Nothing Lasts Forever (1984) – ***
When I first saw Nothing Lasts Forever, almost 10 years ago, I gave it a score of 77 (the low end of ***½), possibly because I was delighted to have seen it at all; it was, after all, never given an official release in North America, either in theaters or on home video, and aside from a few screenings and an airing on TCM, it has only been available in bootleg form. Exactly why MGM declined to release it is unclear, though so odd a film would have likely made little money. It’s also not entirely clear why the film has never been officially released on home video, though the use of stock footage (including a snippet of I Love Lucy) and popular songs might be to blame.
Either way, I was able to see it again, and have lowered my score slightly. As much as I appreciate the imagination, sincerity, and odd wit of Tom Schiller’s only feature film, I realize that it doesn’t hold together all that well or amount to very much, especially not for a mainstream audience. Schiller might’ve thrived making commercials and short films for SNL (which explains some of the big names who pop up here) but crafting a cohesive narrative might’ve been more than he could manage.
Adam Beckett (Zach Galligan) wants to be an artist, but doesn’t what kind of artist he wants to be. Returning to his native New York, he finds the city in the grip of a transit strike and under the control of the Port Authority. Declaring his intention to be an artist, he’s sent to the Port Authority’s art assessment center, but fails their test and is assigned to monitor traffic in the Holland Tunnel; Dan Aykroyd plays his overbearing supervisor. He has a fling with co-worker and fellow artist Mara Hofmeier (Apollonia van Ravenstein), who exposes him to the avant-garde scene, but it fails to stimulate him.
He’s then approached by Hugo (Paul Rogers), a bum he’d shown kindness towards, and is introduced to a secret society, run by seeming bums, which controls the better part of the world. The New York chapter is run by Father Knickerbocker (Sam Jaffe), who asks Adam to be their liaison to the Moon; if he can find and connect to his true love, lunar inhabitant Eloy (Lauren Tom), his own future as an artist is assured.
Adam is thrown for a loop by the revelation, and by pure chance ends up on a bus headed for the Moon; the shifty conductor, Ted Breughel, is played by Bill Murray. Adam learns that the Moon has been colonized for decades, but has been used mainly as a shopping destination for senior citizens, who are unable to spill the beans because of a chip in their heads which changes “moon” to “Miami.” (“Moon over Miami,” get it?) On arriving, he meets Eloy and they share a brief moment of bliss before Breughel and his henchmen arrive and knock him out.
He wakes up back on Earth, where Hugo tells him he succeeded, and ushers him into Carnegie Hall, where he makes his debut as a concert pianist – the reverse of the opening scene, a nightmare where he “performed” such a concert with the help of a player piano. As he basks in the applause, he recognizes a lunar flower among the roses thrown to him, looks up, and sees Eloy beaming back at him. Outside, the “bums” bask in the success of their plans.
Schiller puts a lot of interesting ideas on the table. There’s the all-powerful Port Authority, vetting the aspiring artists which flock to the city, and their test of artistic ability (sketching a nude model in a matter of moments) skewers the notion that such talent can be objectively measured. There’s the secret society, who seem to exist on another plane of reality altogether (Hugo mentions Walt Whitman visiting them, decades after his death – right?). and who control the destinies of humanity with a kind of cosmic stock exchange. And there’s the notion of the Moon as a tacky tourist destination, which allows for some satirical jabs at the tourism industry and at consumerism.
But there’s not enough of a story here, and Schiller’s satire isn’t pointed enough to compensate. That’s not the say his tilts at the follies of conceptual art and American society aren’t amusing, but it’s hard to imagine viewers outside of New York – or in the present day, given how much the film is rooted in the tropes of mid-century culture – getting that much out of it. Arguably, Schiller should’ve focused more on the secret society, on how they reward Adam for his goodness and sincerity, and on how their powers defy mundane logic.
It’s still a likable film, clearly hampered by the tight budget but with some real visual imagination in the uses of black-and-white and color, the wonderfully fake lunar settings, and the fantastical version of New York the bulk of the film takes place in. The blurry prints now available don’t do justice to Fred Schuler’s cinematography or Woods Mackintosh’s art direction, although it’s obvious Schiller was still figuring out how to translate his visual imagination to the big screen. Too bad he never got another chance to do so.
With its bizarre premise, impressive cast (I haven’t mentioned Imogene Coca, Mort Sahl, Eddie Fisher, or the cameo by Lawrence Tierney), imaginative style, offbeat sincerity, and of course, its overwhelming obscurity, Nothing Lasts Forever is, while far from a great film, well worth seeking out for the devoted (and determined) cinephile. Hopefully someday it will be properly rescued.
Score: 74
M (1931) – ****
I’m fairly sure that anyone watching M today will find cause, to remark on well it holds up, on how thoroughly it sets the stage for the police procedurals which follow in its wake – set this alongside any episode of Law & Order, CSI, or any other such show and see just how many of the genre’s tropes flow from what Lang and von Harbou crafted here. But watching it in May of 2022, watching a film about a murderer of children, the police who fail to stop him, the citizens who take matters into their own hands, and the final plea from a grieving mother that all of us must keep watch over the children…well, let’s just say the film continues to resonate after more than 90 years.
Of course, those citizens I mentioned are members of Berlin’s criminal underground, desperate to stop the police raids which have brought their operations to a standstill. They may find the murder of children just as repulsive as the next person, but their overriding motive – especially that of their leader, “Safecracker” (Gustaf Gründgens) – is hardly noble. But then, aside from the patrolmen in their distinctive uniforms, the police, the criminals, and the everyday people look awfully alike.
Lang underlines this theme with sequences like the simultaneous meetings of the police brass and criminal bosses. The former meet at a long table in a clean room, the latter at a round table in a dingy room, but beyond that, they’re all desperate men, filling their rooms with clouds of tobacco smoke, trying to figure out how to find the child murderer as soon as possible. Or take the scenes in which ordinary citizens, driven to paranoia by the notion that the murderer could be anyone, turn on each other and become an uncivilized mob – while the criminals throughout seem well-organized (note how quickly they mobilize the beggars of the city) and possessed of a more consistent code of ethics.
But Lang’s critique of German society – so close, when the film was made, to falling under the control of the Nazis – has long been noted, and the lone voice of the murderer’s ersatz defense attorney (Rudolf Blümner) – “you take a sick man to a doctor, not an executioner” – is all the more poignant in light of what the Nazis would soon do under Aktion T4. But then you hear Safecracker’s arguments to the contrary, that allowing the murderer to live – at state expense, no less – endangers the children, and you can draw a straight line to those who support the death penalty today. (That screenwriter Thea von Harbou and Gründgens would support the Third Reich, while Lang opposed it and moved to America, only adds another layer to this sequence.)
I haven’t yet mentioned the murderer himself, Hans Beckert, played by Peter Lorre in the role that made him a star and typecast him as a creepy psychopath – an image he never wholly shook. But aside from a few glimpses early on, it’s a good 50 minutes before he really takes center stage, and the focus is still split between him, the police, led by Insp. Lohmann (Otto Wernicke), and the criminals, who capture Beckert and put him on trial; who knows the workings of the law so well as those who live by breaking it?
For my awards, I consider Lorre supporting, but I fully understand why one would place him lead and why he made such an impression. His offbeat appearance, nervous energy, and distinctive voice are deservedly iconic, and if he chews the scenery a touch at times (especially during the trial), he’s fascinating in the scenes where he’s alone and we see his inner torment (when his intended victim is intercepted by her mother), his malicious scheming (writing the letter to the press), and his desperate instinct to survive (when he tries to break out of the attic).
Aside from his time in a mental hospital, we learn nothing of Beckert’s background, and unless you take him at his word when he desperately claims he cannot control his murderous impulses and doesn’t even remember killing (and I’m not so sure that we should), he remains a mysterious figure even as we look directly at him. I’m reminded of the infamous scene near the end of Psycho, where a psychiatrist spells out Norman Bates’ pathologies – but then we cut to Norman, grinning darkly at us, and we wonder if the darkness within him could ever be rationally explained.
While Lorre’s performance is the most iconic, one shouldn’t overlook Wernicke as the sly Lohmann or Gründgens as the cold-blooded Safecracker; they’re both very strong in their own right, and they’re surrounded by a large and effective supporting cast embodying the various strata of Berlin society – and revealing their warring capacities for solidarity and malice. All are brought together under von Harbou’s insightful script and Lang’s direction, combining Expressionist techniques with technical innovations that still impress.
Paul Falkenberg’s editing is brilliant, interweaving the various points of view with a fluidity far beyond most films of the era, with touches like the ironic cutaway to a supposedly murdered man having a hearty meal that add a bit of humor to this necessarily dark story. The interplay of image and sound – and the use of sound in general – is stunning, with moments of ghostly silence interspersed with crowd scenes that sound clear and natural and sound effects which help to tell the story – Beckert’s whistling and his attempts to pick the attic lock, both of which help give him away.
Along with the striking cinematography (with fluid movements that really bring the story to life) and the impressive sets, it makes for a film as impressive technically as it remains thematically resonant. Despite the occasional dramatic creakiness, it remains a true and enduring classic.
Score: 93
Shorts by John and Faith Hubley:
- Moonbird (1959) – Two young boys sneak outside in the night to catch a bird. That’s the part the Hubleys’ young sons made up as part of a pretend game while being recorded. Their parents then brought the game to animated life, using sketchy, dreamlike backgrounds, semi-transparent depictions of the boys as ghostly sprites, and a bird (in chalk) which could only exist in a child’s imagination. At 10 minutes, it gets just a touch tedious at times (the boys’ chatter is naturally rather rambling), but it has a distinct charm, and a distinct place in history as the first independent short to win an Oscar – the first of three Oscar wins for the Hubleys. Score: 78 (***½)
- The Hole (1962) – The Hubleys’s second Oscar winner: two workers on a construction site (jazz great Dizzy Gillespie and actor George Mathews) talk about life, accidents, death, and the threat of nuclear war, noting that the people who hold the power of life and death over the rest of the world are just as human – and fallible – as anyone. A false alarm puts the fear of God in the hearts, and we’re left with Gillespie singing “Sitting on Top of the World.” As with Moonbird, the Hubleys took improvised dialogue and set it to animation, but here the dialogue is witty and insightful (Gillespie’s idea for sending his wife telegrams after his death is a gem) and well matched by the loose, casual animation. It also rambles and runs a touch long, but overall it works. Score: 86 (***½)
- A Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Double Feature (1966) – Their third and final Oscar winner, this one produced in association with a major studio (Paramount), and by far the shortest of the three (5 minutes). It illustrates two songs by Alpert and the Brass: in “Spanish Flea,” a flea spends their time harassing farm animals, and when humans build a resort on their land, the plucky flea is just the one to strike back. In “Tijuana Taxi,” a band (Alpert and the Brass?) need to get to the airport, but will their cheerful driver and his ramshackle cab get them there in time? It’s slight, but cute; I prefer “Flea” (a more memorable song and premise) and “Taxi” veers awfully close to stereotype at times, but who doesn’t like Alpert and the Brass? Score: 83 (***½)
Crimes of the Future (2022) – ****
Body art, in of itself, is a very old concept; tattoos and piercings have been around for over 5,000 years, and other forms of body modification – lip stretching, foot binding, neck rings, head flattening, and so forth – have long histories. In Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg turns towards, well, the future, and towards a new concept of body art. In the world of the film, the human body is changing; pain and infection are rare, and certain individuals, like performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) can grow never-before-seen organs. His performances consist of Tenser’s partner, Caprice (Léa Seydoux) removing these organs before a paying audience.
These performances arouse considerable interest – from the National Organ Registry, represented by Wippet (Don McKellar) and his assistant Timlin (Kristen Stewart), from the “New Vice” squad, represented by Det. Cope (Welket Bungué), and from Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman), the leader of a group of people who can eat plastic – in fact, can only eat plastic – and who believes his late son to have been the first person to be born with that trait. (Dotrice and his comrades have consciously pursued it.)
As Tenser struggles from day-to-day with the pressures of living with an ever-mutating body, one which defies even the specially designed bed he sleeps in and the chair he eats in (whilst trying to eat some hideous mush), he also tries to puzzle out the truth about Dotrice and his son’s murder, for his own curiosity and Cope’s (he’s an informant for New Vice). Caprice herself is enticed by the possibilities of modification, and the starstruck Wippet and Timlin might have some secrets of their own (including but not limited to the “Inner Beauty Pageant”).
If it sounds like there’s a lot going on in Crimes of the Future, there is, and if there’s a major flaw in the film – a major reason why it’s a very close #2 on the year so far for me, instead of dethroning Everything Everywhere All at Once – it’s that Cronenberg’s script bites off more than it bothers to chew. That this isn’t a bigger problem – for me, at least – is because Cronenberg has never been one for tight plotting. He’s always been more focused on atmosphere, aesthetic, and sensation, and on those fronts Crimes delivers.
Shot mostly in Greece, in and around run-down settings which suggest few are concerned about keeping the world in much repair (beached and sunken ships abound), it creates a world in flux, full of aestheticized mutation and mutilation, with furniture like Tenser’s bed, chair, and the “Sarc” – a device for conducting autopsies – which look less like furniture and more like bones and organs. Carol Spier’s brilliant production design is in the best Cronenbergian tradition, and the fascinating makeup follows suit, be it the flirtatious nick of a scalpel or the wholesale carving-up of one’s face.
Gruesome though it can be, the film doesn’t wallow in gore, nor is it a grim enterprise; indeed, it’s really quite funny, with Cronenberg’s deadpan dialogue eliciting more than a few intentional chuckles. “Surgery is the new sex” (or is it sex is the new surgery?) is the standout line, but there are gems throughout the script (“You fill me with a desire to cut my face open”) as well as intriguing meditations on what constitutes art, and on whether to defy mutation or embrace it.
The cast certainly rises to the occasion, with Stewart a particular delight as the shy, nebbishy Timlin (one wishes she appeared a bit more often), but as Tenser, Mortensen is a compelling wreck of a man (his vocal performance alone is viscerally unsettling), while Seydoux’s Caprice is about the warmest and most human a person can be in this bizarre world. McKellar is effectively, calmly deranged as Wippet, Bungué has a likably dry wit as Cope, and as a pair of possibly comic, possibly menacing mechanics, Tanaya Beatty and Nadia Litz make an enjoyable team.
Cronenberg paces himself beautifully behind the camera, never overwhelming us with the grotesque, at least for those viewers inclined to give this film the time of day. The sight of a man whose body is covered with ears, his eyes and mouth having been sewn shut, might be off-putting (to say nothing of his dancing), but meet the film half-way and you’ll be fine. Douglas Koch’s cinematography is richly lit and smartly composed, and Howard Shore’s wonderful electronic score enhances the surreal atmosphere from the very start. As soon as I heard it, I knew I was in good hands.
I realize that, for many viewers, Crimes will be too remote, too disturbing, too dramatically unsatisfying, or too grotesque. The aesthetic qualities I reveled may be too much in of themselves – and too little to make up for the shortcomings of the script. I could wish that the film offered a touch more thematic food for thought or a bit more narrative pay-off (although the final scene is quite good). But I can’t deny that, as I watched it, I was enthralled with the world Cronenberg created and the experience the film provided. Art triumphs once again.
Score: 89
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