I'll cut straight to the chase. It's not since Ong-Bak that a film has so wowed me with its (ha!) furious action. I have seen reviews comparing this movie with The Raid and The Night Comes for Us. The latter I remember seeing some of on Netflix, but after a point I just switched off because it seemed to me just full of sadism and mean-spiritedness posing as entertainment. The Raid comparison is more appropriate, especially since a major action sequence is when an army of thugs enters a multi-story building our heroes are trapped in, and they have to fight their way through. But The Raid itself was butt-ugly, shot on a Handycam level camera with no thought for lighting and contrast.
If we say that The Furious is defined by its action, then to me it owes more to the classic Hong Kong martial arts crime movies than anything else. While brutal, the action is also extremely balletic; 'beat' poetry at its finest (apologies, Mr. Ginsberg). In The Furious' world, duels are rare. Most fights are threesomes, foursomes, in general multi-somes. The bodies of combatants in flow are pressed together like a sandwich, twisted into a pretzel, piled up in a meat pyramid.
Director Tanigaki knows how to film his action sequences well - eschewing the frequent modern tendency for rapid cutting, he favors long takes in which we can appreciate the beauty of the choreography and the precision of the actors. It makes the fights easy to follow as a dance of deadly movements. The interesting thing is that in most fights, there are no 'fodder' extras, stuntmen who fall down after just a couple of blows to show how powerful the heroes are. No, almost every battle here is hard-won.
The best part of the film was the climactic 5-way showdown, which for me equals, and (sacrilege!) maybe even surpasses the final fight between the Peking Opera brothers (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao) and Dick Wei in Project A. Without any spoilers, it features an actor/fighter who is part acrobat and part wrecking ball. He is basically Donkey Kong in live action. Lead actors Miao Xie and Joe Taslim have great action chops, and analogous to Angela Mao in Enter the Dragon there is a pivotal cameo at the start from Chocolate star (Jeeja) Yanin Vismitananda.
So yeah, if watching brilliantly choreographed bruising ballets is your idea of a good time, then The Furious will make you happy indeed.
It was heartening to see the 700-seater Regal cinema hall on a weekday evening full of young viewers lined up for a more-than-70 years old film. To make a confession, I had never seen Do Bigha Zamin (DBZ) in its entirety before, only selected clips on TV especially the cycle rickshaw race with its calamitous end. Said to be inspired by watching Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, DBZ is a grounded drama about the downtrodden in society. Our protagonist Shambhu Mahto (an unforgettable Balraj Sahni) is a farmer forced to look for work in the city to earn enough to clear the mortgage on his farm, after he refuses to sell the land to the rich zamindar (Murad) for the construction of a mill.
Shambhu lands in the sprawling chaos of Kolkata with his stowaway son Kanhaiya (Ratan Kumar), while his wife Parvati (Nirupa Roy) is left in the village with his ailing father. In the metropolis, they meet a motley of characters, some of whom - like the fiery-tongued slum landlady or the street-smart boot-polishing urchin Lalu (a young spirited Jagdeep, devoid of excessive buffoonery) are sympathetic enough to help them out. To put the money together before his repayment term ends, Shambhu works like a dog, refusing himself even basic necessities as a good meal or rest after an accident.
With Shambhu and his family's life Roy depicts the hardship of poor folk in the country, the struggle to make a living or hold on to their most meager possessions, while still trying to maintain a shred of dignity and avoid taking the path of crime. It is a sensitive and sympathetic tale helmed by someone that truly believed in the power of cinema for social change. Roy would later go on to make other striking social dramas like Bandini and Sujata; even his gothic melodrama Madhumati has a strong social backdrop of oppression by the privileged class.
The film's production design and cinematography are wholly married to the vision of social realism. Even the songs (composed by Salil Chowdhary) are an integral part of the narrative, with no extravagant escapist dream sequences. DBZ ends, as it should, on a tragic and poignant note: Shambhu finds himself fenced out of his own land after it is auctioned by the debt court, not allowed to even take a handful of dirt from the earth that he and his forefathers had tended for so many generations.
Kudos to the Film Heritage Foundation and Janus-Criterion for undertaking the 4K restoration of this classic. Largely free of any heavy damage and showing painstakingly calibrated contrast that reveals the vision of its makers, the restored version is a marvel.
Assi is story-wise probably the best film Anubhav Sinha has made thus far because, as Baradwaj Rangan in his review says, he constantly subverts our expectations about what the film is about. When we think it will be a grandstanding courtroom drama where a woman lawyer snatches justice from a biased system for her assaulted client, it goes in another, more interesting direction. It looks at the vicious spiral of violence and retaliatory violence, and how in celebrating an act of vigilante justice, the original victim is no longer a factor.
Of course, Anubhav the storyteller is often tripped over by Anubhav the writer of clunky portentous dialog and his need to virtue signal. To no fault of these terrific actors, Mohd Zeeshan Ayub's sensitive husband and Taapsee Pannu's firebrand lawyer are less credible people than idealizations of the script. Where the film is saved is in the introduction of Kumud Mishra's character - I won't spoil it with any further description, but in both the writing and Mishra's committed performance (including an amazing body transformation that makes you see the actor in a different light), a new dimension is added to what could have been a cliched Pink 2 kind of story. Sinha as director also breaks the fourth wall with periodic reminders that a rape crime takes place at least every 20 min in this country (Adding up to the title's eighty in a day, and that's counting only the reported ones).
All things considered, Assi's core is IMO strong enough to make an impact - the climax is beautifully written in terms of how it again restores focus on the person who was originally violated, and only by systemically addressing the 'might is right' thinking which governs our social conflicts - be they gender, religion or caste based - can we truly aspire to be civilized.
Cruel Gun Story (CGS) was a pretty good heist caper in the veteran Nikkatsu Studio's crime filmography. Joe Shishido (he of puffed cheeks fame from Branded to Kill) heads the gang meant to carry out the heist. But Joe is not calling all the shots - a big fish gangster is bankrolling the caper and has assigned a motley of crew-mates to Joe, who may not all be trustworthy.
As South East Asian film expert Tony Rayns says in his video essay included on the blu-ray from Radiance Films, CGS shares a kinship with Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, in which also a gang plots to steal the receipts of a horse racing derby. In other film references, there is a chase through sewers a la Carol Reed's The Third Man.
As can be expected, the heist does not go as planned. The gang face unexpected stumbling blocks - including a guard that refuses to leave the bulletproof money van, and there are double and triple crosses galore. CGS is based on a story by Haruhiko Oyabu, who also wrote the sources behind several Seijun Suzuki movies. The overall mix is delirious, and while there are logical fallacies and contrivances of melodrama, it does not prevent the film from being entertaining.
Shishido as the tough-talking leader holds our attention (and his cheeks don't look as ridiculous as they did in Branded to Kill). I noticed that the environment around the characters had predominantly English signage; Rayns explains that the film is set in and around an American military base (Shishido's contact even obtains a sniper-scope rifle from a GI) and is indicative of the corruption culture prevalent in the period.
A few words on the Radiance blu-ray:
Video quality is solid but not spectacular. The master appears dated, with middling detail and limited contrast / grayscale; it might be the same that was sourced for The Criterion Collection's DVD release as part of their Eclipse box-set on Nikkatsu Noir). Initially, the audio seemed to have some distortion, but that feeling went away afterwards, and the brassy score punches hard. Extras include two video essays (one being the aforementioned Tony Rayns piece and one by Jackie Scanlon on the Nikkatsu Noir period), a commentary by expert Jasper Sharp and a short interview with an older Joe Shishido who looks a lot more handsome after having removed the cheek implants.
Dominik Graf's 1988 thriller The Cat begins with the visual of a man and woman having sex to the strains of Good Times by The Animals, then craftily segues to a couple of blokes in a car singing along with the radio. All these people will play a part in a planned heist. The woman is unhappily married to the bank manager and a willing accomplice in the plan. The two blokes are henchmen that will carry out a robbery and later hold the manager and employees hostage for a hefty ransom. The man - played by German star Gotz George - is the cold-blooded brains behind the operation.
What follows is a multi-layered scheme in which the man arranges for the henchmen to ask for the ransom to be carried by the manager's wife (Gudrun Landgrebe). From his hotel room window opposite the bank and access to police radio communications the man can clearly predict the police operations and accordingly issue counter instructions. Later in a thrilling interlude, he himself navigates fire escapes and narrow ledges, and even slinks under trucks to sabotage them (Gotz reportedly performed his own stunts). But his mistress complicates his scheme by demanding that he kill her husband in return for her cooperation.
As can be gleaned from the above summary, The Cat is a tense noir thriller, and brilliantly done at that. Because of the gray shades in all of the characters, the film is able to constantly play with audience sympathies. The calculative intensity of Gotz's character, the frustration that builds among the henchmen when events start to overwhelm, the tactical games with the police, these make for a boiling mix. This visual texture of the film reflects this element - it unfolds over the course of a sunny, humid day and the characters are frequently bathed in sweat. There is constant cross-cutting between the events inside the bank, Gotz's hotel suite and the police control room; the overall effect is of a constantly tightening grip.
I had not previously heard of the film, and was able to experience it thanks to Radiance Films' excellent blu-ray. A few words about it:
The high-definition transfer beautifully represents the evocative cinematography (Martin Schafer, who did camera duties for Wim Wenders on his Road Trilogy, Paris, Texas and The American Friend). The stereo track comes across strongly in the action scenes and in the soundtrack. There are a number of meaty extras, including a lengthy conversation with Graf (in which he details his early career, the Robert Aldrich influence, how this project began, the contributions of star Gotz George etc) and shorter ones with writer Christopher Fromm and producer Georg Feil. There is also the usual limited edition booklet.
In Sirai aka Prison, Kathiravan (Vikram Prabhu) is a policeman involved with the escort of prisoners in transit. These escort cops must often rely on public transport, and during the entire journey they are responsible for keeping the prisoner confined and the public safe. At the beginning, Kathir is shown to open fire in a public place to stop an escaping convict. He is placed under enquiry. In the meantime, he takes on another escort job, of an under-trial Muslim boy called Abdul Rauf (a stunning LK Akshay Kumar, who reminds me of a young Basil Joseph).
Kathir's two teammates in the mission treat it more like an outing where they can drink and make merry. When they are caught in a public scuffle after one such carouse, Abdul is unsupervised in the bus. It gets worse: Even the rifle meant for guarding the prisoner is left behind with him. The cops chase after and catch up with the bus, only to find both Abdul and the rifle missing. It is at this cliffhanger moment that the intermission comes.
Sirai's second half deals with Kathir and his team meeting again with Abdul, and learning the circumstances that led to his incarceration. It is not a novel story; 70's and 80's mainstream Indian cinema was rife with narratives where an upright cop finds sympathy for a law-offender and they ultimately team up against the actual bad guys.But within this archetype, Sirai imbues its characters and situations with sufficient substance for them to engage the audience.
Abdul's situation comes about as a consequence of the communal divide in his village, and the opposition to his transgressive romance with the Hindu girl Kalai (Anishma Anilkumar). Supporting characters like Abdul's mother (Remya Suresh) and Kathir's wife (Ananta Thambiraja) show a welcome fire instead of being the stereotype doormats. I also loved that the Sirai did not feel obliged to have a climactic showdown reinforcing the cop's badasserie. This is a refreshing change from the ultra-macho 'my beard/dick biggest' leanings of today's masses-oriented cinema.
Of course, all is not great here. The second half of Sirai leans hard into sentimentality - sometimes to the point of obvious manipulation - with repetitive scenes of characters being oppressed or bursting into tears. Also, the visual grammar becomes unnecessarily jerky, insisting on cross-cutting flashbacks where a few lines of dialog would have sufficed to convey the information. It is as if the makers felt that the audience constantly needs to be shown stuff happening. But there is enough goodness here that flaws notwithstanding, Sirai is an excellent example of what I wish more mainstream cinema would aim for.
PS: The film is also an example of how using people born within the industry does not in itself constitute nepotism. Vikram Prabhu comes from an acting family that includes father Prabhu and grandfather the late Sivaji Ganesan. LK Akshay Kumar is the son of the film's producer SS Lalit Kumar. But both are so well-suited for their parts that you do not see them as privileged insiders denying more deserving candidates.
Occasional violence notwithstanding, Tokyo Godfathers -Satoshi Kon's 2003 Xmas themed movie - is his most family-friendly effort. The title is a hat-tip to John Ford's 1948 Western Three Godfathers, in which a trio of thieves led by John Wayne are landed with the care of an orphaned infant.
Kon's heroes are three hobos that find the baby while scavenging in a dumpster. Hana the melodramatic transgender is overjoyed at the prospect of being a 'mother' although it is soon clear that she is less prepared for the practicalities than the middle-aged taciturn alcoholic (ha!) 'Gin', who has a tragic backstory that may not necessarily be true. Rounding out the trio is morose teenage runaway Miyuki.
Initially, Gin and Miyuki want to hand the baby girl over to the police, while Hana - who names the child Kiyoko - is determined to raise her, even if it means striking out on her own. They reach a compromise in deciding to hand the girl back to her parents using the meager clues they find to their identity. Their winding journey includes meeting a mafioso, bearing witness to an assassination and learning about a former bar girl that may be Kiyoko's mother. In this process they also learn more about each other and about their own selves.
Kon is normally known for bizarre dream-logic enterprises like Perfect Blue, Paprika and his series Paranoia Agent. His 2001 fictional biopic Millennium Actress - which traces the life of a former film star, and in the process gives a history of the Japanese film industry - was the closest he had till then got to a conventional drama. Tokyo Godfathers is again a more grounded narrative, remaining in a real world, albeit one with some very colorful characters. While Kon does not sugarcoat the melancholy of his characters, this is ultimately a film of hope, and that is what Xmas season is all about, isn't it?
In Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point, Harry Morgan (John Garfield) is a married sailor that leases out his boat for fishing trips. He is aided by his first (and only) mate Wesley (Juano Hernandez), a colored man with whom he and his family share the sort of friendly bond that would surely have raised audience eyebrows at the time. On one fishing trip, he meets the provocative Leona (Patricia Neal), who is accompanying her sugar daddy. Leona throws him strong feelers but he doesn't bite. He also turns down a proposal from sleazy broker Duncan (Wallace Ford) to carry some illegal human cargo for cash. But fate does not side with our honest family (sea)man. The sugar daddy defaults on his payment (and dumps his mistress), and there are bills that need paying. So Harry has no choice but to take on the job.
Unfortunately things go further wrong and he ends up accidentally killing a man. Harry throws him overboard, and after dropping Leona ashore, goes back to his wife Lucy (Phyllis Thaxter, who I only knew previously as Superman's foster mum, Martha Kent) and two kids. Now the coast guard impounds Harry's boat on suspicion and he still needs to provide for the family. Lucy well-meaningly nags him to give up on the boat and move to her father's farm. Harry loves his wife and daughters, and wants to do his best by them, but he wants none of the farming business: The sea is his lifeblood. He's in the pressure cooker and now it's getting hotter.
Desperate for a paying job, once Harry gets the boat back, he gives into Duncan's new job offer, which actually involves him being the getaway boat for a gang of bank-robbers. Does he actually go through with this? Will he get out alive, and if so, can he face his family again? These are the questions raised in this steamy noir drama.
Early on the film emphasizes the strong romance between Harry and Lucy's married couple. It's the backbone of the drama and one makes believable his actions, be it his rejection of Leona's repeated advances or his resistance to the temptation to make a shady buck. Harry's not a boy-scout but there are lines he will not cross. The threat to his family life is what raises the stakes in how the film plays out. The characters are beautifully written - while Lucy is the 'good wife' pitted against Leona's provocateur, neither of them are archetype 2D cutouts. You completely empathize with Harry's recognition of his fallibility and his resolve to keep certain ties sacred; his monogamy is not a cliche. Leona is also not the archetype 'whore with a heart of gold'; she understands why Harry is committed to Lucy, but does not let that stop her from trying to pull down his defenses. This nuanced struggle between faith and temptation is the powerful engine propelling Breaking Point's drama.
The boiling pot screenplay eventually explodes in the climax with a shootout on the boat. Without spoilers, the end is not a happy return to status quo. But apart from the haunting final image, it is mostly hopeful, and we are glad for that. Shot mostly on real locations, the film carries verisimilitude; Ernest Hemingway, who wrote the story To Have and Have Not, upon which it is based, is supposed to have declared it the best film adaptation of his works.
Coming off a 2k restoration by Warner Bros, the transfer is a solid one, with good detail and excellent contrasts that do justice to the visuals by Ted McCord (The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Sound of Music). The mono track is good enough to get the job done. Extras include a 20-min video essay by critic Alan Rode, a shorter piece by the people behind the popular cinephile Youtube channel Every Frame a Painting and a featurette with John Garfield's daughter Julia talking about her father, his rise and fall in Hollywood, and his work in The Breaking Point.
I was excited about Ronth (aka Patrol) because writer-director Shahi Kabir wrote the script for Nayattu and directed Elaveezha Poonjira, two of the most ball-squeezingly tense movies I've seen in recent years. The latter was a terrific Hitchcockian exercise with just two characters for most of the running time.
Ronth is another cop story, but of a different nature. In its premise of following two policemen - sub-inspector Yohanan (Dileesh Pothan) and his constable-driver Dinnath (Roshan Mathew) - doing their night patrol, it features a more sprawling and episodic narrative. On their rounds the cops, who share a prickly interaction with each other, encounter a series of different situations, which expose their vulnerabilities as well as their hidden strengths. Pothan is especially remarkable as the experienced officer, a credible mixture of bullying and empathy, corruption and integrity to his job. Mathew's rookie is a bit of a caricature in terms of how naive he is shown to be. The situations they face go from the mundane to the bizarre (in one instance they have to deal with a madman that has imprisoned his young child in the belief that it will be stolen from him...a situation similar to the one faced by Takashi Shimura's warrior in Seven Samurai). In the course of the night they learn more about each other, and the audience learns about them. When the morning comes, they face a sudden crisis that may destroy them both.
Where Ronth falls short compared to Kabir's previous efforts is in its lesser subtlety. We already see the inspector's complex nature from the way he handles his psychologically afflicted wife, the petitioners they meet, and the way he reacts to the constable's family emergency. But Kabir feels the need to include a scene where Yohanan has to explain himself to Dinnath; why spend more time telling what you have already shown? As the night goes on, the sheer number of locations the cops have to visit begins to seem a little improbable; it's like they singlehandedly represent the whole force. Also, compared to Nayattu, the crisis of faith/betrayal they face has a more manufactured feel, and is handled with less nuance than one has come to expect from the maker.
But overall, Ronth is very much worth the watch, and I'll definitely keeping a watch for more outings from Shahi Kabir.
I'd first seen 10 to Midnight (10tM) on a pan-and-scan VHS tape in the mid-80's. I always remembered the image of the slasher, naked except for a pair of surgical gloves; effectively scary especially if, like me, you were well below the rating age at the time. Having the film on blu-ray gives me a chance to revisit and see how well it holds up now.
This is another in the long run of movies leading man Charles Bronson made with J Lee Thompson. J Lee had at one point had made celebrated war films Ice Cold in Alex, Guns of Navarone etc. But he was at a different phase of his career when he took up 10tM - the projects smaller in scope and lower in budget. 10tM is lower-tier for both him and Bronson, but not without its points of interest.
Bronson plays the tough old detective Kessler, on the trail of a murderer of multiple young women. Early on, the killer is revealed to the audience. He is Stacey (Gene Davis), a creepy young man with sexual dysfunction / fragile ego issues who takes violent vengeance on the women that reject his advances. The film is mainly a cat and mouse game between crafty killer and dogged cop. The interest comes from the cop's willingness to plant evidence to lock up Stacey, purely based on his conviction that Stacey is the murderer (Of course, since this is Bronson, he confesses before the trial to the judge, leading to Stacey's acquittal). Later Kessler copies the killer's stalking MO, humiliating him at his workplace. This is referred to in the climax where Stacey, after he is captured, screams about how Kessler's illegal actions forced him into a further massacre that leads to the death of at least 3 women when he goes after Kessler's daughter. The film ends on a note of vigilante justice in which it is left for the audience to wonder if the rule of law works both ways.
10tM is pervaded by a sleazy mean-spirited tone - I can't wholly disagree with Roger Ebert's review in which he says, "What is [Bronson] doing in a garbage disposal like this?". I think Gene Davis does reasonably well as the psycho-killer even though the script and Thompson's direction do not ask for any nuance from him. Bronson coasts along as he did in a million of his latter-day tough guy movies. The supporting cast is either workmanlike or outright pedestrian. The potentially interesting aspect of the the cop's ethics are never seriously called into question. This is a Cannon Films production, and very likely, the budget was not a generous one. Apart from the climax featuring a major police hunt with squad cars and a helicopter, there are no 'big' scenes, and it has a distinct DTV feel.
88's release sources its feature presentation from the same 4K restoration that was used on Shout Factory's North American release and also licenses the extras from that one. The widescreen 1.85:1 image is healthy looking and nicely presents Adam 'Terminator 1&2' Greenberg's cinematography. The DTS-HDMA dual mono track is good enough for the film's modest thrills and Robert Ragland's interesting synth score. Extras include a commentary track by Bronson biographer Charles Talbot and several featurettes, all borrowed from the Shout release.
I have come to love the chameleonic Basil Joseph (Sookshmadarshini, Ponman, Paltu Janwar) and, given his limitations, Prithviraj Sukumaran can be quite decent with the right part (like in Ayyappanum Koshiyum). But damn, the best way I can describe Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil (GA), the supposed family entertainer from 2024 is...toxic masculinity portrayed in the light of an amusing and harmless trait.
Prithviraj and Basil are Anandan and Vinu, would-be brothers-in-law (BILs) who have for some reason developed an intense bonding (apparently over phone conversations alone), so much so it appears Vinu's bride Anjali (Anaswara Rajan) is a mere afterthought in their interaction. Perhaps they are united by their self-entitled fragile-ego perspective: Vinu is still sulking over a broken affair he attributes to a selfish and fickle woman. He seems only interested to marry so he can be closer to the BIL; draw your conclusions from that. Anandan is separated (though not divorced) from his wife and young child. He appears unconcerned about reconciling till Basil goads him into bringing his 'Aniyathi' (sister-in-law) home. It then turns out that Vinu's ex and Anandan's current are the same woman. How this impacts their quasi-homoerotic mutual admiration society and how the matter is finally resolved forms the rest of the film.
What makes it so galling is that GA is structured as a farce. We are supposed to find the antics and attitudes of these overgrown men-children cute. Anandan's courtesies towards his wife Parvathy in the intended reconciliation come across as an act antithetical to his true nature - Nikhila Vimal in the part is mostly reduced to staring with a disgruntled expression. When things go awry Anandan totally immediately declares Parvathy a pariah, discarding all notions of trust and mutual respect in a marriage. It turns out that Vinu's treatment of his ex has not been honorable either. This woman has been wholly victimized by these two bullies. The third perpetrator is the film's script, which treats her as a mere prop with no agency of her own. Even worse, Anandan's sister seems wholly okay with this fact and has no problem marrying the man at least partially responsible for her SIL's troubled status. Instead of more incisively exploring this issue we get a welter of pointless sub-plots, including one with Yogi Babu as a man wanting revenge on Vinu for another past sin (which reinforces him as a habitual asshole).
The narrative has a so-called happy ending in which Vinu marries the girl he wants (or whose brother he covets), and gets off with just a token apology to the woman whose life he has probably doomed. GA may have achieved its ends at the box-office, but in terms of the quality of writing, this is certainly not one of Malayalam cinema's better moments.
Like its title, which in the English spelling could stand for either the generic Hindi word for 'caste' or for a specific farming community in Northern India, Sunny Deol's latest vehicle Jaat is a schizophrenic beast. On the one hand it wants to be a tribute/cash-in to Deol's legacy as one of Bollywood's evergreen action movie stars. On the other hand, Deol has basically been air-dropped into the trappings of a Telugu masala flick. This is not surprising, since helmer Gopichand Malineni made his name with a string of such formula Telugu films, several of them starring this goon:
Compared to what Malineni makes him do in Jaat, Deol's previous action filmography is so grounded it would qualify as neo-realism. Interestingly, Randeep Hooda with his Haryanvi background is the only true 'Jaat' in the film (Deol's Punjabi heritage makes him a 'Jatt', which means the same thing, but not entirely); But Hooda here plays a Sri Lankan refugee called Ranatunga, while another Punjabi Vineet Kumar Singh (of Mukkabaaz fame) is cast as his psychotic younger brother Somulu(!). After having escaped the Lankan army and made his way to India with his comrades and a cache of gold (don't ask), Ranatunga runs a tyrannical parallel government in rural Andhra; In collusion with corrupt local authorities, his men oppress the cowed cow-munity, conducting periodic beheadings just to let them know who's boss. Decapitation is a major sport in Jaat - If you played a drinking game with each time someone's head flew off their shoulders, you'd be passed out well before the half-way mark.
The half-way mark incidentally is where the movie's title flashes on the screen. Deol's own entry is not long before; he is the lone non-saffron robed passenger boarding the train from Chennai to Ayodhya Dham. Hmm, according to IRCTC this is a journey that takes 39 hours. I have to wonder if Kill's success has birthed a trend of movies where folks that can afford flights (at least economy) opt for long rail journeys as an exercise in sheer masochism. But unlike Kill, this one goes off-rails fast. When technical reasons force the train to break trip, our nonchalant Jaat Wick gets himself an idli breakfast at a track-side cafe (It might be reading too much, but I wonder if his request for dal-roti getting pooh-poohed is Tollywood hinting at their current prevalence over the Hindi film industry). His meal is roughly interrupted when a bunch of local goons bump the plate out of his hands en route to heckling the cafe lady.
This begins the most fun part. Deol's request for an apology is naturally scorned by the goons. He then proceeds to give them the comeuppance they deserve and his fans demand. But even after the beating they only threaten him with the name of their boss. Which means that Deol must drag them to the boss' lair and demand said apology from him. Repeat cycle. This is the sort of structure that would have been conceived in an 80's Hong Kong martial arts caper, but it's entertaining given the over-the-top cartoony nature of the villains and the humor that comes from Deol commencing his 'idli' story at each level. Finally, he enters the stronghold where Ranatunga rules with his wife Bharathi (Regina Cassandra, clearly relishing the opportunity to play wicked). In a more than passing nod to the Ramayana, Deol rescues a bunch of lady cops (led by a mostly wasted Saiyami Kher) that had been imprisoned by the Ravana-worshiping Ranatunga.
Post-interval, as Deol makes his way to the police station with his rescued charges and we are treated to distasteful reprises of their harassment by the villains, Ranatunga launches a full-scale armed assault with bikes, jeeps and random explosions. More deaths occur, and we become privy to more icky flashbacks, one in which a teenage girl is stripped and assaulted by a senior cop working for Ranatunga. Like Toshiro Mifune's wandering ronin in Yojimbo, a disgusted Deol decides that this town is too rotten to allow to survive, and proceeds to burn it down two-handed, carrying only an armory of assault rifles, RPG launchers, harpoon guns(!), and oh, a military chopper.
There are minor diversions: You have Telugu stars Ramya Krishnan as the President and Jagapathi Babu as the hotshot CBI officer she sends to Andhra to solve the crisis, only to find it Deol-ized before he even gets there proper. There are allusions to land being captured at the behest of foreign powers to extract radioactive thorium as a valuable resource. Mahesh Limaye (once of Jogwa fame) has another crass Bollywood cameo in which he serves as a (loud) mouthpiece extolling the Jaat's badasserie. But Deol's entry as a Ram-like figure - on an Ayodhya bound train - and his fight with the evil Sri Lankan tyrant to rescue Indian womanhood, and the populace in general, is really where Jaat is at.
The action is bloody, but has a cartoony edge that makes it more palatable than a Marco (see how Ranatunga's troops move obligingly in single file so they can get jointly skewered by harpoons like shish kebabs). The sexual violence is more problematic, the inherent misogyny of mainstream Telugu cinema simply transcribed here. Too many gory flashbacks drag the pace while also piling on the ick-factor. However, Deol's ability to convey a sincerity that's naive without getting cloying means that whenever he is on screen, he lifts the film, gives it a little class.
And Soon the Darkness from writer-producer Brian Clemens and director Robert Fuest (the Dr. Philbes movies) is an effective 'missing person' mystery thriller. Clemens, famous for the vintage Avengers TV series (nothing to do with the MCU, kids), also directed the Hammer flick Kronos - The Vampire Hunter, which featured a James Bond-ish protagonist as opposed to their traditional puritanical heroes.
Pamela Franklin (The Innocents, Legend of Hell House) and Michele Dotrice (who I mainly remember as the long-suffering wife of doofus Frank in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em) are two English lasses on a cycling holiday through rural France. With their comely looks and short shorts, the girls catch the eye of the local male population. Michele is getting bored of the lonely pedaling and not averse to a little attention, but Pamela is determined to (erm) carry on. This leads to a spat between the two friends when Michele decides to stay put in a lonely spot by the road, hoping for that young man on the motorcycle trailing them to make an appearance.
After hearing stories from the locals, a worried Pamela turns back for her friend only to find her missing. The man on the bike pops up again, behaving mighty suspiciously. Actually the whole neighborhood behaves suspiciously. While restrained in its depiction of violence or oppression, the film is a precursor to what would be known as the Backwoods Brutality genre. It helps that the girls are nicely rounded as characters; we do care when bad shit starts to happen to them in a foreign land. The film maintains the tension for a large part of the running time, even if it asks some of the red herring characters to behave in an unnecessarily cryptic/hostile manner. The climax isn't quite as explosive as one would have liked, but this was on the whole a good suspense flick.
Visually the blu-ray is a marvel. During the opening credits, things are not so great, but immediately after, there is a remarkable jump in clarity, saturation and detail. The film might have been shot yesterday if not for the fashions, attitudes and the lack of teal filters. The lossless PCM 2.0 audio is fine too, easily supporting the modest requirements of the dialog and music score. Extras include two commentary tracks (one with the writer and director, and the other from film historian Troy Howarth) and a video piece by horror reliable Kim Newman. Newman gives his customary cheerful burble, trying to present the film as a 2nd generation British take on French inspirations from British film-makers like Hitchcock. He also goes briefly into the careers of writer Clemens, director Fuest and the two leads.
Taking into account that there are a good many lacunae in my movie viewing, this is the gist of my theatrical experiences in the year gone:
The Yays
UI - Upendra (Kannada)
It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if S. Shankar and Alejandro Jodorowsky got together and made a movie, UI would be what emerged. In this day when everyone's making super-safe 'movies for dummies', this is an absolute triumph of audacity and divine madness from the maverick Upendra. Even seeing it in Kannada without any subtitles, this was probably the most awed I've been this year. Sadly though not surprisingly, it also seems to have bombed, going out of most cinemas in just a week.
Jagte Raho - Sombhu Mitra & Amit Maitra (Hindi)
OK, this is a cheat, since this movie originally came out in 1956. But the restored version was screened in cinemas this year. Raj Kapoor as an unknown struggler comes to a city and, in his quest for a drink of water, enters a resident colony where he gets taken for a thief and all manner of chaos results. Set in the course of a single night, the film is a satire on urban capitalist society and its sordid underbelly. Remarkably, Kapoor took a part where he is mute through most of the film. It's not perfect, and gets a little preachy towards the end (and the famous Nargis cameo, even though it looks gorgeous, feels like it came from another film altogether. But it's very interesting all the same, and I had a good time on the whole. The resto looks pretty good too in most part.
All We Imagine as Light - Payal Kapadia (Malayalam+Hindi)
Kill is probably the most fun I've had watching a Hindi movie in a long time. Up to half-way I was wondering if the reviews weren't exaggerating a little about the violence in this movie. But post-interval they crank it up to Holy Shit! levels. One scene with a fire extinguisher is bruisingly memorable. Compared to the bloated ass-fests that most new movies are, it's just a 106 min long and packed with badass action.
Furiosa: Mad Max - George Miller (English)
At nearly 2.5 hours, this film is significantly longer than Fury Road, with a lot of time spent on identifying different factions and their politics. It's not Shakespearean drama, some of it more in the vein of video game cut-scenes, but it's sufficiently punctuated with brilliant action to make the whole dish palatable, and Chris Hemsworth's Dementus is a pleasure.
Mixed feelings. There's a neat little drama here, and a number of trademark Raghavan moments (the pre-interval portion is terrific!), but it's also significantly hobbled by a musical romance the director seems to believe in, but which did nothing for me. Still, you should watch it and make your own opinion. It should be at least better than the bigger movies on account of which it missed the Xmas release date it had been aiming for.
In the creative sphere, poet Emily Dickinson is rarely cited as anybody's conscious influence, but her most-quoted line hits upon such a fundamental truth, its underlying sentiment has powered almost every major humanist work in our world. Hope is truly what keeps us going, whether in terms of taking on herculean challenges, grappling with powerful opposing forces or even merely surviving. I realize this sounds like an overly profound opening; in that sense it mirrors Payal Kapadia piloting us into her film's world, the bustling Mumbai metropolis where millions jostle each other. Their thoughts spoken out Wings of Desire style, we hear these jostlers individually, taste their unique cocktails of despair and hope.
Then we zoom into a microcosm of this universe, the hospital - not by coincidence, a place of hope and healing - and our main characters Prabha, Anu and Parvathy. Prabha (Kani Kusruti, Girls will be Girls) and Anu (Divya Prabha, Ariyippu / Declaration), both nurses* and flatmates, are linked by their Malayali heritage. Prabha is senior in both age and rank, and serves as an elder sister / guardian to Anu. Prabha is married, but has not seen her husband , an expat worker in Germany, since many years; even the telephonic conversations have died off. Anu meets her Muslim boyfriend Shiaz in secret, certain that her parents will never approve of the match. The feisty Parvathy (Chhaya Kadam), a Maharashtrian who serves as cook at the hospital, has troubles of her own in the form of real estate bigwigs that are forcibly acquiring her tenement flat in the name of redevelopment.
Prabha is like a forlorn flower, withered from the absence of romance. She is helpful and nurturing to her subordinates, but appears to have lost all hope of personal happiness. A message-less gift of a rice cooker is the only communication she has had in years from her absent spouse; one night, in an almost sexual manner, she hugs the appliance. But it also serves as a reminder of the obligation she has bound herself with - when the new doctor courts her, she gently brushes him off citing her married status. Anu is fresher, livelier. In her telephone conversations with home, she hides her relationship with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). During their clandestine meetings she is often the bolder party, talking dirty and initiating their lovemaking. But this boldness seems to come from a desperation to squeeze as much as she can from the relationship before its inevitable end. Parvathy comes across as more pragmatic than her educated colleagues - she is no defeatist for sure, but also sees no sense in prolonging a fight that cannot be won.
While episodic, All We Imagine...'s screenplay roughly has a three-part structure, one for each protagonist. The resolving act is spearheaded by Parvathy quitting her job and shifting back to her seaside village. Prabha and Anu help move her things (discovering in the process that she has shoplifted several hospital implements as 'souvenirs') and stay over. One evening a man is rescued from drowning, and Prabha uses her skills to tend to him, in a sense bringing him back to life. What follows between them is, depending on your POV, either a fantastic contrivance, a game of benevolent deceit or a fantasy playing in her mind. But it releases her from her emotional prison; she at last learns to love herself again. In the final scene, our three women are sitting side by side by the beach, their hearts at least for that moment in sync, fluttering with the thing called "Hope".
*Kerala in southern India is the biggest source of qualified nursing staff from the country.
My first day of attending the MAMI 2024 fest was spent at the old-skool Regal cinema in Colaba.
Kneecap (Zambia) [dir. Rich Peppiat]
My first movie of the fest, this tale of two delinquent youths and a language teacher with a mid-life crisis forming the titular Irish hip-hop band was a heartily welcomed crowd-pleaser - think The Full Monty meets Gully Boy with a healthy dash of Trainspotting. The surprising thing for me was to learn that it's based on an actual band and the members (Moglai Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Provai) play themselves. Michael Fassbender does an starry supporting part as an Irish rebel and father of one of the Kneecap-ers. It's very pat and cute, hinting at but never hitting any truly dark spots, but the movie acknowledges that in its cheeky intro referencing the stereotype of films about Belfast.
The Room Next Door (USA) [dir. Pedro Almodvar]
Death has been a recurring companion in Pedro Almodvar's films. In his English-language debut, it occupies center-stage. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore are former colleagues and deep friends who just happened to have not met in years. Tilda is a war correspondent who discovers that she has grade III cancer. She is also estranged from her only child. She decides that she will not undergo further treatment and proposes to go to a secluded retreat where she will use an illegally procured euthanasia pill. She begs Julianne to be her 'room next door' companion for these last days. Unlike Bergman's merciless incision into death in Cries and Whispers, Almodvar finds humor in Tilda's preparations for her suicide - her worries about forgetting to carry the pill, her instructions to Julianne about how she is to 'discover' and report her demise. There is an easy camaraderie between the veteran actresses that papers over the script's sketchiness about the closeness of their bond. John Turturro makes an appearance as a former lover to these women that has become a climate change pessimist - he's frankly an irritating guy, prating about the destruction of the planet while obviously practicing a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption.
On the whole this was a decent bleakly humorous drama, spoiled only by the epilogue in which Swinton, as per some unwritten clause in her contract, makes a second appearance as the estranged daughter, drawing attention to herself at the cost of the narrative.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Zambia) (dir. Rungano Nyoni]
Writer-director Nyoni impressed me with her previous feature I'm Not a Witch (IANAW), a bleak, biting satire on the treatment of witchcraft-accused in Zambia. In Guinea Fowl, She once again explores the exploitation of women by traditional society. Shula (Susan Chardy), a modern self-assured woman working an international job (we see her doing a Zoom conference with colleagues across nationalities) is returning from a party when she sees a man lying dead on the road, who happens to be her uncle. This eventually leads to the family holding a customary funeral for the dead man. In the course of the ritual, which we see primarily as an exercise in the women feeding and serving the menfolk, a picture of the uncle as a serial abuser is revealed and suppressed traumas emerge. Watching it, I was reminded of Mira Nair's (IMO) overhyped Monsoon Wedding. But where Nair was content to have a pat resolution to a serious crime, Nyoni has a more open-ended, but also more openly angry protest against the patriarchal system that defends male oppressors and parasites (Shula's father keeps mooching money off her). It also helps that in Chardy (whose character name Shula is the same as IANAW's protagonist), she has a lead performance that screams star potential. I can't wait to see what these ladies do next.
Emilia Perez (Mexico) [dir. Jacques Audiard]
Emilia Perez is the crazy genre-bender a younger Almodvar might have made, if he was friends with Roberto Rodriguez. Described as a 'musical crime comedy', the movie opens with skilled legal understudy Rita Mora (Zoe Saldana, not hidden under prosthetics or motion-capped like in her major franchise movies) being hired by gangster 'Manitas', an intimidating presence with his large frame, grotesque silver-capped teeth and propensity for violence. Not to defend him in court, no, but to find a skilled surgeon for the sex change operation he desires. You see, our Manitas wants to become a woman and fake his death to move to a new life. Lured by the lucre, Rita fulfills his task, and also arranges to send away his wife and children to Europe during the process, ostensibly for their safety.
Cue a few years later, Rita meets the charismatic Emilia Perez, who reveals herself as the former Manitas. Emilia wishes to renew their acquaintance for the purpose of bringing her family back to Mexico. Posing as 'Aunt Emilia', Perez welcomes the family with open arms. They're more hesitant, though: the kids miss skiing in Switzerland, and wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) is in a relationship. Emilia has changed in other ways too: she becomes a celebrity social worker, using her laundered funds to make a foundation to locate missing people feared to have been killed in gang encounters. Perez even develops an attraction to one of her clients (Adriana Paz). But when Jessi announces her intention to re-marry and move away with the kids, Emilia snaps and all hell breaks loose.
Emilia Perez's narrative is presented in brilliant opera fashion, its choreographed song and dance routines wonderfully melding the romantic melodrama aspects with the crime backdrop. Saldana seems to be having a lot more fun than in her superhero Hollywood outings, but the film's biggest star is of course Karla Sofia Gascon in the title role. The film mirrors elements of the actor's life and she plays both Manitas and Emilia superbly. Yes, it's melodramatic and calls for some significant suspension of disbelief, but embraces its kitsch with a sincerity that triumphs over all else. Viva Emilia!
In terms of plot, Dhanush's Raayan (which he has directed himself) is a fairly standard mainstream action movie. A B&W prologue establishes that the lead character Kathavaraayan aka Raayan, after the disappearance of his parents, becomes responsible for his younger siblings - two boys and an infant girl - and will go to any lengths to protect them.
The boy grows up to be Dhanush, who runs a food stall and conceals his toughness under a meek exterior (but he still has a reputation for being a badass). His brothers Muthuvel and Manickavel (Sundeep Kishan and Kalidas Jayaram) are more reckless and frequently get into scrapes. The sister Durga (Dushara Vijayan) is the apple of Raayan's eye, and he is closer to her than the brothers. They have a father-figure in Sekhar (Selvaraghavan) who'd helped Raayan out after he escaped from his village as a child with his siblings.
The main plot is driven by a devious police commissioner (Prakash Raj, stereotyped but effective) that engineers a quarrel between local dons Durai and Sethu (Saravanan and SJ Suryah) with the idea of eliminating them both. One of Dhanush's brothers gets somehow implicated in this quarrel. To protect the family, especially the sister scheduled to be married, Dhanush has to kill one of the dons. This sets into motion a second set of events, one that tears the family apart, and ignites a trail of bloody vengeance.
Raayan's script is a mixed bag: on one hand it's filled with the usual cliches and eye-rolling contrivances of a star-driven film, but on the other, it explores nuances not normally seen in mainstream masala. The dynamics between the brothers, and the transformation of the hitherto pampered sister into an avenging angel justifying her name infuses freshness into the stereotypes - Dushara Vijayan in the film's second half is a revelation - the scene where Durga fends off an attack by goons on a mortally wounded Raayan is nail-biting, and she becomes the main driving force of the vendetta. One applauds Dhanush for permitting her to overshadow his own character. Even the shading of the bad guys is interesting - there's some wicked humor courtesy Suryah's Sethu getting buffeted between his two wives.
There is also some serious visual chutzpah on display, especially in the action scenes and the choreographed festive number that comes late in the film. Om Prakash's cinematography uses overhead tracking shots, slow motion and colors in spectacular ways. If Raayan's script had lesser concessions to 'mass' pandering this could have been an amazing masala movie. But it still has several moments of interest, per se.
The legend of the 47 Ronin is one of the most celebrated in Japanese history. Briefly, after their master Lord Asano is forced by decree to commit sepukku / hara-kiri as penance for an altercation in the Shogun's court, the warriors of Ako castle plotted and carried out revenge against the person they held responsible for the altercation. By this action they also registered their protest against the Shogunate for its wrongful verdict. Interpreted as a symbol of adherence to the Samurai honor code and extrapolated to patriotic fervor, the story has had countless adaptations in Japanese popular culture including at least half a dozen film versions, some by celebrated makers like Kenzi Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) and Hiroshi Inagaki (Samurai trilogy). I haven't seen any of these previous films, and if the idea of Mizoguchi, known more for his feminist melodramas, making a Samurai vendetta flick seems somewhat preposterous (it's like if Douglas Sirk made The Dirty Dozen or Kamal Amrohi made Sholay) one can take comfort in knowing that this was also the opinion expressed by Akira Kurosawa (interestingly enough Kurosawa himself never undertook to adapt this tale).
FoAK is only the second jidaigeki (period drama) in Fukasaku's career. It is certainly amusing to see characters in the opening of a Fukasaku film swaddled in ornate kimonos, adhering to the courtly etiquette of 18th century Japan. Lord Asano (Teruhiko Saigo) is seen to attack the influential courtier Lord Kira (Nobuo Kaneko) after the latter insults him. Although he only wounds the man, the display of violence in the royal court is a shameful affair. As per the royal decree, Lord Asano must kill himself, and his clan is ordered to be disbanded, leaving his loyal retainers leaderless.
Furious at the forced suicide of their master, the Ako clan warriors led by chief retainer Oishi (Yorozuya Kinosuke) wish to kill Lord Kira. But the latter, after being relived of his duties - in itself, an admission by the Shogunate of the one-sidedness of its verdict - lives in a protected citadel with his spies constantly monitoring Ako castle. Oishi instructs the clan members to lay low, pretending to accept the Shogun's verdict, till the time is right for action.
It is nearly two years before the moment comes. During this period, the Ako clan members become ronin (clan-deprived warriors), struggling to fend for their families, while Oishi seems to sink into debauchery. South East Asian film expert Tony Rayns in his video essay for FoAK states that in this while, the clan eroded from an original 600 members to the final number of the legend. Fukasaku personifies this in the character of an ex-Ako warrior whose belief in the cause fails after he suffers humiliating penury where his wife must sell her body to support the family. Sonny Chiba plays another Ako-ite who remains loyal to the clan and shows his mettle in the final revenge, while Toshiro Mifune makes an appearance as a warlord sympathetic to the Ako cause. Non-Japanese viewers only familiar with Chiba and Mifune's names may be disappointed to find that they have limited screen time (adding all his footage, Mifune probably has less than 2 min).
At long last, Oishi gives the call for revenge, and the remaining squad of Ako loyalists launch a full-scale raid on Lord Kira's stronghold. After they fulfill their mission, they surrender to the Shogunate which, in tacit sympathy with their honor code, does not order for their execution; instead, it permits them to commit honorable ritual suicide. Their bodies were later buried with that of their late lord in Sengaku-ji temple, where they are still commemorated.
FoAK has the pedigree of a bonafide epic (aided in no small measure by the cinematography of Yoshio Miyajima, who worked on several of Masaki Kobayashi's classic films), but somewhere in all the grandeur, its soul gets stifled. Not that the film is devoid of good moments - the panic of the Ako retinue outside the palace wanting to know the fate of their master, the initial failed attempt to assassinate Lord Kira, the relentless climactic assault are rendered with Fukasaku's trademark vitality. The fate of the Samurai whose life and faith crumble to circumstances during the terrible waiting period also generate empathy. But the political drama is stuffy, and the majority of characters are overly familiar archetypes whose actions and fate fail to engage us. This lack of grip means that nearly 160 min runtime hangs heavy, and I found my attention repeatedly wandering. Your mileage may vary.
The film is presented as part of Eureka's prestigious Masters of Cinema series. The back cover simply says "Presented in 1080p HD from a restoration of the original film elements by Toei [Studios]", but this is a handsome video presentation with lush colors and filmic texture. There may be a slight green tint, as often seen in vintage Japanese movies, which may be endemic to the source. The lossless Japanese mono audio is strong in terms of dialog, sound effects and the eclectic score (Toshiaki Tsushima). On-disc extras include a video essay by Japanese film expert Jasper Sharp, but what I loved was Tony Rayns' supplement, which is a masterclass on the true history of the 47 Ronin legend and the multiple adaptations of it in theater and cinema. The included booklet features an essay by Jonathan Clements, which talks about the disagreement between Fukasaku and lead star Kinnosuke, which may have led to the tonal discrepancies in the film. The cover features vintage poster art on the reverse side. While the film was not entirely satisfactory to me, this blu-ray release is highly recommended to people who are already fans or want to check it out.
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.
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.
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