Obscure Spongebob Reference Not Intended

Film: Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

Our NetFlix subscription has been a boon in finding a lot of movies, but NetFlix doesn’t have everything. There are probably 100 or more films not in the NetFlix library that might show up eventually and might not. One of these is Albert Lewin’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, which has been sitting in my NetFlix queue at the bottom in the “not available” category for months. What a treat to find it at a public library!

Like many films of the day, this one starts at the end. A collection of Spanish fishermen dredge up something horrible—a pair of bodies intertwined. We don’t see them; we see only their hands clasped together in death on the beach. The story is then picked up by a professor of archaeology named Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender), who relates the tale of Pandora (Ava Gardner).

Pandora is a beautiful but selfish and self-centered woman. Every man who knows her, even in some respects Fielding, is infatuated with her, and she uses this knowledge to force men to act in the way she wants. She’s a tease, and in our opening scene with her, she teases a man named Reggie (Marius Goring) into suicide. Since he can’t have her, he poisons himself. She also teases Stephen (Nigel Patrick), the object of Janet’s affection. Stephen is a driver, and has spent two years building a car to break the land speed record. Pandora promises to marry him if he pushes his car into the sea. He does. She tells him since it is the ninth day of the third month, she will marry him on the third day of the ninth month.

Unbeknownst to Pandora is the presence of Hendrick van der Zee (James Mason), who has shown up in the small Spanish port. Pandora swims out to his ship and meets him, surprised that he is alone. He is in the middle of painting a portrait, quite coincidentally of the Greek myth Pandora, and the face on the portrait is Pandora’s. She becomes quite interested in him as a result, and he joins her group of friends and suitors on the Spanish coast.

What we (and Fielding) learn is that van der Zee is truly the Flying Dutchman of legend. He killed his wife, convinced that she had been unfaithful, and declares a curse on himself at his trial. He escapes his jail cell and returns to his ship only to discover that the curse has come true. He cannot die. He is forced to roam the Earth alone and eternally. Every seven years, he can come ashore for six months to find a woman and convince her to love him so much that she will give up her life for him.

Into this mix, we add a matador named Juan Montalvo (Mario Cabre), who is also infatuated with Pandora. He schemes against the other men (especially van der Zee), Stephen rescues his car from the ocean and attempts to set the land speed record a few days before the wedding, and everything comes to a head, leading back to the beginning. Honestly, it’s impossible to spoil the ending of this movie. If you’ve seen the first five minutes, you know how it’s going to end.

The question is the movie’s place on the list. Does it belong? I’m not really sure. It’s a nice story and an interesting one because of the supernatural elements in the story. I’ll be blunt here: I like James Mason a lot. I think he was almost always great and it’s impossible not to watch him when he’s on the screen. Ava Gardner, though, does nothing for me. I’m not sure why.

While the film is about the romance, it’s also about the growth of the Pandora character. She’s nasty for quite a bit of the film. It’s evident that van der Zee is enamored with her because she is the very image of his murdered wife. She’s mean, though, through a good part of the movie. This is entirely intentional, of course, because if there is no real growth in the character, there’s no real purpose behind the film. As the film goes on, she learns that her own desire to hurt others comes from her own unhappiness, and by the end of the film, rather than goading Montalvo, she seeks only to calm him and send him on his way.

The supernatural elements seem to be an attempt to add weight to the film, but I don’t know if there’s enough there. It’s a sweet movie, and a tearjerker of sorts, but all in all, it doesn’t belong with the greatest of the great.

Why to watch Pandora and the Flying Dutchman: Because James Mason kicks ass.
Why not to watch: Too fluffy to be anything more than a curiousity.

Alone in a Sea of Humanity

Film: Lost in Translation
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.


Suffering from jealousy is not one of my problems when it comes to actors on the big screen. It would be cool to be in a movie once—I’d love to be horribly killed in a film, either by zombies or as a zombie, but beyond that, I have no ill feelings toward the people on the screen. The main reason for that is that I am not an actor. The last time I acted seriously was 1988, and I gave it up for good immediately following that. I’d make a fool of myself in a movie.

The money would be nice, though. I could certainly handle the lifestyle. Or could I? Bob Harris (Bill Murray) would appear to suggest that the same things that the rest of us go through are gone through by those at the top end of the fame and money spectrum. Life is a series of boring events, being pushed and prodded by others, and drinking away the pain. Such is the tale of Lost in Translation.

Harris is an aging action movie star well past his prime who has shown up in Tokyo to film a few commercials for whiskey, and the fact that he’s being paid $2 million is the only thing that is comforting him. He feels lost, not just in Tokyo but also in his life. His marriage is stable, but boring; while he is in Tokyo away from his family, his wife constantly harangues him about carpet samples, which she sends him. He spends his evenings in the bar trying to drink away his jet lag and boredom.

Also staying in his hotel is Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), the wife of a photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) in Tokyo for a photo shoot. He doesn’t have a lot of time for her, and she spends her day being bored and lonely and completely out of place in a city in which she understands nothing and no one understands her.

The two find each other and gravitate toward each other. This is an age difference that we have been taught to expect in movies, the much older man and the very young woman, but this is not the typical romance. Their mutual attraction, while it certainly contains something physical, remains almost platonic. They become not romantic love for each other, but a center of calm and a place of normality. In a city where the language is completely unintelligible and the customs and current fads are strange and unfathomable, they each become a place of comfort for each other. This is what is central to their relationship—not sex, but peace of mind.

Bob continues to live out the absurdities of his existence, appearing on a Japanese talk show. The show is almost unexplainable, a sort of video madhouse that could only make sense for those fluent in the language—he is as out of place here as he is everywhere else in Tokyo except for at the side of Charlotte. That night, after dealing with more carpet samples, he finds himself alone and falls into the arms of the hotel lounge singer (Catherine Lambert, who evidently was the actual lounge singer at the real hotel in Tokyo). This causes a minor rift between him and Charlotte, almost as if he was unfaithful to her instead of his wife.

There is a sweetness to this film in which the romance is made more real by the fact that it isn’t consummated. Right around the middle of the film, the two are lying on her hotel room bed fully clothed after watching La Dolce Vita, and they talk about his life and hers. Both of them are lost in their lives. He is bored with his existence, tired of constant attention and being fussed over by people he can’t understand and doesn’t want to understand. He’s adrift. She hasn’t discovered yet what she wants and has lost any will to do anything. It’s a touching scene with real intimacy despite the fact that they barely touch. Their physical contact is limited to his patting her feet near the end of the scene, but it is such a comforting and natural gesture that it resonates with a real affection.

There is an opposite to Bob in the film; this is Kelly (Anna Faris) who is in Tokyo promoting her new film. Kelly is everything that Bob and Charlotte are not. She is vain, stupid, arrogant, and unable to see her own ridiculousness and idiocy. There is no indication that Bob was anything like this at the start of his career, but I like to think that he was. Kelly is too unaware to realize that she’s nothing more than a pretty face—she thinks that people love her because she is special and talented. Bob, world-weary, has grown up enough to realize his own irrelevance while Charlotte appears convinced that she never had any relevance in the first place.

Typically with a romance—and this is a romance despite the almost complete absence of sex and the total absence of it between our two main characters—the desire of the audience is to have the couple end up together. I don’t think that’s ever on the table here. I don’t want these two to run off together, and really, I don’t think either of them wants it. They do, of course, the same way everyone thinks “if only” at certain times in their lives, but there is no real danger that each will abandon his or her spouse and stay in Tokyo. Their parting is inevitable. And yet even though that parting is tender, sweet, and sad, there is a sense of joy in it as well—if nothing else, they’ve found someone who can always be a friend when a friend is needed.

This is a pretty film. Coppola’s idea to not subtitle the Japanese is the right one—it places us in the audience in the same position as the characters, who smile and nod like many people do when confronted with a language they cannot possibly fathom.

While all of the roles are well acted, this is Bill Murray’s movie. It shows exactly where he has come in terms of presenting a character on the screen. Bob is a real person. He makes jokes that only he understands and finds funny. There is a part of him that appears to revel in the bizarre circumstances he finds himself in. He plays this role with complete resignation of his life being what it is and nothing more or different that Charlotte becomes something he needs to attain. He’s finally found something worth striving for, and there’s a real sense of ache in him, of utter confusion and frustration and bewilderment, that the scenes with her are real treasures.

This is a spectacular film, and I’m happy I watched it, and happier now that I own a copy and can watch it again whenever I want. It feels like reality, like a few days sliced from someone’s life. I can give it no higher compliment.

Why to watch Lost in Translation: Proof that Bill Murray has grown up. His comedy is tinged with tragedy.
Why not to watch: Ennui, pain, and desperate loneliness

The Oddest Flower in the Bouquet of Love

Film: Midnight Cowboy
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.


What will you do to survive? How far will you go? In John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, we discover exactly how for our putative hero Joe Buck (Jon Voight) will go to live another day in New York City in pursuit of a sad little dream.

Joe is a cowboy, not a “for-real cowboy,” as he tells people throughout the film, but the closest thing to a cowboy in New York City. At the start of the film, Joe is a dishwasher in the Podunk ass-end of Texas who decides that life would be better if he were having a lot more sex. While that’s a career option for women with little moral standing, there’s not really a huge market for guys looking to get paid to have sex with women in the Podunk ass-end of Texas, so Joe collects his last paycheck, buys himself some slick cowboy duds, and hops a bus for New York City.

Sadly for Joe, New York doesn’t operate in the same way that he’s used to. He’s a rube, and he’s also an obvious victim and target. It’s apparent immediately that Joe is either going to need a lot of good luck or a very good teacher if he’s going to survive, let alone thrive in the city. He starts his “career” as a hustler by propositioning women on the street, asking if they can show him to the Statue of Liberty. This gets him into the penthouse of Cass (Sylvia Miles), and it appears that his career is off to a rollicking start.

Sadly, though, Cass is offended by his asking her for cash, and ends up demanding money from him. The cycle continues when Joe meets Enrico Salvatore “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a crippled no-account who fashions himself as a con man but is too well known by the downtrodden to hustle anyone but a rube like Joe. Ratso hustles Joe for $20, telling him that he’ll take him to a “manager” but instead dropping him off with a religious fanatic (John McGiver, a classic “that guy”).

Eventually, Joe finds Ratso again, and shakes him down for his money, but naturally it’s all been spent. In a rare moment of conscience, Ratso takes in the big stranger, inviting him back to his place, which is a condemned building that the two squat in. They become petty criminals, scamming people for change, ripping off grocers for food, and trying to find a way to get Joe’s stud career started. It finally happens when Joe receives an invitation to a party hosted by some Andy Warhol wannabees, and the pair manages to entice Shirley (Brenda Vaccaro) to pay $20 to spend the night with Joe. However, Ratso takes a tumble down the stairs, and his health takes a drastic turn for the worse. He becomes convinced that the only thing that will solve his health problems is getting to Florida.

That’s the rough outline. Contained within is a series of some of the most tragic and sad events I’ve seen in a movie for a long time. Joe is a complete innocent, good only for lovin’ as he tells us at one point. Through a series of flashbacks, we see the life he spent with his grandmother, who frequently abandoned him. We also see his relationship with his girlfriend Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt), a relationship that ends in a gang rape and Annie in an institution.

It’s evident pretty quickly after Joe hits New York that his dream is doomed. Flat broke and kicked out of his hotel, Joe scams crackers off tables in restaurants. Desperate at one point, he allows a young gay man (Bob Balaban) to take him into a movie theater and perform oral sex on him, a low he didn’t think he was capable of reaching. In this world, though, nothing can go right for Joe, and the young man doesn’t have any money to pay him, leaving Joe still broke and, by his own code, defiled. By the end of the film, Joe is willing to do almost anything to get Ratso to Florida, pleasuring men being fair game.

There are definite homosexual and homoerotic undertones throughout the film, particularly in the relationship between Joe and Ratso. Are they gay? It’s hard to tell. There are certainly tender moments between the two of them. While we see flashbacks of Joe’s past, when we enter Ratso’s mind, it’s to envision his magical future in Florida, generally with a shirtless, attractive Joe. It’s not too hard to read this as homoerotic, but I don’t think it is. That these two men come to love each other, but I don’t gather a sexual thing between the two of them. They’re merely devoted to each other. Still, that’s been a common read. This is further enforced by the constant gaybashing the two of them do. This is further indicated by Joe’s inability to perform with Shirley until she accuses him of being gay, which suddenly changes everything. Of course, this is merely my opinion, and the reading that the two men are closeted is certainly one that can be justified.

What stays with me from the film is the plight of these two men, desperate for anything to get them out of their situation and unable to do anything that works, never getting ahead. At one point, Joe pawns his little battery operated radio for $5. This doesn’t sound like much except that the radio is virtually the only thing he has left from his life in Texas. It’s been his constant companion, the only thing he has for entertainment. To see it go, and go so quickly is a tragic moment in the film. It’s evident to anyone watching that there’s no chance in hell of him getting his radio back. They freeze in their squat, barely able to cook a meal, and at almost every turn, their life together disintegrates.

Midnight Cowboy is celebrated in no small part because it was originally released with an X rating, a rating that was subsequently dropped to R without any changes or cuts. Why did it get an X initially? I have no idea. It’s certainly got enough troubling material in it that I wouldn’t let anyone under 17 watch it, but it’s hardly explicit.

Despite the fact that this film is almost as old as I am, very little in it has aged. This is still a masterful film worth watching, worth studying.

Why to watch Midnight Cowboy: The strangest love this side of Martha Ivers.
Why not to watch: You can’t get past the X rating

Noah's Western Ark

Film: Stagecoach
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.


Consider for a moment Noah’s Ark. I don’t care if you’re a strict fundamentalist (and if you are, you probably aren’t reading my blog in the first place) or if you find it a disturbing piece of Jehovah fan fiction. For just a moment, consider the story. Noah takes a motley assortment of critters onto a big boat, and then the boat sails through treacherous waters to arrive safely at the end. Noah’s Ark is a good metaphor for a particular type of movie. Put a bunch of very different people on or in the same vehicle and send them on their way. If things get boring, add some problems.

And thus we have John Ford’s Stagecoach, where the mode of conveyance is, of course, a stagecoach driving over and over through the same valley (really) through Apache country. There are soldiers, conflicts, rampaging natives, chases, the birth of a child, moral superiority, close calls, and a cavalry charge to save the day. If you’re wondering where a lot of the conventions in Westerns came from, you need look no further.

Essentially, we have a stagecoach leaving one town and headed for another. The locations and names of the towns aren’t important. Thrown onto the stage we have a motley assortment of Old Time West-y folks who have many, many reasons to dislike each other intently. Naturally, this means that they’ll be travelling together in close quarters. Inside the coach, we have Dallas (Claire Trevor), a woman of fallen moral character, who is being run out of town by the decency league of morally upright women. Going with her is the drunken town doctor (Thomas Mitchell), being kicked out for his own moral failings.

We’ve also got one of those morally upright (and uptight) women (Louise Platt), who is married to a soldier at a nearby fort. She’s pregnant, although no one knows this at first. We have the perpetually afraid and nervous whiskey salesman, Peacock (Donald Meek) who would much rather turn around than plow through dangerous territory. A bank manager named Gatewood (Berton Churchill) is desperate to leave town because he’s stealing $50,000 in payroll from the Western Union. We also have a slick gambler (John Carradine) who claims to be going for the protection of the women.

On top of the stage we have Buck (Andy Devine) and Curley (George Bancroft), who happens to be the sheriff. He’s going because a dangerous criminal named the Ringo Kid (John Wayne) happens to have broken out of prison and Curley is anxious to bring him back in. Ringo is looking for some payback on a man named Luke Plummer, and he broke out of jail to get it. It’s evident that both Buck and Curley like the Kid, but Curley has a job to do as the sheriff, and he’s going to do it. The coach encounters the Kid just as it leaves town, and the Kid hops a ride, since the eventual goal of the coach is to get to the town where Luke Plummer is waiting.

It’s easy to look at this film and assume that John Wayne’s character is the center because these days, he’s easily the most famous and well known face in the bunch (although it was Mitchell who won an Oscar for his role, and he’s incredibly familiar as the uncle in It’s a Wonderful Life). That’s a mistake, though. While Wayne’s character is important to the overall narrative, each of the characters on and around the stagecoach has his or her important role to play. Those who start in the positions of moral and social authority—the pregnant woman, the gambler, and the bank manager—end up fallen in some way by the end of the film. Those in low status—the criminal, the prostitute, the coward, and the drunk—all end up redeemed. Each character is critical, and each has his or her moments. Peacock, for instance, is so meek and unassuming that he can’t get anyone to get his name or occupation straight (he’s mistaken for a preacher frequently) until the very end of the movie, after he’s been wounded and survived. Our society matron ends up depending on Dallas the prostitute for assistance, comfort, and care of her child; in fact, it is Dallas who carries the child for almost the entire movie that we are aware of a child. The pregnancy is hidden throughout, and the mother is never seen holding her own infant.

In short, it’s the relationships that happen between the people that are the real thrust of Stagecoach. The ensemble nature of the story and the cast is what drives the film, not Wayne’s performance. If any character is the true center of the film, it is Claire Trevor’s Dallas. When the Ringo Kid goes to confront his nemeses, we see only the beginnings of the fight, and our focus is immediately shifted to Dallas and her concern with the aftermath.

In a world where the Western has become a clichéd film genre, it’s difficult to attempt to watch these clichés unfold without reacting to them in a jaded fashion. It’s important to keep in mind with a film like Stagecoach that in many way, the conventions of the last-minute cavalry rescue, the town drunk, the hooker with the heart of gold, and many of the other standard characters and tropes of the genre were still being invented.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that as a Western, Stagecoach looks its age. There’s no real way around the fact that this film would probably flop if made exactly like this today. However, there’s much more here than just a standard Western. Stagecoach is worth watching for what Ford was able to accomplish with not just story, but with a cast this large and this good, and with a cast of characters this diverse and yet complete. Are the characters one- and two-dimensional? Perhaps, but each one a complete story arc, and each one grows and changes over the course of the film. The drunk reforms, the whiskey salesmen survives through his fear, the society dame has her prejudice revealed, the bank manager is destroyed. Even Ringo, his revenge complete, has realized that it’s time to stop being a wild gun and time to settle down and raise a family.

In short, don’t watch it because it’s a great Western. Watch it because Ford was a great director, and this is still a great film.

Why to watch Stagecoach: It’s the film that made John Wayne a star.
Why not to watch: Just because many clichés started here, it doesn’t mean they don’t still read as clichés.

Bette Davis Eyes

Film: Now, Voyager
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

Sometimes, people have really good years. If you’d asked me a few months ago to define a good year for an actor, I’d have suggested James Mason in 1959; he was in Journey to the Center of the Earth and North by Northwest, which is the greatest film in the world in your humble narrator’s opinion. However, I might now suggest that both Claude Rains and Paul Henreid may have had the finest year ever in 1942. Both were in Casablanca, and almost weren’t because they were kept overlong filming Now, Voyager for Irving Rapper.

We start in the Vale home of Boston, and they are frequently referred to as “The Vales,” so you know they’re moneyed. Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is the spinster daughter of Mrs. Henry Vale (Gladys Cooper), who is unquestionably in the running for most horrifying mother in screen history. Charlotte’s life is cloistered—there’s no other real way to put it. She’s virtually a shut in, dumpy, and completely under the thumb of her vicious and reprehensible mother. She’s also on the verge of a nervous breakdown, equally because of her mother.

Into this stew of misery enters Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), one of the greatest psychiatrists in the world. She confesses her pitiful life to him, including the fact that her one brief romance was squashed by Mommy Dearest and she is desperately unhappy. He is convinced that she could recover completely if she spent a little time at his sanitarium up in Vermont. She goes, and we discover that indeed, the stay in the sanitarium changes her dramatically. Rather than rush home to see mother again, she instead takes a cruise, where her life changes even more.

It is here that she meets Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid), a married man with a terrible marriage and a daughter very much like Charlotte. She and Jerry are strongly attracted to each other despite his situation. The cruise ends up in Rio de Janeiro and the pair go for a ride with a driver who speaks no English. When they end up in an accident that destroys the car, the two are stranded for a night. Naturally, the movie magic happens, and the two of them end up very much in love. She misses the boat, and he convinces her to stay with him for five days before catching the boat in Buenos Aires. Love blooms, of course, although both of them know it is doomed.

Eventually, Charlotte goes back home and confronts Mother, who is having none of it. However, Charlotte sticks to her guns and defies her mother. It helps that she receives a gift of flowers from Jerry, which gives her courage. At a dinner, before which Mother damages her ankle, Charlotte takes charge and much to the shock of her relatives, is charming and in command. It is here that she meets Elliot Livingston (John Loder), and the two begin a courtship despite the fact that her true love is Jerry.

She and Jerry meet again at a party, and suddenly romance is in bloom again. On a whim, Charlotte ends the romance with Elliot, cancelling their impending nuptials. When she announces this to her mother, Mother obliges everyone in the audience by keeling over with a heart attack and expiring. Charlotte inherits everything, but is so guilt-ridden that she immediately returns to the sanitarium.

It’s here that she meets Christina (Janis Wilson, who is strangely uncredited for being so central to the film), who happens to be the daughter of Jerry. She is immediately taken with the girl, in part because she reminds her of herself and partly because she is Jerry’s daughter. And, of course, this means that once again she is tied up in the life of Jerry Durrance.

Now, Voyager is not the happiest movie in the world, which might well seem strange for a romance from the mid-1940s. Movies from this era, the country in the middle of a terrible war on two fronts, tended to be happy affairs because the country needed them. This one doesn’t go for the feel-good, though, which does nothing for me but make me respected it all the more. It goes where it should and where it needs to.

One of the great things about the film is not just the acting of Bette Davis, but the role itself. Charlotte Vale, who starts as such a pitiable character ends up as a truly strong woman in charge of her own destiny. It’s a fantastic transformation, and one that is actually believable. Her final scene with Jerry is one of the great scenes from any film, and certainly the most affecting in the film.

Aside from the final line, the great moment in the film happens three times—Jerry plants two cigarettes in his mouth, lights both, and gives one to Charlotte. It seems so natural and such a magically subtle piece of intimacy that it almost seems impossible that it was scripted.

It’s also worth noting that the great characters in the film are not limited to Charlotte, the love-struck Jerry, and the highly entertaining and forthright doctor. My absolute favorite character in the film is Mrs. Vale’s private nurse, Dora (Mary Wickes). She’s a firecracker, and is a small breath of comedy in what is otherwise the very model of what people are thinking of when they think “tear-jerker.”

This is an impressive film, that is, I think, more relevant and accessible today than it was when first filmed. There’s a sense of real backbone in the character of Charlotte Vale, a sense of feminism before the word had a meaning that resonates very powerfully today. Sometimes films age like vinegar and sometimes they age like fine wine. Now, Voyager is the second sort; it’s gotten better with age.

It’s worth noting that this is not a film that could easily be remade. The sensibilities of the 1940s are very important to this movie. Today, Jerry would get divorced from his shrew of a wife and marry Charlotte a couple of days after the cruise, destroying the entire second half of the film. The fact that their love cannot be is what drives the entire narrative structure of the film. I’m perfectly fine with this; since the film wouldn’t work in that sense for a modern audience, it means that any attempt to bring this movie into the current era is virtually doomed from the outset. Good. This one should be left alone as the classic it is.

Why to watch Now, Voyager: Bette Davis at the absolute top of her very strong game.
Why not to watch: The waves of pure, entitled evil that waft off Mrs. Vale.

Living Through Another Cuba

Film: Memorias de Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment)
Format: VHS from Black Hawk College through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.

Aside from Ricky Ricardo, Fidel Castro, cigars, and GitMo, what can you tell me about Cuba? I admit to a lack of knowledge about the little communist stronghold to America’s southeast, so I was curious to see the only Cuban entry (I think) in “The Book.” Tomas Gutierrez Alea’s Memorias de Subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) is in part archive of the Cuban revolution and in part the story of a man trying to find his way in a world that has suddenly and irrevocably changed around him.

Our guide through this new Cuba (the film is set between the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis) as well as the focus of the film, the subject of and source of the meditations, is Sergio (Sergio Corrieri), a middle-aged failed writer and former member of the bourgeoisie class. While he contemplates the various changes that have taken place in Cuba, he also contemplates the three main relationships he has had with women in his life: Hanna, his first great love; Laura, his wife who has left for Miami; and Elena (Daisy Grenados), a young and fairly dim but pretty girl who accuses him of rape.

Of these three women, it is Elena who we spend the most time with. She is attractive, but not very bright or educated. While touring Hemingway’s Cuban home, for instance, she refers to him as “Mr. Way.” Sergio is attracted to her for a number of reasons, not the least of which is her natural beauty. Beyond that, though, he comments that he finds women more attractive when they are made that way by things—natural beauty itself isn’t that appealing, but women who have been made beautiful by nice clothing, cosmetics, and the like are appealing to him. In Elena, he has a girl he can essentially turn into what he wants. He does this at first by promising her his wife’s abandoned clothing.

We discover late in the film that Elena is only 16, and when Sergio doesn’t marry her, her family accuses him of taking advantage of her because of her mental deficiency. This is, aside from her apparent native dimness, the first we’ve seen of anything like forced sex on the girl. In fact, she seems like a pretty willing participant, and this is no doubt significant. A metaphor for the Cuban state, perhaps? Probably. It’s worth noting that the more “Cuban” sounding the women’s names become, the more they attempt to hurt Sergio. Hanna, who is German, is still on a pedestal in his mind, Laura is just sort of bitchy, and Elena is actively and aggressively seeking to do him harm.

The narrative here is really nothing special. A man’s wife leaves him for a better life in the United States while he stays in Cuba. After she leaves, he spends time with a younger woman who eventually accuses him of taking advantage of her. He also remembers his first love with a woman who eventually moved to New York while he stayed behind to run his father’s furniture store. That’s really it.

What is interesting is the style in which the film is told. Sergio’s narrative is not told in any sort of specific order. Instead, the film attempts to mimic the twisting and convoluted pathways of memory, jumping in time from past to present to past as one thing reminds Sergio of something else. We follow his train of thought as it spirals in on itself, looking at Elena and remembering Hanna, or remembering a conversation while having another in the present.

Slowly, the audience begins to realize that Sergio is, as he claims, terribly old for his 38 years. He’s lived a complete life, and now in the new Cuban state, there isn’t anything left for him, and also no reason for him to leave and start again somewhere else. Even being cleared of the charges leveled by Elena’s family give him nothing more than a brief respite from what he assumes will be the crushing weight of his own existence. Acquittal, in many ways, is just as bad as conviction. Either way, Sergio is still imprisoned.

Alea uses archival footage well, and the narrative, while jumpy, is not that hard to track. I think perhaps I’m too much amateur and not enough auteur to really grok the thing’s totality, though. I didn’t find it revelatory or revolutionary, and evidently, that’s a failing on my part.

Why to watch Memorias de Subdesarrollo: The heart and soul of Cuban cinema.
Why not to watch: Disjointed narrative

Month 11 Status Report

November has come and gone, and I'm still plugging away at the list. It's worth noting (since this was the goal) that while I didn't watch much in November, everything I watched was new to me. I realized (and still realize) that I've relied too much on films I've already seen, and too much on my personal collection this year.

Of the 820 or so still to watch, I've seen roughly 150, making the list of new-to-me films well over 650. I'm going to continue to concentrate on new-to-me films for the rest of the year, but it's impossible for me not to hit some Christmas movies and a few other beloved films before 2010 rings its last.

And then? Year 2 is just around the corner. Based on current projections, I should finish this up around 2013, assuming I can find all of the films. There are still some three or four dozen problematic ones, and I need to get on those--an issue since my local public library will emphatically not get audio-visual material through WorldCat. Two of the other libraries I can access won't do interlibrary loan for me. The fourth...well, I don't want to affect the librarian's numbers too much, so caution is required.

Ready for December? I am.