A double bill at Chez Flickhead

“Stirring, even triumphant moments!”


~ P L U S ! ~

“Jaw-dropping!”

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Instead of the standard “Directed by Edward Dmytryk,” the credit on Bluebeard (1972) reads “An Edward Dmytryk Film.” That’s a fairly lofty claim back when Hollywood made distinctions between films (considered to be representations of ‘art’) and movies (middlebrow entertainment) — remember the words of the fatcat producer played by Ernest Borgnine in The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968): “I don’t make films,” he snarled, “I make movies, dammit!”
    I’m sure the moneymen bankrolling Bluebeard could relate. Produced — finagled? — by the pre-Superman team of Ilya and Alexander Salkind, Bluebeard defies the ‘films’ of its time (figure anything from Truffaut to Bob Rafelson) by sticking to the antiquated forms of a 1940s gothic mystery/thriller tainted by the 1960’s unfortunate move toward ‘camp.’
    Richard Burton is simply ridiculous as the ladykiller — ten minutes into this and I could only hope he was paid handsomely for his efforts — inches away from twirling a fake moustache and muttering “Bwa-ha-ha!” to his unsuspecting brides. Who all look wonderful, by the way — the movie… er, ah, film is a Playboy pictorial come to life, its nude scenes causing quite a stir back in the day. As you can see from the poster above, some are shot, some are suffocated, two are “chandeliered,” one is “falconated,” and Raquel Welch plays a nun. All under the guidance of sanctimonious hack Edward Dmytryk. If only Buñuel could’ve gotten his hands on this thing.
    In an inspired feat of programming, our co-feature for the evening is Ted Post’s The Baby (1973), a deranged reaction to Women’s Lib. Its predominantly female cast keeps the titular male in a state of infantilism, in diapers and a crib even though he’s pushing twenty. Anjanette Comer plays the social worker out to upgrade the lad, much to the chagrin of his sisters (Suzan Zenor and a radiant Mariana Hill) and mother (Ruth Roman, looking all Joan Crawford with her eyebrows and cigarettes). To divulge any more of this mishegas would be criminal.

    

The mercenary position

Best known as a master cinematographer — you can see some of his finest imagery in Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948) — but Jack Cardiff’s career as a director is a very different kettle of fish. He made a respectable version of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1960), a serviceable Shirley MacLaine comedy in My Geisha (1962), and worked with John Ford on Young Cassidy (1965), a biopic about playwright Sean O’Casey. Then there’s the other side of Jack Cardiff, where a proclivity for cheap dime store novels and Saturday matinees may preclude serious academic consideration: Scent of Mystery (1960), the first and only picture ever shown in Smell-O-Vision; the kitschy Viking warrior epic The Long Ships (1964), complete with Sidney Poitier in pointy, upturned genie shoes; The Liquidator (1965), a humdrum faux-Bond affair; Alain Delon wooing Marianne Faithfull with deep purple prose in Naked Under Leather (1968); and the ripe mad scientist shenanigans of The Mutations (1974).

    Falling somewhere in the middle of all this, and now available on DVD-R from Warner Archive, is Dark of the Sun (1968), wherein Cardiff takes off like Sam Fuller on steroids. Following a band of mercenaries led by Rod Taylor and Jim Brown, hired by Calvin Lockhart to retrieve a gaggle of whites under attack and millions in diamonds deep in the Congo, the picture plays like a two-fisted, barrel-chested homage to the tawdry men’s adventure magazines of the day: Stag, True Men, Argosy, etc. — a popular genre which died sometime in the 1970s with the softening of earlier definitions of masculinity.

    Based on a novel I haven’t read by Wilbur Smith, Cardiff and screenwriters Ranald MacDougall and Adrien Spies sidestep standard movie conventions. They plow through the scenario’s three-day mission with verve, pausing the action only long enough for intelligent banter about duty and honor versus whoring one’s soul in the midst of a country’s political freefall. (Taylor’s bead on the trickle-down effect of globalization corrupting the Congo’s warring factions is a progressive observation for the time.) When the action resumes, it’s often brutal and pulverizing: the rape and slaughter of innocents, fistfights fortified with machetes, chainsaws and bayonets, sweaty, rootless men driven beyond the breaking point. During two scenes in which Rod flips out on a neo-Nazi opportunist played by Peter Carsten, the actor seems moments away from having a nervous breakdown.

    There’s reason to believe the new video is missing a few scenes, notably between Taylor and Yvette Mimieux, whom he rescues along the way; promotional stills suggest a brief romantic subplot that’s not onscreen. (If you’ll recall, Yvette played Rod’s Weena in The Time Machine in 1960.) Remastered from a print and not the negative, the new DVD looks acceptable but has a slight audio fade that’s sporadically detectable. Despite these misgivings, however, any opportunity to see Dark of the Sun is well advised.

Update: On their Twitter page, Warners claims the DVD-R is uncut and not mastered from a print.

Above and below, original ads and art details by Frank McCarthy; click images to enlarge

Will I ever see this hanging in the lobby of my local multiplex?

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The Powers That Be have opted to remake The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, even though the original version is just two years old and, to me at least, a perfectly satisfactory work with a standout performance by Noomi Rapace in the title role. Of course, that picture was Swedish, so those gosh darned subtitles are an imposing chore for America’s “slow readers” and illiterates. Filling time while Barbara Broccoli sorts out the tangled finances of the next James Bond movie, Daniel Craig stars as Blomkvist and Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth. It’s under the direction of David Fincher, which could be a blessing or a curse.

Silicone boobs and brass bras

Film director Terence Young (1915-1994) had an undistinguished career in the 1950s British cinema, but fell in with the original perpetrators of the James Bond franchise and soared to international prominence in the 60s. There’s no question that his three most famous pictures will always be Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965). Perhaps a falling out with Cubby Broccoli and/or Harry Saltzman, the double-ohs of 007, secured his rather curious fall from Bond: the all-star drug smuggling mediocrity The Poppy is Also a Flower (1966); hitting pay dirt with Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin in Wait Until Dark (1967); blundering into David Lean territory with the interminable Mayerling (1968); the nearly surreal Red Sun (1971), samurai Toshirô Mifune saddling up in the Old West with Alain Delon, Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress and Capucine — I shit you not; again with Bronson for The Valachi Papers (1972), when the star was on his commercial roll; from the age of Mandingo, Young braved the southern fried KKK exposé The Klansman (1974), with Lee Marvin, Richard Burton, Cameron Mitchell… and O.J. Simpson “as Garth”; reunited with Audrey Hepburn for Bloodline (1979), streamlined kitsch via Sidney Sheldon; directing the first and only picture produced by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Inchon (1981), a famous disaster, impeccably cast; and the dry espionage of The Jigsaw Man (1984), Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine and the anti-Sleuth.

    Therefore, in the center of this mishegas, it should come as no surprise to find War Goddess (1973), one of the more fascinating deviations of its time. A throwback to those sweaty, wretchedly dubbed Italian sword-and-sandal/peplum epics from a decade earlier, it takes place in an all-female city of Amazon warriors — the insignia on their flag looks like the Bat Signal — who live under enforced lesbianism save for the one day of the year when the male Greek army piles in to knock ‘em up and propagate the race.

    Its color has faded, the image muted from age, the dubbing sucks, and the version that’s on DVD and Netflix streaming is a full-frame affair, the scope and breadth of some shots now the property of one’s imagination. Still, War Goddess is amazing on so many foul levels, its dialog teetering on What’s Up, Tiger Lily?-style witticisms (“Have you tried Oriental concentration?” “Only on Orientals!”), and an adventure that snakes into enough truly bizarre territories that I wouldn’t be surprised if Herman Mankiewicz wrote it over one feverish night it in the throes of a drunken tear. It’s that good… and bad.

    But the presence of Young’s name in the credits (indeed, it’s on the screen as Terence Young’s War Goddess) serves to underline the tumble from past glories. This is, after all, the guy who made From Russia With Love: what happened? Despite a cast of literally, well, a thousand, mounted and robed and on horseback, and battle scenes that may have impressed on the big screen, War Goddess carries the stink of Poverty Row by way of Cinecittà.

    Young borrows from his famous catfight scene in From Russia With Love, two healthy specimens engaged in nude knock-down, drag-out hot oil rasslin’ that reverberates with the 1950s S/M cheesecake of Irving Klaw. And there’s enough nudity to suggest this is a truncated version minus whatever soft core porn transpired between the statuesque Amazon Queen and the wisecracking King of Greece, a sword-wielding stand-up comic with no shortage of comebacks. No matter how dire the production, there’s never a dull moment.

Netflix streaming

Tie-dyed utopian dreams: La Vallée

Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon strike a pose in a publicity photo for La Vallée, click to enlarge

La Vallée (The Valley [Obscured by Clouds]) Produced and directed by Barbet Schroeder. Cinematography by Néstor Almendros. Edited by Denise De Casabianca. Music by Pink Floyd. Filmed in Techniscope and Eastmancolor. 100 minutes, released in 1972 by Les Films du Losange. Cast: Bulle Ogier (Viviane), Jean-Pierre Kalfon (Gaetan), Michael Gothard (Olivier), Valerie Lagrange (Hermine), Jerome Beauvarlet (Yann), Monique Giraudy (Monique), and The Mapuga Tribe and its Chiefs.

When Barbet Schroeder’s La Vallée was released in the United States in 1978, it was already six years old. Originally distributed in Europe in 1972, the film had all the ingredients for a cult hit in those heady times when marijuana smoke filled more than a few American movie theatres: a cast of young idealists and societal dropouts searching for nirvana, esoteric drug use, open sexuality, and a music score by Pink Floyd, recorded shortly before their signature hit, Dark Side of the Moon.

    The belated release unfortunately missed the peak years of the ‘midnight show,’ the short-lived market that buzzed with druggy concoctions along the lines of El Topo (1970) and Eraserhead (1977). I first saw La Vallée in 1978 at the Valley Art theatre in Tempe, Arizona; and again a year later at San Francisco’s Strand, paired on both occasions with Schroeder’s More (1969), an erratic portrait of heroin addicts featuring what is, without question, the finest performance in Mimsy Farmer’s checkered career. At the time, given my patchouli-and-tea shades state of mind, La Vallée struck me as the work of a kindred spirit. From its opening shot panning over the mountains of New Guinea, set to the Floyd’s pulsing instrumental theme, the picture held me spellbound.

    The producer and distributor of work by Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Barbet Schroeder made his directorial debut with More, co-writing it and La Vallée with Paul Gégauff, an author whose screenplays often delved into pet themes of dual natures and conflicting personas within the individual — the efforts of a man perhaps ill at ease in his own skin, or carrying a deep seated distrust of others: René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960), from Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, wherein a jet set wannabe consumes his well heeled role model; and a long string of pictures for Claude Chabrol, among them Les Biches (1968), in which a neglected sex partner loses her identity when morphing into a superficial copy of her alpha lover. Both of these pictures have similar scenes of characters believing they’re ‘transforming’ in front of mirrors, while effectively highlighting the lines separating one being from another, masters from servants.

The American release poster; click to enlarge

    In More, Gégauff traces the transmutation of a hot tempered wanderer into a strung-out junkie attempting to take root in a secluded Spanish village with a woman unstuck in reality. In La Vallée, it’s the gradual evolution of a capitalist bourgeois into a free spirit shedding all ties to conventional living. The pressbook for the film offers this synopsis:

    Viviane is an uncomplicated young woman married to the French Consul in Melbourne. Her interests lead her to New Guinea in search of the near-extinct Bird of Paradise feathers, which she plans to send back for sale to Paris boutiques.
    At Lae, a coastal town, she meets Olivier, a young adventurer who is about to leave with some friends on an expedition into bush country. Gaetan, the head of the expedition, reveals his secret goal is to discover an unknown valley in the phantom regions of the island which is still nothing but blank spots on the map — “obscured by clouds.”
    Only the natives suspect its existence but do not dare explore it — for it is there that the Gods live.
    Despite her misgivings, Viviane joins the expedition — to find her feathers. She wavers between doubt and fascination, hesitates about continuing and gradually discovers other visions of life outside her own. Her exposure to the lush environment, Papuan rites and instinctual love, pushes her further than her companions. As the search continues into the unexplored regions, the horses are abandoned and the expedition is stripped to the essentials.
    At the point of exhaustion, they see a valley.

    On the one hand, I doubt that Gégauff bought the concept of heaven on earth, if he ever believed in heaven at all. In the quasi-autobiographical Une partie de plaisir (1975), a film written by and starring the author under the direction of Chabrol, we’re given a glimpse of him as a Hemingwayesque control freak making life miserable for his wife and daughter — who, incidentally, are played by his actual (second) wife and daughter. (Not long after its release, Gégauff was stabbed to death by his first wife.) But the Chabrol film also indicates that he was probably an alcoholic; and addicts, being what they are, habitually dream of some imaginary plateau where they can flee from responsibility and accountability.

Valerie Lagrange, Ogier, Kalfon and a Mapugan tribesman; click to enlarge

    Also included in the pressbook is the following interview with Barbet Schroeder, conducted in 1971 by filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier:

Why this film after More? This film seems also to be a trip.
    In one shot of More, I had La Vallée in mind: we see a chart of the human brain. The areas still unknown to modern science are left blank. The hero comments: “The brain is like a map of Africa: still largely uncharted. It is in these blank spots that the highest functions of reason and creativity take place.” At the beginning, La Vallée was the story of a woman’s discovery of life and pleasure. But pleasure is a serious thing, full of anguish, which has no ultimate direction but a relationship with death. One must pay for it, one must “leave some feathers.” The two films realize a transformation and a journey of characters who try to push themselves to the limit, with all the risks which that involves.

What is your position in relation to the characters?
    I am no longer interested in classic heroes; documentaries, reportages, whether ethnologic or not, have taught us to look at individuals in a different way; their intensity of existence and their truth have taken precedence over psychology and “characterization.” I make no value judgments of my characters any more than of the natives, and I tried to keep the same distance in filming both, leaving them to develop freely. A caricature would have been too easy. Certain roles did not develop at all. Rather than typing them with a few specific traits, I preferred that they should be like people one encounters in life, whose presence one feels without knowing anything about them, but whom one would like to know.

Ogier and mudmen; click to enlarge

Why New Guinea? Why this expedition?
    Because New Guinea is the last unknown. It is one of the only places on the globe where there still remain some unexplored regions, some blank spots on the map. It is also one of the last places where tribes can be found whose way of life is still close to Upper Neolithic. Only enlightened adventurers, spurred on by the need to seek out their origins, could have undertaken this search for a legendary valley. In another era they would have been mystic peasants, like those in the films of Glauber Rocha.
    The hippies are the only contemporary movement which has produced a lunatic fringe filled with a spirit of adventure. I have tried as much as possible to eliminate all gratuitous hippy folklore in order to better describe a certain way of feeling. It would have been senseless to draw from the magnificent characters of the great American adventure stories, from Hawks to Hemingway, from The African Queen to Green Mansions, from H. Rider Haggard to Mogambo. . .

How much is improvisation, and how much is scripted?
    Everything concerning the mountain tribe is obviously improvised, and a number of other sequences are partly improvised. In general we always tried to improvise, even within written scenes, but following the established structure scene by scene.

Are you trying to establish a relationship between people who are searching for a kind of primitivism, and the primitives themselves?
    No, because there isn’t really much, except on the initial, warm, intense level of human beings who meet and, curious about each other, exchange gifts and hospitality. Beyond that, misunderstanding inevitably encroaches between a group which is the product of our industrial society and a tribe in the process of slowly emerging from the Stone Age.

How do you define this film?
    All along, I’ve tried to keep as many meanings as possible, in order to avoid the possibility of leaving the film open to a single definition. What interests me, as John Huston says, “The pleasure of the journey itself rather than the goal.” It’s up to each individual to decide whether or not he wants to conclude that his dream of returning to the bosom of nature is a sad utopian vision, and a flight from the self and its implications in society.