Merchant Ivory's HOWARD'S END by E.M.Forster

It is interesting to see Aspects of the Novel applied to the silver screen.

"Why the goblin?"

"The goblin signifies the spirit of negation."

Brook's BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Dostoyevsky

Noble families in Europe tended to solve the problem of inheritance by sending some sons into military or church service. The third brother in this novel is a writer and philosopher. It is his developement as a free thinker in contrast to Alyosha's faith - a struggle for the soul of Ivan, the flawed man - that makes this one of book often touted as best work of literature ever!

Alas the movie cannot do justice to all three brothers (let alone embedded stories like the inquisitor's) and Ivan's action and lust make him the main focus. Yul Brenner steals the show. Even Williiam Shattner must play second fiddle.

Siodmak's THE KILLERS by Hemingway

Whereas Tarkovsky's student film limits itself to Heminway's short story about the killing of the Swede, Siodmak's noir extends the action to explain why the Swede waits suicidally for the killers. Personally I'd skip the Dragnet-style 60s remake (with the originally intended director) whose interest is more ostensibly in the killers than the vistim but whose only inovations (the boxer becomes a racer) pale beside the cherchez la femme story stolen from Siodmak.

What I find most interesting is th suicidal Swede as a tiny insight into the ultimatelly suicidal Ernest. Noir draws on war-wearriness, as I believe does Hemingway's greatest work. Perhaps it is not that women worked while the men were away that ultimately makes them fatal. Perhaps its their failure to make it all
better like mommy did with skinned knees. Love cannot make these broken men whole again. They are
victims, but also killers.

Kurosawa's DERSU UZALA by Arsenyev

The taiga mysteriously defeats, as it did Napoleaon, even the great Akira Kurosawa. Perhaps camping with the Russian crew left him hungover. It is unfortunate (as it is too often with Oscars) that his great opus is know to many through this work without samurai. But perhaps it is not that Akira needs Japanese. It may be he needs greater (historical) distance. His version of Macbeth is a better adaptation.

The film is undoubtedly beautiful, in particular an iconic shot of Captain and Dersu skygazing with the sun lower left the same size as the full moon upper right. The film ought to be called Siberia. It is only incidentlay about the little Mongolian Dersu Ursula, and ultimately it is the Russian captain who has the greater conflict with nature, needing to map the great white.

Dersu Ursula is disadvantaged by being known to us only through bad Russian. One struggles to reconcile one's condescension to the wiseman, so awesomely lored, so adorably bowlegged. The film's rhythm is like the permafrost, suddenly flowing after long stretches.

Stoloff's JOE PALOOKA by Runyon

I couldn't resist writing up a film based on a classic comic. Robin Williams as popeye seemed too on the nose. Who now remembers Joe Palooka, the fighter, played here bu Jimmy Durante. Our younger readers might know some cartoon animal version of the manager character Knobby's with his big schnoz and gravly voice, oft imitated in Saturday morning cartoons - ah cha cha cha!

"Misfortune dogs my footsteps," he says, reminding Joe the champ has no wife and kids. Paluka lost his first fight because he was taking it easy on acount of his opponent asked him to take pity on his wife and kids.

De Mille's KING OF KINGS by Synoptic Gospels

Taking advantage of my mother’s home video library on a visit home for the hoildays, I decided to treat myself to an old fashioned movie marathon. I decided on a double feature (one silent) with cartoon and film short to start (sans Pathé news)… I opted for the shorter 1927 version of this film.

Movie Marathon Entry the third:

Whatever De Mille's record on race, let us admit that the mysogeny of this film he borrows straight from the Bible. Magdelene may not be a foreign woman, but as 'courtesan' she is shown consorting with the Romans. Worse, she is in some sort of league with Judas.

The greatest story ever told is here reduced to a Springer episode. Herod loved Magdalene who loves Judas who loves Jesus. Nice cinematic touches include sins leaving Mary and slight returning to a blind boy offering us our first fuzzy view of the Christ. Then of course there are the set pieces, the tableaux (pieta, etc.) and - being a Demille pic - the spectacles.

Enrico's OCCURANCE AT OWL CREEK by Bierce

Taking advantage of my mother’s home video library on a visit home for the hoildays, I decided to treat myself to an old fashioned movie marathon. I decided on a double feature with cartoon and film short to start (sans Pathé news)…

Movie Marathon Entry the Second:

Is life on the run worth living? There is a Borges story in which a man about to be shot by a firing squad regrets that he has not finished his novel and is granted time in him mind to finish it before the bullets pierce him. Enrico’s approach here is naturalistic, but this story has a twist.

Without giving it away, I will just remark that the vistim’s opening view of the creek from the plank may be the most devastating POV shot in all of film history. Also powerful are the twirling trees and the aiming eye. Use of sound is spare - mainly just splashes and rifle blasts. The soldiers orders are garbled, then clear. The only music is a brief refrain of the blues Livin' Man. At the end, he laughs. Or is it the end? Drum roll please.

Leodard's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by

Taking advantage of my mother’s home video library on a visit home for the hoildays, I decided to treat myself to an old fashioned movie marathon. I decided on a double feature with cartoon and film short to start (sans Pathé news)…

Movie Marathon Entry the Fourth:

The light tone of this classic adaptation puts it page and cover in my book above more recent sentimental adaptations aimed at a certain audience. The dialogue is crisp and bright and just witty enough, on target, as it were. Laurence Olivier shines as always, this time as the inimitable Darcy.

Fleisher's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Swift

Taking advantage of my mother’s home video library on a visit home for the hoildays, I decided to treat myself to an old fashioned movie marathon. I decided on a double feature with cartoon and film short to start (sans Pathé news)…

Movie Marathon Entry the First:

Perhaps Disney is to blame for the fact that so many people consider Swift some sort of quaint caricaturist, when in fact he is one of the more biting, bitter misanthropes to ever write.

This is probably the world’s second cartoon feature film (after Snow White) but all the saccharine elements are already in place, the star-crossed princess, the love birds singing. The biggest loss is of course the picaresque since Gulliver drops in like God to solve all the Lilliputian problems. All the while we keep waiting and hoping he’ll move on.

Lewin's PORTAIT OF DORIAN GRAY by Wilde

"Always is a dreadful word." This film is dominated by a devil's advocate. One begins to believe Oscar actually likes principles better than persons, and persons without principle best of all. In one short speech he fausts Dorian with any number of cynical aphorisms: "There's no such thing as a good influence; all influence is immoral. The purpose of life is self-development."

"We suffer for what the gods give us...youth is the one thing worth having. What the gods give they quickly take away. The gods are jealous of you... "The world is yours for a season; it would be tragic if you realized too late..every impule that we resist broods in the mind...Caprice lasts a little longer than life-long pasion."

When we remember the attitude his society had towards Oscar's 'nature', one can begin understand his cynicism in declaing that "being natural is simply a pose." He held out some hope for redemption through aesthetics. "There's nothing that can cuer the sould but the senses." And vice versa.

Arau's LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE by Laura Esquivel

I am not sure this film will become a classic any more than Chocolat or Babett's Feast, but it makes me hungry for more. Such sensual novels are almost as easy to adapt as action thrillers. Still, Arau makes a wise choice to emply some first-person narration voice-over. For one, the protagonist (and what sweet agony!) can comment on the action, noting her black-hole heart the night her mother proises her intended to her sister in marriage, and note the passage of time efficiently. She knits all night.

This is a fim about sublimation. Would that we all remained celibate if we could produce such poetic prose, such imagery and cookery. There is not much in the way of analysis of the many cause of revolution - national and familial. There is just pomegranet seeds, candles, a nude on horseback...

There is an American butting in, of course, but the mother plays the fairy tale villain, not allowed to defend tradition, but cold and calm in her crulty, much worse in its way than an angry tyrany would be.

Deborah Warner's LAST SEPTEMBER by Elizabth Bowen

From the opening phonograph scene, we know we are in the 20's. Instead of fiddling while Rome burns, we have dancing while Ireland broods. The film effectively brings out the class elements to the conflict - albeit in a less masculine way thatn How Green Was My Valley. "About what?" an Anglo-Irish asks at cadlelit dinner, when asked what he thinks about 'the situation'.

"Closing in, I think. Rolling up." The problem of this film is depicting those caught between, while failing to find a tone that is close while the main characters are 'rolling '. Cheerio and all that! What are they doing having a tennis party in the midst of war? (And why are we with them?) One stiff upper lip desires sometihng real to happen, even the house to burn.

Keira Knightly feels sure 'they' (the rebels) won't shoot her chap while she's there. "They all know me." One struggles to know the characters in the film. Such things are more easily done with novelistic interiority.
Nothing against Keira Knightly, but I am in love with Maggie Smith. See her shine also in Muriel Spark's Prime of Miss Jane Brodie.

Ptushko's SADKO by the Soviets

Sadko goes in search of the bird of happiness. In India he finds a phoenix whose lady's head sings warriors to sleep, but it is a sad sleep. How Sadko sails to India, fighting Vikings along the way, and back via Egypt is only one of the mysteries. Answers hardly matter amidst such lushery.

Soviet touches are not subtle but less kodachrome than the fairy dust. Sadko appeals directly to the people when the merchants refuse to bankroll his quest. But it is the sea princess who comes up with the golden fish. A less-than-subtle jibe at monarchy has sea king and queen argue over whether Sadko plays the zither or the psalter. She wins.

What did the terrestial princess give Sadko to carry around his neck? For that you must see the film, but I will let slip that he find happiness - not in India, nor in Norseland, nor in Egypt, but in the native soil.

Kakogiannis's ELECTRA by Euripides

She cuts her hair in grief and looks like a boy. Her lost twin brother can be recognized by a hunting scar. But this is not Shakespeare yet. Our film can draw from classical sources galore. Early emphasis on Electra's marriage follows Euripides, whereas Sophocles picks up with Orestes return. Aeschylus relies on Orestes footprint on the tomb.

Electra says Orestes will reverse their bad fortune. Aegisthus says he will remove Orestes' head. Kakogiannis portrays these graphically with Electra rolling on the tomb, a point of view shot completing a 360 degree rotation off the axis of the horizon live.

Of course it began farther back. A god makes a command. Agamemmnon killed daughter Iphigenia, whose mom Clytemnestra, his wife, kills him in the bath. So their son Orestes kills her. The furies pursue him. We're back to gods, or Sartre's flies.

Hamilton's EVIL UNDER THE SUN & MIRROR CRACKED by Christie

Agatha Christie is not bigger than Jesus, but close. After Bible sales come Christie mysteries. Guy Hamilton's adaptations do not offer overly much but a chance to contrast Marple and Poirot in films featuring murders around starlets. "There are two things I don't like about you," retorts blue actress to red, "your face." Christie is queen of the catty quip.

Marple slips un unseen. Poirot is all ostentation. Marple is villager, Poirot outsider. Marple is amateur, Poirot professional. This last matters since Poirot can be plausibly called in on cases, whereas Marple must perforce remain an improbable murder magnet, my particular pet peeve.

Poirot's character reveals Brits' love/hate with the continent. Ridiculing him, as when he haggles with the beggar boy, places him on similar footing with Marple, underestimated. Marple meanwhile puts us back in our place, "dear boy." Landsbury looks sunken, but spry. I prefer the still and dowdy Marple, knitting, and listening.

Besides casting problems, Hamilton could lose the porn music over Liz Taylor's close up for one. But he cannot ruin Christie's plotting. Evil Under the Sun contrives to find motive for everyone and opportunity for none. In Mirror it is the motive which must be divined, among other things.

Morrisey's HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Doyle

There have been so many fine adaptations of Sherlock (respects, Nige, but Jeremy's my fave) that I thought I would offer a comic alternative.  Caine gave us one of the nose. This one features Peter Cook as Holmes, but he is beside the point.

Dudley Moore imitates Peter Sellers. In fact, does Dr. Watson have an Indian brogue? Moore plays the Doctor, a unidex runner named Spiggot, and a table-tapping trance medium. Is that Moore too, the massage parlor lady with the hairy back? Over the top? How long would you expect a dog peeing on man gag to last?

Cocteau's ORPHEUS by Ovid

Where shall Cocteau set this deathless myth? The left bank vaut bien the forum. It thinks it's the center of the world, but no one passes. The police kill a poet, his patroness bundles Orpheus into the limo with the body and off we go. Charon is a limo driver who, falling for Eureydice, lets slip the details of his suicide by gas. No excess is absurd. The problem with Cocteau's Orpheus is he is bete. The car radio has more poetry: "The bird sings with its fingers: once..." It is a fair questions though - to know how those who live in their imagination will act in a real through-the-looking-glass situation.

The role of the bacchantes is problematic, as is princess death. Her biker handmen may lack the sutlety of Sartre's flies but they get the job done. A girl may be just the thing to turn a man's head, but this tends to trivialize our death-wish, reducing it to mondain love triangle. She stole the wife's soul without permission so no skill is needed to get it back. It's just a technicality, complete with paperwork. The working death is the worst. And Heurtebise was just following orders. Tam tams and echoes give the orders.

How terrible to imagine that signatures will still signify in the beyond. What Cocteau calls poet is to write without being a writer. The existential problem is to write without being written.   

Kurosawa's RASHOMON by Akutagawa

The Chinese equivalent of the detective tale, the gong an, predates Poe/Mauppasant by centuries. In the introducion to Dee Gong An, the translator attempts to explicate some of the story elements that may seem surprising to non-Chinese readers, such as the use of dreams and ghosts in solving the mysteries. We can see this last element in the Japanese mystery tale Rashomon. 

It is true that Kurosawa's film offers three distinct filmic views - the rainy gate, the court/yard with wall at beheading level, and the deadly, dappled woods - but there are four, not three, versions of the rape/murder tale: the 'witness's, the bandit's, the raped woman's, and the murdered samurai's. This last is the key, as channeled through a woman shaman. The samurai in life was calm whereas his ghost's account is emotional; but is this the woman shaman's influence, the ghostly realm's, or the samurai's true nature as undistorted by the others' accounts?

One can see in Kurosawa's samurai films an exploration of the five Buddhist lay ethics the pancasila: against taking life in Yojimbo and against intoxicants in the follow-up Sanjuro, against  sexual immorality in Seven Samurai, against taking what is not given in Hidden Fortress (which influenced Star Wars), and against untruth in Rashomon. 

Kurosawa adapted a story of Uchido in his last film Madadayo, as touching an hommage to age as is his masterpiece Ikiru and a nice counterpoint to that other Japanese master filmmaker Ozu's masterpiece Tokyo Story.  

August's HOUSE OF SPIRITS by Allende

It is a tricky thing to get the mix of magical realism right for a diverse audience. There are those demands perfect verisimiltude in all things save one aspect, or maybe two, as if they were ashamed of the magic. Then again there is a real difference from pure fantasy land here.

On the one hand almost everything is magical already. On the other hand we lose our sense of wonder. It is not a sense of potential that hovers in the thick air of Allende however. It is an air of menace. I am not sure Wynona Rider was the right casting choice for a torture victim.

Barreto's GABRIELA by Amado

I admit I imagined el Turco a bit less glamerous than Marcello Mastroinni. For the rest there is enough naturaleza to ground the heavenly sights, and scents, enough to allow us to believe in terrestrial paradise: from the dust of Bahia to wispy waves, and oh the night.

There are those who will have a hard time getting past all the nudity, and that is a shame. It is they who gets stuck on the breasts. For those who accept them as they come, there is tenderness, the fold of a knee across a sleeper's thigh, and most of all playfulness. Gabriela is a delight!