fixed bayonets!

fixed bayonets! is set during the korean war and follows a small unit of u.s. soldiers left behind to stall enemy forces to give a larger division time to advance. the story focuses on inexperienced corporal denno (richard basehart), a man wrongly believed to be a hero when in fact he is unable to pull the trigger when faced with an enemy, and his relationship with his superior, sergeant rock (gene evans).

i've never been all that interested in war films, but anything directed by samuel fuller is worth a watch. shock corridor is one of my favourite films and remains the most terrifying film about mental illness that's ever been produced. i'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but one flew over the cuckoo's nest has nothing on shock corridor. fuller also directed forty guns, which i love and reviewed here, and was still making great films towards the end of his career with the big red one and the controversial white dog. the thing about fuller and the reason his movies are still remembered and re-released is that there's always something a little different about them. he doesn't make a standard western or a standard war film, there's always an element of fuller magic that puts a different, usually darker, spin on things.

i'm no expert, but as a war film fixed bayonets! is pretty effective. it reminded me of that documentary restrepo, where the filmmakers follow one unit for a year in the same location. this had that same sense of pointlessness and isolation. essentially rock and denno and their men are trapped on the side of a mountain for pretty much the whole film and there's a constant threat of gunfire at all times. there's a realism to this, but also there's something a but existential about it with the men constantly questioning why they're doing what they are doing and what it means to be a solider.

there are some fantastically tense scenes, including a moment where denno has to cross a minefield to rescue a wounded comrade. there's also a really thrilling battle with a tank at the end of the film. however, the real highlight for me was one of the stranger moments, when one of the characters (i won't reveal which one) effectively predicts his own death. he describes to the men what he would do if he were the enemy, and the whole time he's talking about it we're watching an enemy soldier as he actual does it, following the prediction word for word. it's a weird moment of almost magic realism and it's kind of sad and beautiful at the same time.

fixed bayonets! is a solid war film and there are things to enjoy here whether you're into the genre or not. however, it also has some moments of sheer samuel fuller genius and for that reason it's worth checking out.

fixed bayonets! was released in a dual format (blu-ray and dvd) edition by eureka entertainment on 15th february 2016

the naked prey

the naked prey is one of those ‘hunter becomes hunted’ films that have been popular since forever. it’s also kind of beautiful and marks a real achievement for it’s writer/director/producer/star cornel wilde.

the naked prey opens with a group of white hunters stalking elephants in nineteenth century africa. when they insult a local tribe their camp is attacked and the men are taken to the local village to receive punishment. for one of the hunters, that punishment entails becoming the human prey in a manhunt across the wild plains.

the first striking thing about this film is the opening credit ‘cornel wilde as man’, which seems an incredibly arrogant opening statement from the self-proclaimed auteur behind this film. however, the lack of a name for the main character is in keeping with the minimalist nature of the whole piece. there is barely any dialogue in this film, and most of the dialogue we do hear is not in English and not subtitled. for the most part, we watch wilde’s man trek alone across a vast, dangerous landscape that makes him and his trials seem small and insignificant in comparison. occasionally he is forced to fight his pursuers and the fights are as savage and raw as the stock wildlife footage of predators taking down their prey that is cut into the film. there is nothing noble about the violence and the struggle for survival in this film, it is simply portrayed as necessity.

of course, all this happens after we are forced to endure one of the most cruel and brutal sequences ever shot when the other hunters are tortured and killed by the tribe. perhaps the most brutal death involves a man being caked in mud then roasted slowly over a fire as he screams. it is scenes like this that caused controversy when the film was released as the obvious assumption is that the filmmaker is representing all african tribes as bloodthirsty murderers. however, as the film progresses the group of hunters in the tribe are shown in a more sympathetic light, mourning their dead companions with genuine sadness as they are picked off one by one by their wily prey. later, wilde’s character is shown as perhaps more of a callous killer than any of his pursuers as he dances with glee at the sight of the hunters almost burning alive. by the end of the film balance is restored and the two parties find a kind of mutual respect, but what’s important is that the film isn’t afraid to show the extremes on both sides.

ultimately the message wilde was trying to deliver was that in the right circumstance men are no different to animals and that there is neither glory nor shame in that, simply truth. at the same time, he tells this story in a very entertaining way. wilde’s man is the ultimate underdog, stripped of everything and challenged to survive against armed men who know the land much better than he does. it’s exciting to see him figure out how to survive against these odds and taking on the challenge of the landscape as well as that of his hunters. wilde does a fantastic job making the character and his feats believable, partly due to the fact that he is in amazing shape for a man approaching fifty. he also plays the desperation very well, which makes the story all the more compelling.

there are, of course, hundreds of films with this same setup, going all the way back to richard connell’s 1924 short story, the most dangerous game, filmed in 1932. since then there have been numerous reworkings, my personal favourite being 1994's surviving the game in which homeless ice-t is hunted by rutger hauer and gary busey (gary busey, these days a bit of a joke, delivers an amazing speech in that film). there are still elements of the most dangerous game around today, most notably in the hunger games, but the reason that the story is so frequently retold is that it’s a good story. we love to see an underdog prevail, whether it’s katniss everdeen or a naked cornel wilde. it’s also a story that will always be universal and that’s never been more clear than in the naked prey.

this is a really well-produced, beautifully shot film with some fantastic setpieces, and it’s also a thrilling 90-minute ride that looks gorgeous on blu-ray. if you like to be entertained in style and don’t mind the odd stock footage clip of animals killing each other, you should definitely give this a watch.

the naked prey is released by eureka on blu-ray on 19th october 2015

a letter to three wives

a letter to three wives is an oscar-winning film from 1949 that i’d never heard of until recently. there’s a newsreel clip on the dvd that shows part of the oscars ceremony from that year and i’d never heard of any of the films that won, which makes me wonder how many great films i’ve never heard of and whether the oscars are really that important anyway. mostly i’m just glad i got to see this film at all, because it has interesting women doing stuff and dealing with issues in a way that's often missing from contemporary films.

the film follows the titular three wives on a day trip with a group of school kids. before the boat leaves they open a letter from their mutual friend, addie ross, in which addie declares that she is going to run away with one of their husbands that day. away from the mainland and with no way of contacting their husbands, all the three wives can do is each reflect on their marriages and wonder if it’s their husband addie has stolen.

a letter to three wives is a comedy-drama, although i’ll be honest, i didn’t realise it was supposed to be a comedy until one of the jospeh l. mankiewicz biographers mentioned it on the commentary track. sure, there are funny moments but i wonder if the definition of  ‘comedy’ has changed over the years. it doesn’t really matter, because it’s the drama that’s interesting here.

the three main characters seem bold and interesting by today’s standards but whether that’s a reflection of a forward-thinking writer/director or a sad indictment of the decline of gender representation in contemporary cinema, i’m not sure. the least interesting character is probably linda darnell’s gold digging lora mae, and yet her character has the most complex relationship with her husband. she’s more than just a gold-digger, that’s the point, and her later scenes with paul douglas provide some of the more surprising and touching moments in the film.

then there’s ann sothern’s rita, a radio writer who has shot to fame and made a fortune from her career. the issue is that her husband, played brilliantly by kirk douglas, is a low-paid schoolteacher at a time when it was unusual for the woman in the relationship to be the breadwinner (to be honest, sometimes i think that’s still considered unusual, even if it is more common these days). ultimately, it’s not douglas’ character who has an issue with this, it’s rita who wants to bring him up to her level without understanding that money isn't all that important to him. in this way, the film becomes a real study of class and status, but rather than simply playing that out between the couples, the difference between the classes is more prominently represented between the individuals in the actual relationships.

this is most evident with jeanne crain’s deborah, a woman who met her husband while serving in the navy. many films of this period tackled the subject of soldiers returning from war only to struggle to fit back into society, but few of those films chose to focus on a woman in that situation. it would have been particularly difficult for women returning from war because suddenly they were expected to go from a position of authority and activity back to being housewives again, a predicament that was highlighted in betty friedan’s seminal 1963 feminist text, the feminine mystique. in deborah’s case, the difficulty of fitting back into society is made worse by the fact that she is also a small-town farm girl thrust into middle-class society because of the man she met in the navy.

all three stories here are equally interesting and thought-provoking, helped by mankiewicz’ assured direction which keeps a steady pace and gives the ideas room to breathe. structurally the film makes innovative use of flashback’s and narration to weave the various strands of the story into a compelling whole. but as great as mankiewicz is as a filmmaker, it’s the performers who really make this story work, particularly the darnell, sothern and crain.

a letter to three wives feels like a kind of film we don’t see too often anymore, certainly not among oscar-nominees. it’s a film where the stakes are domestic and the drama is familiar, and this makes it all the more emotionally charged. more than anything, this is an entertaining, accomplished film from a writer and director at the height of his powers working with a truly great cast, and for that reason alone it’s worth a watch.

eureka entertainment will be releasing a letter to three wives on blu-ray in a dual format edition as part of the masters of cinema series on 29 june 2015

life of riley

life of riley is a french film based on an alan ayckbourn play set in yorkshire. if that sounds odd, it’s actually only the first of a number of unique and interesting things about this film.

the film follows two middle-aged couples in the process of rehearsing a play for their amateur theatre group. everything changes when they discover their friend, george riley, is dying from a terminal illness and only has six months to live. to help take his mind off the situation they invite george to be in the play but his presence soon starts to tear their relationships and friendships apart.

director alain resnais employs a number of interesting stylistic techniques to tell the story in what would unfortunately become his final film. the film opens with the camera moving through real yorkshire locations, and he uses this device to link the scenes together throughout the film. however, when we actually go into the scenes the locations are marked by a cartoon drawing of whichever house we’re going into. the locations themselves are deliberately made to appear like stage sets, with the backdrops made to look like curtains that the actors move in and out of when they enter or exit the scene. as you would expect from a film that has taken so many elements from theatre, many of the scenes are filmed in long takes, and resnais does some really interesting things with the camera during these takes. however, when one of the characters has a monologue or a particularly emotional moment resnais not only cuts to a close-up, he replaces the background with a monochrome, cross-hatched backdrop that takes us out of the scene but really emphasises the actor’s performance at the same time.

with so many alienating and sometimes distracting techniques at play, you would expect life of riley to be a confusing mess. however, resnais’ methods are all suggested by the playful nature of the source material. ayckbourn’s play has it’s own stylistic touches, such as the fact that the title character never appears onstage, or the fact that the play the characters are rehearsing is another ayckbourn play. resnais’ interpretation of the play seems like a perfect extension of the themes and ideas ayckbourn established, because resnais seems to have been really inspired by the source material rather than restricted by it.

somehow, all these disparate and distracting elements come together to form a story that really works. despite the actors being french and the locations looking like stage sets, i never doubted that we were in rural yorkshire. the characters really come to life, mostly thanks to some excellent performances from the veteran cast, and it’s impossible not to become engaged in the story, even when it seems like resnais is doing all he can to distance you from it. this is a film that takes some real risks, but for the most part, those risks pay off.

the only thing i’m not sure about is the animatronic mole. i didn’t quite get that part.

ultimately what holds this film together is the story of four people who need their lives to be shaken up, and that shake up comes in the form of the imminent death of their friend. relationships are tested, secrets are revealed but in the end, and as is fitting for a film structured around the performance of a play, the show must go on.

i’ve seen a few films based on stage plays, and usually my criticism is that they felt too much like plays, in that not enough has been done to adapt the material. resnais avoids this by embracing the medium and making use of the best of both worlds. somehow this works, and it’s worth seeing the film just to see how resnais pulls this off.

eureka entertainment will be releasing life of riley on blu-ray and dvd in a dual format edition as part of the masters of cinema series on 25th may 2015

paper moon

peter bogdanovich started out as a film critic who learned filmmaking the fast way through working with roger corman, most notably on the boris karloff classic, targets (if you haven't seen targets, you should seriously check it out). bogdanovich went on to become one of the most acclaimed directors of his generation. paper moon was made at the height of that acclaim and is considered by many to be his best work.

the story follows travelling con man moses pray (ryan o’neal) who visits the graveside of a former lover only to find himself agreeing to take the woman’s orphaned nine-year-old daughter, addie (played by o’neal’s real life daughter tatum o’neal) cross country to stay with her aunt. it’s not long before addie has not only worked out how moses makes his money but also decides to help him. as they near their destination the usually cautious moses is pushed into bigger and more risky cons by his young protégé.

paper moon is a fascinating film about family, loyalty and greed and the depression-era setting perfectly captures an america on the brink of disaster. moses pray’s america feels almost like the wild west, as he drifts from town to town always on the lookout for the next mark. the roads he and addie travel seem almost as empty as the towns they find along the way and there is a real sense that something has failed; that the american dream didn’t work out and now everyone has to do whatever they can to get by. addie takes this idea to a new level.

in the opening minutes, it appears as though paper moon will be a story of innocence corrupted. addie is a girl who has no one, and now she’s stuck with a con man for a father figure. however, the balance of power soon shifts when moses tries to put addie on a train to make the journey alone and she practically blackmails him into taking her with him. as their relationship develops, moses begins to learn more from addie than she learns from him, although for her it is clearly a game in which she never has to face the consequences. for moses, there is much more at stake and in the end he is more likely rediscover his own lost innocence than addie is to lose her's.

there is a key scene in the film around the mid-point that neatly summarises the themes of the story. moses becomes enamoured with a carnival dancer named trixie delight and decides to bring trixie and her 15-year-old black maid imogene along with them. addie isn’t particularly happy with this arrangement and she and imogene work out a plan to separate moses and trixie. when the plan works, moses tells addie they’re leaving and she waves to imogene as she skips along the hotel hallway to be with her surrogate father. the camera follows addie, but never loses focus on imogene standing alone behind her. this is a story about people who do what is best for them and only them, and addie is sometimes just as guilty of that as moses is. this adds more tension to the film’s central dramatic question – will moses take addie with him in the end, or will he abandon her with her aunt?

paper poon is also an incredibly well-crafted film and is a great example of a talented directed working at the height of his power. the black-and-white cinematography, by famed cinematographer laszlo kovacs, seems to somehow add a vibrancy to the story rather than simply emphasising the bleakness of the period. the contrast of the setting and the photography next to the sentimental and seemingly light-hearted plot is an interesting juxtaposition and one that produces an unsettling feeling that things are about to go horribly wrong at any moment. ryan and tatum o’neal give career-defining performances in the lead roles, and tatum actually went on to become the youngest winner of an academy award at the time.

this is one of those rare titles that manages to tell a great story without compromising on emotional depth or complexity. the story on the surface of a young girl being taken in by a con man is an entertaining and at times funny and heart-warming romp that moves at a satisfying pace. at the same time there is so much more complexity and nuance under the surface that it is easy to imagine watching this film over and over again. in summary, paper moon is a genuine classic and definitely worth revisiting.

paper moon is released on blu-ray in a dual format edition as part of the masters of cinema series on 18th may 2015

man of the west

i often hear people complain that they don't like westerns, i guess because with each passing decade the western environment seems more and more alien and distant and i think there's also an idea that the themes handled by westerns are somehow outdated. the thing is, that's so not the case. like all films, westerns are about everything. they're about life. man of the west is a perfect example of that.

the film opens like many westerns do, with a stranger arriving in town. in this case the stranger is link jones, played by gary cooper. gary cooper was one of the great western icons and is probably most famous for high noon. if you haven't seen high noon stop reading this right now, go watch high noon and then come back. seriously, high noon is one of the most left-wing, rebellious, revolutionary movies ever made. i could go on about high noon forever, but back to this film...

so link turns up and all we know about him is that he has a bag of money and a gun, both of which he conceals. he's catching a train across country and when a travelling businessman asks what his plans are he claims he needs to hire a school teacher to work in his home town, except we don't entirely believe him. cooper plays link as a man with something to hide, and we later find out that he really does.

link catches a train, and on the way the train is robbed by bandits. three passengers make it off - link, the businessman and a saloon singer named billie ellis, played by julie london. this julie london -

stranded, the three of them decide to walk to the nearest town and along the way they come across a cabin. link decides to check it out because they need shelter, and it's never clear whether he knows what's waiting for him in that cabin or not. when he opens the door he is confronted by his old gang, led by aging outlaw dock tobin.

what follows is a series of unfortunate events that continuously put link in a position where has no choice but to join up with the gang for one last heist.

what doesn't come across in what i've described is how dark, moody and existential this film is. link is a man haunted by his past; a man who desperately doesn't want to kill again. at the same time there is a sense that it's not a case of his past catching up with him, but that he caught up with his past; that there's an inevitability about what happens to him and how the story plays out.

cooper plays the torment perfectly, because throughout the film he is in a position where he either has to go along with the bandits and become what he was before, or kill them all to escape and become something worse. at the same time he has to protect billie from the gang and this creates a constant tension. there is one excruciating scene in which one of the gangmembers puts a knife to link's throat, pressing it in so hard it draws blood, and orders billie to strip for them while link is forced to watch.

perhaps even more tense is the scene in which link gets some payback against this particular thug and the rage coarsing through him as the beats the crap out of this monster is palpable. it reminded me of jack nicholso's character in the last detail and how he just has this capacity for violence boiling inside him at all times.

i'll be honest, my only issue with the film is that julie london has a particularly thankless task playing billie and it was a shame she didn't get to do more. later there's an implication she has been raped by one of the characters, but because this happens off screen it makes it seem more unnecessary. i'm not a big fan of the rape-revenge movie at all, but it would have been nice to see billie kick some ass.

that said, no one in this film comes off well. even link is portrayed as a terrible person and in those moments where his rage and killer instinct somes through it's never heroic. the fistfights and shootouts in this film are messy and raw; the violence never glorified.

man of the west is not an easy watch, but then anthony mann's grim westerns never are. that said, there is so much that makes this worthwhile, from the extreme tension created in the setpieces to the twists and turns in the story and not forgetting cooper's permanently haunted performance. if you like westerns you will love it, and if you don't then you should watch it anyway because it may just convince you that there is more to the genre than men with guns shooting at each other.

man of the west is released on 23 march 2015 on blu-ray and dvd.

for further details check out the eureka website.

wild river

wild river is a kind of epic, political, romantic drama from 1960, directed by elia kazan and starring montgomery clift and lee remick. it's one of the most thematically complex films i've seen in a long time and it asks some pretty big questions.

clift plays chuck glover, a bureaucrat from the tennessee valley authority. the tva are tasked with controlling the tennessee river, which floods regularly causing mass destruction and devastating loss of life. in order to harness the river and stop the flooding they have to build dams along the river, but in doing so they will cause other areas to flood. people live in these areas and they have to be moved out. one person, an 80-year-old woman named ella garth, doesn't want to move and it's up to glover to convince her to move before her land is flooded. however, what he doesn't count on is falling in love with ella garth's granddaughter, carol, played by lee remick.

the film opens with some fairly shocking documentary footage of a particularly devastating flood, followed by a heart-wrenching eyewitness account from a survivor who lost his family in the disaster. this sets the scale of what is at stake perfectly and introduces the first of several interesting themes that the film deals with, man vs. nature. water is an ever-present antagonist in the film, from the water that surrounds the island where ella garth lives to the rainwater that pummels carol's house in later scenes. there is a real sense that maybe human beings weren’t meant to live in places like this, but there they are anyway.

perhaps the most prevalent theme in the film is that of progress, and whether it can be considered good or bad. ella garth has spent a lifetime maintaining her land and doing just fine without help from anyone else, and yet the government are insisting she moves because the country needs to progress, so it also becomes a story about government vs. the individual. then there’s social progress. glover tries to convince ella to leave by hiring her workforce for his land clearing project, but he runs into trouble with the townsfolk when they discover he’ll be paying black workers the same wage as white workers. trouble is perhaps an understatement as the situation soon escalates out of control, but glover will not be forced to change his mind. when it comes to social change and a moral standpoint he is as stubborn as ella garth, and that’s where things become complicated.

this isn’t a film that provides any answers. what glover does for the workers is clearly right, but there is a hypocrisy there, because when he turns up to ella garth’s house with the sheriff in tow it’s hard not to compare this scene to an earlier one where the townsfolk come to him to force him to leave town. glover changes from someone who thinks he’s doing the right thing by ella garth to someone who maybe isn’t sure anymore but can’t do anything about it.

it's glover's impossible dilemma and the journey to that dilemma that really made the film work for me. montgomery clift was part of a movement in hollywood towards a different kind of leading man, most memorably played out in red river in which he starred opposite john wayne. the rugged western star was on his way out and in his place came a more sensitive, introspective kind of screen icon. here, clift is so far to the left of the traditional male star he’s rendered completely ineffective. kazan shoots clift in a way that always shows him as being dwarfed by his surroundings, a righteous man shouting into the wind. he is beaten up several times in the film and fights back by simply standing up to take another beating, rather than causing any violence himself. to see such a passive and ultimately ineffective ‘hero’ on screen seems groundbreaking even by today’s standards, and clift plays it beautifully.

on a side note, i did a bit of research on montgomery clift before watching the film and his wikipedia entry almost brought me to tears. he was a complicated, misunderstood man who was perhaps born into the wrong era and suffered a terrible tragedy.

the real contrast to clift’s character is lee remick’s carol who has no hesitation in telling glover exactly what she wants from him. their relationship acts as a microcosm for the bigger situation of the dam vs. the old lady who won’t move; two powerful forces coming together each trying to force change on the other.  but even in the face of love, glover is paralysed into inaction and it’s carol who really has to fight for him.

i've been talking and protesting a lot about female characters in films recently, and in this, a film made 55 years ago, i had no issues. both ella and carol are fantastic, well-drawn characters who are given equal screen time to the men and really make their stories their own. remick plays carol as a woman on an emotional rollercoaster, going from accepting glover into her life to realising she has maybe made a mistake to then fighting to hold onto the man she loves. it’s breathtaking and really refreshing, which is surprising considering the age of the film.

it is worth pointing out that as a film from 1960, wild river does take it’s time and has a slow pace even for films of this era. in fact, it’s deliberately slow and makes a point about slow change being the only kind that works. and that’s what makes this film worth checking out; that behind every scene, every line of dialogue and every actors’ choice there are layers upon layers of meaning and intention. this is a tough film to unpack and i’ve barely scratched the surface, but there is much to discover here if you take the time to look for it.

wild river is released on 23 february 2015 on blu-ray and dvd.

for further details check out the eureka website.