Walkabout: Criterion #10

"Walkabout" is an often disorienting experience that offers the audience a bare amount of exposition. There is a violent unsettling act early in the story of wilderness survival that sets the story in motion, but is never explained. The question of why is important, but not knowing the answer is just as necessary and in not providing an answer director Nicolas Roeg is stretching our brain muscles and
removing the safety netting. We start the movie disoriented, lost and this is a deliberate choice by its creator. "Walkabout" is a dangerous movie about seemingly irrational acts of violence and the violent and rational cycle of life played out in nature. It's also about man's uneasy relationship with the frequently violent natural world and how this relationship defines us.

Nicolas Roeg is a master craftsman who in this film is more comfortableconveying meaning through montage than filmed conversation. "Walkabout"opens with a dialogue-free tour of modern-day (circa 1960s) industrial Australia. Machines click clack, cars honk, and butchers slice withcold mechanical precision. Even the film's lead (played by JennyAgutter and referred to as Girl in the credits) is trapped in a mechanical role as she and her classmates steadily drone and sputter in a classroom voice exercise. The modern world is cold, angular, gray, impersonal. Contrast the cold grays of urban Australia with the brilliant rust-colored sands of the film's wild outback setting. These are two vastly different worlds and successfully moving from one to another proves impossible for everyone in the movie.

The film's simple story finds actress Jenny Agutter and the director's young son Luc Roeg abandoned in the Australian outback and details their attempt to survive. During their journey they meet a helpful Aboriginal teenager on his walkabout, a rite of passage where a young man is left to the wilderness to survive on his own. A nagging question tugs at us throughout the film as we wonder if the Aboriginal teen is irreparably harming his quest as he becomes more involved in the lives of the two city dwellers. As the trio wanders through the wilderness, the children, who arrived in the outback in formal school uniforms, slowly shed their outfits as they begin to adapt to the natural world.

As mentioned, "Walkabout" is a story about violence and Roeg's film is filled with much violent efficiency as insects strip down carrion, rust reclaims abandoned mining outposts, men slaughter wildlife for sustenance and sport, and the native peoples of the outback pick over a burnt and abandoned automobile. Those who would claim "Walkabout" is a simplistic fable about returning to nature and living simply neglect how unforgiving the outback is in the film. It readily consumes anything that stands still. Life in the wilderness is short and brutal, but Roeg does seem to be saying that the trappings of modern life are noise that distracts us from our finite nature and inevitability that the land will one day reclaim us for its own.

The existence of the British interlopers is simplified as they focus on the essential concerns of finding food, water, and shelter. In an existence stripped down to essential needs, a sexual longing quickly develops between the Aboriginal teen and the girl he is shepherding through the wilderness. Roeg's treatment of this inevitability is frank, insistent, and sure to make many viewers ill at ease although it never seems forced or unnatural. This is a film about being guided by essential needs when removed from the concerns of modern existence. Roeg's frank examination of sexuality is more anthropological than titillating.

The film is finally beautifully elliptical. "Walkabout" is about cycles--renewal, destruction, repeat. The film is bookended by unsettling deaths the causes of which the movie does not explain, but which can be readily discerned by the attentive viewer. "Walkabout" works on a basic emotional level while viewing it, but then expands in significance after the film is turned off and reflected upon. "Walkabout" may be a hard film to love as it is deliberately disorienting and holds that life is brutal and short. But it is a film that is hard to not to appreciate as one peels back its layers after viewing. Most multiplex bon bons quickly pass from memory once we have stepped outside the theater, but "Walkabout" plants itself firmly in the brain and lives on long after the movie has ended.

A great work of art and essential viewing.

Hard Boiled: Criterion #9

There is no subtlety whatsoever to John Woo’s “Hard Boiled” the follow-up to his action melodrama “The Killer.” “Hard Boiled” strips away much of the previous film’s labored sentiment and replaces it with insane action set-pieces involving babies in peril, motorcycles exploding in midair, and hundreds of thugs and cops flying through glass windows. So many glass windows. Yet “Hard Boiled” is also insanely fun in its ludicrousness. There is not one shred of realism in this go for broke, surprisingly gory, action extravaganza, and we are thankfully spared much of Woo’s heavy handed take on the duality of man, nature of evil, and spiritual concerns. There are also blessedly no doves whatsoever in this film. Woo’s films are better when he keeps his rote, superficial philosophizing to a minimum and lets his flair for berserko action take center stage.

The plot is simple if not always coherent. Rogue super cop Tequila (Chow Yun-Fat) is out to avenge the death of his partner at the hands of Triad gun smugglers. While gunning down mob thugs, Tequila comes face-to-face with an undercover cop, played by Tony Leung, who is continually forced to compromise his own values in order to remain undercover. In Leung, Woo is able to examine his favorite theme of man being neither completely good nor wholly evil, but unlike in “The Killer,” “Hard Boiled” doesn’t dwell on this theme interminably and the film is the film is stronger for it.

John Woo, a Christian, displays substantial gore in this film with many highly stylized shots of arteries being severed followed by blood splattering onto faces, glass windows, and white walls. The heroes and villains also possess an insane tendency to create mayhem in the midst of crowded restaurants and hospitals where innocent bystanders are picked off quickly and by the hundreds. Had the film been a mainstream US release, its gory action scenes would have assuredly caught the attention of congress persons displaying election year “what about the children” concerns about media violence. The berserk violence of “Hard Boiled” is not an afterthought, though. It is, instead, the point of the whole bloody exercise. Remove the film’s stylized bloodletting and it would lose its pulse.

Maybe it says something about this viewer that Woo’s restrained by comparison and morally concerned “The Killer” came off as lackluster, while the more bloody, less talky cut to the chase “Hard Boiled” struck me as a wildly successful genre exercise. “The Killer” had a classical tragic story arc while the story of “Hard Boiled” is mostly a device to deliver mayhem. But “The Killer” was frequently heavy handed and Woo spends much of his film developing his hero’s thin personalities. Character development does not play to Woo’s strengths. He is at his best when choreographing death and destruction.

Woo makes several appearances in “Hard Boiled” as the owner of The Jazz Bar where Tequila plays tenor sax after hours. He is the film’s moral voice and offers meta-commentary on the action, but never overstays his welcome. These are light mostly insubstantial moments that clue you in to the fact that “Hard Boiled” is more concerned with obliterating man than examining his soul.

Next Up: Nicolas Roeg’s “Walkabout.”

(John Woo wanted Chow Yun-Fat play a jazz musician in “The Killer,” but producers balked at the lead’s embrace of this American art form. Jazz enthusiast Woo, though, got his wish with “Hard Boiled” and he features a long opening sequence where super cop Tequila wails on his sax.)

The Killer: Criterion #8

I came to John Woo's "The Killer," a Hong Kong production, after having seen much of his American work including the sublime "Face/Off"--a film I love not in spite of it's insanity, but because of it--and the regrettable sci-fi action drudgery of "Paycheck." In my mind, "Face/Off" was the perfection of the Woo asthetic--bullet ballet, good/evil versus evil/good, maudlin sentimentality, gun battles on the beach, gun battles in church, and doves. Lots of doves. Those films that came before it were warm-ups and those after were tired retreads.

But no proper consideration of Woo can be properly made without seeking out his most critically acclaimed works "The Killer" and "Hard Boiled"--we'll get to that one next--starring frequent Woo leading man Chow Yun-Fat. Those critics who came to "The Killer" in 1989 unfamiliar with the director's work were no doubt impressed by his unique action sensibility that lovingly frames bullet wound upon bullet wound as injured bodies fly through the air and through conveniently placed panes of glass. Surrounding the violence is a story that is unapologetically melodramatic acted out by classic types: the renegade cop, the hit man with a conscience and the wilting chanteuse who loves him. In "The Killer," she is blind, but is the only one who sees the good in him.

By 2009, Woo's style has been heavily imitated, parodied, and fully integrated into the American action movie aesthetic. "The Matrix" being a prime example. Watching "The Killer" now is not nearly as invigorating as it must have been to its initial audience. We can't help but see it in part as an artifact. Just as watching "Psycho" won't have today's seen-it-all jaded horror fan fainting in the theater, "The Killer" won't substantially impact those raised on Woo imitators. Woo has done himself no favors by endlessly recycling the same visual tricks in so many of his later films. The ill-placed doves in the climactic moments of "Paycheck" invited derisive howls.

"The Killer" is an exercise in style and as a result fails to engage on a basic human level. The endless parade of canon fodder who continue to fall in lovingly rendered scenes of carnage make no connection with the viewer. They are a means to a bloody end. They arrive in wave after wave never providing a substantial challenge to conscientious killer Ah Jong (Chow Yun-Fat) and arch-rival Inspector Li-Ying (Danny Lee). Jennie is forever helpless, always getting in Ah Jong's way, but providing him with the desire to go straight, a desire which proves problematic.

Ah Jong and Li-Ying are super human taking down wave after wave of machine gun-toting baddies and are only really challenged in the climax when the screenplay demands it. Is such a hero even interesting? When the hero is seemingly invulnerable what's to keep the audience worried and therefore invested in the film. John Woo does spend a fair amount of screen time exploring the fact that good and evil live in everyone and that a hero or villain can be both a good guy or bad guy, but the conversations that spell out this ideas are blunt, repetitive, and uninteresting.

The film does have a dynamite sequence, however, involving a political assassination that is tense and that concludes with a stand-off in a hospital emergency room where a little girl's life hangs in the balance. It's the film's high point and shows Woo at the height of his powers. There's greater economy in these moments. The action is tighter and there is no heavy handed dialogue to weigh it all down.

Did I expect too much from "The Killer"? Was I expecting the wrong things from the film and asking it to be something it was not? Possibly. It's not the first time the melodrama and simple characterization prevalent in many Asian action films have bored me. Two recent examples being "Tears of the Purple Tiger" and the critics' darling "Triad Election." Maybe I am failing to appreciate the genre for what it is. Maybe I'll have a better idea after our next installment John Woo's "Hard Boiled." Stay tuned.

A Night to Remember: Criterion #7

Fifty years after its release, "A Night to Remember" can't help but have lost some of its impact. In telling the story of the sinking of the Titanic, the film is hindered by budgetary and special effects restrictions that make the whole enterprise frequently seem stage bound. Those coming of age in the 1990s are apt to think James Cameron got here first and it's impossible to watch Roy Ward Baker's take on the tragedy and not constantly compare the two films. Baker has more human, compelling characters, but for sheer spectacle Cameron edges out this quieter, very reserved, very British take on the disaster.

Director Roy Ward Baker's film is based on the book of the same title which was compiled from first hand accounts of the ship's surviving passengers and crew. Both Baker's film and Cameron's, in an effort to achieve veracity, depict many of the same incidents detailed in the book. This repetition makes Cameron's "Titanic" seem like a remake of the 1958 film which many still consider to be the definitive dramatic take on the subject. The two films are incredibly similar in their closing halves when the ship's musicians play on the deck of the ship while Molly Brown looks on from a nearby lifeboat as the ship's tail end slowly begins to rise high into the air. Unfortunately those who have encountered Cameron first won't be as surprised by the proceedings lessening the dramatic impact.

Baker's film, however, distinguishes itself with its very British point of view and its attention to detail. The first class passengers approach the impending disaster with great self-control and bearing. They are more apt to be perturbed than terrified. This is in part due to the fact that they believe the ship is unsinkable and the whole evacuation an unwarranted nuisance, but the film makes clear that their dignity and unflappability is a result of their class and nationality. It is the rabble in steerage--a mix of poor European immigrants and Irishmen--that react in panic. They are, in fact, closer to the rising water and not allowed up on deck until the first class passengers are tended to, but the film almost treats their tragedy as a noisy afterthought. The primary focus of the story is on how the moneyed British react to the growing doom.

Beauty and the Beast: Criterion #6

"Beauty and the Beast" is a fascinating adaptation of the Leprince de Beaumont fairy tale that tweaks the story's usual theme of love beyond appearance. In director Jean Cocteau's sumptuous fantasy, the Beast's appearance remains a constant hindrance to love throughout the story and Belle has difficulty looking beyond it. Disney's version, the most familiar to this viewer, finds Belle learning to love the beast for his character and eventually growing to love his unique, but not too beastly, appearance. Cocteau has something else in mind and uses the fairy tale to examine traditional notions of beauty and love. Belle is not quite the heroine we expected and the Beast is not rewarded in the manner we assume.

Cocteau explains his intentions in this letter to American viewers:

To fairyland as people usually see it, I would bring a kind of realism to banish the vague and misty nonsense now so completely outworn. My story would concern itself mainly with the unconscious obstinacy with which women pursue the same type of man, and expose the naiveté of the old fairy tales that would have us believe that this type reaches its ideal in conventional good looks. My aim would be to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that I summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: “And they had many children.”

I was therefore obliged to deceive both the public and Beauty herself. Slyly, and with much effort, I persuaded my cameraman Alekan to shoot Jean Marais, as the Prince in as saccharine a style as possible. The trick worked. When the picture was released, letters poured in from matrons, teen-age girls and children, complaining to me and Marais about the transformation. They mourned the disappearance of the Beast—the same Beast who terrified them so at the time when Madame Leprince de Beaumont wrote the tale.

So in "Beauty and the Beast," Cocteau is trying to be subversive and unpack traditional notions of beauty. Belle, more inwardly and outwardly beautiful than her wicked sisters--see Goneril and Regan--still is none too saintly as to rise above an enslavement to the desire for the traditional prize catch. Given that fairy tales are about the attractive ensnaring the attractive--beauty is the result of good character and vice versa--Cocteau's conclusion is likely to appear odd and unsatisfying after the first viewing. When Belle gets her handsome prince we are ill at ease and unsatisfied. I found it off-putting, but after reading Cocteau's letter, reprinted in part above, I am fascinated. He was being a provocateur trying to destabilize the ideological underpinnings of the fairy tale and, necessarily, our own facile desires. The seeming purity of fairy tales is a sham and props up a superficial beauty ethic.

Yet "Beauty" succeeds as a traditional fairy tale until its closing moments. Belle is far kinder than her sisters and chooses to put herself at the mercy of the Beast when her sisters refuse out of vain self interest. She is pursued by a strapping traditional hero type unworthy of her attention and greedy. Her quest finds her remaining in the beast's home, but more out of a desire to honor her father and out of respect and admiration, but not love, of the Beast. That this love never really materializes is confounding given our familiarity with the story. Cocteau is playing a devilish game.

When ever anyone enters the Beast's estate, the straightforward sunny film becomes dark and dream-like. Time slows down and characters float across the screen. Candelabras are represented by human arms poking through walls clutching candlesticks. (An obvious inspiration to Lumiere, Ms. Potts, and crew.) The Beast costume is convincing and surprising given my expectation of 1946 special effects. The film, whether the viewer appreciates its rhetorical aims, is too beautiful to miss.

And what do we make of the ending? Belle finally gets her handsome prince, but not as we expected. When the Beast changes it does not feel triumphant, but tragic. The Beast proves to be the film's most noble character and Belle a tragic figure for seeking out someone more palatable. Cocteau closes his film with a triumphant ascension to the heavens, but we feel loss and disappointment.

Is Cocteau successful in deconstructing our beauty ethic? It's hard to say yes when he's so clearly manipulating the audience, but it is a deft manipulation and done in a medium that honors beauty as a virtue. In the end it's a beautiful experiment that must be experienced and hashed over.

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel, Part III

Love on the Run

Having completed Truffaut's Doinel cycle, we've progressed from a powerful portrait of childhood cruelty in "The 400 Blows" to the affable, adequate romance of "Love on the Run." "Love" is hindered, however, by repeated flashbacks to the previous films. This does no "Love" no favors; when it jumps to scenes from "Blows," it instantly suffers in comparison and reminds us of the far better film.

When "Love" is not mired in flashbacks, it's a nice enough film. Antoine is now separated from Christine and pursuing record store employee Sabine (Dorothee). Sabine grows tired of Antoine's unpredictability and rootlessness and leaves him. Truffaut then throws us a welcome surprise by reintroducing Collete (Marie France-Pisier) of "Antoine and Collete." Now a lawyer, Collete spots Antoine running--as always--away from the courthouse after his divorce is finalized.

Collete finds a copy of Antoine's autobiographical commercial failure of a first novel and while reading it invokes several of the film's ponderous flashbacks. Collete does provide the film's most haunting scene as she recalls to Christine the tragedy that ended her first marriage. It's a jarring and effective moment in an otherwise average movie.

What are we left with at the end of "Love on the Run"? It hardly feels like we've learned much. Antoine has entered another relationship, which given his track record and restlessness, will likely fail. The series does not provide a definitive end with the film as it just sort of ends. Antoine is in love again. But for how long?

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: Part II

In which I sound like a Philistine...



Stolen Kisses

The first full length sequel to "The 400 Blows" is bound to suffer by comparison to the masterwork preceding it. "The 400 Blows" is one of cinema's greatest achievements, an indictment of child abuse and neglect that's hard to shake. It's follow-up, "Stolen Kisses", is a breezy, unfocused farce that at times seems hastily assembled. Reviewing the film I am reminded of the danger of undertaking a task of reviewing The Great Films. My dislike of them, or failure to "get" them, is more likely to reveal my ignorance than the film's flaws. I fear that I will be exposed as a Philistine. But here goes.

"Stolen Kisses" is not a bad film. But it is not a great one. Jean Pierre Leaud returns as the romantic Antoine Doinel and it is a testament to his charisma and charm that we continue to watch the series with interest despite its decline in quality. Doinel is still running everywhere, unlucky in love, bad at life, and still dreaming big. As noted before, the fact that Doinel emerged from "The 400 Blows" a relatively happy person is both a relief and--possibly this reveals a cruel streak in this author--a disappointment. "Blows" closing note of doom and sadness is bleak, but perfect and we can't but help feel that the film's coda is undermined by a sequel.

While "Blows" was wistful, "Kisses" is comic. It features the wacky misadventures of Antoine Doinel and more than a little mugging by Jean Pierre Leaud. We get to see him fail miserably as a private detective, hotel porter, and television repairman. These scenes of professional failure are often played broadly and Truffaut's direction seems at times rushed and uneven. The film's heart lies in Leaud's relationship with Christine Darbon (Claude Jade). As with Collete in the previous installment, Antoine is doted on by Christine's parents. Through them, he finds a semblance of the parental bonds he never had.

Christine and Antoine's relationship gives the film heart. It is pensive and sweet: the anxious Antoine attacking the demure Christine all while trying to figure out romance. While trying to snag Christine, Antoine will also find himself involved in an affair with a married woman who also offers him a lesson in romance and the fairer sex. This is the coming of age chapter of the Doinel cycle and it never quite coalesces into a pleasing whole. It's choppy and disappointing in light of its predecessor. Yet the performances by Leaud and Jade recommend the film and those who grew attached to Antoine in "Blows" will desire to follow his story further.



Bed and Board

"Board" almost becomes a great film, but is dragged down by a regrettable, forgettable romance between Antoine and a stereotypically exotic, distant Asian temptress. Christine and Antoine are now married and "Board" will focus on the simultaneous distance and close connection that marriage can create. Antione finds himself bored with his wife sexually--"Bed and Bored"--without the challenge of pursuit, but ultimately finds himself longing the connection and comfort he shares with his lover.

While "Kisses" featured a frequently slapdash editing style, Truffaut's direction in "Board" is fluid and dynamic. It opens with a delightful sequence following Christine's feet down a city street as we are cleverly introduced to Mrs. Doinel for the first time. "Kisses" is often chaotic and oddly directed while Truffaut appears to be in full control of this installment. The camera pans and swoops with precision and grace and the editing is concise. This film features some of the most assured direction of the series.

Much of the film's action takes place in Antoine and Christine's neighborhood: a collection of apartment buildings with windows and doors emptying into a shared courtyard. It's a small, boisterous community whose characters in their boisterousness and choleric temper recall a Fellini ensemble. While in this neighborhood, the film enchants, but then we are taken outside of it and into a regrettable storyline involving another dead end job for Antoine and a boring affair.

Antoine and Christine anchor the film and keep you watching. Leaud still charms and scenes late in the film when he realizes he loves Christine deeply, though his lust may have cooled, are touching and painful. The two portions of the film inside and outside the marriage are uncomfortably incongruous, but Truffaut's assured direction and the film's ensemble ultimately redeem the uneven film.

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: Part I

In this installment, we'll look at "The 400 Blows" and "Antoine and Collete," the first two chapters in Francois Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series:



The 400 Blows (1959) (Dir: Francois Truffaut)

Has there ever been a better first film?

Film enthusiast, critic for the influential French periodical Caheirs du Cinema ("Notebooks on Cinema"), and author of the auteur theory, Truffaut had already left a permanent impact on the cinema before he ever stepped behind the camera. As a critic, Truffaut passionately railed against what he considered the staid state of French cinema. Rather than critique from a safe distance, Truffaut entered the fray and changed cinema through iconoclastic example. He would become one of the leaders of the French New Wave" ("Nouvelle Vauge") which rejected traditional cinematic technique and subject matter.

After seeing Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," Truffaut was inspired to channel his love of film into a directing career. His first film is a cinematic treasure and is an indisputable part of the canon. Want to begin your own cinema appreciation journey? Start here.

Like many a first time novelist, Truffaut looked to his own past to create an autobiographical tale. The film's subject Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) would reappear in four Truffaut films each time played by the same actor. Antoine's story is very similar to the director's own life. A fatherless child, Truffaut was passed around from family member to family member then eventually reclaimed by his birth mother and stepfather. His guardians would tire of him, irritated by his delinquency, and hand him over to state custody and incarceration until he reached adulthood. Doinel, like Truffaut, would also spend a brief and and troubled stint in the French army.

"The 400 Blows" opens with an uninterrupted tracking shot that travels down a Paris street and escorts us into Antoine's world. It's an elliptical moment that will later be repeated in reverse when Antoine is taken away from home to become a ward of the state. It also prepares us for the film's continual restless movement. Doinel is always on the run away from home and school and onto the streets of Paris. This tracking shot is accompanied by a jaunty theme that increasingly becomes more sad and wistful. In these simple opening moments we are given clues to the arc of the entire film.

Like the film's musical theme, the first moments of "The 400 Blows" are playful. They resemble an "Our Gang" comedy as a classroom of thirteen year olds engage in mischief and are confounded by ruthless teachers and malfunctioning ink pens. Antoine, in a classroom full of goofballs, is repeatedly singled out by his teacher for correction and punishment. This continues at home where his mother and father are constant critics of Antoine and rarely offer positive reinforcement. Doinel, unhappy at home and at school, chooses truancy and constantly attempts to run away from his troubles. Antoine's early experiences, forced marching by gym teachers, running from authority figures, being confined by exasperated by adults, are later repeated in the more sinister setting of juvenile detention. In the film's haunting final moments, we glimpse toddler wards of the state placed in outdoor cages during recess at the juvenile detention facility. This, disturbingly, mirrors an earlier scene of adult prostitutes staring out from a holding cell as they await sentencing. "The child is the father of the man."

Antoine's mishaps are amusing at first, but as he is buffeted by adults at every turn, we begin to feel sympathy for the boy followed by pity and finally hopelessness. Doinel is an unwanted child. No wonder he runs. He is always a problem, never a blessing. There is, however, a brief respite for Antoine when he goes to the cinema with his parents. For Antoine, as for Truffaut, the movies offer a magical escape and a momentary chance for happiness.

"The 400 Blows" is a warning for parents and caregivers. It shows how neglect and constant negative reinforcement necessarily leads to a troubled adulthood. We are impacted by the tale, but not lectured. The film's final moments are haunting and leave Antoine stranded and alone. As he once again runs away from confinement, Truffaut keeps Doinel trapped in the frame. Antoine is moving but he is always in the center of the screen. He is running away, but still confined. And as the film reaches its conclusion, the film freezes on Antoine's face, trapped with nowhere to go. It's a disturbing moment and creates a feeling of hopelessness in the viewer.



Antoine and Colette (1962)

This follow-up to "The 400 Blows" continues Doinel's story and necessarily modifies the closing moments of Truffaut's debut. When we last saw Doinel he was alone and trapped by his situation. He stares blankly at the screen and we are given the impression that this boy is lost, maybe eternally. Turns out he's actually okay if not very happy. The very act of continuing the story undermines the full stop and despair of "Blows." Depending on your reaction to the conclusion of "Blows," this might be a blessing and a relief. It's best, as when approaching most sequels, to let the first part stand on its own and try to approach additional installments as individual films.

"Antoine and Colette" is approximately thirty minutes long and was initially released as part of the anthology film "Love at 20." (Criterion has packaged "The 400 Blows" and "Antoine and Colette" together as part of their Adventures of Antoine of Doniel boxed set.) The film finds Doinel at 17 years old living in a tiny apartment and working in an assembly line at the Philips record company. The film includes a clumsily inserted flashback from the first installment and demonstrates that Doinel has continued his friendship with his more privileged classmate Rene.

While attending a concert with Rene, Antoine becomes fixated on Colette and begins a labored attempt at wooing her. She is kind to Doinel, but, as a narrator informs us, considers Antoine a friend. Antoine, however, is blinded by persistent romantic longing that the series will continue to reference. He fuels his romantic outlook with a steady diet of literature and music. While he obsesses over his nascent romance, Colette goes about dating young men with no intention of ever entangling herself with Doinel. As one prone to similar romantic obtuseness as a young man, I found this chapter of the Doinel story both humorous and a little uncomfortable.

This film also introduces a trend that will recur in "Stolen Kisses." The orphaned Antoine, even into adulthood, becomes the surrogate child of his love interest's parents. The parents, seeing Antoine's need, feed the young man, offer him company, meals and kindness. It's touching, but awkward, as the parents show him more affection than do the young women Antoine is pursuing.

This sequel to "The 400 Blows" is worth viewing more for the work of Jean Pierre-Leaud than for Truffaut's direction. (There is, however, a crackling sequence in "Antoine and Colette" when Antoine keeps trying to slyly ogle Colette and her legs while she pretends not to notice.) Leaud's work in "Blows" is raw and and austere, but in this installment and "Stolen Kisses," Leaud shifts towards a more endearing and hapless comic figure. He is a skilled, unassuming comic, believable and deliciously awkward. He provides enough reason to keep viewers returning to subsequent chapters. With "Antoine and Colette" and "Stolen Kisses," the tone shifts from realism toward farce grounded in humanity.

The Red Balloon and White Mane*

Albert LaMorisse, director of the short features that are the subject of this week's entry, never found much success in feature films, but the two short subjects he created starring children earned him the Palme d'Or from Cannes and an Academy Award. (LaMorisse also invented the classic board game La Conguete du Mond, translated as Conquest of the World and better known in the US as Risk.) "The Red Balloon" is a whimsical story about a young boy who befriends a precocious balloon and "White Mane" tells the tale of a young man who befriends a fiery, not-to-be-tamed stallion.

"The Red Balloon" stars the director's young son Pascal as a boy who discovers a bright red balloon tethered to a light post one morning. The boy shimmies up the post and takes the balloon home with him. The balloon is not allowed in the house so it is let loose on the landing where it waits for the boy. It will later follow him to school, hound a tyrannical school master, and evade capture from a gang of bullying boys. "Red" is a traditional boy and his dog tale with the part of the dog being played by a balloon with a will of its own.

The story is simple and delightfully odd. The whimsical tone is easier to sustain in a short film where we are not given much time to dwell on the premise. The film is almost entirely free of dialogue, as well, so we are not tethered by magic killing exposition. Pascal accepts his balloon's free will without difficulty allowing the audience to do the same. The balloon and Pascal, however, are not welcomed by the traditional institutions including the school and church. Pascal is removed from both when his balloon attempts to follow him into these magic-free zones. Order must be maintained. The balloon also incites the warrior-like boys who come into contact with it. They must conquer and destroy this playful incongruity. But despite their attempts to restore order, the magic rebounds tenfold in the film's wondrous climax.

"The Red Balloon" utilizes what appear to be simple special effects in the creation of the life-filled balloon. It darts, taunts, loops, pushes into tight spaces, rises, and falls seemingly on its own. While obviously tethered by some puppeteer off-screen, the balloon also appears to be weightless. It's a great effect and the kind that blends into a film without necessarily calling attention to its creators. Its the best kind of special effect that serves the story and is not an end unto itself. Though the film is presented in Technicolor, it opens in a cold, gray world. The stony streets, drab storefronts, and gray skies provide a stark contrast to the titular balloon. In its redness it pops off the screen and constantly reminds us of its otherness.

"White Mane" follows Folco, a boy fisherman living in the marshes of France. He spots a striking white stallion while working and tries to approach the horse. White Mane, a leader of a pack of wild horses, evades the boy, but the two will meet again. White Mane is also trying to elude ranch hands who are attempting to capture and break the wild horse. As the horse evades the men, he warms to Folco who desires a friend more than workhorse.

The film's nature photography is fantastic and the scenes of White Mane fighting for leadership of his clan are fascinating and brutal. Animals were clearly injured in the making of this film, but I do not get the impression that LaMorisse staged the fight for pack leader. The fight is brutal with the horses biting one another in an attempt to dominate. Its a nice corrective to the sanitized friendly horse image splashed across lunch box and Trapper Keeper.

"White Mane" is presented in black and white and the scenes of Folco and his family are reminiscent of the familial moments from Ray's Apu Trilogy, unadorned and quietly observant. Storytelling is handled by a narrator who maybe gives us false hope in the film's conclusion. I was reminded of "Pan's Labyrinth" which presented two possible fates for its child hero. "White Mane" does the same, but I could not shake the feeling that the narrator was lying to me. Given the film's seemingly solid placement in the mundane, its insistence on the fantastic in its conclusion strikes the viewer as false. Ironic? Not likely, but maybe LaMorisse is trying to let his child viewers down easily.

*(Criterion sells the two films separately and without frills. Given this, the two films are not given series numbers in the normal Criterion manner. Netflix, however, packages the two together through their Red Box Entertainment label.)

Amarcord: Criterion #4

Amarcord, which means "I remember," is a severely nostalgic film from Federico Fellini. It is also a movie composed entirely of vignettes that do not seem to be forming into any sort of cohesive whole until late in the film. An apparent lack of narrative force can make the film a difficult one to dip into, but I found that it improves greatly on repeat viewings as we get to know its large cast of characters and its sad, sinister undertones become more apparent. Amarcord follows a year in the life of the people of the Italian village of Rimini. It is the 1930s. Fascism has taken hold and Il Duce is in power.

In watching the film I was immediately struck by its similarity to two nostalgic American movies. It is like A Christmas Story in its structure and its cast of broad, sometimes grotesque, comic characters many of whom are family. Watch any of the dinner scene from Amarcord and then view similar moments in Christmas and you will see that director Jean Shepherd was clearly influenced by Fellini. Amarcord also calls to mind Radio Days, the vignette-filled Woody Allen film about growing up in 1940s Brooklyn. The two are so alike that it is clear Allen was unabashedly emulating Amarcord with his nostalgic look at family and lost youth.

Those two films, however, used an offscreen narrator to tie one disparate moment to the next while Amarcord does not. Fellini's transitions are more jarring and the sequence of events in the film does not necessarily follow any immediately apparent pattern. This will likely be disconcerting to the first time viewer more attuned to the tidy storytelling of most film and television. More than tell a story, Fellini wants to reminisce. He jumps from one vivid memory to the next without the urgency of arriving at a fixed endpoint.

About a third of the way into the film it becomes clear who its main characters will be. All are plagued by great longing. Titta Biondi, a teenage boy on the cusp of manhood, obsessed with the female bodies of Rimini. His father Aurelio the town's lone communist, political stalwart, and a frequently ineffectual patriarch. And Gradisca an aging beauty and the obsession of all the boys and men of Rimini. She expresses a continual aching desire for transcendent romance and seeks it out in films, ceremony, and the pomp and trappings of Fascism. This desire for transcendence cannot be satiated and it continually proves allusive even to the end of the film.

The humor of Amarcord is cruel, usually the pain or humiliation. This recalls the humor of another classic Don Quixote which mines much of its humor from the torture of the addled Alfonso. Nabokov found the book, in a famous series of lectures given at Harvard, to be crude and cruel and wonders what he would make of Fellini's film. In the film, we see townspeople having fun at the expense of the crazed Volpina and the town's blind musician. Much of the cruelty of Amarcord, however, can be seen as a result of fascism as group think takes over and brings man's worse tendencies to the fore.

We see much of the film through the eyes of the teenage Titta who is fascinated by the female posterior and to a lesser extent cleavage. The men of Rimini never grow out of this objectifying behavior, however, and long after the female form even as they overlook the women themselves. The oversexed Volpina is teased and handled by the men of the town. Gradisca is hounded by catcalls wherever she goes and the town's boys direct their sexual longing toward a statue of a mythic naked figure. The film's priest seems to only care if his young male confessors are engaged in onanism. Sex is the constant obsession of the men of Rimini, but it is forever adolescent and an aggressive, one-sided affair.

The film's most memorable scenes follow a day of pageantry for visiting dignitaries. All of Rimini gathers together to praise Il Duce and to put on a show of being good Fascists. They move as a group and work themselves into a fury of loyalty. They act in unison and behave as a hive mind. Even the priesthood and school teachers--who more indoctrinate than educate--collude with the Fascists. The lone dissenter is humiliated after an attempt to show solidarity with a different political cause.

Amarcord from moment to moment feels disjointed and even aloof. As the film closes, though, its elliptical structure reveals itself and seemingly unconnected moments come together. We begin to see Fellini's blueprint and the entire approach seems less scattershot. The film also has a large cast and when viewing the movie a second time each character becomes more distinctive. With Amarcord repeat viewing is a necessity.