Friday, July 10, 2009
Herzog Week: My Best Fiend
By Edward Copeland
The only time I visited Europe was in late 1991. Somewhere along the Italian Riviera, I spotted a newspaper in a language I couldn't read but with a headline that had enough words that I could recognize: Klaus Kinski Morte. My Best Fiend, in a sense, is less a documentary (of course Herzog doesn't like to distinguish much between features and documentaries, insisting Fitzcarraldo is his best documentary) about the late eccentric actor than director Werner Herzog's feature-length eulogy for his volatile friend. Herzog first met Kinski as a teen when he shared an apartment with Herzog's family and Kinski already was an aspiring -- and eccentric -- actor then, prone to outbursts of rage. Years later, when his career was more firmly established, these became legendary and anyone amazed by the Christian Bale recording can see he had nothing on Kinski when you see some of the footage of the explosions Kinski unleashes on the sets of the films he made with Herzog. If My Best Fiend has a weakness, it's that a lot of the footage is the same footage you will have seen if you've watched Burden of Dreams. Herzog does find more amusement than sadness when discussing his lost friend, especially when discussing Kinski's autobiography which Kinski admitted was almost entirely fiction because he thought no one would have any interest in reading the real story of his life or if he admitted he liked Herzog. Herzog took a lot of grief for making five films with Kinski (Cobra Verde is the only one of the five I haven't seen), since his reputation as a troublemaker preceded him and most other actors and crew were reluctant to work with him. Despite its portrait of a truly unstable talent, Herzog still clearly conveys his affection for Kinski and that shows through above all as does the late actor's talent, especially through the moving images that Herzog chooses to close the film.
Labels: 90s, Documentary, Foreign, Herzog
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
Herzog Week: Burden of Dreams
By Edward Copeland
Can a documentary come with spoiler warnings? It probably depends on how much you know about the history of the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo going in, but there were some real surprises for me when I watched Burden of Dreams. For one thing, right off the top I learned something I didn't know: That the film began as an English language film with Jason Robards in the title role and Mick Jagger as his dimwitted actor sidekick. With filming 40% complete, but with numerous complications involving a border war, missed rainy seasons that left rivers unnavigable for the film's boats and the backing out of financiers, Robards became seriously ill and had to go back to the U.S., with orders not to return. At the same time, the production had gone on so long, Jagger had to back out as well as the Rolling Stones had a commitment to a concert tour. Back to the drawing board for Herzog, who did a massive rewrite, got Klaus Kinski involved and had even more problems. The documentary is so amazing that it's a wonder that Fitzcarraldo got finished at all. Of course, the big moment of the film involved the dragging of the large boat over a mountain to reach the river on the other side. The man who did this in real life had the good sense to disassemble his boat and do it in pieces, but Herzog insisted on doing it in one piece, making it even more of a maddening challenging. One thing is for certain: No one should ever watch Fitzcarraldo without watching Burden of Dreams soon after. As an added plus on the Criterion DVD of Burden of Dreams is included an earlier short film by its director, Les Blank, called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Herzog had years earlier befriended a struggling young filmmaker named Errol Morris who was frustrated about how to get started and Herzog bet him that if he got his film made (a documentary about pet cemeteries called Gates of Heaven), Herzog would eat his shoe, which he proceeds to do at the film's premiere.
Labels: 80s, Documentary, Herzog
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Herzog Week: Fitzcarraldo
By Edward Copeland
Even though it's not officially a two-part film, Fitzcarraldo in many ways reminds me of Apocalypse Now. The films are good, stand-alone works but when you see the documentaries about what went into making them (Burden of Dreams will be along later today), they make the experience even more impressive. The third collaboration of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, Fitzcarraldo tells the story, loosely based on truth, of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, whose name has been garbled into Fitzcarraldo by the Spanish and Indian natives of the region of South America where one mad dream after another falls into ruin. Fitzcarraldo already has lost a fortune trying to construct a railway across the continent, but now his overriding dream is to build a grand opera house in the jungle town of Iquitos. Unfortunately, he must first find a means of achieving the dream and bringing Caruso to the natives. His first plan, building a fortune from making ice, goes nowhere, but he soon discovers that there are still some unclaimed regions of the jungle from which a fortune from rubber could be made. Unfortunately, it is in the most mythically dangerous part of the jungle, an isthmus divided by the densest of terrain. After acquiring a huge boat from another rubber baron, Fitzcarraldo sets out for his mission, to venture into a land where reportedly no men have returned alive. While the film itself is a tad overlong, the imagery is so remarkable that it carries it along and Kinski is the main reason why. With his shock of blond hair and white suit, if you added spectacles, he'd bear a striking resemblance to the musician Thomas Dolby from the same era. Claudia Cardinale also does well as Fitzcarraldo's lover, a high class brothel madam who finances most of her lover's mad ventures. While Fitzcarraldo isn't as great as Aguirre, the Wrath of God or an indescribable marvel such as Stroszek, when you combine it with Burden of Dreams it truly is a remarkable experience on par with the pairing of Apocalypse Now and Hearts of Darkness.
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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Herzog Week: Woyzeck
By Edward Copeland
Werner Herzog mentions (and I've watched and listened to so much Herzog of late, I'm ashamed to admit I can't pinpoint exactly where) that he and Klaus Kinski filmed Woyzeck quickly after they finished their work on Nosferatu. Alas, the speed and the fact that it is based on an unfinished play shows. Thankfully, Kinski's performance makes it worth watching, even though it doesn't come close to matching his other collaborations with Herzog. Kinski plays Franz Woyzeck, an unstable military private, trained as a rifleman but used mostly as a barber, haunted by voices in his head. He's also the subject of experimentation by a doctor who for a year has allowed him to eat nothing but peas in some cockeyed plan to see if he can turn a man into a donkey. Woyzeck also has a young wife (Eva Mattes) and child, only his wife can't bear his touch or his obvious madness and barely keeps secret from him her affairs. As her lover and others taunt Woyzeck, his madness grows greater. The problem with the film is that Woyzeck starts nuts and he really doesn't have anywhere to go. You figure he's going to snap in some way and the dialogue gives you clues like big flashing lights as to what will happen. It's fortunately a very short film. Kinski's decision to pull his performance in instead of chewing the scenery with madness is the best decision made in the film, but Woyzeck overall is forgettable.
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Herzog Week: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
By Edward Copeland
In a featurette on the DVD for Nosferatu, Werner Herzog says that it was the first time he attempted a pure genre film and boy did he pull it off. He also felt some responsibility, remaking what he considers the first great German film something that, in actuality, he did twice, making both English-language and German-language versions (on the commentary, Herzog prefers the term reversioning). I only watched the German version and it may well be the best screen telling of the Dracula story I've seen put on celluloid. Of course, the reason Herzog made two versions was the international nature of his cast and as a result many of the actor's voices were dubbed by others in both versions. The great French actress Isabelle Adjani plays Lucy Harker, but since she spoke neither English nor German, another actress voiced her part in both versions. The same was true of the Frenchman Roland Topor who plays Renfield, though the dubbed cackle would make Dwight Frye proud even though Herzog claims never to have seen the Bela Lugosi version. Klaus Kinski as Dracula and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker could do their own voices in both versions. Herzog, as a German child born during World War II, felt that there was no German forefathers in his immediate generation to look back to, so he and other aspiring filmmakers went back to their cinematic grandfathers like Murnau who made the silent Nosferatu in an effort to find their way to connect to German culture that didn't involve the horrors of Nazism. Kinski's makeup, which took four hours a day, is patterned after the look Max Schreck had in the silent classic and his subdued performance boosts the creepy element that Herzog builds. What's particularly amazing for a vampire film is how much is not shown. Only a single drop of blood appears on screen throughout the entire film, yet it doesn't do anything to lessen the horror, though I'm not sure horror is the proper word. There aren't scares as in your typical vampire story; Herzog's film concentrates on moods and atmospherics and really succeeds better than other movies that take the easier paths to spooking the audience. Kinski's Dracula contains a bit of a tragic figure within his horrific monster body, longing for the ability for human emotions such as love or even the desire just to die. All the classic characters get a bit of a twist. Ganz's Jonathan Harker starts out as the would-be hero, out to save his wife before becoming a zombified figure shaking in a corner. Walter Landegast's Van Helsing isn't the fearsome vampire hunter of some versions, but just your average doctor who believes in science and pooh-poohs the superstition when Adjani's Lucy tries to warn him of the vampire in their midst. Lucy changes the most. It's somewhat ironic that this version premiered in 1979, the same year that Sigourney Weaver first became Ripley in Alien, because Lucy is the character that pretty much takes charge when it comes to trying to stop Dracula. Now, she doesn't do some Ripley-style asskicking, but it is an interesting take, especially within her village, which has been hit by the plague and provides some unusual sequences where Lucy tries to enlist help only to find the living citizens drinking and celebrating what they assume will be their last dances. As I've dived into Herzog for this week's project, I've found his body of work to be more eclectic that you'd think while still showing some of his signatures within the different films. Of all those I've viewed, Nosferatu may be my favorite Herzog so far.
Labels: 70s, Foreign, Herzog, Silents
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Herzog Week: Stroszek
By Edward Copeland
If you describe in detail the bare bones of the plot of Werner Herzog's 1977 film Stroszek, the movie sounds quite depressing. However, Herzog spins his story in such a whimsical way, it's hard not to smile most of the way through its bittersweet tale. While there really is not a documentary feel about Stroszek, that line is blurred since the three main characters are all played by real people loosely based on themselves. The title character, Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.), is an alcoholic who has spent most of his life in Berlin in halfway houses, jails and reform schools and is getting yet another chance at life on the outside as the film opens. He's quiet with a somewhat sweet demeanor and musical desires that play out on the piano in his apartment or the accordion he takes to the town square for spare change. He takes in a prostitute named Eva (Eva Mattes), who leads poor Stroszek on a great deal of the time while bringing in most of the cash. Bruno's other friend is an elderly man named Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz), always a hair trigger away from a rant about the secret police and other conspiracies, who cared for Bruno's things while he was away. As Bruno and Eva continue to be harassed by a couple of street pimps, the trio hit upon the idea of leaving Berlin to go far away, really far away, to Wisconsin in the United States, where Scheitz says his nephew has invited him to live and offers them job opportunities. Stroszek is a one-of-a-kind type of film, where you're never quite sure where it's going because plot seems completely extraneous to observation and moments such as dancing chickens that seem out of the blue prove riveting. It's unlike most Herzog films, but it's a wonder to behold.
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Herzog Week: Even Dwarfs Started Small
By Edward Copeland
Of all the Herzog films I watched in preparation for this week, Even Dwarfs Started Small is the only film I came close to not finishing because it's just that damn odd. You know you're in for something way off the beaten path when the DVD commentary contains (as do most Herzog films) not only Herzog and Norman Hill but professional eccentric Crispin Glover, who was reportedly so influenced by this disturbing mess that he planned to film his own homage to it. I don't know if Glover got around to it, but if he did, don't tell me about it. In some case, ignorance truly is bliss. While the film is unique for using a cast entirely of little people, it's nothing more than a collection of bizarre and disturbing images. Though it's about 95 minutes long, it took me a long time to finish because it's weirdness eventually took on an element of mundaneness that would not hold my interest. There is no plot to speak of and even less in the way of character. My best guess is that it's a story of what happens when the inmates run the asylum, but are they inmates? It's unclear whether the dwarfs are students, inmates or patients of an institution, but they clearly are leading a rebellion when one of their own seem to be arrested for wrongdoing. As they trap the institution's supervisor inside, they go about mutilating animals, staging mock weddings, setting fires, hotwiring cars so they can run in endless circles and crucifying a monkey. They also giggle and cackle. Boy, do they giggle and cackle. Herzog says on the commentary that following a prize he won for his first feature, the very good Signs of Life, he was plagued by nightmares and Even Dwarfs Started Small sprang from that. He also said the he was influenced by Tod Browning's classic 1932 film Freaks, but he missed the great lessons of that film. Freaks created real characters you cared about from its sideshow attractions as well as a story that carried the film from beginning to end. Even Dwarfs Started Small has none of that and is by far the worst Werner Herzog film I've ever seen. Of course, because it was made by a major filmmaker such as Herzog and is ambiguous about what the hell it is about, it's one of those films that many will defend with the usual: "I don't get it. It must be genius" instead of accepting the simpler truth: it was Herzog's third feature and it was a mess made by a self-taught filmmaker in his 20s experimenting and failing in the process. Just because he made a spectacularly strange dud doesn't distract from the great works he would go on to make. This is weirdness for the sake of weirdness.
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Monday, July 06, 2009
Herzog Week: Signs of Life
By Edward Copeland
Signs of Life was Werner Herzog's first feature-length film as a writer-director, though it never received a release in the U.S. until 1981. Still, this 1968 film bears many of the themes that will recur throughout Herzog's body of work and does so with humor and a nice character study as a pseudo-oasis for a recuperating soldier during World War II becomes suffocating for the soldier, both as a warrior and as a man. Peter Brogle stars as Stroszek (no relation to the title character of the later Herzog film), a soldier whose severe injury earns him cushy duty with two other soldiers, as well as his wife, guarding an ammunition supply on a Greek isle. As his injuries heal, Stroszek grows restless and feels that he's not doing his military duty in these plush environs where enemies are nonexistent. His comrades (Wolfgang Reichmann, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg) really offer little help with their drinking and bitching and one's obsession with insect infestation. Even the unusual perk of having his lovely wife Nora (Athina Zacharopoulou) present brings Stroszek little comfort. As time marches on, Stroszek unravels, eventually becoming a threat to the ammo himself that the Nazi military must deal with in a setting where they saw no resistance whatsoever. Herzog's film builds slowly and doesn't lead to a huge climax, but it always is fascinating with interesting little scenes such as when a the soldiers twice encounter a gypsy and the military commanders try to figure out what to do about their Stroszek problem. The score by Stavros Xarhakos proves very reminiscent at times of Anton Karas' famous Third Man work. With its nature and madness aspects, Herzog was definitely setting the stage for themes he'd return to time and time again. Signs of Life is not one of his greatest films, but it is a good one and quite fascinating when viewed in context of his entire career.
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It's Herzog Week at ECOF
By Edward Copeland
For reasons that really have no rational explanation, a phase I started going through watching Werner Herzog films that I hadn't seen seemed to coincide with a week that I knew would take me out of commission.
So as a result, I decided to create Herzog Week so I could write the reviews in advance and provide a week's worth of copy. Herzog is a fascinating filmmaker and a fascinating man. Born in Germany in the middle of World War II, but deprived of much of modern technology in his youth. He made his first telephone call when he 17 and started making his first film two years later. Later today, the first new review, of Herzog's first feature-length film, Signs of Life, will appear. Until then, you can look back at previous writings on Herzog I've done.
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Friday, July 03, 2009
Work in progress
By Edward Copeland
Ed Howard of Only the Cinema has begun a new site dedicated to trying to keep track of blog-a-thons and other special events happening around the movie blogosphere. As someone who used to try to keep a blog-a-thon calendar until my own life got too hectic to keep it up to date, I wish him the best. The site is still under construction but is called simply The Film Blog Calendar. Help him out by letting him know if you have something planned that might be of interest to the online film community.
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Ed Howard of Only the Cinema has begun a new site dedicated to trying to keep track of blog-a-thons and other special events happening around the movie blogosphere. As someone who used to try to keep a blog-a-thon calendar until my own life got too hectic to keep it up to date, I wish him the best. The site is still under construction but is called simply The Film Blog Calendar. Help him out by letting him know if you have something planned that might be of interest to the online film community.
Labels: Blog-a-thons
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Karl Malden (1912-2009)
In the flood of recent celebrity passings, one would wish that TV would grant an appropriate amount of time to noting the career of Oscar winner Karl Malden, who died today at 97. Certainly he's been in the public eye a lot longer than others. He may not have set records like others did, but I guess your death only deserves real notice if you managed to become tabloid fodder in your lifetime first. Malden didn't have that foresight. He just did his job and did it damn well, working up until the year 2000 and making public appearances well past that. Malden made his Broadway debut in 1937 in the original production of Golden Boy. While his film career began in 1940, he continued to appear on Broadway until 1957, including the original productions of Key Largo, All My Sons, The Desperate Hours and, of course, A Streetcar Named Desire. Amazingly, he never earned a Tony nomination. His first notable film came with 1947's Kiss of Death. Though occasionally he got to show a darker side, he usually was the on the side of right such as the police commander in Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends. In 1951, he got to repeat his Broadway role as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire and was given the Oscar for his performance. He worked with Hitchcock in 1953's I Confess! In 1954, he reunited with director Elia Kazan and co-star Marlon Brando playing Father Barry and earning a second Oscar nomination in On the Waterfront. Kazan and Tennessee Williams brought out his darker side in 1956 when he played the oddly overprotective husband in Baby Doll. Brando brought him along when he directed his Western One-Eyed Jacks. He played the no-nonsense warden in Birdman of Alcatraz the same year he was part of the all-star cast of How the West was Won. That same year, he even went musical, playing Herbie in the film version of Gypsy. He usually dealt the cards in Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid. While George C. Scott steamrolled over the screen as Patton, Malden was at his side as Gen. Omar Bradley. As the 1970s came in, Malden found most of his work on television (aside from disaster flicks such as Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and Meteor). He had a successful run as Detective Lt. Mike Stone, originally opposite Michael Douglas, on The Streets of San Francisco, which earned him four consecutive Emmy nominations. One of my favorite TV roles of Malden's was one which won him an Emmy as the father in-law in the miniseries Fatal Vision, who at first defends his son-in-law in the murders of his daughter and grandchildren before coming to believe him guilty. Of course, for many his most famous role will come from a TV commercial as American Express pitchman in the 1970s with the famous tagline, "Don't leave home without it." His last screen appearance, appropriate given the large numbers of roles where he played members of the clergy, was as a minister on The West Wing in 2000. He also served once as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He did achieve one record that few ever accomplish: He was married to the same woman for 70 years. RIP Mr. Malden.
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On paper, it's ideal
By Edward Copeland
There was a time when just the sight of those familiar white-on-black credits would make me positively giddy in anticipation of what was to follow. However, winning streaks must come to an end and after an amazing one, Woody Allen began producing one yawner (or worse) after another). Then came word of Whatever Works and that its star would be Larry David. I couldn't help but get the old feeling again, especially when those credits start accompanied by Groucho Marx singing "Hello, I Must Be Going." While the end result is certainly the best thing Allen has produced in many, many years, it's still far from perfect. (Following Vicky Cristina Barcelona, it also marks two films in a row Allen has made that don't involve murder in their plots.) Whatever Works originally was written in the 1970s as a vehicle for Zero Mostel, which makes it even more interesting that it is one of Allen's stronger recent efforts. As his films began to slip into repetitiveness after 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors, his two best efforts, Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets Over Broadway, were another leftover 1970s script and a collaboration with another writer, respectively. Enough about what's gone wrong with Woody, let's talk specifically about what works and what doesn't in Whatever Works. David stars as Boris Yellnikoff, a professor of quantum mechanics and committed misanthrope who loves to tell people how he was a finalist for the Nobel Prize. (The joke, of course, is that there aren't finalists. Anyone can be nominated. They just announce a winner.) We meet Boris expounding to his friends at an outdoor cafe on subjects such as Christianity and communism, both of which he thinks are good ideas on paper but suffer from a fatal flaw: the notion that people are fundamentally decent. Charm's not a priority for Boris, who doesn't suffer fools gladly and pretty much considers anyone who isn't him an example of a fool. While there are plenty of updated references to make it appear as if Whatever Works takes place in the present day, it still has 1970s aura hovering over it. In fact, parts of it seem as if they might have been part of a rough draft for Annie Hall. David speaks directly to the camera and once he meets young Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), he tries to groom her tastes in a way somewhat reminiscent of Alvy Singer dragging Annie to The Sorrow and the Pity or giving her books to read. There is the difference that the other characters note that he's talking to the camera and think he's a little off, speaking to people they don't see. One weakness of the film is Wood's attempt at a Mississippi accent, but her character is so full of charm that eventually she overcomes it. What made me excited about this film was knowing that in the past actors who have worked with Allen have said he's not a stickler for his dialogue as long as you get the important point out. With David, the mastermind behind the brilliant improvised sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm, starring and a cast that includes Ed Begley Jr. and Michael McKean, veterans of Christopher Guest's improvised movie comedies, I held out hope for Allen's freshest, funniest, most spontaneous comedies in a long time. Indeed, Whatever Works does provide many of those laughs. However, when characters get lines that are just setups for a punchline, more often than not they land with a thud. David doesn't do well with straight jokes, but let him riff and he's like a comedic jazz musician. This is the case with others as well. As the film starts to sag, Patricia Clarkson arrives just in time as Melodie's strict churchgoing mama and gives the film a shot of pure comic adrenaline. She has the same problem. Hers is not the type of person who would come up with punchlines. This is a character comedy and that's where the laughs do and should come from and Clarkson provides more than her fair share. Whatever Works may not end up in the pantheon of the greatest Woody Allen films, but Larry David is a perfect fit for his lead and the movie does provide more than enough laughs to make the experience worthwhile, though there is one scene in particular where I could visualize the flared nostrils and arched eyebrows that would have accompanied Mostel's performance in the part. Even better, unlike many recent comedies, it actually follows the 90-minute rule. At the film's end, Boris again speaks directly to the audience as all the characters whose lives he's affected again question what he's doing. He explains he's talking to the people who bought tickets to hear his story, if they are still out there. You can't help but wonder if that's not Woody asking out loud if he has much of an audience left after his years of misfires. If he steers back on this course, perhaps he'll woo them back.
Labels: 00s, Woody Allen
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