AFI Corner: Villains #30 Travis Bickle

Posted on May 3, 2020 by 4 Star Films

In this column, I go back to my roots with The American Film Institute’s Top 100 Lists, a good place to start for those interested in Classic Hollywood films. It’s in concurrence with #AFIMovieClub and the 10th anniversary of becoming a classic movie fan myself. Thanks for reading.

The first time I ever saw Taxi Driver — owing partially to AFI’s list of heroes and villains and my own naivete at the time — I think I legitimately did think of Travis Bickle as a villain. At least he was a volatile human being I didn’t know what to do with. He unnerved me in a sense. Hence, villainy. It makes it a lot easier to categorize him in such a way because it makes it unnecessary to consider his character in more complicated terms.

However, over subsequent viewings and as I’ve grown as a person, my thoughts on Travis have evolved even a little bit. Sure, there still is the same knee-jerk reaction to his brand of vigilantism that goes to the extreme. And yet I look at him, his genuine desire to clean up the revolting streets, his sense of compulsion to protect Jodie Foster’s character — how do you come to terms with him?

These are not bad desires per se, but they get twisted over the course of the movie. By the time of his dream-like ascension, the angst of this cabbie and Vietnam vet has taken him off the proverbial deep-end.

The final scenes of Taxi Driver — even the ones leading up to the climax — and following thereafter, do not make me angry at Travis. On the contrary, I pity him and question what kind of world we live where someone can come to believe that they are a hero in their little world of self-delusion. And yet it doesn’t end simply there. Something more exists. For even the briefest of moments I think and question: Is there someone or something like Travis Bickle inside myself?

After all, if he started from a place of genuine altruism, what about me? I can be, at times, petty and self-serving on my worst days (or even some of my better ones). You never set out to be a villain. Sometimes it just happens due to the proclivities of human nature and how we are wired.

So, on a good day is Travis a hero and on a bad day, a villain? I’m not sure if it’s as easy as that. But I would like to slightly push back against the villain title. I think what drew Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro toward the character was this inherent sense of the everyman ambiguity.

He could be any of us. The character is a barometer of the times and a culture coming to terms with the times. Even as De Niro leers into the mirror gruffly yelling, “You talking to me?” he’s not just calling out to his own reflection. We are all in his place. It’s yet to be known how we respond. That’s what makes it one of the most memorable characterizations of the 1970s. As much as I don’t want to admit it, Travis spells out the best and worst about us.

Classic Movie Beginner’s Guide: Ginger Rogers

Posted on May 2, 2020 by 4 Star Films

As we continue to look at musicals our recent beginner’s guides have been focusing on stars at the center of some of the best films of the era. Today let’s focus on Ginger Rogers.

Aside from being part of the incomparable dance partnership with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers was also an accomplished comedienne and a tested dramatic actress who showed surprising elasticity throughout her varied career. Here are just a handful of her best movies.

Gold Diggers of 1933

Some might forget Busby Berkeley started to choreograph a new syntax for the movie musical and crucial to one of the industry’s most successful Depression_era backstage dramas was Ginger Rogers. Joining forces with Joan Blondell and Aline Macmahon, among others, they build on the success of 42nd Street.

Top Hat (1935)

For some people, this is the ultimate Astaire and Rogers movie featuring some of the most extravagant sets and career-defining numbers together. The cast is rounded out by old favorites like Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore. However, of course, the main attraction amid the screwball foibles are our shimmering leads, Rogers sporting her iconic feathery ensemble.

Swing Time (1936)

Others will say this George Stevens-directed feature is actually the greatest Astaire-Rogers pairing and who would blame them? The dancing is phenomenal and the songs equally amicable including standards like “The Way You Look Tonight.” Surprise, surprise, Ginger and Fred are magical together yet again.

Vivacious Lady (1938)

So many films could earn this spot but Vivacious Lady is buoyed by the real-life chemistry and friendship of Ginger Rogers and James Stewart. The material is fairly light, but they handle it with ease. In a turning of the tables, Stewart was yet to be a big star and Ginger Rogers vouched for him. Greater things were yet to come for both of them.

Worth Watching

Flying Down to Rio, The Gay Divorcee, Roberta, Follow The Fleet, Shall We Dance, Stage Door, Bachelor Mother, Kitty Foyle, Major and The Minor, I’ll Be Seeing You, Monkey Business, etc.

Close Encounters of The Third Kind (1977): Sci-Fi, Spielberg, and Truffaut

Posted on April 30, 2020 by 4 Star Films

Close Encounters is built on a mystery and Steven Spielberg’s follow-up to Jaws starts off in a jarring fashion challenging us to stay with him. Because he quickly throws us into the action and suggests this is a sci-fi tale on a global scale.

Bob Balaban, a cartographer-turned-French translator, speaks for all of us trying to figure out what’s going on, yelling out against whirring old WWII fighter engines, “I don’t understand!” Two lines of juxtaposed dialogue are all we need. The planes were reported missing in 1945. But they look brand new! It takes a moment to tease out the dramatic situation, but there we are. The question is how did this happen? As this is a Spielberg creation, we must point our gaze heavenward or more precisely to the outer reaches of the galaxy.

Francois Truffaut somehow feels like a special piece of casting. The Nouvelle Vague director and hero of Spielberg is cast as Lacombe, a French scientist leading a surprisingly cooperative international team.

It’s not simply because this is the only film he acted in that he didn’t also direct. It has to do with his temperament and the subject matter. There’s something serene and utterly profound about Truffaut. He’s deeply human and engaged and yet feels implacable even as everyone else — the Americans especially — seem frantic and harried. He’s a calming force in a literal maelstrom.

Because Spielberg immediately sets the picture up as not only a national but a global storyline with implications for the entire world. It’s not just higher-ups and government officials covertly working on the issue. Extraterrestrial life would mean potential hysteria, especially for the common man. In this regard, he introduces a few stand-ins.

One is Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss). He loves to tinker, isn’t a particularly devoted father or husband, and he’s a staunch believer his kiddos should grow up with the quality entertainment he had as a kid like Pinocchio, instead of vacuous putt-putt games.

If we are to be honest, Dreyfuss can be a perfectly genial hero in something like American Graffiti or even Jaws, but within this narrative, reflected by his family life, he often comes off whiny and obnoxious, and it hurts his rapport with the audience.

In this particular instance, there’s some difficulty in feeling a true human connection with him even as we are drawn and fascinated by what forces he might have witnessed because that is the million-dollar mystery propelling the picture and keeping humanity agog with visions of UFOs and the great unknown of outer space.

Yes, we are planted in the ’70s so if you want to blame his wife (Terri Garr) for not being a particular understanding or his children for being exasperating you can, but today it just makes him out to be a selfish dolt. This isn’t the same whimsy of some of his cinematic predecessors; it just feels like immaturity.

Sadly, without a substantial protagonist, a Hollywood blockbuster like this can feel intermittently detached and impersonal. It’s not based on lack of effort by the director or the actor. We simply don’t like the man.

It’s much more agreeable to stick with the sci-fi elements because this is where the film really has its deepest successes. Special effects hardly feel like a detriment. They are simple and practical casting just enough of a spell to hold up. But they are not there to do all the heavy lifting.

The first encounter happens when Roy is driving down a country road in his truck only to be ambushed by the most spellbinding sight he’s ever witnessed in his life. It’s greater than any Aurora Borealis and sends his car into a state of zero gravity. The only indication he has after the fact of what he’s just seen is a burning sunburn across the side of his face.

From that point on Roy is doggedly firm in his resolve. It’s almost a primordial urge. He has to see the beautiful lights again, he has to understand them, he needs everyone to appreciate them as much as he does.

One person who does is a single mother, Jillian Guiller, whose little boy Barry has some transcendental encounters in the evening hours, drawn to forces outside of himself — the same forces pulling Roy to something unnameable. In fact, they are the same forces Lacombe is so intent on learning more about. It leads his team traipsing around Mexico, India, Mongolia, etc. all on the trail of this great unexplainable mystery.

For Roy, unadulterated obsession sets in. He can’t get the image out of his head. His wife is frightened. His kids think he’s crazy, and they have every right to. He drags all the family out to stare at the sky. He loses his job. He starts shoveling dirt through the kitchen window with the whole neighborhood watching the spectacle.

With his wife driving off in a tizzy, trying to rescue her family from a maniacal husband who needs mental health, he goes back inside. They fail to see the final destination, the symbol so many people have subconsciously remembered. It’s a clue of where our story must travel.

That leads us to a family road trip — at least one my family took while I was in high school. One of the stops was Devil’s Tower, christened the first National Monument by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. Like Mt. Rushmore in North By Northwest — which I coincidentally saw on the same vacation — Devil’s Tower is an iconic American symbol. Natural and still somehow mystifying even otherwordly. The perfect seat for our finale.

It’s a mesmerizing experience sitting atop Devil’s Tower taking in the bright lights, the musical patterns of communication putting John Williams’ talents to the best possible use. Though it would be lying to say it didn’t verge on monotony in patches, at its very best, Spielberg has an unabashed appreciation for the wide-eyed spectacle and his stroke of genius is taking a very concrete relic and making it so integral to this encounter.

There’s something totem-like, it is a monolith in its own right, and suggests something as ancient as time itself. His other choice is to make the creatures on the other end the most amiable beings imaginable. Years of watching The Thing from Another World and Body Snatchers taught a different paradigm, but Spielberg is an optimist at heart. It shows through and through as the story is carried away by the exponential magic of the final climactic moments.

In many regards, it is a taste. For those still capable of awe where special effects or time or comprehension don’t get in the way of enjoyment, those final moments can indeed be spellbinding. It’s true their trance-like grip reached out to me. The only regret is some of the momentary distractions leading us on this road. It takes a whole lot of roadblocks and digressions to finally get us to our close encounter.

There’s something else nagging inside me. Dreyfuss fulfilled his unerring obsession like an angelic pioneer sent off to the great unknown. He reached the apex as he conceived it. There is nothing more for him to do. Still, one must wonder how exactly are the wife and kids doing at his sister-in-laws? It seems Spielberg has conveniently left the problematic issues of earth behind for the extraterrestrial. Too bad we are not afforded the same luxury.

4/5 Stars

Note: I viewed the Director’s Cut although there is also the previous theatrical cut and the special edition featuring an extended “mothership” scene.

Small Change (1976): A Story of Love and Adolescence

Posted on April 28, 2020 by 4 Star Films

Francois Truffaut has a knack for understanding children in all their intricacies. One suspects it’s because he’s never really grown up himself. He is a child at heart with even his earliest films of the Nouvelle Vague channeling the joy and the passion of a younger individual.

First, there was The 400 Blows, most literally, as an autobiographical docu-drama of youth and then Jules et Jim brimming with the freneticism to tell a historical romance with frolicking verve. I feel much the same energy as the boys hurtle through the streets of their little town of Thiers against the opening credits.

He accents it with the scoring of Maurice Jaubert and later on applies the crooning of Charles Tremet to give it an unmistakably French spirit. It’s a different time, a different generation even, but Truffaut has not lost any of his passion or lust for life, once again managing to tap into the exuberance of youth.

It’s nothing spectacular mind you. Small Change is mostly vignette-driven. It subsists off minor pieces of observation and scenes that might easily have a place in real life. Truffaut takes interest in the daily activities of kids and the important business that takes up their time. We are afforded the opportunity to sit back lazily and appreciate the mundane aspects of the community as they happen.

The local school is a humble place, but its admirable pursuits in the name of academics are as old as the Greeks. Resources are one thing certainly. It helps to have means and yet more crucial is a safe space for incubation where young minds can lean into their curiosities. Mediator thy name is teacher, and what a delight to find some of these individuals are more than up for the task.

Boys struggle to memorize and offer the proper feeling to their assigned passages until Ms. Petit ducks out and one of their members can be heard out of the second story window giving a rendition that would make future thespians everywhere proud. It’s moments like these that surprise us magnificently.

If you will, they’re like anti-400 Blows moments or more exactly triumphant answers to the earlier film. Where teachers aren’t authoritarian tyrants all the time nor kids untethered hooligans. Sure, there’s some of both intermittently, but Truffaut finds time to make both factions gel and feel human.

Mostly it comes with living in a neighborhood where everyone knows everybody else. Patrick gladly takes a neighbor’s young son back home and stops by to say hello to the teacher Mr. Richet and his wife, who live down the hall.

Movie theaters are communal spaces where everyone shows up. Ms. Petit’s even there in the back with her boyfriend. It’s a reminder to all the younger generation, adults — even teachers — are real people too.

There is one new boy in town whom nobody knows and his personal life is all but invisible. He doesn’t talk much, his personal hygiene leaves something to be desired, and he seems to lack all the materials they’re supposed to bring to class. He’s one of those kids some might term a “bad influence,” but even he can get in on the latest episode of Columbo making its round through the corridors of the school the night after.

Julien, with his shaggy mop of black hair, is one of them even as he plays at the outsider and shows signs of a tumultuous home life. Youth can be tender even as it’s also shown to be mean-spirited and crude at times. What’s joyous about Small Change is how affection and quality relationships are allowed to take center stage. They are present with teachers and parents too.

But there’s space for humor too. A single mother scrimps as she takes care of her baby and looks eagerly for love. Her little boy is a precocious one wandering into all the open doors, terrorizing the cat and such trifles. In one death-defying stunt, he takes a fall and comes away from it giggling while leaving his mother with a near-heart attack.

Sylvie is a little girl who uses the water from her fishbowl ( inhabited by Plic and Ploc) to brush down her favorite bag, dirtied with age and similar means of upkeep. I’m reminded of a hilarious incident where the resourceful little girl balking at going to dinner with her parents commandeers her father’s bullhorn and manages to have an all-included dinner pullied to herself through the open window.

In a concerted effort to save some pocket money, the rambunctious De Luca boys go into the haircutting business, maiming their friend’s head in the process with the most grotesque results.

Meanwhile, Patrick is smitten with the mother of a classmate, Madame Riffle. The lavish advertisement of a man and woman on the wall of a shop fills his mind with dreamy ideas (Comfort on the rails). Still, unlike one of his cocksure peers, he’s tentative when it comes to necking in the theater with their classmates. It’s not the right environment for puppy love. He doesn’t know the girls they’ve met up with. There are too many people around. It’s all forced.

He gets his chance later on with a pretty girl at camp named Martine who causes his heart to go pitter-patter. They only have eyes for one another even amidst the teasing of their peers. You can tell how genuine and sweet it is in the clumsy, bright-eyed manner of youth.

With Truffaut’s own views of adolescence, trauma, and innocent love, one is reminded of descendants like Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. This is where he gets it from. There is not one without the other. What makes Small Change intermittently wonderful is how it captures the specificity of its unique time and place. In its own way, it’s an unadulterated descendent of The 400 Blows from a brighter, happier time.

It’s as if Truffaut and the rest of the world has found the love they’ve been craving. At the very least, they have enough hope to keep on trying. That’s one of the beauties of youth: indefatigable naivete, at times, yes, but more so, relentless optimism.

On the last day of school, before the bell rings for summer, Mr. Richet gives his attentive pupils one final rallying cry:

“Time flies. Before long, you will have children of your own. If you love them, they will love you. If they don’t feel you love them, they will transfer their love and tenderness to other people. Or to things. That’s life! Each of us needs to be loved!”

4/5 Stars

Note: The film is also known as Pocket Money in English-speaking countries, although due to the release of a Paul Newman movie of the same name a few years prior, Steven Spielberg suggested the alternative title for the American release.

AFI Corner: Alternative Picks Vol. 1

Posted on April 26, 2020 by 4 Star Films

The AFI Corner column is in concurrence with #AFIMovieClub and the 10th anniversary of becoming a classic movie fan myself. Thanks for reading.

I hinted at several things in my Introduction to this column. Namely, the AFI lists are great but hardly comprehensive. There are numerous blind spots. It’s folly to think 100 titles (or even a couple hundred) can encompass every good movie.

However, they triggered so many rabbit holes for me — to different directors, actors even foreign cinema — and I’m glad for these asides. In no particular order, I want to point out some titles you won’t find on the AFI Lists. It’s not in an effort to be contrarian, mind you. On the contrary, I want to shine a light on more great movies!

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

Leo McCarey is represented on 100 Laughs with The Awful Truth, but it is Make Way for Tomorrow that remains his other often unsung masterpiece. Among many other accolades, it served as the inspiration for Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story focusing on an elderly couple slowly forgotten by their grown children. It’s a surprising sensitive picture for the day and age. Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore couldn’t be better.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Hitchcock obviously gets a lot of visibility on the AFI lists and rightly so. However, if we want to toss out another film that he often considered his personal favorite (featuring one of my personal favorites: Teresa Wright), Shadow of a Doubt is a worthy thriller to include. Having spent time in Santa Rosa, California, I’m equally fascinated by its portrait of idyllic Americana in the face of a merry widow murderer (Joseph Cotten).

Out of The Past (1947)

It’s hard to believe there wasn’t much love for Out of The Past on the AFI lists. After all, it’s prime Robert Mitchum (#23 on AFI Stars) an up-and-coming Kirk Douglas (#17), and an inscrutable Jane Greer. However, from my own explorations, its director Jacques Tourneur is one of the unsung masters of genre pictures in Hollywood ranging from Cat People to Joel McCrea westerns.

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Howard Hawks is another fairly well-represented figure across AFI’s filmography. This aviation-adventure picture is one of the missing treasures featuring a bountiful cast headed by Cary Grant (#2 Stars), Jean Arthur, and Rita Hayworth (#19). It exemplifies Hawks’s wonderful sense of atmosphere and rowdy, fun-loving camaraderie.

Hail The Conquering Hero (1944)

Likewise, Preston Sturges is no slouch when it comes to AFI, whether by merit of Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve, or The Palm Beach Story. However, one of my personal favorites is Hail The Conquering Hero. I find it to be such a pointed war picture, taking hilarious aim at a genre that was quick to lean on schmaltz and propaganda, especially during an event as cataclysmic as WWII.

What are some other alternative movies to add to AFI’s lists?

7 Women (1966): John Ford’s Final Film

Posted on April 25, 2020 by 4 Star Films

7 Women.png

7 Women is an oddity that nevertheless deserves a more prominent reputation. Here we have the inauspicious final film of John Ford, becoming the capstone to a career spanning decades and plenty of classics.

However, there’s no John Wayne in this picture nor western panoramas. Still, it sticks with you and delivers a considerable drama chock full of immense potential in such a short span of time.

The story takes place in a Christian mission situated in China near the Mongolia border. The year is 1935. Though the territory has some protection, there is still a world of feudal violence brooding around this stronghold of Christian virtue.

The religious subtext alone has enough thematic intrigue to keep the story continuously compelling. On top of this, you have the rather unusual circumstances (both then and now) of having an entire cast packed with top-tier female performers.

What sets the picture apart is how it becomes a kind of battleground for morality as people of different breeds chafe against each other, further exacerbated by the harrowing backdrop all around them.

Miss Agatha Andrews (Margaret Leighton) runs her compound with puritanical virtue that would be off-putting if there were anyone to stand up against her. Instead, all her cohorts take her pharisee-like fervor benevolently because they share faith in the same God.

Among them is the right-hand Miss Argent always prepared to pay her services. Sue Lyon is able to subvert her image as a youthful seductress in Lolita for that of an angelic missionary, who is taken under Andrew’s wing. She leads the orphans in renditions of “Jesus Loves Me” and is a cloistered young woman of genuine faith.

Eddie Albert feels strangely cast as a teacher — especially since it’s the Green Acres era — but bless his soul, he’s still as wonderful as ever. He could do it all, and he’s the perfect counterpoint to all the women in his stead, including his peckish wife, the pregnant Florrie (Betty Field).

Their lives could very easily continue in relative peace if not for the arrival of a lady doctor named Cartwright (Anne Bancroft as a last-minute replacement for Patricia Neal). It becomes apparent all too quickly she is the utter antithesis of all that Miss Andrews aspires for her immaculate city on a hill to stand for.

They immediately have it out over everything from cigarettes at a dinner table (ironic for a doctor who is supposed to care for the human body) and the liberal use of coarse language unbecoming a woman. They very much represent two distinct worldviews, and they have an impasse. Dr. Cartwright won’t agree to be shipped out; she has a job to look after Florrie’s baby, while her employer isn’t about to let her camp become a house of sin.

Her protests are final, noting the good doctor will never fit into “a Christian community,” and she takes this as a personal affront, asking the impressionable Emma if she wants to live in Dr. Cartwright’s world.

Admittedly, her points aren’t entirely unfounded as their new apothecary proclaims spiritually is dead because she’s never seen God take care of anyone. It’s the pragmatic truth as she sees it but to such an ardent zealot as Miss Andrews, these are blasphemous words.

While Ford never strikes me as a persistently religious figure, he was raised Catholic and his pictures from 3 Godfathers and The Quiet Man to 7 Women do provide portraits of different figures of the faith. This is arguably the most robust conversation, a heavy indictment of holier-than-thou morality versus actual sacrificial lives lived out of love.

7 Women 2.png

If all this back and forth is playing out in the foreground, the background begins to heat up with word of marauders ravaging the territory. Miss Andrews’ own hypocrisy is laid to bear when missionaries from differing denominations (among them Anna Lee) are begrudgingly allowed asylum.

At least Dr. Cartwright is a straight shooter. It’s when the real crisis strikes, true character is always revealed. Our suspicions are confirmed as the real heroes come out of the woodwork.

When the compound is overtaken by cholera and drastic measures are in order, the Dr. takes charge for the sake of everyone. Then, the local Chinese garrison flees, leaving them as sitting ducks. It’s inevitable. The feared Warlord Tunga Khan will soon be on their doorstep.

What we don’t know are the results of this impending invasion. To its credit, 7 Women does not spare us from the senseless killing; it is a horrible feeling to know no life is sacred in a film. Those who are spared are locked away to watch the bloodshed.

Mike Mazurski and all his Mongolian cronies are the film’s one obvious blind spot. It’s a moment where the film acts its age. And yet even underneath this apparent flaw, you have this strange counter-story as if in an alternate reality Woody Strode, former UCLA star, is going head to head against Mazursky who was himself a professional wrestler. It’s this weird subtext that’s strangely riveting as they battle for control of this rowdy assemblage of bandits.

With time, Miss Andrews becomes completely unhinged spouting off scripture and losing all pretense of a peaceful, righteous figure. She finally gets put in her place by one of her closest companions. (“What right have you to shout abuse behind our celibate walls”). She sees the Pharisee for who she is.

Again, it is the heathen — the woman of the world — who shows wells of affection when it comes to protecting the weak and the helpless and even those who despise her guts. There is another verse pertinent to her character, redeemed as she is, in her unapologetic profaneness. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The actions are what speak on her behalf.

In her final hour, Ford christens Bancroft with what should be remembered as an iconic doorway shot all her own because she knows what she has done, sacrificing herself for everyone, ready to drink the cup of wrath.

She goes out as fiery as she came in. In fact, Anne Bancroft kills it, despite Ford christening her with the rather unflattering moniker of “The Maid of Monotone.” This movie would lose so much fury without her husky heart and soul at its core.

The 7 Women is a fitting final twist in an illustrious career. In a mountain of westerns revolving around men’s men where only a few sturdy lasses on par with Maureen O’Hara were ever able to break in, Ford goes and makes a film populated with women.

What’s even more rewarding is how much there is to cull through. While it might have unceremoniously become the bookend of Ford’s career, it’s no less of an achievement. Taking stock of everything, it’s a criminally underseen gem that adds yet another compelling contour to the old coot’s already complex career in Hollywood.

Once asked in an interview about his favorite picture of Jean Renoir, Ford always the eloquent elocutionist responded curtly, “I like all of them.” We certainly can attribute this to the usual irascibility of the director, but it seems like a fitting way to consider his own work.

While pictures like Stagecoach and The Searchers get their due, even an offering like 7 Women, seemingly minor, taken as part of a broader career, is still full of Ford himself. “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” could not be further from the truth.

With Ford, it’s like each individual picture is giving you another side of him; artistically and thematically he is a part of these movies. The images speak on his behalf. All the better for someone so notoriously difficult to pin down. Look at his films if you want to know the man.

4/5 Stars

The Story of Adele H. (1975): Starring Isabelle Adjani

Posted on April 23, 2020 by 4 Star Films

L'histoire_d'Adèle_H. I didn’t think about it until the movie began, but the only person I’ve ever known to only go by the initial of their last name was for the sake of keeping their anonymity. If you’re a nobody, it doesn’t matter who knows your name.

In this case, if you’re the great Victor Hugo’s daughter, they stand up and take notice. Especially if you run off to Halifax Nova Scotia to pursue a British soldier named Albert Pinson of some dubious repute. Hence Adele H.

This is her story based on the diaries she left behind. It’s during the American Civil War. It’s still left to be seen if the Confederacy will be able to succeed. Adele’s father is currently exiled from his homeland, and she is intent on receiving the invitation of marriage from the man she once rebuffed.

When she lands in the new environment, there’s a timidity furled about her to go with her obvious affluence. She picks up a coach and converses in impeccable English with the driver looking for adequate lodging for someone like herself.

The place settled upon is a boarding house run by a Mrs. Saunders, and there she finds a welcoming albeit humble abode, the perfect home base to begin her inquiries. It seems a noble mission in the service of love.

I’ve come to like Francois Truffaut’s brand of economical period piece. Because usually we come to equate them with ballooning budgets and grand narratives, but Truffaut seems more interested in the character studies. If The Wild Child and now The Story of Adele H. are any indication, it’s the personal relationships he’s invested in and this allows the director to step into the cultural moment and still somehow make them highly resonate with us in an altogether different era.

Isabelle Adjani is the portrait of youthful innocence and she is so young, so beautiful, and full of emotional fervor. It’s hard not to be carried away by the passion of her performance.

Her first meeting with her beloved Lt. Pinson (Bruce Robinson looking like a British incarnation of Alain Delon) blooms with this candor even as it becomes obvious he’s moved on — he no longer has feelings for her, if he ever did — and what’s even more heartbreaking is how madly she still desires to be with him.

Even as the film cuts back and forth between French and English, one is reminded how French really is a romance or romantic language. English sounds so blunt and harsh, at times, in comparison. Maybe as a native French-speaker Truffaut’s not attuned to his actor’s tones in English. Maybe he’s playing off these very elements. No matter, the French is quiet, melodious, and even rapturous in the most passionate declarations.

I don’t understand the literal translation (without subtitles) but the underlying feelings are crystal clear and devastatingly powerful. Her zealousness, the pleading professions of love, met by a soldier whose stoic aloofness only draws out her urgency even more.

One is reminded of a scene where she enters a party — dressed in the hat and tails of a gentleman — but she doesn’t seem to bother hiding the fact she’s incognito, and she gets inside. We see in through the glass as someone goes to fetch Pinot, and he’s forced to make a show of the whole thing by pulling Adele outside and trying to make her listen to reason. Through Nestor Almendros’ fluid cinematography and Truffaut’s intentionality, we understand the whole dynamic without hearing the words spoken.

Or there’s another instance where Adele is presented with a couple volumes of her father’s works by a bookkeeper who is more than a bit smitten with her. But her eyelashes flutter in the most mesmerizing manner, and she proceeds to lash out at him. She doesn’t want to be reminded of who she is and where she comes from.

By now Adele has crossed over to the point of desperation, tears, and, ultimately, obsession. The story begins to sink and devolve into something else entirely. For the first time, we realize what might really be going on.

This might be the most propitious time to insert a morsel about the real Adele Hugo. She most certainly would have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Truffaut doesn’t actually make his film about mental illness per se, and that is problematic if we are clamoring for a wholly authentic biopic.

Instead, we must watch Adele’s descent without much explanation. At night she’s overtaken by terrors and during the day she doggedly pursues any means to bring her eternal back to her. First its vague thoughts of hypnotism, then deceit, and character assassination, effectively besmirching her lover’s reputation with anyone else who tries to wed him.

It’s these interludes which somehow evoke the possessiveness of Ellen in Leave Her to Heaven and yet far from being vindictive, Francois Truffaut casts them in the most pitiful of lights. The film is spellbinding for much of the outset, and Adjani remains steadfast through it all. She carries it along based on her immense graces alone.

However, as the dirge-like rhythms drag on, it can hardly maintain its running-time, following Adele through events that feel like foregone conclusions as she becomes more dismal and delusional. It feels like most of the ideas have been expressed to their full potential, and now we must wallow in her trail of unrequited love.

Finally, she follows her man to Barbados only to be left as a shell of her former self escalated by her complete and utter deterioration. When the film ends it feels like a courtesy to all parties. To Adele because she needn’t suffer anymore and for the audience because we could hardly be more woebegone.

If anything, The Story of Adele H. touches on the darker caverns of Truffaut’s creativity, and yet maybe it’s simply because we always remember the youthful giddiness in his pictures instead of the forlorn aspects. More than anything it makes one appreciate how eclectic his body of work is and the through-line connecting every picture is authentic humanity — even humanity unhinged — in some way, shape, or form.

It just so happens Adele Hugo’s humanity was a bit more depressing. The sad thing is, probably few people actually know her name or, frankly, care about it. In spite of this, Truffaut manages to cast her as a creature of unwavering love on the scale of Wuthering Heights or other comparable works.

At 20 years of age Adjani already had completed a role for a lifetime. If you didn’t get the impression already, she has a magnificent aura about her, half spectral beauty, half tragic heroine.

4/5 Stars

The Wild Child (1970) and Truffaut’s Empathy

Posted on April 21, 2020 by 4 Star Films

The Wild Child (L’Enfant Sauvage in French) is based on “authentic events,” as it says because Francois Truffaut became fascinated by a historical case from the 1700s. A feral boy was discovered out in the forests and then taken under the tutelage of a benevolent doctor.

Although he had initially wanted to adapt The Miracle Worker, Arthur Penn got to it first and released the rendition of Helen Keller’s story to much acclaim. Instead, Truffaut pored over the medical observations of one Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard relating to the curious case of the aforementioned Victor of Aveyron. Somehow this effort follows in the same vein of The Miracle Worker but feels entirely organic and indigenous to Truffaut’s roots.

There are several striking elements about The Wild Child that become immediately apparent. At first, I wasn’t expecting the black & white cinematography, but somehow it makes so much sense. It’s an intuitive expression of the world and frequent Truffaut collaborator, Néstor Almendros, shoots the world with a stark, no-frills tintype aesthetic proving quite extraordinary. The pictorial simplicity is impeccable. Meanwhile, the soundtrack is equally spare, all but scoreless, aside from interludes of Vivaldi when appropriate.

The second notable aspect was the opening dedication to Jean-Pierre Leaud. This only makes sense if you consider the lineage of Truffaut and where he has come from. Certainly his first and greatest achievement was The 400 Blows, which starred Leaud as a wayward youth — not far removed from Truffaut’s childhood or Leaud’s own.

Their relationship remained closely intertwined even as it charted the course of the Nouvelle Vague with the works of Jean-Luc Godard and the resurgence of the Antoine Doinel character in Antoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses, and the still forthcoming Bed and Board.

Of course, in following the historical discovery of a feral boy in the woods of 18th century France, the environment and context could not be farther removed. The opening moments are a striking wilderness chase scene with the naked boy living off the land and fleeing from a pack of hunting dogs, looking to smoke him out and earn the good graces of their masters.

It’s the story of civilization impinging on the natural world even if it is under unusual circumstances. The narrative isn’t an altogether novel one if you remember any historical examples of Native Americans who were shamelessly paraded through so-called “enlightened” western society, like sideshow attractions, only to be decimated by their diseases.

Still, Truffaut films are nothing if not personal, and The Wild Child fits into this personal collage. Each one of his films, individually and together, is sculpted by his ideas into vessels of art and creativity — ways in which to see the world and make sense of it.

If nothing else, somehow he seems to empathize with the circumstances. First, from the child’s perspective, to be left for dead, without parents until the age of 11, and then thrown into a world you cannot comprehend. But he has also evolved into the adult — in this case Dr. Itard — who, in a show of sympathy, makes the boy his charge, if not a pet project.

Truffaut is so invested in this role he throws off all pretense of merely being behind the camera and takes on a role in front of it. Both cinematically and practically, he is the boy’s mentor and guide without an intermediary of any kind.

You can see how deeply he empathizes with other human beings and somehow the good doctor seems like a fitting stand-in for Truffaut himself, on multiple accounts. In a society that looks down at this boy, seeing him merely as an outcast, an idiot, a pariah, Truffaut/Dr. Itard sees someone worth salvaging. He won’t give up on the creature’s intelligence nor his primal urge toward morality — some latent iteration of the noble savage.

And yet he can still be an exacting, obsessive taskmaster. All for the creature’s own good mind you, but there you are. Whether it be the acquisition of language, intelligence, or cinema, you can easily see how any of the three could overlap. He has the end goal in mind, and he’s so unswervingly devoted to the success of his pupil, even to the point of feeling callous at times.

Was this the way it would have been with a wayward, youthful Leaud? Was this Truffaut with his mentor and father-figure Andre Bazin? All seem to be hinted at and as an audience, we can only surmise. Because you have this complicated tie between teacher, antagonist, and friend underlying this film, regardless of its period context.

Someone who opens up the world to you in their infinite wisdom, but no doubt causes you to want to rebel at other times. This is integral to our nature, not only as children but when we grow up too. Only when we’re older are we granted the full lucidity to see everything clearly with the benefit of hindsight. To see the motives behind discipline, tough love, and the implementation of rules.

If I’m to search my own heart, it is not always noble. It is not inclined toward good and has a predilection toward selfish and petty ideas. It takes some framework, some discipline to rein in, but not with the dismissiveness of the civilized elite from Paris and the learned academics. The honest-to-goodness humanity of Dr. Izard/Truffaut and the maternal affections of Madame Guerin are a fine place to start for reference.

Victor isn’t a miraculous case study during his time in their home by any means. He’s a work in progress. But isn’t he a far cry from where they found him — naked, wild, and living in a hole — self-sufficient though he may have been? As children, we are often content making mud pies in the sand when he could have something far better.

As someone who has dabbled often unsuccessfully in the field of education, you realize it’s the little victories that feel like moving mountains. Thus, when Victor begins to retain information, return home of his own accord, and spell the word “LAIT” when he wants milk, these are miraculous in themselves.

Still, it takes the adult to have the foresight to know what will be in the child’s best interest. Things get more convoluted when the dynamics change. That, folks, is what we call the teenage years. Because it’s true sometimes, what people think is in their best interest differs greatly.

4/5 Stars

AFI Corner 100 Songs: #4 Moon River

Posted on April 19, 2020 by 4 Star Films

Let me be clear about this. “Moon River” was love at first sight. The genesis is a bit unclear. Certainly, I saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s first. That must be it. Although my Grandparents had Andy Williams on record. That could have been it. I’m not sure.

The bottom line is the mellifluous tune, with its wafting nostalgic melancholy and quietly evocative tune is beautiful in all its many forms. Mancini’s composition, tailored to Audrey’s own voice, is perfectly understated for her. The lyrics of Johnny Mercer are beyond compare. Simple yet perfectly measured.

I often jest that it’s the kind of song I would want to play at my wedding, but there’s some truth to that as it touches on something that I think is wonderful. For me, it’s the embodiment of love and longing indicative of both the past and future. Huckleberry friends we’ve left behind and those at the rainbow’s end we’ve still yet to meet.

What’s more, it a melody plucked out of time. Yes, it’s the track in the opening scenes of the movie. Yes, Audrey Hepburn sings it so tenderly. But it has a life of its own.

This is part of what makes it one of the most memorable tracks on The American Film Institute’s Top 100 songs. There might be better songs, but nothing can fill the same void in me like “Moon River.” It warms the cockles of my heart.

Classic Movie Beginner’s Guide: John Ford

Posted on April 18, 2020 by 4 Star Films

In our ongoing series, we try to illuminate a person in film history we believe newcomers to classic film should get to know.

This week we thought it would be a nice challenge to try and acknowledge the irrefutable career of John Ford, one of the towering giants of 20th-century cinema. Not only did his images and stories become synonymous with the myth of American West, you could take it a step further and say his films made up the fabric of America itself.

His collaborations with the likes of John Wayne and Henry Fonda boasted some of the greatest achievements in movies of all-time while his beloved Monument Valley has to be one of the most iconic filming locales there ever was. Without further ado, let’s focus in on the irascible maestro Pappy Ford.

Stagecoach (1939)

To be quite honest, John Ford had a vibrant career well before Stagecoach including numerous well-regarded silents and critical successes influenced by his Irish roots like The Informer (1935). However, Stagecoach galvanized his partnership with John Wayne and it stands as a marker of his vast imprint on the Western genre.

My Darling Clementine (1946)

Before I get ahead of myself, you should sit down right this minute and watch Ford’s Grapes of Wrath, also starring Henry Fonda and adapted from John Steinbeck’s famed novel. The images are unforgettable. Of course, the same might be said of My Darling Clementine a western that canonizes the legends of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

The Searchers (1956)

The Searchers is unquestionably John Ford’s magnum opus. The visuals are gorgeous with his usual painterly eye. Monument Valley practically leaps off the screen. John Wayne provides one of the most stunning performances of his career. And he’s surrounded by Ford’s typically robust stock company. It’s the kind of film where long passages stay with you.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

It would be so easy for this gritty black & white western to rely solely on star power headlined as it is by John Wayne and James Stewart. However, Lee Marvin is equally important as sadistic outlaw Liberty Valance. Ford adds another stunning entry to his Western landscape this time tackling larger-than-life men and the myths that surround them. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Worth Watching:

The Iron Horse, 3 Bad Men, The Whole Town’s Talking, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Long Voyage Home, How Green Was My Valley, They Were Expendable, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 3 Godfathers, Wagon Master, Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, The Long Gray Line, Mogambo, The Horse Soldiers, How The West Was Won, 7 Women, and more.