Quiet Desperation

Film: Czlowiek z Marmuru (Man of Marble)
Format: DVD from New Lenox Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

When I saw Andrzej Wajda’s Popiol i Diament, I was more than a little impressed with it. This was a gutsy film, an anti-Soviet film made in communist Poland directly under the eye of Russian overlords. It takes a special filmmaker to make that sort of film. Poland, though, was always that sort of country. They were one of the first to start resisting Soviet control and always had something of a hard-headedness to them, a desire for self-directed destiny. Czlowiek z Marmuru (Man of Marble) is another film in the same vein.

The film concerns the rise and sudden fall from favor of a bricklayer in Poland. Yes, a bricklayer. Where we pour adulation on sports stars and movie icons, the Soviet state and its satellites tended to make heroes of exemplars of the proletariat. We start, though, not with the bricklayer, but with a film student looking to create her thesis project. This student, known only as Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda), wishes to make this film on Mateusz Birkut, who was once hailed as a worker hero of Poland, but then vanished.

She discovers some old footage of the man, including a film that was unfinished by its director, Jerzy Burski (Tadeusz Lomnicki). She finds him and asks him about the man and what happened to him. Through lengthy flashbacks, we learn of exactly how things happened, and slowly start to learn of why.

Burski (played in flashback by Jacek Lomnicki) makes short newsreel propaganda films. He’s made several around the creation of the city of Nowa Huta, a worker’s city. Specifically, he wants something special, not just another film that talks about how the building is progressing as planned. So, he sets up a stunt in which bricklayer Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwilwoicz) and a team of four will lay 28,000 bricks in a single shift—something like 15 times what a single worker was expected to do on a shift.

And thus Birkut becomes a folk hero, and gives demonstrations of his ability to other workers. It’s soon obvious that Birkut agreed to the stunt not as a way to become famous, but because he is a true believer in the socialist state—building quickly and more efficiently means that more people will get housing sooner. But he also causes problems with his ideas, and at one such demonstration, he is handed a blazingly hot brick, burning his hands severely and effectively ending his bricklaying career.

And so we watch through flashbacks and through the flashbacks and commentary from people who knew Birkut the meteoric fall of the man who more than anyone else in the film tries to live up to the professed ideals of the state. It is at times subtle and at other times as restrained as a punch to the kidneys in its effective indictment of the system that steamrolls everyone in its attempt to whitewash everything into a victory for socialism and the proletariat. While the state professes its desire to help the workers and place them at the forefront of everything the state does, in reality it exploits them as mercilessly as any industrialist using child labor. People like Birkut, who truly wanted nothing more than to help the workers in a meaningful way, get crushed under the machinery of the state that is acting against its professed ideals. In fact, for all of his efforts, Birkut eventually winds up in prison on manufactured charges designed to shut him up.

With a film like this, there are multiple questions that need to be asked and answered. First, and most importantly, is the question of whether or not the film accomplishes its main task. Czlowiek z Marmuru is a strong indictment of the systematic degradation of the workers less for actual benefit and more for the purpose of propaganda. It exposes a government and a society that essentially runs on corruption and lies. We in the West would happily accept this without proof, seeing that we were subjected to the other side of this propaganda coin. It’s something else to see it from someone who lived it.

The second question, just as important, is whether or not the film is good and worth watching. This is a more difficult question to answer. This is a good film, but it’s difficult to recommend it over the far superior Popiol i Diament.

It has, though, left me curious to see the follow-up film, Czlowiek z Zelaza (Man of Iron), which chronicles the struggle of Birkut’s son.

Why to watch Czlowiek z Marmuru: Gutsy filmmaking from a gutsy director.
Why not to watch: It’s from a lost world, a lost time, a lost culture.

Herr Kurtz's Legacy

Film: Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

If you took German at Wheaton North in the 1980s, you could guarantee that once a year he’d show you Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). I’m not sure why he showed us this film other than the fact that it was in German and available. Honestly, I’d have preferred to have watched Das Boot. But no matter.

Der Blaue Engel tells the story of Professor Doktor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings), a professor at the local preparatory school. He discovers at the beginning of the film that his students (who seem to be of disturbingly varying age) are almost to a man obsessed with a woman named Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich), a performer at the local seedy cabaret club, Der Blaue Engel. He goes to the club that night and finds himself entranced.

It’s worth noting at this point that for the current age, Marlene Dietrich is a bit zaftig. However, she’s downright skinny compared with most of the women on stage. Some of them are a bit plump and a couple of them are essentially barrel-shaped. In this group, she’s anorexic.

Regardless, Rath goes back the next night, again ostensibly to track down his misbehaving students who should be concentrating more on their studies. But in reality, he’s there to see Lola Lola. We find out that she’s a bit more than a just a cabaret performer when a ship captain attempts to buy her services for the evening. Rath, however, stands in the way of this and defends Lola’s honor. Everyone else in the cabaret is a bit entranced by the professor, and makes him something of a hero. Kiepert, the show magician (Kurt Gerron) takes Rath and puts him in the reserved box, and Lola sings “Falling in Love Again” to him.

As it turns out, Rath spends the night with Lola, and is late for class the next day. He gets dressed down by his boss and becomes a brief laughing stock for his students before he essentially walks out of the job, goes back to Lola, and proposes. She accepts, and the two are married. He immediately puts his foot down on the sale of her postcards (and the sale of everything else) while he has money. But the money runs out, and so does his will to protect Lola from the seamier sides of things. Eventually, he is forced to join the show as a clown, a huge step down from his former position of importance and respect. Worse yet, the troupe is returning to his home town and Der Blaue Engel. Worse still, Lola has grown tired of him, and is now taking up with a new man.

Der Blaue Engel is a tragedy in the classic sense—we have a man of power and position who falls to extreme depths by the end of the film, becoming essentially a degraded version of himself and a parody of his former stature because of a fatal flaw. In this case, it’s a combination of his pride and his blind love for Lola, who eventually becomes disgusted with the man that she married.

There are a lot of noteworthy moments in the film. The first time that Rath is backstage, for instance, he continually runs into the current clown, a man who never speaks and looks completely emotionless and numb. By the end of the film, this self-important professor is in the same position, playing the same role, giving us a nice foreshadowing for what is to come. Additionally, at the reception of the wedding, the magician performs a trick where he causes eggs to appear out of thin air. Lola begins clucking and the deliriously happy Rath begins crowing like a rooster. Toward the end of the film, on stage, the trick is repeated, and Rath is forced to repeat his rooster crow in front of his former colleagues and townspeople, a moment of almost complete degradation and humiliation.

Given that this film hits Shakespearean depths of tragedy by the end, I have to wonder what the hell Herr Kurtz was thinking when he put this in front of a bunch of 14-year-old freshmen every year. I mean, Das Boot isn’t any less depressing, but at least there’s some explosions.

Regardless, this is a great film and regarded as such for a reason. It’s a tremendous performance from Jannings, who is the real star. It’s also a literal star-making performance for Dietrich, who was an unknown before this film.

It’s also an interesting piece of film history for a couple of reasons. The film was simultaneously shot in both English and German (I watched the German—Herr Kurtz would want it that way). It’s also a bridge from the early silent German expressionist dramas into the world of talkies. There’s a bit of expressionist influence here, seen mostly in the street exteriors outside the nightclub. In biological terms, this film is a transitional fossil to a more modern form.

Why to watch Der Blaue Engel: One of the great dramas of the early days of film.
Why not to watch: It’s really depressing.

Social Climbing

Film: The Social Network; A Place in the Sun
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Chances are good that if you’re reading this, you have a Facebook page. I have a Facebook page. So do my wife, my older daughter, and my mother. My younger daughter has a fan page on Facebook. If you’re active online, the chances are extremely high that part of your activity involves Facebook. The people who don’t have a Facebook page are those who’ve never bothered to sign up and those who have, for one reason or another, rebelled against it. Friendster and MySpace still exist, after all—and MySpace still has around 30 million users.

Anyway, The Social Network is the Facebook story, because when it comes to online social networking, it is the 800-lb. gorilla. MySpace may still have 30 million users, but Facebook has 800 million worldwide—so many that I’m surprised my version of Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize the name of the site automatically. The film takes place essentially as a flashback as two separate lawsuits have been brought against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg). As each new topic comes up, we get flashbacks to what actually happened.

I’m resisting recounting the plot, not for any spoiler reasons or because it’s not worth recounting, but because this movie is surprisingly dense. I mean this in a positive way; the first hour of the film feels very much like two hours simply because of everything that it includes. There’s a lot going on here, and the first hour of the film recounts the story of the website’s initial genesis, creation, and the start of its expansion. A lot of characters come and go, and there is a tremendous amount of story told here. In the hands of a less confident and competent director, this would be at least a three-hour film.

And yet, it never becomes bogged down or overwhelmed by its plot. Despite the vast number of characters here, the story is also very easy to follow. Essentially, Zuckerberg is a computer programming genius, but also (at least according to this film) has jealousy issues, a desperate need to be the center of attention, and the social equivalent of Tourette’s syndrome. The film opens with his break-up with his girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), who he destroys on his blog. Throughout the film, when he feels he’s being snubbed or not taken seriously, he utters incredibly offensive, rude, and otherwise abusive things to the source of his personal shame, particularly to his best friend and original business partner, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield).

And really, that’s sort of the path the entire movie takes. Zuckerberg can’t help but irritate, annoy, bother, or otherwise piss off everyone he knows in his quest to create Facebook, and thus invent himself in some way. Eduardo and Erica are only two of the casualties. He also draws a lot of attention from twin rowing Olympians Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer is credit with both roles, and Josh Pence is additionally credited with Tyler) and their associate Divya Narendra (Max Minghella). He also has a few choice encounters with Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake).

This is one of those strange films in which almost everyone is, or at least acts, reprehensibly. While the Winklevoss twins and Narendra are certainly not blameless, in many ways Zuckerberg and Parker come off as the film’s biggest villains. Only Eduardo Saverin really ends up being shown in anything like a positive light. While his actions at one point jeopardized the entire venture, his actions are also completely understandable in light of everything that happens during the course of the film.

The Social Network got a lot of hype last year, and a great number of people were disappointed when the film didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars. I can see that. I am perhaps showing my age when I say that I didn’t like this film more than I liked The King’s Speech, but I do understand why so many people enjoyed it. In many ways, Mark Zuckerberg is the most relevant famous person in a lot of lives. He is very much like the Bill Gates of the generation after mine, and thus the film about him is sure to resonate with many.

What’s interesting to me, though, is that it reinforces something I’ve long suspected is true. People who end up in positions like Mark Zuckerberg get there for a variety of reasons. One, plainly, is an obvious and specific genius. Facebook, at this point, exists in the way it does and with the popularity it does simply because it does. If you want a social presence online, it’s the only real option, especially after what looks like the spectacular failure of Google+. But a great deal of this film happens because Zuckerberg and Parker especially act in absolutely the most cutthroat manner possible. These are not nice men working for a better world, but men working for their own end, and to hell with everyone else, including friends. They sacrifice everything simply to be on top, and stop at nothing to proclaim their own victory immediately to those they have trampled to get there.

Is this accurate? I have no idea. It’s what’s here in the film, but I have no idea whether or not this film reflects the reality of what happened. However, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the Erica Albright character doesn’t exist in reality—Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend since before Facebook was created. So…one wonders.

A Place in the Sun tells a more grisly, brutal version of the basic social climbing story. George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) is the nephew of a man named Charles Eastman (Herbert Heyes). The uncle hires the nephew to work in his factory out of some combination of familial respect and kindness. Since the uncle is extremely wealthy and the nephew is extremely poor, it’s kind of a charity case. But George proves himself pretty capable.

Sadly, George also proves himself unable to abide by the single important rule of the factory—don’t date any of the other workers. He begins seeing Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) who works in the same part of the factory he does, almost out of convenience. Alice is naïve and a bit in awe of George’s last name, but ultimately begins to understand that he’s from the wrong side of the family and isn’t really starting at the bottom as she believes.

But, George does begin to rise in the company, and as he does, he attracts the attention of Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor), a society girl with more time and money than anything else. The two quickly fall for each other, this time George being the one who is dazzled by the promise of money and romance. Sadly for him, Alice Tripp has some bad news; she’s pregnant and demands that he marry her, despite the fact that both of them will lose their jobs because of it.

And so George begins to think of what he can do. He has no way out. He wants nothing more than to be with Angela, but Alice has him trapped with her pregnancy, and she is insistent that he marry her no matter what. And so he starts to think of what to do, and he remembers that poor naïve Alice can’t swim and that the Eastmans have a house on a lake nearby, and all of his plans start to fall together, and those plans involve Alice only up to the point where he pushes her out of a boat and she drowns.

It’s an interesting film because it can easily be interpreted in a variety of ways. On the one hand, this is pure bourgeoisie propaganda—the people with money aren’t to blame in any of this. They try to bring the poor boy into the fold and what happens? His greed and lust become the seeds of his downfall. In truth, it is Angela who is the most sympathetic character here, and the one closest to being considered a true innocent. Alice is a nag and a scold and George is just plain vicious and scheming. But it’s innocent (and fabulously wealthy) Angela who ends up with the broken heart, thanks to the evil man from the lower social order.

On the other hand, the left-leaning among us can interpret it as a fable about the ills of wealth and power. George was happy where he was, and was plenty happy with Alice until Angela showed up and tempted him higher. George’s betrayal of Alice doesn’t come from inherent evil, but the evil he comes to in trying to adapt to the unfair advantages of those in significantly higher economic bracket. George loses his soul because losing one’s soul is the only way to truly reach that sort of elite economic position—and to get there, George must betray everything he has ever believed in.

Which interpretation is correct? I don’t know. It’s another film in which I dislike almost every character on the screen for the entire film. And yet, the story is quite compelling, well acted, and gutsy for the time. After all, Alice is pregnant out of wedlock, it’s 1951, and the Hays Code is very much still in effect. For the time, this film walks a razor’s edge of what it can even talk about openly—Alice’s confession of pregnancy had to raise more than a couple of eyebrows.

Still, this is not an easy film to recommend. It’s a good story and a good film, but it’s also rather unpleasant, and leaves a bit of an oily feeling after watching.

Why to watch The Social Network: It’s a story that defines an entire generation.
Why not to watch: Almost everyone in this film is a walking sphincter.

Why to watch A Place in the Sun: A story that feels both Hollywood and based in gritty reality.
Why not to watch: No one to really root for.

Creepy Sex is Creepy

Film: A Ma Soeur! (Fat Girl)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on laptop.

I’ve said it before on this blog that in general, coming of age stories come in two varieties: male and female. For boys, coming of age is all about coming to terms with mortality, which means that something has to die, be it a friend, a relative, or (usually) a beloved animal. For girls, coming of age in movies is about coming to terms with their sexuality, which means sex, sometimes non-consensually. Since A Ma Soeur! has the English name of Fat Girl, guess what this film is about? Wrong! In a magical twist, in this film we’re going to get both sex and death.

Yeah, it’s about sibling rivalry and a couple of young girls having sex. And it’s pretty damn creepy and finishes with a completely WTF ending. This was a film I had trouble tracking down, and right now, I’m wondering why I bothered.

We have two sisters, Anais Pingot (Anais Reboux) and Elena Pingot (Roxane Mesquida) who start the film talking about sex. Elena, who is about 15, is still a virgin, but is also something of a slut. She likes boys a lot, and has done pretty much everything but actual sex, and her intention is to find someone special and lose her virginity to him. Anais, 12 and chubby, is of the opinion that it would be better to lose her virginity to a nobody so that she doesn’t have to deal with that person in her life. The two are on vacation with their parents (Arsinee Khanjian and Romain Goupil) at a French resort. Anais, incidentally, spends a great deal of her time singing an extremely morbid song, and we spend a lot of time listening to her do exactly that.

It’s here that they meet Fernando (Libero de Rienzo), an Italian college student, who invites the girls to sit with him. It’s not more than a couple of minutes before Fernando is tongue deep in Elena’s mouth. She introduces him to her parents, and that night he sneaks into her room at the resort. Fernando claims to love the girl, but naturally he’s just looking for sex. She refuses. And so we get surprise buttsex. The next morning, Fernando sneaks out, actually refuses oral sex in part because he realizes it’s statutory rape and runs off. Dad flies home because he’s not a fan of vacations, and we’re left with the three women.

The relationship between the two girls is pretty realistic. The pretty Elena loves her sister, evidenced by the morning after where she feeds her, and hates her, as evidenced by the way in which she treats Anais through much of the rest of the film. Anais is petulant, wearing a constant pre-teen frown. She wants nothing more than to be exactly like Elena (choosing the same dress in the store) except for when she wants to be nothing like her sister. There’s a very sweet scene in the middle of the film when the two talk to each other, and there’s a real sense of actual sisterhood between the girls. This scene is the one thing I took out of this film that I didn’t find at least mildly repugnant. Of course, this scene is followed by statutory rape, so the pleasure of that scene doesn’t last too long.

Anyway, Fernando continues macking on Elena, giving her an “engagement” ring that he actually stole from his mother. That night, Elena and Fernando have non-buttsex sex while Anais lays in her bed on the other side of the room. So, Anais has been forced to watch her sister with Fernando two nights in a row and has witnessed her sister’s loss of virginity. And guess what? The really creepy stuff still hasn’t happened, because there’s about half an hour of film left. But let’s linger on this moment for a bit, because the film certainly does. We watch Anais while her sister is having sex in the background, and we never cut away until Fernando finishes.

I’m going to go full spoiler on this, and I’m not putting it under a spoiler tag. What follows is the rest of the film, so if you don’t want to know the ending, stop reading here. If I felt that there was value in seeing this film, I’d use a spoiler tag, but this is one of those situations in which I feel like I doing a service by telling the ending completely. That way, other people don’t have to watch. You’re welcome.

Anyway, Elena, Anais, and their mother have to drive back to the outskirts of Paris. When the mother gets tired, she pulls the car off into a rest area and they sleep. And then, because statutory rape buttsex wasn’t enough to make this movie really creepy, the movie suddenly turns into a slasher film. A guy bashes in the windshield of the car with an axe, kills Elena and the mother and then (you know what’s coming) rapes Anais, who claims later that it wasn’t rape. After all, her intent was to lose her virginity to someone who didn’t matter.

What the fuck? Regular readers of this site know that I don’t drop the f-bomb here that often, but in this case it’s warranted.

This is a film that makes me want to take a shower to wash off the ick. It’s ugly, it’s brutal, and it’s repugnant, and I can stand all of that. Where I have a problem is that it also seems completely pointless, like the entire film was to give us a situation where Anais could essentially get what she wanted without really anything good happening to her. I felt very much the same when I watched Fish Tank earlier this year, and I wasn’t a fan of that film. But this one…I watched about half of it with my nose wrinkled in disgust. This film was banned in Ontario in 2001. I don’t agree with censorship in most cases, and I don’t agree with it here. I do, however, understand the motivation in this case even if I disagree with the decision.

Ugly premise, ugly film, and now I’m in an ugly mood. It’s also an unfortunate translation of the name of the film—the actual translation from the French is My Sister Has, which is a much better title. It focuses on both of the girls instead of just the one. But in this case, that’s akin to coming up with the perfect thing to call a new human atrocity.

On a positive note, this was my first experience with Hulu Plus, and I have to say that the quality is top-notch. Those looking for a new streaming service due to NetFlix ire could do a lot worse than this. The search function isn’t that great, but as a source for streaming video, the quality is excellent.

Why to watch A Ma Soeur: You’re a pervert.
Why not to watch: You are a decent human being.

The Forbidden Zone

Film: Planet of the Apes
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I love science fiction, and there are times when that feels like a guilty admission. Great science fiction exists, and great science fiction tends to ask questions that are almost impossible for other types of fiction to explore, namely the question of what it means to be human. But then there is the type of science fiction that is just sort of strange. Planet of the Apes is that kind of science fiction—the premise is so silly that it’s almost impossible to take seriously.

But, it has an incredible pedigree. The novel was written Pierre Boulle, who also wrote the novel Bridge on the River Kwai, and the screenplay was co-authored by no less a person than Rod Freakin’ Serling. Director Franklin J. Schaffner’s other films include Patton and Papillon. In short, there’s a lot going for this movie right off the bat.

But it is silly. A quartet of astronauts blast off into space and travel at relativistic speeds for 18 months, assuming that when they land it will be far into the future. Their ship lands in a lake and begins sinking, and one of them, the lone woman (Dianne Stanley), has experienced a problem with her containment unit and has thus died and aged. The ship starts sinking immediately and the three survivors—Taylor (Charlton Heston), Landon (Robert Gunner), and Dodge (Jeff Burton) make it to shore and start exploring.

What they discover is a world in which humans are a degraded species and (to quote Dr. Bobo from the later years of Mystery Science Theater 3000) apes rule the world. Humans on this world can’t even talk, and are essentially parasites in the ape world. Interestingly—and far beyond the realm of typical possibility—the apes speak English and seem to have early human technology except for the fact that they have relatively modern guns. Everything else, though, is primitive.

It’s Taylor who will be our main character. The apes round up a collection of humans who are raiding their crops, killing many, including Dodge. The rest are captured, and Taylor is wounded in the throat, preventing him from speaking. However, it’s soon evident to several of the apes that Taylor has genuine intelligence. Of primary importance here is Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter), who works with animals and specializes in humans. Zira calls Taylor “Bright Eyes” and is shocked to discover that he understands speech and can write.

Zira is engaged to Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), who is the simian equivalent of an anthropologist. He has a hypothesis that apes evolved from lower orders of animals, specifically from humans, but such talk is considered heresy, particularly from the chief ape scientist and spiritual leader, Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Of course, eventually Taylor regains his voice, and the fact that he is capable of actual speech and shows signs of real thought is problematic for the apes. So naturally Taylor escapes with the help of Zira and Cornelius as well as Zira’s nephew Lucius (Lou Wagner) with the apes in hot pursuit. There's a lot going on in a place called The Forbidden Zone, and there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that Zaius knows what's there, and that what's there is something like blasphemy.

As I said at the top, the premise is entirely silly. And yet, almost despite itself, it’s a premise that works. In large part, the film works because of how thoroughly the actors buy into it. Everyone, particularly Heston, buys into the premise of the film to really sell it. The film needed that, because without it, it would quickly devolve into camp, and not good camp.

And so, we have this strange thing. We have a movie with this incredible pedigree, with good actors performing good work, and all of it in service of a story that is silly on its face. There’s no good reason, for instance, that the apes would speak English when we are supposed to presume that the film is taking place on a planet in a different solar system. Language is far too complex for it to evolve in exactly similar ways on two distinct worlds. What this means is that the surprise ending—one of the most legendary in film—doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who doesn’t completely buy into the premise.

Despite all of this, it’s an impossible film not to enjoy. Yes, the concept is silly and ridiculous, but it doesn’t matter because it’s also a great deal of fun. Additionally, the costuming is tremendous, and while the ape faces do look a bit fake and rubbery, they’re also surprisingly effective at allowing for facial movements, expressions, and speech.

After this first film, the Planet of the Apes did go the camp route, eventually becoming far campier than the first film could have ever been. The remake was ridiculously weak, starting from the same premise and substituting a huge budget for things like quality. I’ve heard a lot of good about the latest film, but haven’t seen it. I’m not sure I want to, really. I like the purity of this film, goofy premise and all, and I’m satisfied with that.

Why to watch Planet of the Apes: It is essential science fiction viewing.
Why not to watch: If you don’t buy the premise, the entire film is shot.

Month 22 Status Report

I posted 31 reviews in October--27 days with a single film, 2 days without a film, and 2 days with two films. Not bad, really. If I can keep up the same pace through November, I'll hit the halfway point right around the end of the month, and that's not at all a bad thing. I'll probably hit that mythical halfway point sometime in early December, though.

So what's ahead? Rarities, I think. There will be some familiar faces in November, but I'm going to try to focus more on films that are harder to locate, difficult to find, or that have otherwise eluded me. After all, I have to watch them sometime, and a couple of years from now, I'd rather be tracking down something easily available than one of these films that exists only on ancient media and only in one or two places in the world.

The current tally, by the way, is 516 films out of 1089, leaving me with 573 to go. It's at a time like this that I think of all I've seen so far (I've logged more than 1000 hours of filmwatching since I started) only to have the finish line still so far away. That's one reason hitting the halfway point is so meaningful to me.

Behind the Mask

Film: Scream; Halloween
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen (Scream); DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television (Halloween).

It’s Halloween! Last year, that meant my favorite films, because this also happens to be my birthday—the 9th anniversary of my 35th birthday in this case. This year, we’re going traditional, and I’m watching the sorts of films most people watch on this day. Today, it’s two of the best slasher films ever made: Sceam and Halloween.

The first 10 minutes of Scream are arguably the most famous 10 minutes in slasher movie history. It’s pure genius, and it’s proof that Wes Craven is one of the smartest horror film directors in the business. High school student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) gets a series of increasingly disturbing phone calls only to discover that the calls are coming from a homicidal maniac. He kills her boyfriend in front of her, then kills her brutally before running off. What makes this so good is that in this scene, Craven is playing with our expectations. When Scream was released, almost none of its stars were known for anything. A few, like Henry Winkler and David Arquette were known, but Barrymore was by far the biggest name in the film. No one expected her to die off at all, let alone right at the start.

Scream is a film plays with the slasher subgenre of horror movies by both following the standard tropes and flouting them in intelligent ways. The biggest and smartest flouting of the slasher convention is the film’s budget. Typically, slashers are low-budget affairs with plenty of nudity and gore to distract from the minimal budget, bad acting, and grainy footage. Not so with Scream, which is slick and glossy and made with obvious money behind it.

Wes Craven is one of the most important directors in the subgenre and for very good reason—a lot of his movies helped create the genre and a lot of his movies similarly played with the ideas of the slasher film and the crazed killer. In fact, at one point in Scream, one of the characters lists off some of the more important ways to avoid dying (like don’t have sex and don’t take drugs or drink), and then going as far as possible to break them. What’s more important, though, is that Craven doesn’t simply break the rules; he breaks them in ways that make sense in the film.

I’m not going to get too involved in the plot here, because for the genre, this one is pretty involved and convoluted, and takes a number of interesting twists before it eventually all makes sense at the end. Suffice to say that at each stage in the film, the current theory makes perfect sense, and ultimately the way the film wraps up fits in with everything we’ve seen as well.

I like that the film is kept in the realm of the possible. Too often, the slasher genre involves a killer who is possessed of supernatural or demonic powers (more on that type of killer in a moment) and can take huge amounts of physical punishment because he is essentially immortal or at least undead. Not so in this film. Repeatedly, when victims (or potential victims) are attacked and fight back, the killer, typically known as “Ghostface,” takes actual punishment. It’s a nice thing to see, when we typically see the killer shrug off blows that would sideline anyone else. In many ways, this makes the action scarier, because it also makes the action more real. I’m not too worried about Jason Voorhees because I don’t believe in the possibility of a thunderingly badass undead machete killer. A guy in a mask? Yeah, that’s possible.

The other reason I’m not going to tap into the plot here is that this is either a movie that you’ve already seen because it’s critical for the subgenre of slasher as well as the main genre of horror or because you’ve never seen it, and I don’t want to be the one who spoils it for you. This is a film to go into cold if you haven’t seen it, because it plays so intelligently with everything that has come before it. Craven, thanks to movies like this one, remains one of the players in horror and one of the most important directors to watch. A good director gives a wink and a nod to a knowing audience. A great director gives a wink, a nod, and then moves in for the kill.

As a final note on this one, Scream matches many other films of the genre in having a score that truly helps it sell the scares.

John Carpenter is the director of a number of shorts in his early student career. His first full-length film is a science fiction comedy and his second is essentially an action film. His third film, though, was Halloween, and it was here that Carpenter made his greatest mark. Carpenter, thanks in no small part to this film, has been pigeonholed as a horror director despite the fact that a number of his movies are not straight horror, or even horror at all. If nothing else, that’s in indicator of how good this film is and how influential it has been for the last 30-plus years.

Many of the standard tropes of slasher movies come from this film—virginity being the way to prevent death (according to Carpenter, this was because the kids having sex were so focused on sex that they couldn’t pay attention to anything else), never saying “I’ll be right back,” the concept of the final girl, the vanishing killer at the end, teens in peril, quick flashes of nudity, fake shocks, a minimalist but effective soundtrack, the killer who walks at a slow pace but still catches up, even the idea of each death being its own unique set piece. It’s also one of the first films with a masked killer, although there were others before it, notably Blood and Black Lace.

The story, as with many slashers, is straightforward. Fifteen years ago, a young boy named Michael Myers (Will Sandin at this point) kills his sister just after she has sex with her boyfriend. Michael is institutionalized, and at the start of the film, has broken out and returned to the scene of his grisly crime. Rather than a clown mask, he steals a completely blank white mask (actually a William Shatner mask painted white) and sets about killing anyone and everyone around the house he once lived in. Pitted against him is Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis in her first role, and one that would define her early film career), and his doctor (Donald Pleasance).

Like many a great scary movie, most of the good shocks in this one are tricks of timing, camera, and pacing. Halloween is thought of as a gory and gruesome film, but there is almost nothing here in terms of blood or gore. The film is virtually bloodless, a fact that indicates precisely how powerful the suggestion in Carpenter’s film really is. Just as important is the idea that aside from the disturbing opening, the really good scares, the ones that people really remember all come in the last half hour of the film, and the best ones come in the last 10 minutes. The bulk of the film, essentially, is set up and getting the mood correct. It’s an old lesson of horror—scare everyone in the first 15 minutes and you don’t need a great scare again until the final reel.

Halloween was made on the cheap, the entire film start to finish cost about $320,000 and the actors had to supply their own wardrobes. That’s a budget that wouldn’t cover a catering bill these days. It goes to prove that low budgets can bring out the best in creative and intelligent filmmakers, and that not having millions of dollars means that smart directors find new ways to do things that both save on money and, in the case of this film, heighten the scare factor.

I don’t want to go too far into the plot of this film. If you haven’t seen it before, you should see it immediately. If you are even mildly a fan of scary film, though, this is one you’ve seen and loved. Halloween is one of those rare litmus test films—horror fans are essentially required to like it. Fortunately for all horror fans, there is very little here not to like. Halloween provides plenty of scares, jumps, and boo moments (my favorite being Michael Myers sitting up after the closet fight) to last anyone through the Halloween season. While a great many films followed in the genre, only a scant few have come anywhere close to this level of all around quality. Horror fans love it because it’s awesome; film students love it because it’s purely great.

Quick piece of fun trivia—Michael Myers is referred to in the script of the film not by his name, but as “The Shape.”

Why to watch Scream: You can test your knowledge of slasher movie tropes.
Why not to watch: The real life relationship between Courtney Cox and David Arquette bleeds into the film to the film’s detriment.

Why to watch Halloween: It is the gold standard by which all other slashers are judged.
Why not to watch: If you’re a gorehound, there’s not that much blood here.