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Synopsis:
When a White journalist (James Whitmore) takes pills to turn himself temporarily Black, his travels through the South begin to give him an approximation of systemic and individual racism across the American south.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• African-Americans
• Deep South
• James Whitmore Films
• Journalists
• Mistaken and Hidden Identities
• Race Relations and Racism

Review:
I’ll open my review of this unusual independent film by citing directly from David Sterritt’s article for TCM, where he notes that:

Black Like Me (1964), based on the book of that title by John Howard Griffin, tells the unlikely tale of a bold, flawed, and enduringly controversial experiment carried out by a journalist whose lack of training in social science was balanced by deep curiosity and a profound sense of indignation over some of the ugliest aspects of 20th-century American society.

Indeed, it should be noted that modern viewers will likely have a hard time swallowing the overall intent of this flick — and it doesn’t help matters that (as Bosley Crowther points out in his review) “Whitmore’s make-up does little to convince us he’s actually Black (he looks more “like an end man in a minstrel show”):

… and “Carl Lerner’s direction of the screenplay that he and his wife, Gerda, wrote is melodramatic and unsubtle.” However, also true is Sterritt’s assessment that while this is “not great cinema,” it’s “a compelling time capsule… offering a rough-and-ready sketch of the powerful passions and noble purposes that propelled the civil-rights movement in the crucial year of 1964.”

To that end, in order to contextualize this film within other cinematic efforts of the time, I turn to DVD Savant’s review, where he writes:

As socially conscious filmmaking moved into the 1960s, it became marginalized more than ever. Getting low-budget B&W pictures into theaters was an even tougher sell, and the watered-down liberal messages in TV meant that only a specialized audience went for films about social justice or race equality. The average person thinks that a successful liberal consciousness picture is the overly insistent The Defiant Ones or the feel-good Lilies of the Field or the glamorous Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Ironically, those glamorous and unthreatening Sidney Poitier pictures probably did more to convince nervous whitebread America accept the idea that blacks weren’t a scary “other”, than all the heartfelt confrontational movies put together. The nature of film distribution required that movies court a white audience. Sidney won over his audiences by playing characters of obvious virtue and integrity. Good actors like James Edwards and Brock Peters got plenty of bit parts and some that allowed them to express pride in their color, but Hollywood in general reacted to the Civil Rights advances with a dose of defensive tokenism.

With all this important contextualizing information in mind, Black Like Me is recommended for one-time viewing.

Note: I found it especially intriguing reading more about Griffin himself in Sterritt’s overview for TCM, and highly recommend a fascinating 2011 documentary about him available for viewing on Vimeo.

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• A most unusual social experiment brought to life on screen
  

Must See?
Yes, as a powerful (if perhaps inevitably flawed) independent film about racism.

Categories

• Good Show
• Historically Relevant

Links:

• IMDb entry
• TCM Article
• DVD Savant Review
• NY Times Original Review

Synopsis:
In post-WWII Parma, a bourgeois young man (Francesco Barilli) engaged to an apolitical beauty (Cristina Pariset) reflects on life, religion, politics, and the recent death of his friend (Allen Midgette) while beginning an affair with his young aunt (Adriana Asti).

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Bernardo Bertolucci Films
• Italian Films

Review:
Bernardo Bertolucci was only 22-years-old when he made his second feature-length film, with overt references to filmmakers he admired — including Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Unfortunately, Bertolucci’s Oscar-nominated screenplay — co-authored by Gianni Amico, and inspired by characters’ names from Stendhal’s 1839 novel The Charterhouse of Parma — doesn’t provide us with much to hold onto, with Barilli simply presenting as a callow youth whose crush on his aunt seems ill-advised at best:

… and Asti coming across as merely a wide-eyed, tortured cipher. While this film is lauded in 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die as an “astonishing” “elegy for those bourgeois lives doomed because they take place before the revolution,” showcasing “a perfect portrait of the generation who were to embrace revolt in the late 1960s,” most modern (non-Italian) viewers won’t have a good sense of which revolution is being referred to, or why any of this much matters.

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Aldo Scavarda’s cinematography
  

Must See?
No; you can skip this one unless you’re a Bertolucci fan. Listed as a Personal Recommendation in the back of Peary’s book.

(Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

Links:

• IMDb entry
• Village Voice Review

Synopsis:
A famous director (Marcello Mastroianni) in a creative slump seeks respite at a spa, but by inviting his mistress (Sandra Milo) and his wife (Anouk Aimee) to come visit — and inevitably being surrounded by people wanting something from him — he is unable to rest.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Anouk Aimee Films
• Barbara Steele Films
• Claudia Cardinale Films
• Directors
• Federico Fellini Films
• Italian Films
• Marcello Mastroianni Films
• Midlife Crisis

Review:
Fellini’s hyper-existential 8 1/2th film was made after his first six features — Variety Lights (1950) (which he co-directed — so, it counts for half), The White Sheik (1952), I Vitelloni (1953), La Strada (1954), The Swindle (1955) [not listed in Peary’s GFTFF], Nights of Cabiria (1957), and La Dolce Vita (1960), as well as segments of Love in the City (1953) and Boccaccio ’70 (1962) — and thus was named after its own numerical placement in his oeuvre. As Alexander Sesonke notes in his review for Criterion, “8 1/2 is a film about making a film, and the film that is being made is 8 1/2.” Precisely.

Given how intentionally self-absorbed this project ended up being, I was pleasantly surprised by how easily I got caught up in Mastroianni’s travails — unlike in the much bleaker La Dolce Vita (perhaps in part because Fellini kept a note to himself by his camera saying “Remember — this is a comedy.”). Fellini very effectively conveys what it’s like to be so famous and beloved for your craft that you’re literally swarmed by people wanting a piece of it (and you):

… as you’re simultaneously trying to manage an escapist affair, keeping your wife and producers happy (or not):

… and flashing back continuously on memories from your childhood.

Fellini’s direction is seamlessly fluid, never giving us a moment’s pause before turning to the next distraction (much like his protagonist seems to feel at all times).

Watch for Barbara Steele as an inscrutable young American starlet in an early sequence:

… and Claudia Cardinale — at both bookends of the film — starring as Fellini’s (er, Mastroianni’s) “Ideal Woman”.

Note: Not surprisingly, this film spawned a number of imitators, including Alex in Wonderland (1970), All That Jazz (1979), and Stardust Memories (1980).

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Marcello Mastroianni as Guido
  
• Gianni Di Venanzo’s cinematography
  
• Many memorable scenes and moments
  
• Nino Rota’s score

Must See?
Yes, for sure. Listed as a film with Historical relevance, a Cult Movie, and a Personal Recommendation in the back of Peary’s book.

Categories

• Foreign Gem
• Historically Relevant
• Important Director

(Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

Links:

• IMDb entry
• Criterion Essay
• TCM Article
• Movie Diva Article
• Washington Post (Desson Howe)
• Washington Post (Hal Hinson)

Synopsis:
In late 1800s Turin, workers at a textile factory are inspired by a visiting “professor” (Marcello Mastroianni) to collectivize and strike for better conditions.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Historical Drama
• Italian Films
• Labor Movements
• Marcello Mastroianni Films
• Workplace Drama

Review:
Nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and debuting at the 35th Congress of the Italian Socialist Party, this serio-comedy about disastrous workers’ conditions back before unionization — including 14 hour work days, no accident insurance, unsafe working conditions, and only a half-hour lunch break — tells a sobering yet ultimately uplifting tale of workers coming together to stand up for their rights. We see the harshness of their living and work conditions:

… as well as how intimidating it is to stand up to the dismissive and patronizing bosses at their company:

… and the challenges that arise when a visiting worker in much more dire straits insists he has no choice but to be a scab.

Mastroianni’s role throughout is a crucial one, playing a seemingly meek yet actually headstrong force who knows that he must act with deliberation and relational savvy at all times.

The cinematography, historic sets, and ensemble cast all add to the film’s air of bleak realism, helping us imagine we’re really there during this time.

I was interested to read in J. Hoberman’s essay for Criterion the following about director Mario Monicelli, whose only other film I’ve seen was the featherweight heist caper Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958):

“[He was] the son of a political journalist who moved from socialism to anarcho-syndicalism to fascism (briefly) to antifascism, and who also founded Italy’s first film journal, [and] is best known for his socially aware tragi­comedies. Still, his oeuvre is not easily synopsized. He directed some sixty films and wrote or cowrote more than seventy over the course of a career that began in 1935 with a precocious 16 mm feature based… on Ferenc Molnár’s novel The Paul Street Boys and ended seven decades later, when he was ninety-one, with The Roses of the Desert (2006), a comedy about an Italian medical unit sent to Libya in 1940.”

I haven’t seen enough of Monicelli’s titles to say, but I would venture to guess that this remains one of his most potent — and still relevant — outings. It’s well worth a look. Watch for several familiar faces from Italian cinema of the time, including Renato Salvatori:

… and Annie Girardot (both from Rocco and His Brothers).

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Marcello Mastroianni as the Professor
  
• Fine performances by the ensemble cast
  
• Excellent use of real-life locales
  
• Giuseppe Rotunno’s cinematography
  

Must See?
Yes, as a good show on an important topic.

Categories

• Good Show

Links:

• IMDb entry
• DVD Savant Review
• Criterion Essay (by J. Hoberman)
• NY Times Original Review

Synopsis:
During World War I, a crook (Charles Denner) supports his wife (Françoise Lugagne) and four kids by secretly wooing and then killing lonely women with money, keeping a mistress (Stéphane Audran) as well on the side.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Claude Chabrol Films
• Danielle Darrieux Films
• French Films
• Mistaken and Hidden Identities
• Serial Killers

Review:
Claude Chabrol directed and Françoise Sagan scripted this fictionalized biopic of French serial killer Henri Désiré Landru, who was also the inspiration for Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Indeed, Chabrol was a huge fan of Chaplin’s work — an interview with him can be found on the Criterion DVD of the latter — and it’s easy to see its influence, given that Denner’s Landru (like Chaplin’s many cinematic iterations) is a clownish (with widely painted eyebrows) yet serious character who moves around the world feeling perfectly justified in his every move:

… and who is able to shift personas with ease while maintaining his work-a-day sensibility.

After all, wooing and killing (then chopping up and burning) women is simply his lot in life (so he sincerely believes).

As in … Verdoux, this is all presented in a darkly comedic fashion, with the running “jokes” including the fact that there’s a shortage of men due to World War I (which is surely the primary reason so many lonely women fall for this balding, intense weirdo), and that Landru must somehow support his large family.

Indeed, it’s surprisingly challenging to hate Landru despite what a despicable sociopath he unquestionably is. Chabrol’s real-life wife (Stéphane Audran) plays Landru’s real-life lover, Fernande Segret:

… and there are other well-known faces among the women Ladru seduces and murders — including Danielle Darrieux as Berthe Héon:

… Juliette Mayniel — Florence in Chabrol’s Les Cousins (1959) — as Anna Collomb:

… and Hildegard Knef as Mme. X.

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Charles Denner as Landru
  
• Vibrant cinematography and sets
  

Must See?
No, though it’s worth a one-time look.

Links:

• IMDb entry
• Village Voice Review

Synopsis:
In May of 1962 — after the end of an eight-year war with Algeria — an assortment of Parisians are interviewed about their views on life, happiness, society, and current politics.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Documentary
• French Films

Review:
French filmmaker Chris Marker (nee: Christian Hippolyte François Georges Bouche-Villeneuve) co-directed — with DP Pierre Lhomme — this snapshot of Parisians’ impressions of the (supposed) first “lovely month of May” in eight years since the beginning of the Algerian war (which led to Algeria’s independence from France after more than 100 years of colonial rule). Marker considered this movie to be a form of “direct cinema” (rather than cinéma vérité), given that he was intentional in many of the people he selected to interview — including the inventor below, who says, “Luck plays a big part in life — but the best luck is hands; they’re the best capital you can have” (as the camera occasionally pans to a spider crawling along his coat).

After collecting 55 hours of footage, the resulting ~2.5 hour film — with participants’ interviews left as uninterrupted as possible — was divided into two parts: “A Prayer from the Eiffel Tower” (mostly about everyday life and love) and “The Return of Fantomas” (looking more closely at reactions to the situation in Algeria). Notable instances in the first section include, as described by Margarita Landazuri in TCM’s article, “a suit salesman”:

… “a mother of nine children”:

… “a group of stockbrokers concerned about how the Algerian situation is affecting the market”:

… “children examining a museum display of John Glenn’s space capsule”:

… and “a blissfully in love young couple unconcerned about anything but their own happiness.”

In the second half, “Among those interviewed are an African student” (from Dahomey):

… “and a young Algerian worker who discuss French racism”:

… “and a communist priest who chose his political convictions over his church.”

Notably, however, “there’s also an eccentric young woman who designs costumes for her cat, saying she does so to escape from those dead things that crush you.”

The kind of rhyme or reason you make of all this will likely vary — but regardless, as Landazuri points out, the footage “seems prescient about the political upheavals of the 1960s and beyond, including Paris in 1968.” Note that two versions exist: one narrated in English by Simone Signoret (though there are still subtitles throughout for participants) and one in French by Yves Montand.

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Fine “direct cinema” footage of daily life in Paris
  
• Several quirky interludes
  
• Michel Legrand’s score

Must See?
Yes, for its historical relevance.

Categories

• Historically Relevant

Links:

• IMDb entry
• TCM Article
• DVD Savant Review

Synopsis:
A pair of sisters (Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom) travel by train with Thulin’s son (Jörgen Lindström) to an unnamed Central European country, where the increasingly ailing Lindblom is cared for by an elderly doorman, Thulin has an affair with a man she meets at a bar, and Lindström wanders the halls of their hotel.

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Ingmar Bergman Films
• Scandinavian Films
• Siblings

Review:
The third entry in Ingmar Bergman’s informal mid-career trilogy about the complexities of love and connection — following Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and Winter Light (1963) — was this surreal chamber piece taking place primarily on a train and in a hotel, where individuals struggle to communicate with one another and make sense of the world around them. It’s unclear whether Lindblom and Thulin are meant to be lovers or even (symbolically speaking) two sides of the same person (the latter actually makes more sense):

… with Lindblom erupting defiantly in sensuality:

… Thulin imploding from an unnamed illness:

… and Lindström (the neutral child observer) taking everything in.

The film was primarily notorious upon its release for its sexually explicit nature — though its content is downright tame by today’s standards.

Those who enjoy weird imagery and symbology will have a field day, given that Lindström encounters a group of traveling dwarfs who put him in a dress:

… is cared for by a questionable elderly staff person (who speaks an unknown language):

… and watches as a military tank rattles down the deserted street outside their hotel room while his aunt lies prone.

You will have to decide for yourself whether this is the type of film you get immersed in, or simply watch with curiosity (or boredom).

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Sven Nykvist’s cinematography
  
  

Must See?
No; you can skip this one unless you’re a diehard Bergman fan.

Links:

• IMDb entry
• Criterion Essay

Synopsis:
A widowed minister (Gunnar Björnstrand) struggles with his faith while navigating his relationship with a doting parishioner (Ingrid Thulin) and meeting with the pregnant wife (Gunnel Lindblom) of a suicidal father (Max von Sydow).

Genres, Themes, Actors, and Directors:

• Christianity
• Ingmar Bergman Films
• Max von Sydow Films
• Priests and Ministers
• Scandinavian Films
• Widows and Widowers

Review:
This second film — following Through a Glass Darkly (1961) — in Ingmar Bergman’s informal trilogy about the life-saving importance of communication and love was one of his personal favorites, carefully constructed — with crucial assistance from his DP, Sven Nykvist — with a particular vision in mind. However, its unrelenting bleakness makes it a challenging viewing experience, as we watch a seemingly rigid and cold man of faith (Björnstrand) failing to support a parishioner in need:

… while cruelly mistreating the woman (Thulin) who is devoting her life to him.

The story opens and closes on his nearly-empty church services:

… and otherwise takes place in a bitterly gray, wintry landscape.

With that said, the performances — particularly by Björnstrand in the crucial central role — are committed and convincing, making this a rewarding viewing experience for Bergman fans who can otherwise stomach its dreariness.

Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:

• Gunnar Björnstrand as Tomas Ericsson
  
• Sven Nykvist’s cinematography
  
  

Must See?
No, unless you’re a Bergman completist.

(Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die)

Links:

• IMDb entry
• TCM Article
• NY Times Original Review