24th SFIAAFF Preview

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 2/15/2011. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

* * * * *
The blog-friendly publicity department of the SF International Asian American Film Festival, which runs from March 16-26, kindly let me attend its press screenings over the past couple weeks. I was able to fit four into my schedule.

Wisit Sasanatieng has just been named one of the "three most important Thai directors" in a poll on www.thaicinema.org. His new film Citizen Dog, like his directing debut (still shelved from any US release) Tears of the Black Tiger, takes its gaudy color palette from the film posters, programs, hand-painted promotional stills and other ephemera that remain from the 16mm film production era of the Thai movie industry which lasted until the early 1970s. But instead of the genre pastiche that Wisit's previous film was, Citizen Dog is loosely structured through the cast of eccentric Bangkok characters country bumpkin Pod encounters while stumbling through a series of jobs hoping to defy the prediction his toothless grandma cackles at him as he leaves the family farm: "If you get a job in Bangkok, you will surely grow a tail!"

Luckily Pod (played by Mahasamuth Boonyarak, who I was not surprised to learn is actually a bass player in a rock band; he's got something of a pop star look) is quite unlike the rest of Bangkok's citizens. He's set apart from the crowd in an early sequence in which he's shown moving about town in crowds of people all singing the film's theme song, some quite soulfully, while he glances around at them quizzically. (Another memorable musical sequence comes in the form of a recitative rap song explaining Granny's reincarnation as a gecko clinging to Pod's lamp.) He also has a singular, unrequited devotion to Jin (Saengthong Gate-Uthong) a quirky cleaning woman he meets while employed as a security guard. I suspect this romance thread in the film, along with Pen-ek Ratanaruang's dryly bemused voice-over, is the origin of the many comparisons to Amelie Wisit's film has garnered. The time we spend with Jin reveals her to have an instinct for romantic self-sabotage similar to Amelie's. But from Pod's point of view, his romantic goals are thwarted not by his own lack of confidence but by the craziness of Bangkok and its absolutely bizarre residents. And indeed the unexpectable flourishes of the writer/director's imagination are the real selling point of Citizen Dog. Read all the plot synopses of this film you want beforehand, but I'm certain there will still be plenty of surprises for you when you actually see it. There's just so much crammed into the running time that no synopsis could cover it all without practically rewriting the screenplay. As of yet without a US distributor, Citizen Dog plays the Castro Theatre March 17 and the PFA March 18.

Linda Linda Linda is perhaps even more fun. It's another in the current cycle of films exploring Japan's teenage subcultures, but unlike my experience watching Kamikaze Girls, Go or All About Lilly Chou-Chou, my interest never flagged and I never sensed director Nobuhiro Yamashita reaching for a sentimental or "shocking" cliche. He drops the audience into the very richly detailed galaxy that is Shibazaki High School counting the days to the upcoming school festival and the accompanying rock and roll talent showcase held in a gymnasium-cum-stage. It took a few scenes for me to find my bearings, but soon after I did I was completely won over by these characters. Kyoko, Nozomi, and Kei need to find a vocalist for their Blue Hearts cover band, and to spite a former bandmate they pick the Korean exchange student, Son. They're not exactly striving against all odds to learn catchy Ramones-esque songs like "Linda, Linda", but rather there's a realness to their struggles competing for practice time at the school's pop music club room, dealing with hopeful and ex-boyfriends, and, for Son especially, figuring out how to fit in. By the end of the film you may just have to struggle not to get up and dance along in the aisles (not only is it a fire hazard as we've all been reminded by Sarah Vowell, but it also blocks the view of your fellow moviegoers. So restrain yourself.) Linda Linda Linda plays Friday, March 17 at the PFA and Wednesday, March 22 at the Kabuki.

The other two I saw were among the films passed over by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television in its selection of China's latest Oscar submission in favor of the Promise, which failed to be nominated.

Despite uprooting the setting from Austria to pre-Communist China, Xu Jinglei's Letter From an Unknown Woman is actually more faithful to Stefan Zweig's 1922 tale of romantic obsession than Max Ophuls' revered 1948 version. But perhaps it's most interesting to read Xu's film politically, as Jiang Wen's intellectual playboy character is surrounded by symbols of Westernization, transforming the heroine's infatuation into a manifestation of what might have been called "capitalist thought" after 1949.

Kekexili: Mountain Patrol tells the grippingly true story of a Beijing journalist who travels to the remotest corner of Tibet where the chiru, or Tibetan antelope, is being wiped out by poaching. The film's plot is filled with ethical ambiguities that hooked me in as tightly as a classic Hollywood noir or Western can. It's refreshing to see increasingly layered films like this one coming out of mainland China's film industry.

Though both films are set for US distribution, only Kekexili: Mountain Patrol has its Frisco theatrical release dates: April 21-27, right in the middle of the Film Society's film festival. If you're like me and you tend to be locked into festival mode at that time, avoiding the arthouses like the Lumiere and Act I/II, make an effort to see the film at its March 20th Kabuki screening.

Of course, Landmark would schedule its most enticing calendared programs for the weeks when another major festival, the SFIFF, will be running. Following Kekexili: Mountain Patrol at the Lumiere will be Carol Reed's 1948 the Fallen Idol April 28-May 4. The Act I/II will get the Confomist that week instead. The rest of the current Landmark calendar, I have to say, doesn't inspire me much. I've already seen the Devil and Daniel Johnston (at IndieFest 2005) and though I'd definitely recommend it to people who wish they knew a bit more about this Daniel Johnston guy they keep hearing about, I'm unlikely to prioritize a repeat viewing.

And Now: the Best New Films of 2005

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/27/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

* * * * *
In between all the film festivals and events happening right now, just thought I'd squeeze out a post that's been long in coming. I already ran down my favorite filmgoing experiences of last year, but avoided talking about "new releases", knowing that I had submitted such a list to Senses of Cinema's World Poll which was still in the pipeline. Here's that list; forgive me for the gimmicky presentation; it's just that the question of documentary vs. fiction filmmaking was a real and major theme of my cinematic exploration last year.

More excitingly, I have the honor to present an end-of-year wrap-up by a friend and fellow cinephile from my neighborhood, Adam Hartzell. Adam is a contributor to the excellent resource koreanfilm.org and to greencine daily, and is a much more well-travelled moviegoer than I, attending out-of-town film festivals every year. So it speaks well of local film programmers that eight of his top ten were films you or I could have seen on a Frisco screen last year.

Without futher ado, here's Adam:

To make it on my Top Ten, the film had to be released in the past few years and found itself on a screen in my vicinity in 2005. I saw 126 films new to me in the theatres in 2005. (Some of these were first time viewings of old school films and, thus, out of the running. But some of the highlights of those films were Carmen Santos's Sangue Mineiro (Brazil, 1929), R.D Pestonji's Country Hotel (Thailand, 1957), Lee Man-hee's The Starting Point (South Korea, 1967), and Masuda Toshio's The Velvet Hustler (Japan, 1967).) I chose to see these films within the confines of choices made by other people, e.g., retrospective curators, distributors and theatre owners. To give you an idea of the films I avoid, I never ended up seeing the trilogy of the third installment of the trilogies Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, or Star Wars. And to give you an idea of the films I seek out, in 2005, I traveled to Udine, Italy to see Park Chul-soo's Green Chair and Busan, South Korea to see Hur Jin-ho's April Snow and Nobuhiro Yamashita's Linda, Linda, Linda. So based on the choices I had available to me, choices enabled by some well-planned vacations, here are the best choices I made.

10) THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (Noel Baumbach, USA 2005)

I think I can fairly say that I'm not feeding delusions by saying that the father and eldest son here are not me, but I sure could relate to the often ignored plot element of driving around forever looking for parking. For that reason alone, this film could have easily been placed in San Francisco without missing a beat. The opening tennis match will remain a classic scene for me. We knew the characters immediately - point, set, and match. Although I've heard the "It's very Kafkaesque" joke before, I laughed yet again. This was the quirky film I needed on another dreary day during San Francisco's rainy season. Big Thanks to the Opera Plaza Theatres for providing me shelter from the rain and to Peet's Coffee too since someone finally opened up a coffeehouse nearby that stays open into the late evening.

9) BEYOND OUR KEN (Pang Ho-Cheung, Hong Kong 2004)

It didn't start off well. I was told by one of the volunteers that I'd sat in the wrong seat and he instructed I move. The seat I sat in was reserved, but not for me. When I moved to a seat closer to the stage, I began to feel this buzz in the air. I would learn soon that all the Italians were anxiously anticipating the arrival of Italian pop star Gianna Nannini about whom I knew nothing, but was to find out from the English translation provided on stage that a song by Nannini would be featured in Beyond Our Ken that figured as director Pang Ho-Cheung's inspiration for the film. And what a lovely little twisting film it was. Italian style as envisioned by this Hong Kong director whose film AV, which I'd seen a few days before, led me to believe, well, that Pang was a hack. I stand corrected. Great performances by Gillian Chung and Tao Hung helped this mystery about the strange companionship taken up by an ex- and present girlfriend of the same boy become one of my more memorable cinematic experiences this year at the Teatro Nuovo in Udine, Italy.

8) KAMIKAZE GIRLS (Nakashima Tetsuya, Japan 2004)

Take two at the Teatro Nuovo and again it's a story about an unlikely friendship. This film was just crazy fun. Although I prefer the slow-paced, artsy films, I can enjoy my spectacle just as much as the next film geek. The two fast friends are played to full special effect by Fukada Kyoko and Tsuchiya Anna. Juxtaposing a Rocco-obsessed, baby-doll-dressing, Japanese teen girl with an equally, fashion-plated, female Yakuza in scooter-wheeled training was just zany enough to work. This could have veered out of control but Nakashima takes us on several, bizarre, tangential courses while still returning us to the central theme of the film - friendship. The film takes Japanese teen expression through fashion seriously and has fun, but never ridicules. For once, a film I desperately wanted to receive a release in the States actually did.

7) A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (David Cronenberg, USA 2005)

Cronenberg tends to freak me out. But he doesn't freak me out as if he's pummeling me with violent visuals or grotesque graphics just for the sake of pummeling. There has always been a message and method for getting his freak on and his film Crash definitely solidified that for me. His latest installment is many things, but foremost for me it is pedagogy on human desires. As much as some of us might like to think we're incapable of violence, there's a history lying back there in all of us of possible acts committed if not actually enacted. And Cronenberg keeps mining our collective Id for all it’s worth. I caught this later than the average cinema bear, waiting to see it at the 4 Star with Brian at a completely packed house on Christmas because it seemed nicely sacrilegious to do so. (I also caught the first Orthodox Jewish film, Ushpizin, at a Saturday matinee for the same reasons.) But I definitely saw what all the fuss was about, along with the importance of theatres like the 4 Star and the crowds that love them.

6) GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. (George Clooney, USA 2005)

I'd love to say 'Good Riddance' to McCarthy-ism, but sadly it's alive and well in the wiretappin' US of A. So this film provided further opportunities for me to reflect on how much does and doesn't change here. The choice for black and white was perfect in juxtaposing McCarthy's own words against the film and against us, resembling the conversations some of us have with TV pundits now. (OK, yelling at Bill O'Reilly's outlandish statements is not really a conversation.) David Strathairn provided one of my favorite performances this year, along with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, rounding out a film that didn't drag for me one bit. Well, it's a drag that this same old, same old refuses to die. But the presence of a considerably packed crowd at the Embarcadero Theatre during a matinee after work gave me some hope.

5) HOST & GUEST (Shin Dong-il, South Korea 2005)

I'd just be repeating myself with what I've already written here, so let me just say how nice it was to watch this film in a South Korean multiplex in Busan. If only every visit to a multiplex could bring such enlightenment.

4) GRAIN IN EAR (Lu Zhan, China and South Korea 2005)

Ditto.

3) VODKA LEMON (Hiner Saleem, Armenia, France, Italy, and Switzerland 2003)

This is such a simple parable with little dialogue and little scenery, yet sometimes the simple stories are the best ones. From the very beginning of the absurd opening scene of a village elder being dragged in his bed on route to a funeral through the icy roads, I knew I was in for a treat and the film's patient pace refused to disappoint. The crunch of the snow underneath the feet of these characters, the bodily defenses they engage in to protect themselves from the cold, all underscored a general theme of surviving in less hospitable climes. I love the Balboa theatre, but sometimes it is cold in the winter, and occasionally that temperature works perfectly with the film on screen.

2) NOBODY KNOWS (Kore-eda Hirokaz, Japan 2004)

This made a lot of critic lists last year, but I didn't get to see it until the beginning of 2005. Could a film get any sadder? But this wasn't melodrama mania. This was the kind of sadness that comes with intimacy, getting to know characters gradually so when tragedy strikes, you are not shocked into horror, you simply grieve along with the characters. Kore-eda is to film what Sigur Ros is to music. For some time now, Kore-eda has been exploring our reception of the deaths that surround us. Nobody Knows continues this exploration to show us what happens when we ignore the slow deaths around us that simple interventions could rescue. Instead, these kids find their own way to survive, demonstrating the paradox of human ingenuity that keeps us together and alienated at the same time. Big thanks to the Lumiere Theatre for providing me a safe place to let the tears drop.

1) THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERATOR (Caroline Martel, Canada 2004)

Although all the films listed here, (and many not listed), had an impact on me, none had as much of an impact as Montreal-born director Caroline Martel's montage experiment The Phantom of the Operator. The film explores the history of women operators, but it's so much more than that. Through a whispering French narration and creative use of industrial videos and other ephemera, Martel motivates us to rethink the part women have played in the telecommunication revolution, and all that still lies hidden behind every revolution. Her avant-garde approach is accessible even to this kindergartner within that school. Full disclosure might require me to note that I've worked in a phone center for the past 7 1/2 years. But one need not have worked in the industry to appreciate what Martel observes here. Martel schooled me in more ways then one, as all great documentaries do, but she also brought an artful respect to this topic, showing the beauty along with the disturbing, that transcends the topic while underscoring her themes at the same time. The Pacific Film Archives at the University of California, Berkeley rocks my world yet again. I saw my two favorite films from 2004 there, (A Certain Kind of Death and Invisible Light), and yet again they screened my favorite film of 2005.

Well there you have it. I'm sure Adam will be happy to address any comments you might have if you click the "comments" link below.

Vision Thing

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 7/2/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

* * * * *
Today marks the 10th Anniversary of the release of Showgirls in director Paul Verhoeven's Mother Holland, and it didn't take much prodding for me to be convinced to join the appreciation party happening right now in the blogosphere. Yes, I actually like this perhaps inherently misogynistic film that rates a measly 3.8/10 from imdb voters and a 16/100 score on Metacritic. I count myself among the growing number of cinephiles whose views at the very least fit under the umbrella statement, "It doesn't suck."

I first saw Showgirls in the summer of 2001 when I scored free passes to Peaches Christ's summer series of witching hour cult movies called Midnight Mass. Showgirls was the second film in the series, and unquestionably the most raucous evening of those I attended (I skipped 9 To 5). The audience was packed with drunks, butch dykes, drag queens, and a few of us token "normals" who maybe didn't feel quite so normal anymore. I had the distinct impression that my friend and I were the only ones who'd never seen the film before, especially when most of the audience seemed to be yelling half the lines of dialogue at the screen. It was clear that at least we'd stumbled into a true cult phenomenon, and indeed Peaches has screened the film to sellout crowds at least once every summer since 1998. Well, how can you not enjoy a film on a certain level when surrounded by enthusiasm like that? I even got into the spirit of the evening and at one point around the midway mark yelled out (something I never do in a movie theatre) in my most nasal geek voice, "Excuse me, I'm trying to watch the movie!" It got a laugh, but there was some truth in my mock complaint. It was fun but difficult to untangle my reaction to the film from my response to the audience's shouts and cheers. I remember thinking that the film had utterly failed at being sexy if that was the intention, but I had the impression that the sterile plasticity of the sex and nudity just might have been part of a grander scheme to satirize the American Dream. Though I hadn't yet read Charles Taylor's review of the film, I agreed with his premise that Showgirls is intentional camp. I had been exposed to the idea of Verhoeven as satirist (through Zach Campbell for one) before seeing the film, and I found myself agreeing.

Here come spoilers in case you're still a Showgirls virgin...



I was totally caught off guard by Molly's rape scene, though. It's a truly disgusting and shocking scene, and sharply contrasts the good-natured humiliation, back stabbing, lying, pimping and whoring that make up the bulk of the film. Perhaps I was reacting less to the film than to the way the Midnight Masses became so much more subdued for this scene and its aftermath, but it felt like a real miscalculation to suddenly change the film's tone so radically. It took exposure to insightful analysis by the likes of Eric Henderson for me to start to understand the function of that scene in the film, and to finally see Verhoeven's creation as something more than a fun but flawed film.

So when the call went out for participation in a Showgirls-a-thon, I was ripe to revisit the film on DVD, which I finally did last night. What follows are a few thoughts and questions, not coherently gelled into any kind of argument whatsoever.

1. I own the soundtrack on audiocassette (it features excellent tracks from likes of Killing Joke, David Bowie, and Siouxsie and the Banshees) but I'd forgotten that in her initial hitch-hiking scene, Nomi changes the music from Dwight Yoakam (who she mislabels as Garth Brooks) to a song not found on my tape for whatever reason. "Vision Thing," by one of my favorite bands of the late eighties and early nineties, the Sisters of Mercy, is a song about America's cocaine-fueled aggression and imperialism. Though we don't hear the beginning of the song (which starts off with the sound of a coke sniff) I'm sure that whoever selected it knew what Verhoeven was up to; it's no coincidence that the Bowie song that plays in the dance club is "I'm Afraid of Americans". Oh, and guess where the Sisters are launching their 2006 American tour on March 22? Sin City itself, where the streets are lined with the tossed-away hamburger wrappers left by Nomis of the world over.

2. Having recently seen Footlight Parade for the first time and being struck by the incredible speed of the first half of that film, propelled of course by the actor who personifies "rapid-fire", James Cagney, I have to say Verhoeven doesn't quite capture that feeling of intense organizational energy though he comes close a couple of times. I'm not saying he's even trying to. The 1933 Lloyd Bacon/Busby Berkeley film Showgirls usually gets compared to is of course 42nd Street which is less fresh in my mind. But I definitely feel that Footlight Parade is worth a comparative look too, if only because the milieu seems somewhat more similar; aren't the depression-era girlie shows Cagney is trying to put together in that film some of the more apt equivalents to big Vegas shows like "Goddess"? And wasn't a big part of the appeal of Busby Berkeley's most lavish production numbers (like the ones in Footlight Parade) the feminine flesh on display, even if they never provided audiences the full frontal nudity required to bat eyebrows in 1995?

3. What kind of fantasyland is this where not only does someone suggest that Janet Jackson or Paula Abdul might star in "Goddess", but that the president of the hotel actually repeats the dismissed suggestion to the media? Or am I remembering 1995 inaccurately, with my post-Super Bowl, post-American Idol perspective clouding my sense of history?

4. What's with Cristal's underdeveloped Elvis fixation? Is there some character backstory or a key line that got trimmed out somehow?

5. Least-sexy sex scene in the film: Elizabeth Berkley flopping like a fish in the pool with her groin attached to Kyle MacLachlan's abdomen.

6. Spoilers again. That means you, mom; I know you haven't seen the film. Here's a wacky and/or trite interpretation of Nomi and Molly's relationship for everyone to point and laugh at. Let me know if this has already been proven or disproven somewhere I haven't seen (like in that Film Quarterly roundtable on the film that I still haven't read). Molly, who reiterates that she hasn't had sex in many a moon at the point Nomi comes into her life, represents Nomi's virginity (or born-again virginity if you will, since we later learn Nomi's a reformed Oaktown crack-whore). Though surrounded by wanton Vegas sexuality, Nomi's roommate remains chaste, ensuring that no matter what our natural-blonde heroine goes through in her escapades at the Cheetah club or with aspiring gynecologists by which I mean choreographers, her hymen remains intact. But when Andrew Carver and his gang force their camels through the eye of the seamstress's needle (sorry about that turn of phrase but I couldn't resist) it's as if Nomi has herself been raped. And though she gets revenge on the rapist, she also feels the blame and shame rape victims (I'm told) often do. Looked at this way, it seems that perhaps her departure on the road to Los Angeles is not so much a return to blind ambition but an escape from a community where she no longer can live in her own skin. Or is that what ambition always is anyway, an escape from our selves?

Bruce Conner and Crossroads (1976)

NOTE: THIS ENTRY, ORIGINALLY POSTED AT THE CINEMARATI SITE, HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM AN INTERNET CACHE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 5/11/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED. UNFORTUNATELY, COMMENTS ARE CLOSED.

* * * * *
Last week San Francisco was treated to a nearly-complete retrospective of one of its hometown heroes of experimental film, Bruce Conner. Conner is perhaps best known for his first film, to quote the Cinema 16 program announcement for its screening in early 1961, "a pessimistic comedy of executions, catastrophes and sex" called a Movie. Later films like Cosmic Ray, Permian Strata and Mongoloid (with songs by Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and Devo, respectively, as soundtracks) would inspire both the rapid-cutting and archive-excavating techniques now thought of as clichés in the music video form.

His films were split into two programs of shorts (most films run for 5-10 minutes or so) each broken up by an intermission q-and-a session with Conner, who is at 72 years of age very sprightly and just the slightest bit obstreperous when he doesn't like an interviewer's question. I attended the program focusing on the more rarely-screened films and versions of films; it was quite instructive to see two alternate versions of Report screened on a single program, and I was delighted to see material like 1981's not-in-the-imdb Mea Culpa (music by Brian Eno & David Byrne) and a new "remix" of Cosmic Ray using a digital split screen technique. It's exciting to see new material from this great filmmaker, even if it (like last year's Luke) is rooted in projects started decades ago. In the q-and-a Conner intimated that he doesn't need to continue making the fast-paced films he's famous for when so many others are doing it for him.

The highlight of the evening for me was finally seeing Conner's longest (at 37 minutes) and most leisurely paced film, Crossroads. Constructed out of footage taken from 27 different cameras watching the nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll in July 1946, Conner's film forced me to contend with the beauty of its iconic mushroom cloud imagery and the concept of cinema as a record of destruction and decay. The division of the film into two halves, marked by the change of composer (Patrick Gleeson to Terry Riley) lends a taste of narrative structure that most of us expect from documentaries.

This year I was first exposed to the term "structuralist film" and the recent work of James Benning (13 Lakes and Ten Skies, each of which are composed of ten-minute-long static shots). Though I feel like I'm struggling to catch up to an understanding of this kind of filmmaking, I wonder why Crossroads, though made in a completely different manner, shouldn't be considered a sibling of this movement. It shares certain (at least surface) qualities, and I found myself contemplating the relationship between nature and the camera much as I did while watching a Benning film. At the same time, Riley's minimalist soundtrack accompanying images of destruction created a link in my mind to Godfrey Reggio's Philip Glass-infused Koyaanisqatsi and its decidedly non-structuralist progeny. I can't help but feel certain that Reggio was familiar with Bruce Conner's film. And I wonder if perhaps Conner hasn't made another like Crossroads because, again, others have been doing it for him.

DeMille and de Mille

NOTE: THIS ENTRY HAS BEEN SALVAGED FROM THIS SITE AND REPOSTED UNEDITED ON 6/6/2008. SOME INFORMATION MAY BE OUTDATED, AND OUTGOING LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN INSPECTED FOR REPUBLICATION. COMMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

* * * * *
No, this is not another blog post about Anthony Hopkins. Last week I saw a pair of films directed by the DeMille brothers. One apiece, not working as a pair like the Coens or the Pangs or the Farrellys (Just who started this brother-directing-team trend anyway? I'm having trouble thinking of anyone earlier than the Brothers Quay). Cecil B. DeMille everyone knows for having directed the Ten Commandments (which I haven't seen) and the Greatest Show on Earth (which is inaptly named as it's probably the worst Best Picture Oscar winner ever) but he made some very watchable smaller-scale films earlier in his career, particularly in the silent era. I highly recommend Male and Female for some good, class-conscious comedy from 1919. Cecil's older brother William C. de Mille (they each spelled their last name differently for some reason) directed a long list of silents too but quit Hollywood after completing only a few talkies. The final film he directed on his own was the 1932 drama Two Kinds of Women, starring Miriam Hopkins as Emma Krull, the daughter of a "hick Senator" (Irving Pichel) from South Dakota who falls in love with a New York playboy (Phillips Holmes).

Two Kinds of Women for the most part plays like a typical romantic melodrama of the time. In part because the Holmes character is underdeveloped, Emma seems very naive (to her disapproving father and to the audience) to put faith in her new beau's renuciations of his former lifestyle. We're set up to see the usual conflict between "jazz age" values and traditional ones, but Emma sees no such conflict, moving into the world of speakeasies and police raids without abandoning her wholesome, Midwestern outlook. Though the script feels like nothing special, there are a couple of shocking directorial choices, especially in the context of a studio-themed series in which a certain house style is maintained. Besides the famed "Paramount Glow" there was also, for example, an avoidance of any camera movement drawing attention to itself. De Mille shatters this convention several times, most startlingly with a hand-held shot taken from the point of view of a drunken gold digger. There were audible gasps in the audience; one might even have been mine.

The accompanying co-feature was Cecil B. DeMille's This Day and Age. Absent any real lasting stars in the cast, it has become one of DeMille's most obscure and rarely-seen films. The most famous face belongs to Charles Bickford (also found in another Balboa series film, the outrageous White Woman), who plays a racketeer with ironclad connections in all the centers of power throughout the city except for the student body council at the local high school. When he murders Herman, an independently-minded tailor popular with a group of students, they determine to bring him to justice even if the community of adults is paralyzed by his power.

When a Cecil B. DeMille film is working, it unrelentingly sweeps me into the passions and thrills of the story, like a speech by a gifted demagogue. Thus did This Day and Age, milking the maximum narrative mileage out of each on-screen injustice against the youth and society, helped along by a healthy dose of salacious appeal in the form of a subplot in which a schoolgirl (Judith Allen) is used as sexual bait to distract the racketeer's bodyguard. It's only once DeMille spends several minutes more than absolutely necessary on elaborate, extra-packed shots of a victory parade from the scene of Bickford's inquisition (over a pit of rats!) and forced confession, to the courthouse where a previously unsentimental judge proclaims the mob of junior vigilantes "heroes", that I really had time to pause and reflect on what I'd been seeing. I remembered DeMille's conservative political bent, and suddenly noticed how the film acted as a mirror of fascist youth movements in Europe in the early 1930s in its expression of a desire for a new generation to assume the mantle of leadership from adults immobilized in the face of corruption.

I wouldn't necessarily go as far as some have in calling the film a fascist one, in part because it's missing a crucial implication we expect from the word today, that of racial purity. The extremely sympathetic character Herman is a Jewish immigrant who prepares ethnic food for the students, knowing that "the stomach is the last place to get patriotic." Robert Birchard, in his data-laden but context-light book Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, points to this and to the existence of a "well-dressed and well-spoken black classmate" whose role in the plot against the racketeer requires him

to masquerade as a stereotypical shoeshine boy. This acknowledgement of black role-playing as a mode of social survival within the predominant white society is virtually unique in pre-1960s American film. (page 262)

Birchard is correct in pointing this out, but his attempt to completely exonerate the film from fascist implications doesn't quite convince. In the prior paragraph, he calls the film an "allegory (represented by youth versus adults) about the necessity for society to renew and maintain the will to defend itself against totalitarian forces (the gangsters)." But if the gangsters are the totalitarian force in the film, what do we call the vigilante methods of intimidation, interrogation and torture so admired by the judge at the end of the film? Clearly the film, like so many Hollywood products, leaves enough room to be read both ways. The fact that the youths use gangster-like tactics on the gangster makes it very similar to a film released by Warner only two months earlier, The Mayor of Hell. Except in that film the youth rebellion is led by James Cagney's gangster character, while This Day and Age cloaks the rebellion's gangster tendencies by casting his mob exclusively with youthfully innocent actors and extras.

Tonight I'm going back to the Balboa to see two more Cecil B. DeMille films, both the type of period epics he is most remembered for: the Sign of the Cross and Cleopatra. I've never seen either before, and I'm very excited to see how they play with such a fascinating (if somewhat repellent) film as This Day and Age fresh in my mind. Will I be swept up by the narrative again, only to find myself cheering for a questionable cause?