The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Knife in the Water (1962), directed by Roman Polanski

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "I'll Fall With Your Knife", by Peter Murphy

      Originally I was going to lead this off with a talk about the state of cinema in the 60s, how both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’ were putting out excellent films, even though most of the credit tends to go toward the French New Wave and Italian neorealists. Then I was going to do something addressing Roman Polanski. Neither of them felt right though so I’m just going to get to the film.

      Released in 1962 through Zespol Filmowy, Knife in the Water was the directorial debut of Roman Polanski, written by Jakub Goldberg, Jerzy Skolimowski and Polanski himself. Leon Niemczyk and Jolanta Umecka play Andrezj and Krystyna, a couple driving down the road when they come across, almost run over, a young hitch-hiker played by Zygmunt Malanowicz. They pick him up on their way to the marina, where they have a boat docked, and ultimately manage to convince him to join them on their sailing trip across the lake. However it soon becomes clear that this is no holiday trip between friends. There is a tension building here, an inevitable implosion between these people, but when will it happen? What form will it take? What is it about Poland and stolen windshield wipers? You’ll have to see for yourself.

     The main thrust of Knife in the Water is human behavior, for lack of a better description. The relationship between Andrezj and the young man, the young versus old, the romantic versus the rational. Which then morphs into the parent-child dynamic as the young man tries to prove his competency in a world he has little experience in (sailing), which of course leads into something of an oedipal complex and this sexual contest between the woman and the two men. All of which is steeped in this tension where you’re just waiting for someone to snap and start throwing fists. Which feels incredibly awkward and uncomfortable, and makes for some good drama.

      The crux of this tension and this drama lies in the fact that these characters are forced to deal with each other due to being stuck in this boat, but Polanski never allows the setting to limit the dynamism of the film. There are shots that invoke the physical intimacy of the characters, having them in the immediate foreground as characters in the background are directed towards us. Aerial shots where we are looking down at the characters, shots from the water, a lot of stuff that would probably be a hassle to do in the early 60s and which highlight the characters and their isolation from anything and everyone else. Combined with the script it’s a deceptively advanced work for someone’s debut film.

      I also have to give credit to the film’s score, which was done by Krysztof T. Komeda. Musically Knife in the Water sounds like what you imagine all those film noir detective movies would sound like: smooth jazz that seems to slink around the room like a plume of smoke from a beautiful woman’s cigarette. Something which I think compliments the film, as it accentuates this atmosphere of lethargy where the characters ultimately have nothing to do but deal with each other. I think there may be some points where we shift into something a bit more folk-based, but the jazz is what really makes this movie pop in my opinion.

      Of course if you’re not a fan of that era of directors, Bergman, Truffaut, what have you, then I doubt Knife in the Water would change your mind. Although it’s much more straightforward then, say, Godard’s Alphaville, this is still a film of very little action, and where if characters do talk it’s often around the point rather than on it. It’s a very psychologically-centered film, dealing in questions of maturity and the male ego, and there are certainly many people out there that don’t have the patience to sift through that. I did, and even I am struggling to put this review together, if that tells you much.

      Still I think I’ll give Knife in the Water the recommendation. While I think it drags a bit, maybe by design, by the end I think it managed to tell an intriguing story. It’s not a blockbuster or some grand epic by any means, but as a debut film I think it showed a great deal of promise and a knowledge of the craft that would have established Roman Polanski as a director worth keeping track of, an assumption that would eventually be justified in his later films and not the horrible things he would also take part in. It’s definitely not a party movie, but if you’re in a more sullen mood on All Hallow’s Eve then you might throw this on and brood for a while. If you have a boat then even better.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Mondo Cane (1962), directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Il Cielo In Una Stanza", by Mike Patton & The Metropole Orchestra

      We’ve reached the summit folks. Every year for quite a few years now I’ve dedicated the month of October to something I call The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul. 31 days, 31 films, 31 reviews. At a time in my life that could be loosely described as ‘rock bottom’, at a time when the world seems to be doing the same, this shitty little collection of text and jpegs that no one reads has been one of the few bits of metaphorical solid ground I’ve been able to touch down on. A chance to flex my creative muscles, a place to work through my various episodes, all within the context of me complaining about somebody else’s work. Even when this blog has been all but dead, the Marathon has still persisted, beyond all sense of reason or the confines of Halloween. Maybe I can’t muster the will to let it go, or maybe deep down this is what I like to do, the source of my passion. Either way I guess I’ll keep going as long as I can.

      As has been more recent tradition, the last ten days of the month are reserved for foreign films, specifically those outside the U.S.A/U.K./Canada area. Today I thought I’d take a visit to Italy, a region which has been a consistent source of genre films for the Marathon over the years. For a while I was considering covering something by Lina Wertmüller, but given some other revisions we’ll be seeing in the future I decided to change things up. For the sake of variety and, as always, because I felt like it at the time.

      Released in 1962 through Cineriz, Mondo Cane was directed jointly by Gualtiero Jacopeti (who also produced the film and wrote the narration heard throughout the film), Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi. A documentary, Mondo Cane’s intent is to show off various aspects of human life from around the globe, in particular the enticing, the morbid, and the bizarre. Visit a village in Italy where the Good Friday celebration involves the priest leading a procession through the streets beating his legs with shards of glass. Take a trip to a restaurant in Taipei where dogs make up the menu. Try not to blink when passing by a village in Malaysia who’s main source of income is fishing for sharks, and they’ve got the bodies to prove it. It’s a wild, terrifying world we live in, says the minds behind Mondo Cane, and they’re giving you a front row seat to the show.

      The colloquial term for films like Mondo Cane would be ‘shockumentaries’; Films which deal in intense subjects, sex, violence, substance abuse, what have you, in order to draw the audience in. In the Italy of 1962 some naked breasts and an ass or two is as far as you get when it comes to sex, barely a step above cheescake Barbarella stuff, but they make up for it with plenty of violence and death. When they show a ceremony in Papua New Guinea involving a slaughtering and roasting of pigs, Mondo Cane leaves nothing to the imagination; You get to watch as tribesmen, armed with heavy wooden clubs, gather in circles and beat the brains out of the pigs before tossing their corpses on the fire. When we visit a shop in Malaysia that sells snake meat, we don’t cut to people enjoying a little snake curry, we get to see the butcher stretch that serpent out and slice it up the middle like a bit of shoe leather. Those out there with strong stomachs will be able to handle the more morose elements of the film, but if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to know how the sausage is made (quite literally in the case of the force feeding geese scene) or generally doesn’t like to see animals suffering then this is definitely not the film for you. Even as someone who has watched dozens of horror films over the years, I found some of the stuff in Mondo Cane rather gruesome.

      Of course there’s also the question of who Mondo Cane is geared towards. While it is true that this film is international, when it comes time to highlight the ‘weirdness’ of the world there is a definite focus on certain regions like Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, aside from its native Italy. The main thrust of Mondo Cane is in social commentary; at pointing out the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the world with an aloof, detached air, yet will quite often descend into chauvinism. Mondo Cane is quick to disparage and mock in a scene where American tourists visit Hawaii and take in hula lessons, making points that are quite poignant even today, and yet it takes a 180 in a later scene where a Papua New Guinean tribe is taking communion at a Catholic mission, describing it in sentimental tones as the ‘last bastion of civilization’ in that area. Not to mention several comments directed towards New Guineans, Chinese and other such peoples that could be taken as patronizing at best. Is it racist on the level of Birth of a Nation? No, but if my skin was the same shade as those being gawked at on screen I’d probably find it uncomfortable, and so it might be for others.

      If there’s one thing I’ll praise about this movie though is this music. It’s constantly switching up throughout the movie, from orchestral stuff to big band swing, to lounge jazz and even though the transitions weren’t always smooth I still found it enjoyable. The music was done by Nino Oliviero and Riz Ortolani, the latter of whom was a composer for over two hundred films in his career, particularly genre films, so chances are that we’ll be seeing him again in the future.

      Ultimately though, I don’t think I can recommend Mondo Cane. Putting the casual racism aside, I don’t think there’s that much, really, to drive a viewer’s interest these days. While there is this sort of Addams Family-style cheerfully macabre atmosphere that’s a tad infectious, the shock and awe tactics that worked so well back in the 60s have lost most of their luster in these modern times. There are hundreds of videos on youtube with people eating weird stuff for example, so half of this movie has become superfluous. It was popular enough to get a sequel a couple years later though, so maybe that film would be a more palatable Halloween treat than this one.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), directed by Robert Aldrich

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Don't Worry Baby", by The Beach Boys

      The film industry is one that loves to play both sides against the middle. For every movie that plays up how fabulous Hollywood is and how show business is glamorous, there’s a movie that says that it is a lie, and that Hollywood is in fact bad and how show business is very much not glamorous. For every Singing In the Rain, there’s a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, or Showgirls and so on and on. The natural  assumption would then be to go the middle route and assume that it’s just average, capable of experiences both good and bad, but I think that’s the sucker’s bet. Given the recent outings of several executives and talent as rapists and molesters, and given the nature of the country it inhabits, I think it’s more than fair to assume that the film industry really is an veritable charnel house for hopes and dreams and the fact that anything half-way decent ever gets made at all is something of a small miracle. The same can be said of all industries really, but seems more acute in the case of the arts, a field supposedly built on the ideas of self-expression and creativity. Aside from internet film blogging  that is, which prides itself on featuring neither of those things.

You might notice that those anti-show biz film examples I gave prominently star and feature women, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Aside from the aforementioned rapists and molesters, female actors also have to deal with the fact that their careers generally have a much shorter expiration date than their male counterpart. Doors that were wide open at 18 and 19 are increasingly closed when you’re pushing 40, which isn’t an easy pill to swallow if you have gotten a taste of the spotlight in the past. That stories of substance abuse, excessive cosmetic surgery, and eating disorders are so common should come as no surprise, because that is the type of environment that is supported, if not outright endorsed by the Hollywood establishment. Which sounds shitty, but only because it is in fact really shitty and unlikely to change without sweeping socioeconomic changes. Charnel house of hopes and dreams, remember?

Which brings us to today’s film, 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, adapted from the novel by Henry Farrell, with a screenplay by Lukas Heller and directed by Robert Aldrich, who Thunderblog buffs might recall from Kiss Me Deadly. In the year 1917 there was no bigger name in entertainment than that of Baby Jane Hudson, the song & dance moppet supreme and the apple of her father’s eye, much to the chagrin of her sister Blanche. By 1935 the Baby Jane star had collapsed in favor of Blanche Hudson, the up and coming Hollywood starlet, at least until a violent incident with a car ended both their careers. These days however you don’t see much of the Hudson sisters; Jane (Bette Davis) has become a bitter, emotionally unstable alcoholic and the now-paraplegic Blanche (Joan Crawford) has become a shut-in (although not necessarily by choice). But that’s not Baby Jane’s bag, jack! She’s a star! She’s meant to be on a stage, basking in the adulation of her fans, not wasting away in some dusty old house! Which is exactly what she’s going to do, just as soon as she gets rid of some dead weight.

      Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is one of the earlier entries I’ve seen so far of a subgenre I’ve dubbed invalid thrillers, for lack of a better term. Basically films wherein the protagonist is incapacitated at the start of the story and subsequently tasked with surviving a dangerous situation, thus giving otherwise mundane tasks an increased sense of tension than they would otherwise have. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is perhaps the most famous example of what I’m talking about here, although much of that film is about unraveling the mystery and attempting to entrap the criminal. Baby Jane on the other hands settles firmly on the more ‘psychological’ side of things, emotional manipulations, acts of torture, and so on. If you’ve ever seen Misery, or the hundreds of Misery parodies and pastiches that followed, you’ve got some idea of what you’re in for with this film here.

      As was the case with Misery, Baby Jane is a film that is carried on the backs of its cast. Victor Buono makes his proper introduction in this film, who you might recall as King Tut from the Adam West Batman series or the face you picture in your mind’s eye when you imagine a fat Jason Siegel, but the ones you came to see are Crawford and Davis. Both veterans of the silver screen by the year 1962, winners and nominees of multiple Academy Awards, and both actors who were no doubt feeling Hollywood’s dagger pressing against their back at this stage in their career, putting in the work that proved that they hadn’t lost a step. Particularly in the case of Bette Davis; Crawford does great work as Blanche, the frazzled, frail victim, but there’s so much meat on that Baby Jane bone that Davis chews to bits. Her portrayal of Baby Jane Hudson is a Batman rogue before that really meant something, and considering the Batman: The Animated Series would eventually introduce a villain named ‘Baby Doll’, I don’t think I’m the only one who thought so. On the one hand she’s a spiteful, vindictive harridan, capable of acts of great malice with no sense of remorse. Yet flip the coin and she’s a child, or rather an adult desperately trying to recapture her childhood, the only time in her life when she was happy, the only time she felt loved and the world seemed to make sense. She’s loathsome but at the same so pathetic that you can’t help but pity her. A tragic villain played to perfection, it’s no wonder that she would eventually get a Best Actress nomination for the role. That she didn’t win and that it would prove to be her last ever Best Actress nomination is a shame, even though she was one of the most prolific players in the best acting nomination game at that point, because the more I stew on it the more fascinated I become with it. A bit of a slow burn but then really kicks your ass into gear.

      As wild as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? can get though, there’s something...personable about it that Misery lacks. Now I’ve only caught some of that film so I can’t make any in depth comparisons, but Misery has always had a bit of a pretentious air about it. A novelist writing a novel about how it’s so hard being a rich and successful novelist because some people like your work TOO much and get obsessive about it, and then they made it a movie. Not exactly relatable. The personal lives of Golden Age Hollywood actresses might seem at first to be the same here, but the Hollywood aspect isn’t really the focus of Baby Jane, it’s just a good set piece. Really the film is about these sisters who were set against each other from the very beginning, and how that resentment and bitterness rippled outwards and drastically altered the entire course of their lives, and that to this day they’ve trapped themselves in this quagmire of toxicity and familial obligation. Because if they didn’t have each other, they’d have no one. I think the film tends to present things a bit more one-sided than how I’ve described it, but there are definitely points throughout the film where it shows that neither woman is without sin. Which I like, it adds a layer of depth to the story beyond whatever morbid fascination there is in watching the early 60s equivalent of  torture porn. From a simple thriller to a Shakespearean tragedy.

      Just about the only thing I didn’t care for all that much is the score, composed by DeVol. Typical orchestral fare for the time, and I do love “I’ve Written A Letter to Daddy” as a leitmotif, but occasionally it feels like it has two gears for every case: Twilight Zone drama and My Mother The Car cheeze. Scenes that don’t seem all that dramatic are suddenly very dramatic, and the lighthearted moments feel like Lucille Ball is about to step in from off-screen, that sort of thing. It tap dances along the line between drama and melodrama, and not only on the side that I think it intended.

      Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is an easy recommendation from me. Loved the story, loved the acting, and it feels like a novelty to have a movie starring older women, about older women, that’s something besides Steel Magnolias or what have you. If you liked Kiss Me Deadly, if you liked Psycho and other Hitchcock works, then I think you’ll get a kick out of this movie. And while you’re leaving to go watch this fine film, don’t forget to stop at the lobby and pick up your very own life-sized King Thunderbird doll, only 3.95 each! Sure to bring a smile to your face and a financial burden on your family.