StopSmiling

Friday, October 06, 2006

October DVD Roundup: A Rollicking Italian Comedy of Unmarriage, plus Hell Below and Hell on Earth

Seduced and Abandoned (1964)
Directed by Pietro Germi
(Criterion)

Jigoku (1960)
Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
(Criterion)

On the Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Juarez (2006)
Directed by Steev Hise
(Illegal Art)

The Loved One (1965)
Directed by Tony Richardson
(Warner Home Video)

Reviewed by Gabriele Caroti, Josh Tyson and James Hughes

*****

Seduced and Abandoned (1964)
Directed by Pietro Germi
(Criterion)

Reviewed by Gabriele Caroti

The sweat on Italian actor Saro Urz??s brow ? a symbol of dishonor and desperation ? is the recurring image in Pietro Germi?s Seduced and Abandoned, the second effort out of the comedy gates from the neo-realist melodramaturge turned commedia all?italiana auteur. The drops of sweat are so indelible that they are the obligatory touch on the cover illustration and menus of the new Criterion DVD release, where the drips and Urz??s nervous twitching eyes are actually animated.

During the Sicilian dog days of a July afternoon, while plump and doting Matilde (Paola Biggio) ? ?Look at how nice and fat your sister is!? her mother proclaims ? is sleeping on the divan for siesta, young Peppino Califano (Aldo Puglisi), her fianc?, seduces innocent yet sensual and leggy younger sis Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli) ? ?You?re spindly as a spider!? ? and, as expected, all hell breaks loose. From the moment the tryst is discovered, paterfamilias Vincenzo Ascalone (Urz?) is a desperado on a mission to cover up the imminent disonorata in a society obsessed with honor. He?s a man obsessed and locking up Agnese in an attic room and only letting her out when nature calls is the least he can do, and it buys him some time to go on a rampage to the Califano family.

Whereas Germi?s comedy debut and massive Oscar-winning international hit Divorce Italian Style battled the feudal misogynistic marital laws, Seduced attacks the laws of consensual sex. These are summed up when Peppino decides that he doesn?t want to marry Agnese (thereby saving both families? honor) solely because he slept with her, and declares, ?I want a virgin for a wife! Pap?, would you have married mam? if she?d done what Agnese did with me?? Clarinet-playing nebbish dad Califano (Rocco D?Assunta) forcefully proclaims, ?It?s a man?s right to ask and a woman?s duty to refuse!? Germi?s comedy is a biting critique of machismo and a serious indictment of the practically prehistoric Italian legal system. The director leaves no stone unturned: when Ascalone drives three hours to the closest lab to have his daughter?s urine tested (after he procures it by force, of course) and the doctor tells him he has to wait a few days, he leans in and whispers, ?Listen? my cousin is Judge Randazzo?s brother?s lawyer.?

The impeccable HD transfer shows off the ultra-monochrome cinematography by Aiace Parolin, reminiscent of the photography of the mezzogiorno by coeval still photographer Alfredo Camisa. And the characterization under Germi?s direction in Seduced is impeccable ? Sandrelli is Agnese, perfecting her role as Mastrioanni?s all-encompassing desiderata in Divorce. In the superb supplemental interview Sandrelli speaks eloquently about her role while coming off as incredibly down to earth and humble about her experience; to prepare for her role, Germi made her watch Chaplin movies. Urz? rises to the top as the Italian character-acting titan of the era simply based on this role, a massive achievement which rivals Alberto Sordi. It?s a shame he isn?t a household name (not that Sordi is one, either...).

The rest of the cast is fabulous: from nerdy, id-driven, college-bound Puglisi, to Agnese and Matilde?s handsome yet weepy figlio di papa bro (Lando Buzzanca) recruited to kill Peppino (?You?ll get a maximum of three to seven years ? it?s a crime of passion!?); from Matilde herself and her mother (Lina La Galla), to the sleazy-lawyer cousin (Umberto Spadaro) and his querulous maid (who while serving the coffee tells how she always has trouble going to the bathroom), to even the na?ve rookie northerner carabiniere.

Seduced and Abandoned comes from a story by director-screenwriter Luigi Comencini (Bread, Love and Dreams, The Scientific Cardplayer) and was written by Agenore Incrocci and Furio Scarpelli, a writing duo who branded themselves Age-Scarpelli ? a sort of Glimmer Twins of postwar Italian commedia screenwriting, responsible for the classics Big Deal on Madonna Street, The Great War, Mafioso, later The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and a whole slew of films for the Italian literal prince of comedy Tot?. As evidenced by his interview on the DVD, Scarpelli is sprightly and still working ? he also wrote Il Postino, for better or for worse. A mini-masterpiece, Seduced and Abandoned suffers slightly ? and I do mean slightly ? in its pacing compared to the chef d??uvre that is Divorce Italian Style, but I can still safely say that it?s one of the greatest comedies ever made.

*****

Jigoku (1960)
Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
(Criterion)

Reviewed by Josh Tyson

The first two thirds of Jigoku are just plain weird: hyper-stylized opening credits featuring bongo-drum cool jazz and women in various states of undress with their faces hidden all butt up against a spooky monologue on youth?s fleeting nature and the inevitability not only of death but of atonement for one?s sins. Then there unfurls a tangled love story with pulpy, noir overtones. Dopey college student Shiro (Shigeru Amachi) is wracked with guilt after riding with his immoral friend Tamura (Yoichi Numata) and leaving a hit-and-run accident; while rushing to the police station to confess, Shiro inadvertently causes his fianc?e?s untimely demise. Shattered and wallowing in drink, Shiro is suddenly called away to visit his father and sick mother in a retirement home populated by all sorts of unsavory folks (and one savory doppelganger for his fianc?e). Eventually, the whole damn cast ends up following him out there for one fucked-up anniversary party: Tamura, the accident victim?s disgruntled lover and mother, and the fianc?e?s parents.

The last third of the film, though, is divinely weird: having died en masse, the ensemble suddenly finds themselves stuck in hell (?Jigoku? in Japanese), forced to atone for their sins in a variety of grisly ways pulled from Genshin?s Ojoyoshu, a detailed account of the Buddhist version of Hell written in the 10th century.

These are disgusting and disturbing to be sure: heads ripped off, teeth bashed in over and over and over, the mad with thirst forced to drink their own pus, skin removed and flesh seared. But for Shiro in particular, psychological torment is the order of the day. Not long after Enma, the king of Hell, a portly devil in kabuki makeup who sits in judgment of all who ?slither into the underworld,? makes Shiro look into the all-knowing mirror and see his sins, the young man meets his fianc?e by a river. She informs him that she was pregnant when she died. Their unborn baby has been born in hell, and Shiro embarks on a frantic quest to rescue the infant as she floats down a river of, wait for it, blood.

This is a film absolutely intoxicating in its idiosyncratic strangeness. All of the striking camera angles and colors that punctuate the seeming randomness of the time on earth flower in Hell, building a sumptuous cornucopia of gore and philosophical musings on the wretchedness of humankind. It?s a visceral stew that bubbles gloom and spews doom but yields a reduction that is moderately upbeat ? one that suggests that for some, there may be a way out of Jigoku after all.

*****

On the Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Juarez (2006)
Directed by Steev Hise
(Illegal Art)

Reviewed by Josh Tyson

The numbers and methods surrounding the murders of women in the Mexican border town of Juarez since 1993 are so savage and dizzying that it seems odd to try boiling it all down in a 58-minute documentary. So rather than focus on the sordid details of individual cases, On the Edge: The Femicide in Ciudad Juarez looks at the myriad factors that helped create a situation where scores of women ? estimates range in the 400s ? have been abducted, raped and murdered, while their killers are treated with impunity or never even pursued.

Steev Hise?s film explores how backwash from NAFTA, combined with extreme poverty, has led to a rise in drug trafficking and how that lucrative trade?s reliance on violence to settle disputes has fostered a matching climate of brutality. Meanwhile, the tendency among many Juarez factories to hire only women has created vitriolic animosity amongst unemployed men. (The reasoning behind the practice is debated; the manufacturers contend that women have more delicate hands, while others argue that the country?s social structure has made women submissive and therefore more manageable.) Finally, corruption at all levels of government has marred the attempts of the resulting victims? families to obtain justice.

Drawing commentary from activists, lawyers representing victims? families, journalists, a history professor and mothers of slain women, the film creates a reasonably forceful narrative, though there are two frustrating elements: wordy statistics often appear on screen while subjects are delivering detailed information; and a ceaseless hissing, pulsating, and nervy soundtrack makes the skin prickle to the point of mild distraction. These problems should be overlooked, however. On the Edge seems less concerned with aesthetics than with functioning as a primer. The film is packed with useful information about femicide and the desperate situation in Juarez, suggesting that people interested in learning more should visit the city. It also offers alarming perspectives on bigger issues like immigration and the "war on drugs" that are often taken at face value.

Perhaps the most chilling long-term observation comes from Charles Bowden, author of Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future, who likens the murdered girls to ?canaries in a coal mine?: ?The future you?re wondering about, that the politicians are describing as ?wonderland,? has been working on the ground in Juarez for close to 30 years...You don?t have to speculate. You can go there and touch it, and it?s a cardboard shack on a sand dune with no electricity and no running water, and in that shack are human beings that work forty-four hours a week in American-owned factories. The future is here.?

*****

The Loved One (1965)
Directed by Tony Richardson
(Warner Home Video)

Reviewed by James Hughes

At the twilight of the ?60s, when A-list actors began baby-sipping the Kool Aid of the youth culture and indulged in ensemble movies based on ?hot books,? the results were often disastrous. In lopsided oddities like Candy (1968) and Myra Breckinridge (1970), the participants, who wanted desperately to be dug, fell flat on their faces, despite the richness of the source material. But on the cusp of that particularly slippery trend of recruiting marquee names to promote blue literature was John Calley, the maverick producer who made his bones as a champion of offbeat projects and would one day run both Warner Brothers and Sony Pictures. In the mid-?60s, as rules of censorship were loosening, Calley recognized the cinematic possibilities of The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh?s celebrated satirical novel from 1948, and recruited Christopher Isherwood and Terry Southern to adapt the screenplay ? a world-class pairing of script doctors if ever there was one. Calley also slipped a dog-earred copy of Waugh?s book to Haskell Wexler, the gifted, politically motivated cinematographer who would soon emerge as the Pontecorvo of Chicago. Wexler ultimately shared a producer credit with Calley on The Loved One, but is remembered more for the film?s exquisite, tack-sharp black-and-white photography. At the center of this counter-culture dream team ? which also included Hal Ashby as editor ? was Tony Richardson, the director of such starched social commentaries as The Entertainer (1960) and A Taste of Honey (1961). Richardson, fresh off his Best Picture win for Tom Jones (1963), was looking to cash in on his newfound power, and the result was one of the most potent comedies of the New Wave.

The film is seen through the eyes (and bangs) of the English chap Dennis Barlow (Robert Morse), a na?ve, aspiring poet and ?artificial insemination donor? who is a dead ringer for Nigel Tufnel, complete with Roman Polanski?s Paramount-era moptop. (On the thinly populated but informative DVD supplemental documentary, Trying to Offend Everyone, Morse, an American, admits that every one of his lines required looping: ?Some days I?d have an English accent, and some I?d sound like the batboy for the New York Mets.?) Over the opening credits, Barlow squirms in his seat as he descends into ?the world famous city of Los Angeles? on a TWA airliner. On the runway, Richardson presents what appears to be a nod to Dr. Strangelove, released a year earlier, which famously opened with the mid-air coital re-fueling of B-52 bombers. Pushing the sight gag one step further, Richardson lingers on the gleaming nose of the plane before zeroing in on the phallic Jetway ramps as they penetrate the airliner from both the front and the rear. (The title sequence isn?t the only brush with Strangelove: the film is stitched with Terry Southern?s hilarious barbs that portray corporate executives and the military as obsessive, scatological deviants, and Jonathan Winters delivers a command performance, Sellers-like, in multiple roles.)

The ultimate fish-out-water, Barlow soon connects with his aging uncle, Sir Francis Hinsley (John Gielgud), a regal and adored artist who is in fact viewed as a washed-up hanger-on by the studio-heads he frequently pesters. After discovering that his token office at Megalapolitan Pictures has been occupied by a clueless exec practicing his putting, Hinsley catches the hint that he?s no longer wanted, and Barlow soon discovers him hanging by the neck from the high-dive above his drained, decrepit swimming pool. (While viewing the image of the suicide, which splashes across the front page of the newspapers, one of Hinsley?s snobbish English mates remarks: ?Bad form! These pictures in the press. That dreadful pool with cracks in it!?)

What begins as a seemingly conventional wind-up of the Hollywood studio system soon digs deeper ? quite literally ? into the dark recesses of the undertaking business. The idyllic setting that becomes Hinsley?s eternal resting spot is the sprawling, all-purpose necropolis Whispering Glades, and it?s Barlow?s job to see that his forgotten uncle is properly celebrated in the afterlife. The only problem is that Whispering Glades seems to lavish an eerily excessive amount of attention on its dead. Each occupant is deemed a ?loved one,? or, in the case of Hinsley, ?the strangulated loved one for the gothic slumber room? ? at least that?s how he?s referred to by the polymorphously perverse embalmer, Mr. Joyboy, played with near-orgasmic relish by the great Rod Steiger. Even a milquetoast like Barlow is seduced by the strange sexual energy of the place, and he?s soon sneaking kisses of marble statuette?s breasts and courting the particularly morbid cosmetician, Aimee Thanatogenous (Anjanette Comer). The setting of a kinky mortuary is like putty in the hands of Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood: ?Whattaya say, gang? Last guy in the box is a bad boy!?

The genius of the film is that it predicts the pseudo-theologies of the L. Ron Hubbard set that would one day yoke Hollywood?s most vulnerable and inbred royalty. In the sinister, quasi-religious world of The Loved One, the pathetically thin curtain that masks Whispering Glade?s sinister inner-workings is where Richardson and his players have all the fun. Things go wonderfully haywire when the proprietors of the inestimable land on which Whispering Glades sits engage in a form of city-planning that makes the rolling black-outs that Enron traders willfully inflicted on ?poor grandmas in California? seem like mere child?s play. It?s best to leave the mind-bending plot-twists to the viewer, but suffice to say that when the blessed Reverend Glenworthy promises ?celestial serenity? for his institution?s inhabitants, he certainly means it.