Monterey Pop (1968)

Posted on June 18, 2017 at 7:10 am by Jeff Kuykendall

This review was originally posted on January 9, 2012. It’s being reposted in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival, originally held June 16-18, 1967.

With Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock (1970) gradually transforming from an engrossing concert film to a Shoah-long historical document, I find myself increasingly valuing D. A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop (1968). At just 79 (count ’em!) minutes, the great documentarian’s compilation of the June 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival manages to capture the feel of a staggering, landmark 3-day rock concert without actually requiring the viewer to camp out in front of their big-screen TV hanging up tie-dyes and rationing the pot. Now, Pennebaker claims he was just making the most of an imperfect situation; in his 2002 introduction to Criterion’s 3-disc DVD set, he apologetically states that they had a finite amount of film to shoot with, so the crew tried to limit themselves to one song per band (he also good-naturedly gripes that the Grateful Dead couldn’t play a song under ten minutes; thus their exclusion).  The numerous outtake footage provided on those other 2 DVDs puts the lie to that claim, however; clearly there was some tasteful editing applied. The result is more of a sugar rush than an epic acid trip. He rockets from one act to the next, devoting equal time to loving close-ups of the rising stars onstage and the awestruck hippies in the audience.

Mama Cass, captivated by Janis Joplin during the performance of “Ball and Chain.”

You don’t need sharp eyes to observe that those audience members are frequently other acts, spending their free time in rapt attention of their peers. My favorite moment of the film is during Big Brother and the Holding Company’s lacerating performance of “Ball and Chain.” While Janis Joplin freestyles her way through the blues in her The World is Ending Right Now, exploding-out-of-her-skin fashion, Pennebaker captures Mama Cass’ gaping mouth. It’s not hard to read her lips when she silently mouths WOW. Maybe she’s heard Joplin sing before, but something cataclysmic is happening. Big Brother and the Holding Company is disappearing; Janis Joplin is arriving. So the question becomes, as a director and editor, do you show three, four, five hours’ worth of performances, or do you show the moments that people need to remember, so there’s no good excuse to miss Joplin skipping with joy while she leaves the stage after a fame-making set, or Jimi Hendrix setting fire to his guitar ritualistically, or Pete Townshend smashing his to pieces while Keith Moon’s drum topples into plumes of smoke?

Grace Slick sings “Today” with Jefferson Airplane.

Pennebaker crystallizes each of these iconic performances with little, lingering details captured by his easily distracted camera. Joplin’s foot, pounding at the stage while she remains firmly locked in place, like the gas pedal to her roaring vocals. A mesmerized hippie in the audience tapping her thighs to the rhythms of Canned Heat’s “Rollin’ and Tumblin’.” Many beautiful stoned faces during Country Joe and the Fish’s oozing, psychedelic “Section 43.” And increasingly his images tend toward the abstract. Marty Balin’s vocals dominate Jefferson Airplane’s spellbinding “Today,” but Pennebaker keeps his camera trained on Grace Slick’s profile while she sings along; it seems like Balin’s voice is eerily rising from her lips in an act of possession. With the white spotlight indirectly lighting her features, the image seems to become black-and-white. Similarly, when Otis Redding sings “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” the camera crouches almost behind him, capturing, alternately, his face and microphone – and a blinding spotlight that turns the screen entirely white. You feel what it’s like to be onstage, the audience invisible, singing for your life. An introduction to Eric Burdon and the Animals’ cover of “Paint It, Black” begins in absolute darkness, while Burdon says, “It takes a few hours to get together, this one. But good things always do take a few hours to get together. I hope.” Then, as a fiddle strikes through the darkness, Pennebaker hits us with rapid-fire, grainy close-ups of a woman’s fingers, fingers touching mouth, tongue licking, eyes staring coldly forward. Apropos of nothing, really. Then back to the performance, and we see the fiddler onstage before the swimming and pulsating colors of your famous San Francisco liquid light show. Finally, for the first stretch of Ravi Shankar’s almost twenty-minute-long raga, we don’t even see the performers onstage, only the throngs watching, meditating, praying, working arts and crafts booths (“Free Rocks,” reads a sign next to a dish of pebbles), handing out brochures for “Indian and Japanese Music.” When we do focus on Ravi & Company, we get intense close-ups of fingers plucking sitar, hands beating tabla, and the intensely-concentrated faces of the players. (Pennebaker captures the telepathic communication between the players during the improvisation by cutting back and forth among their faces.) The juxtaposition is strangely moving. When the raga is complete, you understand the rapturous applause. You’re connected to it. You’re in your living room, and you’re applauding, you fool. 79 minutes!

Beautiful people: images from “Monterey Pop” (click to enlarge).

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Secrets of the French Police (1932)

Posted on June 10, 2017 at 8:23 am by Jeff Kuykendall

RKO’s Pre-Code Secrets of the French Police (1932) proves that sensationalist, exploitative pulp was passing itself off as authentic crime procedural decades before the modern TV incarnations. The film, produced by David O. Selznick and directed by A. Edward Sutherland (Murders in the Zoo), is based on a popular series of articles by crime writer H. Ashton Wolfe which appeared in the Hearst papers Sunday supplement The American Weekly. The magazine, which ran for half a century, in its 20’s and 30’s heyday featured spectacular contributions from many notable artists including Alberto Vargas, Edmund Dulac, Lee Conrey and others, illustrating lurid tales of suspense, crime, and detective work. The film begins with a copy of the magazine opened to an installment of Wolfe’s Secrets of the Sûreté, The French Detective Police, insistent (as Selznick often was) on the faithfulness to its source material. But it was a little more complicated than that. Wolfe, author of books like The Forgotten Clue: Stories of the Parisian Sûreté With an Account of Its Methods, was a fascinating and problematic character. His standard lead detective, a forensically minded Sherlock Holmes, was Philip Woodley-Foxe, a thinly-veiled stand-in for Wolfe himself, and he insisted on the veracity of many details of his stories. Mark Gabrish Conlan writes at Movie Magg that Wolfe “claimed to have been a police detective in Lyons, France and to have written the articles based on his real experiences with the force — only while they were checking out the legalities of using real people’s names in the film…RKO’s legal department discovered that Ashton Wolfe was in fact a con artist wanted on swindling charges in both Britain and France (which itself suggests the plot for a very interesting thriller). So Frank Morgan ended up playing the fictitious ‘St. Cyr’ instead of Ashton Wolfe — or at least the glamorous law-enforcer identity Ashton Wolfe had created for himself.”

The film’s opening underlines that it’s an adaptation of the American Weekly series by H. Ashton Wolfe.

The film wastes no time in getting confusing. After we witness a grim funeral for murdered French police officer Brigadier Danton, the plot dashes off in several directions at once without properly introducing anybody. As you’d expect from an early 30’s Hollywood film set in Paris, accents are a grab-bag of French, something meant to pass as French, and unapologetically American. François St. Cyr (Frank Morgan of The Wizard of Oz fame) vows to avenge Danton’s death, and begins following the clues, beginning with the cigarette ash left near his body. A pickpocket named Leon Renault (John Warburton, Saratoga Trunk) romances a flower girl, Eugenie Dorain (Gwili Andre, Roar of the Dragon). A Russian in a rather Gothic chateau, Han Moloff (Gregory Ratoff, All About Eve), places a telegram declaring that he has discovered the lost Princess Anastasia of the Romanovs. To which you might justifiably say, “Wait, slow down – what?” Well, it will all come together, but not in ways that you might expect, or even in the genre in which the story started.

Eugenie (Gwili Andre) and Moloff (Gregory Ratoff).

Ratoff gives what seems to be a Bela Lugosi-inspired performance, speaking with slow, commanding menace. He is a hypnotist with shades of Svengali, kidnapping Eugenie, murdering her elderly guardian, and placing her under his spell so that she will claim to be Anastasia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas II who was rumored to have escaped assassination in 1918. He intends to bring her before the Grand Duke Maxim (Arnold Korff, Diary of a Lost Girl), who knew the real Anastasia as a little girl, and convince him of her authenticity, collecting the reward money. The problem is that every time she sees potted flowers in Moloff’s estate, she switches automatically into flower girl mode, dreamily lifting them up and offering them for sale. This, by the way, is a good indication of the depth of character development in this thoroughly pulp film. Eugenie is the Flower Girl, nothing more. Her smooth-talking, thieving boyfriend Renault (in the mold of Leslie Charteris’ Simon Templar, aka The Saint), who proudly claims that he’s a nationalist and will never rob a Frenchman, is recruited by St. Cyr to break into Moloff’s heavily guarded chateau. Deeper inside those walls we get the first signs of Moloff’s truly malevolent persona: he has constructed a mad scientist’s laboratory and loves to embalm women with formaldehyde and encase their bodies in statues which he poses about his home. Naturally. When Eugenie spoils his scheme by asking the Grand Duke if he’d like to buy some of her flowers (“No more cut flowers in the house!” Moloff fumes to his staff), Moloff sets about embalming her. Only St. Cyr and Renault can save her in time.

Moloff works his embalming technique.

Some nods are made to the forensic methods which Wolfe detailed in his stories. In one fascinating scene, detectives use descriptions of a suspect to build a sketch out of puzzle-like pieces hung on a giant wall. You may ask why the portrait needed to be wall-sized, but it makes for a spectacular image. Other gadgets and strange inventions are employed, such as Moloff’s installation of a movie projector and sound effects machine inside a building at the end of a bridge. As the Grand Duke’s car crosses the bridge, the projected image of another (colossal) vehicle appears to be charging right at him; his driver spins the wheel and the car crashes below, killing its passengers. Yet it’s the final act which is most memorable, surprisingly aligning Secrets of the French Police with other early-30’s crime/horror films like the superior and essential Michael Curtiz films Doctor X (1932) and The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Tellingly, the film also reuses sets from the atmospheric chiller The Most Dangerous Game (1932). In a climactic scene which earns its horror movie bona fides, a desperate, handcuffed Moloff reaches out toward the electrodes of his Frankenstein-inspired mad scientist machine. His hands begin to smoke, and the handcuffs spark and separate, freeing him – but he dies in the process. Perhaps this and the creepy embalming scene might have been handled less explicitly after the Production Code, but the true Pre-Code element is very brief nudity from one of Moloff’s victims. Above all Secrets of the French Police is a confused mishmash of a film, entertainment at the cost of coherency, good taste, or common sense. True crime? Of course not. Which makes it perfect late night viewing with a 30’s-inspired cocktail of your choice. The film is included on last year’s Forbidden Hollywood Volume 10.

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Duelle (1976)

Posted on June 3, 2017 at 10:37 am by Jeff Kuykendall

A young woman working at a hotel named Lucie (Hermine Karagheuz, Out 1) is approached by a mysterious woman in a veil, Leni (Juliet Berto, Celine and Julie Go Boating). She’s looking for a wealthy and powerful man who used to stay at the hotel, Lord Max Christie, claiming to be his longtime lover. Lucie regrets to tell her that Christie spent his time at the hotel with another woman, Sylvia Stern (Claire Nadeau, Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud). Nonetheless, Leni hires Lucie as a detective, putting her on the trail of the elusive Christie. Meanwhile, Lucie’s brother Pierrot (Jean Babilée) is being seduced by a pretty blonde, Viva (Bulle Ogier, Celine and Julie Go Boating), though he is also seeing a “ticket girl” hostess at a local club, Elsa (Nicole Garcia, My American Uncle). Viva is tracking down Sylvia Stern – who is found murdered in an aquarium, a burn mark on her body. Elsa – whose real name, when she’s not professionally flirting and dancing with men at the club, is Jeanne – discovers a large jewel on a choker in Pierrot’s dresser. She tries it on and it magically glows; it also leaves a burn mark on her neck just like the dead Sylvia’s. As for amateur detective Lucie, she meets Viva and begins to realize that both Viva and her client, Leni, are after the same jewel. Her brother reluctantly reveals their true natures: Viva is the daughter of the Sun, and Leni the daughter of the Moon. They can stay on Earth for only 40 days between the last full moon of winter and the first full moon of spring. The magic jewel can allow them to stay. Pierrot kept hold of it, hoping to become as powerful as its previous owner, Lord Christie; but the two supernatural women trap him in the center of their duel.

Lucie (Hermine Karagheuz) follows Viva (Bulle Ogier) in the pre-dawn hours.

With this film noir/fantasy plot you might expect a certain kind of film, but Duelle (1976) – a title that suggests a duel, a pair, and women – bears the mark of legendary French New Wave director Jacques Rivette. His films often dealt with (usually female) protagonists unraveling conspiracies that may or may not exist, the supernatural sometimes intruding in mundane ways. He was also the most literary director of the Nouvelle Vague, inspired as much by novels and the theater as his beloved cinema. With the sprawling, 760 minute Out 1 (1971) he mixed all these interests together using improvisation as his primary muse. By contrast, Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), an international art house hit, stuck to a conservative three-hour running time and was downright accessible, with a playful haunted house mystery at its core. Duelle, at 121 minutes a wisp of a film by Rivette standards, reunited him with his Out 1 producer Stéphane Tchal Gadjieff and was to launch a quartet of films made closely together, unified thematically but diverse in genre. Though the project was never fully completed, the new, beautifully designed Arrow Academy box set The Jacques Rivette Collection pieces together the remnants: Duelle; the second film in the series, Noroît (1976); and Merry-Go-Round (1981), part of his comeback after ill health and anxiety scuttled plans to finish the quartet. (Decades later, he would complete another of the proposed films in the series, 2003’s sublime love story The Story of Marie and Julien. Only his “musical comedy” would remain unmade.) An Autumn 1975 Sight & Sound article, excerpted in the box set’s booklet, explains the concept of the series as Rivette envisioned it: “Some preliminary ground rules: each film covers the same 40-day Carnival period, extending from the last new moon of winter to the first full moon of spring, when goddesses are permitted commerce with mortals. These ‘daughters of fire’ – the title is taken from Nerval – come in two varieties, Daughters of the Sun (fairies) and Daughters of the Moon (ghosts).”

Juliet Berto as Leni, daughter of the Moon.

To add to the elaborate structure of the undertaking, the films would not be made in their intended order. This is why Duelle bears two subtitles, Une quarantine (“the forty,” referring to the enchanted 40 days), and Scènes de la vie parallèle: 2 (Scenes of a Parallel Life: 2). Though this film was the first in the series to appear, it was to be properly placed second in Scènes de la vie parallèle. Marie et Julien was to be the first, the musical comedy the third, and his Western/pirate movie, Noroît, the fourth and last. (By contrast, calling Star Wars “Episode IV” is fairly straightforward.) Rivette works in mysteries, conspiracies, and codes, so you could only tease out this information by reading interviews and articles. In Duelle itself, the story of two rival beings, the daughter of the Sun and the daughter of the Moon, and the jewel which will allow them to stay beyond the 40 days, is only revealed elliptically. In Rivette movies, characters do not stop and explain their relationships; they do not speak in exposition. You have to pay attention and work it out yourself, playing detective like Lucie. But more often than not, it reaps great rewards. Duelle begins like the sort of minor key, casually experimental effort you’d expect from a French New Wave director in the mid-70’s. But then people start dropping dead, the film becomes a genuine neo-noir (with a casino, a dance hall, a hotel, and a shadowy, empty aquarium as the primary settings), and – almost before you’ve noticed – an urban fantasy. Rivette was expressly influenced by Jean Cocteau, and you can see Cocteau’s masterpiece Orpheus (1950) in the way that supernatural beings pass through our contemporary reality with both playfulness and severity; but I ask you what is the difference between a film like Duelle, which transposes fantasy against the gritty backdrop of a twilight Paris, and the novels of China Miéville and Neil Gaiman? Rivette did it first. For this reason I included it in my 100 Essential Films of the Fantastic a few years back, even though its art house pacing will send some viewers packing.

Lucie works a spell on the sought-after jewel.

And on the art house side of the equation, we see Rivette once more inserting elements of improvisation and meta-commentary by putting the film’s composer right there in the background of many scenes. All the music is improvised and performed live by pianist Jean Wiéner; in one funny moment, he begins scoring a tense confrontation when you didn’t even notice he was there: light falls on shadows in back and suddenly there he is, haunting the room like another of Rivette’s ghosts. The cast consists largely of Rivette’s repertory company. Ogier, Berto, and Karagheuz had all appeared in Out 1; Berto played Celine in Celine and Julie Go Boating, which also featured Ogier. Ogier dresses like Celine and Julie‘s magician, wielding her stick (which hides a blade) like a magic wand. Rivette would also remain loyal to cinematographer William Lubtchansky throughout his career, and Lubtchansky works wonders here, inspired by the idea of moonlight and a duel between the Moon and the Sun by filming many of the scenes during the magic hour, the sky brightening slowly, the streets empty, lamps still lit. In the interior scenes he lets the room’s light sources suffuse corners or the softly glowing interiors of aquariums, and in the film’s key scene – the introduction of magic, as Elsa dons the jewel choker – her face drops into shadow and the gem lights supernaturally from within its recesses. Then light crosses her face again and the jewel dims. Rivette plays with this concept further when Leni and Viva are confronted by their foes. Viva, Sun-fairy, is cornered in darkness, the lights blinking out and the doors shutting, weakening her. Leni, Moon-ghost, is pushed down a hallway by Pierrot as he opens one door after another that spill sunlight, like Van Helsing fighting Dracula. But, this being a Rivette film, he is named not after a Stoker character but after the Pierrot of the Commedia dell’Arte. (Though he craves power by using the jewel – and at one point causes a mirror to break with a gesture in the air – his name reminds us that he will be doomed to play the fool.) For too many years Duelle has been the best-kept secret of Rivette’s filmography, known only to those lucky enough to attend revival screenings of Rivette’s work; that’s how I was introduced to it, over a decade ago. Now that we can finally watch it on Blu-Ray thanks to this essential box set, the secret is out: this is one of Rivette’s most accessible and very best. Now would somebody please get around to releasing Love on the Ground (1983)?

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