Mad Love (1935, Karl Freund)

Not even halfway through Mad Love’s sixty-seven minute runtime it’s clear all the film’s going to have to do to succeed is not to fail, which isn’t going to be easy. The film’s about a brilliant surgeon (Peter Lorre) who’s sort of publicly stalking married stage actress Frances Drake. Now, he falls in love with her during her performance at a “theater of horrors” where an audience full of men get off on Drake being tortured for cheating on her husband. There’s a lot to unpack right off in Mad Love, it’s awesome.

Right at the end of her performance, it appears Drake—in character—confesses her lover’s name so the husband can go and kill him, having sufficiently literally branded his wife into place. That moment’s when Lorre gets the most excited.

Off stage, Drake has been married to successful pianist Colin Clive for a year and they haven’t been able to even honeymoon yet because he’s touring and she’s acting. It’s finally time for them to meet up, right after her cast party (the theater is closing for the season too) and getting to finally meet Lorre, after he’s rented out the most expensive box in the theater for almost fifty performances in a row.

Lorre—rather appropriately given he’s about to buy a wax dummy of Drake (without her knowledge)—creeps Drake out. But she’s got the medical connection when it turns out she’s going to need it because husband Clive has been in a train accident and his hands are mangled. Only Lorre can save him. And he’ll move heaven and earth for Drake’s gratitude.

He’ll even, maybe, cut the hands off a recently executed murderer to give them to Clive. After all, the murderer was an expert knife thrower; might come in handy for a concert pianist. Lorre has no way of knowing Clive has already met the “donor” (Lorre knows about their availability because in addition to watching women pretend to get tortured, he never misses an execution).

When the hands seemingly take a life of their own, Lorre sees another opportunity to get close to Drake, who’s still just trying to help suffering husband Clive, and, well, as they do… complications ensue.

There are a lot of constraints on Mad Love. A lot of impossible (thanks to the Production Code if not moral decency) outcomes and quite a few unlikely ones. So a satisfactory resolution is always in question. But the film gets there all right. It’s got some genuine humdingers of scenes—no other word—when Lorre all of a sudden pivots to another extreme and is fantastic in it. The whole movie rests on him.

Not to discount the other actors, who are all great—Mad Love’s got an amazing cast—but it’s the Peter Lorre show and no one can pretend otherwise.

Drake’s really good—she’s got an incredible suspense sequence to get through in the third act and nails it—Clive’s good, though he gets the least material of the three leads. Then there’s the supporting cast and it’s a doozy. Because even though Mad Love is set in Paris and tries its best to be (broadly) European, it’s also got some American flavor. Starting with Edward Brophy in a jaw-dropper cameo as the convicted murderer on his way to the guillotine. Brophy turns the Hollywood New Yorker to eleven and has a ball. It’s astounding director Freud is able to maintain it without just breaking the film in two.

While Brophy isn’t in the film for very long, the film moves the American bull in the Parisian china shop chores along to Ted Healy, who plays a pushy New York reporter in town to cover the execution (Brophy’s an American citizen being executed) and also to get famous philanthropist surgeon Lorre to write some articles for his paper. See, Lorre doesn’t accept any payment and instead uses his skills and develops these miracle procedures to help children and maybe soldiers. He’s a saint.

Who just happens to get off on torture and death, which none of the locals really notice since he’s such a saint but Healy thinks something hinky is going on.

It’s so good, so weird, so not.

Excellent direction from Freud, photography from Chester A. Lyons and Gregg Toland, and editing from Hugh Wynn. Wynn’s got some exquisite sequences, including a downright successful dream montage.

Just for being itself, Mad Love has a bunch of hurdles to clear and it sails over them, finishing better than one could hope given said hurdles. Its snaking to get through the Code is an achievement on its own, but Lorre, Freud, and Drake all score big by the end.

Lorre’s simply magnificent.

Ladies Should Listen (1934, Frank Tuttle)

There’s a funny moment in Ladies Should Listen. As in a singular one funny moment. I can’t remember the joke because it wasn’t very good and was too busy being shocked at something vaguely amusing in the film, especially coming from Rafael Corio, who has the distinguished honor of giving the worst performance in a film of bad performances.

Though it’s hard to blame the actors much for their performances. At its best, Tuttle’s direction is scant middling while the script manages to be charmless, laugh-less, bad, yet decently paced during the first half. Screenwriters Claude Binyon and Frank Butler are adapting a play and afterwards I got to look back on how naive I was during the opening titles when I thought the worst problem would it being stagy.

In fact, I don’t think I’d ever use stagy as an adjective for Ladies Should Listen. Something about the truly atrocious editing—by an uncredited, unknown cutter—makes it seem far less stagy than prescient about laugh-track heavy sitcoms. After every joke or gag, the shot lingers or, worse, and these ones are on Tuttle, goes to a close-up, then lingers. Every time it brings the film to a dead stop and it’s a race to see if there will be any significant momentum before the next stop.

The answer is always no.

It’s possible the film would be funny if it had a Marx Brother in the lead instead of Cary Grant. He doesn’t mug well and his character is a little thin. He’s a penniless blue blood who sleeps around a lot but never settles down because he’s of weak character. Or because his partners soon realize he’s a pretty boy without any substance. We only find out about his romantic history after Frances Drake shows up.

So, Grant’s this creep who tries to manipulate women into sleeping with him—including deceiving them about meteorological conditions—but then it turns out Drake is his apartment telephone switchboard operator who’s stalking him through the phone. And Grant apparently always calls someone and gives a full account of his day, because Drake knows things he says in person. Doesn’t matter.

When it turns out his latest conquest—Rosita Moreno—isn’t just married (to Corio) but they’re out to get Grant’s options on a Chilean mining concern, Drake has to save him even if he doesn’t want to be saved. Throw in Grant’s best friend, a similarly unfunny Edward Everett Horton, and Horton’s romantic pursuit, rich girl Nydia Westman (who the movie craps all over for wearing glasses and thinking Cary Grant is handsome), and you’ve got an hour of comic gold. Or so someone at Paramount incorrectly thought.

Grant’s not good, Horton’s not good, Drake’s not good but gets some sympathy because it’s obvious Tuttle is messing her up with his direction, Westman’s not bad but the movie’s literally against her so maybe she’s just overly sympathetic, and Moreno’s actually nearly okay. Moreno and Charles Arnt are the closest Ladies gets to okay acting. Arnt’s Grant’s valet and makes all sorts of date rape-y inventions for Grant to use around the apartment. Because what if Quagmire were great looking.

Look fast for Ann Sheridan.

But if you’re suffering through and wondering if it’s ever going to get better… no. The answer is no. It’s bad right up until the last scene, even if there’s a decent Paris cityscape backdrop.

Parade (1974, Jacques Tati)

Parade somehow loses the plot after intermission. Given the plot is just a night at the circus, usually showcasing director Tati’s pantomiming, it shouldn’t be possible to lose such a thing. But Parade does.

Maybe intermission not coming halfway through the film should be a sign. And at least the post-intermission material sails by relatively quickly, even as the content itself starts to strain. Probably because it’s entirely focused on the orchestra, which wasn’t in the opening half, and the film kind of gives up on the idea of verisimilitude and narrative distance.

Obviously, being a combination of a videotaped live performance and—I guess—staged and filmed material (i.e. not all the shots from the live videotaping), Parade gets some stylistic allowances but post-intermission, all of the insert shots fail. The lengthy orchestra sequence has numerous problem framings where people and settings change, not to mention lighting, and no one seems too concerned with it, which is rather strange given at least the dedication to showcasing the talent in the pre-intermission part of the film.

The first half has at least three good Tati pantomimes and another one where he’s “in character” too much and it feels like it should be in a movie, it has a great magician sequence, and a phenomenal juggler sequence. Plus there’s a cute mule sequence. The cute mule sequence goes on way too long and gets cloying at the end, but there are some really good laughs in it. It’s also where the audience starts losing the plot themselves and can’t quite gin up the enthusiasm.

Not audience as in Parade watcher, but the audience in the film, the live circus audience there for when Tati videotaped. There’s a whole subtext just to their attitude as the film progresses and it’s hard for it not to be contagious. At times it’s difficult to get enthused about the onscreen action—Tati showcases the performer doing a bit, not the performer, so all long shots—because the audience has checked out and they’re a big cue as to how impressive an act should play.

There’s also this “subplot” involving two kids at the circus—who happen to be the only two kids at the circus; the audience is otherwise entirely some very groovy French hippies from the early seventies who all came on moped—and it seems like Tati’s saving them up for something and it goes nowhere. It goers nowhere fast, which is kind of nice—once Parade gets tiring post-intermission, which is in the last third, it’s at least a speedy run downhill.

Parade has some great parts—and some exceptional performers—but it doesn’t come together, which is a bummer. It seems like the initial impulse could’ve gone somewhere. Instead, it ends with a bunch of tedious gag inserts and manages to screw up Tati’s exaggerated dancing, which should be a great sequence. The videotaped portions of Parade are its best, capturing the speed and grace of the performers. The filmed sequences never match the intensity.

Like I said, it’s a bummer.

Trafic (1971, Jacques Tati)

For the first hour, Trafic has a lot of gems. The film opens with a car manufacturing plant with a lot of nice, precise composition and editing, and director Tati maintains an interest in the goings-on of cars and their drivers. The action centers around an auto show in Amsterdam (presumably filmed at a real auto show for some of it) and there are a handful of wonderful montage sequences showing off the latest and greatest in technology. But more the old standards—how’s the trunk work, how’s the door work, how’s the hood work—with Tati going a little absurd but never completely there. Usually because they cut away not because the scene couldn’t go totally absurd, it’s just not there long enough.

During that first hour, there are these various gag setups without any follow through; instead Tati finds something else in the action, like how people yawn when driving or, you know, pick their noses. A lot. The nose picking montage would break a lesser film but Trafic can manage it just fine. In fact, when the subsequent montages break out amongst the random drivers driving unobserved… nothing can quite beat the nose picking. Though they never really try as hard again either.

Tati plays a car designer whose company is sending him to the auto show to help exhibit their camping car. It’s a station wagon with a camper built into the back of it and there are all sorts of gadgets. The film takes a long time to get around to introducing the gadgets, but once it does, they’re amusing and all a little silly. But their reveal comes after the first hour, when Trafic is starting to sputter about aimlessly. When it does find the plot again, it’s an entirely unpredictable one, which would be fine if it were good but instead the last thirty plus minutes of the film embraces all its weakest elements.

First and foremost is Maria Kimberly. She’s playing the public relations person in charge of presenting the car. She’s always changing her clothes—in her adorable little car—and it’s immediately a tired gimmick because Kimberly’s obnoxious. It’s not her fault she’s obnoxious, the character’s obnoxious, but she’s profoundly unpleasant to be around. All she does is whine, under-act, change her clothes, have guys ogle her. She’s got this dog with her the whole movie, occasionally getting into antics, and it takes an hour for it to be believable she’s the dog’s person she’s so indifferent to it.

Kimberly, Tati, and Marcel Fraval are in charge of getting the model camping car to the auto show. Except the car company’s truck is a junker and it starts breaking down immediately, leading to multiple mechanic stops. At one point Tati could juxtapose incapable, glamorous Kimberly—who the film establishes in her first scene as an inept jerk—with a female mechanic who has to do all the work while her dad sits and watches the Apollo 11 mission on TV, but the female mechanic doesn’t even get a credit. She also doesn’t get anything to do. While the film holds together for an hour, Tati seems done trying to do any juxtaposing—flashy new auto show cars against cars in junk yards—around thirty minutes in. Trafic is frustrating because you can see it starting to go downhill. It’s very clearly happening and for a while it seems like Tati’s got to have it under control because he’s so unconcerned.

And then it crashes and never recovers. Worse, there’s a crash and a recovery in the narrative, so the whole thing becomes a self-analogy.

In the end, Trafic doesn’t work out. It’s got a solid enough first hour—a little soft near the end but certainly recoverable—then the rest is one miss or another. Except this utterly sublime moment where one of the subplots pays off unexpectedly and brilliantly and magically and then Kimberly ruins it.

But by that point, the only thing more surprising than Kimberly messing it up would be Tati trying to patch Trafic after her latest puncture.

The Suspect (1944, Robert Siodmak)

The Suspect is the unlikely tale of middle aged shopkeeper Charles Laughton, who forms a friendship with a young woman in need (Ella Raines), which gets him in trouble with his wife, Rosalind Ivan. There are complications—the film’s established Ivan has been a horrible wife to Laughton and a bad mother to their son, Dean Harens, even getting in the way of the young man’s potential at work; she and Laughton no longer sleep in the same bedroom. And he’s been perfectly appropriate with Raines, as far as advances go.

The film’s rather smart in that regard, not ever letting Laughton seem like a lech; in fact, when it comes time for someone to confess their adoration, it’s Raines mooning on about Laughton to her fellow shop girls. The film’s very careful about how it presents Raines and Laughton; they’re utterly passionless with still completely devoted.

Unfortunately, in addition to an unpleasant, uncooperative wife at home, Laughton’s also got an absolute asshole of a next door neighbor, a perfect Henry Daniell, who’s not above a bit of blackmail. Daniell’s married to suffering Molly Lamont, who’s pals with Laughton because they’re both friendly and their spouses are not.

Tragedy soon befalls the neighborhood, leading to police inspector Stanley Ridges noising around. His first appearance in the film has some of Suspect’s best filmmaking, if only Ridges’s voice weren’t so unimpressive when he’s narrating this terrifying reenactment sequence. The writing’s good, the direction’s good, the photography and editing (Paul Ivano and Arthur Hilton, respectively), but Ridges’s read of his dialogue is terrible.

Ridges will be responsible for ruining as much of The Suspect as one can ruin without taking into account the hoops they must’ve gone through to keep this thing Code-compliant. It is, after all, about a married man whose only way to find true happiness is to rid himself of his loathsome wife. And she was a bad mom and proud of it. And she does dare Laughton to do it. So if he did do it, would he really be responsible….

The film’s usually intriguing so long as it seems like Laughton’s got a surprise up his sleeve. He breaks with expectation a few times in startling ways, good and bad, and it’s a lot of fun. Until it isn’t and the plot just scampers along trying to find a twist to reveal. Director Siodmak keeps the red herrings to a minimum, which actually turns out to be too bad given how poorly the whole thing wraps up. The third act’s a disaster.

The first act’s good, the second act’s not as good but good (Raines loses screen time in direct contradiction to when she should be getting it), then the third act’s a mess and somehow to ending is even worse.

If the script and the Code didn’t fail Laughton, it’d be a great part. Raines is charming and gets to wear some great hats but it’s a very shallow part. Ivan’s good. Harens is in it so infrequently he’s fine. Lamont’s good.

And Siodmak’s got some excellent direction. But far from enough to make up for the narrative problems, much less Ridges’s woefully inadequate antagonist. Thanks to Ridges, The Suspect ends up wasting everyone’s time, particularly Laughton’s.

The Lady Refuses (1931, George Archainbaud)

The Lady Refuses gets frustratingly close to making it to the finish. It collapses in its final moments, though it’s barely been keeping it together through the third act, when everything (by everything the main plot and the single directly related subplot) comes together and profoundly fizzles. The only reason it provides any tension at all is because the movie puts its most likable, appealing character—maid Daphne Pollard—in some kind of danger. Without that peril, it’s just a shrug, like everyone’s lost enthusiasm for the story.

Not a surprise given the eventual resolution.

The film tells the age-old tale of London gal down on her luck, Betty Compson, who has to chose the bridge or working the street–Refuses is kind of shockingly real about that dichotomy—and picks the latter. Only her first night out the cops decide to harass her so she knocks on a fancy door and who should answer but lonely old widower Gilbert Emery. Refuses juxtaposes the cops on Compson’s trail and Emery’s layabout drunkard son John Darrow being disinterested in hanging out with Emery and Emery getting the sads. So when Compson needs help—any kind of help—Emery’s an enthusastic aid.

Soon after a nice dinner and Compson’s assurances she’s never actually worked the street before tonight and hasn’t yet had any customers, Emery hires her to get Darrow away from Margaret Livingston. Now, Darrow thinks Livingston is just after him for a good time, but she’s actually in cahoots with his childhood friend Ivan Lebedeff to get a sizable chunk of Emery’s estate somehow.

By somehow it involves Livingston bedding Darrow on a regular basis and Lebedeff getting more and more insanely jealous over it even though he’s apparently in on it. It’s unclear. There’s zero backstory for any of the characters outside an occasional line—actually, wait, I’m not sure there’s anything in backstory except Darrow and Lebedeff being childhood friends, no one else gets anything.

For instance, there’s no explanation to Emery being openly British and Darrow being obviously American. Ditto Compson, who’s ostensibly a Brit but the character maybe makes more sense if she’s American and there’s even an implication but it’s subtle and Refuses, you know, refuses to do subtle. And the only time Compson does try an English accent… well, a more gracious reading would have her being faking it intentionally.

Anyway.

Things quickly become a love triangle—wait, actually a pentagon when you through in Livingston and Lebedeff—because while Darrow falls for paid personal savior Compson, Compson and Emery are in love. It’ll all work out in the end, Compson and Emery are sure.

As The Lady Refuses is a Pre-Code melodrama (not to mention the title), things very obviously do not work out and the last twenty to thirty minutes they just get worse and worse.

Acting-wise, Compson’s probably the best, though she’s far more effective for her ability to emote than to read her lines. Though the biting her lip thing is kind of annoying (but nowhere near Darrow’s terrible Groucho Marx impression). Darrow’s bad. Emery’s occasionally cute but not good. Archainbaud’s direction is standoffish but when it’s Emery, it just seems British. Albeit British with some boring composition, which eventually gets editor Jack Kitchin in trouble because Archainbaud’s obviously not shooting enough coverage.

Refuses is occasionally academically interesting as an early talkie or a Pre-Code or whatnot, but it’s a fail overall. The resolution’s an odd mix of disappointing and insulting.

The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismäki)

The Match Factory Girl is a hyper-focused character study. It opens with the visually fascinating process of a match factory before introducing lead Kati Outinen. Technically protagonist, obviously more subject. She quite noticeably doesn’t talk for the first twenty minutes or so, which says more about her situation than her character—no one’s interested in what Outinen has to say.

She works, rides the bus home reading romance novels, then cooks and cleans for mother Elina Salo and stepfather Esko Nikkari. When she’s feeling adventurous, she goes out to the neighborhood dance hall and waits in vain for a man to ask her to dance. Then it’s back to work, back to the romance novels, back to cooking and cleaning; she even gives her paycheck to Salo and Nikkari ostensibly for rent, but they clearly don’t work. We don’t get any exposition laying it out, but when we meet Outinen’s brother, Silu Seppälä, he’s got a couple informative lines.

Director Kaurismäki’s script fills in very little on Outinen’s ground situation; outside Seppälä, there’s a little bit implied about the relationship between Outinen and Salo, done through set dressings and lingering shots, not dialogue. From the start, when Outinen’s just moving through her days, Kaurismäki juxtaposes those silent activities against television news coverage of Tiananmen Square. Heavy contrast between events in the world and Outinen’s despondently mundane existence.

At least until she decides she’s had enough and she’s going to get something for herself. She gets a pretty dress, which leads to trouble at home—and establishes the financial situation Salo and Nikkari, as well as some of the extent of the abuse Outinen has been suffering at their hands—and then to Outinen breaking bad. Of course, Outinen’s breaking bad is just, you know, going out and having a bigger beer than usual at a night club and not the local dance joint.

At the night club, Outinen meets greasy yuppie Vesa Vierikko; after a night together, she thinks they’re dating, he does not. Lots of complications ensue.

Match Factory Girl doesn’t even run a full seventy minutes, so when Kaurismäki veers off the predicted trajectory for the third act, it all of a sudden becomes a (muted) thrill a minute. We’ve spent the entire film seemingly understanding at least Outinen’s capabilities but as her environment becomes more and more hostile to her… she goes a different route. The story’s always tragic in one way or another, but Kaurismäki takes it to new heights (depths?) of tragedy by the end.

Outinen’s fantastic. She’s good throughout but the big character “change” in the third act is entirely through her performance whereas Kaurismäki’s direction has been doing a lot of framing until that point. It’s still a character study at the end, just with Outinen running the show instead of Kaurismäki and… oh, he edited it too. So Kaurismäki. Timo Salminen’s photography is excellent but it’s all about the editing when it comes to how Kaurismäki crafts the narrative distance.

The supporting cast is all good. But they’re all entirely in support of Outinen, even when she’s not in the shot with them—which only happens a few times.

Exceptional work from Outinen and Kaurismäki. It’s amazing what they can do in an hour and nine minutes.

Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana (1994, Aki Kaurismäki)

I spent much of Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana waiting for the character, played by Kati Outinen, to forget her scarf because I thought the title was Don’t Forget Your Scarf, Tatjana. I knew the film only ran sixty-two minutes and so assumed there’d be some scarf-forgetting. Oops. Is there scarf-forgetting? No spoilers. But it definitely focused my attention on Outinen’s scarf and potential forgetfulness, which isn’t really her character at all.

Tatjana is a road movie, with Outinen and her friend Kirsi Tykkyläinen traveling the Finnish landscape, teamed up with locals Matti Pellonpää and Mato Valtonen. Outinen is Estonian, Tykkyläinen is Russian; Outinen speaks a little Finnish, Tykkyläinen none, so they take what they can get with traveling companions. While the film opens on Outinen and Tykkyläinen—and the scarf—the action immediately moves to Valtonen.

Valtonen is a seamster, existing on stolen puffs from his mother’s cigars and an endless supply of coffee. When he runs out of coffee, he promptly locks his mom (Irma Junnilainen) in the closet so he can steal from her purse—Valtonen, the actor, is forty-ish in Scarf; it’s unclear if his character is supposed to be much older or younger, but he’s clearly a grown ass man stealing from his mother’s purse, not to mention locking her in a closet. He’s expecting a package of coffee (or thinks his mom’s getting one), but instead unwraps a twelve-volt coffee maker. And, as one does, decides to try it out in his car on a test drive.

See, Valtonen’s car is in fellow child grown over Pellonpää’s shop. Once they get the bill settled and Pellonpää dons his rocker leather jacket, they hit the road. They have a fairly nondescript test drive, with Valtonen guzzling coffee and Pellonpää drinking bottle after bottle of vodka—until they meet Outinen and Tykkyläinen. The women need a ride to the harbor to catch a boat and it’s not like the men have anything better to do.

So begins their quietly devastating journey, where the men never quite understand the women—both Valtonen and Pellonpää seem fundamentally incapable of expressing themselves in a way anyone else can understand; they aren’t even friends with each other, just fellow stalled travelers—and the women soften to their absurd, slightly tragic ferrymen.

Tatjana’s got its fair share of absurdities starting out—at no point does it seem like mom Junnilainen is in any actual danger in her closet prison—so when the road trip takes multiple full days, it never seems unlikely. Director Kaurismäki doesn’t have time in an hour to wait for the audience to catch up, either you’re keeping pace or you’re left behind, and the quartet finds themselves in these mundane but exquisitely peculiar situations together.

It all wraps up beautifully, with Kaurismäki getting to amp up the absurd in such a way to make it all the more grounded.

Gorgeous, deep, lush black and white photography from Timo Salminen. Great direction (and editing) from Kaurismäki. The acting from the four leads is good. Tykkyläinen has the showiest part—and it’s still not very showy—and is a lot of fun.

Tatjana’s a great use of an hour.

L’Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)

L’Atalante begins with a wedding procession; village girl Dita Parlo has married commercial barge captain Jean Dasté and is going off to live with him on the barge. The wedding guests drop all these details through exposition—we’re not privy to the newlyweds’ conversations as they walk through the village to the barge. Juxtaposed, first mate Michel Simon and cabin boy Louis Lefebvre race ahead to have the boat ready for the captain’s wife’s arrival.

Both Simon and Lefebvre bumble comically while the guests’ exposition establishes Parlo’s never even left the village before and is also a bit more of a dreamer than the rest of the town. The exposition drops turn out to be important as one of Parlo and Dasté’s problems is going to be their inability to talk to one another. It’s also going to allow director Vigo to do these wonderful sequences inspecting how Parlo’s experiencing her new reality. There’s never any discussion of what she expected or what Dasté told her, but she arrives readier to work than he’s comfortable with, leading to a fine comedy sequence involving the laundry.

Life on the barge is initially as idyllic as it’s going to get with outrageously eccentric Simon making things interesting, but the newlyweds have discovered the pleasures of the flesh so they can put up with a lot from Simon. In addition to being a tchotchke and junk collector, Simon has an uncounted amount of cats aboard the barge, leading to some adorable comic relief moments.

But when Parlo starts to get bored—after Dasté’s back to piloting the barge instead of keeping her warm in bed—things start getting testy. Especially after Dasté gets into a fight with Simon, which acts as the inciting incident for the rest of the couple’s troubles.

All Parlo wants is to see something besides the barge and the riverbank, but Dasté’s responsibility is to the barge and Simon’s not in the mood to do him any favors. Pretty soon Parlo (and the audience) learns Dasté’s jealous outbursts aren’t rare but rather the norm. And neither of them wants to talk things through, leading to a couple impulse decisions, but one with far greater consequences for the couple and the film.

L’Atlante has a handful of dreamlike sequences, usually from the perspective of the characters, though sometimes Vigo gets so enthusiastic he lets the film get lost in them. Most impressively he’s able to maintain the dream in one character’s plot while toggling back and forth to another’s; the latter threatens to turn the former into a nightmare, but Vigo doesn’t let it intrude, with Maurice Jaubert’s helping keep the two threads in balance. It’s precise and glorious work.

Starting towards the end of the second act, Vigo’s also able to tighten the focus on Dasté’s performance, something the film had never suggested would be an emphasis. Not with Simon able to handily walk off with any scene, his costars and Vigo enthusiastically giving him all the room he needs or wants. So when the focus tightens on Dasté, Parlo and Simon maybe not fading but definitely given some distance, everything all of a sudden hinges on Dasté being able to be sympathetic without the narrative giving him any help in deserving it. Vigo changes up the narrative distance, but maintains the same approach to characterization. It ends up letting Vigo leverage the supporting cast, which works out and keeps from letting Dasté get mawkish.

The film’s a technical delight. Boris Kaufman does a great job shooting it all, with he and Vigo getting some amazing shots on the barge and of the barge. Louis Chavance’s editing is magical, especially with Jaubert’s music running under his cuts.

Parlo and Dasté are both good. The film incidentally builds their character relationship, letting everything else take precedence—okay, usually Simon, but how isn’t he going to walk away with a scene, but again, Vigo makes it work—so once they start having troubles, there’s no real inherent sympathy. Because L’Atalante can be a fairy tale, a day dream, a nightmare, and a dual character study all in one. No one—not Vigo, not Dasté, not Parlo, not Simon—even has to toggle. They’re able to do all of them simultaneously, no doubt thanks to Vigo, but the cast keeps up.

Of course, Simon’s the best performance. He’s an aged sailor who’s traveled the world and ended up on the barges, he likes his drink, he likes his cats, and he likes ladies. Maybe too much. The way Vigo and Simon balance Simon right up until the end is phenomenal. Even as Dasté gets more and more volatile, the energy always buzzes off Simon. So good.

Lefebvre’s fine as the cabin boy. He’s entirely support. Gilles Margaritis’s good as a flirty traveling salesman who happens across the naive but separately so newlyweds.

L'Atalante’s glorious.

Zero for Conduct (1933, Jean Vigo)

There are some truly excellent moments in Zero for Conduct, usually when director Vigo slows down the film (literally) and focuses attention on how the characters are experiencing said moments. The biggest one—though maybe not best—comes during the prelude to insurrection, when the students in a boys’ school are marching towards… well, it turns out their not marching towards anything right then but it’s a really filmic moment with pillow feathers going through the air. It’s a great moment.

But it doesn’t really add up to anything, not for the story (as it is) or the film itself. Zero for Conduct only runs forty-five minutes, which seems to be just right—going into the finale, it seems unlikely Vigo could’ve stretched anything else given the considerable constraints. For example, the big insurrection turns out to just be limited to the four main boys, while the others sleep it off, and the reaction from the school is very muted. Vigo hasn’t been going for minimalism until now, so scaling it down so much seems like it’s got to be a money thing.

Or maybe the boys—two are indistinguishable, one is short, one is effeminate (which leads to a creepy implied subplot with one of the teachers and it’s too bad things don’t actually get violent at the end)—are supposed to be good enough as archetypes. But Zero for Conduct doesn’t age particularly well. It’s about a bunch of asshole dudes; the adults are the school are corrupt or incompetent, mean or just plain sexual predators—save the earnest headmaster (Delphin), who gets played for jokes because he’s a little person.

And most of the kids are assholes too. Sure, they’re in earnest revolt but everyone’s revolting.

If the finale worked out to be anything more than a muted slapstick romp—and not a bad one, Vigo’s far better at the slapstick action than having new school staff member Jean Dasté do Chaplin impressions during recess–Conduct might’ve pulled through but it abandons the kids.

Regardless of their acting being wanting—Vigo covers the acting deficiencies by limiting Conduct’s dialogue and lots of dubbed-in background audio—it’s still ostensibly their story and they get the boot. But, I guess, whatever… fraternité. Emphasis on the frat.

Oh, and I do want to mention the technical successes again. When Vigo has them—save one time he does a photographic cheat on a magic trick—they’re outstanding. They just don’t add up; mostly because Vigo’s front heavy with them.