I enjoyed director Oliver Parker's 1995 film version of Shakespeare's Othello.
Othello the hero of Venice
Reviewing the film for The New York Times on December 14, 1995, Janet Maslin said this about the performance of Laurence Fishburn in the title role: "If there's a hint of Ike Turner (whom he played brillantly in 'What's Love Got To Do With It?') to this Othello's jealous fury, that seems to be very much what Mr. Parker had in mind. It's a long way from Welles or Olivier (the two giants among cinematic Othellos), but this performance still has pathos and power."
Othello and Desdemona in love.
The film, like the play its based on, is very intense, and since we know that the evil Iago is going to stir up the jealous Othello into a homicidal rage against his innocent wife, it's kind of like watching a train wreck. It would have been fun if Fishburne had played Othello as Ike Turner: "Ida Mae, I better not find out you gave that damn handkerchief to Cassio or somebody may get a cap busted in the ass!"
Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as Ike and Tina
The most famous wife beater of all time: Ike Turner.
Trained Shakespearean Kenneth Branagh delivers a flawless performance as the evil Iago. Irene Jacob is believable as the loving and devoted Desdemona who is wrongfully accused of adultery by her jealous husband.
Iago plants the seeds of jealousy in Othello's mind.
The movie has been criticized for deleting too much of the play and for rearranging scenes and adding love scenes which involve nudity. I think that this is merely taking advantage of the medium of film. Shakespeare wasn't prudish by any means. If it had been available and could get approval by the Master of the Revels, and if all the female roles hadn't been played by boys, Shakespeare might have had a nude sex scene. Like the man said, "The play's the thing!" (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2). Five out of Five.
This movie by the celebrated Italian directior Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was very controversial in its' time, has been celebrated as a deep philosophical meditation on the meaning of life, and gave us the term paparazzi.
La Dolce Vita is translated as "The Sweet Life" or "The Good Life." The film has no traditional plot, but follows Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a reporter for a gossip tabloid, through seven loosely related episodes. Each episode follows Marcello through a night and into the morning.
According to the Wikipedia article "Marcello is a journalist in Rome during the late 1950s who covers tabloid news of movie stars, religious visions and the self-indulgent aristocracy while searching for a more meaningful way of life. Precisely, Marcello faces the existential struggle of having to choose between two lifestyles, namely depicted by journalism and literature. Indeed, Marcello on the one hand leads a lifestyle of excess, of fame and pleasure amongst Rome's thriving popular culture. Thereby, depicting the confusion and frequency with which Marcello gets distracted by women and power. On the other, a more sensitive Marcello aspires of becoming a writer, of leading an intellectual's life amongst the elites, the poets, writers and philosphers of the time. In the end, Marcello chooses neither journalism, nor literature. Thematically, however, he's opted for the life of excess and popularity by officially becoming a publicity agent."
Very controversial upon its' first release, the film was condemned by the Vatican in 1960. The film was banned in Spain until after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. Watching the movie in 2015, its hard to see what the big deal was. There's no actual nudity, and the sex is only suggested, not shown. It's easy to see, though, that the movie was seen as promoting a hedonistic lifestyle and mocking the Catholic Church.
Marcello lives with a women (Yvonne Furneaux) to whom he is not married and he refuses to make a commitment and continues to see other women, leading her to attempt suicide. Marcello takes a rich noblewoman (Anouk Aimee) to the sleazy apartment of a prostitute and sleeps with her in the prostitute's bedroom. Then there's the famous scene where Marcello wades into the Trevi Fountain in Rome with Anita Ekberg. Anita Ekberg plays an American starlet (a la Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield) who is all good times and jiggle and is followed everywhere she goes by the Paparazzi.
This film is the first to depict the hordes of photographers who hound celebrities. Marcello's friend is one of these independent photo journalists and the character's name is Paparazzo. Hence, the plural form, Paparazzi.
Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini
There is all kinds of analysis of the structure and meaning of La Dolce Vita and it "remains a classic and one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time."
Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain
Just to sit down and watch La Dolce Vita for enjoyment without analyzing it, it's not a bad movie. The film is well shot and well acted. I'm not sure that all the deeper levels of meaning come through upon one superficial viewing, but it's a lot more enjoyable than some other art films that I've seen. La Dolce Vita doesn't hit the viewer over the head with philosophy like Bergman's The Seventh Seal, for instance. There is a good bit of tragedy in Marcello's seven days and seven nights which should cause reflection from the viewer. Emma, Marcello's live in girlfriend tries to commit suicide because of Marcello's neglect of her. Then a sick child which has been brought the to the site of an alleged apparition of the Virgin Mary dies in the middle of the crowd. Marcello's friend, Steiner, a prominent public intellectual, kills his two children and then kills himself because he can't deal with the tragedy of the human condition divorced from traditional religion.
La Dolce Vita has been ranked as the 6th Greatest Movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly and number eleven in Empire magazine's list of the 100 Best Films of World Cinema. The Bad Catholic declares himself unworthy of ranking a film of this stature. The critics and scholars say its one of the best films of all time and was written and directed by the Great Fellini. FINIS.
What happens when a writer wants a job writing a screenplay so bad that he's not only willing to prostitute himself by writing bad material for money, but he's also willing to pimp out his hot young wife to a wolfish producer? In a nutshell, that's the plot of French "New Wave" director Jean-Luc Godard's classic 1963 film Le Mepris (Contempt).
Of course, the main attraction of this movie in 2015 is not its' intellectual content or its' cutting edge direction but Brigitte Bardot at the height of blond bombshell sex symbol-ness. The film's most famous scene, the opening sequence in which a very naked Bardot lies in bed on her stomach and asks Michel Piccoli if he likes various parts of her body, was sarcastically shot by Godard after the producers pitched a fit at him that they had paid for Bardot and Godard had turned in a movie that didn't have even one nude shot of her. Filmed partially with a red filter, the scene certainly has Bardot totally naked but she stays on her stomach in bed the whole time and all we get to see is BB's magnificent backside.
Paul and Camille discuss their marriage.
Based upon a novel by celebrated Italian writer Alberto Moravia, the story is about a playwright Paul (Michel Piccoli) and his young hot wife, Camille (BB). Paul is hired by a wolfish American movie producer Jerry Prokosch(Jack Palance) who wants him to re-write a script for a movie already in production. The famous German directior Fritz Lang (playing himself) has been shooting a film version of Homer's Odyssey. Lang has been making an "art film" but Prokosch wants a sword and sandal epic with lots of action and sex. Prokosch has picked Paul to rewrite the script because he knows that that Paul has a good looking young wife and needs the money. Prokosch pitches a fit in a screening of Lang's artistic dailies and throws cannisters of film everywhere. Paul decides to sell out his artistic vision for $10,000 and write the crappy script that Prokosch wants.
Camille gets pimped out to the wolfish Prokosch
Paul has already prostituted himself out for money when, apparently, he tries to also pimp out his wife to Prokosch. When Camille shows up to meet Paul at Cinecetta studios in Rome, it's obvious that Prokosch has the hots for her. Although Camille wants to stay with her husband and not go with Prokosch, Paul insists that she ride alone with Prokosch in his Alfa Romeo to his villa for a drink and Paul will follow alone in a taxi. This begins the downhill spiral of Paul and Camille's marriage.
A full half hour of the movie follows Paul and Camille around in their apartment as they discuss their relationship. Camille, obviously upset, lets Paul know that she doesn't want to sleep with him anymore. She concedes, however, that she is still willing to make love to him occasionally, she just wants to sleep on the couch. She also lets Paul know that she doesn't like Prokosch and she doesn't want to go with the production company to Capri where the movie will be filmed. At one point, the clueless Paul slaps Camille, and says "I never should have married a twenty eight year old typist!"
Director Jean-Luc Godard and Brigitte Bardot on the set of Le Mepris
Of course, when they get to Capri, Paul and Camille's marriage disintegrates. Once again, Paul insists that Camille go off alone with Prokosch when she only wants to stay with her husband. Camille finally gives in and begins to have an affair with Prokosch (all that's ever shown is Camille and Prokosch kissing - the rest is left to the audience's imagination). Camille leaves with Prokosch to go back to Rome. When Prokosch asks her what she intends to do in Rome, Camille tells him that she is going back to her old job as a typist. Telling her that she's crazy, Pokosch then pulls out in front of a tractor trailer truck and both Prokosch and Camille are killed in the wreck. A devastated Paul leaves Capri and tells Fritz Lang that he's now going to finish writing his play which he had abandoned to write Prokosch's script. The End.
Contempt is actually a lot better than it sounds like it should be. The movie is beautifully filmed in Cinemascope. The shots of the natural beauty of the Isle of Capri are stunning. The moral of the story seems to be don't sell out to The Man. If Paul hadn't prostituted himself and pimped out his wife for money, they would have remained happy. At one point, Camille even tells Paul that when he was a struggling writer and they had no money that they were happy. Contempt is also about the movie industry and it's interesting that Godard was having the same kinds of problems with his producers, who wanted to see BB naked on screen, that his fictional screen writer was having with Prokosch. If you want to get really artsy about it, some critics have said that Contempt parallel's Homer's Odyssey with Paul as Odysseus, Camille as Penelope and Prokosch as Poseiden. Some critics have seen parallels with the break up of director Godard's own marriage in the movie. At one point in the apartment, BB puts on a brunette wig, which made her look like Godard's estranged wife, actress Anna Karina.
Contempt is definitely worth watching. I streamed the film off of the Internet from Amazon. The movie is in French, Italian and English. The picture was excellent. Three and a half stars.
In 1956 Brigitte Bardot was a 23 year old aspiring starlet who had already appeared in a number of films. Her husband, director Roger Vadim, put her into this movie (French title: Et Dieu . . . crea la femme) which skyrocketed his young wife into stardom and made Bardot an international sex symbol.
The superficial plot involves Juliette Hardy (Bardot) an 18 year old orphan. Juliette just can't help herself - she likes to lie out in the sun naked, go barefooted, dance, drink and she REALLY likes MEN. Juliette is also fabulously beautiful.
A Girl Just Can't Help It: She's Gotta Take a Sunbath Naked In the Yard!
As the film opens, Juliette's foster mother has had enough and announces that Juliette is going back to the orphanage until she's 21. By this time, Juliette is being pursued by the wealthy magnate Eric (Curd Jurgens) and Antoine Tardieu (Christian Marquand).
Antoine and Juliette washed up on the beach
Antoine promises to take Juliette away with him, but she overhears Antoine tell his buddies that he just intends to bed Juliette in a one night stand and then dump her. Outraged, Juliette flees to the lavish yacht owned by Eric but also refuses to sleep with him or become his mistress.
Juliette has resigned herself to going back to the orphanage when Antoine's younger brother, Michel, asks Juliette to marry him. Juliette realizes that this is a mistake and warns Michel that she will probably betray him because she just can't help it. When Michel insists, Juliette says yes and they are married over the objection of Michel's mother.
On the way back home from the wedding, Michel gets into a fight with a local tough guy who has called Juliette a whore. Skipping the wedding dinner, Juliette takes Michel upstairs and consummates their marriage, scandalously coming downstairs wearing only a bathrobe and loading up take out plates to take back upstairs. Apparently, this was just as scandalous to the censors in 1956 as it was to the family at the dinner.
Juliette tries hard to be a good and faithful wife to Michel. Eventually, she is bored out of her mind and doesn't know what to do with herself. The real problems start, however, when Eric buys out the small shipyard owned by the Tardieu family and makes Antoine his local manager. When Antoine moves back to St. Tropez, Juliette knows they're going to have a hard time keeping their hands off each other.
Juliette has become really bored with this marriage thing!
When Juliette takes a boat with a bad engine out for a spin, Antoine has to swim out and save her. Washing up on a remote beach, Juliette and Antoine do what comes natural and have sex. Being a very honest girl, Juliette takes to her bed saying she has a fever and tells Michel and Antoine's younger brother who tells their mother. Momma Tardieu tells Michel when he comes home that he needs to run that whore off this minute. Instead, Michel pursues Juliette to a local bar where she is letting loose and wildly dancing with the Rumba band. Overcome with jealousy, Michel pulls a gun to kill Juliette but is stopped by Eric who was come to the bar to try to take Juliette for himself. Eric is shot by Michel and has Antoine take him to a doctor who will be discreet and not tell the police.
Eric orders Antoine to leave St. Tropez and transfers him to a job out of town. In the last scene we see Michel take Juliette home, apparently for a little sexual healing. The End.
Juliette gets down with the band!
The film was a big hit in France and stirred up a firestorm of controversy when released in the U.S. The National League of Decency condemned the move and attempts were made to ban the film in various jurisdictions.
Despite its thin plot, And God Created Woman is a visual feast. Shot in Cinemascope on location in St. Tropez, the color and the scenery jump out at you. And, of course, the young Brigitte Bardot is stunningly gorgeous and well deserves her "sex kitten" reputation. Bardot really doesn't do much acting in this, she mostly just struts around showing off her "assets."
As proof positive that time destroys everything, here's a recent picture of Ms. Bardot
I watched the Criterion Collection DVD with a fully restored print of the movie in the original French with subtitles. Four out of five bikinis.
This Cecil B. DeMille epic from 1947 in glorious technicolor, is a lot of fun to watch. Set in pre-revolutionary war western Pennsylvania, the movie centers around the Indian War on the western colonial frontier called "Pontiac's Rebellion."
Based upon a novel by Neil Swanson, the movie is about Abby Hale (Paulette Goddard) a convicted murderer who is granted clemency in exchange for becoming an indentured servant in America. Abby gradually becomes the love interest of Captain Christopher Holden (Gary Cooper) who is busy fighting the evil Martin Garth (Howard Da Silva) who is selling guns to the Indians and hopes to turn the American Northwest into his own personal fiefdom.
The movie is very entertaining to watch and a feast for the eyes. The movie does have a few problems. Paulette Goddard at age 37 is way too old to be playing the role of a girl in her late teens and early twenties. Boris Karloff is kinda silly playing the Indian chief Guyasuta, and the racial stereotypes of the 1940s are well on display in the portrayal of all the native Americans in the film. Then there is the notorious scene where Cooper and Goddard are being pursued by hostile Indians in a canoe. In order to save them from going over the waterfall, Cooper grabs hold of a low hanging branch with Goddard hanging on to him and pulls them to safety on a ledge. Yeah Right!
Other than that, Unconquered is a lot of fun to watch. I'm especially fond of the scene where Gary Cooper props up dead British soldiers in a wagon to fool the Indians into thinking that reinforcements have arrived. The Bad Catholic gives Unconquered four out of five muskets.
Watching this movie in 2015, it's hard to understand all the controversy that surrounded it when it was first released in 1953. A notorious "dirty movie," which the Motion Picture Production Code Office refused to approve and which was banned in Kansas, Ohio, Maryland and Jersey City, New Jersey, the film today seems really tame and silly. I felt like Hawkeye Pierce in the M*A*S*H episode "The Moon is Not Blue." Hearing about the controversy about the notorious "dirty movie," Hawkeye moves heaven and earth to get a copy of it for the 4077 only to be really disappointed.
About as racy at "The Moon is Blue" gets:
Cynthia (Dawn Addams) dresses to try to get Donald back.
It's really hard to understand what about this was thought so bad that it was condemned by the Catholic League of Decency and was thought to corrupt the morals of the public. Nobody has any sex and nobody says any dirty words. There's no nudity. And, in the end, the institution of marriage (between one man and one woman, I might add) is upheld.
William Holden, Maggie McNamara and David Niven share dinner and a lot of peppy dialogue.
Based on a very successful Broadway play, also directed by Otto Preminger, the film version of The Moon is Blue starred William Holden, Maggie McNamara and David Niven. The slight plot involves the infatuation of an architect, Donald Gresham (William Holden) with an aspiring actress, Patty O'Neill (Maggie McNamara). Gresham "picks up" O'Neill on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and convinces her to join him for dinner and drinks in his apartment. There is a lot of snappy dialogue involving Patty telling Donald that she's a virgin and asking him if he intends to seduce her. Inside the apartment building, Donald is being stalked by his former fiance Cynthia. Donald and Patty are joined for dinner by Cynthia's playboy father, David Slater (David Niven).
Other than a lot of colorful dialogue about sex, pretty much nothing happens. The most exciting thing that happens is that Patty's father, a hard bitten Irish cop, thinking that his daughter has been seduced by Donald, shows up and gives him a black eye. The evening comedy of manners comes to an end, Patty meets Donald the next day back at the Empire State Building, Donald asks Patty to marry him and she accepts. Patty predicts that they will have five children and they live happily ever after.
"The Moon Is Blue" started out as a successful Broadway play by F. Hugh Herbert.
On stage, Patty was played by Barbara Bel Geddes and Donald by Donald Cook.
The controversy surrounding this movie is really incredible. In fact, there's more sex and naughtiness in most Shakespeare comedies than there is in this movie. After United Artists released the film "for adults only" without a seal of approval from the Production Code Office, the film faced censorship fights in court which went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States which overruled the Supreme Court of Kansas which had upheld the banning of the film.
The great Otto Preminger
It's interesting to speculate what the censors of the early 1950s would have thought about a really "indecent and obscene" film. Viewing the film today, William Holden and David Niven were really great actors, and do a good job with this light comedic material. Maggie McNamara is cute and handles her peppy dialogue very well. (The dialogue is like a Tarantino movie - it sounds good, but nobody talks like this in real life!). It's not a great film by any means, but it still hold up as an entertaining light romantic comedy. Three stars.
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Repo Man (1984) are a couple of strange ass movies. I watched them back to back because I had read on the internet that Repo Man was heavily influenced by Kiss Me Deadly.
Based on Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novel of the same name, about the only thing that this weird surrealist flick share's with Spillane's novel is the title. Reportedly, screen writer A.I. Bezzirides thought that Spillane's novel was a piece of crap and jettisoned the whole thing and wrote a screenplay about nuclear armageddon.
Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) and his secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) get down to business!
The original Mickey Spillane novel involves a mafia conspiracy about a suitcase full of drugs. This movie involves a conspiracy about a nuclear device concealed in a box. According to the Wikipedia article on Kiss Me Deadly: "It comes to represent the 1950s Cold War fear and nuclear weapon paranoia about the atomic bomb that permeated American culture. (Homage is paid to this glowing MacGuffin in the 1984 cult film Repo Man, the film Ronin, and in Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction.)
Bad things happen when the nuclear box is opened!
When the box is opened, really bad shit happens and nobody may ever get over it. The film stars Ralph Meeker as a sadistic, totally amoral Mike Hammer, Cloris Leachman as the damsel in distress, Gaby Rodgers as the two faced dike, Albert Deckker as the mad scientist, Maxine Cooper as Mike's main squeeze Velda.
Filmsite.org describes Kiss Me Deadly as "the definitive apocalyptic, nihilistic, science fiction film noir of all time - at the close of the classic noir period."
Repo Man was inspired by Kiss Me Deadly and is a much more entertaining movie. According to Wikipedia "Repo Man received near universal acclaim and is considered by many as one of the best films of 1984."
1984 is back in the Bad Catholic's heyday, but I guess I missed this because I was probably too busy graduating from High School, applying to college and getting a job for the first time. But, better late than never. This time, the MacGuffin is some shining dead aliens in the trunk of a Malibu. The shining light in the trunk which will kill you is directly inspired by Kiss Me Deadly. Unlike Kiss Me Deadly, Repo Man sort of has a happy ending.
Repo Man stars Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton. It is listed by Entertainment Weekly at number seven on their list of the best cult movies of all time. The sound track features songs by popular punk rock artists Iggy Pop, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks and others.
The Glowing Malibu from Roswell, New Mexico
Roger Ebert said "I saw "Repo Man" near the end of busy stretch on the movie beat: Three days during which I saw more relentlessly bad movies than during any comparable period in memory. Most of those bad movies were so cynically constructed out of formula ideas and "commercial" ingredients that watching them was an ordeal. "Repo Man" comes out of left field, has no big stars, didn't cost much, takes chances, dares to be unconventional, is funny, and works. There is a lesson here."
The Bad Catholic gives Kiss Me Deadly three and half glowing nuclear boxes and gives Repo Man five glowing car trunks.
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