Touch of Evil

 Year:  1958

Director:  Orson Welles

Screenplay:  Orson Welles, based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson

Starring:  Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor

Running Time:  111 minutes

Genre:  Crime, thriller, film noir

In an unnamed town on the Mexican-U.S. border, a wealthy American businessman and his girlfriend are killed by a bomb planted in the car.  Upstanding Mexican cop Miguel Vargas (Heston) and his new bride, Susie (Leigh), witness the explosion and cut short their honeymoon while Vargas becomes drawn into the investigation, coming up against powerful, corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan (Welles).

This is one of the best, as well as one of the last, of the classic film noir.  The term film noir was coined by French film critics to describe a run of stylish American thrillers and crime dramas that featured bleak, cynical and often nihilistic attitudes, and which flourished in the 1940s and '50s.  Based on the 1956 novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson, this is a surprisingly dark thriller, with it's striking visuals, including run-down locations, off-kilter camera angles, extreme close-ups, grotesque characters, and stark, black and white photography, the film has a genuinely nightmarish feel.  The main flaw is its racially insensitive casting, with white actors, such as Charlton Heston and Marlene Dietrich, cast as Mexican characters.  Although it is worth pointing out that the Mexican Vargas (albeit played by Heston) is the noble hero, while the white American Quinlan is the chief antagonist.  In the character of Hank Quinlan, Orson Welles creates one of the screen's most memorable monsters.  A racist, corrupt cop who plants evidence to frame suspects, and has all the powerful people in the town in his pocket, and who seem to orbit him like satellites around a planet.  The ageing, gargantuan Quinlan, an alcoholic, who constantly eats candy bars, and walks with a cane, he seems almost to be falling apart in front of our eyes, and yet there are flickers of the tattered remnants of nobility in his small, narrow eyes, and in his relationship with ex-lover Tana (Marlene Dietrich under very heavy makeup), who appears to be the only person who really knows and cares about him, there is a kind of tenderness, making him more damaged than truly evil.  A miscast Charlton Heston (who looks kind of like a young Sean Connery here) is okay, and Janet Leigh is good as Vargas' new wife, Susie, even if she doesn't have much to do.  The scene where she is attacked in a remote motel almost foreshadows her most famous role in Psycho (1962).  The film was taken away from Welles and re-edited by the studio without his approval.  For example, in Welles' version there are no opening credits, and the film opens with a famous sequence where a ticking time bomb is placed in the boot of a car.  An unsuspecting couple get in the car and drive off.  We follow the car through the streets, there is no score, instead we hear street sounds:  Music spilling from bars and restaurants, police whistles, car noises, muffled conversations, and then the car explodes.  In the release version, the credits are splashed over Welles' carefully composed shots, and the street sounds replaced by loud, brassy music.  A furious Welles penned a 58 page memo outlining his vision for the film.  In 1998, the film was restored and re-edited according to Welles' instructions.  Now it can be seen for the masterpiece it is.

Orson Welles, Victor Millan, Joseph Calleia and Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil

The Wonder

Year:  2022

Director:  Sebastián Lelio

Screenplay:  Emma Donoghue, Sebastián Lelio and Alice Birch, based on the novel The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Starring:  Florence Pugh, Tom Burke, Kila Lord Cassidy, Niamh Algar, Elaine Cassidy, Dermot Crowley, Josie Walker, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Period drama

1862: English nurse Elizabeth Wright (Pugh) travels to a remote rural village in Ireland to investigate a young girl, Anna O'Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy) who, according to her family, has not eaten for four months, and yet still appears to be in good health.  

Based on Emma Donoghue's 2016 novel, The Wonder is a dark and powerful psychological period drama. Its slow moving, meditative pace with bleak, windswept vistas of moorland and dark, cramped interiors, cast a powerful spell.  The film's message of belief and the stories that we tell ourselves and each other is hammered home a little too much, including a strange prologue in a film studio emphasising to the viewer that, yes, we are being told a story.  It is also about the dangers of belief, and even in this day and age, it is unusual to see a film that has such a strongly secular message.  However it also deals with how much people need stories and need something to hold on to.  Elizabeth has previously lost her baby and has been abandoned by her husband, she is also traumatised by her experiences nursing the sick and injured in the Crimean War, and copes with her trauma and despair by taking laudanum and also pricking herself with pins.  The O'Donnell family and the village itself are still suffering the after effects of the Great Famine, and feel like they need a miracle, as well as living in a devoutly religious and patriarchal society, cut off from much of the rest of the world.  Florence Pugh gives a powerful performance as the skeptical, grieving nurse.  Kila Lord Cassidy is very good as the "fasting girl", and her real-life mother, Elaine Cassidy, plays her character's devout mother, paralysed with grief for the loss of her teenage son.  Niamh Algar plays the taciturn and slightly sinister elder O'Donnell daughter, and Tom Burke plays the charismatic newspaper reporter who originally came form the village, and is immediately convinced that Anna is faking, but also understands the way the villager's minds work.  While some of the film's more offbeat touches don't always work, it is a beautiful, dark and troubling film, with fantastic performances. 

  Florence Pugh and Kila Lord Cassidy in The Wonder

Funeral Parade of Roses

 Year:  1969

Director:  Toshio Matsumoto

Screenplay:  Toshio Matsumoto

Starring:  Peter (Shinnosuke Ikehata), Osamu Ogasawara, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Emiko Azuma

Running Time: 105 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Eddie (Peter), a young transgender woman living in Tokyo, works in a gay bar called the Genet, where she is having a relationship with the bar's owner (Tsuchiya), who is already living with and in a relationship with the bar's "madame", Leda (Ogasawara).

This film is essentially an updated, gay take on the Ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles.  The movie is a fragmented, kaleidoscopic range of cinematic techniques and storytelling styles.  The narrative flashes back and forth in time, cuts in news footage, skewed camera angles, on-screen captions, fast editing, and in one sequence dialogue is shown in comic-style speech bubbles.  There are also documentary style sequences throughout where the actors are interviewed as themselves about the film they are making and about their lives, gender identity and sexuality.  The soundtrack moves from classical music, '60s pop and updated versions of traditional Western music.  The famous tune "The More We Get Together" is a recurring musical theme throughout the film.  The film is often frustrating, frequently baffling, sometimes very shocking and also often very funny.  The constant exuberance and invention means that it never gets boring, and there are strong performances, particularly from Peter, the stage name for singer, dancer and actor Shinnosuke Ikehata, in the lead role.  Some of the film's themes, about the political tensions as well as the Tokyo avant-garde scene of the time, don't really translate well to modern, non-Japanese audiences, but it is worth watching as a snapshot of the underground scene of late sixties Tokyo, as well as a milestone of LGBTQIA cinema.  One of the film's notable fans was director Stanley Kubrick, who credited the film as one of his stylistic inspirations for A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Funeral Parade of Roses