank (as released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution in 1997). It was through Hornby's permission that they could change the setting to Chicago. Basically, Cusack and Pink/DeVincentis would each go through the book and write what they structured from the book and eventually edit what they saw by basically approaching it as "a checklist of things we need to get done". Cusack suggested trying to approach Stephen Frears to direct. He had actually studied law at the University of Cambridge before electing to work as an assistant to Lindsay Anderson at the Royal Court Theatre (he also worked as an assistant to Karel Reisz as well) and he soon honed his skills for British television. He became a feature director with Gumshoe (1971), but he became a name with My Beautiful Launderette (1985). Hornby was apparently quite satisfied with the adaptation, mostly because a good deal of the dialogue addressing the audience is basically straight from the book. In 2020, a television adaptation of the book came out that lasted one season.

There is something strangely comforting about a comedy that doubles as a sort of male confessional. It is the kind of movie made for people who besides having a certain interest in music maybe, just maybe, need to grow up. The love affair one can have with music in all of its meaningful depths and reaches is palpable with the people we experience in the film that actually end up feeling like people we know in some way or form. Maybe we don't all make top five lists, but we sure do stew on something in the great book of lists and hang-ups. Strangely, it reminds me of Annie Hall (1977), which also handles the anatomy of a breakup through a lead that likes to address the audience (of course, one actually feels the pulse of a tolerable human being in terms the direction and in the acting with High Fidelity, so chew on that). From the jump, it is quite understandable to see Cusack at his most curious and possibly his most effective role. He corrals the movie with a certain kind of slacker (one can operate a store and still slack) charism that really does come through in a manner that we follow along with in ways that a lesser actor would've simply just made a muddled mess. I posit that while some people are self-absorbed, we call them friends anyway because there is a difference between terribly behaved people and people with terrible behavior (i.e. the type that needs to hear "shut up!" once in a while), and some movies win out with weirdos like this. We chuckle and recoil at what we see and hear of a person in all of his bewildering aspects because Cusack just happens to have the voice to carry that drumbeat of weirdness to finding something to do besides just looking back. Of course, it just so happens that there is a pretty capable cast right behind Cusack to make things work beyond just a grandstand for music. Black and Louiso are a dynamic pair of amusement because each just happen to have their own distinct type of humor that connects from the jump in terms of timing and general energy for the material that is palpable in more ways than one. Hjejle goes along with the proceedings that arise from being presented in the prism of one-sided weariness that works in parts. There are a few other little surprises to be found in small moments to see someone such as Robbins take one on the chin in one particular scene of imagined confrontation or one particular cameo to raise a chuckle. I like the overall mood of the film, one that doesn't just dally to conventional means to try and say something about weird hangups or the people you see along the way, and doesn't overstay its welcome at 113 minutes. In general, what we have is a film made by people who clearly had an interest in making a confessional for the hang-ups in all of us that has a distinct love for Chicago and enough charm to make one mix themselves into seeing it play out.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Alice in the Cities.

Review #2332: Alice in the Cities.

Cast: 

Rüdiger Vogler (Philip Winter), Yella Rottländer (Alice van Dam), Lisa Kreuzer (Lisa van Dam), Edda Köchl (Angela), Ernest Boehm (Philip's editor), Sam Presti (Car Dealer), and Lois Moran (the Pan Am booking agent) Directed by Wim Winders.

Review: 

"The most pure is still definitely Alice in the Cities because it was my discovery of my own turf and my own territory which was the road, and the first film I made on the road and the first time I had discovered storytelling as a very free gift and not as something with a lot of rules."

It occurred to me that I haven't covered too many German directors recently, and it only seems appropriate to finally get around to a Wim Wenders movie, complete with a pivotal one for a director at a crossroads of what he should do. Wenders was born in Düsseldorf in Germany, and he actually had an interest in still photography as a youth. He actually studied medicine and philosophy before trying his hand at painting. It happened to be that his obsession with cinema (such as the works of John Ford) led him to try his hand at filmmaking; he failed entry test at France's national film school but found a studio office back in his hometown to work and eventually studied at the University of Television and Film Munich while also working as a film critic. He made his first short films in school before graduating with his feature debut in Summer in the City (1970), which had influence from a "great hero" of his in John Cassavetes. He then made his next film with The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (1972), a West German-Austria co-production that evidently took influence from Alfred Hitchcock. His dissatisfaction with the German/Spanish co-production of his next assignment with The Scarlet Letter (1973) led him to consider a different line of approach. Incidentally, that movie features Rottländer and Vogler in small roles. Wenders was inspired by the experiences that Peter Handke (a writer on three of Wenders' films) had as a single parent and probably just as inspired by Handke's 1972 novel Short Letter, Long Farewell, which was about an alienated writer making a journey across America. He also took inspiration from the Chuck Berry song "Memphis, Tennessee", which was about a man trying to re-connect with his daughter. However, he almost did not do the movie at all because he happened to come across the release of Paper Moon (1973) because, well, it coincidentally felt similar to what Winders had in mind for his movie. However, he was persuaded by none other than Samuel Fuller to convince to not give up. Taking inspiration from the photography of Walker Evans (famously known for his large format photography during the Great Depression), the movie was filmed in sequence from North Carolina to the eventual result in Europe as an improvised shoot (as shot by Robby Müller on 16mm rather than 35mm because of budgetary constraints, but the movie was framed for it the way they wanted to, which helped for a subsequent restoration). The film is considered as the first of a "Road Trilogy" crafted by Wenders, likely because his next two films with The Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976) each dealt with the road and had Vogler as star. An active director and photographer for over a half-century, one can find numerous highlights of Wenders such as Paris, Texas (1984), Wings of Desire (1987), the documentary Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and most recently, Perfect Days (2023).

What we have here is a wandering piece of curiosity, one that captures a special type of feeling that arises from being unable to do anything other than take photographs in the guise of trying to "craft a story". There is a loneliness that arises in the imagination one can have with this film, since it has plenty of breathing room with its double act of Vogler and Rottländer that just vibes on its own terms in crisscross neatness. The journey is one of absorption rather than finding some sort of meaning to it all, and it probably is noteworthy to say that Winders "felt like a fish in the water" when it came to making the film, one where he could go into an adventure with drifters that sure find "something" in the eyes of travelling with one's eyes rather than seeing it, if you will (a half century later, consider how far one has come since the Polaroid SX-70 in "instant photographs of things"). Rottländer appeared in a handful of films as a youth before moving on to costume designing and eventually a medical doctor. She arrives in the picture not too long into its trappings (110 minutes) and basically snatches the show with her spry energy, one that seems quite natural in expressing the free quirks that come with both the road and becoming an actual person beyond the imagery of oneself. The character played by Vogler has been said in some circles as being the alter ego of Winders in his time and this works out for a worthwhile performance in the drift towards burning in for responsibility rather than burning out into oblivion, particularly when matched with the enigmatic Kreuzer for a few scenes. One hits the road of uncertainty with reasoned assurance with a duo that maneuver the countryside (sometimes with a choice music cue) with absorbing grace that could only come from a filmmaker wanting to let a movie breathe in being an image of the street rather than just capturing it, which works just as well for the ending in closing right on the point needed. As a whole, this is a movie wrapped in the glow of a journey worth taking in feeling and seeing the images for oneself.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

We begin 2025 with the fourth edition of New Directors Month, which you might remember had started with Metropolis for 2024. Through the month of January, we'll feature over ten filmmakers (Shigehiro Ozawa, Stephen Frears, just to name a few) that Movie Night hasn't managed to talk about in the previous fourteen seasons. Onward.