The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - '"Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

       Here’s another film that’s been on the queue for years, and yet always managed to escape the list. Unlike with Wages of Fear however, we’re not dealing with an unknown here; This is Fritz Lang, director of Metropolis, also known as the film that I end up comparing every silent movie I’ve ever reviewed against, as well as Destiny, which wasn’t as good but still had moments of inspiration. Many directors go their entire career without making one film on the level of Metropolis, but just as many readers likely don’t realize that Metropolis was just one part of Lang’s storied career. A career which spanned several decades, continents, and genres, from the early days of silent film through the Golden Age of Hollywood all the way to the 60’s. In fact as much as I praise Metropolis, it’s arguably not Lang’s most lauded, most celebrated, most fondly remembered film -- this one is. So if I want to win any of those arguments, I better check it out for myself and see if that hype is real. Also I’m probably not actually going to argue, I just want to watch a movie.

       Released in Germany in 1931, M was directed by Fritz Lang, written by Lang and Thea von Harbou, and produced by Seymour Nebenzal through Nero-Film A.G. There’s a child murderer (Peter Lorre) loose in the streets of Berlin and the public is in an uproar. Accusations are thrown, people are being accosted and attacked on the street, and as usual the police’s way of handling it is heavy-handed and completely ineffectual. Well that’s not quite true, as the near constant bar raids and night patrols do raise the ire of Berlin’s criminal population. With their livelihood on the line the heads of the various syndicates decide to set up their own investigation in tandem with the police. As both sides of the law create a city-wide pincer movement it seems that the killer’s day are numbered, but you don’t become a serial killer in pop culture without being hard to catch. Moreover, if he is caught, who’s gonna get to him first?

       Film began as a principally visual medium, and Fritz Lang understood that better than most filmmakers. We can see that quite clearly in Metropolis with its elaborate effects, but we can see in M the kind of visual storytelling that Hitchcock would utilize in his thriller films. The scene of little Elsie Breckmann bouncing her ball against a pole where a notice of the murderer is posted, only to see that same ball roll slowly roll out a bush later on, a sign of the grisly act that has just taken place. Or during the scene where the murderer is running from his pursuers, and rather than making that shot look smooth the camera jostles as it races after him, coming to a stumbling stop as he turns towards us, compounding this atmosphere of panic. Hell, even the visual of the M, the brand which marks the killer for what he is, is a deceptively powerful look for how simple it is. While the film does have sound there’s a lot of it that is done in complete silence, and it really shows just how much a director can convey without saying anything. Not as dynamic as Metropolis, but powerful nonetheless.

       That’s not to say that the inclusion of sound here is just a gimmick, as it seemed to be in some early ‘talkies’, as Lang uses it quite distinctly in M. Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, originally written for the Henrik Ibsen play Peer Gynt takes on a sinister second life as the murderer’s favorite tune, and of course you couldn’t do Peter Lorre’s final speech justice without sound. It’s a bit strange that, rather than just having scenes being done without talking and leaving natural sound they are done with sound removed entirely, I don't know if that’s a matter of how it was preserved or what but it works. There’s not a wasted syllable in the bunch.

       Speaking of Peter Lorre, he is undoubtedly one of the highlights of this film. This was only his third ever film role, second ever credited, and he hits it out of the park. People talk up Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector, for good reason but I don’t know if anybody has ever embodied the concept of creepiness like Peter Lorre. You see him in M and you see on screen what you picture in your mind when you hear the words ‘child murderer’. The way he looks, the way he talks, how he smiles, Lorre’s every move and gesture arouses this feeling of anger in the viewer as naturally as blinking. His final speech is a powerful bit of acting, catching the viewer between the two extremes of pity and disgust. It’s no wonder he became a Hollywood staple for a couple decades after this, everything about him is iconic. That’s not to say that the rest of the cast were bad, there’s not a bad one in the bunch, but I don’t know if this film would be as strong as it was without the casting of Peter Lorre. It was a star-making kind of film and he was the star. 

What kind of film is M, though? I personally see it as a transitional film for Lang, between the German Expressionist movement that he helped to establish and what would become film noir. M’s subject matter is rooted in the underbelly of modern society, a film about criminals tracking down an even worse criminal, but there’s an aura of the bizarre about it that calls back to Fritz Lang’s origins. The directness of the visuals, the overpowering silence (intentional or otherwise), the weird little bits of humor the overwhelming weight of Lorre’s insane compulsions, while it’s not as out there as nightmarish as Expressionist classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari there’s still a surrealism that covers the film like a blanket. It’s a film with its feet in the past and the future, and you can see in it a throughline to Hitchcock and Batman and countless other pieces of art and media.

M receives the recommendation. While crime thrillers aren’t exactly an uncommon sight in film, it takes skill and vision to do it well, and Fritz Lang proves here that he is a skilled craftsman. While it’s not the grandiose cinematic experiment that Metropolis became, it’s a classic in its own right. Be sure to check this one out this Halloween if you’ve got a chance, it’s definitely worth the time. Maybe pair it with Psycho or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, make it a really wild night. I don’t know if it’d be fun, but it would be memorable.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), directed by Richard Fleischer

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Submarine" by L'Imperatrice

       When I was younger, my tastes in literature tended to be a tad more extreme than that of my peers at the time, even at an early age. Comics books and manga sure, and a step above that to pop culture staples like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, but then I would go even further beyond. Malory, Cervantes, Doyle, Swift, Kafka, Kerouac, Burroughs, Farren, and many more besides. I don’t know if it made me a better person or anything so much as it proved that I had too much time on my hands, but it was certainly an enjoyable way to spend some time. Sitting down, getting comfortable and letting yourself sink into the world of a story is an experience unlike any other. Even film cannot compare to the level of sheer immersion a book can provide in the correct circumstances.

       Which leads us into “Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea”, written by French novelist Jules Verne. When it came to science fiction I had always been drawn more to the flashy, allegorical tales of H.G. Wells, with its extraterrestrial war machines and horrific beastmen, but I always had a soft spot for Verne’s famous work. Maybe because my childhood had been full of hi-tech Bat Caves and giant robots, but the idea of this mysterious genius who lived on his own terms in a fantastical machine of his own design really captured my imagination. As it did for many others, the story has popped up again and again over the years, from Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series to the anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. I’ve covered adaptations of Wells’ work in the past so it only seemed right to get to Verne as well, and when it comes to him there seems to be one film that stands out among the rest. Makes things a lot easier, let me tell you.

       Released in 1954, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was written by Earl Felton, directed by Richard Fleischer (who also did Marathon alum Compulsion) and produced by Walt Disney through Walt Disney Productions, based on the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. The year is 1868, and the story that’s on everyone’s mind is that of a mysterious ‘sea monster’ which has been attacking and sinking ships across the South Pacific, destroying cargo and sailor’s lives in the process. So severe is this problem that the U.S. government charters a ship to go on a hunt for the beast, bringing on the respected Professor Pierre Aronnax (Paul Lukas) and his assistant Conseil (Peter Lorre) as a scientific advisor. For several months they travel the seas with no luck, until one day while coming to the aid of a wrecked ship they come across the infamous themselves. They fire at the thing, but it avoids their cannons and rams into the ship full force, crippling it and sending Prof. Aronnax, Conseil, and crewman Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) overboard into the watery depths. The End.

       But not really. As Aronnax and the others drift through the sea, they make an astounding discovery and uncover an even more amazing truth: the so-called ‘sea monster that had been the terror of merchant mariners was not a living creature at all, but a submersible ship -- a technological marvel the likes of which has never been seen before. This submarine, known as the Nautilus , is captained by Nemo (James Mason), a mysterious man whose great intelligence is matched only by his hatred for those warlike savages that inhabit the surface world. Not quite prisoners aboard the Nautilus but not quite guests either, the three men have little choice but to accompany Nemo and his crew in their underwater utopia as they travel twenty thousand leagues under the sea (a league in nautical terms being equivalent to three miles). To Ned Land however, just because you have little choice doesn’t mean you can’t fight.

       While cinema is a combination of aural, verbal and visual storytelling, there are certain films that are made or broken principally on a visual level. If the xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s Alien looked like something off of Star Trek, the film would not have become the franchise it is today. If Star Wars lacked the lightsabers or the Death Star it would be remembered now as some kind of half-baked Buck Rogers ripoff. So it was with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; If you don’t get the Nautilus right, then you don’t get the film right. Fleischer and Disney get it right in my opinion, without going overboard as is so often the case with adaptations of these stories. The Nautilus’ angular design is unlike anything that would have been seen on ships at the time, yet its interior is rooted firmly in the Victorian age. It’s aesthetic is rooted in that Victorian conception of what advanced technology would look like and yet it is recognizable as a submarine to the modern eye, because it is basically a modern submarine. I've always been a fan of Kevin O’Neill’s mollusc-inspired Nautilus, but it’s also a little too steampunk to be believable. This Nautilus however, even though it is clearly fictional it still feels like something that could have actually existed at one point in time, which is what really makes it work.

So there’s money shots aplenty of the Nautilus, footage of it moving underwater through water (they get a lot of mileage out of the five seconds of their model ship slowly chugging through the ocean) and when the film isn’t doing that it’s probably showing some B-roll of ocean life; some dolphins, a whale, the corpse of a sea turtle and so on. Rather simple stuff today, but remember that the 40s and 50s were when deep sea diving was first developed. Two years after this film came out Jacques Cousteau released his landmark marine biology film The Silent World, which up until Fahrenheit 9/11 was the only documentary to ever win the Palme d’Or, so the bits of undersea life we see in this film likely went over huge with movie audiences at the time. Not so much these days perhaps, but there is a simplicity to it that I can’t help but find charming.

       Cramped quarters make for a small cast, but 20,000 Leagues makes the most with what they’ve got. James Mason, who we just saw a while back in The Fall of the Roman Empire is once again a highlight here as Captain Nemo, taking what in other hands might be a one-note antagonist and transforming him into a multifaceted and ultimately tragic character. Peter Lorre as Conseil is the stooge, as he is in every movie where he isn’t the villain, but it works because he’s so damn good at it. Kirk Douglas on the other hand left me wanting. He was clearly cast as the ruggedly handsome, two-fisted action hero of the film (despite this film having little action), which he does, but the rest of the time I found his performance came across as overbearing and tiresome. It seems like the filmmakers were really pushing for the tension between Nemo and Ned Land in the novel to be the primary conflict of the film, but Land is so consistently portrayed as childish, underhanded and obnoxious that Nemo ends up coming across as the more reasonable one, despite being the guy who has been murdering people since the start of the film. I mean if Nemo didn’t chuck this dipshit into the nearest trench after the first five minutes then he can’t be that bad.

        Of course it wouldn't be a Disney adaptation of a public domain without substantial changes to the source material. Turning Ned Land into what amounts to a protagonist is one. The need to ‘Disneyfy’ the story up with musical numbers, comedic gags, a pet sea lion and portraying native peoples as cannibalistic savages who talk only in grunts is another. The primary change however is transforming the Nautilus from a vessel that runs on electricity in the novel to what is clearly implied to be atomic energy in the film, and from that the entire tone of the story changes. The original novel was about a man driven by tragedy towards revenge on mankind, and while that's still present in the film it’s hard to deny that Nemo is probably right to keep the nations away from nuclear power for as long as possible. This being a film made in the 50s however, the moral is ultimately about how good atomic power is and how America is totally ready to use it. Following that thought though, it’s hard to even recognize Nemo as a villainous character after a certain point; Aronnax and the other try to paint Nemo as a hypocrite for decrying the surface world’s violence while using violence himself, but really what it ends up doing is proving that Nemo’s opposition to war isn’t just rhetoric but something that he will take action against. Who he targets seems to trend towards indiscriminate, which is where the moral ambiguity lies, but the film also tries to do it when the target is clear, like ships transporting illegal goods from slave labor camps, which I mean...if the ‘just following orders’ excuse doesn’t work for military officers I don’t know why we’d make an exception for sailors. In trying to blame the black and white morality it is Nemo, for all his brusqueness, that more often than not comes across as noble and the stowaways as hypocrites. Although I’m not sure if that was the intent or just the subtext. You can’t have it both ways Walt.

Modern movie goers will likely struggle with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It’s a two hour long action adventure with very little in the way of action, even though it’s probably got twice as much of it than in the original book. If you were a fan of films like Star Trek: The Motion Picture however, low impact spectacle films, then you’ll probably get something out of this one. Which I was, and while it’s not a 1:1 adaptation of the source material I’m still giving it the recommendation. Break out the seaweed cigars and baby octopus pudding this Halloween and make a night of it

Reelin' In The Years -- The Maltese Falcon (1941), directed by John Huston

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Something I Dreamed Last Night", by John Coltrane

       1941 is a year that will live in infamy, cinematically at least. The year that everything changed, or so film historians would have you believe. I’m talking of course about the release of Citizen Kane, a story of lost innocence, political and moral corruption, and some not that subtle digs at a certain newspaper magnate who may have helped manufacture consent for the Spanish-American War. The film that not only established Orson Welles as one of the great creative minds of the medium but has since gone on to be recognized as one of the greatest films ever made, right alongside Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Whether that title still holds up or if it’s just lip-service people make to sound cultured, the fact is when you think of ‘big’ movies, when you think of ‘important’ movies, Citizen Kane is one of those first names that come up. Even if you’ve never seen the movie, which is a distinct possibility in this day & age, chances are you still know the name Citizen Kane. Know it in the same way you know Star Wars, or Jaws, or King Kong.

So it would seem that Citizen Kane would be the natural choice for today’s stop, but I had actually already seen Citizen Kane some years ago and while I’ve recently been breaking with tradition and looking into reviewing movies that I’m familiar with, trying something new always takes priority. What to choose then? 1941 saw the release of two films by Alfred Hitchcock, Suspicion and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Hitchcock films are always in contention. Universal released The Wolf Man, which would go on to become one of the premier names of the Universal Monsters line despite never transitioning into a proper franchise like Frankenstein or even The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Disney dropped Dumbo in 1941, but considering the current political climate covering a movie where a bunch of crows talk jive didn’t seem the correct move. Similar thinking went into the decision to pass on Kenji Mizoguchi’s The 47 Ronin; I’m going to be covering a Japanese film in this series, but you’ll have to wait until the postwar period to get it. No no no, it’s the 40s, so how about a little film noir? How about one of the most famous film noir movies ever made? That’ll work out just fine.

       Released in 1941 through Warner Bros., written and directed by John Huston in his directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon was actually the second film adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett story of the same name, the first having come out a decade prior directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Ricardo Cotez and Bebe Daniels. Humphrey Bogart stars as Sam Spade, a private detective working in San Francisco with his partner Miles Archer. One day Spade is approached by a beautiful woman named Ruth Wonderly, looking to hire them to locate her sister Corinne, lured away from their home by a man named Floyd Thursby. They take the case, but what started out as a simple tailing job soon turns to tragedy when Archer is shot and killed by an unknown assailant, and then mystery when Thursby is murdered not too long afterwards. The cops suspect Spade, he had a job related to Thursby and a relationship related to Archer’s wife that places him at the top of the suspect list, but what is the truth? Who killed Archer and Thursby? Who is Ruth Wonderly, really? And what of the talk of this mysterious black bird, and the mysterious trail of death that seems to follow it wherever it goes? Where is the Maltese Falcon?

       Film noir, much like the Southern Gothic literature of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, marks what I believe can be seen now as a maturation of the medium in the United States. Optimism and sentimentalism stripped away to reveal the underbelly of humanity; Gangsters, thug cops, femme fatales and hardboiled detectives. So it is here in The Maltese Falcon: Sam Spade is our protagonist but he is not a noble or heroic figure. He’s cynical, condescending philanderer who has no problem manipulating people to get what he wants, but because he has a certain set of ethics he operates under he stands aparts from the antagonists, thus drawing the support of the audience. We may not like him as a person, but we respect his search for the truth.

       Yet another feather in the cap for Humphrey Bogart, who was only a year away from blowing up Hollywood with Casablanca, who really exemplifies that sort of duality that I implied in the above paragraph. Handsome but haggard, charismatic but acerbic, you can tell pretty easily why Bogart was once considered one of the coolest men in Hollywood. He’s helped by a damn good supporting cast; Mary Astor as the duplicitous damsel in distress Ruth Wonderly, long-time Bogart bud Peter Lorre as the shady Joel Cairo (I don’t know if Lorre has ever played a character that wasn’t shady), and Sydney Greenstreet as the boisterous and dastardly Kasper Gutman in not only his film debut, but the role which granted him his sole Academy Award nomination in his all-too-short career (he lost, like so many others, to the horror that was How Green Was My Valley). Four very distinct people with four very distinct personalities that play off each other well, and really elevate what is already great writing. A lot could be learned about characterization from this film, both literal and visual.

       As mentioned before this is the directorial debut of John Huston, who had been a screenwriter since 1930 and would go on to write, direct and act in such films as The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Moby Dick and The Man Who Would Be King until his death in 1987. Up until this point I had never seen a film by John Huston, so I can’t speak to any stylistic choices that would place him amongst the auteurs, although since he wrote/co-wrote and directed a whole bunch of his films I think he’d be considered an auteur either way. I will say that The Maltese Falcon is directed well, moves along quickly but the mystery has a good build and the film never feels rushed. Not very adventurous in terms of cinematography, although there is one shot at the end that I like, but with the writing and the acting it doesn’t really need it.

       The only thing about The Maltese Falcon that rubs me the wrong way is the score. Now I’ve been around film noir enough to know that the genre’s connection to jazz music is far less prevalent than pop culture would have you believe, but the orchestral score used here feels off to me. Too peppy at times, even downright goofy. Half the time you aren’t sure whether you’re watching a highlight of Hollywood’s Golden Age or an episode of Leave It to Beaver. The Maltese Falcon is less overtly violent than other film noir so they can kind of get away with it, but there are definitely scenes where the music is very noticeable. Scenes that would normally have a light degree of levity suddenly threaten whimsy, and I don’t know if Bogart can pull off whimsy.

       The Maltese Falcon is not only a good movie, it’s a pioneer for the hundreds of films, books, comics, cartoons that followed in the years hence. Where Citizen Kane’s elephantine reputation might scare some modern moviegoers away, or at least cause them to put it off for special occasions, The Maltese Falcon is supremely watchable; Put it on wherever, whenever, and you’re probably going to have a good time. It gets the recommendation. Next time on our tour, I guess we’ll take a look at that whole World War II thing everyone’s talking about. We’re not doing Casablanca though, so don’t even ask.