Category Archives: War

Hear no evil, see no evil: Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today ***1/2

August 8, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 19, 2011)

These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous.

–Justice Robert Jackson (chief counsel for the U.S. at the first Nuremberg trial in 1946)

Herman Goring. Rudolf Hess. Hans Frank. Wilhelm Frick. Joachim von Ribbentrop. Alfred Rosenberg. Julius Streicher. Any one of those names alone should send a chill down the spine of anyone with even a passing knowledge of 20^th Century history. Picture if you will, all of those co-architects of the horror known as the Third Reich sitting together in one room (along with a dozen or so of their closest friends). This egregious assemblage really did occur, during the first of the Nuremberg trials (November 1945 to October 1946).

Through the course of the grueling 11-month long proceedings, a panel of judges and prosecutors representing the USA, the Soviet Union, England and France built a damning case, thanks in large part to the Nazis themselves, who had a curious habit of meticulously documenting their own crimes. The thousands of confiscated documents-neatly typed, well-annotated and (most significantly) signed and dated by some of the defendants, along with the gruesome films the Nazis took of their own atrocities, helped build one of the most compelling cases of all time.

By the time it was over, out of the 24 defendants (several of whom were tried in absentia for various reasons), 12 received a sentence of death by hanging, 7 were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life, and the remainder were either acquitted or not charged. One of the biggest fish, Herman Goring, ended up “cheating the hangman” by committing suicide in his cell (Martin Bormann, one of the condemned tried in absentia, had already beat him to the punch-although his 1945 suicide in Berlin was not confirmed until his remains were identified in a 1972 re-investigation).

Hollywood would be hard pressed to cook up a courtroom drama of such epic proportions; much less a narrative that presented a more clearly delineated battle of Good vs. Evil. Granted, in the fog of war, the Allies undoubtedly put the blinders on every now and then when it came to following the Geneva Convention right down to the letter-but when it comes to the short list of parties throughout all of history who have willfully committed the most heinous crimes against humanity, there seems to be a general consensus among civilized people that the Nazis are the Worst.Bad.Guys.Ever…right?

At any rate, this is why a newly-restored U.S. War Department documentary, produced over 60 years ago and never officially released for distribution in America (until now) may well turn out to be the most riveting courtroom drama that will hit theaters this year.

Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (made in 1948) was written and directed by Stuart Schulberg, who had worked with John Ford’s OSS field photography unit, which was assigned by the government to track down incriminating Nazi film footage to be parsed by the Nuremberg prosecution team and help build their case.

Schulberg’s brother Budd (who later became better known in Hollywood as the screenwriter for On the Waterfront and A Face in the Crowd) was a senior officer on the OSS film team; he supervised the compilation of two films for the U.S. prosecutors; one a sort of macabre Whitman’s Sampler of Nazi atrocities, from the Third Reich’s own archives, and the other assembled from that ever-shocking footage taken by Allied photographers as the concentration camps were being discovered and liberated by advancing troops in early 1945.

Stuart Schulberg, in turn, mixed excerpts from those two films with the official documentation footage from the trial to help illustrate the prosecution’s strategy to address the four indictments (conspiring to commit a crime against peace; planning, initiating and committing wars of aggression; perpetrating war crimes; and crimes against humanity).

So why had Schulberg’s film (commissioned, after all, by the U.S. government to document a very well-known, historically significant and profound event in the annals of world justice) never been permitted open distribution to domestic audiences by same said government? After being shown around Germany in 1948 and 1949 as part of the de-Nazification program, extant prints of the film appeared to have vanished somewhere in the mists of time, with no documented attempts by the U.S. government to even archive a copy.

Even the man who had originally commissioned the film, Pare Lorentz (who at the time of the film’s production was head of Film, Theatre and Music at the U.S. War Department’s Civil Affairs Division) was given the brush off by Pentagon brass when he later petitioned to buy it and distribute it himself.

A 1949 Washington Post story offered an interesting take on why Lorentz had been stonewalled, saying that “…there are those in authority in the United States who feel that Americans are so simple that they can only hate one enemy at a time. Forget the Nazis, they advise, and concentrate on the Reds.” (there are several layers of delicious, prescient irony in that quote…so I won’t belabor it).

Stuart Schulberg’s daughter Sandra, along with Josh Waletzky, embarked on a five-year mission in 2004 to restore this important documentary. I should note that the term “restore”, in this particular case, does not necessarily refer to crystalline image quality; though they have done the best they can with what is purported to be the best existing print (stored at the German Film Archive).

They did have better luck with the soundtrack; they found what sounds to my ears to be fairly decent audio from the original trial recordings, which they painstakingly matched up as best they could to reconstruct the long-lost sound elements from the original. Voice-over narration has been re-recorded by Liev Schreiber, who is a bit on the dry side, but adequate .

It is chilling to hear the voices of these defendants; even if it is at times merely “jawohl” or “nein”- one hopes it is enough to give even the most stalwart of Holocaust deniers cause for consternation.

So what is the “lesson for today” that we can glean from this straightforward and relatively non-didactic historical document? Unfortunately, humanity in general hasn’t learned too awful much; the semantics may have changed, but the behavior, sadly, remains the same (they call it “ethnic cleansing” now).

“Crimes against humanity” are still perpetrated every day-so why haven’t we had any more Nurembergs? If it can’t be caught via cell phone camera and posted five minutes later on YouTube like Saddam Hussein’s execution, so we can take a quick peek, go “Yay! Justice is served!” and then get back to our busy schedule of eating stuffed-crust pizza and watching the Superbowl, I guess we just can’t be bothered. Besides, who wants to follow some boring 11-month long trial, anyway (unless, of course, an ex-football player is involved).

Or maybe it’s just that the perpetrators have become savvier since 1945; many of those who commit crimes against humanity these days wear nice suits and have corporate expense accounts, nu? Or maybe it’s too hard to tell who the (figurative) Nazis are today, because in the current political climate, everyone and anyone, at some point, is destined to be compared to one. Maybe we all need to watch this film together and get a reality check.

Historical drama, War

The sorrow and the pity: City of Life and Death ****

August 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 9, 2011)

One of the lighter moments in City of Life and Death

After watching Chuan Lu’s City of Life and Death, “war is hell” feels like an understatement. Set during the “second” Sino-Japanese War, this historical drama focuses on the 1937 “Rape of Nanking” (an estimated 200,000-300,000 residents were slaughtered by Japanese soldiers over six weeks ). The horrors recounted here burrow into your psyche and bivouac like an occupying army.

Shot in stark black and white, the film hearkens to the classic era of neorealist war dramas like de Sica’s Two Women and Rossellini’s Open City. Lu infuses his narrative with a Kurosawa-like humanism, taking a relatively non-didactic approach. Initially, we get the invaders-eye view, primarily through the personal experiences of a Japanese soldier named Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi).

As they enter the ruins of the heavily bombarded city, Kadokawa and fellow members of his small patrol seem frightened and confused, like they are not quite sure what their next order of business is. They meet pockets of resistance from the tattered remnants of the outgunned Chinese defensive forces, who have obviously taken heavy casualties.

It’s not long before most remaining Chinese soldiers have been captured and rounded up. In the first of many horrifying atrocities reenacted in the film, they are marched en mass to the beach, where they are unceremoniously mowed down (so much for that whole Geneva Convention thing).

Out of this pile of carnage crawls a survivor, young Xiaodouzi (Bin Liu), a prepubescent soldier who looks like a cherub that has stumbled into the pits of Hell. His (true) story is an amazing one. He finds his way into the “safety zone” of the city-which brings us to the conundrum of this tale. If I told you that the most compassionate character in this film is a Nazi, would you believe me? All I have to do is tell the truth, because John Rabe (John Paisley) was a real person.

A German businessman, he was a key organizer in a group of foreigners who negotiated with the Japanese for the Safety Zone, which ended up saving thousands of Chinese (shades of Oskar Schindler). Rabe’s assistant, Mr. Tang (Wei Fan), who is bilingual in Japanese, plays a huge part in this endeavor, as does Mrs. Tang (Lan Qin).

Tang cultivates an uneasy “friendship” with Kadokawa’s mercurial commanding officer, Ida (Ryu Kohata), a textbook sociopath. Mr. Tang learns that dealing with the devil is tenuous at best (Ida’s cold-blooded betrayal is beyond reprehension-and one of the more shocking moments in a film that is rife with them).

But Ida outdoes even himself when he demands that Rabe surrender 100 female “volunteers” from the Safety Zone to be requisitioned as “comfort women” for the Japanese troops. In an emotionally shattering scene, women slowly begin raising their hands, seeming to reach a mutual grim epiphany as they look around the room at each other and realize that this may be the only way to ensure that their children survive the nightmare (heart-wrenching as that scene is, it pales in comparison to the historical record-there were an estimated 20,000 rape victims, from toddler age to grandmothers).

Interestingly, the most compelling character is Kadokawa, who is the “conscience” of the story (the director has taken flak in his native China for portraying a Japanese soldier in a sympathetic light). Granted-through association he is complicit, yet he is still human. He’s conflicted; at times visibly appalled and repelled by what he is witnessing. He doesn’t refuse orders (until the crucial denouement) but in a way he is an avatar for the collective guilt all humans bear as a species perennially bent on inflicting pain and suffering on itself.

In one extraordinarily staged sequence, a contingent of Japanese soldiers conducts a traditional victory dance through the city. Keep an eye on Kadokawa’s face. He is chanting along with the other soldiers, but as his eyes meet those of the dazed and expressionless Chinese onlookers, it becomes clear that as far as his soul and humanity are concerned, this is a Pyrrhic victory at best.

I can’t say that I “enjoyed” such a relentlessly grim and depressing 133 minutes. That said, City of Life and Death is one of the best films I’ve seen this year. It is intense (and brutal), but masterfully made and well-acted. It also examines a chapter of 20^th century history that has been largely overlooked by film makers.

The fact that the Chinese and Japanese governments remain at loggerheads over respective “official” accounts of those horrific six weeks back in 1937 demonstrates that this is not an obscure incident that should just be relegated to the dustbins of history. In fact…no “incident” of this nature should just be relegated to the dustbins of history.

Drama, Royal Intrigue, War

Lovelorn, non-smoking Huguenot seeks same: The Princess of Montpensier **1/2

August 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 14, 2011)

Oh, royal houses of Europe…how I adore you. My sexy Saxe-Coburgs, my beloved Bourbons, Bonapartes and Burgundys; my saucy Tudors, Windsors and Romanovs; and I want to give a shout-out to any of you sassy Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluksburgs who may be in da house tonight. How much I love and admire your pomp, your pageantry…and your colorful, endearingly filthy, ever-subservient peasantry. And your rich history-so rife with war, intrigue, and refreshingly unapologetic in-breeding (*sigh*).

For the purposes of this review, we zero in on the French duchies of Guise and Montpensier. In 1570s France, things aren’t going so well on the religious front. Catholics and Huguenots are slaughtering each other like cattle over New Testament bragging rights. This is the backdrop for The Princess of Montpensier, a well-acted and handsomely mounted (but curiously detached) bodice-ripping costume drama from Bertrand Tavernier (‘Round Midnight).

The tale (adapted from Madame de La Fayette’s 17^th century short story by Jean Cosmos, Francois-Olivier Rosseau and the director) centers around a fetching young aristocrat named Marie de Mezrieres (Melanie Thierry). Marie has a breathless, Harlequin romance crush on dashing war hero Duke Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel)-and the feeling’s mutual (if yet to be consummated).

Alas, there is a major roadblock straight up ahead for the two lovebirds. Marie’s ambitious father, the Marquis de Mezrieres (Phillipe Magnan) has struck a mutually beneficial backroom deal with the Duke de Montpensier (Michel Vuillermoz) to marry her off with the Duke’s son, the Prince of Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet)-who also happens to be the cousin of Marie’s beloved Henri (following all this so far?).

The Prince and his cousin have been friendly rivals since childhood; but now the hot-headed Henri is seething with resentment about the Prince’s pending marriage to Marie. However, since he shares his cousin’s soldierly sense of duty to wipe out the heretical usurpers, Henri puts Jealousy and Envy on the back burner and channels all that hostility into ministering their common cause (i.e. disemboweling Protestants on the battlefield).

In the meantime, Marie receives sage advice from her mother, the Marquise (Florence Thomassin) to essentially do the same; put the romantic stirrings for Henri aside and focus on her “duty” (i.e. happily submit and learn to love the Prince-like him or no). After an awkward, decidedly un-sexy wedding night, with parents and in-laws holding vigil just outside the doors of the boudoir and then studiously examining the soiled bed sheets immediately afterwards to confirm consummation, the two eventually develop a cautious affection for one another (the Prince more so than his wife).

Of course, Marie and Henri are still struggling with their smoldering desire to jump each other’s bones. Luckily, Marie soon finds a distraction-in the form of a middle-aged gentleman named Comte de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), who is also the most interesting and complex character in the film. Chabannes, a seasoned soldier and an intellectual, is the Prince’s long-time friend and mentor, who not only schooled the younger man in the art of swordplay, but in the sciences, arts and letters as well.

Chabannes also happens to be a Huguenot-but has declared himself a political neutral in the current conflict, hanging up his scabbard in disgust after having had his fill of wanton killing in the name of God. Eager to groom his Princess for her debut before the Royal Court in Paris, the Prince arranges for Chabannes to tutor her while he is off to war. Before he knows it, the tutor finds himself falling in (unrequited) love with his student.

Tavernier’s effort strongly recalls two films-John Schlesinger’s Far From the Madding Crowd (1967) and Patrice Chereau’s Queen Margot (1994). The former, adapted from Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel, is set in England, during the much later Victorian age, but features a heroine (portrayed by Julie Christie) who, like the Princess Marie, is headstrong, intelligent and beautiful, and likewise becomes a crazy-making object of desire for three men with disparate personalities (an arrogant young soldier, a wealthy, lovelorn middle-aged landowner and a poor farmer with a heart of gold).

The latter film is quite similar in theme to Tavernier’s on several levels; again featuring a strong female protagonist (Isabelle Adjani, as the sister of France’s King Charles IX) who is forced into an arranged marriage that separates her from her true love and plunges her into the midst of royal intrigue. Chereau’s film is also set against the backdrop of the Catholic-Huguenot wars (both films also re-enact the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre).

Unfortunately, The Princess of Montpensier lacks the spark and passion of the aforementioned films . Tavernier gets the period detail right, and his film is gorgeous to look at (thanks to DP Bruno de Keyzer), but something is missing. I don’t fault the cast; it’s the characters’ motivations that elude us. There’s detachment here; it’s like watching ornately carved pieces shuffled about on a chessboard. The film is not unlike Marie herself-an obscure object of desire at once enticingly beautiful and frustratingly unreachable.

Biopic, Historical drama, Politics, War

Even Hitler had a girlfriend: Vincere ***

July 18, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 10, 2010)

Have you ever noticed something about movies set in mental hospitals? More often than not, there’s at least one character who thinks he’s Napoleon; or Jesus, or Elvis (you get the idea). I’ve always wondered if that cliché is based on fact. I couldn’t tell you from any personal observation-because I’ve never been committed (yet).

In 1920s Italy, a mental patient named Ida Dalser had a good one. She would claim repeatedly, for the benefit of any or all within earshot, that she was the wife of that country’s leader, Benito Mussolini (who was in fact married-but to another woman). She also insisted that her son, Benito was Il Duce’s firstborn and therefore his “rightful heir”. “Yes, of course you are,” they would assure her, rolling their eyes as they handed her meds. Funny thing is, she really was the mother of Mussolini’s firstborn son; although to this day there remains no official documentation that the marriage took place.

Actually, she wasn’t really crazy. Crazy in love, perhaps, but she wasn’t nuts. Unfortunately for the doomed Ida, she died of a brain hemorrhage in 1937, in a psychiatric hospital. Her son suffered a similar fate, dying in an asylum in 1942 at age 26. Mussolini’s history with Dalser was kept a state secret during his regime, and remained undisclosed to the general public for a number of years afterwards. Writer-director Marco Bellocchio has taken this relatively obscure historical footnote and elevated it to the level of a classic baroque tragedy in an exquisitely mounted new film called Vincere (Win).

The film picks up their story in pre-WWI Milan, where Mussolini (Felippo Timi) is a struggling self-employed journalist, and Ida (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is running a beauty salon business. Attracted more by his persona rather than by his politics (he was a socialist acolyte at the time), Ida becomes 100% devoted to her lover; at one point she even sells off her business to help keep his self-published newspaper afloat. In a cleverly written scene, he vows to pay her back every lira, melodramatically drawing up an IOU like a world leader composing a proclamation (a portent of the clownish theatricality he would adopt once he did become a world leader).

However, his eventual “payback” to Ida was not exactly reciprocal in sentiment. Following the birth of their son, Mussolini (a textbook narcissist) begins to distance himself from Ida, Much to his convenience, storm clouds gather over Europe and Mussolini runs off to join the army, leaving Ida puzzled and hurt by his emotional (and now, geographical) distancing. When she visits him at a military hospital, she learns to her chagrin that the woman attending him is not his nurse-but his new wife. Her nightmare is only beginning.

Bellocchio makes an interesting choice. Just as Mussolini disappeared from Ida’s life, leading man Timi virtually disappears for the film’s second half, with archival news reels of the real Mussolini taking his place to update the viewer on his career trajectory, whilst Ida’s life turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

You see the method to the director’s madness, however, when Timi reappears in a memorable scene as Mussolini and Ida’s now college-aged son. He entertains several of his fellow students with a pitch-perfect reenactment of a Mussolini speech that has immediately preceded the scene in one of the aforementioned archival news reels. His pals are impressed by his spot-on impression of Il Duce (although they don’t really believe that he is Mussolini’s son, as he claims to be).

The first half of the film, which examines the couple’s relationship, reminded me at times of Reds or Doctor Zhivago, with its blend of passion, politics, and historical sweep. It is important to note, however, that this is not a film that sets out to detail Mussolini’s rise to power; it is really Ida’s story, which is more intimate.

That being said, as Ida descends further into a living purgatory, getting shuffled from institution to institution, having her identity, freedom, and eventually her son co-opted by “the state” (which is to say, her ex-lover), you could take away an allegorical lesson here about the ugly politics of fascism. Then again, one could also say that “seduction and betrayal” sums up politics in general.

Action, Adventure, Historical drama, War

Canola dreams: Little Big Soldier ***1/2

July 17, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 3, 2010)

I will confess that I have not gone out of my way to follow action star Jackie Chan’s career. According to the Internet Movie Database, he has made 99 films; after a quick perusal of that impressive list, I’d guesstimate that I have seen approximately, let’s see, somewhere in the neighborhood of, oh, around…four.

So when I say that Little Big Soldier is the best Jackie Chan flick I’ve ever seen, you can take that with a grain of salt. There is one camp of Chan’s devotees who would tell you that you can’t truly appreciate his prowess as an entertainer until you’ve seen one of his Hong Kong productions; I think I understand what they are talking about now.

Of course, you could easily apply this caveat to any number of accomplished actors from Europe or Asia who, due to their broken English, give the impression of impaired performances when they star in Hollywood films.

For example, let’s say I was a (what’s a polite term?) casual ‘murcan moviegoer who had never heard of The Last Metro, The Return of Martin Guerre or Jean de Florette, and my first awareness of Gerard Depardieu was seeing him in 102 Dalmatians. “Loved the puppies, but who was that dopey fat French dude?”

So, while Chan’s latest Hollywood vehicle, The Karate Kid inundates 3700 screens, in the meantime this splendidly acted and handsomely mounted comedy-adventure-fable from director Sheng Ding sits in the wings, awaiting U.S. distribution. The film had its North American premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t make the screening. Luckily, I found a Region 3 DVD version available for rent (the movie opened in the Asian markets back in February of this year).

The story is set in the era just prior to the unification of China under Qin Dynasty rule, a time when many of the country’s states were in a perpetual state of war with one another. Chan is the “Big Soldier”, a Liang survivor who emerges from a mountain of corpses in the opening scene, poking around the remnants of a recent battle. When he happens upon a wounded enemy Wei general (Lee-Hom Wang), he takes him prisoner, hoping to collect a reward.

Big Soldier, a cynical, dirt-poor farmer who was grudgingly conscripted into military service, would just as soon leave the fighting to those who care, and fantasize about what he’s going to grow on the “5 mou” of land that he is going to purchase with this windfall (rice paddy…or canola field?). The young general, an arrogant nobleman, is appalled to be at the mercy of such rabble, but in his debilitated state has no choice but to grin and bear it until he sees a chance to escape.

An arduous, episodic journey ensues, with the “prince and the pauper” dynamic providing most of the comic and dramatic tension. Along the way, the pair encounters interesting characters, most notably a motley crew of cutthroats led by a whip-wielding bandit queen (“They are trustworthy, but truculent,” as one character describes the bandits, in the film’s best line).

However, it’s the animals who threaten to steal the show; my favorite scenes feature a bear, an ox and a pregnant rabbit. There’s also a Shakespearean subplot, concerning royal intrigue in the general’s home court, which leads to an unlikely alliance between the two sworn enemies.

Chan (who wrote the screenplay) reportedly has had this project percolating for nearly 20 years. Despite its relatively simplistic narrative, the film does have an epic feel. The misty mountains, serpentine rivers and lush valleys of China are beautifully photographed; suggesting a mythical sense of time and place.

As per usual, Chan choreographs and directs all of his own fight scenes, executed with his Chaplinesque blend of gymnastic prowess and deft comic timing. As I mentioned earlier, I’m no expert on his oeuvre, but his performance here sports a noticeable upgrade in nuance and character immersion from what I’ve seen of his Hollywood fare (don’t worry, fans-the closing credits fold in the requisite blooper reel). If you have a multi-region player, it is worth seeking out; although this is likely best seen on the big screen.

Documentary, Spy vs Spy, War

All the world war’s a stage: Garbo the Spy ***

July 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo in 2010)

WW2 espionage buffs won’t want to miss Garbo the Spy, an absorbing documentary about a Spanish double agent who arguably changed the course of the war in one brilliant play. In 1944, he managed to convince the Germans (who thought he was working for them) that the D-Day landings were merely a diversionary exercise (the Nazis may have otherwise thrown even more weight behind the defense of their crucial Normandy beachheads).

It’s a fascinating tale of an enigmatic and unlikely hero, who one interviewee calls “one of the greatest actors” who ever lived (at one point, he had 22 “operatives” working for him-all creations of his own imagination, and juggled so masterfully and convincingly that his German employers truly believed that they were an actual consortium of intelligence gatherers). Director Edmon Roch uses a clever device, weaving in footage from classic WW2 espionage thrillers to put events in context. One bit of footage (from the 80s) showing a choked-up “Garbo” visiting the U.S. cemetery in Normandy, is a moving tribute to the great sacrifices made on those beaches.

Drama, War

Blu-ray reissue: Paths of Glory ****

June 29, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 11, 2010)

Paths of Glory – Criterion Collection Blu-ray

Stanley Kubrick really came into his own with his third film (fourth, if you include his never-officially-released “lost film”, Fear and Desire). Kirk Douglas is in top form as a WWI French regiment commander caught between the political machinations of his superiors and the empathy he feels for his battle-weary soldiers, who are little more than cannon-fodder to the paper-pushing top brass.

After an artillery unit serving under Douglas refuses to execute an insane directive from a glory-hungry field general to lay a barrage into their own forward positions, the commanding generals decide that the best way to ensure against any such future “mutiny” is to select three scapegoats from the rank and file to be court-martialed and shot.

Despite all the technical innovations in film making that have evolved in the 50+ years since this film was released, the battle sequences still make you scratch your head in wonder as to how Kubrick was able to render them with such verisimilitude. The insanity of conflict has rarely been parsed onscreen with such economy and clarity. A true classic. Criterion’s Blu-ray print has been transferred with an obvious attention to quality and detail that befits a Kubrick film.

Culture Clash, Drama, War

Blu-ray reissue: Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence ***1/2

June 29, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 11, 2010)

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence – Criterion Collection Blu-ray

I had nearly given up all hope that this largely-forgotten 1983 gem from Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Empire of Passion) would ever see the light of day on DVD, much less be given the Criterion treatment on Blu-ray-but there you go. I remember at the time of its original release, the stunt casting of David Bowie and (equally flamboyant) Japanese pop star Ryuichi Sakamoto in the leads seemed to generate more interest than the film itself.

The story is set during WW2; Bowie and Ryuichi play a headstrong, defiant British officer and a disciplinarian Japanese prison camp commander who butt heads from day one. The dynamic between the two men initially recalls the relationship between Alec Guinness and Sessue Hayakawa in The Bridge on the River Kwai-but quickly moves into some more decidedly weird areas (very, very weird areas).

Tom Conti is excellent as a fellow British prisoner who attempts to mediate peace between the two. The real scene-stealer is Takeshi Kitano, as a prison guard. He injects a subtle humanity into a character that could have easily played one-dimensional. Sakamoto composed the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack (an electro-pop pioneer, he was the founder of the Yellow Magic Orchestra).

This is a film that deserves a serious reappraisal. That being said, the films of Oshima are always a challenging, and not for all tastes, so consider this a guarded recommendation; while definitely worth consideration for the collector on your list who is a confirmed fan of the director, perhaps a “test” rental first would work best for others.

Historical drama, War

DVD Reissue: Gone With the Wind ****

June 25, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 28, 2009)

Gone With the Wind (70th Anniversary Edition) – Warner (2-disc)

1939 was a good year for director Victor Fleming. Even if he had been hit by a bus after helming The Wizard of Oz, his rep would have been secured; but he also delivered a little sleeper you may have heard of called Gone With the Wind that same year. Technically, he “inherited” the project from George Cukor, who dropped out over differences with producer David O. Selznick (who in essence co-directed). No matter who actually called the shots, the end result is generally considered the quintessential American film epic.

You know the story (based on Margaret Mitchell’s sprawling novel); spoiled, narcissistic Southern diva (Vivien Leigh) has unrequited love for dashing Confederate war hero (Leslie Howard) who is betrothed to her saintly rival (Olivia deHavilland) and takes 2 hours of screen time to realize she really belongs with the roguish and equally self-absorbed Clark Gable.

The burning of Atlanta (and other Civil War distractions) provides an occasional sense of release from the smoldering passion and sexual tension (consummated in torrid fashion about 3 hours in). That’s a lot of foreplay, but in the meantime you are treated to a visually sumptuous feast and mythic performances by all four leads. It is worth noting that co-starHattie McDaniel became the first African-American actor to win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress, 1940, for her role as “Mammy”).

While it is hopelessly “of its time” (particularly in its unfortunate characterizations of African-Americans), it is ahead of its time in one respect-it features some very strong and self-sufficient female protagonists. This is one film that transcends its own medium. Warner’s 2009 transfer is breathtaking.

Action, War

Torah! Torah! Torah!: Inglourious Basterds ****

June 17, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 29, 2009)

Care to repeat that anti-Semitic remark?

World War II movies can be divided into four categories. There’s the no-nonsense, fact-based docudrama (The Longest Day, The Battle of the Bulge, Tora! Tora! Tora!).

There’s the grunt’s-eye-view, “based on a true story” yarn (Saving Private Ryan, The Big Red One, Hell is for Heroes).

There’s the Alistair MacLean-style action-adventure fantasy; with maybe one toe grounded in reality (Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen, The Eagle Has Landed).

And finally, there’s the “alternate reality” version (Castle Keep, The Mysterious Doctor, and The Keep). Quentin Tarantino’s new war epic, Inglourious Basterds, vacillates between action-adventure fantasy and alternate reality.

Sharing scant more than a title with the correctly spelled 1978 original (itself a knockoff of The Dirty Dozen) Inglourious Basterds is ultimately less concerned with WW2 than it is with giving the audience a Chuck Workman on acid montage of 20^th century cinema, “101”.

It’s not like we haven’t come to expect the cinematic mash-up/movie geek parlor game shtick in Tarantino’s films, but he may have outdone himself here, referencing everything from the Arnold Fanck/Leni Riefenstahl mountain movies to Tony Montana making his final stand in Brian DePalma’s Scarface.

Tarantino wastes no time referencing his Sergio Leone obsession, with a prelude cut straight out of Once Upon a Time in the West and pasted into “Nazi-occupied France”. Remember Henry Fonda’s memorably execrable villain? He has a soul mate in SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a disarmingly erudite sociopath who has been assigned the task of combing France to round up and eliminate Jews hiding out in the countryside. Landa is very good at his “job”, which has earned him the nickname of “The Jew Hunter”.

A scenery-chewing Brad Pitt stars as Lieutenant Aldo Raine (whose name, I am assuming, is homage to the late actor Aldo Ray, who was a staple player for many years in war films like Battle Cry, The Naked and the Dead, Men in War and The Green Berets). Lt. Raine has been charged with assembling a Geneva Convention-challenged terror squad comprised of a hand-picked group of Jewish-American G.I.s.

Their special assignment: Kill Nazis. I know – “Wasn’t that the goal of the Allied forces in Europe?” Yes, but the mission orders normally didn’t include a directive to take scalps. And forget about taking prisoners; although they always leave a lone survivor (not before they etch out a Charlie Manson-style souvenir in his forehead).

The self-anointed “Basterds” have managed to “carve out” quite a name for themselves, and have become the bane of evil Nazis (or as Raine refers to them in his Huckleberry Hound drawl, “gnat-sees”) everywhere; these are some bad-ass Jews. Even the Fuhrer (Martin Wuttke) fears them; he is particularly chagrined whenever the name of the dreaded “Bear Jew” (horror director Eli Roth) is mentioned.

This particular team member (known to fellow Basterds as Sgt. Donny Donowitz) has earned his nickname from his swarthy, hulking appearance and a preference for dispatching Nazis utilizing a baseball bat (move over, Sandy Koufax). These happy Jews, this band of bubelehs have even enlisted a Nazi-hating German defector (Til Schweiger) who fits right in; he’s a complete psychopath.

This outing is not strictly a Braunschweiger fest. No Tarantino film from Jackie Brown onward would be complete without an ass-kicking heroine. Shosanna Dreyfus (played with smoldering intensity by Melanie Laurent) is a French Jew who has a score to settle with one of the main characters (recalling “The Bride” in Kill Bill).

She’s a clandestine resistance fighter (a la Melville’s Army of Shadows) who has covered up her Jewish heritage by changing her name and “hiding in plain sight” as proprietress of a movie house. Her story eventually converges with the Basterds (and her quarry), culminating in an audacious, Grand Guignol finale.

Love him or hate him, Tarantino proves again to have a real knack for two things: writing crackling dialogue, and spot-on casting. As usual, every actor seems to have been born to play his or her respective part , especially Waltz. Repellent as his character is, Waltz manages to telegraph the pure joy of performing, just short of hamming it up.

Pitt, who doesn’t get as much screen time as trailers infer, seems to be having the time of his life. Diane Kruger is good as a German movie star who is feeding intelligence to the Allies. A heavily made-up Mike Myers can be seen as a British general; playing the type of supporting character “back at HQ” that you could picture Anthony Quayle, Jack Hawkins or Trevor Howard playing back in the day.

As you might expect, there are cameos a-plenty, including Rod Taylor (as Winston Churchill) and Bo Svenson (a veteran from the original film). Don’t strain your eyes trying to spot cameos by QT stalwarts Harvey Keitel and Samuel L. Jackson; they are heard, but not seen. Tarantino appears as a dead German soldier getting scalped, which undoubtedly fulfills the fantasies of some of his detractors.

Much of the dialogue is spoken in-language by the French and German actors. It’s quite a testament to the director’s formidable writing skills that after the first few scenes, you don’t really notice that some characters will frequently switch idioms (especially the amazing Waltz, who proves equal fluency in German, French, Italian and English). Even when subtitled, the words veritably sing and dance with Tarantino’s unmistakably idiosyncratic pentameter.

In the context of pure visual storytelling, I think that Inglourious Basterds signals the director’s most assured, mature and resplendent work to date (beautifully photographed by Robert Richardson, who was the DP on both Kill Bill films and previously a veteran of 11 Oliver Stone collaborations). This is particularly evident in the film’s opening scene, which immediately draws you in with an eye-filling, gorgeously expansive exterior shot of the French countryside.

The buildup to the finale is the visual highlight of any QT film to date. In a possible homage to Joan Crawford’s Vienna (whose name is derived from the French word for “life”) donning her rose red blouse for the final showdown with her black-clad nemesis in Nicholas Ray’s lurid revenge western Johnny Guitar, Shosanna (whose name derives from the Hebrew word for “rose”) dons her vividly Technicolor red dress as she prepares for the showdown with her black-clad nemesis, scored with David Bowie’s “Putting Out Fire” (originally the theme for Paul Schrader’s 1982 version of Cat People).

It’s a ballsy move by Tarantino, but not unlike his similarly brash gamble lifting of the theme song from Across 110^th Street for Jackie Brown’s credits, I’ll be damned if it ain’t the perfect choice (maybe he figured it would have been pushing his luck to also “borrow” the “harmonica man” theme from Once Upon a Time in the West?).

Finally, a thought or two about the violence, which is de rigueur for any Tarantino film, and which invariably provides the catalyst for discord in any conversation between his disciples and detractors. Yes, you will see scalping, stabbings, shootings, and deaths by strangulation and bludgeoning. This is not Pinocchio.

Yet, if you were to add up all of this mayhem in screen time, I’m guesstimating that it wouldn’t be more than 10 minutes (out of a 153 minute total running time). With the possible exception of Kill Bill Vol. 1 (an over-the-top affair in the bloodletting department by anyone’s standards) I think that the knee-jerk tendency is to perceive a higher ratio of violence in Tarantino’s films than actually exists.

In fact, do you know which scene has the most white-knuckled, edge-of-your seat, heart-pounding suspense in this film? People playing a game of Celebrity Heads. I won’t spoil it for you; just know that wherever Alfred Hitchcock is, he’s probably looking down on QT with a nod and a wink…from one inglourious basterd to another.