The Bride Wore Black (1968)

Posted on April 18, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

One likes to imagine that after François Truffaut sat down with Alfred Hitchcock for the extended interview sessions that became the seminal book Hitchcock by Truffaut, he became restless to try out some of Hitchcock’s theories on his own. The result, then, would be The Bride Wore Black (1968), and certainly no one missed the overt homage. Truffaut’s film is a love letter to Hitchcock in many ways: he brought back his Fahrenheit 451 composer, Bernard Herrmann, whose most famous work was for Hitchcock (The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Psycho, etc.); for his story he chose a novel by Cornell Woolrich, whose fiction had inspired Rear Window; and the plot would involve a series of elaborate murders by an icy woman (not a blonde, alas), all executed with straight-faced black humor. Reportedly, Hitchcock was delighted with the result. (He was a cool cat. He also admired Russ Meyer’s Supervixens.) In later years, many critics would take Brian de Palma to task for imitating the master so closely; but the greatest success of The Bride Wore Black is that it adopts Hitch’s theories of suspense filmmaking without quite imitating him. It is still recognizably a film by Truffaut, one of the greatest directors of the Nouvelle Vague.

The tragic wedding day of Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) is only revealed gradually, in impressionistic flashbacks spurred by the confessions of dying men.

Truffaut’s Jules and Jim star, Jeanne Moreau, was nearly 40 when she was hired as the lead of The Bride Wore Black. Hitchcock may have hired someone younger, but Truffaut wanted to create a showcase for Moreau, who was his ex-lover and one of the greatest stars of European cinema of the 50’s and 60’s. And her age adds an invaluable layer to the story. She is playing Julie Kohler, a woman whose husband was murdered many years ago on the steps of their wedding chapel. She has spent an untold amount of time pursuing the men responsible for that single, fateful gunshot out of the blue – her features reveal that she’s haunted and just a little bit weary, but also intelligent, emotionally reserved, and calculating. Truffaut gave her some private motivation, which he confessed to Hitchcock, and is suggested in the film only by an easily-missed line of dialogue: Julie is likely still a virgin. This contributes to her awkwardness when a member of the opposite sex (usually her intended prey) makes a pass at her: an uncomfortable vulnerability which only makes the performance more intriguing to watch as she goes about her plans of revenge. The viewer is given to wonder if she might let down her guard and see her victims as human beings; and even, possibly, allow herself to fall in love – when one of the men she means to kill, a talented painter named Fergus (Charles Denner), becomes enraptured by her beauty. He casts her as Diana the huntress, giving her a toga and a bow and arrow while he sketches her image, and paints a nude of her on the wall next to his bed. Julie seems to become confused, possibly even touched. But when the artist suggests she turn her arrow more in his direction, she doesn’t hesitate to aim it straight at his heart.

Julie exchanges rings with her murdered husband.

What makes The Bride Wore Black such a joy to watch is the manner in which it rewards the viewer’s attention. The unconventional opening credits, set to Herrmann’s score (mixing the traditional wedding march with an unsettling suspense theme), is one fixed camera shot: a photo of a topless Jeanne Moreau being rapidly printed, over and over, into a growing pile of nudes. You’re inclined to think it’s just fodder for a smut shop; it might take a second viewing to realize it was actually Fergus’s bedside painting of Moreau being reproduced for a wanted poster, being the only image available of the killer’s face. It’s almost a surrealistic gesture to place this scene out of context; and you could say the same for Truffaut’s never explaining exactly how Julie Kohler discovers who was responsible for her husband’s death. (It’s certainly extraordinary detective work on her part, and to leave out that exposition allows Truffaut a touch of Nouvelle Vague experimentation, as well as to let the narrative just cut to the chase.) After the first murder – and once the viewer realizes this isn’t a whodunit but a whenwillshedoit – Truffaut begins to tease the audience’s expectations as he moves from one potential murder scene to the next. Moreau’s scheme to off Michel Lonsdale’s smarmy politician Rene is especially fun: a game of three players – Julie, Rene, and Rene’s young son – in which our film’s antihero, pretending to be the son’s teacher, tries to negotiate the restless child into bed, and then gradually steer the father into a perfectly helpless position. Watch the entire sequence carefully and you’ll see Truffaut’s modus operandi for The Bride Wore Black: it’s as much a comedy on human behavior as it is a satisfying black-widow thriller, and the film triumphs on both counts.

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Sayonara Jupiter (1984)

Posted on April 16, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

It is the year 2125. The Earth’s population is 18 billion, and colonies throughout the solar system hold an additional five billion (the opening titles inform us). New sources of energy and sustenance are urgently pursued to sustain those vast numbers. On Mars, the polar ice cap is detonated to melt free a new source of water; but it also reveals previously hidden markings on the planet’s surface, pictographs which suggest an ancient alien intelligence, a la Chariots of the Gods. A similar discovery is about to be made on Jupiter. An operation known as the J.S. (“Jupiter Solarization”) Project hopes to use a chain reaction of nuclear fusion to transform the planet into a sun, thus providing a source of energy for the outer colonies. But the planet hides a secret: something strange and mammoth hides deep within the gas giant, which transmits a mysterious signal when two officers, “Chief Investigator” Eiji Honda (Tomokazu Miura) and “intergalactic linguist” Millicent Willem (Rachel Huggett), fly their shuttle dangerously close to the alien object. Meanwhile, a black hole begins to materialize near the planet, swallowing one of their vessels and threatening to consume Earth within two years. A plan is hatched to “divert the path” of the black hole by slightly modifying the J.S. Project – the planet will be exploded instead. When word of the new plan reaches the protest group called the Jupiter Church – led by a grinning, guitar-toting, dolphin-owning hippie named Peter (Paul Tagawa) – they attempt sabotage with explosives and laser guns.

Koichi Kawakita, of the "Ultraman" series, provides the special effects for "Sayonara Jupiter."

The Toho Company hoped that Sayonara Jupiter (1984) would be a dazzling science fiction spectacle to rival those coming out of Hollywood. It was an ambitious production. The expensive special effects (by Koichi Kawakita) largely move beyond the “toy model” look of earlier Toho films; the “Jupiter Ghost,” an alien spaceship decorated with lights and lurking within violent storms near the planet’s nucleus, is particularly impressive-looking near the film’s climax. Director Koji Hashimoto, a Toho assistant director graduating to the big leagues, makes the unique decision to represent a genuinely international space colony on “Minerva Base” by casting American, French, British, and German actors alongside his Japanese stars, many speaking their native language. (Hashimoto would next helm Godzilla 1985, Toho’s attempted reboot of their most famous franchise; one of the officers in Sayonara Jupiter watches Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, a 1964 Godzilla film.) Questions are asked in Japanese and answered in English, and vice versa, as though everyone on Minerva refuses to sync. This Tower of Babel approach proves to be a major miscalculation, one of the film’s many. The English-speaking actors are amateurs with no screen presence and community theater delivery. Because of this, unintentional laughs begin at about six minutes into the film, and don’t let up for the next two hours-plus.

"Peter" (Paul Tagawa) leads the cult known as the Jupiter Church with pop songs and dolphin tricks.

I mean, where to begin? After acolytes of the Jupiter Church are arrested for a crazed protest at Minerva Base (they smash a single computer over and over), Honda recognizes one of them as the love of his life, Maria (Diane Dangely) – who’s French, to keep with the multinational theme – and immediately grabs her by the hand and runs with her in slow-motion through the halls of the ship. When they reach his private cabin, they make zero-gravity love, Moonraker-style. In an abstract sequence, they float naked through the cosmos, holding hands like Superman and Lois Lane, while delivering background exposition that amounts to: they haven’t seen each other for years; he likes outer space; she doesn’t really care for it. Within the blink of an eye, Maria is back on Earth along with the rest of her protest group, whose daily activities apparently consist of hanging out on a sunny beach, tanning, windsurfing, and smiling with glazed eyes at their leader and spiritual guide, the aforementioned Peter, who has a pet dolphin named Jupiter, and sings pop music about how wonderful the Earth is. The beach scenes suggest a J-pop video directed by Roger Corman. An underwater camera captures a woman swimming topless, her breasts gliding slowly toward the camera, as though this is going to be that kind of movie. Late in the film, a killer shark attacks poor Jupiter, gorily mauling him to death. Honda – on a rare visit to his home planet – attempts to recreate the climax of Jaws by throwing explosives into the water and firing at them with a pistol. When the shark cannily dodges the explosions, Honda plunges the boat’s propeller into its face and grinds it into pieces. Returning to the beached and blood-drenched dolphin, Honda looks at the bikini-clad girls and beach bums and asks optimistically, “Is there a vet around?”

Honda (Tomokazu Miura) engages in a laser shootout with terrorists.

Shark attacks, zero-gravity sex, and J-pop videos aside, there are unmistakable plot similarities to Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two, which also involved alien intelligence near Jupiter and the conversion of the planet into a sun. Clarke’s 2001 sequel was written first as a 10-page film outline, then as a novel from 1981-1982; appropriating an idea from Stanley Kubrick’s film, he changed the story’s key planet from Saturn to Jupiter, since new Voyager flybys of Jupiter and its moons had opened up some narrative possibilities. The film of 2010, directed by Peter Hyams, arrived in theaters in December 1984. Sayonara Jupiter hit theaters first, though America remained largely ignorant of its existence, and it certainly had no impact on 2010‘s box office. Hashimoto’s film was written by Sakyo Komatsu, adapting his own two-volume novel published in 1982, the same year as Clarke’s book. I’m inclined to think that similarities between the two projects are therefore coincidental, though it’s not out of line to suggest that the Japanese film’s production was aware of the forthcoming Hyams film and positioning themselves as a friendly rival. This isn’t the cinematic equivalent of the space race: Sayonara Jupiter, in a gesture of polite diplomacy, dedicates itself to NASA. I’m not sure what NASA engineers would have thought of the film’s questionable physics and gonzo exploitation elements. After a few beers, they’d probably get a kick out of it.

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Christiane F. (1981)

Posted on April 13, 2012 at 6:00 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Christiane F. (aka Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo [“We Children of Zoo Station”], 1981) is the tale of Christiane Felscherinow, whose true story of drug addiction and prostitution at the ages of 13-14 was published first as a series of interviews in a German news magazine, and then as a bestselling autobiography in 1979. An exposé of teenage life on the streets of Berlin from one who survived and escaped, it was a sensation with an audience curious to uncover the seamiest details of Germany’s urban youth culture. The inevitable film adaptation was from Uli Edel, a young, first-time director who would go on to direct Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) before translating his gritty style to television dramas such as Twin Peaks, Homicide: Life on the Street, and Oz. His work on Christiane F. is admirably unadorned. Though the subject matter anticipates films like Less Than Zero (1987), Trainspotting (1996), and Requiem for a Dream (2000), Edel’s film is deliberately straightforward, occasionally uncinematic, like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. As Edel explores restroom stalls, decaying train stations, and crowded dance clubs, the camera’s gaze is unflinching; it’s a film about locking eyes with those you would normally cross the street to avoid.

Christiane (Natja Brunckhorst) and her boyfriend Detlev (Thomas Haustein) feed their habits.

To tell the story of Christiane F.’s harrowing downward spiral, Edel enlisted a cast of young – mostly underage – amateur actors. Natja Brunckhorst was only 14 when she was hired to play the role of Christiane; Thomas Haustein, playing her boyfriend Detlev, doesn’t seem to be much older, judging by his hesitant brush of a mustache. As with Taxi Driver, this is a gradual descent into an urban Hell, and the unfamiliar faces of the johns and junkies leaning against graffiti-sprayed walls and slumped against toilets only add to the film’s verisimilitude. The texture helps considerably since the story itself is fairly mundane: Christiane, increasingly isolated from her broken family, takes some LSD with friends while lecturing those who shoot up heroin. But soon enough she’s curious to try some herself, which leads quickly into addiction, and ultimately into turning tricks for cash, just like her boyfriend, who confesses to hustling for a gay clientele on the side. It’s a vehement anti-drug film, but one which is coated with a viscous layer of bodily fluids; the scene in which Christiane, following a lengthy and brutal withdrawal, suddenly sprays her boyfriend – and the bed, and the walls, and their last remaining drugs – with rust-colored projectile vomit surely ranks among the most spectacular, and nauseating, anti-drug statements ever committed to film.

The zombie-like Christiane stumbles through the streets of Berlin.

The withdrawal scene also features a moment in which Christiane, delirious, begins clawing off the room’s wallpaper, like a scene in a horror film (symbolically, the innocent, colorful design of her childhood wallpaper peeks out from behind the shreds). It’s significant that early in the film Christiane takes her date to a screening of Night of the Living Dead, for by the film’s end she exists in a world inhabited entirely by Romero-esque zombies, and has become one herself; her mother’s horror at finding her overdosed on the floor of their bathroom mimics the horror of the mother from NOTLD who discovers that her daughter has transformed into a monster (the very scene Edel excerpts in Christiane F.). But the scene which most closely evokes that of a horror film is firmly rooted in real-world terror: while Christiane shoots up in a public toilet, a junkie comes climbing over the closed door of the stall, stealing the needle from her, and plunging it into his throat, indifferent to the blood that streams loose. He returns the needle a minute later, says his thanks, and leaves.

David Bowie performs "Station to Station" for an enthralled Christiane.

David Bowie was sympathetic to the film’s cause, and produced the film’s soundtrack, which contains songs from his late-70’s period (Station to Station, Low, Heroes, and Lodger). He also appears as himself in concert, mesmerizing the Bowie acolyte Christiane with his performance of “Station to Station” (in the parking lot outside the concert, she snorts heroin for the first time). The original Germany vinyl release of the soundtrack album was fetching $60 at a local records store as of a few weeks ago, but you can find the 2001 CD remaster for much cheaper. Although it contains no exclusives to the Bowie catalog, it remains my favorite album of his, with a mood that swings wildly between ecstasy and gloom – a perfect match to Christiane’s drug-induced highs and Lows. It also contains the bilingual version of “Heroes,” in which Bowie sings part of the song in German. That track is a highlight of the film Christiane F. – accompanying a Godard-esque sprint by the juvenile delinquents through a closed mall – just as it’s a highlight in Christopher Petit’s strange, overlooked mood piece Radio On (1980).

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