My Best Fiend

Mein liebster Feind (Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, 2002)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Germany, 1999
In German and English with English subtitles

Although I'm a huge Herzog fan to begin with, I have a special fondness for this tremendously funny and utterly compelling 1999 documentary about his bizarre working relationship with the great actor, legendary temper tantrum thrower, and raving egomaniac Klaus Kinski. Recalling the five feature films the pair made together over the course of the years, Herzog takes the viewer along for an anecdotal wild ride to the locations where some of their stormiest collaborations were filmed: the jungles of Peru for Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, the Czech Republic for Woyzeck, etc. Kinski usually comes off as an out of control but brilliant ass, a prima donna prone to hostile fits of anger whenever he'd forgotten his lines or stopped being the center of attention, but Herzog readily admits that the two needed each other to bring out their best. Watching this portrait, it's clear that the two had mutual respect for one another and at least occasional affection as well. Ironically, My Best Fiend also sports multiple confessions from the director, ostensibly the sane one, of plots to kill his belligerent star--the first for threatening to leave Aguirre, the Wrath of God just before the movie was completed ("I told him I had a rifle and by the time he'd reach the next bend in the river, there'd be eight bullets in his head and the ninth one would be mine") and another when he became so angry with Kinski on a different film that he decided to firebomb his house ("This was prevented only by the diligence of his Alsatian shepherd"). While Kinski died of natural causes in 1991, Herzog's offbeat tribute to his cinematic partner in crime has to rank as one of their most memorable projects ever. Rating: 5/5 stars! (http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com/)

Herzog (left) and Kinski share a quiet moment on the set

Spies

Spione (Kino DVD, 2004)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Germany, 1928
Silent with English intertitles

Although this odd German drama/romantic comedy/spy caper's probably the most formulaic silent film I've seen from Herr Lang to date, it's entertaining enough that I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a change of pace from the modern crap du jour. Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Willy Fritsch star respectively as the mysterious Haghi, who runs a secret espionage empire out of a massive bank, and as No. 326, the undercover Secret Service agent assigned to hunt him down. However, it's the beautiful Gerda Maurus who continually threatens to steal the show as Sonja, an operative for Haghi whose ill-timed love affair with No. 326 puts both her and her dapper new friend at risk from Klein-Rogge's megalomaniacal villain.

While the good guy/bad girl love affair between No. 326 and Sonja is in many ways the most predictable and least appealing aspect of Thea von Harbou's script, there's a lot to admire here anyway. "Throughout the world...strange events transpire" we're told at the outset. Within seconds, the opening sequence (above) proves it with a motorcycle chase, assassinations perpetrated by masked gunmen, and newspaper reports of an international crime wave--all set to Donald Sosin's pulsating score. On the storytelling front, don't be surprised to discover that a Japanese character, the diplomat Dr. Matsumoto (Lupu Pick), stands out as one of the few honorable people in a world full of opium den habitués and traitors for hire. Although this foreign patriot will pay the price for an all too universal human mistake in one of the film's most superbly-edited moments, the sensitivity of his portrayal underscores the movie's internationalist and modernist sensibilities.

Visually, Lang and cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner offer up other treats in the decadent Weimar fashion. In one scene, a boxing match takes place in the center of what's then revealed to be an elegant nightclub ballroom. In another scene, a runaway's troubled past is conveyed solely by two blink-and-you'll-miss-them images suggesting physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her parents. If both Feuillade's Les Vampires and Lang's own Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler seem to be more complete pre-1930s crime epics, Spione/Spies still has enough border crossings, false identities, international derring do, and, yes, romance to make it easy to envision it as the blueprint for all later spy movies--the James Bond franchise be damned! (http://www.kino.com/)

Faust

Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage (Kino DVD, 2001)
Dirigida por F.W. Murnau
Alemania, 1926
Silente con intertítulos en inglés

• Mefisto: "¿Qué quieres: una mujer, un juego de azar, una orgía? ¡Cualquier cosa que quieras, debo dártela!"

No había visto ninguna otra versión de Fausto antes de ésta, pero me imagino que todos ustedes conocen los detalles básicos de la historia: a fin de que él que gane tomará posesión de la tierra después, el diablo y un arcángel hacen una apuesta sobre la incorruptibilidad del alma del protagonista. Fausto (Gösta Ekman), un alquimista en busca de un remedio para la peste, eventualmente cede a la tentación, pero su amor a la inocente Gretchen/Margarita (Camilla Horn) resulta ser una especie de redención. Aunque el guión de Hans Kyser tiene sus pros y sus contras, este filme es un verdadero banquete para los ojos. Con una serie de imágenes de pesadilla (los Caballeros del Apocalipsis, varios retratos de portadores del féretro encapuchados, la escena donde Satanás desencadena la pestilencia sobre un pueblo medieval), Murnau logra capturar todo el pandemonio de un mundo traumatizado. Al mismo tiempo, otras visiones oníricas (como la escena cuando aparece una mujer desnuda y otra donde Fausto vuela por toda Italia sobre la capa de Mefisto [Emil Jannings]) llaman la atención a las tentaciones de Fausto con una euforia seductora. Mientras Murnau y su equipo técnico utilizan efectos especiales y modelos miniaturizados con gran éxito y imaginación, quizás el aspecto más moderno de esta narración es su compasión hacia el personaje de Gretchen: vilipendiada como una pecadora después de su "caída" sexual, ya queda la personificación del amor y de la esperanza a pesar de ser la víctima de enormes repercusiones machistas por parte de sus ciudadanos. Una película genial con una partitura por Timothy Brock y la Olympia Chamber Orchestra que me gustó también.
(http://www.kino.com/)

Diary of a Lost Girl

Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (2001 DVD)
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Germany, 1929
Silent with English intertitles

Pabst and screenwriter Rudolph Leonhardt might have sacrificed all subtlety to deliver their pitch ("With a little more love, no one on this earth would ever be lost!"), but this anti-juvenile delinquency message movie is still quite a spectacular follow-up to the director's Pandora's Box. Louise Brooks is once again astounding as the naive protagonist Thymian (with her diary, below), a pharmacist's daughter who's ordered to give up her baby and is then sent away to a reform school after her dad's reptilian-looking assistant (Fritz Rasp) forces himself upon her one night--while she appears to be unconscious. Other indignities that follow eventually lead to Thymian's stint in a brothel, a not totally unexpected turn of events given the circumstances but one that Pabst ingeniously seizes on to suggest that there's more of a sense of community for Thymian among the other lost souls there than in the typical bourgeois home of the time. Along the way, this scathing moral critique is amplified with unusually vivid visual references to rampant sadism and sexual abuse at the reformatory and a narrative condemnation of capitalism and male philandering as two of the true evils at work in society. And lest you ever forget that desperation is the order of the day, twin suicides frame the action with motives both "understandable" and not. A flawed masterpiece but a masterpiece nonetheless.(http://www.kino.com/)

Der Letzte Mann

Der Letzte Mann (2006 DVD)
Dirigida por F.W. Murnau
Alemania, 1924
Silente con un intertítulo en inglés

Dos años después del éxito de Nosferatu en 1922, F.W. Murnau triunfó de nuevo con otra película mucho más introspectiva. El último hombre (o La última risa como se llama en inglés gracias a un traductor poco escrupuloso) tiene que ver con lo que sucede cuando un portero, envejecido y débil, pierde su empleo al hotel de lujo dónde ha trabajado por años. Otros traumas siguen este primer asunto desmoralizador en la vida del anciano (protagonizado por Emil Jannings con convicción), nos proporcionando un retrato sobre la pobreza y la vejez que me parece una especie de antepasado cinemático del gran Umberto D. (1952) de Vittorio de Sica. A diferencia del clásico neorealista all'italiano, el alemán Murnau libremente mezcla toques naturalistas y expresionistas en el momento de enfrentar esta situación. La historia se narra con un único intertítulo, una proeza excepcional que llama la atención a la poesía visual del cineasta y de su cinematógrafo Karl Freund. En una escena, se usa el trucaje para distorsionar las caras de los vecinos cuando se burlan del portero luego de su "caída". En otra, las casas de vecindad del barrio parecen hundirse al frente de la figura solitaria del hombre avergonzado. Aunque el "guión" de Carl Meyer hace hincapié en los vínculos entre el dinero y el prestigio social de manera sorprendente para aquel entonces, irónicamente mi única queja hoy es que el inesperado final felíz parece representar una forma de capitulación artística al nivel argumental. Sea lo que sea, esta obra queda un buenísimo ejemplo del splendor de otrora que se pueden encontrar entre los nitratos de plata. ¡Un filmazo! (http://www.kino.com/)

La cara de desgracia (Herr Emil Jannings)

Asphalt

Asphalt (2006 DVD)
Directed by Joe May
Germany, 1929
Silent with English intertitles

While Joe May's nowhere near the household name that Lang, Murnau and Pabst are among silent movie aficionados (at least not outside of Ferdinand von Galitzien's Teutonic household, that is!), it's hard for me to imagine a much more satisfying nitrate from the era than Asphalt in terms of the sheer entertainment value on display here. From its dazzling opening scenes of a bustling Berlin shifting from daytime to nighttime right before your eyes to its claustrophobic finale depicting one character's lonesome walk into an uncertain future, this is just a joy to behold on both the visual and narrative planes. First-time viewers of the DVD should be prepared to be seduced.

It helps that Betty Amann and Gustav Fröhlich are perfectly cast as the vivacious jewel thief and no-nonsense traffic cop who seem to fall for each other after he's arrested her, but shots like this clever mirror image above do a nice job of complementing the script's tendency to keep the characters' emotional connection uncertain. Does Amann's Else Kramer really fall in love with Frölich's Officer Holk or is she just trading on her undeniable good looks to beat the rap? Could there be such a thing as love at first sight between a career cop and an unrepentant criminal? And given this temptress' Lulu-like combination of charm and sensuality, would it be fair for any man to blame Holk for putting the possibility of love with her ahead of his ethical responsibility to enforce the law? May and ace cinematographer Günther Rittau manage to entertain all these questions while entertaining you, the viewer, but I was actually hooked like Holk as soon as Amann walked onscreen. Good thing I'm not a cop with a conscience!

femme fatale

(noun, see Betty Amann in Asphalt)

(http://www.kino.com/)

A Séance with Countess Dusy Told

As some of you already know, I have another blog, Gambling with Countess Dusy Told, that I started last month with the idea that it'd be an all-movie sort of thing free of the "distractions" of languages, literature and the like. While I now ponder killing that blog off Dr. Mabuse style and bringing all the movie reviews back home to Caravana (their ancestral home before my recent caffeine binge anyway), here are some links to the non-French/non-Spanish films viewed for Gambling in June. In the meantime, is it really cold in here or is it just me?

• A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1929)
• Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang, 1924)
• Anna Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920)
• The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, 1932)

La caja de Pandora

Die Büchse der Pandora [Pandora's Box ] (2006 DVD)
Dirigida por G.W. Pabst
Alemania, 1929
Silente con intertítulos en alemán e inglés

Lulu: "Tendrás que matarme para deshacerte de mí".

Ya que ríos de tinta han sido derramados sobre esta famosísima película, favor de ser paciente conmigo cuando escribo que Die Büchse der Pandora queda por encima de todo elogio. Aunque la encantadora actuación de Louise Brooks es el obvío centro de atención para cualquier aficionado al cine (¿ha existida una actriz más guapa, más llena de vida, y más sexy a la vez?), no es mentira decir que todos los otros entre el elenco son excelentes también. Como algunos de ustedes lo sabrán, el guión de Ladislaus Vajda versa con la historia de una mujer desventurada, Lulu, cuya "amoralidad" sexual será la ruina de ella y de todos aquellos que de ella se enamoran. Mientras que su caída se refleja en una transformación simbólica que parece bastante degradante (después de ser una cortesana en Berlin, se convierte en prostituta y prófuga en Londres), lo interesante es que la Lulu de Brooks es el personaje más "héroico" de todos en este mundo degenerado de alcahuetes, hombres impotentes, y suicidas (¡por supuesto, la suma importancia de Gräfin Geschwitz, la lesbiana protagonizada por Alice Roberts, queda tema por otro día!). En otras palabras, Pabst lleva a la pantalla un retrato de la "modernidad" que sería muy pero muy pesimista incluso sin la espantosa entrada en escena de Jack el Destripador (Gustav Diessl, abajo, con Brooks) en el acto final. Espectacular. (http://www.criterion.com/)

Nosferatu, una sinfonía de horror

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (2002 DVD)
Dirigida por F.W. Murnau
Alemania, 1922
Silente con intertítulos en inglés

Después de haber visto la totalmente olvidable Memorias de una geisha (un fracaso sino por la presencia de la guapísima Gong Li, mi nueva novia china de "talkies" americanos) el viernes pasado, era un gran placer regresar al mundo silente, teutónico e incluso "Ferdinand von Galitzienesco" de Nosferatu el día siguiente. Aunque había sido un rato desde que yo vi esta clásica por primera vez, estoy contento de decirles que la obra mantenga su capacidad de entretener sea mediodía o medianoche.

A pesar de tener un estilo narrativo más "novelístico" que algunas otras obras de la época, el despertador de esqueleto arriba (¡qué toque tan chido!) nos recuerda que Nosferatu es un nitrato dedicado a lo visual más que nada. Los méritos artísticos de los paisajes salvajes, los ataúdes llenos de ratas, y la llegada de la "barca de la muerte" a Bremen, por ejemplo, son reconocidos en todo el mundo; además, llaman la atención al poder simbólico de los sueños por medio de sus trucos tétricos.

Al hablar de las imágenes, tengo que confesar que nunca me canso de mirar el actorazo Max Schreck (él de la sombra famosísima) como el vampiro Nosferatu. Ustedes sabrán que no estoy diciendo nada nuevo aquí, pero la "fusión" de Schreck y Nosferatu es más escalofriante y creíble que nunca. Si esta toma dice casi todo acerca de la calidad alucinante de la película, una sorpresa final queda igualmente interesante: si miran atentamente a la escena, verán un ejemplo antiguo de una heroína feminista dando todo por amor. (http://www.kino.com/)

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (2006 DVD)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Germany, 1922
Silent with English intertitles

• "How does a woman like you get into such company? Black marketeers, gamblers and prostitutes?"
• "We are bored and tired, Mr. von Wenk! We need sensations of a very special kind to keep us alive!"

Fine, fine crime thriller frequently hailed as Germany's response to the Fantômas books and Feuillade serials. While a hefty four and a half hours of running time may necessitate that you devote a weekend to most leisurely submit to its decadent pleasures (the film, based on a pulp novel by Norbert Jacques, was initially released in two aptly-titled installments, Dr. Mabuse, the Great Gambler and Inferno: A Play of People of Our Time), the documentary-like portrayal of various cocaine-and-cards clubs and the usual expressionistic obsessions with things like mad doctors, mind control, and spiritualism make this totally worth it. Siegfried Kracauer's 1947 From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film isn't alone in positing Mabuse as the type of tyrannical, Hitlerian übermensch that would foreshadow the true Evil to come, but Lang's vision of manipulated stock market crashes and world-weary aristocrats looking for shallow kicks ("Everything you see from a car or a theater box is ugly...or dull") does a superior job of capturing a Berlin hovering over the edge of the abyss even without that retrospective analytical baggage included. Featuring Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the power-mad archcriminal, Bernhard Goetzke as the dogged Prosecutor von Wenk, and Gertrude Welcker as aimless socialite Gräfin Dusy Told (my new silent movie girlfriend, at least for the day). (http://www.kino.com/)