1973: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973, Peckinpah) 8/10

"This country's getting old and I aim to get old with it. Now, the Kid don't want it that way. He might be a better man for it. I ain't judging. But I don't want you explaining nothin' to me. And I don't want you saying nothin' about the Kid and nobody else in my goddamn county."- Pat Garrett (James Coburn)

A leisurely paced final western from legendary director Sam Peckinpah about ideas of individual identity, the maintenance of one's own system of values, the evolution of the West and the process of aging and maturity, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a bleak examination of the bonds of friendship and the ties that break them.Pat Garrett (James Coburn) a former outlaw turned sheriff has been assigned the duty of capturing his friend and ex-collegue Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson).

Whilst Garrett may now don fancy attire, live in a white picket fence home and enjoy the respect of the New Mexican business elite; he is in actuality torn and bitter inside. While the Kid is despised for his murderous thievery by the giant corporate cattle ranchers such as Chisum, he is envied by his former mentor Garrett who admires his sense of ideals and hopes to give Billy more time by continually avoiding to capture the man.

Instead Garrett pursues his own psychological journey meeting with former allies under the notion of finding Billy the Kid. Through this one gets the sense of Garrett trying to confront past elements, whilst being unable to relate or tackle the real problems that currently plague him such as his detached relationship with his wife and his inability to come to terms with his newfound respectability and consequential responsibilities.All the while, Billy continues to expand his mass popular support and gain new supporters such as his fidgety knife-wielding sidekick Alias (Bob Dylan). It is this type of power that Garrett envies as he is reduced to displaying his power through force and intimidation. No longer respected by his peers, family or the community, Garrett has become a puppet of the corporate state and has to decide between his loyalty to his friends or his employers.

In many ways this film is like Peckinpah's earlier masterpiece The Wild Bunch in its detailed account of two former allies now foes battling once another. Like The Wild Bunch's Deke Thornton, Garrett is now the employee of the artifice of the state; whilst Billy like William Holden's Pike is an organic rival to the ideas of state. Unlike The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid tackles subjects such as aging more directly as two different values systems come to the forefront: Kid's vision of an open individualistic state versus the ideals of Chisum and the corporate state that attacks those who rebel against it.

Similar elements of companionship and brotherhood are explored, but at a much more visceral and personal level.This is assisted by Coburn's ultimately cool performance as Garrett, in which he is able to convey over time a maturing Garrett through the changes in his personality and his aging complexion. Similarly Kristofferson is able to offer a bubbly playfulness to contrast Garrett's seriousness. Dylan appears miscast and doesn't really add anything to the picture, while the stellar supporting line-up of western veterans such as Jason Robards, Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens rounds out the fine cast.

Peckinpah's lyrical gunplay and editing come to the forefront in the 2005 "Special Edition Cut" made by Peckinpah scholars based upon Peckinpah's writings and the supposed aesthetical intentions of the late director. Certainly, while this isn't a director's cut it does add something new to the process and provides something less extensive than the '88 Preview Version, which may be more in line with Peckinpah's vision. Ultimately, this is a splendidly bleak and grimy Western that tramples on the last remnants of the Western mythology with cold calculated precision and flair. It is at least a minor classic of American cinema and Westerns in general, rather than a fully fledged flawless work.

* Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is released through Warner Home Video as part of the Sam Peckinpah: The Legendary Westerns Collection

Other Peckinpah Films Reviewed:
Junior Bonner (1972) 6/10

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1966: Persona

Persona (1966, Bergman) 8/10

Recently, while rummaging through the university library, I perused through Peter Cowie's biography of Ingmar Bergman and noticed a startling fact. In 1963, almost a million Swedes went to see The Silence, the last of Bergman's quasi-religious trilogy that included Winter Light and Through a Glass Darkly: an impressive statistic for a nation whose population is between 7-8 million.

Three years later, after being made director of the Dramaten (The Swedish Royal Theatre Company in Stockholm) and increasing their profits (with oddly plays designed for children), releasing a misinterpreted film (All These Women) and almost dying due to antibiotic poisoning, Bergman's latest film Persona (which had been lauded worldwide) attracted only ten percent of the domestic audience that the critically-mixed The Silence attracted.

The question that Cowie failed to answer in his biography was why so few people were interested in Bergman's latest project that was a self-conscious treatise on identity and the nature of cinema itself? Perhaps the answer is reflected in Bergman's original title for the project that would be Persona: Cinematography. Coupled with the scandalous on-set affair by lead actress Liv Ullman and Bergman, the abstract aesthetic nature of Bergman's latest project was hardly in-line with his previous "mainstream" projects.

Contemporary audiences could easily relate Radiohead going from OK Computer to Kid A; as Persona threw out the conventional theatrical leanings and traditional filmic documentation and instead replaced it with a new bold cinematic language. Certainly, the rise of the Nouvelle Vague movements throughout continental Europe could explain for the drop in Bergman's audience, but Persona is something even more experimental, daring and oblique than anything produced by Godard, Antonioni or Pasolini during this period.

This is cinema at its most basic and its most complex. Utilizing the historic implications of imagery from the silent era, Bergman creates a film that is strikingly rich in detail and feels cool and ultra-modern the entire time. After being nearly paralyzed from a severe lung infection, Ingmar Bergman returned to the screen with his most daring film ever. Persona was initially developed through a combination of his boredom at being bedridden in a Swedish hospital bed and his glancing upon a magazine photograph of his ex-wife Bibi Andersson with her Norwegian friend Liv Ullman. Wholly believing the pair were physically alike, Bergman developed a story based upon the idea of two different women being one and the same. The result was a film that is still fresh, invigorating and perfekt to this day.

The film stars Liv Ullman as Elisabet Vogler, a famous theatre actress who during an adaptation of Electra suddenly stops talking and places herself in a silent semi-autistic state. Alma (Bibi Andersson), a bubbly innocent nurse is placed in charge of Elisabet's health and is asked by her superiors to take her to a cottage in the countryside in order to try to improve Elisabet's health.

Yet, instead Alma begins to openly reveal herself to her mute friend, before realizing their friendship and close relationship is not Alma perceives it to be. This produces a film that not only explores the ideas of duplicity, but also the ability of two halves of a being becoming whole. Bergman and Sven Nykvist film the picture in a crisp monochrome style that attempts to showcase this theme of "the human mirror."

Throughout the film, Bergman also teases us with his cinematic experiments as he tries to break down the invisible wall between cinema and the audience via a variety of methods: Ullman photographing the audience, a young boy touching the screen etc. Through his breaking down of this wall, Bergman is allowed to wildly experiment with the material substance of film. Yet, this is never done a gimmicky fashion. All is done artfully and tastefully in the manner of an expressionist horror film with Ullman as the vampire or God figure depending on which scholar is analyzing the film.

Dominated by excellent performances from both Andersson and Ullman, Persona captures the essential themes of Bergman's earlier works (fears about art, existence, God, modernity etc) and repackages them in a bold and strikingly beautiful, yet unconventional format. The result is a multi-layered film that not only questions our existence and the nature of identity, but our role in the modern world. Through film Bergman expressed his fears and Persona is his attempt to strip down cinema to the elemental- removing its personas and its masks to reveal that all our notions of self and being are ultimately analogous roles played by ourselves.

* Persona is available through MGM Home Video as part of the Ingmar Bergman Collection

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1965: Story of a Prostitute

Story of a Prostitute (1965, Suzuki) 8/10

On its surface Seijun Suzuki's 1965 film Story of a Prostitute appears to be little more than a quasi-Romeo and Juliet story of two torn lovers doomed to spend their lifetimes unable to openly love one another. Yet, there is something deeper here within Suzuki's film. This less a film about romance and more about death.

The setting is World War II China. The Japanese army are slowly beginning to lose their grip on the war. Harumi (Yumiko Nagawa) is a young women who has volunteered to work as a "comfort woman": utilizing her body as a service for the troops. Her reasons for participating in such a project is to spite a former upper-class lover, who she believes will be eternally shamed for failing to marry her. This initial action sets-up a key characteristic of Harumi: she takes revenge out on others by using herself as the instrument. Quickly she and her fellow prostitutes become accustomed to the dehumanizing nature of their labour. The men are savage and cruel, none moreso than Narita (Isao Tamagawa) the commanding officer of the local batallion who personally selects her to fulfill his debased sexual desires.

Their first intimate encounter is sadistic and distasteful, as the tyrannical Narita wields his authority by raping Harumi. His rank and sex dictate their encounters as he berates and abuses her for her choice of profession. He attempts to stress his potence by ritualistically fondling his sword, yet within him lies a feeble and corrupt creature. When Narita verbally abuses her, she demands him to curb his language as all officers are to speak in the manner of the Emperor. His reaction is swift and cruel: as he savagely physically abuses her before continuing his pattern of verbal, sexual and emotional assault.

Desperate to punish Narita for his response to her, Harumi begins to court his straightlaced and literate orderly Private Mikami (Tamio Kawachi). He resists her lure. Honour and upholding the conventions of the Japanese military hierarchy persuades him to resist her advances. He is the perfect military man: obedient, dehumanized and robotic. It is no surprise that Kawachi plays him with so little emotion and movement as the man he is playing is a living corpse.

About twenty-five minutes into the film, there is a beautiful shot in which Yumiko Nagawa stares in-between the bedposts realizing her trapped position. She is a prisoner to her bed and will never be able to socially mobilize herself away from that position. Mikami and Harumi briefly become secret lovers, but soon Mikami tries to revert back to their original status as unattached human beings.This static notion of status is another common theme in the film. Characters often try to change their fate, but more often than not, they become relegated to their position and demote themselves back to their rank. This is true in the characters relation to death.

Death is all-around Story of a Prostitute. It is on the battlefields and in the bedrooms. No-one can escape it. Mikami is already dead emotionally and spiritually. Harumi is rapidly dying and hopes to use her potential lover to save her: to allow her to live once more. The problem is Mikami is afraid to live. It is revealed that he was once an officer, but was soon relegated to the status of a private for disobedience. Now he is grown so disenchanted with the army and life in general that he barely steps out of line.He tries to breathe new possibilities into his fleeting life by reading philosophy by Diderot, but is soon absurdly declared a communist by his commanding officers. The army will not tolerate such liberal thought that strays from their rigid ideals. Thus rigor mortis begins to set-in on Mikami's life.

The battle between life and death is never more perverse than when Mikami is wounded in a trench. Dying in the mud, his fellow soldiers gather his machine gun and leave him to perish. Only Harumi is willing to save Mikami from certain death. Their capture by a Chinese faction promises life and the hope for a fruitful relationship to blossom. Yet, Mikami resists. The Japanese military code insists it is better to die rather than capture. Any escape back to the Japanese front will result in certain death via a court-martial. Thus Mikami is in a Catch-22 situation: to disobey the tattered codes of his imperialist matters or to return to the fold and certain death. Tired of the arbitrary authoritarianism within their ranks,Uno (Kentaro Kaji), a former fellow soldier in his battalion has already fled to the Chinese borders. He can promise Mikami freedom, but again he resists. Thus, Suzuki brings up a shot similar to that in his own Gate of Flesh made a year earlier. In that film, there is a brief glance at an American flag, which is encouraged to be spat upon; in this film there is the opposite, as a Chinese flag is shown as a diametric opposing force to Japanese imperialism, which should be spat upon.



Story of a Prostitute is the middle-piece in Suzuki's development from the Technicolor jazz-pop of Gate of Flesh to the harsh anti-Fascism of Fighting Elegy. As in Gate of Flesh, Story of a Prostitute demonstrates the power available to women in their sex. In Gate of Flesh, the prostitutes use sex to purify and maintain order within their society; in Story of a Prostitute sex (not rape) becomes a liberating force from tyranny and oppression. Harumi achieves liberation from the cruelties of Narita through sex and she hopes Mikami will too. Yet, he lacks the courage to fulfill his physical desires as he is repeatedly told the army's mantra to avoid wine and women, something his own officers fail to do. Unlike the surrealist flourishes of Gate of Flesh and Youth of the Beast, Suzuki demonstrates an emotional realism in Story of Prostitute that is gritty and painful. The scene in which Mikami and Harumi first consumate their relationship is beautiful as it is tragic as Mikami shivers and shakes upon his first sexual encounter; and later cries at the thought of what has just happened.

The harsh black and white widescreen cinematography, powerful acting (particularly by Yumiko Nagawa), tense script and rounded characterizations give this film a gritty authenticity and focus often lacking in Suzuki's films. Here the story is more important than the image. This most likely has to do with the fact Suzuki was an ardent fan of the novel the film is based upon, unlike his genre-bending gangster flicks that were culled from studio scripts that he had little or no interest in. That's not to say that Suzuki's sense of style is absent from this picture: on the contrary it is perhaps one of his most beautiful pictures in terms of visuals as he maximizes the full width of widescreen cinematography with Bergman-esque compositions, Wajda-style fluid tracking shots, swinging camera movements and stylized freeze-frames and slow-motion shots.

Even the film's moments of eroticism are done in a tasteful and artful manner that stresses the wholeness of sex within a loving relationship, rather than the rapid-fire exploitation shown in contemporary Hollywood films. Suzuki's cinematic interests here seem to once more be widespread: the opening shot is highly reminiscent of Kurosawa's Yojimbo as Harumi's lone warrior figure roams the desolate landscape; while Suzuki's heroine Harumi would not be out of place in a film by Sirk or Bergman.

At the film's stunning conclusion, Harumi's fellow prostitutes remark it is more cowardly to die and more difficult to live. This is the central mantra of Suzuki's film. War itself accomplishes nothing and its particpants achieve nothing but stagnating life itself. The scene in which Mikami recites the difference between a cowardly soldier and a courageous one perfectly sums up Suzuki's anti-war notions. Bravery and courage are not demonstrated by blindly following orders and participating in crazy feats; they are shown by acting against a corrupt authority and through living what little life we are given to the fullest.

Story of a Prostitute is available through Criterion

Other Seijun Suzuki Films Reviewed:
Youth of the Beast (1963) 7/10

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1963: Youth of the Beast

Youth of the Beast (1963, Suzuki) 7/10

A gay Yakuza driving under pink cherry blossom trees? A desert sandstorm on the outskirts of Tokyo? A hallucinatory figure gliding in mid-air? The Takeshita School of Knitting?

None of this is explicitly explained, nor does it firmly fuse together in Seijun Suzuki's 1964 pop-art-jazz gangster flick Youth of the Beast: a film dedicated more to the unconventionalities of the image, rather than the absurdities within a loosely conventional plot. What does it all signify in the grand scheme of things? Little. And how and why does it all come together? Only Suzuki knows. Youth of the Beast is a synthesis of multiple conflicting genres and styles mixed together in a concotion that is focused more on external aesthetics than on the internal dynamics of the script. Within the film's 91 minute running time there are conjoined elements as frayed and disconnected as the American Western, Yojimbo, Film Noir, Warner gangster flicks, Ozu, Fuller, Melville, Welles and Godard all thrown into a film that manages to elucidate little other than Suzuki's expansive cinematic tastes.

The film tells the story of Jo Mizuno (Jo Shishido) a disgraced ex-cop seeking revenge on the individual who murdered his former colleague in a supposed double suicide. Subsequently, Mizuno joins two rival Yakuza gangs and plays them off one another, whilst striving to find out who killed his deceased friend. The actual plot itself is of little importance, as Suzuki never really adheres to it: drifting in and out its fixed consciousness in order to explore the power of the image. This lack of streamlined purpose tends to result in a fluctuating storyline that plays like a film fast-forwarded through all the slow parts, with both positive and negative results. The positive is that the film runs at a breakneck pace that never lets up; the downside is that the plot is disconnected from the imagery. It is a film, which only seems to make sense in terms of a story, if one "goes with the flow," rather than the plot.

Like Antonioni's L'Avventura, the configuration of the composition tells the story, rather than the script. The two rival Yakuza's dress in the manner of professional accountants and businessmen, yet in actuality they act like negligent amateurs whose business model is built on an increasing scale of violent destruction. Each are a persona of fantasy: a decadent image of a cinematic version of a Yakuza. Their respectable businesses also demonstrate this pattern: owns a nightclub; the other is in the film business. They sit around in their plain offices without any real sign of purpose or direction. It is only when Mizuno enters the frame that their private undercurrents become public. They act simply on short-term emotion and their obsessions, rather than a calculated long-term plan: the most evident of which is the gay Yakuza Hideo who slashes the face of anybody who reminds him that he is "a son of a whore."

The obsessions become even more opposed as Yakuzas within the Nomoto clan particpate in such metaphorically intriguing comfort activities ranging from stroking cats to stroking guns.There is an internal lust for sadism, which is primarily taken out on women such as the heroin addict who crawls along the floor for another score, or the mistress who gets whipped by a jealous Yakuza who then fondles her amidst a sandstorm. Yet, the women in the film are just as conniving, utilizing blackmail and their own methods of revenge to balance out the equilibrium of the Yakuza underworld.

The film strings this concept of revenge, obsession and the gangster lifestyle are seen through its lively imagery:

- Mizuno wiping his blood-stained shoes on the clean shirt of an attacker
- A cat-obssessed Yakuza cleaning his blade on his favourite cat
- The pink-feather clad dancer who appears in the blackness of the night club
- The rival gangs fighting in their plush automobiles in a scene reminiscent of a Western gunfight
- The heroin addict ripping the lining out a chair for the next score
- The ritualistic eradication of limbs and body parts to satisfy old scores or to fulfill old habits

The film's architecture demonstrates both the decadence of this lifestyle, but also its debasement. For each scene in a palatial house or exotic club, there are also the blown-out houses similar to Suzuki's later Gate of Flesh and the windswept topography of L'Avventura. Like in the former the film's eroticism is charged with an element of sadistic glory and a desire to keep all the elemental figures within their natural social rank.

On more than one occasion Youth of the Beast is an irrational mess as a result of its abridged plot that seems destined to have been for an empty melodramatic crime film that has been razed down by Suzuki for maximum action. Instead, Suzuki uses the silent film approach of letting the images do the talking, which results in the loud vivid set-pieces and elaborate Technicolor images on display. The end-product is a film that is a highly entertaining feast of cinematic delights that is as memorable for its images as it is forgettable for its storyline. The pace is quick, the action loud and the acting taut.

Like Fuller's Naked Kiss it is a discombobulated fusion of several ideas, although this film comes out slightly better than the latter. There is a slight touch of organization here that keeps the picture together and prevents it from becoming an absolute wreck .There are better films than this by Suzuki, but there is perhaps none so memorable for accomplishing so much externally with so little internally.

* Youth Of The Beast is available through Criterion

Other Seijun Suzuki Films Reviewed:
Story of a Prostitute (1965) 8/10

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1938: La bete humaine

La bete humaine (1938, Renoir) 8/10

In Grand Illusion and Boudu Saved From Drowning, French master Jean Renoir explored the tensions of class in modern society. In his 1938 proto-Noir La bete humaine, Renoir delves into the anthropological rather than the sociological.

From the film's opening shot, we know there is something different to this Renoir film than some of his earlier classics such as Grand Illusion and Boudu Saved From Drowning. As the credits end we are introduced to the blazing furnace of a speeding locomotive, which directly introduces us to ideas of danger and "playing with fire." Our first shot of legendary French actor Jean Gabin is not of a handsome and slick charming man, but a soot-filled and dirty face. The matinee charm of Pepe Le Moko is erased in an instant. In a few brief opening shots Renoir is able to demonstrate there is something unsettling, violent and dangerous about the film and the characters within it.

The film adapted from Emile Zola's novel tells the story of Jacques Lantier, a working-class engineer who becomes unknowingly involved in a sordid world of murder, crime and adultery. Forced by a broken axle to stop-over in the industrial city of Le Harve, Gabin visits his godmother at her quaint railside cottage. Her introductory remarks unsettle our notions of Gabin's character as ordinary. He suffers from outbursts of violence: a disease caused by generations of alcoholism and bad blood, which have seeped into his genes. We are witnesses to this shortly after when he unconciously strangles a potential lover ironically by the railroad.

Onboard a train back to Le Harve, he encounters Severine (Simone Simon) and her husband Robaud (Fernand Ledoux), the local stationmaster in Le Harve. The Robauds internal relationship is enshrouded in secrecy. They are an odd couple: the stout and aging grizzly stationmaster and the beautiful young femme fatale. As their secret lives lose their potent ability to masquerade, their relationship in its language and form alters. Robaud's emotional lust for vengence kicks in and he commits the heinous crime of murder upon Severine's "godfather". It is an interesting parallel to Lantier's godparent: she reveals secrets, while Severine's conceals them.

Lantier does not witness the crime, but witnesses the couple in the tight corridor around the time of the murder. He knows the couple are acting guiltily through Severine's eyes, but has fallen for her charms. The pair begin a torrid and intimate affair, which is based on Severine's desire to accumulate more and to control Lantier's actions. He tries to resist, yet her sexual charms are too alluring: resulting in consequential disaster for everybody involved.

Throughout the film, Renoir creates a moody, foreboding atmosphere that was highly influential in the establishment of the American Film Noir movement a few years later. Expressionistic lighting plays a crucial part in creating this atmosphere and is extremely effective in representing the sense of entrapment the characters begin to feel. This is primarly done by having the image of the window pane reflect on the walls when specific characters are in the shot. At times it almost appears to mirror the bars of a jail cell as do the pillars in the ball room dancing sequence. Gabin plays himself into Simone Simon's trap and cannot escape, thus resulting in her influence over him.

As with other elements in the film, Simone Simon is definitely a proto-Noir Femme Fatale figure repeatedly emasculating those she has a relationship with. She is a pathological liar who uses her sex to force men to do evil tasks at her bidding. When they are unable to do, they are seen as cowardly and effeminate. Note the scene in which Gabin tries to kill her husband Robaud with a metaphorically phallic lead pipe on the trainyard. When he is unable to do so due to his sympathy for Robaud's depression, he becomes impotent and unwanted by Simon who quickly finds a new lover to do her dirty work. Sex is Simon's instrument of power and we see her use it when her and Gabin copulate in the trainyard shed during a rain storm, which notes their tempetuous affair. Additionally, it is important to recognize that when Gabin is unable to kill Robaud, there are puddles on the ground, noting a symbolic end to any sort of fruitful relationship.

The train is also an important (and highly phallic) symbol in the film. Gabin gets most of his pleasure riding on the train, as he is in control. Yet, the first problem Gabin encounters is when the axle on his train breaks. An axle can control many things including steering and braking. It is due to the mechanical failure that he becomes involved in the seedy dealings of Robaud and Simon's Severine. Thus an uncontrolable fate guides his destiny from this point onwards. The train also represents violence and danger. Note the scene in which a young woman gently sails on a boat on a placid river, only to have nature disturbed by the fury of the locomotive. Train noises and sounds can be heard throughout the film at key points, which remind viewers of the danger and violence to come. Additionally, the colour black is also featured prominently, none so more strikingly then when Severine reveals her secret to Gabin (who already knows) when she is dressed all in black in a costume that could be considered funeral, or perhaps the start of a peverse marriage with her veil.

As with other Renoir films of the period class plays an integral part to the actions of the characters. The class status of Robaud is never fully presented and perhaps he could be considered bourgeoisie, but Severine certainly acts as though she is with her rampant materialism. The comment Robaud makes that 'nobody will suspect him and Severine of committing any crime' seems to point in the direction that he was at least considered a member of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, Severine seems to use working-class men such as Gabin's Lantier to do her bidding and the character of Cabuche (played by Renoir) is another working-class fellow who is treated indignantly and with suspiscion because of his class status.

Despite its iconic status being assured there are some glaring frailties in the film. Firstly, the soundtrack is at times so overly sappy and melodramatic, you would think you were watching a Hollywood romantic epic. Additionally, one of the first shots of Severine holding a kitten, while in retrospect ironic considering Simone Simon would later appear in Cat People, is lit in a fashion that isn't sensual, but rather viriginal and romantic. There are other moments throughout the film, which point to this and perhaps Renoir was experimenting with trying to find a focus for the film.The second complaint is the entire idea of Gabin's illness.

This was a period when eugenics was a prevalent idea, but there is never any reason given for his sudden attacks, or how they can be controlled other than generations of alcoholics producing bad genes being the source. The character of his godmother addresses some of the problems, but she brings up the subject in an off-putting way, which is designed to startle the audience, yet is never really fully realized. In creating the film Renoir omitted much of the melodrama of Zola's novel. With this in mind, Renoir could have easily done away with this element as well, which may have perhaps enhanced the picture had he changed Gabin's illness to perhaps an underlying rage from an unhappy childhood, which is brought about by specific actions.Although the film is great, this idea of why Gabin becomes the "human beast" is neither rounded or completely utilized in an appropriate manner.

It appears to me that Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seems to be an influence here and perhaps Simone Simon is the Caligari figure with Gabin as the somnabulist Cesare who goes in a trance-like state. But even that explanation cannot decipher why Gabin chokes an earlier romantic interest in the film's opening half hour. It is the only truly haphazard element of the film and takes away from the grandness and brilliance of the rest of the film's 96 minutes.

Still, the picture is one of Renoir's best and one of the best and most influential of the period. Along with Carne's Port of Shadows, the film was instrumental in creating the atmosphere and mood necessary for Film Noir's success. This is not a major masterpiece in the same manner as Grand Illusion simply because of Renoir's inability to harness the potential of Zola's human beast element, which is essentially the crux of the film. Other than that element, the picture is superb with great performances from Gabin and Simon and is highly recommended as a minor masterpiece in the Renoir canon.

La bete humaine is available through Criterion.

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1950: Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950) 10/10

Before Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece Sunset Boulevard there had been very few “backstage” critiques of Hollywood and film culture. William Wellman’s 1937 A Star is Born along with Buster Keaton’s 1928 slapstick comedy The Cameraman are some of the more acknowledged pieces prior to this period, which utilized Hollywood as its backdrop. Yet, unlike the latter two films, Sunset Boulevard represented a more scathing and fastidious position toward Hollywood, particularly in the divide between the Old Hollywood of the silent era and the New Hollywood of the sound era. The effect of Wilder’s film was clearly evident in the immediate creation of other “Hollywood backstage” films such as :Vincente Minelli’s 1952 film The Bad and the Beautiful; Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa; Robert Aldrich’s 1955 picture The Big Knife; George Cukor’s 1954 remake of A Star is Born and Stanley Donen-Gene Kelly’s 1952 musical Singin’ in the Rain, which further ridiculed Hollywood’s silent era in a less spiteful manner.

Sunset Boulevard is the fullest and most dynamic example of Billy Wilder’s career filled acidic cruelty and satirical spite. Along with John Huston, Wilder was a director chided by influential American critic Andrew Sarris for his overarching cynicism. Yet, an examination of Sarris influential and exceptional American “auteur bible” The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968. demonstrates his distaste for directors whose work holds a defeatist or pessimistic outlook. In his classification of “who is and is not an auteur”, Sarris unconsciously endorses a cinematic language that requires and hones a redeeming factor in which the central characters can be cleansed of their sins and start anew. Such characteristics are prevalent in the work of Fritz Lang, which despite his distrustful attitude toward authority, always maintains a Christian element of salvation and repentance.[1]

Sunset Boulevard however is a rare Production Code era film that has no fuzzy ending or elements of remorse amongst its principal characters. Rather it is an astringent and downbeat critique of the antithetical forces of Old and New Hollywood. In the process, no-one is spared any mercy, whether they are lowly opportunist Joe Gillis (William Holden) or eminent director Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself). In the process, Wilder creates a film that embraces a multi-genre approach: the satiric and slapstick forms of comedy; psychological and monster horror characteristics; melodramatic dramas; and the mad criminals of crime capers. Minus the western and the musical, the dominant genres of the silent period are all here, while the World War II era progeny of Film Noir is added in the utilization of its themes, concepts and lighting.

The film begins with the camera peeling back from the gutter: a helpful element of foreshadowing representative of the film’s principal characters. The first is Joe Gillis (William Holden): a B-movie screenwriter from Ohio who is being hunted by the Repo Men for back payments on his sporty convertible. The second is Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson): a legend of the silent screen desperate to return to the spotlight and fulfill the wishes of “millions” who demand her return to the silver screen. The third is Max (Erich von Stroheim), Norma’s sad and conniving butler with a dark past. Each is at a low in their careers: stuck in a metaphorical gutter, which they hope by combining their forces with others, they can aid the resurrection of their individual careers.

After a shot reminiscent of a Warner Brothers gangster flick with an array of police cars hurdling down Sunset Blvd, we are introduced to Joe Gillis: drowned and floating in the pool of an enormous Hollywood mansion built by one of those “crazy people in the crazy twenties.”
The “crazy” individual in question is Norma Desmond, who first meets Joe in his flight from the Repo Men. A blown tire has fatefully driven him onto her estate. She thinks he is a mortician for her pet monkey; he recognizes her as a forgotten silent film star.

In their sparring chit-chat, Desmond hears that Gillis is a screenwriter and would like his assistance in assembling her lifelong work: a film about Salome, the daughter of Herod Philip who received John the Baptist’s head on a plate. Naturally, Desmond plans to star as Salome, despite being more than thirty years too old for the part, and hopes to obtain Cecil B. DeMille as director. In his head, Gillis concocts a plan to swindle Desmond out of money in order to pay off his debts and return to Ohio.

Yet, unbeknownst to Gillis, he is the one who is being used. As Max will reveal later in the film, Norma Desmond uses men for her own sexual gratification. Her materialism and vanity is apparent in the grandiose opulence of her home and her line of Norma Desmond photographs. Significantly, the only films shown at her home are Norma Desmond silent pictures. She is a figure distinctly from the silent era. Her actions and movements are wildly over-the-top in stark contrast to Joe Gillis’ New Hollywood subtleness. With its wheezing organ and cavernous walls the home is reminiscent of a Universal Horror film: a fact made even more prescient in Norma Desmond’s claw-like fingers and expressive make-up. Her home has become her own world: a representation of herself, which has become a safe-zone from a period that has abandoned her. Here, Chaplin is replicated, Valentino is reminisced and “The Waxworks” featuring silent stars such as Buster Keaton and Hal Warner play cards: it has become a shrine to the silent era and an abode for the dead and the forgotten.

When Gillis steps into this world, he turns it upside down. His virility and youthful energy are increasingly utilized less for screenwriting and more as a plaything for Norma. The effect is typified in a New Years celebration in which despite a sophisticated dinner and expensive orchestra, the only guests are Gillis and Norma Desmond. Yet, Wilder’s cruelty is often in the latter half of the film replaced by sympathy. Despite her narcissistic demeanour, Norma can be at times warm and appealing toward Joe Gillis. She buys him gifts, pays his bills and cultures him. Materially she offers Joe anything he wants, yet she cannot offer him the type of relationship he desires. The source of Norma’s fan letters is revealed in Max’s intricate plot to continue her stardom and prevent her from further suicidal “bouts of melancholy”: a blow made even more crushing when Norma is invited back to Paramount Studios not to make Salome with DeMille as she believes, but rather to borrow her antique car for an upcoming period piece. Even DeMille is not spared in this heart-breaking scene in which for fifteen minutes Norma regains her stardom, as he equally appears foolish and out of touch with the modern era.

Wilder does provide Gillis with an outlet to break free from Norma in the form of a script writing job with Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson). Yet, Gillis’ adulterous adventure with Betty turns out to be ruinous. It is also significantly one of the rare moments when the characters do exert moments of guilt and regret; yet it is only as a minute response to their own selfish greed. Ideas of fate and chance are abound in Sunset Boulevard. And its fate that Holden’s character reluctantly accepts not as a Hollywood scriptwriter, but as Norma Desmond’s solitary member of what “On Sunset Boulevard” author Ed Sikov refers to on the Paramount DVD commentary as ‘a male harem: a bordello of one.’

Sex was a taboo subject in 1950, yet Sunset Boulevard is dripping with ideas of sex throughout its 110 minute running time. The theme of power is a crucial element to Sunset Boulevard. Here power is manifested into the ability to control one’s sexuality. In the case of Joe Gillis he is unable to do so and thus is as much an emasculated servant as Max, without the uniform. Norma’s forceful clout as a star and material power allow her to obtain anything she wants, including Joe Gillis. After abandoning Norma’s genuine romantic advances at the New Years Party, he clearly ends his chances at having a relationship built on love and cooperation. His return after Norma’s suicide demonstrates his own capitulation. Although guilt holds some sway in his decision, Gillis’ lust for money draws him back to Norma Desmond, which results in Gillis prostituting himself even further.

Wilder gives the film an additional element of spite in his utilization of realistic locations such as Paramount Studios, figures and semi-autobiographical elements, most notably in the tense relationship between von Stroheim and Swanson, which was a touchy subject in itself considering their failed project Queen Kelly (the silent film shown in the picture at the suggestion of von Stroheim) effectively ended von Stroheim's career behind the camera.
Another director may have not tried to push his actors to the edge in a story with such personal undertones, yet Wilder’s ability to do so results in a subservient tension between the pair throughout the film. Yet, this tension not only represents the conflict between von Stroheim and Swanson, but also the conflict between the characters of the decayed and exaggerated mannerisms of Old Hollywood and the ungrateful, yet realistic tones of New Hollywood. The end-product is some of the most dynamic performances and cinema ever put to celluloid.

[1] See Fury or Metropolis for such examples

* Sunset Boulevard is available through Paramount Home Video

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1983: Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1983) 9/10

With it’s opening aerial shots of the Mojave Desert, one would first expect Wim Wenders’ 1983 "road movie" Paris, Texas to be an elegiac homage to the American Western. Yet, out of the scorching landscape of the Mojave Desert there stumbles a man who is not a robust giant, but rather a skeletal figure: a mere shadow of his former self. Like John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards in John Ford's The Searchers, the man is a loner: out of touch with the modern world, yet trying to re-enter it without fully being able to comprehend the effect of such a decision.

Thus, we are witness to the first endeavor in four years undertaken by Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) to exit the wind-swept vast emptiness of the desert and re-enter the neon wilderness of contemporary American society. Desperate to quench his thirst, Travis collapses in a diminutive concrete bar on the outskirts of the Mojave and awakens only to find himself being scrutinized by an inquisitive German physician and his stringent green neon lights. Searching for the man’s identity, the physician comes across a business card in Travis’ wallet. Yet, Travis is unable to confirm whether the name on the card belongs to him, or a relative. He is currently in a self-imposed catatonic mute state: the result of a tragedy he is as of yet is unwilling to confer about.

After calling the number, the physician gets in contact with Travis’ brother Walt (Dean Stockwell): a Los Angeles based entrepreneur who designs billboards and lives in a modern home on the periphery of metropolitan LA. Stunned to hear of his brother’s existence Walt informs his French wife Anne (Aurore Clement) about the news. Her response is aphasic. While she is pleased to hear that her brother-in-law is alive, she is internally worried about the effect it will have on his soon to be 8 year old son Hunter (Hunter Carson) who she and her husband have adopted.

Upon arriving in Texas, Walt is appalled to find that his brother has snuck away from the physician’s office in order to continue his eternal search in the desert. When Walt catches up with Travis, he is given a cold response. Despite Walt’s efforts to re-immerse him into the fold, Travis eventually steals away again in his vain quest to return to the wilderness. Yet, once more Walt corrals his estranged brother and demands an answer to Travis’ behaviour. However like the static and muted television in their motel room, Walt receives nothing but silence and disorientation.

Travis continues to receive information, but fails to process the answers Walt needs and wants to hear. Soon, Travis’ perplexing behaviour turns obsessive-compulsive as he refuses to fly to LA and instead wants Walt to track down a particular rental car and take a two day trip back to southern California. Reluctantly, Walt agrees. Along the way, Travis begins to slowly open up. His character is a shy and childlike ball of turbulence. His internal conflicts produce a web of confused language and bizarre questions about his childhood.

In fact, as the film expands so does Travis’ interest in the past. Upon arriving at Walter’s home, he voraciously flips through photo albums and asks questions about his mother. Most befuddling of all he carries a picture of an empty plot of desert in Paris, Texas, which he purchased four years earlier to begin a new life for his family. According to a story told to Travis by his father, it was the land were Travis was initially conceived. While Walter believes his brother has fried his mind in the Mojave sun; in actuality Travis has begun a process of regeneration and rebirth; reverting to a childlike state and learning how to grow.

Upon his first distant meetings with his remote son, Travis appears appropriately nervous: preferring to spend time sitting on Walter’s hill-top patio with a pair of binoculars staring at the planes who fly over the house constantly throughout the day. The desert hills have been replaced with tight concrete monstrosities; while the whistling wind is usurped by a cacophony of whizzing planes, cars and sirens. Artificial lights pollute the sky in a blaze of simulated nature. Travis is perturbed by it all. He is desperately searching to return to something more organic and natural.

As he reaches a more mature stage of growth, he asks Walter’s housekeeper to help him become an ideal father. His son who previously rejected all advances to walk home with his father, now clings to his side, which worries Anne and Walt. The past becomes more resonant when Walter displays Super 8 footage from five years earlier in which Travis, Hunter and his abstracted wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) are blissfully enjoying life. The images unearth and solder the directionless fragments in Travis’ mind. Now, he has a purpose. After being informed by Anne that Jane is possibly residing in Houston, Travis gathers his son and belongs and attempts to recover the life he once he lost and mend the past once and for all.

Paris, Texas is less a "road movie" as some critics have described it and more an existential journey for self-knowledge, as well as a commentary on the emotional complexities of modern life. Travis is desperate to rehabilitate the family he once had and realizes he must undergo his own personal psychological and emotional amendment in order to do so. This involves facing the past and regenerating himself from a childlike state to an effective father. The process is made incredibly difficult not only because of the external difficulties between father and son, but also because of Travis’ reluctant and unassertive approach to solving problems.

When Travis’ is finally reunited with Jane his response is frigid and aggressive. He detests what she has become, but more so he detests what he has forced her to become due to his past actions. Wender’s lush long takes and the performances by Stanton and Kinski during these scenes are beautiful, yet difficult. Like Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, Wenders traps his audience by exercising the scenes between the estranged couple in gorgeous extended takes that demonstrate the multiple sides to the couple. Upon their first meeting Travis listens while Jane talks in a meaningless, watery tone. Yet, the tables are later turned with Jane tearfully listening, while Travis concocts a painful allegory in a striking contrast to Jane’s destitute speech. It is here that we see Travis realize the folly of his four years of pain and strife.

Earlier, Travis had drunkenly told Hunter about how his father began to love his mother not for who she was as a person, but as an idea. This scene is shot in a manner that almost appears like a psychologist’s office in which Travis pours out his troubles to his son who becomes his stand-in psychoanalyst. Yet, here we begin to see how the past continues to inflict great pain on Travis. Whereas at the beginning of the film, he remained a teetotal former alcoholic, he now readily drowns himself in alcohol to try to forget the past. As he drives his antiquated truck through decrepit towns with faded Coca-Cola signs and dim-lit bars, he knows he must accomplish this task in order to bring stability and meaning to the life of his son, if not to his own.

Robby Muller’s cinematography is truly gorgeous and along with Kaufman’s Unbearable Lightness of Being and Kurosawa’s Ran, Paris Texas is one of the best looking films of the decade. It is also enhanced by Wenders colour-coded symbolism that unlike the work in PT Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love never feels forced or artificial, but rather an organic extension of the work. In my analysis, the four major colours referenced the most overtly in the picture are black, red, green and yellow. Black stands in for truth and honesty. The couch on which Travis emits his darkest secrets to his son is black, as is the clothing he wears on his second visit with Jane.

Red stands for the past and pain. The dusty red cap Travis wears in the desert symbolizes his mental agony. The crane assisting in the delicate construction of claustrophobic, emotionless new buildings is red. Upon their first sighting of Jane, father and son are wearing red, while she drives a red Chevette. The room in which Travis and Jane first talk is completely red as is her clothing. Yellow stands for change. The cap wore by Dean Stockwell when he first learns that Travis is alive is yellow. The shirt wore by Hunter when he first accepts Travis is yellow. Green seems to be the most promising colour that of hope. The second to last scene in the film is bathed in green as is Travis’ meeting with the physician. Here there is promise for something new to be created and/or rehabilitated.

The modern problems of communication are also symbolized in the film. Travis is reluctant to use modern appliances such as phones, cars, planes or trains. His attempts to be honest and forthcoming often necessitate in turning his back to the person he is trying to address. At the beginning of the film, he is often mute or talks in ambigious fragments, which fail to capture his emotions to others. Furthermore, he is unable to sleep as he is tormented by an urge to end his search.

Brilliantly acted, beautifully shot, powerfully scripted by Sam Shepard and astutely directed Wim Wenders film is a slow-burning exploration into the psychological and emotional difficulties in contemporary Western society. Despite its slow pace, the film is never dull or trite. Rather the picture is a fascinating and complex, yet emotionally difficult examination of a man destroyed by modernity and searching to rebuild the past in order to better the future of his once cherished family.

Like L’Avventura and La Dolce Vita, the film successfully examines the spiritual emptiness of modern life. Travis is a figure desperate to love, yet has realized the life he has sought for almost half a decade was nothing more than an idealized memory. His wife and their relationship have become objectified, sterile and passive. Thus, like Ethan Edwards the home Travis returns to can no longer accept his kind. The road and the desert are his only salvation: the only environment in which the remainder of his desolate life can continue.

* Paris, Texas is available on R1 DVD through Fox Home Video

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1960: La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960) 10/10

In my early cinematic education there were three crucial films to my initial development and understanding of the medium: (1) Cameron Crowe's 2000 coming-of-age film Almost Famous (2) Francois Truffaut's 1959 debut Les Quatres cents coups (400 Blows) and (3) lastly Federico Fellini's 1960 masterpiece La Dolce Vita.

Whereas Almost Famous and 400 Blows introduced me to what I would later acknowledge as the basic framework of "auteurism" and its autobiographical elements, La Dolce Vita was another matter entirely. A visually striking modern morality play set amongst the glamour and glitz of Rome's affluent Via Veneto, La Dolce Vita introduced myself to the fantastic cinematic indulgences of Federico Fellini.

Prior to co-directing his first film alongside Alberto Lattuada 1951's Luci del Varieta (Variety Lights) Fellini had been one of the finest screenwriters of the neo-realist period: lending his hand to some of Italian neo-realist pioneer Roberto Rosselini's finest films including Rome, Open City, Paisan and The Flowers of St. Francis. The neo-realist emphasis on almost documentary authencity in its locations, plots and performers was at odds with Fellini's own surreal imagery and absurdist sense of humour.

By his fourth full-length film 1954's La Strada, Fellini had grew tired of the artistic restrictions placed upon him by the neorealist ethic. La Strada could be classified as Fellini's last neo-realist picture and his first "Felliniesque" film as its motif-laden imagery counteracted with the stark reality of the films of de Sica and Rosselini. With 1957's Nights of Cabiria, Fellini had created his own distinct visual identity, which employed his satirical brand of humour and flamboyant imagery as a counterpoint to his investigation into the moral complexity of modern human life.

The follow-up to Nights of Cabiria was 1960's La Dolce Vita: a decadent juxtaposition of modern vices and spiritual emptiness. Although ideas of contemporary moral destitution had been prominently argued in both La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita utilized a distinctly modern and urban decor to develop its line of questioning.

Often described as a contemporary reworking of Dante's Divine Comedy, the film is at its core a topical morality play: an allegory of modern society's unquenchable materialism, greed and desire for fame and fortune. Fellini was not the only Italian filmmaker to address such themes during this period. Michaelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura delves into similar concerns with more a distinctly more ambigious end-product. That's not to say there is not mystery to Fellini's film, as the film's devasting finale embodies a degree of equivocality, but rather Fellini's film is far more cunning in its exploration of deceit: examining a full-range of characters from all classes, ethnicities and social backgrounds.

The film stars Fellini's "alter-ego" Marcello Mastroianni as Marcello a journalist for a Roman tabloid who cruises the streets with his chief photographer Paparazzo (Walter Santesso) looking for the latest star or affluent jet-setter to catch in an adulterous act or making a fool of themselves in public. Despite his desires to enter a more dignified profession as an author or a journalist for a respectable publication, Marcello openly enjoys the social benefits associated with his based brand of journalism.

Although barely middle-class Marcello continues to indulge in the vices and luxuries of the rich. He drives a sporty British convertible, coolly adopts his favourite black shades and sleeps with an attractive socialite Maddalena (Anouk Aimee). Yet, their relationship is not valid within the social confines of the Roman elite and they are forced to discreetly quench their sexual appetites in the flooded basement apartment of a working-class prostitute.

Furthermore, Marcello has recently become smitten with blonde American bombshell Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) who is filming an epic in Italy. Hoping to take advantage of her fractured relationship with her alcoholic boyfriend Robert (Lex Barker), Marcello attempts to woo Sylvia. But Sylvia is not interested. Not because she does not find Marcello attractive, but she too like Marcello suffers from an ability to commit to an idea. Whereas Marcello's failure to commit is in the form of his suicidal girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux); Sylvia is unable to focus on a single direction. Despite her appearance, she is naive and childlike: buzzing from one idea to the next and fascinated by life's little pleasures from howling wolves, to lost kittens and an evening dip in the Trevi Fountain.

Yet, the film is not solely about Marcello's relationship with women, but rather his (and society's) thematic descent into hell. Here, Fellini equivocates on characters unlike in any film before. As in Nights of Cabiria, the theme of the sacriligious abuse of religious faith is demonstrated. In La Dolce Vita the act is carried out by two seemingly pure and innocent children who cause a media frenzy in a rural Italian village after they claim to have seen the Virgin Mary. Congruently, Marcello's acquaintance and mentor Steiner (Alain Cuny) is stripped of his veneer of intellectual respectability and domesetic bliss. As with the two children, the media once more is viewed as a negative and iniquitous body designed to exploit the feelings and beliefs of ordinary people.

As Marcello increasingly delves into the world of the rich and accepts invitions to particpate in their activities and vices, the more selfish and spiritually corrupt Marcello becomes. Yet, with his lust to attain validity within the "sweet life" of the Roman social elite, Marcello begins to lose all ties to reality and his soul. His life becomes an empty mess as he is outcasted and shunned by his former wealthy friends and lovers: left to drunkenly stumble alone on the beachfront unable to hear or remember the remnants of an incorruptible conscience in the form of a young girl he met at a restaurant earlier in the film.

La Dolce Vita continues to remain as fresh and vigorous today as it was more than forty years ago. An important piece of modern cinema, the film showcases a materialist society similar to our own filled with spiritually bankrupt individuals placating themselves with frivolous luxuries. The acting, direction and atmosphere created by Nino Rota's score and Martelli's cinematography is undeniably cool, but also contextually portent with its omens of moral depravity.

While Fellini's later films such as Juliet of the Spirits and Satyricon would be take on a far more colourful and carnivalesque role, La Dolce Vita is perhaps more grotesque in its character portraits. The authenticity of the characters and those who played them is undoubtedly essential to this legitimacy. Each of the actors appears to genuinely equate with their character: from Anita Ekberg's bouncy Sylvia to Mastroianni's brilliant portrayal of the curiously indecisive Marcello.

In La Dolce Vita, Fellini presents a vision of Rome that is both blissful and poisionous. The high life becomes the forbidden fruit that Marcello voraciously gnaws upon leading to a debauched life of promiscuous adventures that are empty morally, ethically and spiritually. Otello Martelli's voluptuous widescreen cinematography along with Nino Rota's imaginative employment of music ranging from liturgical to rock adds to the multiple identities and conceptions of morality throughout the film. The cavernous club in which Marcello begins to woo Sylvia is fascinating in its hellish decor and satanic maestro Frankie Stout (Alan Dijon), yet Fellini shows throughout the film that locations such as this and the watery flat in which Marcello and Maddalena copulate in are not the only locales of moral depravity.

Less obvious realms such as Steiner's intellectual haven and the rural God-fearing community were the visions of the Virgin Mary take place are also viewed by Fellini to have the ability to allow the corruption of the human soul to occur. Despite the film's ascensions and descensions of locales throughout La Dolce Vita, Fellini repeatedly demonstrates that Hell as a breeding ground for sin and vice is not always recognizable in the film and often takes on new symbolic forms such as the respectable homes of the elite or the glitzy Via Veneto.

Additionally, Marcello's debasement is congruent to his own inability to communicate with those around him. The film's famous opening shot of a statue of Christ carried to the Vatican by a helicopter featuring Marcello emphasizes the modern failure to communicate to others as a significant social flaw, which has resulted in the ability to adopt and maintain dual lives and feelings as seen in the case of Steiner. By the film's end the breakdown in communication between the film's characters has resulted in their complete moral perversion noted by Marcello's inability to hear a young girl along the shore.

* La Dolce Vita is available on R1 DVD from Koch Lorber.

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.