La Clé sur la porte

1978, France, directed by Yves Boisset

Though it caught me eye because it features Patrick Dewaere, this is very much Annie Girardot's film -- as enlivening as Dewaere is, he doesn't appear for a good half hour, by which time we're deeply invested in Girardot's character, a lycée teacher who also functions as a kind of de facto youth leader for the various local teens friendly with her daughter. It's a very affecting portrait of a woman trying as hard as she can to create a reasonably sane space for her adolescent charges, whether formal or informal, and the sense of the shared bonds of community is both effectively sketched and quite convincing. Boisset wisely resists the temptation to portray Girardot in saintly terms: she's not immune to the errors of judgment, but she's also grounded by a strong ethical sense, and it makes for an compelling portrait of late-1970s French society, still negotiating between poles of adult authority and youthful liberation.

Adieu au langage

2014, France/Switzerland, directed by Jean-Luc Godard

A film that's very much in keeping with later-period Godard: dense, narratively confusing, potentially pretentious/infuriating/illuminating, visually magical (and certainly not populist: I was 50% of the audience for this screening). It certainly resists any easy categorization, and it's not a film that's going to please someone motivated by narrative progression and resolution more than anything else. For me, it's hard not to be impressed by the vitality of an artist constantly trying new things no matter what stage of his career he happens to be at: here, the experimentation is especially obvious on the visual level, with the director make intriguing use of a wide range of cameras. The different equipment generates a strikingly varied set of outcomes, from very grainy, almost lo-fi pictures to crisp and astonishingly detailed close-up shots depending on which camera he chooses. As David Bordwell suggested in a post recently, Godard is interested here in visual texture in a way that seems more familiar from painting, and as such it's no accident that he includes a variety of shots of palettes, brushes and paint (and finds visual equivalents for these in other places, such as the coat of the dog we see throughout the film). Inevitably, Godard also uses 3D in ways that no commercial filmmaker would imagine, most notably when he splits the two cameras required for 3D filmmaking and has each follow a different bit of action (if you close one eye and then the other you can flip back and forth between the two images, editing them in whatever sequence you'd like yourself). The first of those instances was, to my mind, the most successful for a number of reasons: it worked quite naturally with the onscreen action as well as having the element of surprise, and it had me laughing with delight. 

Tchao pantin

1983, France, directed by Claude Berri

1983 was the high point of Coluche's not-all-that-distinguished cinematic career, between this film, which won him a César, and Bertrand Blier's La Femme de mon pote, loosely based on Coluche's own complicated private life (and particularly his relationship with Patrick Dewaere, originally supposed to play opposite Coluche in the latter film). Very few directors seemed to have known what to do with Coluche's raucous, populist comic persona -- while their comedy is quite different, it reminds me to some degree of the challenge that Robin Williams' manically energetic improvisation posed to directors right through the 1980s. Like Williams, Coluche could tone it down when required, sometimes to rather syrupy effect, but here the tone stays spare and generally unsentimental. Claude Berri is no cinematic innovator but the first half of his film is strong, sketching in the tentative and spiky friendship that develops between a night-shift petrol station attendant and a young North African (played by Richard Anconina). The second half proceeds in an increasingly obvious and rather less credible direction, despite the welcome insertion of Philippe Léotard, though this is partly due to the structure of the picture: we go through the first half of the film with essentially no information about Coluche's character except for a loose architecture that allows us to project a variety of troubles on him, and the second half fills in a good deal of the missing detail. Coluche doesn't have to display an enormous range but he does jaded very effectively, his downbeat demeanour well-matched with the overall vibe of Paris noir. 

Les Vécés étaient fermés de l'intérieur

1976, France, directed by Patrice Leconte

A fine example of a bad film that remains interesting for all kinds of extra-textual reasons, not least the list of collaborators (on both sides of the camera). For the most part, I'm a Patrice Leconte afficionado so there's some automatic interest in seeing where the director got his (feature-length) start, however inauspicious, though it took his career some time to recover after this débâcle. His next film, Les Bronzés, is no masterpiece but it is a good deal more coherent than Les Vécés, and is certainly a better reflection of the comic spirit of the times. 

In theory, the earlier film had many of the right ingredients -- co-written by a writer (Gotlib) from the comic book tradition, a key source for 1970s comic cinema, and very much anti-establishment in spirit; starring a new entrant on the acting front (Coluche), with his own anti-establishment credentials; and backed up by an experienced actor (Jean Rochefort) who was nonetheless very sympathetic to many of the emerging trends, but who ended up absolutely detesting the film (thankfully he forgave Leconte a decade later for Tandem and several further pictures).

Between them, though, they managed to deliver an extraordinarily flat, old-fashioned picture, with the blame very much on the writers/director. The jokes are often thuddingly obvious, and visually the film has very little to offer. Very, very occasionally, there's a brief snippet of some interest -- two or three shots in the early going that might well have been snipped from a Wes Anderson film, but that's about it.

The other big problem is Coluche, though I'm not sure if he himself is the problem or whether Leconte needs to take the blame here, too. Very, very few directors made good use of the actor in his relatively brief cinematic career, and almost no-one managed to make good comic use of him. My sense is that his persona was fundamentally much better-suited to sketch comedy rather than film comedy, where it frequently comes across as rather wearing. 

I'm indebted to a fascinating French-language blog post at Le Broccoli qui Tousse for some of the biographical details.

Love Brewed in the African Pot

1980, Ghana, directed by Kwaw Ansah

Kwaw Ansah was the victim of some awful timing, starting his cinema career just as Ghana's cinemas went into terminal decline in the early 1980s: the arrival of the VCR combined with an extended curfew to close many of the venues that were already struggling after a decade of economic upheaval. There is almost no hint of that offscreen turmoil, though: the film is set at a vaguely-defined point shortly after independence and focuses on the confrontation of tradition and modernity (intermingled with issues of social class). Like Sembène, Ansah is blunt about the ways in which many leading figures in post-independence Africa echoed their colonial predecessors, even striving to emulate them (thus the tragi-comic figure of the father with his pith helmet and his insistence on certain forms of dress and address). For the most part, Ansah displays a fine observational eye for the tensions between different views of the world, zeroing in on the distaste of the educated elite for traditional observances (a theme that was common in Ghanaian newspapers of the 1950s), though the film shifts gears quite radically in the final twenty minutes, and the move to a more consciously Shakespearean/metaphorical register is jarring.

Nous ne viellirons pas ensemble

1972, France, directed by Maurice Pialat

Pialat worked with major film stars for the first time on Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble but the transition is seamless, and he extracts a performance of exceptional complexity and humanity from Jean Yanne, despite the character's overtly boorish aspects. Indeed, it's rare to see an actor embrace an unsympathetic part quite so fully: one scene of physical abuse is the more distressing for the sense that real people were hurt in the making. The filming process surely influenced Yanne's subsequent turn, at least in the films he made as a director, to a lighter register, quite a departure after a decade with Chabrol, Godard and Pialat. The rhythm of the film is beguiling despite the subject matter of an extended breakup: there's a sense of a pendulum swinging in ever smaller arcs as the inevitable outcome approaches, and yet there's no hint of the melodrama that often accompanies such a scenario. Indeed, the prevailing tone is one of deep melancholy, even tragedy for characters who struggle to communicate at the most fundamental level despite their constant verbal interactions. 

Une si jolie petite plage

1949, France, directed by Yves Allégret

I've little to add to David Cairns' excellent overview, which was prompted me to seek the picture out in the first place. It's another fine entry in the cycle of desperately downbeat films produced in post-war France, films that are impossible to read as anything other than part of the struggle to come to terms with the country's recent past. The conclusion here is especially bitter, though perhaps it's only from the depths of the abyss that renewal can come.

Mille soleils

2013, Senegal, directed by Mati Diop

A beautifully moving companion piece to Touki-Bouki, though it functions well in its own right even for those who haven't seen the Mambéty film as a kind of confrontation between a man's present and his past (though the context is very different, it occasionally made me think of Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing). The opening shot is especially good, bringing together a whole range of themes -- modernity/traditional culture, movie stardom/reality, a love and celebration of the cinema -- in one place, while the film as a whole provides a useful insight into current inter-generational tensions in Senegal. 

Among the Living

1941, US, directed by Stuart Heisler

An entertaining genre mashup, blending horror plotting with noir-ish camerawork in a manner quite characteristic of the period -- Siodmak's Son of Dracula, for instance, has equally striking camerawork in certain passages. This film has some exceptionally vibrant scenes, and the tracking shots through town are especially good -- unusually mobile and quite effective as a means of dramatizing the mental state of the character they accompany. The extended bar/dancing scene put me in mind of another Siodmak film, Phantom Lady: Elisha Cook Jr's frenzied drumming seemed of a piece with the nightmarish vision of entertainment on offer here.

The Killing of Angel Street

1981, Australia, directed by Donald Crombie

Despite its flaws, Phillip Noyce's Heatwave is a much more interesting take on events surrounding and succeeding the disappearance of Juanita Nielsen in 1975: this a prosaic film, saddled with a dreadfully obvious soundtrack and a weak romantic subplot. However, Liz Alexander, in a very rare lead role, is generally strong as the primary character, growing in conviction as the film develops and proving very convincing at the finale.

Frozen

2013, US, directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee

The last remaining 4-year-old in America has now seen Frozen, and a lot of 2013/2014 Halloween costumes suddenly make much more sense.

Born to Kill

1947, US, directed by Robert Wise

As brisk and brutal as The Sound of Music is lengthy and overblown (which is not to say I don't like the latter film). Lawrence Tierney gets more screen time than usual even if his role is very similar to his standard tough guy fare and he's given a run for his cold-hearted money by Claire Trevor. They both watch Walter Slezak walk away with the film, though: he's quite brilliant as the self-interested detective quick to sense the chance to maximize his own opportunities. By contrast, as much as I enjoy his weaselly presence in other films, I couldn't quite figure out Elisha Cook, Jr's purpose here: his character seemed more narrative device than actual person and at times he comes across rather awkwardly as one of Tierney's inner voices, surely not the intended effect.

Tangled

2010, US, directed by Nathan Greno & Byron Howard

Adieu poulet

1975, France, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre

Pretty formulaic stuff that's beset by mismatches: Francis Veber is hardly the best candidate to script a gritty, ripped-from-the-headlines politico-police story, though why director Granier-Deferre didn't simply abandon some of the more slapstick elements is beyond me. Ventura is solid in a role that demands nothing of him -- he's far more interesting in L'Emmerdeur or Garde à vue, from roughly the same period -- but to my mind Dewaere, an actor I generally worship, is miscast. His energy works wonderfully well in other films but on this occasion it makes him seem as though he has breezed in from another picture entirely, one that's more satire and less exposé. The film's most enjoyable quality is the portrait of Rouen as political quagmire: there aren't many films set in the Normandy city, and for all of his conventional qualities Granier-Deferre is almost always strong on atmosphere and location.

Garou-Garou, le passe-muraille

1951, France, directed by Jean Boyer

A routine 1950s Bourvil vehicle, taken from a Marcel Aymé short story that is heavily watered down in this telling -- the Occupation-era story finishes in literal suspense, of a deeply discomfiting nature, whereas this postwar version is a sometimes slapstick romantic comedy despite Bourvil's awkwardness around women. Some of the dialogue is zesty enough, most likely due to the presence of Michel Audiard, and Gérard Oury co-stars, years before he turned to directing.

Crocodile Dundee

1986, Australia, directed by Peter Faiman

A textbook example of making a film for the global market while retaining some local colour, with everything that implies both negative and positive: Paul Hogan's script does a fine job of collecting and repurposing all manner of Australian tropes (the bushman, attitudes to the law, Aboriginals' status) without actually saying much about any of these subjects except lifting an amused eyebrow, while the film gleefully embraces the sexist/racist/homophobic asides so common in Hollywood cinema of the 1980s. The New York nightlife scenes, in particular, are cringeworthy, though the early going does retain a good deal of charm, especially when John Meillon is on screen.

Man in the Shadow

1957, US, directed by Jack Arnold

Jeff Chandler versus Orson Welles hardly seems a fair fight, but Chandler holds his own in this fine example of the politically-minded B picture (though it's a B purely in terms of the lack of top-shelf stars rather than in its ambition). The allegory isn't far beneath the surface, though the politics are still a touch muddled -- even the characters sympathetic to the investigation of a migrant worker's murder aren't quick to use disparaging terminology. The whole thing looks absolutely spectacular: the black and white CinemaScope is used to excellent effect, exploiting both the format's capacity to show the widescreen landscapes and to pack a good deal of information into the frame in sequences on the ranch sets where much of the action occurs.

The French Connection

1971, US, directed by William Friedkin

Interesting as a compare/contrast pairing with Serpico on New York police procedures of the 1970s, as well as the overall attitude to the law by those on the enforcement side. There's more than a little celebration of the vigilante in the film, and it's tough to know whether such tactics were a (legitimate?) response to the New York streets of the era, or very much part of what made them so dangerous in the first place. Hackman catches the eye, but Scheider is the unsung (acting) hero.

Lucy

2014, France, directed by Luc Besson

Hardly surprising that Besson takes the lessons of the Besson school and applies them with considerable force: fast plotting, breathless/kinetic action, a dash of humour, plus an engaging actress. It's everything you'd expect from a production line of considerable talent.

A Most Wanted Man

2014, UK, directed by Anton Corbijn

Absorbing, but all a little too obvious in the end: untrustworthy American spies, espionage agents with troubled personal lives (or no personal lives at all), deep cynicism as to the way of the world, wintry colour schemes are all present and correct. By contrast, the Hamburg location is distinctive and used with great skill -- there's a real sense of the events happening in a very specific place, while the contrast between neighborhoods and social classes is sketched in economically. It's hard to resist the temptation to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in his own final spiral given his character's physical state though I suspect that this says more about Hoffman's qualities as an actor than his actual situation during filming.

Hunted

1952, UK, directed by Charles Crichton

A fine postwar thriller, with Crichton showing himself at least as adept at atmospheric material -- the nighttime scenes in and around Bogarde's flat are especially good -- as he was with comedy. The narrative moves along very briskly, with the central section a kind of proto-road/buddy movie. Bogarde moved with extraordinary ease between genres in the 1950s, equally convincing as a former sailor, doctor, colonial farmer or war hero.

Serpico

1973, US, directed by Sidney Lumet

Watched as a companion piece/complete contrast to The Parallax View: visually and performatively the films are worlds apart even if they share a strong sense of place (New York here, the Pacific Northwest there). I've never been the world's greatest Pacino fan as his tendency to go big always seems to be present just under the surface, though this is a performance of considerable commitment and conviction with no attempt to smooth out Serpico's contradictions and confusions.

Duck Soup

1933, US, directed by Leo McCarey

A nice way to start the New Year, but a better way to start a life at the movies: this was Shay's first full film at the cinema and he loved it. Of course, when you're not-quite-four it's hard to figure out whether it's the popcorn, the funny seats, the evening out, the soda, the film itself or a bit of everything that is most important but for the most part Shay was an attentive audience member and had plenty of questions afterwards about the onscreen action. He thought the ending was completely crazy -- well, it was -- but his favourite scene was the wonderful "mirror" sequence, clearly a hit with the rest of the crowd too based on the laughter I heard behind me.

Silver Linings Playbook

2012, US, directed by David O. Russell

A film antic enough that we could almost believe we had a wild New Year's Eve instead of packing the kids off to bed so we could watch a rare full-length film without getting up exhausted; wonderful chemistry between the leads, though, of that real movie-star wattage.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

2014, US/New Zealand, directed by Peter Jackson

A fairly satisfying conclusion -- although the title pretty much describes what happens, even if we had a hard time keeping track of the exact number of armies involved -- to a somewhat unsatisfying trilogy. Still, it's hard to imagine going back to the well to watch this set of films again.

The Parallax View

1974, US, directed by Alan J. Pakula

Impossible to imagine this being made in anything like the same fashion forty years on -- there's no way the combination of downbeat tone, paranoia, and astonishing visuals would emerge from the studio system these days. Still one of the most unsettling films of the 1970s, even if much-imitated.

Love Affair

1939, US, directed by Leo McCarey

Most of the films I watched over the past few months are getting short shrift, though I feel a bit more guilty about not giving my full attention to this one: I can't figure out if that's the reason why the film didn't sing for me nearly as much as other McCarey films from the same time period. The stars are charming and the plot complexities quite satisfying but the downbeat tone was a little wearing at times in comparison to the lightness of touch on offer in other films, even those with a poignant overall message.

Mission: Impossible

1996, US, directed by Brian De Palma

Seen again for the first time since the cinema release, as a follow-up to reading David Bordwell's excellent blog post on visual storytelling. I'm not a big De Palma fan but for the most part the film remains quite fresh nearly twenty years on, unlike many of that year's other big hits (Independence Day, Twister, Jerry Maguire, The Rock, all of which seem more and more obviously formulaic); the set-piece above is especially good, though the TGV-set finale shows its age a good deal more.

The Desert of the Tartars

1976, Italy/France/Germany, directed by Valerio Zurlini

A viewing inspired by Judy Dean's excellent consideration of the film as part of David Cairns' 2014 Late Films Blogathon. It has mythical-colonials aspects that pair it very well with the near-contemporaneous Le Crabe-tambour, also featuring Jacques Perrin, though few films can compete with the astonishing locations of Zurlini's film. The picture is imbued with a profound sense of the absurd, with the protagonist discovering that his longer-for escape from the stifling life of the provincial nobility is, if anything, even more constricted with rules. It's also an exceptionally subtle work, with the days becoming months and perhaps even years through a very careful, discreet use of elision; the same discretion marks the film's attitude to death, generally turning away and allowing the characters to their own fates. The cast is quite remarkable, and Vittorio Gassman looks more than ever like something hewn from a Roman coin.

The Awful Truth

1937, US, directed by Leo McCarey

Just as perfect as on many previous viewings, with the exception of the very final shot, which comes in sharp contrast to the resolutely non-mechanical interactions of the rest of the film.

The Babadook

2014, Australia, directed by Jennifer Hart

I spent the three months from December 2014-March 2015 making a final push to finish my PhD. In had little time to watch films and even less time to blog about them -- and I suspect that for want of brain space, many of the films I saw during that period will be too quickly forgotten, though director Jennifer Hart's supreme control over her material, and her film's extraordinary soundscape, will linger for quite some time.

He Walked By Night

1948, US, directed by Alfred L. Werker (and Anthony Mann, uncredited)

A fine procedural, in that 1940s docu-fiction mode that came complete with narrator, although the staging by Werker, Mann and cinematographer John Alton is more than strong enough to stand on its own, especially the atmospheric sequences in unusual, semi-desolate Los Angeles locations. The minutiae of the police investigation is fascinating and conveyed very crisply: Jack Webb has an especially nice part as the key tech man, but the scenes of interrogation also have a brisk rhythm that still allows time for the minor performers to sparkle. There's no mystery to the identity of the criminal: we spend a great deal of time in his company, with the tension coming instead from the gradually closing net. The template was, of course, carefully followed by television in the 1950s, including Webb's Dragnet, but it's also the skeleton for big-budget fare like The Day of the Jackal a quarter-century later.

Un Singe en hiver

1962, France, directed by Henri Verneuil

A meeting-of-the-generations picture, the only time that Gabin appeared with Belmondo, the most iconic actor of the New Wave, and their distinctly different styles work very well here: Gabin's mostly disciplined technique -- there's a good deal to Farran Smith Nehme's comment that Gabin lets the action come to him, both in the film she's discussing and in his broader career -- contrasts with Belmondo's bundle of nervous energy, although one of the film's great pleasures is the way that the two quite different actors move toward the centre as their characters develop an unlikely friendship. The pair seem to have an entirely unforced camaraderie onscreen, though Belmondo suggested in an interview that Gabin barely spoke to him when he wasn't delivering a line; the magic of the movies, indeed. Verneuil is not an especially innovative director, but he did have a fine sense of how long to allow a scene to play out, and the set pieces are especially well-calibrated -- drunken antics can easily become tiresome, whether onscreen or off, and Verneuil knows just when to cut away to the next scene while still indulging our desire to see the actors play broad strokes. After the fun, the ending is surprisingly poignant -- something of a rueful hangover and yet invested with a great deal of affection.

Cars

2006, US, directed by John Lasseter

I've seen the beginning of this a half dozen times with my older son -- and heard the beginning another half dozen times while driving -- so it was mostly just a relief to find out where the story went. As with most Pixar films, I find the artistry extraordinary but the overall effect so calculated that it leaves me a little cold.

Le Chat

1971, France, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre

A brutal film that has virtually no violence -- though animal lovers should beware -- as Gabin and Signoret embody the daily realities of a marriage that has long-since collapsed into a horrible kind of co-dependent enmity. At one point, Gabin flicks a folded-up piece of paper at Signoret in lieu of more civilized communication, but it feels as though he has delivered a slap. Both actors are in fine form, navigating a horrible kind of waltz around each other, both within the home that seems increasingly small and on the streets of the compact neighborhood where they can't help but cross paths. The neighborhood, on the western fringes of Paris, functions as an effective metaphor for the collapsing relationship: the film was made right at the time when entire quartiers were being razed to make room for the edifices of La Défense, and the background construction creates a maddening modernist soundtrack.

L'Année sainte

1976, US, directed by Jean Girault

This is a contribution to the fifth annual Late Show blogathon, hosted, as ever, by David Cairns at Shadowplay.

The final card in many careers is a dispiriting one: there really aren't that many people who go out on a genuine high, and Jean Girault's lightweight comic fable about two escaped prisoners disguised as members of the clergy was never likely to restore Gabin to the glories of old. In truth, the actor seemed to have been playing out the string for more than a decade by the time the end came. The 1970 Simenon adaptation Le Chat, starring opposite Simone Signoret, was one of his best postwar films, as Gabin himself recognized, but it's a rare highlight for the period after 1963, which marked the close of the second great phase of his career (perhaps not quite as glorious as the pre-war phase, but fine nonetheless, with even the lesser films brisk and well-constructed and with Gabin still magnetic despite the advance of middle age).

The saddest thing about L'Année sainte is how diminished everything seems. Gabin had been convincing in roles far beyond his years since at least the early 1960s where the role called for it -- he's quite brilliant as the apparently retired politician of Le Président, for instance -- but here he is very visibly decrepit himself. The sequence where the camera lingers on him as he struggles with a a set of stairs would seem almost cruel if had been shot by a more skilled director, whereas in Girault's case I suspect that it just didn't occur to him to do anything more creative.

Gabin was never an especially vain actor onscreen -- he makes no attempt to conceal his jowled face or his ample belly in something like Un Singe en hiver, playing opposite Belmondo in his absolute prime -- but the passage of time never seemed like a distraction in such roles, and in many films he projected a continued energy that belied his chronological age, with the decisive, overbearing farmer of La Horse perhaps the exemplar in terms of his later career, although he shows quite the turn of speed in Un Singe en hiver when running from exploding fireworks.

But Gabin is only a symptom of the larger malaise, in which the overall cheapness of the enterprise is revealed by the frequent shots of an airplane with obviously different logos depending on whether it is shown in flight (in the livery of the fictional Air Italia) or taking off (when it's interchangeably a Pan Am 'plane and a KLM airliner). Such technicalities wouldn't seem so significant except that they are so glaring, as if to signal that the filmmakers have virtually nothing invested in their product.

The same is true of the appearance of the glorious Danielle Darrieux. There's no real reason for her character to exist since she barely contributes to the plotline, but once the filmmakers invent her they barely trouble themselves actually do anything meaningful with the actress, one brief, nostalgic scene between Gabin and Darrieux perhaps excepted.

As with half a dozen of his later films, Gabin shares the lead with a much younger actor, on this case Jean-Claude Brialy, although unlike Gabin's film with Belmondo or the several pictures he made with Alain Delon, Brialy is mostly called on to react to Gabin rather than to do much of interest himself. It was hardly the most glorious of decades for Brialy, either: he made very few films during the 1970s, after a great run from the late 1950s through the end of the subsequent decade, and this is at best a forgettable entry in his filmography, though the line where Gabin summarily rejects a third cellmate on the basis that he's gay acquires a certain frisson from the knowledge that Brialy was comfortably out far earlier than many actors.

It's tempting to read a greater degree of meaning into some of the other lines, too, particularly Darrieux's comments about having known Gabin's character in his pre-war glory, while there are perhaps allusions to Gabin's mortality -- nothing too surprising, given that he had suffered from health issues for several years, and indeed hadn't made a film for a couple of years by the time this opportunity came along. If the film doesn't mark a glorious ending to Gabin's career, it does at least have an amusing finale, and Gabin gets to deliver the payoff line with a flash of the old energy that made him so compelling across four decades.

Incidentally, Jean Girault has his own Late Films story, as something of a career-ending specialist: he died during the filming of Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes, the fifth and final entry in that series of astonishingly popular films that starred Louis de Funès, which also became de Funès's last picture since the actor died a few months later. De Funès marks roughly the edge of the boundary of my enthusiasm for French popular culture: he's an actor whose appeal often eludes me, especially when he is not paired with another, less rubber-faced performer (he was excellent with Gabin and Bourvil in La Traversée de Paris, though). His final film was hugely popular in its year of release, but I could barely make it past the half hour mark, blogathon or not.

Razzia sur la chnouf

1955, France, directed by Henri Decoin

A tough, and tough-minded, film -- laconic in its brutality, and once you've seen the ending, deeply unsettling in its view of right and wrong. Gabin is at the height of his postwar powers, entirely convincing as the gangster taking over a drug operation after a previous operator proved disloyal to the boss, and dealing with the unpredictable men charged with dispensing violent internal justice (most notably Lino Ventura, who is mostly called on to be a distilled version of the carved-from-stone type he played so frequently in those years). This is the strongest work I've seen from Henri Decoin, both in terms of content and shadowy staging: the tone is more consistent than in any of the other Decoin films I've seen, and when the director slows the rhythm down it's with purpose, adding nuances of shade to Gabin's character in particular.

La Horse

1970, France, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre

The first of two films Gabin made in quick succession with Granier-Deferre, the second being  Le Chat: both pictures feature Gabin characters absolutely unwilling to deviate from their self-appointed paths, and neither of them especially sympathetic. Here, the actor plays a prosperous Normandy farmer dealing with an unwelcome intrusion from the criminal underworld -- and while he's an unpleasant martinet in his dealings with his family, the same qualities seem to act in his favour when dealing with uncompromising thugs. I suspect that Granier-Deferre is attempting to make some kind of point about the social climate of the time, in which defenders of a certain kind of France dealt with the threat represented by the 1968 generation, although the director's thinking is muddled enough that no-one, and especially not Gabin, comes off looking good from the encounter. The actor manages to get through the entire film on the strength of essentially one expression, which is entirely consistent with his character, and in the face of the almost complete lack of reaction or willingness to deal everyone else has little choice but to compromise.

Le Président

1961, France, directed by Henri Verneuil

Although based on a Simenon novel and imbued with a good deal of tension, Le Président is a political film rather than a crime piece, and one that's deeply rooted in the realities of French political life between the twenties and fifties, particularly the country's chronic political instability. Gabin plays the retired elder statesman who is still connected to current political life, and he's at the top of his game -- he plays nearly twenty years older with a great deal of ease, as an entirely convincing amalgam of various French politicians (Clemenceau being the most obvious reference point). It's a rare film that's quite this interested in the intricacies of political manoeuvring, and it helps to have a passing familiarity with ways in which governments were formed and dissolved in France, but the performances are ample compensation in themselves, with Bernard Blier especially notable in support. 

Cops and Robbers

1973, US, directed by Aram Avakian

This one would never have made it past the Hays Code: altogether too much unpunished crime, and worse, there's an insouciance about the thumbing of noses to the authorities -- which is exactly what makes the film rather pleasurable. It's nothing like as strong as Avakian's later 11 Harrowhouse although it does share some of the same shaggy dog spirit and it's hard not to enjoy the constantly jawing protagonists whatever their attitude to the law. The 1970s New York setting is used to the full, with Avakian finding original settings for much of his action, and building up a rich backdrop of distinctly local visual and aural detail. 

Maigret voit rouge

1963, France, directed by Gilles Grangier

A straightforward Maigret adaptation: the dialogue is more Audiard-esque than Simenon, while the plot casts the Europeans as gangsters in a fairly genteel register in comparison to their more violent American counterparts. Still, Gabin undoubtedly lifts things: he has a wonderful eruption late on that's perhaps not entirely in keeping with Maigret's character but allows the actor a little bit of a stretch, and he draws the eye every time he's onscreen.

Heatwave

1982, Australia, directed by Phillip Noyce

Like Noyce's earlier Newsfront, this is strong on ideas but not always entirely convincing in execution, partly on this occasion because of the imbalance in acting talent: Judy Davis is a formidable performer cast in a no-nonsense role, and pairing her with the rather pallid Richard Moir in a milquetoast part was always going to be a tricky marriage. In addition, Davis's story, as a journalist/activist in the complex political terrain of a major Sydney building project, is a good deal more interesting than the moral qualms that Moir navigates, although that narrative does give some additional insight into the shadings of grey attendant on any politically sensitive undertaking. Visually, Noyce does a fine job -- the very striking scene when Moir drives to the scene of a fire is a good example -- with his camera doing a good deal of quite mobile work that serves to accentuate the overall thriller vibe. I also liked the sense of connections only partially made, to ensure that the viewer remained an active participant; in an interview Noyce remarked on this as something characteristic of the time in which it was made, and that he'd probably be asked to make things a good deal more emphatic if he made a similar story now. 

Petersen

1974, Australia, directed by Tim Burstall

With Alvin Purple director Burstall at the helm, I anticipated a film far more ocker in spirit than the reality, which is more social commentary than broad laughs, consistent with the 1970s oeuvre of writer David Williamson. It's by no means a perfect film in terms of its social attitudes -- among other flaws there's a reasonable amount of what a later viewer might call "mansplaining" in the title character's interventions on behalf of feminist groups, something that's characteristic of Williamson's writing more generally.

As acute as he is in examining the Aussie male of the 1970s and 1980s, Williamson is a good deal less clued-in (or perhaps less interested) when dealing with the Aussie female, and the conclusion is, to say the least, rather jarring: it's difficult to say whether the brutal event or its insouciant aftermath is more unsettling. Jack Thompson is quite brilliant in the lead -- it's not at all hard to see why he became a star on the strength of this and the subsequent Sunday Too Far Away. There's something amazing in seeing an actor transform into something more than just an actor before your eyes: I was distracted by Errol Flynn in Captain Blood for exactly that reason -- not only is he visibly becoming "Errol Flynn," but he knows it full well.

The Sapphires

2012, Australia, directed by Wayne Blair

A bit of a genre mishmash, crossing Good Morning Vietnam with The Commitments and adding a dash of Rabbit-Proof Fence, with the result about as confused as you might expect, and miles away from the true story that inspired the film. The film is a good deal better on Australian soil than Vietnamese, with the outback setting quite nicely evoked in both its positive and negative aspects, while the actors, particularly Deborah Mailman and Chris O'Dowd, are both energetic and effective. There are some very amusing moments in the first half, too, as the musical act slowly takes shape, and before the film enters bumpier territory with respect to the Vietnam war backdrop.

A New Leaf

1970, US, directed by Elaine May

I couldn't quite decide whether it was my sense of humour or an unfamiliarity with Elaine May's work, but it took me a while to get into her gently scathing satire, with its two richly-drawn central characters, played by May herself and Walter Matthau. The latter is highly enjoyable in a buttoned-down mode, but the real revelation to me was May's apparently substantial influence on Wes Anderson. I think it says a great deal about the relative oblivion into which May has fallen that this connection isn't made rather more often. I remember David Ehrenstein commenting somewhere that in a sense Anderson's great obsession is the preservation of good manners in all situations, and Matthau's character in particular could very easily slot into a Wes film. Visually, I was on the fence, though: the film certainly seems quite typical of its time period, with striking -- even grotesque -- closeups, although sometimes this has terrific comic effect, particularly in the shot where Matthau reacts with great alarm to the possibility of an ample bosom being unveiled in his direction.

Double Indemnity

1944, US, directed by Billy Wilder

I hadn't seen this for years, and it looked quite wonderful on the big screen. As much as I remembered the performances, particularly the against-type turn from Fred MacMurray, I had forgotten just how spectacularly sour the film is -- a disturbing portrait of two people who deserve each other in the worst possible sense. It's a film that casts a long shadow, too -- it's not hard to find traces of the flinty personalities across the Atlantic a couple of years later, in fare like Macadam.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

1973, US, directed by Peter Yates

A very fine Boston film, one I can't believe I'd allow to escape me for so long. I've an ongoing correspondence with a film-loving friend, and this film provoked one of our few mild disagreements: where he was lukewarm owing to the faded "insouciance and swagger and magnetism" this was, for me, precisely what makes the film compelling, the viewer's awareness of the star's past greatness functioning as a very useful backdrop for a character who is a mere shell of himself. It's also an absolutely fascinating picture of early-1970's Boston, with Yates's outsider eye as useful here as it was in San Francisco a few years earlier for Bullitt. At times, the procession of low-rent diners and bars -- and low-rent patrons -- reminded me of Cassavetes circa Minnie and Moskowitz, although the tone is quite different.