The Queen of Spades [dir. Thorold Dickinson]

Based on a story by the famous Russian author Alexander Pushkin, 1949's The Queen of Spades (QoS) is a fabulist melodrama on the themes of want and greed. When the Russian captain Suvorin (Anton Walbrook) visits the clubs where women and wine are aplenty, and games of chance are played, he himself refrains from gambling. Unlike his rich royalty-descended fellow-soldiers, he must scrimp and save for his future. In his own words he cannot afford to 'risk the necessary for the lure of the superfluous'.

In a tome purchased from a rather sinister (one could say Mephistophilean) bookseller, he learns the story of a certain countess Ranevskaya (Dame Edith Evans), who after selling her soul to the devil, obtains the secret of winning at cards. He becomes obsessed with extracting the secret from the Countess, now aged and crippled, yet still a strong-willed dominating woman (and looking rather like a Queen of Spades). He decides to make his way to the Countess by seducing her ward Lizaveta (Yvonne Mitchell). Liza is an innocent, bullied by the Countess who uses her as a lady's maid, and not wise to the ways of wily men. She succumbs to Suvorin's (copied) passionate love messages and secretively admits him into the house.

Suvorin instead makes his way to the Countess' room, to beg her to tell him the secret. He first offers to take her sin upon his head, then threatens her with his pistol. The countess falls dead from fear, and a frazzled Suvorin runs to Liza's room where he confesses all. Disgusted to learn the true motives for his 'passion' and his role in the Countess' death, Liza asks him to get out of the house and her life.

Later, Suvorin gets (or imagines?) a visitation from the dead Countess, who gives him the secret of the winning cards (Three...Seven...Ace), on condition that he marry her ward. He tries desperately to mollify Liza but is soundly rejected. Armed with the Countess' secret, he draws out his life's savings and enters the club. In a febrile humor, he plays a succession of games, each time betting the total of his previous winnings. In the third and last game, when he thinks he has the winning ace, he reveals his card, only to find that it is the Queen of Spades. He has been damned.

QoS is less a horror film than The Innocents (1961), more a fevered melodrama with supernatural underpinnings. Incidentally, Jack Clayton who directed that one was associate producer here. Director Thorold Dickinson (who was apparently hired only a few days before shooting began) generates, through deep focus and shadowy corners (DoP Otto Heller), an atmosphere of eerie unease that surely inspired Clayton (as does the impressive production design, contrasting the Countess' overbearingly lavish homestead with Suvorin's bare quarters). Anton Walbrook and Edith Evans are the two main cornerstones in the cast, and they are terrific in their respective parts. I also love that Suvorin's greed comes from his hatred of his circumstances and the derision he faces from his more prosperous fellowmen at the cards table. If I have any complaint, it is only that in the quest for a more cheerful final image, the film focuses on its least interesting characters.

But if B&W gothic melodramas are your thing, then you definitely need to deal yourself this hand.

A few words on the UK blu-ray from Studio Canal:

The disc boasts a terrific transfer, equaling Criterion's work on The Innocents, if we're talking B&W masterpieces. Comparing with screenshots of the earlier Kino Lorber release, I'd say the image is appreciably refined with better contrast and grain resolution. The lossless mono audio is clear, both dialog and the evocative audio effects (the scene where Suvorin hears the thump of the ghostly Countess' walking stick and the swish of her gown approaching his room is a sterling example). Extras include a commentary track, multiple featurettes, and archival audio interviews with the director. There is also a slim booklet included in the case. The slipcover is useless for me as it's the same front and back image as the inside cover.

Love, Sex aur Dhokha - 2 [dir. Dibakar Banerjee]

If one were to look for a common thread in all of Dibakar Banerjee aka DB's filmography (at least the  full-length features), it would be the interplay between truth and deceit. His comedies Khosla ka Ghosla! and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!  prominently feature swindlers that live by pulling the wool over people's eyes. The characters are either deceiving someone else or blinding themselves to reality for the sake of wealth / happiness. Shanghai and Detective Byomkesh Bakshi! have protagonists driven by a search for the truth hidden behind the wall of deceit. In the fitfully interesting Sandeep aur Pinky Faraar (which was almost buried for want of takers) the characters are a bit of both. It would appear that, like his favorite detective, Mr. Banerjee is also through his films a 'Satyanweshi' (Truth-Seeker).

The first Love, Sex aur Dhokha (LSD) featured the camera as its ultimate protagonist, both an unbiased observer and a tool of deceit. In the world of 2010, it was handycams, CCTV and sting operations with hidden cameras that provided the voyeuristic view. 14 years later in LSD-2 (aka Like-Share-Download), it is reality TV, mobile phone cameras, virtual worlds and live-streaming / social media coverage that peers into our lives.

LSD-2's first episode focuses on Noor (Paritosh Tiwari), who after undergoing gender change surgery is now a participant in a talent show called Truth or Dance. Here the participants, challenged to dance or reveal a sensational truth about themselves, constantly work to up their audience ratings with emotional hooks. By choice I am not a major consumer of reality TV outside of cooking competitions, but this segment recalled my skims of shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati and  India's Best Dancer when sitting with mum, their naked attempts to hold audience interest by milking sob stories or generating "behind-the-stage" content that's supposedly candid/unrehearsed. Noor's game is to bring in the mother (Swaroopa Ghosh) she has not spoken to in years, and who still refers to her as male. Their on-camera meeting is all sugary tears, but behind it is a still uneasy alliance, forged not so much by rekindled love as an arrangement to share fame and money. Noor is also desperate for her lover, a co-participant on the show, to publicly acknowledge her. Banerjee's script - with co-writers Shubham and Prateek Vats - fluidly mixes Noor's growing destabilization with the on-camera drama she generates for audience points (with cheeky references to notorious Indian reality TV imbroglios like 'Iske oopar nahin bolne ka!'). He brings the proceedings to a furious boil, aided in no small measure by terrific performances from Tiwari and Ghosh as the estranged mother-son/daughter joined only by their common greed.

Episode 2 has Swastika Mukherjee as Lovina, manager for a social work outfit integrating transgenders into mainstream employment. When one of their subjects Kullu (Bonita Rajpurohit), a Delhi Metro attendant, is found raped and beaten, Lovina raises hell with lax law authorities demanding a full-scale investigation. But the truth is more complicated and it's not a black and white world. Lovina finds herself backed into a corner to get out of which she herself must play the games of power. This segment is remarkable mainly for how nuanced its characters are. Their natures are neither good nor evil, only human (with all that the term implies).

The last segment is probably what will polarize most viewers with its stratospheric launch into surrealism. Live-streamer Game-paapi (Abhinav Singh) garners a following for his channel where he dispenses macho trash-talk while playing a Counter-Strike clone shooter. When an anonymous hacker posts sleazy morphed pictures of GP in a homosexual context, he is outraged. But this makes for a giant spike in his online viewership, leading to sponsorship deals linked to his "new identity" as an LGBT spokesperson.Tormented by the insult to his heterosexual masculinity and the fickle warping of his 'social influencer' career, GP is driven to madness and even death...or is it? Banerjee here goes into full bore whatever the fuck mode, bringing in cyber messiahs and virtual celestial worlds. I can't say it made a lot of sense to me, on the other hand I couldn't help but admire his courage in pulling out something so audacious.

As my previous review would show, I wasn't too thrilled by the first LSD. The sequel on the other hand proved far more gripping and imaginative, maybe even profound. No late cash-in this, but a strong return to form for the auteur. Showing now on Netflix:

Run, Man, Run [dir. Sergio Sollima]

In Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown, actor Tomas Milian played a character nicknamed 'Cuchillo' aka 'The Knife', who is chased by Lee Van Cleef's lawman. Cuchillo's a vulgar and shifty bastard, loud mouthed and slippery, amenable to all kinds of dirty tricks. The character was obviously a hit with audiences, because Sollima and Milian return to Cuchillo in Run, Man, Run (RMR). Here his braggadocio is a little tamped down and he is a touch more openly heroic. Cuchillo gets mixed up in an adventure pertaining to the Mexican revolution when an imprisoned poet he helps to break out of jail confides to him in a dying moment, the location of hidden gold in Texas meant to fund the rebellion.

But several other parties are interested in the gold, and perhaps for less altruistic reasons. There's former sheriff Cassidy (Donald O'Brien), a pair of French mercenaries, the Texan mayor (Gianni Rizzi, who frequently played oily villains) and his daughter, and the bandit Riza. Cuchillo's quest leads him to tight spots on several occasions: he is beaten, shot at, strung up, tied to a windmill. To survive, he must rely on his wits and his knife skills, and occasionally, the help of some unlikely allies.

While the political angle has a place in RMR, it is secondary to Cuchillo's adventure. There are even some moments of black comedy, like when Cuchillo steals food from a house and walks out the front door only to find himself facing a firing squad. Milian is a delight in the lead, conveying as much through shrugs, grins and glances as through dialog. There are some strong actors in the supporting cast. The action scenes are ambitious and fun. I know Leone is a bigger name, but I find Corbucci and Sollima's less pompous western tales more easily watchable.

A few words on the blu-ray release from Eureka:

Video-wise, the Eureka transfer is pretty fine. Detail is not always the greatest, but the colors look pretty good. In general, it resembles how I'd expect a low-budget Italian western of that period to look like. The Italian mono track I used (overdubbed, of course) sounded good. Bruno Nicolai's score has some nice moments (my favorite is a nighttime ambush where Cuchillo has to take on a gang of fellows with his knives, while an ally takes up sniper duty). The English subtitles are generally fine, although there is the occasional typo like when the rebel leader tells his henchman to "...get the keys to the 'panty' and double the men's rations". There is also an English audio track (with optional SDH subs).

Extras include a feature commentary with (who else!) Kim Newman, a 20-min video essay by Stephen Thrower, alternate English credits sequence and a lengthy trailer. The booklet has 2 essays by critic Howard Hughes, one on the film, and an exhaustive rundown of films featuring the Mexican revolution. The now OOP first run of this movie had a bonus disc with a 85-min badly truncated US cut (and its own commentary).

RMR is another fine specimen of the spaghetti western genre, and even if you didn't get the LE, the standard release has enough good stuff in it to warrant the purchase.