The Weekly Gravy #66

Othello (1951*) – ****

*For my own awards, I count Othello as a 1952 film. It was first released in Italy in late 1951, but was shown at the 1952 Cannes Festival, jointly winning the top prize with the largely forgotten Two Cents Worth of Hope. It wasn’t shown in the States until 1955, but I decided that was too far removed from its first appearance. But there are three legitimate years to choose from, depending on one’s preference.

As the note above suggests, Orson Welles’ Othello doesn’t really belong to any one year, or any one country (an Italian-Moroccan co-production with a cast of mostly American and British players), nor does it exist in one definitive version, three different versions having existed over the years, two of which – the cut which played at Cannes in 1952 and the cut which was released in the States three years later – are included on the Criterion edition. Add to that its legendarily fragmented production, spread over at least two countries and three years, and you have a film whose identity is as elusive as that of any film I know.

It’s fitting, because Othello is, in part, the tragedy of a man who does not fully belong to any world, save perhaps the world of warfare; Othello’s race sets him apart in Venice, even as he is revered for his military skills, and Desdemona’s father Brabantio (Hilton Edwards) assumes Othello used witchcraft to seduce her, so hard is the idea of his daughter marrying a Moor to comprehend. Othello himself claims, with great eloquence, that he knows nothing of the world but combat:

Rude am I in my speech,

And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace;

For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith,

Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used

Their dearest action in the tented field,

And little of this great world can I speak

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle.

Act I, Scene 3

He’s not entirely wrong; two acts later, when his faith in Desdemona is destroyed thanks to Iago’s cunning machinations, he evokes martial imagery to denote the death of his peace of mind, culminating with:

Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, th’ ear-piercing fife,

The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats

Th’ immortal Jove’s dread clamors counterfeit,

Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!

Act III, Scene 3

I’ll refrain from further quotation; these two speeches will serve, not least because they made it to the screen unaltered – among the few elements of the play that did. Welles’ respect for Shakespeare is undeniable, but even if the patchwork production of Othello didn’t require it, he was still entirely willing to cut and re-arrange the text to suit his purposes. Much of Othello is told with quick, even jagged cuts, which combine with the fiercely stylized cinematography to turn a classical tragedy into an Expressionistic nightmare. But for these speeches, Welles the director largely deferred to Welles the actor; the latter speech in particular is filmed with the sun behind his head, making a haunting image which perfectly suits his mournful expression and softly commanding delivery.

Yes, Welles wore blackface, or something uncomfortably like it, and if the result isn’t quite as cringe-worthy as what Laurence Olivier wore in his Othello (of course, that film was in color and this is in black-and-white), it’s still a mark against what is, otherwise, a fantastic reading of the part, however reduced or obscured by the necessities of the production. There’s no compromise whatever in Micheál Mac Liammóir’s sly, scheming Iago, the epitome of venomous courtesy, and Suzanne Cloutier is a tenderly tragic Desdemona. But the real star is Welles’ camera, which captures any number of stunning images.

From the famous extra-Shakespearean prologue, combining the funeral procession of Othello and Desdemona with Iago being thrust into an iron cage and hoisted into the air, to the horrifying shot of a bedsheet being pulled tight over Desdemona’s face, to the bravura uses of shadows, close-ups, windows, and mirrors throughout, this Othello is truly magnificent to look at. There are even touches of humor, like the little dog which might belong to Roderigo (Robert Coote), but which wanders around of its own accord, an entity of adorable absurdity. And the score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino and Alberto Barberis adds to the atmosphere of surreal tragedy.

Welles’ Othello is inescapably uneven and flawed, but it’s just as clearly inventive, exciting, and the product of a great talent, albeit one working under incredibly trying conditions. It may only be solid as Shakespeare (though it gets most of the themes across fairly well), but it’s marvelous as Welles, and tempted though I was to keep my score from going too high, I can’t deny how thoroughly engaged I was throughout. The Olivier version – basically a record of a stage performance – is far more complete, and very well acted, but it’s nowhere near as engaging or entertaining as this brazenly accomplished little film.

Score: 90

House of Gucci (2021) – ***

Early in House of Gucci, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) and his future ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) have a wild tryst in the office of her father’s trucking company. They go at it right on a conference table, knocking stacks of paper coffee cups out of the way to make room for their percussive coupling. It’s the kind of moment that makes your jaw drop at least a bit for how wildly over-the-top it is, yet it’s quite cheerfully aware of its own absurdity. If House of Gucci had struck that note of vigorous camp a bit more often, it might have been a real treat.

Instead, it reminds one a bit too often of the films they used to make from the soapy-trashy best-sellers written by the likes of Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins – films like Valley of the Dolls, The Adventurers, and so forth, films that promised lurid thrills and provided a lot of rich, beautiful people, lush settings, and moral dissipation, but little actual stimulation. Films that, as much as they concern sex, rarely showed anything more explicit than a bare bottom. Not that explicit nudity is necessary in achieving an erotic atmosphere, but when you realize that the nude scenes in Gucci are never going to show anything of consequence, you might feel as if the filmmakers pulled just a bit of a bait-and-switch.

To be sure, Gucci isn’t as dispiriting as The Adventurers, or as hopelessly absurd as Valley of the Dolls; it’s overly long, with a muddled story obscured by a lot of dodgy Italian accents, and it may leave you without much understanding of just why Patrizia had Maurizio killed…but it manages to be oddly compelling, holding one’s attention even as the story loses some steam in the home stretch. Ridley Scott may have been too serious a director for this pulpy material, but it has rather more life to it than his lesser recent work, even if it lacks the power of his best (including The Last Duel, which came and went less than two months ago).

The cast helps. Not because most of them do their best work, or anything close to it, but because they’re having just enough fun with these caricatured roles to avoid that numbing feeling you get when you see a good actor slumming. Driver gives easily the least of his three performances this year, playing Maurizio as a gawky gull who’s not so noble as he might seem, but just about as foolish. Within those limitations, he’s effective enough – he has a great awkward smile – but we never really understand him. Better, as Aldo Gucci, is Al Pacino, who can ham brilliantly when he so desires; he’s not brilliant here, but we appreciate Aldo’s zest for life and power and his complicated relationship with his son, Paolo (Jared Leto). And Jeremy Irons, as Rodolfo (Maurizio’s father and Aldo’s brother), gives an effective portrayal of leathery snobbery.

Then there’s Leto. From what I’ve read, his take on Paolo doesn’t resemble the real man very much, but neither does the portrayal in the script, which makes him into a pathetic buffoon, a failed designer with an appalling lack of taste; his designs don’t look so bad to me, but I have about as much grasp of haute couture as I do of higher mathematics. Here, made up to look like Gallagher, with an accent that suggests the entirety of the Mediterranean poured into one clownish vessel, he’s an effective figure of pity, but I’m not sure if he’s good or just pitiable.

There’s no question that Gaga is good, though how good is a matter of taste. At her best, she’s fantastic, showing the various layers of Patrizia, especially as she sets her sights on Maurizio and, like Lady Macbeth, influences the course of Gucci affairs from behind the scenes, fiercely rejecting the idea that she is any less a member of the family for not having been born one. She’s not quite as good in the later stages of the film, mainly because we never really get a grasp on what Patrizia’s motives actually are, but she plays each scene sincerely, even when Patrizia herself is anything but sincere. Ultimately, it’s not a flawless performance (her accent work isn’t so great either), but it’s a compelling one.

The script by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna is easily the film’s weakest element, skipping about through the years without much sense of narrative, giving us too little insight into the characters and their choices, offering tantalizing hints as to the depths of the Guccis’ snobbery – especially when Maurizio forsakes the dark-haired “commoner” Patrizia for his old friend, the blonde, aristocratic Paola Franchi (Camille Cottin), but casting too wide a net to ever go very deep. There are solid scenes – the relationship between Aldo and Paolo in particular has an element of humanity the rest of the film could’ve used more of – but it’s too sprawling and hollow to fully work.

Scott’s direction is solid, never truly inspired, but not indifferent; Dariuz Wolski’s cinematography is adequate and Claire Simpson’s editing is stymied by the material, but the sets are solid and the costumes are, unsurprisingly, excellent – even if your taste for the fashions being worn may vary. (It’s definitely not to my taste.) The technical elements are simply a means of delivering the performances and the melodramatic situations to our waiting senses, and they do so adequately. It’s a more effective serving of ham and cheese than some recent efforts, but too rarely does it reach the heights of a real camp classic.

Score: 67

Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands/Kōya no Datchi Waifu/荒野のダッチワイフ (1967) – ***

CW: sexual assault, violence, misogyny.

Some films seem to be reverse-engineered from their titles; The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot comes to mind, or just about any film made for the SyFy channel – who could resist Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda? Of course, these films are almost never as good as their titles, and are often far worse; if anything, I would recommend being wary of any film whose title is too extravagant. This film is an odd example, as it was apparently first released under the title Horror Doll, but the name it now bears fits it just as well, and has probably lured in more curious viewers than the original. Whether or not their curiosity was satisfied, I cannot say.

It’s part of the pink film genre, a current in Japanese cinema of the 60s and 70s that heavily featured violence, naked women, and violence against naked women. Inflatable Sex Doll features all three, so be forewarned. The story involves Shō (Yūichi Minato), a hitman who’s hired by sleazy businessman Naka (Seigi Nogami) to rescue his girlfriend, Sae (Noriko Tatsumi), who’s being held hostage by a gang of criminals. They regularly assault her and film themselves doing so, sending the film to Naka, who tearfully shows one of these films to the indifferent Shō.

Accepting the assignment, Shō discovers that one of the kidnappers is Kō (Shōhei Yamamoto), a former friend of his who assaulted and murdered Shō’s girlfriend Rie (Mari Nagisa), and he anticipates taking his revenge. At his hotel, he discovers Mina (Mika Watari) waiting for him; she may be Kō’s girlfriend, and she certainly works for him, which Shō immediately deduces. But he sleeps with her anyway, after which Kō and his henchmen burst into the room, and –

Well, at this point we’re about halfway through the film, and what happens after this point might just be an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, as it were; trying to make too much sense of it might be futile, but that might be said of the first half as well; in the opening scene, Shō proves his prowess to Naka by shooting a bottle off a tree, then unloading his guns into the trunk, literally cutting it in two. There’s also the presence of Sae’s father, gone mad with grief and given to caressing one of the titular dolls, and the character of the doctor (Hatsuo Yamaya), who seems to specialize in kissing his patients and giving them mollifying injections. We’re in a mad, mad, mad, mad world, all right.

Whether you find the film rewarding or not depends on your taste for a film where every female character is objectified and brutalized, and most lack any agency or personhood (Mina is about the only one to even have significant dialogue), a film without likable or sympathetic characters – Shō, his sympathetic desire for revenge aside, is a pretty nasty fellow himself, a film which pulls the rug out from under you just when you think you might have figured out exactly what’s going on – and that itself is a tall order, given the jagged editing and experimental use of sound, where sound and image are at times deliberately divorced, presumably to separate past and present, though it’s not always clear.

For my part, it’s got many striking moments, especially in the visual realm, thanks to cinematographer Hajime Kai; there are daring angles, offbeat compositions, and touches of pure surrealism (a woman’s torso encased in cracking plaster), contrasted throughout with handheld shots and telephoto shots taken, presumably incognito, in public, which give the film an air of clandestine sleaze. There’s also Yōsuke Yamashita’s free-jazz score, which only adds to the anarchic atmosphere, as do the seedy sets and the surprisingly good gore effects, which mainly come into play near the very end. Perhaps it’s that ending, as much as it frustrates me, that keeps the film from being quite as repellent as the people who populate it; it minimizes any risk of our seeing Shō as anything other than a pathetic brute, though Minato’s performance doesn’t leave much room for doubt.

He’s only person in the film who really gives a notable performance (which is as much on director Atsushi Yamatoya’s script as on any of the actors), but he’s definitely solid, not overplaying the unsavory aspects of Shō’s nature but showing the relish Shō takes in violence and fantasizing about violence, whether he’s drawing a parallel between his guns and his manhood, drawing out his revenge on Kō, or berating Mina. In case I haven’t made it clear, this is a profoundly unpleasant film, and you’ve probably already decided whether or not it’s the film for you. I won’t say it’s the film for me, but I can appreciate the appeal.

Score: 72

Alice in Wonderland (1951) – ***½

For something even more surreal but infinitely more family-friendly, I resumed my trek through the Disney animated canon by revisiting their film of the Lewis Carroll books. I forget how long it had been since I’d last seen Alice, but I remembered having a comparatively lukewarm opinion of it. That’s not entirely fair, as it’s an enjoyable film in its own right, but compared to Cinderella – to say nothing of the first five Disney features – it’s a bit of a letdown.

Perhaps the problem lies in the source material, or rather, its stature as a classic of children’s literature. The previous Disney features were either adapted from short fairy tales that required much expansion to reach feature length, or from books which the studio felt comfortable deviating from, as in Pinocchio and Bambi. But the two Alice books are so renowned as to require a higher degree of fidelity – and the animators had the famous John Tenniel illustrations to live up to, or work against.

The result is a film with good scenes but not much through-line, with accomplished visuals but a certain lack of identity. It’s not quite Disney’s Alice, but it’s also not quite Carroll’s; it’s a good introduction to the material for young children, but older viewers may find it a mixed bag.

To be fair, there’s a lot here to relish, including some authentically Carrollian moments of anti-logic – the appearances of the Cheshire Cat (Sterling Holloway), the querulous questioning of the Caterpillar (Richard Haydn), the tea party with the Mad Hatter (Ed Wynn) and the March Hare (Jerry Colonna), and the farcical trial presided over by the Queen of Hearts (Verna Felton). The spirited voice acting and wild animation keep up pretty well with the wit of the original material, and Alice herself (Kathryn Beaumont) strikes the right note of well-behaved bemusement throughout.

Other scenes work less well, like the whole “The Walrus and the Carpenter” sequence, the flower-garden episode, and the “Very Good Advice” number, where Alice bemoans her situation and moves the various surreal creatures around her to tears. (She does an awful lot of crying, and we never do share in her despair.) It’s a sentimental scene in a story with no room for sentiment. At the same time, one may share in Alice’s frustration with the denizens of Wonderland, who tend to be unhelpful at best and obnoxious at worst.

And again, the story is really just a series of sketches, at least until Alice arrives at the castle of the Queen of Hearts. Until then, the film has a tendency to meander; I figured the Tea Party scene came a lot earlier and didn’t anticipate all the distractions and digressions which precede it. The lack of really good songs doesn’t help; “The Unbirthday Song” and “Painting the Roses Red” are fun, but the rest are surprisingly forgettable. It adds to the feeling of a film which is a bit too much of an illustration and not enough of an adaptation.

There are some classic Disney moments, especially the march of the playing-card army, and there’s more than enough skill on display at every level (the voice acting really is quite good) to make it worth your while. But you may find yourself just a bit unsatisfied when it’s all over – something that cannot be said of its predecessors.

Score: 80

The Starling (2021) – **

CW: child loss, mental illness, suicide.

Grief is a tricky emotion to depict convincingly on the screen. When displayed overtly, it can be harrowing (or hammy), but these displays usually come only in the immediate aftermath of a loss. After that comes a longer, subtler period of generally internalized grief, which can lead to behaviors which confound and frustrate those around the victim. If the viewer can empathize with the victim, the film can be painfully moving, but if not…well, you get films like Collateral Beauty or The Starling. The Starling isn’t quite as bad or baffling as that film, nor does it aim anywhere near as high, but it’s still quite lacking, especially in its attempts to balance poignant drama with sitcom-level comedy.

After losing their infant daughter, the Maynards struggle to lead their lives. Jack (Chris O’Dowd), who blames himself for what happened, attempts suicide and is committed to an institution, while Lilly (Melissa McCarthy) tries to go through the motions at her supermarket job, but is visibly distracted; her weekly visits to the institution are leading nowhere, owing to Jack’s inability to move past his own self-loathing. Attempting to work in their garden, Lilly is harassed by a starling, which represents those forces in life we cannot control; Jack’s psychiatrist refers her to a former mentor, Dr. Larry Fine (Kevin Kline), once a prominent psychiatrist, now a veterinarian, and their meetings end up having an effect on both their lives.

Matters reach a head when Lilly throws a rock at the starling and stuns it; overcome by guilt, she takes it to Larry, who shows her how to nurse it back to health. She does so rather quickly, and not long after, Jack reveals his struggle with depression, which he’s dealt with since long before his daughter’s death, and he re-takes control of his life, leaving the institution with Lilly and tangling with the starling and its new mate, in a kind of a love-hate relationship, happily ever after.

To quote Burn After Reading, “What did we learn?” The response, of course, is “I don’t know.” “I don’t fuckin’ know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.” The characters in that film didn’t know what not to do again, but I at least know not to bother with this film again. I guess Lilly and Jack learned to accept what they can’t change and change what they can, namely their own approaches to processing their grief, but there’s nothing dramatically or emotionally satisfying about it. Lilly’s nursing the starling back to health comes too late in the story and is resolved too quickly to have a meaningful impact, just as Jack’s revelation about his mental health comes out of nowhere and feels like nothing so much as an easy way to wrap up his arc.

Up until then, the film alternates between mawkish melodrama and hacky comedy, the result being neither moving nor funny. Director Theodore Melfi was able to strike the right balance in the mostly humorous St. Vincent (with McCarthy in a rare straight-woman role), and did fairly well with the mostly serious Hidden Figures, but he botches it here. Not to deny screenwriter Matt Harris his due credit; the script may have made the Black List way back in 2005, but films like Anonymous, Life Itself (the terrible ensemble drama, not the Roger Ebert documentary), Lucy in the Sky, Money Monster, Pan, Passengers, and The Sea of Trees all began as Black List scripts, so don’t assume it’s a mark of quality.

Some of those films at least had interesting ideas that didn’t really make it to the screen, but it’s hard to see what anyone saw in The Starling. It offers no real insight into grief, mental illness, or the healing process; it traffics in lazy tropes like the world-class professional (we’re told Larry was on track to head the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins – classic bad-movie shorthand) who abruptly gives it all up on account of some vague disillusionment; and the starling itself behaves like enough of a genuine menace that Lilly’s ultimate acceptance of its presence seems more like resignation than affirmation. I’m not sure if the clunky moments of broad humor were in the original script or added to suit McCarthy’s strengths, but they fall very flat either way.

The acting isn’t too bad – McCarthy is actually fairly good, balancing the various tones as well as possible – but most of the cast can’t transcend the weak material. Add in Benjamin Wallfisch’s cloying score, the vapid original songs (by The Lumineers, among others), the tacky shots which swoop along with the starling, the uncomfortable attitude towards psychiatry and psychopharmacology (Jack stops taking his medication, hiding the pills in a pair of shoes, and seems no worse for it), and the fact that the starling itself was realized with CGI, and you’ve got what’s easily the weakest film I’ve seen so far this year. Unless you want to count Diana: The Musical.

Score: 50

Bugsy (1991) – ***½

It’s a little surprising to go back and realize how well Bugsy did with the awards groups. Not so much the Oscars and the Globes as the critics’ groups; the L.A. Film Critics gave it Picture, Director, and Screenplay, and the National Society of Film Critics gave it Supporting Actor (for Harvey Keitel) and had it at 2nd or 3rd place in Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor (for Elliott Gould), and Screenplay. It just doesn’t feel like a critics’ film, especially not the script, which is part of why the film falls short of greatness for me.

It tells, in somewhat fictionalized form, the story of Benjamin Siegel (Warren Beatty), a member of the New York Jewish mob who’s sent to L.A. to take over a local gambling operation, but who’s more interested in hanging out with his old friend George Raft (Joe Mantegna) and adding to his list of romantic conquests, most notably Virginia Hill (Annette Bening), the rare woman not to fall immediately for his looks and charm, which only intensifies his infatuation.

Setting up shop in L.A., he finds a new ally in local mobster Mickey Cohen (Keitel) after he rips off one of Siegel’s gambling parlors; after all, why trust the men who got robbed when you can trust the man who successfully robbed them? On a business trip to the dusty town of Las Vegas, Nevada, to check out a surprisingly profitable parlor there, Siegel is struck by an idea: turn this backwater into a haven for legal gambling, so the mob can rake in the profits without constantly over their shoulders.

He conceives a lavish complex, the Flamingo, a combination casino, hotel, and nightclub. His enthusiasm blinds him to the project’s growing costs, causing concern among his superiors, including longtime friend Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley), who somberly notes Siegel “doesn’t respect money.” This profligacy – and Hill’s skimming – eventually cost him his life, but as we know, his faith in that little town has been vindicated many times over.

Of course, the film totally omits the developer William Wilkerson, who actually began the Flamingo project, implies Vegas was a lot less developed in the mid 40s than it really was, and heavily rearranges events for the sake of drama. But that’s Hollywood for you, especially when you make a film with the main character’s nickname as the title – even if he viciously hates the name and goes off on anyone who uses it. But he earns it, not just for his temper and split-second shifts from charm to brutality, but for his impulsiveness – he’ll buy a car or even a house on the spot if it strikes his fancy, commit himself wholly to a seemingly quixotic project, and get on an elevator, meet a woman, and be halfway to seducing her by the time they reach their floor.

Beatty might have been 12 years older than Siegel lived to be, but he makes up for it by how well he balances the smooth charm, the fierce obsession, and the taste for violence which mark the film’s Siegel. I’ve always found Beatty to be an offbeat presence, a combination of classical charisma and New Hollywood idiosyncrasy, and that unusual quality works extremely well here, whether he’s wooing, scheming, or wreaking havoc. The rest of the cast pales a bit in comparison; Bening crackles with energy early on, and her chemistry with Beatty is such that you can believe they would marry shortly after the film opened and stay married, despite Beatty’s reputation as a womanizer. But the script keeps having her issuing hollow ultimatums or throwing unjustified tantrums, and she fades into the background somewhat in the last act. She’s solid, but the material lets her down.

The Oscars and Globes both nominated Keitel and Kingsley (Jack Palance in City Slickers won both awards), and this is still the only nomination of Keitel’s career. He’s solid here, a hard-headed opponent who becomes a trusted friend (and to a degree, a voice of reason), but it’s weird that this is the only time either group ever honored him. Kingsley is okay, also playing a voice of reason (and, to a degree, a long-suffering friend), but his accent is distracting and he’s not great. Gould, as the ill-fated Harry Greenberg, whose bungling carelessness makes Siegel look level-headed, is effectively pitiful, but his screen time is just a bit too limited for him to break through.

For me, much of the fault lies in the script by infamous creep James Toback; there are fascinating details of character and crisp exchanges which evoke old Hollywood, but it tries to condense too much history and cram in too many characters, leaving much of the story to drift by in dreamy montage or move from scene to scene without a clear sense of time. I’d be curious to see the extended cut, which expands the theatrical version’s 136 minutes to 149; reputedly, Toback’s original script would’ve made for a four-hour film, and the story feels decidedly circumscribed at points.

But some of the blame may also rest with director Barry Levinson, who definitely outdoes his Oscar-winning work on Rain Man, but doesn’t give the material the flair that, say, Scorsese might have managed; Allen Daviau’s cinematography is solid, but aside from Siegel’s desert epiphany, I can’t think of many really memorable images. Ennio Morricone’s score is good (it reminds me of his score for Once Upon a Time in America), but too sparsely used. The Oscar-winning sets are suitably lavish, and the Oscar-winning costumes contribute in particular to Siegel’s sense of style, the contrast of which with his volatile nature is a key part of his character.

If I sound a bit down on Bugsy as a whole, I should make it clear that I still think it’s quite a good film about a fascinating (if disturbing) individual. When it focuses on him, it mostly works. But when it tries to encompass his life and times, it loses its grip, the result simply being less than the sum of its parts. But that somehow seems to fit the story of a man who changed the face of America, but being his own worst enemy, didn’t live to see it.

Score: 83