Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête)

Screened: January 8, 2008
Format: DVD - Criterion (2003)
Selected By: Libby

Jean Cocteau was regarded as one of the leading French cultural figures of the early twentieth century when he created his 1946 fantasy Beauty and the Beast. Although he worked as a director, novelist, playwright, and designer, Cocteau considered himself first and foremost a poet, and a poetic sensibility runs throughout the output of his versatile career. A loose adaptation of an eighteenth century French fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast was Cocteau’s second film, and it shares the surrealism that characterizes much of his work. Far removed from the horrors of post-war Europe, yet infused with rich social and political commentary, Beauty challenged audiences to demand more from the fantasy genre. Cocteau was explicit about the film’s gender and sexual subtexts, and its deconstruction of traditional fairy tales motifs.

In Beauty, Cocteau utilizes baroque design and technical wizardry to create a phantasmagorical landscape where reality and fantasy mingle. The banality of the film’s opening sequences stand in stark contrast to the Beast’s castle, where Henri Alekan’s silvery photography reveals a new wonder or chill behind every corner. That Beauty and Beast was completed at all, let alone with such opulent production design and visual effects, is a minor miracle. The film suffered from post-war shortages of everything from film stock to textiles to medicine for Cocteau himself, who was seriously ill during the production. Under five hours of stifling makeup, French heartthrob Jean Marais conjures an amazingly affecting performance as the Beast. In his monstrous visage, Marais was widely regarded by French girls and women as much more appealing than when he appeared as the handsome prince. This subversive thematic twist is, of course, exactly what Cocteau intended.

Despite Beauty and Beast’s financial success in France and internationally, Cocteau wrote that his “greatest reward” was the enthusiastic response the film received at its first screening, held not for critics or the public, but for the film studio’s technicians. Six decades later, Beauty and Beast remains a milestone in early post-war French film, and in fantasy film generally. Its ambitious artistry has influenced filmmakers across genres, yet Cocteau’s sincere, challenging approach to his source material is still all too rarely emulated.

Review: Atonement

2007
Director: Joe Wright
Viewed: January 7, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

There’s a powerful film about the dimensions of morality somewhere beneath the surface of Atonement, but director Joe Wright doesn’t permit that film to fully emerge. Something tantalizing is going on in this adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, especially in the film’s first act, and thereafter whenever Romola Garai is on screen as the eighteen-year-old incarnation of the film’s primary narrator, Briony Tallis. Unfortunately, Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton seem content to coast on filmic conventions that, while attractively realized, seem misplaced or outright leaden. It’s challenging to discuss Atonement in detail without revealing its twist conclusion. Suffice to say that the daring metatextual themes of the source material seem to lose something in the translation to the screen.

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Film Diary: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007
Director: David Yates
Viewed: January 5, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Brothers (2007)

Film Diary: The Boss of It All (Direktøren for det Hele)

2006
Director: Lars von Trier
Viewed: January 5, 2008
Format: DVD - IFC (2007)

This film features Jens Albinus on a splendid 90-minute comedic jaunt as Kristoffer, and some scenes that are as hilariously excruciating as anything in The Office, such as when Albinus has to puzzle out exactly what his “character” asked a subordinate in an email. I’m not sure how to feel about von Trier’s experiment with “Automavision”. It seems to be an elaborate innovation in search of a problem, but who am I to deny an auteur his experiments?

Film Diary: Killer of Sheep

1977
Director: Charles Burnett
Viewed: January 5, 2008
Format: DVD - New Yorker Video / Milestone Cinematheque (2007)

Well, the hype is right. This was an excellent film, infused with an insightful naturalism I haven’t seen in American cinema in some time. I can’t recall a starker, more perfectly conveyed portrait of a thirty-something working class American male than Stan in Killer of Sheep. And Stan and his wife gently dancing to “This Bitter Earth” as she runs her hands over his bare torso? Easily the most sensual image in film this year.

The Best Films of 2007 (That I’ve Seen)

Our big year-end feature is here! Thanks to the Cinephiles to submitted their Best of 2007 lists!

Click here to go to our the Best Films of 2007 main page.

Film Diary: Ratatouille

2007
Directors: Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava
Viewed: January 4, 2008
Format: DVD - Disney (2007)

3-Minute Intro: The Paleface

Screened: January 4, 2008
Format: DVD - Universal (2002)
Selected By: Stephanie

Until Mel Brooks took aim at the genre three decades later, Norman Z. McLeod’s 1948 Bob Hope vehicle The Paleface was the essential Western film parody. Created at the height of Hope’s prolific comedic film career at Paramount, The Paleface–along with his film noir parody, My Favorite Brunette—highlights the comedian’s ability to play the Vaudeville clown in any setting. Hope’s straight man here is a straight woman. The sultry Jane Russell, the pinup with the scornful gaze, succeeds as his foil by playing it aggressive and slightly amused, providing a counterpoint to Hope’s weak-kneed, reluctant gunslinger.

In Hope’s television specials and live performances, his trademark quips showcased the actor’s pitch-perfect comedic timing and captivating physical presence. Hope’s delivery had a self-effacing style, even when his jabs were pointed at others, earning him a reputation as a wry but unthreatening performer. In his films, the plot was more or less an excuse for Hope to offer ninety minutes of his characteristic sardonic commentary. “Painless” Potter, the un-hero of The Paleface, is but one incarnation of the archetypical Hope character from the Paramount years. No other comedic actors have been able to achieve the distinctive alchemy he brought to his protagonists: charismatic, cowardly, handsome, inept, sarcastic, painfully self-aware, earnestly pathetic, and ultimately someone you cheer for. Throughout his career, Hope modestly claimed his writers were the true comedic geniuses, but in The Paleface he ably demonstrates that ninety percent of humor is in the delivery.

Opposite the comedian is the sex symbol. In 1948, Jane Russell was known for her first role—and prominently featured cleavage—in the Howard Hughes Western The Outlaw. While her casting in the The Paleface was likely meant to tap into male audiences’ smoldering memories of her from that film, Russell used the opportunity to reveal her talents as a performer. Despite some salacious and dubious outfits, her Calamity Jane is the tough-as-nails outlaw hero of the film, and it is a testament to her talents that she conveys nerve and intellect along with her distinctive, daunting sensuality. Russell’s nascent comedic sensibilities are also obvious, and would achieve their pinnacle five years later when she arguably upstaged Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Review: The Savages

2007
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Viewed: January 3, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print

The Savages is, if nothing else, unequivocal in its subject matter. It tackles the admittedly tricky topic of elderly dementia with gusto, exhibiting fearless interest in how such a tragedy can act as a catalyst and a stressor on toxic familial dynamics. The route it takes to this destination is muddled, however. Tamara Jenkins aspires for her second feature film to be both funny and touching, and to that end she traffics simultaneously in affected oddness, excruciating awkwardness, and legitimate human pain. The mixture never quite coagulates into anything particularly revelatory or even into lasting amusement. It’s a credit to Jenkins’ sharp dialog and the talent of her lead performers, therefore, that The Savages manages to find some absorbing drama in the deepest corners of the black comedy coal bin.

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Film Diary: Stranger Than Fiction

2006
Director: Marc Forster
Viewed: January 3, 2008
Format: DVD - Sony Pictures (2007)