February Flix File

I was going ignore the Berlinale, “like the German Oscars, but everything’s funded by taxpayers”, but the big gala awards presentation was a rally of enthusiastic support of Hamas, and their campaign of rape, torture, and mass murder. The German culture minister stood up and applauded along, not really a surprise if you’re familiar with her career. I can’t ignore this, but the only thing I have the power to do is point it out. History is repeating, with the black spider hiding in the sunflower.

One of the hostages, who was taken along with his small children, was in a film shown at this festival ten years ago. Pray for them all to be released.

The FBI Story (1959)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
Vintage proputainment (enterganda?), starring Jimmy Stewart–personally chosen by J Edgar Hoover!–as an agent who tells the story of his thirty-year career to a group of new recruits. The German title was Geheimagent des FBI, “Secret Agent of the FBI”, so I expected a better story than I got. Tja. It’s a recruitment film, Hoover supervised the shooting and the script, and thus effusive in its praise for the agency despite his assorted abuses of power and civil rights. Compare to Seberg.

But the Time Capsule factor–the vignettes are more or less true stories–made it worth watching all the way through. The film opens with a re-enactment of the 1955 bombing of United Airlines Flight 629, starting with the perp with his mother to the airport, buying life insurance at a vending machine before taking her right to her gate. After a law was passed to allow FBI agents to carry firearms, we’re treated to a group learning how to use automatic weapons (I assume all wrong; this is not my area of expertise). At the end of the film, there’s a sequence where an agent follows a Communist spy to a Giants game being played in Yankee Stadium; there’s a lot of nice pre-war cars. Stewart’s character marries a librarian, who bears him three children while she follows him around the country on different assignments. Their son volunteers for the Marines after Pearl Harbor and is killed on Iwo Jima–these things would have still been pretty close to the hearts of contemporary audiences, at least the adults.

Some of the chase scenes and shoot-outs, while intended to be exciting, and with the blood and gore heavily white-washed away, were unintentionally funny. Also hilarious every time it happened: Stewart, as the elderly narrator, uses the word “hoodlums” to refer to assorted famous 1930s bank robbers with machine guns. The past is truly another planet.

The Stranger (1946)

arte Mediathek, original English
Content Warnings: Dog murder, newsreel footage of concentration camps that was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials

Orson Welles, playing a Nazi architect of the Final Solution who has escaped justice and now teaches at a college in New England (huh), says two things about the German people of his time that made me wonder if he could see something General Marshall couldn’t see, because they’re still true today. “He cannot admit to error” and “The basic principles of equality and freedom never have and never will take root in Germany.”

Horrifying realizations aside, this is still a pretty good flick. I was really impressed by the use of light and shadow in the opening act, where another escaped war criminal was being followed around South America, in the expectation that he would lead the investigators to Welles. There’s a lot of good suspense, especially in the final act. I could not empathize with Loretta Young’s character, who marries Welles under his pseudonym, without knowing his history, because even after he tells her he murdered her dog, she still loves him. If that’s not a deal breaker, I don’t know what is.

Make sure you see a re-issue from a credible source; apparently it fell into the public domain and many home video versions were poorly copied/edited.

The Merry Widow (1925)

arte Mediathek, original English
This version was shown with a new musical score written and recorded in 2023 in Hamburg, and the composer really loved his dissonance.

Super-premium glamour Hollywood! Lush, elaborate costumes and sets. This is a love story between an American show dancer and a European second-in-line to a throne–the crown prince also wants her, and so prevents their marriage. Heartbroken, she settles for an elderly rich baron with a foot fetish, who does not survive the wedding night, and becomes the titular toast of partytime Paris.

There is a happy ending, thanks to a violent anarchist. Director Erich von Stroheim did not play around. Pre-code, vibrant, and brilliant. I would have preferred an original musical score.

Apparently Clark Gable was an extra in one of the crowd scenes, but I didn’t notice him.

True Grit (1969)

arte Mediathek, original English
Warning: Horse abuse
John Wayne and Glenn Campbell, and a fourteen-year-old girl with more confidence than most grown women had when I was that age. A classic that I’m not sure holds up, but I do wish someone had shown it to me when I was about that age.

Most important: The cat survives.

Flic Story (1975)

arte, Deutsch
French crime film starring two of the biggest stars of their time and place: Alain Delon as a police inspector chasing down a bank robber/murderer/gangster, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. He’s escaped from prison and resumed plying his trade, and the inspector’s career is on the line. The script is based on a true story and starts in 1947; they’re still feeling psychological after-effects of the Vichy/Occupation. It’s a cat-and-mouse game of forensic psychology until (not really a spoiler) the cat wins.

I loved the costumes and sets. Great acting, engaging story, well-paced. Interesting to see how this time period was portrayed a generation later. I missed some references because I’m not familiar with the pop culture and justice system of post-war France, but not so many I couldn’t understand the action. Also I was a bit confused that the story took place over three years; the passage of time wasn’t presented very clearly. In one scene, the calendar on the wall says September, then in the next scene there were six inches of snow on the ground. Overall, an interesting evening; a well-made film with an interesting story.

The Jewish Cardinal (2013)

arte Mediathek, Deutsch
A French biopic of Polish-Jewish Jean-Marie Lustiger, who was baptized as a Catholic as a teen, a few years before his mother was taken to Auschwitz to be murdered (he and his father escaped). Later he joined the priesthood and rises to the rank of Archbishop of Paris. There is a scene where he and Pope JPII, who he calls “Karol”, go skinny dipping, an interesting way to show their close relationship. Except for a few flashbacks, the story concentrates on his struggle in the 1980s to maintain his cultural identity while being expected to mediate conflicts between the Roman Catholic Church, the Polish government, and Jews of the world, as they all have their own vision for how the site of Auschwitz should be kept and used. Time is also spent on his strained relationship with his father, who hated his conversion.

At the end, a narrator informs us that after Lustiger’s death in 2007, his body was brought to the cathedral of Notre Dame, and a cousin read the Kaddish for him. I thought “Huh, these days someone would burn the place down” before I remembered someone already did.

As with all true stories, reality is probably somewhat more complicated. English-language Catholic, Jewish, and secular news agencies all emphasized different parts of his life in their obituaries. But this was a well-made and thought-provoking movie.

Adventures of Don Juan (1948)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
Filmed in Technicolor: Costumes, swashbuckling, forbidden love–fun for the whole family. Won the Oscar for Best Costume Design that cycle, and deservedly so. Crazy numbers of costume changes among the major players, and every one ornate. The music during the fight/chase scenes was brilliant, nothing was held back.

Will watch again.

Saw Raymond Burr’s name in the opening credits, but couldn’t find him under all the floppy hats. Raymond Burr seems to be the Dick Van Patten of 2024.

The MacKintosh Man (1973)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
I’m just going to copy this bit from the IMDB: “an American actor plays a British agent who impersonates an Australian thief to get close to a Russian spy, and finally they end up in Ireland, where he’s given a fake Canadian passport by a French actress.”

Mr Radish saw “Paul Newman” and “John Huston” in the program listing and thought this one would be better than it actually was; I didn’t realize Newman’s character was an agent, intentionally allowing himself to be imprisoned. He’s busted out of prison by some sort of criminal organization, which I didn’t realize were Russian spies, becoming a sort of inside man for the British spy group.

Neither one of us understood the ending.

Interesting scenery, sweeping from London to Ireland to Malta, but for good reason, this one will never headline a Paul Newman retrospective.

Withnail & I (1987)

arte Mediathek, original English
The titular characters are unemployed London actors, alcoholic, pushing thirty, living in filth. Withnail has a rich uncle (“the dude in the wheelchair from Naked Gun“) with a farm. Needing to get away from the landlord and some drug scenes, they head out to the country.

It was touted as one of the most important British comedies of its time. I laughed once. At a chicken.

And it was set in 1969, so there wasn’t even any good music or costumes.

Naja, after giving me four and a half good movies this month, it was time for arte to unload a stinker.

 The Accused (1988)

arte Mediathek, original English
Warning: Really graphic rape scene
arte required government ID as proof of age to watch Val Kilmer shoot a machine gun (Heat), but not to watch Jodie Foster get gang-raped on a pinball machine in front of a dozen cheering men. It’s an EU project to “promote cultural integration throughout Europe.” Their words, not mine.

Anyway, this was a very well-made film about a prosecutor trying to get some justice–over the objections of her boss in the state’s attorney’s office–for a client on the margins of society. I was able to busy myself during the brutal depictions by finding out exactly which episode of the X-Files all the one- and two-line characters were in. The main witness was The Thinker…

Well-made, excellent work by Foster, I enjoyed the clothing and music–80s steel guitar dramatic background music just hits so good–but due to the subject matter I will not rewatch it, and I want to steer clear of anyone who enjoys watching it over and over. (I call this my Schindler’s List List: Very good movies, should be watched, but too intense/sad/difficult for repeated/casual viewings.)