The Weekly Gravy #6

Owing to limitations of time and energy, I’ve only got three reviews for you this week. But two of them will be on Turner Classic Movies this coming Wednesday, and the third you can watch right now! And more importantly, all three of them are quite good and reflect the passion and unique talents of their creators.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) – ***½

The earliest surviving animated feature, done not with cels but with artfully crafted silhouettes (much in the vein of Javanese wayang) by Lotte Reiniger, who devoted her career to perfecting the form; she also developed the multiplane animation camera, which Disney would make much use of in his early features. The story is from the Thousand and One Nights, about the titular Prince Achmed being tricked by an evil magician into riding a magic horse, which leads him to the magic island of Wak Wak, where he falls in love with its queen, Pari-Banu, but the magician kidnaps her and sells her to the Emperor of China, so Achmed goes to rescue her with the help of a witch, but then the demons of Wak Wak kidnap her, and he has to find Aladdin and his lamp to get her back, and he finds out Aladdin is his brother-in-law…it’s a complicated little tale.

It’s certainly exquisite to look at, with the graceful motion of the silhouettes, the simple but striking backgrounds, and the amazing use of tints, yellow, blue, green, and red alike, all restored to their original glory in 1999. There’s also the use of special effects—pulses of energy, flickers of flame, and so forth—which add to the overall visual enchantment. As a work of animation it’s pretty hard to fault. And the DVD includes Wolfgang Zeller’s lovely score, written for its original release.

As a piece of storytelling it’s not quite as successful; the silent silhouette animation affords little room for characterization (the characters have only very limited facial expressions), and the story is a bit of a shaggy dog (even at 65 minutes it can feel padded), with Achmed having his fat pulled out of the fire once too often by the Witch of the Flaming Mountain, who just so happens to nurse an intense hatred for the antagonistic magician. And, admittedly, some of the character designs (the Chinese emperor especially)…haven’t aged too well. But it’s a must-see, both for its place in film history and its considerable artistry, and I’d definitely like to see some of the films Reiniger made in the following half-century of her career.

Score: 82

Behold a Pale Horse (2020) – ***½

Director Taylor Geiman isn’t just a personal friend, he’s a former roommate of mine and a fellow thespian (when you’ve done a show with someone, you know what kind of bond that forms). So when he announced the release of his newest short film, I was intrigued; when he specifically asked me to review it, wanting “a quote from the only critic of merit I know,” I could hardly resist the overture to my ego. Whether his estimation of my skills is warranted, you may decide for yourselves.

And you may also decide for yourselves how to estimate his skills, for the film is freely available on Vimeo, and at just 10 minutes, an extremely modest time investment. I recommend, however, you take the time to watch it with a good sound system or headphones, as the sound is so very crucial to the mood of the piece, and this is above all a mood piece. (It might not hurt to turn the lights down as well.)

A man (Justin Anderson) goes to a remote cabin and commits a double homicide, killing his ex-girlfriend and, presumably, her new boyfriend. Rather than flee the scene (he listens to the radio and learns the police are after him for the murder or attempted murder of the ex’s parents), he sits back with a beer and finds himself beset by ghoulish phantoms. And in the end, if I’m interpreting it correctly, he gets the least desirable job offer in film history, and has no choice but to take it.

Like I said, it’s 10 minutes, short and sweet (well, maybe not so sweet), with little dialogue and much of the macabre, leavened with a bit of dark humor in the way the phantoms swirl around the main character, sometimes menacing him, sometimes just waiting for him to do what they need him to do. It’s not like they’re on the same clock as the living, after all. And when he tries to take a stand against them, hissing “Come on, motherfuckers,” the impotence of his defiance in the face of the supernatural should raise a chuckle.

Geiman shot the film in black-and-white, a good choice, but he also shot it on video, and I would like to see what he could’ve done with celluloid; I think the added texture would’ve heightened the visceral nature of the story. As it is, it feels just a bit too clean. But his compositions and the editing are alike thoughtful, hinting at the main character’s motives but not spelling them out, and his script allows for some reflection on the cost of doing evil to the human soul—in this instance, a cost beyond regret or legal ramification.

What it ultimately comes down to are those unnerving low rumbles on the soundtrack, courtesy of Chad Orr, which hint at evil forces so well that they hardly need to be shown, and those final moments, which impose a whole new meaning on what we’ve just seen; this is a morality tale, all right, but of a morality far outside human experience. Watch it for yourself here:

Score: 78

The Watermelon Woman (1996) – ***½

The Watermelon Woman is a love story, but not between protagonist Cheryl (writer-director Cheryl Dunye) and Diana (Guenevere Turner), whom she begins dating in the course of the film, but between Cheryl and Fae Richards, AKA “The Watermelon Woman” (Lisa Marie Bronson), a Black actress and singer of the early-mid 20th century who worked in mainstream films under her pseudonym, generally playing the “mammy” archetype. Cheryl digs deeper into Richards’ life, including her lesbianism and her efforts to overcome the limits placed on her career by appearing in Black-made films in leading roles, discovering vintage photographs, film clips, and home movies which tell the story of an overlooked life.

Of course, Fae Richards and “The Watermelon Woman” never existed, which Dunye reveals at the end of the film; she had struggled to find sufficient information on real performers of the era, and decided to create her own, going to great lengths to create a history which reflects historical reality. And it works very well; the vintage film clips aren’t totally seamless, but the photographs and home movies are quite convincing, and even though Dunye sprinkles real archival material in among her fabrications, the illusion is satisfactorily preserved.

The film around these scenes is quite solid in its own right, a combination of ostensibly documentary footage with more traditionally shot dramatic scenes depicting Cheryl’s personal and professional travails. She works at a video store (that’s how she meets Diana) owned by the amusingly obnoxious Bob (Christopher Ridenhour), banters with her friend and collaborator Tamara (Valarie Walker, a scene-stealer), struggles with romance (she and Diana don’t make it), and searches far and wide to learn about Richards, encountering the helpful and unhelpful alike, from Richards’ partner (Cheryl Clarke) to the sister of Richards’ director and one-time lover (Patricia Ellis), who denies her sister was “that kind of woman.”

It’s a funny, likable, deeply sincere journey, with touches of broad humor, like C.L.I.T., the lesbian media archive run by the most absurdly self-righteous archivist imaginable (Sarah Schulman), or Cheryl’s double-date with Tamara, her girlfriend, and Yvette (Kat Robertson), who gets up to sing karaoke and is torturously awful, and down-to-earth comedy like this exchange between Cheryl and Tamara:

“Tamara, why are you always constantly clocking women?”

“We’re lesbians, remember, Cheryl? We’re into female-to-female attraction. Anyway, you’re the one who’s supposed to be clocking all the girls. How long’s it been since you’ve been with one anyway?”

But it’s also thoughtful and moving, with scenes like Cheryl’s interview with Camille Paglia (playing herself), who tries to defend the mammy archetype as a symbol of “abundance” and the use of watermelons in popular culture based on their significance in her Italian-American family. Is it a cringe-inducing bit of white-splaining, or are we meant to at least contemplate what she has to say? The editing certainly makes it look like Paglia isn’t letting Cheryl get a word in edgewise. But why else would the scene be included? Why else would Paglia have agreed to appear in it?

Compared to this, the romantic aspects of the film are relatively straightforward (pun…intended?), although the film’s greatest and least intended impact came from its one sex scene (touted on the poster), which isn’t all that graphic, but word of which got then-Rep. Pete Hoekstra clutching his pearls, as the film had been partly funded by an NEA grant, and led to their grants being assigned to specific projects rather than artists or organizations. But he’s a douchebag, so who cares?

As a piece of filmmaking, it’s effective if somewhat rough around the edges; the acting is uneven and the editing strangely choppy at points, but the aforementioned creation and use of “archival” material, Paul Shapiro’s fun score, and Dunye’s enthusiasm for her subject matter (and for filmmaking in general) carry it through to the end, when Dunye makes sure to credit pretty much every person who passed in front of her camera or stood behind it. It’s a fitting cap to a film fittingly set in the City of Brotherly Love (“and sisterly affection.”)

Score: 83