Reelin' In The Years -- Our Hospitality (1923), directed by Buster Keaton & John G. Blystone

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Hatfield", by Widespread Panic

       Our next stop on the Reelin’ in the Years brings us to the year 1923, and the man who defined the sad boi aesthetic for generations to come, Buster Keaton. Admittedly I know little about Keaton or his work: Aside from a half-remembered film of his I saw years ago, all I knew about him was that he was, along with Charles Chaplin, one of the preeminent comedians of the silent film days. I didn’t know why he was so popular, I didn’t know what made him so influential, that folks almost a century or so later would still be lauding his name and taking such great care to preserve his body of work. At least cinema nerds are, so if I’m aiming for that prestigious label I suppose it’s about time to sit down and get to know him too. Plus Destiny was kind of a bummer, so we need to lighten the mood a bit.

       Released in 1923, co-directed by Keaton and Jack Blystone and written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez and Joseph A. Mitchell, Our Hospitality was the second film by Buster Keaton Productions, which would later go on to put out such films as The Navigator and The General before closing its doors in 1928. Buster Keaton stars as Willie McKay, the last living member of the McKay family after his father was shot and killed by a member of the Canfield family, and a not-so-subtle reference to the real life feuding families the Hatfields and the McCoys. Having been raised in New York City for the past 20 years Willie doesn’t care about any feuds, but a letter of inheritance for his dad’s estate brings him running back to the old stomping grounds, where it turns out the Canfields are still very much interested in stamping out the McKays once and for all. The Canfield men at least, the lone Canfield women just so happens to be the same young woman who befriends Willie on his train ride over, and she just might prove to be his salvation. Because the Canfields may be unrepentant potential murderers, but the one thing they are not are bad hosts, and guess who just got invited to dinner?

       I guess what surprised me most about Our Hospitality while watching it was just how well the gags hold up. There’s this expressiveness to it, this absurdity that feels more timely than I was expecting from a movie a few years removed from World War I. A train in Our Hospitality that happens to run through a forest doesn’t need a clear path for example, the tracks simply run over any logs or rocks in the way. A loaded gun simply refuses to fire until its intended victim shoots it, at which point it works perfectly. Suddenly all that talk of Keaton being so influential starts to make sense, because in these moments you see the foundations of how comedy is built on a visual level. Looney Tunes, Mel Brooks, The Simpsons, all those Zucker/Abrahams movies, it would seem they all share a common ancestor in Buster Keaton. Kinda like how every one in sixteen people is related to Genghis Khan, or whatever that phrase is.

       Along that same track I was also rather surprised and impressed by Buster Keaton as a performer. He has excellent body language, you’re never confused over whether he’s sad or confused or what have you, and yet it feels like he rarely ever emotes locked as he behind this meek, almost vacant expression. At the same time he doesn’t need to, as his tired, sad clown expression asks the perfect mask for whatever the character needs. Willie can be heroic, he can be cowardly, he can be smart, he can be dumb, and it all works, it all makes sense with this chameleonic persona Keaton has created. The rest of the cast is okay, Natalie Talmadge is a decent enough leading lady, Joe Roberts has a nice mustache, but it ain’t called a Buster Keaton Production for nothing.

       Aside from the comedic aspects, I’ve got to give Keaton and Blystone credit for the cinematography as well. For whatever reason they decided this goofy rom-com needed some breathing room, so they start putting in these expansive shots here and there, especially by the end. Huge cliff sides, giant waterfalls and so on, which we just stumble into for no reason other than big dramatic set-pieces. Seems a bit excessive, almost as excessive as what feels like 15 straight minutes of train-related gags in the beginning of the film, but as it was with Keaton’s performance it feels so natural that you just accept it. ‘Buster Keaton falls off a cliff and 2 minutes later has hijacked a locomotive? Sounds about right’.   

       I’ve also got to give a hand to Robert Israel, who composed the score to this release. Very well done, not only appropriate for the time Our Hospitality was made but syncs up well with and enhances the emotional weight of the film as well. A noticeable improvement over Destiny, in my opinion, and a good showing by Kino Lorber. This is probably not the last time we’ll be seeing their name pop up on this list, so we’ll see if they can keep this up.

       My first experience with Buster Keaton and it was a pleasant surprise! There are probably better films to showcase his talents, I know The General is supposedly one of the best films ever made, but as a gateway film I think Our Hospitality did a splendid job. It gets the recommendation, and the official Reelin’ In the Years tour bus rolls on... 

Reelin' In The Years -- Destiny (1921), directed by Fritz Lang

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Bring Me To Life", by Evanescence

       Is there any filmmaker that has gotten so much praise for so little (on this blog at least) as Fritz Lang? I mean I covered a single film of his, Metropolis, six years ago now and yet it feels like he’s constantly showing up in my name dropping sessions? Got a silent movie? Fritz Lang comes in. Science fiction movie? Fritz Lang. Movie that has even a hint of inspiration from German Expressionism? Fritz Lang. The man had been a filmmaker for over ten years before Metropolis and would continue to be one for decades afterward, as much as I loved that film it’s not necessarily indicative of who Fritz Lang was as an artist and filmmaker. Nor would it be for anyone, besides those folks who only ever did one movie I suppose. Conveniently enough, rectifying that problem also coincides with the kickoff of our unofficial Reelin’ In the Years Tour, and you better settle in because there’s a lot more silent black and white movies to come.

We begin our journey in 1921 with Destiny, or Der müde Tod, written (along with Thea von Harben) and directed by Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang, this being his eighth time in the director’s chair. Described as a ‘German Folk Song in Six Verses’, the film centers around a young couple who meet a mysterious stranger while taking a carriage ride into an unnamed village. When they stop off at the local inn the young woman goes off to play with some cats, and when she returns she finds her fiance gone, along with the stranger. Given that he resides in a vast walled structure without any windows or doors next to a cemetery, it should come as no surprise that this stranger is actually Death, and yet this doesn’t stop the young woman from pleading for her lover’s return. So Death gives her a challenge: if love really is as strong as death, then he’ll give her three chances, three lives of different lands and times, in order to prove it. If even one manages to succeed, then her fiance’s life will be returned to him. If not, well, better start making the down payment on that casket. But as long as it’s not chess, it’ll probably be fine.

Our leads here are Lil Dagover (who you might recognize from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), Walter Jannsen, and Bernard Goetzke as the Young Couple and Death respectively, as well as characters within the 3 lives segments. They’re...okay. Lil Dagover does most of the heavy lifting, which makes sense as she was the protagonist as well as the most famous actress in Germany at the time, but there’s not much to lift as they’re all rather simple characters. They try a little bit of comedy in the China story, which has a bit of charm to it. Mostly it’s weird, especially the kissing scene. I’m not sure who thought that looked good.   

       Where the film really shines, setting the stage for Metropolis a few years later, is Lang’s ambitious eye in regards to visual and set design. Not only do we get some nice looking shots in the village, like Death’s vast wall and the room of men’s lives, but then Destiny goes the extra mile and presents us with Renaissance-era Venice, Imperial China and the Ottoman Empire, filtered through the lens of German Expressionism. Lots of large spaces, interplays between light and shadows, warped scenery, and surprisingly not quite as culturally insensitive as you might expect from a bunch of German in the 1920’s. The most intriguing is arguably China, which in Lang’s hands becomes this strange, Carrollesque wonderland of wizards and storybook landscapes, as if you tasked someone to recite Marco Polo’s travelogue from memory while intoxicated.      

The only thing that I would consider enough of an issue to bring up would be the score, or rather how they use the score. It’s very basic, keeping in line with what you expect silent film music to sound like but not always to the context of the scene. The music during the scene where people are celebrating Ramadan, for example, feels very dour compared to the excited atmosphere that the visuals present, and scenes that would expect to be dour, like talking to the personification of death, sound vaguely cheery. Not really the movie’s fault so much as it is the distributor, Kino Lorber, but they’ve done good work in the past so we’ll call it a mulligan. Plus it’s a silent movie, so if you wanted to just hit the mute button and see if you can sync it up with Dark Side of the Moon there’s nothing stopping you. 

In the end, Destiny starts our Reelin’ In the Years tour off right with a recommendation. While I wouldn’t call it an extraordinary film, a solid B in even more solid filmography at the time, it’s an entertaining little tale with that now familiar Fritz Lang flair. Those entering into the world of silent film or love that tasty Expressionist style will find this an easy watch. Those who aren’t can stick with their regular, non-cinematic German folk songs. We won’t judge.

New years, new ideas

Coming up in the recent days/weeks/months is a little series that I'm unofficially calling Reelin' In the Years, where I'll be filling in the gaps in my little tag timeline and thereby covering an entire century of film, from 1920 up to the present day. I don't know if I'll actually manage to finish it by the end of the year or how it'll affect this year's Marathon, but I'm currently in a reviewing mood so why the fuck not?

See you on the other side.

Delicatessen (1991), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Meat Grinder" by Madvillain

       It’s always something of a treat when you see a couple of creative people just click together on a project. Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor for example: Great on their own, and absolute dynamite when put together. Or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, although I’d give anybody credit for hanging out with Jerry Lewis for any length of time. People who may not be friends per se, may not even like each other, yet they are not only understand each other but elevate each other to heights they may not have achieved on their own. It’s a fascinating thing to see, and as someone who is often trapped in his own head and unable to get any creative writing done, thoughts racing ahead of my ability to act upon them, it’s something I’d like to experience myself at some point. Of course some of those famous pairs ended up hating each other, but I figure if you go in hating yourself you won’t have anything to worry about.

Those of you who understand where I’m going with this might not agree with the idea that French-born filmmakers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro fit this description. They only really worked on three films together after all, one of which was Alien: Resurrection of all things, and Jeunet’s most successful period both critically and commercially didn’t come until afterwards, while Caro’s film career is basically non-existent as far as I can tell. Not much ‘elevating’ going on. Yet City of Lost Children was a big, Ron Pearlman sized treat, and I feel like I’ve name dropped these two enough times over the years that it’s finally time to cover the film that introduced me to these two in the first place. Years before the blog got rolling in those halcyon days when hulu actually had stuff you could watch for free, I stumbled upon a strange little film by the name of Delicatessen, and decided then and there to never shut the hell up about it. And now we’re here.

Released in 1991, co-written by Gilles Adrien, Delicatessen was the feature-length directorial debut of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. France, and possibly the entire world, has been reduced to a blighted, miserable wreck, much like your average town in the Rust Belt. Meat has become scarce, and rather than switching to a vegetable-based diet, the landlord of an apartment building (who happens to be a butcher and the owner of a delicatessen) and his tenants have arrived at the most sensible solution: Lure folks in with the promise of room and board as the maintenance man, murder them in the night and cannibalize their bodies. Such is the fate intended for Stan Louison, ex-circus man, eternal optimist, played by Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon, and at his best when pan-fried and served with soup or a fresh garden salad. However poor Louison is not without allies in this den of wolves; Julie, the butcher’s daughter (played by Marie-Laure Dougnac) is determined that this handyman will not suffer the fate of the others before him. He’s gonna get out, and this apartment building is never going to be the same. Partially because of the severe water damage.

Delicatessen was one of those films that, in hindsight, seated as it was in that collection of weird surrealistic fantasy and science fiction films that have since become my wheelhouse. Our tenants are as motley a crew of misfits as you’d ever see, even if they weren’t cannibals . There’s the woman plagued with voices in her head who plots out elaborate suicides, the brothers who make those little cylinders that moo when you flip them, the pistol packing postman, all folk that would seem right at home in your average mental institution. It’s also nice to see the ‘debut’ appearances of several actors that we would later see in City of Lost Children and Amèlie, like Dominique Pinon, Rufus (who played one of the cow box brothers here and Amèlie’s father) and the late Ticky Holgado. Pinon especially, who so projects this aura of the everyman schlub that it allows him to slip from the likable clown Louison here, to the moronic minions in City, to the misogynist loser in Amèlie without ever skipping a beat. 

Despite that, things never quite come together as it feels they should with this movie. There’s the core of good satire there, that in a time of crisis these folk would literally kill friends and family rather than give up the morning sausage, but it never really comes together in a way that’s completely satisfying. The setting feels a bit too self-contained for the world they’ve established, which makes plot points that happen later feel too convenient. Louison never feels like enough of the doe-eyed optimist to counteract the negativity around him, and while things move towards that direction it feels less like his worldview being challenged and more things happening to him. Which is fine if he’s more of a plot device, a catalyst, and Julie was the main character, but it never definitively moves in that direction either? Delicatessen is a movie full of people moving in a straight line it seems like, they're the exact same person when they come out as they were when they went in. Which I guess doesn’t matter if they all died an agonizingly slow death from starvation after all this, but then that’s true of everything.

Thinking about how to wrap things up, and my mind instantly flashed with comparisons to Jabberwocky, Terry Gilliam’s first proper movie outside of the Monty Python umbrella. Ok films, films that have that spark of something unique that make you perk up your ears and take notice, but trip before the finish line. A prelude to something better, in hindsight. So it was with Gilliam, who proved himself a few years later with Time Bandits and so it was Caro and Jeunet, though to this day it unfortunately has been their last. Delicatessen gets the recommendation, and maybe this short, barely coherent ‘review’ will be what you need to get interested in the works of Jeunet, just as this film was all those years ago. Or at least it might slightly tip the search algorithm in his favor, because apparently he’s hard up for movie-making funds at the moment and needs all the help he can get. I dunno, the internet doesn’t make sense.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: The Seventh Seal (1957), directed by Ingmar Bergman

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Dance of Death", by Andrew Bird

       When many people think of the works of Ingmar Bergman, there’s a good chance that what they envision is pretty similar to that one popular skit from that one popular comedy show, Mystery Science Theater 3000: Movies cloaked in deafening silence, where frigid, Teutonic people toss vague comments at each other as they stare off into the distance, contemplating the meaning of existence. Rather basic for a spoof, I believe they center it around herring because that’s literally all that Sweden’s allowed to be associated with, but I think the fact that the parody even existed speaks to Bergman’s talents and creative vision. Fellini was a great director, as was Truffaut, Kurosawa and the like, but how many people beyond the hardcore cinephiles would recognize a spoof or satirization of their films? Bergman, however, by being so famously dour, stands amongst the likes of Hitchcock and Lynch in that his ‘reputation’ preceedes him. You step into a film 5 minutes in or 10 minutes in or an hour in and you instantly know it’s a Bergman film. That’s power, ladies and gents. That cinematic immortality.

       Of course it’s also possible that the MST3K guys were just making an in-joke and none of viewing knew or cared what the fuck was going on, making that beginning paragraph all bullshit, but we’re down to the wire and I’m writing on fumes here. Anyway, my first non-MST3K taste of the work of our esteemed Mr. Bergman was the Virgin Spring back in Marathon ‘14 (and yes, fucking hell I’ve been doing this for too long), a tragic story of lost innocence and revenge. Since I’ve been bringing back so many other filmmakers back from the past, I figured he was long overdue for a return. A big return, and how much bigger can you get than a film that was referenced by Bill & Ted and Last Action Hero? This is the last time I’ll get to utilize that lead in this month, so let’s make it count with The Seventh Seal.

       Sometime in the middle of the 14th century, knight Antonius Block and his squire J return home to Sweden after spending a decade fighting in the Crusades. While resting on a beach Block is approached by Death, intent on taking him away, but instead Block challenges the reaper to a game of chess, wagering his life on the outcome. The gamble earns him some respite and Antonius and J make the long trip back to Block’s estate, but said trip is anything but peaceful. Sweden has been hit with the infamous Black Plague, and any sense of reason or order is being drowned out under the screams of hundreds or even thousands of the dead and dying. Why is this happening? Is this some punishment from heaven for some unknown transgression? Does god even exist, that he would allow these things to happen? These are the questions that Antonius and his traveling companions face as they make their journey further and further into a world gone mad. Yet no matter how mad it gets, no matter how far they go, death is never far behind.

       So as you’d expect from a film where Death is a character, this movie is about death. How we confront the inevitability of death, on an individual level as well as a collective one. Which is interesting, because it allows for a shift in tones without ever generating a feeling of whiplash. The scene where a parade of people are whipping themselves and crying for god to protect them from this disease they do not and cannot understand (one of the most tragic moments in the film) can fit right alongside a scene where Death kills a guy by sawing down the tree he’s resting on because that’s the way she goes, sometimes a person’s death is a huge tragedy and sometimes their dumb ass fell out of a tree. Antonius’ desperate search for proof of god’s existence to justify the suffering fits right alongside J’s war-hardened nihilism for the same reasons, the looming sense of manic dread in the face of what seems to be the apocalypse is counteracted by songs about farting and horses acting like crows. Even the ending is this mixture of light and darkness, of endings and beginnings. Death comes for us all, The Seventh Seal seems to imply, but you can’t let that keep you from living.

       This is also the beginning of Ingmar Bergman’s collaboration with Max von Sydow by the way, which would last until 1971’s The Touch. Seeing him here and in the Virgin Spring those jokes about Bergman films being silent and dour gain some weight, but I found Antonius’ stoicism barely containing this geyser of self-hatred and existential panic rather compelling. I found he was often overshadowed by the stronger personalities, most commonly J, but I believe that was Bergman’s intention, that Block’s experiences had made him withdraw from the world and fed into his depression. It’s a bit of a trip to watch his work here and remember that thirty some years later he’d be playing a side character in Dreamscape, a movie that most people haven’t even seen, much less set it alongside Ingmar Bergman’s most famous film. What a wild career this dude has had, from Swedish classics to Flash Gordon to The Force Awakens.

One thing I do find a bit weird in hindsight is how much emphasis pop culture places on the chess game portion of The Seventh Seal. Chess is an important part of the film of course, kicking off the plot and setting up scenes but the amount of chess playing in the film is actually quite small, you could count the number of moves made on screen with one hand. Prior to this review, I thought The Seventh Seal WAS the game of chess, some kind of bottle movie where Death and the protagonist played each other for an hour and change, interspersed with conversations about philosophy and meaning (and no, you can’t have my idea Jim Jarmusch). It’s still a film about the struggle between man and death, but I guess the competition with the grim reaper aspect of The Seventh Seal is more appealing than the ‘struggling against the inevitability of death and an indifferent universe’ thing. Maybe Antonius should have challenged him to a fiddle contest.

       The Seventh Seal is probably one of those movies that’s too good to be on a Halloween movie list, but since I’m the one writing the reviews, it’s going in anyway. There’s nothing in the way of spooks, Death is the only fantastical bit here and he’s just some bald dude in a robe, but it does deal in some heavy subjects which can be scary to think about when you’re lying in bed trying to sleep. Yet there’s this calming presence to this film as well, a feeling of peace not unlike those childhood days after a good night of trick-or-treating. The perfect atmosphere to end this long, dark marathon of the soul, a perfect film to recommend. Hope you have a good time, and I hope to see you again on the next review.

Happy Halloween!!! 

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Alphaville (1965), directed by Jean-Luc Godard

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Computer Age", by Neil Young

       Of all the filmmakers that made up what film historians now call the French New Wave, it seems to me that none can quite top Jean-Luc Godard. Francois Truffaut had his successes, as well as a fantastic book on Alfred Hitchcock, but he also stank up the joint with his adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Louis Malle had a fruitful career as well, but I can’t say the work of his that I’ve covered (My Dinner with Andre and his segments in Spirits of the Dead) really blew me away. Godard, however, seems like the romantic of the group. Full of big ideas, big emotions, who unabashedly attacked film like a painter would attack a canvas. His films can be very polarizing, in fact I think the trope of weird arthouse cinema was in part inspired by him, but if one defines the purpose of cinema as a means of self-expression, of eliciting an emotional response from the audience, then Godard’s place in the annals of history is assured. If nothing else you’ve got to give him a smidge of respect for inspiring other famous directors like Martin Scorsese, and that smidge is just enough to buy him the penultimate place in this year’s Marathon. What a shock, eh? Did I leave you breathless?

       At 24.17 Oceanic Time, in perhaps another galaxy entirely Ivan Johnson, a reporter for the Figaro-Pravda newspaper in what is known as the Outer Countries, arrives in the city of Alphaville. Alphaville is a technological marvel, a society whose every aspect is managed by an enormous super-computer known as Alpha 60, the invention of the city’s chief figure, Professor Leonard Von Braun. Sounds pretty cool at first, until you learn a while back Alpha 60 obtained consciousness, and his views on humanity has transformed Alphaville into a mindless dystopian state, where the toughs at Civil Control routinely arrest and execute people for illogical thinking, every other lady seems to have been branded and brainwashed into soulless comfort women, and words like ‘love’ and ‘why’ are practically nonexistent. Poetry, music, art, theater, all relics of those inferior civilizations that aren’t ruled by a couple hundred pounds of psychopathic silicon. All things that Ivan Johnson enjoys, being from the Ouer Countries (New York to be specific). Except his name isn’t Ivan Johnson, newspaper reporter, it’s Lemmy Caution, secret agent. And his job isn’t to write an article on Alpha 60’s creator Leonard Von Braun, it’s to kill him.

       A science fiction film noir set in the future  whose principal theme deals with modern society’s over-reliance on machines to the detriment of its humanity. Throw in a megacorporation and Jean-Luc Godard would have preempted the cyberpunk genre by 2 decades. Not exactly of course, I don’t think the internet was even science fiction in 1965, but it’s fascinating to watch this and see the roots of films like Blade Runner. Particularly the first half of the film, dealing with Lemmy’s investigation and culture shock dealing with this weird ass society, and you’re subconsciously waiting for him to pull his gun out and gun down some Replicants. I love sci-fi and I love film noir, hardboiled detectives, femme fatales the works, so the more I can get that combo in me the happier I am.

       The second half isn’t as tight. Keeping in mind that certain nuances in the script are going to be lost in translation, although I’m sure the people at Kino Lorber do great work, there’s a certain point where things just stop making sense. Not in a ‘suspension of disbelief’ kind of way, I legit couldn’t understand what the fuck the characters were going on about. Conveniently enough this also where Godard starts getting ‘artsy’, like suddenly cutting into a dark room where Lemmy and Natacha (our love interest) pose around each other, or ‘hey these 5 seconds are going to be photo negative, enjoy!’ The exact kind of thing that you would expect get mocked if the name on the poster wasn’t Godard, and maybe still then. Things which I wouldn’t necessarily mind given the kinds of film that pass through here, but on a first impression comes across as pretentious. Why is a computer talking about becoming a tiger?

It’s also worth noting that there isn’t much of anything in the vein of special effects in this sci-fi movie. In fact if you had somehow stumbled upon it while channel surfing you wouldn’t be able to tell this is a science fiction movie at all until Alpha 60’s toad of a voice came up or someone mentioned the word galaxies. I think it works out fine, but if European science fiction tends to be about the ideas rather than the American position of the spectacle, then Alphaville might be the most European science fiction film ever made.

       I’m also not entirely sold on our main character, personally speaking. The stoic detective/investigator is a common trope in film noir, and I think that actor pulls that off well, but in the context of the film it seems a bit strange. After all, the entire point is that Alphaville is full of these robotic people and yet Lemmy doesn’t come across as any more emotional than any of the other characters. He’ll say things but he won’t express things. You could chalk that up to his nature as a secret agent, but it ends up having to force the issue somewhat at the end to give the larger cultural conflict between Alphaville and the Outer Countries some weight. 

       This is also another one of those movies that loves to use and reuse music stings, specifically a 2 second burst of swelling brass that will turn out to be a greater monster than Alpha 60. I don’t know if this would be a universal issue, but when I was watching it with headphones the horns were mixed so loud that I actually had to turn down the volume of the movie because it was physically painful. A tolerable experience if the context of the scene called for it, but of course if I’m writing about it. Godard apparently had an addiction because he constantly drops this cacophony in the film, even when it makes no sense to do so. Oh, you’ve got a 10 second scene of Lemmy showing pictures to passersby on the street. Better pretend this is a dramatic scene then! Just outright souring the viewing experience.

       Alphaville is a film that’s long been on the Marathon to-do list, and perhaps the expectations of what it could be ended up overshadowing what it actually is. It’s a fascinating film for the time though, a spiritual ancestor for properties like Blade Runner and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and I think overall Godard managed to push some interesting ideas while still making an accessible movie. Which wasn’t always the case with his films, from what I’ve heard. It gets the recommendation, as well as the award for Easiest Halloween Costume. Forgo logic and pig out on candy and popcorn this Halloween instead.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Drunken Master (1978), directed by Yuen Woo-Ping

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "8 Drunken Gods", by Chow Fu-liang

       Bruce Lee may have been the pioneer of what we know of as the martial arts genre of film, but I don’t think anyone can deny that Jackie Chan was its greatest innovator. With a style honed by the rigorous acting training he underwent as a child for the Peking Opera , a natural gift for comedy and a willingness (if not desire) to put his body through hell for the sake of the movie, Chan not only firmly established himself as one of the top dogs of Hong Kong/Chinese action cinema, he also found great success in the West as well with such films as Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon. I first discovered him as a child through the animated series Jackie Chan Adventures, one of my favorite shows back in those days, and even if didn’t match up 1 to 1 with Chan’s actual life, it did put his name in my head, and later pushed me towards his films. Bruce Lee was undoubtedly a legend, but that legend was confined to a couple films and a role in short-lived superhero show. Jackie Chan, on the other hand, WAS martial arts to me for a long time, and when I think of martial arts movies, his name is the one that immediately comes to mind. Not Bruce Lee, not Jet Li or Tony Jaa, but Jackie ‘remember that time I dressed up as Chun-Li from Street Fighter?’ Chan. So if the newly established guidelines state that we get in at least one martial arts film a year, it only makes sense that he would eventually make an appearance. A proper inauguration, if you will.

       His 37th or so film of that decade, his fourth film of 1978, and his second with director Yuen Woo-Ping (the first, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, having come out earlier that year), Drunken Master stars Jackie Chan as a young Wong Fei Hung (or Freddie Wong, depending on your dub), a real life Chinese folk hero, martial artist and acupuncturist. The son of a well-respected martial arts master, Hung is something of a lazy punk, relying on his natural talents in kung-fu to get out of the messes he finds himself in. When he finally pushes things too far his father arranges for him to be taken in by Master So-Hi for one year, in the hope that he will find discipline through training. Despite appearing like a feeble old drunk, So-Hi reveals that he is more than a match for the over-confident and rebellious Hung, possessing an incredibly bizarre and powerful kung-fu that astounds anyone who comes up against it. Hung, deathly allergic to strain or work of any kind bristles at the idea of the harsh training So-Hi, but it’s training he’ll need, as an assassin with deadly kung-fu roams the land. Can Wong Fei Hung become the Drunken Master, or will he die on his knees? You’ll have to watch to find out.

       If you’ve never seen a Jackie Chan movie before now I can’t think of a gateway film as good as Drunken Master. You’ve got the long takes of quick, intricate and acrobatic fight choreography, the use of props in said choreography, the comedic aspects, everything that defined Jackie Chan as an action star wrapped up in one movie. Not only that, but this is a Hong Kong action movie, which means they’re not selling you a sports car with nothing under the hood. You came for fights, and Drunken Master packs them in as much as they can. With weapons and without, in multiple styles, all the while Jackie Chan (in his physical prime) flips and move through space like gravity forgot his name. It’s amazing to see, almost as if Jackie and the crew are doing their very best to make sure every minute in this 2+ hour movie doesn’t go to waste. If only some of the other filmmakers in this Marathon had taken notes.

       As for cons, well as as a story there’s not to say, there’s not much of a plot or character development beyond ‘guy trains in martial arts to beat people up’. There’s also the fact that use of martial arts in this film emphasizes acrobatics and theatrics, which means it can lack the visceral energy that made The Big Boss and Enter the Dragon such great films. In terms of comedy Drunken Master has a tendency towards the childish and cartoonish at times, including fart and poop jokes, which might turn more serious minded people away. Then there’s the English dub, which has some issues beyond the trope of kung-fu movies having bad dubs. Aside from shoe-horning English names here and there, Wong Fei Hung and his dad becoming Freddie and Robert Wong for example, I just found Jackie’s voice actor rather annoying to listen to at some points. Of course Hung’s character does a lot of whining, but there’s something about the tone of it that struck my ear the wrong way. Definitely a movie you’d want to go subs not dubs for, or you could get up off your ass and learn Mandarin. I mean, unless you’re a coward or something.

       A lot of films get labeled as popcorn movies, occasionally in a derogatory, ‘turn your brain off’ manner, but Drunken Master is an example of this at its best. So much work, so much blood, sweat and tears shed all so that we can see Jackie Chain act like an idiot and beat the shit out of people with chairs and Hong Kong audiences drank it in like fine wine, Drunken Master making over twice what Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow managed to rake in. I loved it too, which is why it’s getting the unabashed full recommendation. It might not seem like Halloween fare, the only horrors here are the horrors of alcoholism, but if you need a fun break from the spooks then this should be your first stop. Drinks are on me.