The Wages of Fear [dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot]

In Le Salaire de la Peur aka The Wages of Fear, an unnamed heat-drenched fly-infested South American town is home to drifters from around the world. These are washed-up, lonely men whose consolations are cheap liquor and small stakes gambling at the local watering hole. When newcomer Jo (Charles Vanel) schmoozes in with his spotless white suit and big goombah manner, he creates a stir and makes an instant crony of the local tough Mario (Yves Montand), the men linked by memories of a shared neighborhood in France and a sense of macho camaraderie. Indeed, as soon as Jo appears, Mario ditches both his barmaid girlfriend Linda (Vera Clouzot, H-G's wife of the time) and his loyal roommate the cherubic and loquacious Luigi (Folco Lulli); yes, fans of a certain video-game franchise will be tickled, more so since Luigi's appearance is very like the iconic animated mushroom-stomping plumber.

Every migrant in the town is looking for a chance to make some proper money and get out of there. This opportunity comes up when an US-owned oil company fighting a blaze at its local drilling site puts out a call for truck-drivers willing to deliver a large shipment of nitroglycerine that will be used to snuff out the fire. There are no safety measures available to cart this lethal cargo, which is why the company is recruiting anonymous drifters whose deaths no one will follow-up on. But for the princely sum of 2000$ apiece, these men are willing to take the risk. Two trucks, each manned by two drivers, set out to traverse the distance to the oilfields: Mario and Jo make one pair, while Luigi and the taciturn German expat Bimba (Peter van Eyck) form the other.

It takes about an hour of the film's running time to lead up to this scenario, but once the journey starts it is almost the sole focus of the rest of the narrative. The men must ride night and day to reach the site in time. Their cargo is sensitive to heat and vibrations. The terrain is rough; paradoxically the trucks must move quick over the rockiest bits to minimize the jolts (references to keeping the speedometer above a certain level to avoid an explosive jerk will remind 90's kids of a certain Keanu Reeves starrer). There are serious obstacles, including a rickety plank bridge, an immovable boulder that blocks the road and later, a lake of crude oil that truck and men must traverse. 

The most interesting aspect of The Wages of Fear (based on a novel by Georges Arnaud) is the changing equation between its characters as they push forth in their hazardous course. Initially Jo is the heavy, the patron who twirls an eager Mario around his finger and bullies the other townsfolk with his revolver and his bravado. It is even suggested that he has 'eliminated' another fellow to be selected for the chance to earn the reward. But as the journey progresses, Jo's nerve gives way. He fidgets, he panics, he even tries to run away before he is dragged back by Mario, who grows increasingly disillusioned and contemptuous of the man he once deified. Both Vanel and Montand give their all to presenting the palpably credible transformation of their characters. In contrast Luigi, who had been earlier slapped around by Jo, throws off a cheerful courage and even the seemingly cold-hearted Bimba reveals an inner humanity. This is solid character drama wrapped around the mechanics of the tense suspense.

I do not agree with some of the criticisms leveled against Wages of Fear that the characters are shallow or that the film is unnecessarily bleak. Without spoiling events yes, it could have concluded on a more upbeat heroic note. But even if it is slightly overplayed in execution, there is nothing inherently wrong with the end as is, and it makes for a poignant conclusion for an equal parts thrilling and moving experience.

A few notes on my viewing experience:

More than a decade ago, a 148-min version of this film was released on blu-ray by the Criterion  label (described on their site as a 'New, restored high-definition digital transfer'), and that release was good enough for the time. Some time in 2017, a new 4K restoration of an even longer (152-min) version of the film sourced from the original camera negative was carried out. The UK release from the BFI is based on this restoration (I understand they postponed their previous 2016 release plans to avail of the new master). As expected (see screenshot comparisons), it is dramatically superior to the Criterion blu-ray in terms of image clarity, grain resolution and a much more refined contrast/gray-scale. Simply put, even if you own the Criterion blu-ray, this is a must-have upgrade (unless you want to wait for a possible 4K UHD announcement).

Somewhere in Time [dir. Jeannot Szwarc]

I don't seem to have spoken about it here before, but some years ago I had seen Jeannot Szwarc's 1980 fantasy romance Somewhere in Time (SiT). Last night I revisited it when I felt like indulging in some Christopher Reeve.

SiT is scripted by Richard Matheson, based on his own 1975 novel Bid Time Return. The movie has a 'meh' rep from several critics including Roger Ebert and my favorite fantasy film reviewer Richard Scheib. To be sure, the brickbats are not unfounded. The mechanics of time travel are pure bunkum - no particle physics or quantum mechanics at play here, you just will yourself strongly enough to be in a specific time (right down to the exact date) and pouf, there you are! 

Playwright Reeve is the one that undergoes this bargain-basement DIY form of time travel, in search of an actress (Jane Seymour) he has fallen in love with from a vintage photograph. Well, not just that; it appears that he has previously encountered this woman, albeit a much older avatar in which she pressed a fob watch into his hand with the words, "Come back to me". Although his effort to track the woman in the present reaches a literal dead-end (she having passed away some years ago), Reeve is convinced that they somehow knew each other in 1912. Armed with some decidedly hokey advice from a philosophy lecturer, alongside a vintage-era suit and a few coins of the period, he embarks on the trip through time to meet the love of his dreams at a specific moment in the past.

As previously stated, there is zero science to the process, and even after the time travel has occurred, the expected anachronism plays little part in the events that follow. But to the people that love this film (and there can be no middle road here, either you love it or you think it's tosh), this doesn't matter a whit. The core engine powering SiT is a chaste, delightfully old-fashioned and therefore timeless romance between Reeve and Seymour, that works like poignant wish-fulfillment. Reeve was not the most versatile actor, but when he played a gentleman, be it as a super-powered Kryptonian or this dashing scribe, he conveyed a wonderfully warm chivalrous presence few other actors can hope to match. And Seymour's actress is his equal: she has on her side ethereal beauty, complemented with a rare grace and suggestion of deep inner passions. With chemistry like this, who cares about narrative superficiality and hansom-sized plot holes? Christopher Plummer is the third angle, as Seymour's manager who is obsessed with his protege's career on the stage and sees Reeve only as a danger to his precious find. It is suggested, though never substantiated upon, that Plummer may know more than he lets on about Reeve's sudden entry into her life. All three (along with John Barry's memorable score and Isidore Mankofsky's evocative cinematography) give life to a film that shamelessly, but also gloriously, defines romantic melodrama.

It is also interesting that while a flop in the US, the film was apparently a big hit in Hong Kong. One wonders if it is because Asian audiences are more used to the idea of reincarnation and saw the film more as a (p)reincarnated love story than finding fault with the science of the time travel.

PS: Just so you don't think I am a lonely champion for this film, there is a society called INSITE (International Network of Somewhere In Time Enthusiasts) dedicated to celebrating and keeping alive the memory of this film, who put out a newsletter, arranged reunions of cast and crew and even tours of the major shoot locations.

PS2: People who liked this film (and/or Matheson's novel) should check out Ken Grimwood's 1987 book Replay, which may have been inspired by this, but takes the idea to another place altogether, and was justly included in publisher Gollancz's Fantasy Masterworks series.

That Long-winded Tintin Movie [dir. Steven Spielberg]

Just to clarify, I have no issues with the fact that a lot of kids and their daddies & mummies like this film. The Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson team has given a very serviceable animated adventure flick to see and forget (until the next time your tyke insists on watching). But if all you're getting out of an adaptation of Herge's perennially marvelous and entertaining comic book series is a serviceable one-time watch, it indicates a certain lacunae.

To be honest, there will be some things inherently amiss with all motion picture versions of the Tintin comics. Much of the humor in the printed stories comes from the framing of the action, how a scene transitions from one panel to another, the joke concentrated in that concise staccato. Seeing those very actions expanded and articulated actually diminishes the fun. This was something that struck me even when I saw episodes from the Canadian cartoon TV series, arguably a far more faithful adaptation of the comics. The other aspect is that a still image, because it requires less repetitive labor and doesn't have to deal with the intricacies of fluidly transitioning from one frame to another, can be far more detailed than a moving image. Several of the larger sized panels from the comics feature lavishly depicted scenes of bedlam that reward you with fresh visual goodies as you cast your eye over each corner. Animated movies cannot afford to be so extravagant, since the frame is moving and they need to quickly set up areas of focus for the viewer. Also Tintin took advantage of many tricks of the comic book format, including the use of thought bubbles and halos reflecting the characters' emotions, that do not at all adapt well to cinema (check this panel as a slight example of what I'm talking about).

These are of course shortcomings innate to any “motion picture” Tintin. The new film in particular suffers from being done with 3D computer graphics (referring to the rendering style here, not the need for 3D glasses, since I saw it “flat” at the old-school Regal cinema). Now I've liked a fair number of CG rendered and roto-scoped adventure films, mostly those by Pixar and some pleasant surprises like Monster House and the super-awesome Rango. I have little to fault in the technical wizardry of the visuals, the noir-inspired lighting in particular, but the Tintin comics have a very distinct visual identity that hasn't translated well to the 3D animated format. In comparison to their bright primary colors and exquisite caricature expressions, the film's visual palate is rather bland – I specifically think it was a mistake to try to render the characters in a more “humanized” way, if you will call it that. In contrast, one of the most fun bits for me was the opening credits sequence where they showed a stylized cartoon version of Tintin set to a jaunty period tune from John Williams (who then goes on to deliver a generic Spielberg movie score for the actual film, why?).

The tone of the film is again mostly flat and lacking in the outright hilarity that makes the comics such a rewarding re-re-re-re-read. The jokes are far too few (Hot Fuzz's Pegg & Frost woefully underused as Scotland Yard's favorite bumbler sleuths)...and the script seems to specifically eschew the surreal and strongly flavored humor that distinguishes Tintin from other schoolboy's adventure comics – remember the scene where a hallucinating Haddock imagines Tintin to be a champagne bottle and tries to “uncork” his neck? Or the one where he gets drunk after they hijack the seaplane and insists on grabbing the controls, leading to their crash? All gone. The few highlights for me were Haddock's flashback of his ancestor's battle with Red Rackham and the hearty chase sequence in the second half of the movie, which successfully incorporate laughs with the thrills. The climactic action again disappoints, with Haddock and the villainous Sakharin seated in opposite cranes indulging in some Transformers-lite machine bashing. Ho-hum.

So these are my general impressions. Truth be told, I had pretty low expectations for the film as a Tintin adaptation and they mostly turned out right. You can definitely see it (hold your kids up as an excuse) but I doubt most Tintinerds will eagerly look forward to the inevitable follow-ups on this franchise. Incidentally if you want to see Tintin adaptations apart from the cartoon series, try this live-action movie called Tintin and The Golden Fleece. To be sure the budget isn't lavish, the actors wear obvious prosthetics to depict the characters, and the adventure is far more low-key than Herge's work, but in its limited way it does a better job of capturing that mix of action and wacky humor that characterizes the Tintin universe.

Dagon [Stuart Gordon]

If Stuart Gordon is known for one thing, it is his screen adaptations of the works of one of horror literature's most revered deities H.P. Lovecraft. Having so far seen his adaptations of Re-animator, Dreams in the Witch House, From Beyond and now Dagon / The Shadow over Innsmouth (TSOI), I can say it's a reputation that's richly deserved because Gordon is able to consistently convey the overwhelmingly wierd essence of Lovecraft's work without slavishly mounting the original prose.

Innsmouth is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories and I had very high expectations for an adaptation of this one. In the original story, the protagonist goes to the remote New England coastal town of Innsmouth and finds that there's something literally 'fishy' about its inhabitants. The narrative deals with his frantic attempt to escape from the town and the horrible secrets that he uncovers in the course. In a brilliant move, Gordon shifts the narrative to a contemporary period and sets the action in an isolated Spanish coastal village where the geeky protagonist (played by Ezra Gooden who was later to do the lead in Gordon's tele-film adaptation of Dreams in the Witch-House) and his girlfriend land after they get shipwrecked in a storm.

Amidst the close packed stone houses, the narrow winding pathways and a perpetual blanket of rain, Gordon develops an atmosphere of intense tension and loneliness. We keep pace with our hero as he loses track of his girlfriend and finds his own life in peril from the decidedly abnormal residents. The only other complete human on the village is an aged drunk. Our hero is subjected to episode after episode of bizarre and often gruesome happenings, and a final revelation that will completely alter his knowledge of who he is.

Kudos go to regular collaborators Gordon and Dennis Paoli for generating a script that constantly hurtles from one strange incident to another. They are intelligent enough to understand where it's necessary to diverge from Lovecraft's vision without deprecating it in any way. In fact the film in my view does a better job of foreshadowing the protagonist's ultimate destiny than its source material. Also to be marveled at is the spectacular make-up and FX sequences that successfully belie their lesser budgets - the (necessarily) brief sight of the Lovecraftian creature at the end of the movie is worth the anticipation raised.

This film is a must see for all horror fans and especially those who are admirers of HP Lovecraft. Ia, ia, Cthulhu fhtagn!