‘La délicatesse‘ (2011) is a kind of experiment. It is very rare for a novelist to fully take on the screen adaptation of his own novel, writing the script and also directing the film. David Foenkinos, one of the most popular French novelists, did it, in collaboration with his brother Stéphane Foenkinos. The source was a novel published two years earlier, a study of grief and emotional recovery, a romantic melodrama and an unlikely love story. It was their debut film, they have relapsed twice since then, trying to prove that those who believe that an author should not be involved in the adaptation of their books are wrong. But above all, it is a film with Audrey Tautou, one of her last films, made ten years after she had conquered everyone’s hearts with ‘Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain’. Her charm and magnetism had remained intact, but was that enough?
Nathalie and François live a love story that is too beautiful not to end tragically and very quickly in this film. He is killed in a car accident and she, left a widow, tries to overcome her grief by immersing herself in the work of a company that deals with international trade. She refuses any kind of emotional involvement, including the advances of the company director – who happens to be a married man – until one day when she, suddenly, kisses one of his subordinates. Markus is a bachelor, he is balding, he is gaining weight, he dresses old-fashionedly and he is also Swedish on top of that, although he speaks perfect French. Everyone around him is stunned, including Nathalie who cannot explain what pushed her to this gesture. Overcoming the mourning period? The too-long refusal to enter into a relationship that had led to an accumulation of emotional energy? Markus is intoxicated by the attention that the beautiful and sad woman gives him and falls in love with Nathalie. Everyone, those with good intentions and those with less good intentions, tries to discourage the connection between the two. How will it develop?
Wrapped-up in the style of a soap opera, the story seems like a fairly banal melodrama. However, there are a few moments of discontinuity in ‘La délicatesse‘, in which the film could have evolved to a more mysterious or ambiguous direction: the kiss scene and one of the following scenes, in which Nathalie is looking for Markus, but several of the work colleagues do not seem to know that he exists. The anonymity of an erased person? or maybe Markus is a figment of the woman’s imagination? Unfortunately, the screenwriter and film directors did not insist and did not develop this path. I have not read the book and, anyway, I avoid book-film comparisons although here they would not be completely meaningless since they have the same author. François Damiens is perfect as Markus, but the one who dominates the film is undoubtedly Audrey Tautou. The actress has been retired for almost ten years, dedicating herself to her family and other activities, and perhaps also tired of being repeatedly cast in roles that are variations of Amélie. I continue to hope that she will return to the screens and that – being already at a different age – she will receive diverse and good quality castings that will highlight her immense talent. I am waiting for her.
Jean Delannoy lived to be a hundred years old and directed some 40 feature films in a career spanning over six decades. He was a contemporary of classical French cinema, of the directors of the New Wave and those who followed them, and even of TV series and dramatic productions. He was one of the favorite targets of criticism and irony of the theoreticians and journalists turned into film directors of the French New Wave. However, he was always successful with the public, or at least with a part of the public. He was the first winner of the Palme d’Or, at the first edition (1946) of the Cannes Film Festival. Last but not least, his two films about Commissaire Maigret are considered the most successful screen adaptations of Georges Simenon’s novels that have the Parisian policeman with a pipe as their hero.
‘Maigret tend un piège‘ (1957) is the first of these films. I remember well that I saw the second one, dated 1959, but I didn’t remember this one at all. It might have been too decadent for the communist censorship, or maybe I was too young and my parents postponed my watching it (for more than 60 years eventually). I don’t think I could have forgotten it. Maigret investigates a series of murders of women who appear to be the victims of a serial killer. The place where the murders take place is the Parisian Marais district and even Rue des Rosiers, which would become famous 25 years later under tragic circumstances. The weapon of one of the murders is stolen from a butcher’s shop near the scene of the crime, and the investigation focuses on the butcher (quickly proven innocent) and those who are connected in one way or another to the building where the butcher’s shop is located. Among them is the Maurin family – he is a designer and a painter, she is a young and unfaithful wife, and the mother is the owner of the building. To solve the cases, Maigret must first untangle the complicated threads of the relationships between the members of this family.
Jean Gabin is the perfect actor to play the role of Maigret. After seeing the other film in the diptych, I read perhaps dozens of novels with him as the hero and I could never imagine him in any other way than how Gabin represented him. He is also helped by the excellent dialogues, among those who sign the adaptation after Georges Simenon‘s novel being Michel Audiard. I liked the fact that Mrs. Maigret, a secondary character in many of Simenon‘s novels, also has a role in the action. The young Mrs. Maurin is played by Annie Girardot. The presence on screen of Gabin and Girardot gives rise to several moments of maximum psychological tension. The entire cast is excellent, and Lino Ventura fans have the opportunity to see him in a supporting role, a few years and a few films before his fame. Watched today, 67 years after its production, ‘Maigret tend un piège‘ did not seem outdated to me at all. On the contrary. Jean Delannoy did not hesitate to go out to film on the streets of Paris, especially at night, with a camera in his hand, as his young critics and rivals did. The ending of the film is excellent, with a confrontation between characters and a psychological tension in the style of Hitchcock, the director adored by Truffaut and not only him. The fascination with female characters and their secrets also reminded me of Hitchcock’s movies. Making a quality detective film that pleases the audience is not a sin. This is what his younger critics would learn after a decade of revolts and experiments. Posterity recovered and rehabilitated Jean Delannoy.
‘Infernal Affairs‘ (original title is ‘Mou gaan dou‘) is the 2002 film that inspired Martin Scorsese to direct the remake under the name ‘The Departed’ four years later. I had read in many places that this is one of those rare cases in which the American remake can be compared to the original, but only now I had the opportunity to see the film produced in Hong Kong and directed by Wai Keung Lau and Alan Mak. It is a psychological thriller combined with film noir, solid and original, which also represented a non-typical production for Hong Kong cinema at that time. Police films from there were already very popular, but most of them were based on action and especially on martial arts. ‘Infernal Affairs‘ approached the relations between police officers and organized crime in a completely different way and emphasized the experiences and dilemmas of the heroes, resembling from this point of view more the French gangster films of the ’60s and ’70s. The success of the film demonstrated that both local and international audiences were ready to accept something other than karate kicks or Kung Fu acrobatics.
‘Infernal Affairs‘ is a story about two moles – two informants infiltrated into enemy organizations. Police Inspector Lau is also the agent infiltrated into the police ranks by a mafia clan boss. Chen Wing is a gangster, but also an undercover agent who reports directly to the police chief who is the only one who knows about his existence. They were once colleagues at the police academy, but they never befriended and their paths diverged. When a major drug trafficking deal fails, the existence of the two moles is suspected by both the police and the gangster gang. Each of the two agents is looking for the other, but as the conflict intensifies, the life or death of each of them depends on the other.
The script is intelligently written and the confrontation becomes a game of minds but also of identities. When his boss is killed and because of the information he provided, Lau begins to feel remorse and looks for a way to redeem his mistakes. Chen Wing seems to get tired due to the constant fear of being discovered and doubts about his own identity. In order to survive among the gangsters, he is forced to commit abominable deeds. Has he actually become a villain too? Is there a way for any of them to recover their own identity and return to a normal life? The lead roles are played by two excellent actors – Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon had two reference models and I am not sure that they have risen to their level. The pace of the action is alert, surprises and complications abound and I think that action movies fans have nothing to complain about. The film also is a snapshot of a historical moment in the evolution of the city of Hong Kong with its streets, crowds, diversity and often violent conflicts. It is an image of a world on the verge of extinction, which takes with it, I’m afraid, some of the most original and interesting cinematography at the edge of the century.
‘No Longer An Island’ a fost titlul pe prima pagină a uneia dintre edițiile ziarului The Guardian, în luna noiembrie 1994. În atmosfera încă Euro-entuziastă a ultimului deceniu al secolului XX, Marea Britanie (împreună cu Franța și cu întreaga Europă) celebra inaugurarea liniei de tren care trecea prin tunelul de sub Canalul Mânecii, pe care britanicii îl numeau afectuos ‘The Channel Tunnel‘ sau mai simplu ‘Chunnel’. Pentru prima călătorie oficială, rezervările fuseseră făcute cu câțiva ani înainte și în vagoanele trenului care parcursese distanța dintre Londra și Paris în ceva mai puțin de trei ore atmosfera era de petrecere. Au trecut 30 de ani de la acele evenimente festive. Un moment potrivit pentru puțină istorie și pentru un bilanț parțial. Căci Tunelul este un formidabil proiect ingineresc și mult mai mult decât atât.
Câteva date statistice despre Tunel. Lungimea totală este de 50,46 km, din care 37,9 km sub apă, ceea ce-l face să fie tunelul cu cea mai lungă secțiune subacvatică și cel de-al treilea cel mai lung tunel feroviar din lume. Este situat sub Canalul Mânecii, în strâmtoarea Dover, între localitățile Folkestone (Kent, Anglia) și Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais, Franța). Este singura legătură fixă între insula Marii Britanii și continentul european. În punctul său cel mai de jos, se află la 75 m sub fundul mării și la 115 m sub nivelul mării. Este un tunel exclusiv feroviar, prin care trec trenurile de pasageri de mare viteză Eurostar, transportoarele LeShuttle pentru vehicule rutiere și trenuri de marfă. Viteza maximă a trenurilor prin tunel este de 200 km/h, dar din motive de siguranță viteza de operare este de doar cel mult 160 km/h. Timpul de transport efectiv dintre cele două capitale este astăzi de aproximativ două ore și jumătate.
De ce nu și trafic de autovehicule? Soluția proiectată pentru tunel asigură transportul acestora pe trenuri cu platforme – un fel de ferry pe roți, dacă vreți. Acestea circulă cu peste 120 de kilometri pe oră, în timp ce traficul rutier nu putea depăși în siguranță 80 de km/h. Dacă se întâmplă un accident sau un vehicul rutier se defectează, tunelul ar fi cel puțin parțial blocat până când urmările incidentului sunt evacuate. În fine, ventilația este destul de dificilă așa cum este, dar ar fi mult mai dificilă pentru un tunel rutier, în condițiile în care majoritatea autovehiculelor folosesc încă motoare cu combustie internă, care consumă benzină sau motorină.
(sursa imaginii – By Aimé Thomé de Gamond (1807-1876) – A scan of an old drawing, from Thomas Whiteside: The Tunnel under the Channel, page 16ish, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3699015)
Primul tren spre Paris a plecat în 1994, din gara londoneză Waterloo. Este un fel de ironie a istoriei, căci de numele împăratului învins în ultima sa mare bătălie de la Waterloo este legat începutul istoriei Tunelului. În 1802, într-o perioadă de pace între războaiele revoluționare, Napoleon a primit propunerea lui Albert Mathieu-Favier, un inginer miner francez, pentru un tunel sub Canalul Mânecii, iluminat de lămpi cu ulei, cu vagoane trase de cai și cu o insulă artificială poziționată la mijlocul Canalului pentru schimbarea cailor. Proiectul său a avut în vedere un tunel săpat cu două niveluri, cu tunelul de sus folosit pentru transport și cel de jos pentru fluxurile de apă subterană. Lui Napoleon i-a plăcut ideea și a discutat-o cu ministrul de externe britanic Charles James Fox, aflat la Paris pentru tratativele legate de Tratatul de la Amiens. Această perioadă de pace avea să dureze însă doar 14 luni. Când ostilitățile au fost reluate în 1803, planul a fost abandonat. Ideea însă plutea în aer, sau poate mai corect ar fi să zicem că plutea pe apele Canalului Mânecii, și în cei 180 de ani care vor urma vor fi propuse nu mai puțin de o sută de proiecte pentru un canal care să lege insulele britanice de continent.
Secolul al XIX-lea a fost caracterizat de un avânt fără precedent al construcțiilor civile, inclusiv proiecte de mari proporții, cum au fost canalele de la Suez sau Corint. Cel din Panama avea să fie săpat în prima decadă a secolului XX. S-a dezvoltat și perfecționat și tehnologia tunelurilor, inclusiv tunelurile transalpine de mari dimensiuni (Mont Cenis, Saint Gotthard și Simplon, cu lungimi între 10 km și 20 km) și primele tuneluri sub un curs de apă, cel de sub Tamisa (1843), urmat de două tuneluri sub râul din Chicago. Realizarea unui tunel care să lege Marea Britanie de continent părea din ce în ce mai realistă și mai fezabilă din punct de vedere ingineresc și economic. Trebuiau doar să se alinieze și clasele politice ale țărilor de pe cele două maluri ale Canalului. Avea să mai dureze mai mult de un secol.
În 1839, inginerul și antreprenorul francez Aimé Thomé de Gamond a efectuat primele cercetări geologice și hidrografice între Calais și Dover. El a explorat mai multe soluții posibile, și în 1856, i-a prezentat lui Napoleon al III-lea o propunere pentru un tunel feroviar săpat de la Cap Gris-Nez la East Wear Point, cu un cost de 170 de milioane de euro. În 1866, inginerul de construcții civile Henry Marc Brunel a făcut un studiu al fundului strâmtorii Dover. Prin rezultatele sale, el a dovedit că acesta era compus din cretă, la fel ca stâncile adiacente, și astfel un tunel era fezabil. Tânărul inginer era nepotul inginerului care condusese proiectele canalului sub Tamisa și ale podului de la Turnul Londrei. Pentru acest sondaj, el a inventat carota gravitațională, care este încă folosită în geologie. Guvernele Angliei și Franței și-au dat acordul să sprijine proiectul în 1876, când a fost semnat un protocol oficial anglo-francez pentru construirea unui tunel feroviar. În 1881, antreprenorul feroviar britanic Sir Edward Watkin și Alexandre Lavalley, un antreprenor francez care participase la proiectul Canalului Suez, amândoi angajați de Compania de căi ferate submarine anglo-franceză, au efectuat lucrări de explorare pe ambele maluri ale Canalului. Atunci au fost săpați primii metri de tuneluri sub Canal. Din iunie 1882 până în martie 1883, mașina britanică de tunelare a făcut tuneluri prin cretă, un total de 1 840 m în timp ce Lavalley a folosit o mașină similară pentru a fora 1 669 m de la Sangatte pe partea franceză. În ciuda acestui succes, proiectul tunelului a fost abandonat în 1883 ca urmare a obiecțiilor ridicate de armata britanică, care susținea că un tunel subacvatic ar putea fi folosit ca rută de invazie. Cu toate că Anglia și Franța au fost aliați în Primul Război Mondial, britanicii au distrus și aceste începuturi de construcție, pentru a se asigura că nu sunt folosite în vreun scop ostil. Mareșalul Foch avea să susțină după război că, dacă tunelul ar fi existat, Primul Război Mondial ar fi durat cu doi ani mai puțin.
Premierul britanic David George Lloyd, susținut de Lordul Amiralității de atunci, Winston Churchill au încercat să readucă în actualitate planurile pentru tunel la Conferința de la Versailles, dar de data aceasta partea franceză a fost cea care a respins sau tărăgănat punerea în practică în toată perioada interbelică. Asta nu i-a împiedicat pe cineaști să viseze și să creeze filme despre Tunel, care aveau caracter de science-fiction în acele vremuri. Încă din 1907, ‘Tunneling the English Channel’, un film al regizorului pionier al cinematografiei Georges Méliès îi prezintă pe regele Edward al VII-lea și președintele Armand Fallières visând să construiască un tunel sub Canalul Mânecii. Un film britanic de la Gaumont Studios, ‘The Tunnel’ (cunoscut și sub numele de ‘TransAtlantic Tunnel’), lansat în 1935, descria un proiect științifico-fantastic de creare a unui tunel transatlantic. Protagonistul său, un domn McAllan, menționează că a finalizat cu succes construirea unui tunel sub Canalului Britanic în 1940, la cinci ani după lansarea filmului.
Atmosfera de după Al Doilea Război Mondial era foarte diferită și, în condițiile reconcilierii și aproprierii dintre popoarele Europei și Regatul Unit, au fost reluate discuțiile și solicitate noi planuri inginerești. Propunerea cea mai populară era cea de a construi un tunel (dar s-a luat în considerare și varianta unui pod) cu o autostradă pe șase benzi. Sistemul de tunele din Hong Kong, primul construit între 1969 și 1972, demonstrase fezabilitatea și antrenase talentele britanice care participaseră la proiect. În 1973, Marea Britanie a intrat în Piața Comună. În 1974, guvernul laburist al lui Harold Wilson a respins proiectul propus atunci, din motive financiare. Când a venit la putere, în 1979, Margaret Thatcher nu a susținut finanțarea guvernamentală a proiectului, dar nu s-a opus unui proiect finanțat privat, deși prefera mai degrabă un tunel pentru mașini decât pentru trenuri. În 1981, Thatcher și președintele francez François Mitterrand au convenit să înființeze un grup de lucru pentru a evalua un proiect finanțat privat. În iunie 1982, grupul de studiu franco-britanic a favorizat un tunel dublu pentru a găzdui trenurile convenționale și un serviciu de transfer pentru vehicule. În aprilie 1985, promotorii au fost invitați să prezinte propuneri. Au existat patru finaliste și a fost aleasă soluția pe care o cunoaștem astăzi, iar Tratatul de la Canterbury, din 1986, a parafat proiectul. De ce era nevoie de un tratat? Existența tunelului modifica practic frontierele celor doua state, care deveneau vecine. Tratatul a fost semnat în clădirea istorică a catedralei din Canterbury.
Construcția pentru proiectul câștigător, propus de Grupul Eurotunnel, a început în 1988 și a fost finalizată aproape în termen, în 1994, lucru remarcabil pentru o antrepriză atât de complexă. Costurile au fost însă cu mult depășite. Estimat inițial la 5,5 miliarde de lire sterline în 1985, Tunelul era deja, la acea vreme, cel mai scump proiect de construcție propus vreodată. Costul final s-a ridicat în cele din urmă la 9 miliarde de lire sterline (echivalentul a 22,6 miliarde de lire sterline în 2023). Partea de transport a vehiculelor rutiere a fost inaugurată prima. Pe 6 mai 1994, regina Elisabeta a II-a și președintele francez François Mitterrand s-au întâlnit la Calais și s-au urcat într-un Rolls-Royce care, transportat cu Le Shuttle, a ajuns la Folkestone. Consorții lor i-au urmat într-un Citroën. Pe 14 noiembrie, în același an, a fost inaugurată linia feroviară. Tunelul putea fi operat la maxima capacitate. Aveau să treacă însă aproape 20 de ani până când, în 2013, numărul pasagerilor a atins cifra planificată de 10 milioane pe an. De atunci încoace, cu excepția anilor de pandemie, aceasta cifră a fost depășită an de an, iar numărul de vagoane de mărfuri transportate anual depășește 1,6 milioane.
Marea Britanie a redevenit o insulă, cel puțin din punct de vedere politic, în urma Brexitului. Pentru majoritatea utilizatorilor Tunelului, asta înseamnă câteva minute în plus de formalități de trecere a frontierelor. Cu toate că traficul de mărfuri nu a revenit încă la cifrele de dinainte de pandemie (ca urmare, mai ales, a recesiunii economice din Regatul Unit), operațiunea generează profituri frumoase. Fapt remarcabil, nu s-au înregistrat accidente sau incidente tehnice majore în acești primi 30 de ani de activitate. Succesul operațiunii readuce în actualitate planul unui al doilea tunel (care făcea parte din planurile inițiale ale proiectului, dar a fost abandonat în ultimii ani ai secolului trecut), precum și planuri ale altor proiecte potențiale de tuneluri în jurul insulelor britanice. Acestea includ o legătură între insula Orkney și Scoția continentală, un tunel între Republica Irlanda și Țara Galilor și unul între Irlanda de Nord și Scoția. Istoria arată că, pentru ca acestea să devină realitate, trebuie să se întâlnească inventivitatea inginerilor, profesionalismul constructorilor, voința politicienilor și resursele finanțatorilor. Când toate aceste condiții sunt îndeplinite, rezultatele sunt spectaculoase.
(Articolul a apărut iniţial în revista culturală ‘Literatura de Azi’ – http://literaturadeazi.ro/)
‘Here‘ (2024) is a technological marvel. There are directors from whom I expect something like this, one of them would be Steven Spielberg, and then Robert Zemeckis, the director of this film, whose movies Spielberg produced on many occasions. The film uses a generative artificial intelligence technology called Metaphysic Live, which is so new that this film probably could not have been made a year ago and which will probably be surpassed by something newer and better next year. This field is evolving very quickly and I think ‘resistance is futile’ ( (c) Star Trek), just as the protests and boycotts against all innovations in cinema, from the introduction of sound to computer-generated effects and stunts, were futile. That said, special effects and their results, no matter how spectacular, do not guarantee either quality or emotion. As a viewer, I go to the cinema and choose to see a film because it interests me and involves me, because it tells me a story and introduces me to new characters that I care about. From this point of view, at least for me, the impact of ‘Here‘ was minor.
The use of AI technology for the characters’ time travel is not the only creative cinematic element of this film. The other very visible one is the fact that the camera is (with one exception) fixed, in the same space and the same angle throughout the entire film. We travel through 65 million years of history in time but we are visually fixed on the same piece of land, and in the scenes from 1900 onwards in the few dozen square meters of the living room of a typical American house with large windows facing a typical American street. The narrative is nonlinear. In fact, there are about 8 or 9 stories (depending on whether we count the one with the dinosaurs) of different generations of the inhabitants of the place, of their destinies with births and deaths, loves and separations, pains of growing up and old age. One of them is the dominant one, that of Richard (born in the house built in 1900) and Margaret – a couple of baby-boomers, now reaching the age of memories and forgetting. The scenes alternate and the transition between them is made inventively, with changes of setsand objects that define in time the scene that will follow.
I found the technical part to be fascinating. What a pity that this cinematic inventiveness does not come in support of a more interesting story (or stories). Robert Zemeckis, who knew so well to combine innovations with sensitivity in other films, was less inspired from this point of view in ‘Here‘. The film is an adaptation of a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, but what works well on drawings on paper doesn’t find an equal equivalent on screen. If the main story were a family drama, it could still work, perhaps, with the help of the actors, but the interwoven narrative doesn’t allow for the development of emotion. A tear has barely formed in the corner of the eye and the next time jump is already happening. By the time we return to the continuation of the story, the tear has dried. The imbalance between the main story and the rest of the narratives is all too obvious, some of which don’t manage to sketch more than a cliché about the characters and their eras. Perhaps if the number of parallel plans had been reduced to three or four, but developed more evenly, the result would have been better. Tom Hanks is formidable, and almost all of his transformations into the past remind us of his youth or previous adulthood movies. Robin Wright is less differentiated in her past incarnations. I don’t know if it’s the AI software or the fact that Robin Wright is just a good actress, while Tom Hanks is an exceptional actor. Alan Silvestri‘s music stylistically adapts to the historical moments in which the different scenes take place. My recommendation is to see ‘Here‘. Some of you may even like the story. The rest of us are waiting for future films with AI effects, confident that masterpieces of the genre will also appear.
‘Flic Story‘ (1975) is one of the last films in a remarkable series of films ‘noir’ inspired by the world of French gangsters, made between the 1950s and the 1970s. The master of the genre was Jean-Pierre Melville, whose last film, ‘Un flic’ from 1972, cast Alain Delon as a crime fighting policeman. Rumor goes that when Jacques Deray undertook the making of this film inspired by a real case and true characters, after having managed to secure the participation of the two actors, he intended to give Delon the role of the gangster and Jean-Louis Trintignant that of the vigilante policeman. It would have been closer to the profiles of the previous roles played by the two, but it would have been a shame. The reversal of roles allows Trintignant to create one of the best performances of his career, and Delon is not bad at all either. The result was a film that Melville would surely have approved of.
Roger Borniche, whose memoirs inspired the film’s script, had been a hero during World War II, who had enrolled in the police force because of a personal history. Idealistic, individualistic, unconventional in his choice of working methods, he often comes into conflict with his superiors and his entourage of bureaucratic colleagues, some of whom bear the burden of collaboration during the war. Having reached the position of inspector and with ambitions for advancement, he receives as a mission the capture of Emile Buisson, an escaped and extremely dangerous gangster who flees justice, robs and leaves corpses behind. The mission will not be simple and the pursuit will last many years.
The script is built as an alternation of scenes in which the policeman and the escaped criminal appear, the two meeting only at the end. The duel between Borniche and Buisson in the film translates into an artistic duel between the two great actors, among the most popular and appreciated of their generation. If a winner must be declared, he is Trintignant. They say that the roles of bad guys are easier to interpret. It may be true, but Trintignant‘s gaze of a killer (sometimes out of pleasure) can still freeze the blood in the veins of viewers. The criminal has one softer side: he loves Edith Piaf’s music, and this will play a role in his capture, in an anthological scene. The entire cast is very well chosen and directed, the characters are credible, the milieu of crime and the police methods and stations of the 40s-50s are very authentically reconstructed. The only criticism I would make of the script is that it does not reflect the passage of time. The pursuit lasted for many years and became an obsession for the French media but also for the police, however the events unfold on screen in the almost two hours of cinema without marking the cinematic time. The screenwriters may have relied on the fact that this case was still present in the public memory of France in the 70s, but that is no longer true today. However, this is only a minor detail in an engaging and atmospheric film, which is worth watching or rewatching.
I didn’t miss the opportunity to watch ‘Red Rocket‘ (2021) because it is the previous film by Sean Baker, the director of ‘Anora’. This was one of the revelations of the year for me and not only for me, as evidenced by the awards and nominations it received, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The surprise was even greater. I had liked ‘Anora’. Well, I liked ‘Red Rocket‘ even more. I found in this film the fluid narrative, the slightly cynical humor, the authenticity and especially the empathetic approach through which the director manages to make us care about characters on the fringes of society, of those we usually don’t meet and in fact wouldn’t really want to meet.
The story takes place in Texas City in the summer of 2016. Now and than, we hear voices of the presidential election campaign of that year on the televisions turned on in the background. The heroes in the film, however, do not seem to care about politics. Mikey is a porn movies actor who returns with only pants and a tank top on him and 22 dollars in his pocket to the poor area of his childhood town, to the house of Lexi, the wife he abandoned long ago. He is running away from something, his time as an actor has passed, he perhaps wants to start over from scratch. The people of the town located near a huge oil refinery do not really welcome him, from Lexi, who reproaches him for his abandonment and absence, to the owners or bosses of various businesses who refuse to hire a man who has a huge lapse on his CV due to the many years he was involved in the pornographic industry. In order to be able to pay the rent that his wife and mother-in-law ask from him in order to stay in the house, he returns to his old job as a drug dealer. His only friend is Lonnie, his neighbor and former schoolmate, a loner with his own problems, who is fascinated by Mikey’s stories about his adventures in California. Mikey meets Raylee nicknamed Strawberry, a young high school girl less than 18 years old, who works as a salesgirl at a donut shop. What at first seems like a flirtation between a mature man and a Lolita-like teenager progresses towards a more serious and dangerous relationship for everybody involved.
Sean Baker is original in the way he chooses his actors and formidable in the way he directs them. Most of them are non-professional actors or with little experience in big screen films. Simon Rex (Mikey) is the only one who has a rich filmography, but many of the titles are television films or music videos. The formidable Suzanna Son plays the role of the girl who has just come out of her teens (she was 26 at the time of filming tough) and I hope that she will find suitable castings for a career worth launching. Bree Elrod (Lexi), who completes the very unromantic triangle, is also practically a debutante in a leading role. Sean Baker uses the naturalness and native talent of the actors and skips rehearsals to gain spontaneity and create authentic characters, who live their roles as the story advances. The streets and surroundings of Texas City gradually become familiar to us, with the houses, streets, refinery, gas station or donut shop that are filmed most often with a mobile camera on 16mm film. The angles are sometimes those of Edward Hopper’s paintings, and the coloring is adapted to the moods of the characters: sometimes they remind me of ‘Barbie’, other times of ‘Gran Torino’. The ending leaves the viewer stoned in a question. Sean Baker is for me the cinematic discovery of 2024. ‘Red Rocket‘ is the confirmation.
‘Scarlet Street‘, the 1945 film by Fritz Lang, once again demonstrates that many of the secrets of the filmmaking profession were already discovered and used by the masters of cinema of those times. Here is a film made almost 80 years ago, with an finely written script, with heroes that reveal their characters as we advance in the action, a film about art and forbidden passions, about fraud and naivety, beautifully and interestingly filmed, and with an ending that defies the customs and the censorship codes of the era. ‘Scarlet Street‘ is one of those films in which Fritz Lang brings something of the shadows and darkness of German expressionism to the film noir genre very popular in American cinema of the 1940s. Finally, this film gives us the opportunity to admire one of the best roles of the great actor who was Edward G. Robinson, a role which is at the same time complex and very different from others in his rich filmography.
The story takes place in 1934. Chris Cross is a resigned man. He works as a bank cashier for 25 years, he married a widow who still adores her deceased husband and who nags him endlessly, he has given up on his dreams of becoming an artist and paints only on weekends. One rainy evening he intervenes on the street in defense of a young and beautiful woman who was being attacked by a man. In a short time, a relationship develops between the two, but everything is based on lies. Chris does not tell the girl that he is married, nor does he contradict her when she tells him that she believes that he is a rich painter who sells his paintings well. Kitty (that’s the name of the girl) is manipulated by her boyfriend, a conman, the two intending to get their hands on the money of the man who seems more and more in love. However, to satisfy Kitty’s demands, Chris has no other solution than to steal. He does it just as his paintings are starting to be successful. His problems are just beginning.
‘Scarlet Street‘ is a remake of a 1931 French film (‘La Chienne’), which was also an adaptation of a novel. The French film was directed by Jean Renoir and starred Michel Simon. The American version is before all Edward G. Robinson‘s movie. Unlike most of his other roles, he is neither a gangster nor a detective, but a middle-aged man who badly falls in love with a ‘femme fatale’. Since love is blind, evidences about the fraud are ignored and the story has little chance of ending other than tragedy. I was surprised at how nuanced Robinson‘s acting is here and how much empathy he can create around a character who is far from being an angel. The cinematography is also remarkable. Indoors, we are served with the portion of ajar doors and long shadows that we are familiar with from other Fritz Lang films. The surprise is in the outdoors shots, on the streets of New York in pouring rain or in Greenwich Village at the art markets. Fifteen years before the French New Wave, Lang and cinematographer Milton R. Krasner take to the streets to accurately recreate the New York of the previous decade. ‘Scarlet Street‘ is a film worth watching or rewatching, and one that I believe will interest not only classic film lovers and students of film history.
If further proof was needed that studios that make movies with streaming as their main distribution method can also produce remarkable productions, then this is the mini-series ‘Chernobyl‘ produced in 2019 by HBO. Craig Mazin is the author of a script that combines excellent documentation with a gallery of very well-defined characters – most of them real -, a series of stories of heroism and cowardice, of terror and compassion, in the conditions of a real crisis of great proportions during the last years of the Soviet system and state. For those who lived the events as residents of the Soviet Union and the surrounding countries, the Chernobyl accident was one of those moments that marked their lives. The effects could have been planetary. In the optimal dimensions of five series of approximately one hour each, ‘Chernobyl‘ combines historical docu-drama with political criticism, the horror genre and apocalyptic films. However, the horror was than clear and real, and the entire planet was close to the Apocalypse. The HBO miniseries brings that drama to life in all its intensity.
The series follows three main characters. Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris) was a Soviet chemist who became famous worldwide for coordinating efforts to limit the effects of the Chernobyl accident and then participated as a witness in the investigations, presenting the results to the world at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Boris Shcherbina (played by Stellan Skarsgård in one of the best roles of his career) was a Soviet politician of Ukrainian origin and his role was to coordinate the rescue activities, the evacuation of the population, but also to cover up the gravity of the situation on behalf of the leadership. A typical communist bureaucrat, he is depicted in the film as waking up late and understanding towards the end the human cost and especially the consequences of institutionalized lying. Unlike the characters of the two men, that of the nuclear scientist Ulana Khomyuk is a fictional one, whose role is to symbolize all those who fought (and many of them sacrificed themselves) to reveal the truth. Emily Watson does not disappoint here either in a formidable role.
‘Chernobyl‘ impresses with the authenticity of the production, the realistic story-telling, the impressive fictional stories around. In addition to the three main characters, a whole gallery of characters were brought back to life or imagined: a young firefighter sent to fight what seemed like a routine fire and his wife who accompanies him in the terrible days after exposure to radiation, the nuclear power plant workers who try in vain to oppose the orders of the arivist bureaucrats that lead to catastrophe, heroic soldiers and miners who risked their lives and health to limit the damage of the accident, the military sent to evacuate the civilian population and kill the animals left behind, which had become contamination hazards. The script is based on public information and documents kept secret by a system that was living out its last years and was trying to survive through internal terror and false propaganda. Although spoken in English, the series are authentic and realistic. The lesson that remains for history is that truth cannot be buried. The price of revealing it may be very high for those brave enough to confront the system, but the price of lying is even higher for society as a whole.
Robert Altman called ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller‘ (1971) an ‘anti-western’ while some critics classify it as a ‘revisionist’ western. The story and the setting are those of the classic films of the genre. We are in a frontier town in the west of United States (northwest, to be more precise) during the period of economic expansion generated by mining. The law is still fluid, there is no sheriff or judge in the film, and the heroes rely on their spirit of initiative doubled by the handling of firearms to make a living and, above all, to survive. The main heroes are perhaps atypical compared to the heroes of classic westerns, but not an absolute novelty in American or world cinema, including Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns made a few years before this film. However, we could say that the story is almost the background in this film, which is an adaptation of a novel written by Edmund Naughton. What interested Robert Altman were the characters, the heroes of the film and the people around them, with their lives and deaths. Critics and film historians, as well as Altman‘s fans, consider ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller‘ to be one of his best films, if not the best.
The film begins in classic western movies style. A man with an eccentric hat and a gun in his belt enters a small Western mining town and searches for the local saloon. He quickly gains authority because he is a good card player and there are rumors that he once killed someone in a pistol duel. He has some money and invests it in building a new saloon and opening an improvised brothel in tents. Not long after, Mrs. Miller shows up, proposing to McCabe to become his business partner. She will manage his finances and use her own experience to properly organize the prostitution enterprise. Business is booming, the bond between the two slowly strengthens, and after a while, representatives of a trust that wants to take over the city appear. When McCabe, too sure of himself, refuses a proposal that seems to him too low financially, things get complicated.
Robert Altman creates an entire human landscape around McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The two heroes are linked by a business relationship. He does not allow himself to desire her more intimately, except possibly when drunk and in front of the mirror. She takes refuge in opium-induced dreams. Reality is crueler and bigger than them, no matter how much confidence and audacity they try to surround themselves with. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie create two of the most impressive roles of their acting careers. Around them, Altman builds a full universe of characters. He chose his team of extras and let them each build their own character, their personality, their skills. Shelley Duvall, who was a regular in Altman‘s movies, and Keith Carradine at his screen debut but already predicting the formidable actor he would become, appear in supporting roles. The atmosphere is created by the sets created with the tools of the era and the cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond, who pre-processed the film to give it a touch of authenticity. Filming took place sequentially, in the chronological order of the events in the film, so that the nature and colors also change in their natural sequence. These are minor details, but they all build an immersive atmosphere, which absorbs the viewers and brings them feel close to the characters, despite the time gap. The music by Leonard Cohen, by then far from his later celebrity, is also overwhelming, and fits perfectly in the first part, although it was not composed for this film but chosen by Altman after listening to the Canadian singer’s album. ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller‘ ends with a memorable gunfight, in the tradition of the genre. Altman called it an anti-Western? I say it’s a beautiful Western made very differently.
