The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Year:  1988

Director:  Terry Gilliam

Screenplay:  Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown

Starring:  John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, Uma Thurman, Jonathan Pryce, Robin Williams, Valentina Cortese

Running Time:  126 minutes

Genre:  Fantasy, adventure, comedy

 

The 18th Century, "The Age of Reason":  A European city is under siege.  As battle rages, the flamboyant, eccentric Baron Munchausen (Neville) offers to rescue the city, but first has to reunite his disparate group of superpowered assistants.  The Baron sets off, along with young stowaway Sally (Polley), on a surreal adventure.

Inspired by a real-life figure from the 18th century, who became something of a celebrity for spinning outlandish tall tales about his various exploits, Baron Munchausen has appeared in books, plays, radio and television shows as well as several other films.  It's easy to imagine that director Terry Gilliam probably saw more than a little of himself in the figure of the outlandish Baron, who refuses to accept reality for what it is.  Best known for his part of the Monty Python comedy troupe, Gilliam had already made a name for himself with bizarre, outlandish fantasy films, and for his refusal to compromise his vision.  Gilliam's epic struggle with Universal over the final cut of Brazil (1985) had already become the stuff of Hollywood legend.  With it's intricate puzzle box structure, tales within tales within tales, and audacious visuals and freewheeling plot, as well as the constant feeling of barely suppressed anarchy, this is a kind of Hollywood filmmaking that we are unlikely to see again, a big budget epic in service to one person's vision and imagination.  Terry Gilliam was a director who really put everything at the service of his film, regardless of the cost and it is unlikely that in modern Hollywood he would be given this much freedom again.  This may not entirely be a bad thing.  Sarah Polley, who was nine years old at the time of filming, has written that she was terrified and exhausted the whole time she worked on the film.  Although she did give her blessing for people to still watch and enjoy the film, and commented that it was still "a great film".  Even Gilliam's fellow Python Eric Idle commented that, in regard to Terry Gilliam films, "you don't want to be in them".  The film itself is a fantastic epic.  It doesn't always work, there are slow passages, and it doesn't always hang together, but there are also indelible images and delightfully bizarre moments, as well as plenty of offbeat cameos, including Robin Williams as the King of the Moon, with a detachable flying head; Oliver Reed at his most satanic as the Roman god Vulcan, depicted here as an arms manufacturer dwelling in a volcano and building a prototype of nuclear bomb; and Uma Thurman making her film debut as Venus. Right from the start where the Baron bursts in upon a theatrical depiction of his story where the cardboard sets become a lavish Sultan's palace, the film is unexpected, and sometimes disturbingly eccentric.   Gilliam saw the film as the third part of a loose "Trilogy of Imagination" beginning with Time Bandits (1981) and continuing with Brazil (1985).  

John Neville and Sarah Polley in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

      

Day for Night

Year of Release:  1973
Director:  François Truffaut
Screenplay: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Jean-Louis Richard
Starring:  Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Dani, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean Champion, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut
Running Time:  116 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, drama

In the balmy South of France, a film crew are working on a trashy, romantic melodrama called Meet Pamela.  As the cast and crew negotiate romantic entanglements, various personal and professional crisis, the dedicated but increasingly harried director (Truffaut) is just determined to get the film finished.

François Truffaut was one of the cinema's great directors, and this is one of his finest, and most purely joyful films, a celebration of film and film-making.  The film features Truffaut's regular alter-ego Jean-Pierre Léaud as the sulky, neurotic leading man who has an affair with brittle, British star Jacqueline Bisset, while Valentina Cortese plays a formidable Italian diva, who has a past relationship with the ageing Lothario Jean-Pierre Aumont cast opposite her, and Truffaut himself plays Meet Pamela's put-upon director.  The celebrated author Graham Greene has a cameo as an insurance agent, credited as "Harry Graham". Everyone seems to be having a great time in their roles, and the film, which opens with a dedication to Lillian and Dorthy Gish, two great stars of the silent screen, is full of references to films and filmmakers.  The story focuses just as much attention on the nuts and bolts of making a film, as it does on the interweaving stories of the actors and crew.  The film-makers have to deal with lack of time and money, journalists, investors, costumes, sets, even a seemingly simple shot of a cat drinking from a saucer of milk takes forever to put on film, and the film's most expensive and elaborate scene is destroyed due to an accident in the development lab.  The film is at times, surprisingly dark and has moments of real emotion, but the mood, predominantly, is one of joyful celebration, and crucially is very funny.

François Truffaut and Jacqueline Bisset in Day for Night