Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian writer-director, dies recently after making 25 films over 51 years. He is most renowned for The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972) and the 9-Oscar winner The Last Emperor (1987). Bertolucci’s body of work benefitted from his longtime collaboration with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.
Of course, his most notorious film was Last Tango in Paris. I rewatched Last Tango in Paris in the last few years, and concluded that it just doesn’t stand up. In fact, I found parts of the vaunted Marlon Brando performance risible and, knowing what we know now about how Bertolucci and Brando treated actrees Maria Schneider, the famed butter scene is disturbingly unwatchable.
I actually prefer Bertolucci’s more recent work, beginning with the underrated The Sheltering Sky (1990) with John Malkovich and Debra Winger. I thought that his The Dreamers was the best film of 2003.
I especially like Bertolucci’s final film, Me and Youwhich he made in 2012 at the age of 72. I saw Me and You at the San Francisco International Film Festival, but it has never been widely available, and sadly, can only be streamed with a Realeyz subscription.
Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed and released thirty years after Welles’ death, centers on the fictional cinema auteur Jake Hannaford (John Huston). Not unlike Welles himself, Hannaford is widely recognized as brilliant and self-indulgent, as both a genius and impossible to work with, having a lifetime of relationship carnage strewn behind him. For the zillionth time, Hannaford is broke and needs to find money to finish his latest movie. He holds a screening party in hopes of snaring financial support from his now more successful protégé Brooks Otterlake (Peter Bogdanovich).
The backdrop is the sort of 1970s Hollywood hedonism where the party includes naked models, midgets (“The midgets broke into the wine cellar and got their tiny hands on the fireworks”) and female manikins for target practice. And, oh, they invited the mid-70s version of Dennis Hopper.
Peter Bogdanovich and John Huston in Orson Wells’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
Hannaford is surrounded by his own posse of collaborators and hangers-on, and a cynical bunch they are. That rampant and matter-of-fact cynicism is very witty, and things are funniest when things go badly – the money pitch is prematurely exposed and the screening of an art film has to be re-located to a drive-in!
John Huston’s performance is wonderful, especially when Hannaford is not suffering fools gladly. Hannaford’s team of scoundrels is played by Mercedes McCambridge, Tonio Selwirt as the Baron, Gregory Sierra, Paul Stewart and Edmond O’Brien, with Lili Palmer as an ex and Susan Strasberg as a provocateur of the press. In fact, virtually every actor delivers an excellent performance, except for Cameron Mitchell with his odd, apparently Southern, accent.
I was surprised by brilliance of Norman Foster’s performance as Hannaford’s gofer Billy, loyal, weary and crapped-upon; Foster is known for 57 screen credits as a director, but he also acted, supporting Walter Huston in one of the first talkies in 1929.
Norman Foster in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
And then there’s the surreal film-within-the-film – the unfinished Hannaford movie that is being screened at the party. The star of that film is Welles’ real-life girlfriend, the Croatian actress Oja Kodar, who co-wrote The Other Side of the Wind. Kodar’s character strides around empty vistas naked and dominates the pretty boy leading man (Robert Random). This film is pure eye candy, with the most vivid colors and the most dramatic camera angles. Kodar’s almost silent performance is exceptional – she has the gaze of a predator, always direct and in command. She looks great naked, and her sex scene in a moving car is exceptionally erotic.
Some critical comment suggests that the film-within-the-film is Welles’ satire on European art films. But, to my eyes, it’s consistent with a good art film of the 1970s, too. Either way, you can’t stop watching it.
Oja Kodar in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND
The Other Side of the Wind has been famous for decades as a Lost Film (and now as a recovered film). But it’s best viewed without that baggage – by just absorbing what’s up on the screen.
Not everyone will like The Other Side of the Wind, especially those who like their movies to be linear. Is The Other Side of the Wind a mess, as some have described it? I don’t think so because the party scenes are SUPPOSED to be frenetic – Welles dips deeply into chaos and ambivalence and obscurity with intentionality.
The Other Side of the Wind is Welles’ unsparing glimpse into his own personality – a personality that self-sabotages his art and cruelly mistreats those closest and most necessary to him. The question he seems to ask himself is whether the self-created tumult is a REQUISITE for his art or an IMPEDIMENT?
In each of four decades Orson Welles produced unforgettable works of art. Citizen Kane is an undisputed masterpiece, and I consider A Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight to be great movies. The Other Side of the Wind is in that class. Thirty-three years after it’s creator’s death, it’s one of the best movies of 2018.
John Huston, Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich in THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD
The release of The Other Side of the Wind is accompanied by two documentaries on Orson Welles and his final movie: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead and A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making. And they’re both available to stream on Netflix.
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is a feature-length documentary. We hear from the two guys involved with The Other Side of the Wind during its forty-year journey. Producer Frank Marshall was one of the four-person crew during the four years of shooting, along with Orson Welles, co-writer and star Oja Kodar and cinematographer Gary Graver. Director Peter Bogdanovich began acting in one role and shifted to another during the shoot – and then played a pivotal off-camera role in the film’s completion.
Here’s what They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead helps you understand about The Other Side of the Wind:
How essential director of photography Gary Graver was to the project, one of the few non-porn flicks in his filmography.
Why impressionist Rich Little oddly shows up in the party in The Other Side of the Wind and what was his original role in the film;
How Welles treated his confidant Bogdanovich in real life, which gives a major insight into The Other Side of the Wind.
What The Other Side of the Wind insiders think is the intended meaning of the movie.
Just how charismatic and witty Welles was in real life – even more quick and refreshing than on his talk show appearances.
You can stream They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead on Netflix.
A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making is a 38-minute “Making Of’ doc about the restoration and completion of The Other Side of the Wind. It’s a procedural that offers insight into all aspects of the final cut, including the editing and the music. A highlight is actor Danny Huston describing the looping of his father’s voice. The story of rescuing the actual cans of film is a helluva detective story in itself.
Netflix offers A Final Cut for Orson: Forty Years in the Making, but makes it unnecessarily tough to find. Instead of using the Netflix SEARCH feature, go right to The Other Side of the Wind and scroll down and click on MORE TRAILERS.
Frank Marshall, Oja Kodar and Orson Welles in A FINAL CUT FOR ORSON: FORTY YEARS IN THE MAKING
The protagonist of Zama is a colonial magistrate in the late 1700s, a low-level functionary of the Spanish crown in a remote backwater of South America. A pretty decent guy for a colonizer who enslaves other humans, Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez-Cacho) has been loyally performing his duties, and his sole ambition is to get a transfer and return to his family.
But his bosses just won’t give him that transfer, even when he performs a morally painful task. Worse than that, his life is an unending sequence of indignities. While de Zama can’t get relieved, the underling who has been fired for insubordination gets the assignment of his choice; de Zama lusts for the Spanish colonial woman who teases him, but she only will bed the same insubordinate underling. De Zama can’t even get his indigenous mistress to wash his shirt.
The Wiley Coyote of Spanish colonialism, De Zama is frustrated, humiliated – and finally, far worse. Zama’s descent leads to his final act of refusing to give what he sees as false hope to even his tormentors. As the indignities pile up on Zama, the absurdity becomes wry; I kept thinking of the Job-like misfortunes of the protagonist in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, which is funny as hell, unlike Zama.
The finest screen actors are best when they are silently watching, observing and assessing their own situations. The Spanish-born Mexican actor Giménez-Cacho is particularly adept at this, and throughout the film we see “I am so screwed” in his eyes.
This is all meant to show us the fundamental corruption of colonialism, and that colonialism ultimately destroys the colonizer as well as the colonized. (Yes, this really hasn’t been controversial for the past 50 years.)
This is a one-note movie. Zama has a score of 89 from Metacritic and is beloved by many admirable critics, including the great Manohla Dargis. But the repetitive tedium and the Message worn on its sleeve didn’t pay off for me. You can stream it if you insist.
Romais an exquisite portrait of two enduring women and the masterpiece of Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men and Y Tu Mama Tambien). Will win multiple Oscars.
Shoplifters won the Palm d’Or at Cannes. This is a witty, and finally heartbreaking, look at a family that lives on the margins – and then is revealed to be not what it seems.
Bitter Melon, H.P. Mendoza’s dark indie comedy on an issue that a Bay Area family must finally face.
The masterful documentary Monrovia, Indiana is a fascinating movie about a boring subject.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes provides insight into of the man who founded Fox News and thus defiled the American body politic and made possible our venerable nation’s descent into Trump’s America.
Just in case you haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet – Lady Gaga illuminates Bradley Cooper’s triumphant A Star Is Born. Don’t bring a hankie – bring a whole friggin’ box of Kleenex.
What They Had is an authentic and well-crafted dramatic four-hander with Hilary Swank, Michael Shannon, Blythe Danner and Robert Forster.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen Brothers’ anthology of darkly funny Western vignettes, is recommended only for Westernphiles and Coen Brothers fans. It is streaming on Netflix.
The Outlaw King, with Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce, exists for those who need a dose of medieval slaughter and a spunky queen, but there’s not enough there for the rest of us.
Skip First Man – a boring movie about a fascinating subject.
ON VIDEO
My Streams of the Week are the eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far that are already available to stream: Leave No Trace, The Rider, The Death of Stalin, Beast, Custody, Monrovia, Indiana, Three Identical Strangers, Quality Problems and Outside In.
ON TV
I don’t want to make a television recommendation this week. I guess you could watch The Prowler on Turner Classic Movies on December 13. But you should really be watching the best movies of the year in theaters or via streaming.
Bitter Melon is H.P. Mendoza’s dark indie comedy on an issue that a Bay Area family must finally face. The dad has long abandoned the family, and it’s almost like he has moved to a different city (but he hasn’t). Two of the adult sons have moved to New York City and Philadelphia. The third son, Troy, lives in the mom’s family home with his wife and kid – and this guy is a nightmare. Troy (Patrick Epino) has a delusional self-image that he is somehow super-talented, even though he is unemployed and living off his wife and mom; worse, he has an anger management problem, and the entire family tiptoes around on eggshells – trying to avoid any disagreement with him.
It should be no surprise that Troy, who thinks he is entitled to his way all of the time, also beats his wife. The wife is too traumatized to seek help, Troy’s mom is in denial and the siblings, having put the family’s day-to-day life in their rearview mirrors, all combine to enable the abuse. When the two brothers return for the Christmas Holiday, the situation becomes unbearable and the family members decide that they must take an extreme step to deal with Troy.
I’ve just described a pretty grim story line, but Bitter Melon is very funny.
Bitter Melon invites us into a Filipino-American family, which is a welcome look at an underrepresented subject. But Bitter Melon is much more than cultural tourism – the characters and story here are universal, from the adult kids coming back to sleep in their childhood rooms for the holidays, the differences between first and second generation immigrants and the family issues of abuse and denial.
H.P. Mendoza is a Bay Area treasure, having written the screenplay and music for the rollicking and refreshing comedy Colma: The Musical and written and directed the genre-bending art film I Am a Ghost. I recommend the delightful Colma: The Musical for anyone, especially Bay Area residents; you can stream it from Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Bitter Melon begins a Bay Area theatrical run tomorrow.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in a scene from Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE
Eight of my Best Films of 2018 – So Far are already available to stream. Here they are, and this week I’m featuring Leave No Trace: his demons, not hers. Leave No Trace is Debra Granik’s first narrative feature since her 2010 Winter’s Bone (which I had rated as the best film of that year). Leave No Trace is a brilliant coming of age film that stars Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie as a dad-daughter team who challenge conventional thinking about homelessness and healthy parenting. Winter’s Bone launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence, and Leave No Trace might do the same for newcomer McKenzie. Leave No Trace may be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Also available to stream:
The Rider: a life’s passion is threatened. n Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The Death of Stalin: gallows humor from the highest of scaffolds. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Beast: finally unleashed … and untethered. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Custody: the searing essence of domestic violence. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Three Identical Strangers: a Feel Good until we peel back the onion. Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Quality Problems: a screwball comedy for the sandwich generation. My favorite film from last year’s Cinequest has been released on video this year: Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Outside In: she finds herself finally ready. Streaming on Netflix.
The biodoc Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes provides insight into the life of the man who, by founding Fox News, created what was once entirely unthinkable, the defiling of the American body politic and our venerable nation’s descent into Trump’s America. Fox News has stripped from American civil society our shared acceptance of fact. You just can’t debate the goals and means of governing with people who devoutly believe things that just are not empirically accurate – that Obama founded Isis, that Hilary murdered Vince Foster and the like. That is the legacy and stain of Ailes and his Fox News.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes tells that story, and precedes it with some nuggets about Ailes’ childhood (including a significant medical condition), his ambitious clambering up the career ladder and his worship of Richard Nixon. The most surprising talking head (in terms of the content of his remarks) is Glenn Beck.
Of course, Ailes met his downfall when his decades-long sexual harassment was exposed. The disgustingly naked quid pro quo character of his serial sexual predation is startling – even among the worst we’ve seen in this #MeToo period.
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes opens this week in Bay Area theaters.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is the Coen Brothers’ homage to the Western genre; it’s an anthology with SIX of their darkly funny stories. They clearly share Mark Twain’s cynically wry take on human nature, which they depict in Western situations of wagon trains, stagecoach rides, prospecting and hangings. The Coen brothers are not just making fun of Western clichés but also celebrating the genre, with beautiful vistas of New Mexico’s harshness and the spectacular Colorado high country.
The funniest is the opening vignette, with its over-the-top send up of Western conventions – white and black hats, saloon gambling, super fast gunplay and the rest, including nods to the “loquacious Western” subgenre. And it cements Tim Blake Nelson as having the funniest shit-eating grin in cinema.
The best performance is Harry Melling’s in the Meal Ticket segment. Melling is best known as Harry Potter’s Dudley Dursling. He plays an itinerant performer who only speaks during his performances; Melling is startlingly brilliant in those performances and even better when he silently and fatalistically regards his competition.
Harry Melling in THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS
By far the best story is the saddest, The Gal Who Got Rattled, about a sad-eyed young woman (Zoe Kazan) who is following her delusional brother west, to what we all know will be heartbreak. Untethered by her obligation to the brother, she gets the Old West’s opportunity to remake her destiny until the Old West’s cruel chance intervenes.
The movie peters out in the ghostly last story, The Mortal Remains, despite Saul Rubinek’s delicious portrayal of a Frenchman in the Old West.
I don’t recommend The Ballad of Buster Scruggs for general audiences, but Westernphiles and fans of the Coen Brothers dark, dark humor will find it worthwhile viewing; it doesn’t rise anywhere near the level of the Coen’s best: Blood Simple, Fargo, A Simple Man, No Country for Old Men or True Grit. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is playing in a few theaters and streaming from Netflix.
Donna Reed and James Stewart in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Every Christmas Eve, the Stanford Theatre presents Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen. It’s a great retro experience to see any film in an elegantly restored movie palace (balcony and all), especially with a Mighty Wurlitzer Organ pre-concert. But sharing the laughs and tears of It’s a Wonderful Life with a large (I’m guessing about 750 seats), sell-out audience is very rich indeed.
The tickets are an egalitarian ten bucks or so, but you must be invested in the experience – you can only buy tickets IN PERSON at the Stanford Theatre box office. The tickets go on sale with little fanfare in the first week of December and quickly sell out. So you have to watch the Stanford Theatre’s website for the start of ticket sales and show up to buy tickets weeks ahead of time. The unforgettable experience is worth it.
This year, advance tickets go on sale Friday, December 14 at 5:00 PM. The Wife and I will be lined up at 4:30.
