1960s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[swo17]

I know what you mean. I haven't got room for either of those incredible films at the moment. Hell, I haven't even got room for The Exterminating Angel.

I certainly have room for The Exterminating Angel--my problem is getting out of it!

[Cold Bishop]

Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, 1968)
You can tell this is going to be a great movie from the first (non-establishing) shot: a long 90 second take with the camera floating over Rachel's bed, across the shadows and photos on her wall, and into the memories presented therein. It's presented so confidently, so unassumingly with so little flair, you don't realize how impressive the shot is until it's nearly over. Such unexpected, disarming maturity is the ultimate signature that Newman presents with this film, one of the most assured debuts of any filmmaker. Joanne Woodward's Rachel is a lonely, sexless school teacher, approaching spinster status and stuck in a mid-life crisis. American cinema of the 1960s, still drunk on the New York stage, had a certain preoccupation with sexually repressed spinsters, yet this film never lapses into the psychosexual histrionics of the era. It deals with a myriad of subjects that, even in 1968, were still taboo in mainstream American movies, yet it never sensationalizes, never dates itself by acknowledging its own "daring". As the work of an actor-turned-director - and not just any actor, but the "Noo Yawk" Method actor of his era- he could have so easily have made a film of "theatrical" quality, like so many made by Brooks, Frankenheimer or Lumet. Given his background, he could have made a good one. But he goes for something else entirely here. Nor is it a Bergman pastiche, even if the specter of the various New Waves and the art-house vanguard does hang over the film. Simply, Hollywood wasn't making films like this in 1968. It's a film defined by astonishing sensitivity, by profound empathy, by a delicate and guiltless frankness toward its subject. It freely mixes naturalism and impressionism, never as an artistic put-on but as the organic response in best exploring its subject (compare it to similarly New Wave-inflected Charly, whose self-conscious touches ultimately get the best of the film). It's a movie filled with epiphanies big and small. A moment early in the film where Rachel's students, eager to start their summer, joyfully run out of class at the ring of the last bell, leaving her alone in her classroom, struck me a like a ton of bricks: in all my school years, I never once considered how it must feel to be a teacher, and to see an entire wave of children who you've bonded with and nurtured simply walk away and move on. The blink and you'll miss it scene where a sleepless Rachel rolls over in bed and briefly contemplates masturbation can still elicit a gasp, not from any particularly shocking presentation but for precisely how subtle and honestly the question's approached. The moment where a preacher grabs Rachel and forces her to stand up - her long isolation broken by one fleeting moment of forceful physical contact: her shocked, near-erotic response is almost as striking as her breakdown moments later. And in a film like this, these qualify as throwaway moments. That a major studio would produce this in 1968 is nothing short of amazing. That it could actually be nominated for Best Picture is pretty much a miracle.

[zedz]

Deux Fois (Jackie Raynal, 1969) – Deux Fois (Re:Voir) – A hypnotic, mysterious dream film, full of repetitions and reflexivity. Raynal addresses us directly, as both lead performer and director, by conspiratorially co-opting us with her gaze, or flashing a mirror into the camera, a trope that Derek Jarman would pick up on in the similarly ritualistic The Garden of Luxor. (Spotting that connection, I realize that Jarman’s early work especially owes a lot to the Zanzibar films.) It’s a mighty potent mix, reaching backwards to the trance films of Maya Deren, sideways to the full-frontal ‘celebrity’ iconography of Warhol’s factory, and forwards to the feminist film practice of the following decade.

[zedz]

The Secret of Wendel Samson (Mike Kuchar, 1966) – Sins of the Fleshapoids (Other Cinema) – A delirious subversion of melodrama. While it’s probably less delirious than one of brother George’s delicious farragoes, it has a surprising dramatic heft, mainly because of its inspired reversal of expectations. Spoilers follow. Wendel’s ghastly secret is that he’s cheating on his gay partner with – shock! horror! – a woman, and that betrayal of his sexual identity invites a sci-fi comeuppance. The film mixes evocative images (Wendel and Maragaret isolated in a snowy landscape, her with a fuzzy halo of fur and hair; morning sunlight blasting out the contrast in a city street; Wendel entrapped in a giant spider’s web – of his sexual guilt) with hilariously stilted line readings (Margaret is something of a queen in this regard) and excellent gags (the “would you like to come upstairs for some cawfee?” pick up is especially inspired). It’s a mishmash that skewers just how grotesquely artificial the drama in most Hollywood melodramas is, and how arbitrary the social rules are that they exploit. The real subversive success of this film, for me, is the way it presents gay relationships as completely normalized. The world of the film may be ludicrous and garish, but it’s one in which a couple of guys can kiss each other on the mouth and plan their holidays together, and where that relationship is taken (absurdly) seriously by the surrounding community. The main characters’ homosexuality is the most sensible, solid and serious thing in the entire film.

[zedz]

Your experimental recommendation for today is:

15/67 TV (Kurt Kren, 1960) – Structural Films (Index) - An extremely simple film – it’s basically a single camera set-up – that Kren manages to milk considerable complexity out of through his editing strategies and dense mise-en-scene. What at first appears to be a casual composition from inside a café or bar soon emerges, thanks to Kren’s repetition of fragments that feature movement in different planes of the image, as a rich three-dimensional field, with elements arranged on at least ten distinct planes. In order of distance, we’ve got: an extremely close foreground figure, some bottles on a nearby table, somebody at a table in the midground, the café window, the table outside the window, passersby outside the café, people standing on the edge of the wharf, passing ships near the wharf, the harbour waters, the landscape vaguely visible across the harbour. Not all of those planes is visible in every fragmentary shot, because foreground movement can obliterate other elements just as much as overexposure can wipe out the more remote and vestigial visual planes. In some instances – as with the passersby – some shots contain no visual element within that plane. Over the course of several minutes, Kren arranges clusters of brief shots of the scene, each one drawing our attention to a different plane or planes and featuring movement in different directions and at different speeds, in a musical arrangement with a complex rhythm of repetition and counterpoint.

[swo17]

My pedantic post for today:

The numbers that precede all of Kren's films correspond to 1) the order in which he made them and 2) the year in which he made them. So you will agree that it is utterly preposterous to suggest that TV could have been made in any year other than 1967. Furthermore, this film was not his 5th but his 15th. Otherwise though, I support your recommendation. More generally, I think all of these structural films are worth a look, and they're all pretty short so it isn't too hard to find time for them. I am too afraid to watch the actionist films though.

[zedz]

My pedantic post for today:

The numbers that precede all of Kren's films correspond to 1) the order in which he made them and 2) the year in which he made them. So you will agree that it is utterly preposterous to suggest that TV could have been made in any year other than 1967. Furthermore, this film was not his 5th but his 15th. Otherwise though, I support your recommendation. More generally, I think all of these structural films are worth a look, and they're all pretty short so it isn't too hard to find time for them. I am too afraid to watch the actionist films though.

You are, of course right. When I cut and pasted, I cut a little too close and left the 1 stranded!

[Gregory]

My Kren pick for the decade would probably be 5/62 Fenstergucker, Abfall etc. It struck a very dystopian (of its time) chord with me.
Anyone who made it through The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes in one piece should definitely have nothing to fear from Kren's actionist films. They're just very... well... wet.

[zedz]

The House Is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1963) – The House Is Black (Facets) – Ostensibly, this is a commissioned documentary about leprosy, but this amazing film transcends that remit, just like it transcends all the other things it could be, like voyeuristic or exploitative, through sheer poetic force. The film is packed with arresting images, united by arresting montage, and matches its intensity with complexity. The conventional narration is a mere blip in the soundtrack, most of which consists of its subjects thanking the lord for their manifold blessings, and occasionally bemoaning the hardness and cruelty of their – and our – world. It’s a total gut punch of a film, and as the work of a one-film-only auteur it’s absolutely up there with The Night of the Hunter.

Last Words (Werner Herzog, 1967) – Werner Herzog Documentaries & Shorts (Herzog), also on Signs of Life (Raro Video) – Yes, there are two great 60s experimental films that pose as documentaries about leper colonies. In this era where it sometimes seems harder to find an authentic documentary than a mock one, you need to remind yourself how radical the idea of a faux documentary was when Kluge and Herzog (Khittl’s Die Parallelstrasse is a much more complex case) were messing around with the form in the mid-60s. Last Words is a wonderful film – for a start, it’s drop-dead gorgeous to look at – and its formal play is delightfully odd. The story, of the last man to leave an abandoned leper colony, is plausible enough (it may even be actually true, for all I know), but Herzog undermines that sense of reality by shooting the talking heads interviews relating the tale in linguistically excessive ways. The two police officers who ‘rescued’ the man from the island talk in unison; other witnesses incessantly repeat the same phrases over and over, and the man himself won’t shut up about how he won’t say a single word. It’s utterly absurdist, sort of Looney Tunes Beckett, and the absurdity rubs provocatively against the dazzling beauty of the setting and cinematography and the simple eloquence of the music performed by the protagonist, so the end result has an enticing emotional complexity.

[zedz]

Hand Catching Lead (Richard Serra, 1968) – Le Mouvement des images (Centre Pompidou) – There’s not a lot to this film, but there’s enough: Serra’s burly forearm extends from the right hand side of the frame, grasping at small sheets of lead that an almost unseen Philip Glass (his fingers graze the edge of the frame a few times) drops in from the top left. He catches them, or doesn’t, then immediately drops them in preparation for the next piece. We’re in serial minimalist mode, with a single simple action repeating itself for three minutes. So what are we watching? First, it’s the starkness of the high-contrast image, with the whiteness of Serra’s arm set against the whiteness of the indeterminate background. The darkness of the falling lead leaves its traces on Serra’s weathered hand, which gets darker and dirtier as the film unfolds. What else? The visual tension of the repetition. Serra misses a lot of the time, so there’s an inherent binary outcome for each drop, but there’s also the question of other possible eventualities, such as a cut or other injury, or a disruption of the rhythm. This tension is inherent in the image as well, with Serra’s arm visibly trembling with the physical effort. Of course, he’s also functioning as a raw metaphor of the apparatus of film projection itself, his claw, like that of the projector, having to momentarily arrest the constant flow of material (each instance a slight variation on the previous one) for the benefit of the viewer.

[zedz]

Three more experimental films worth chasing down, closing in on the fifty I promised:

Breathdeath (Stan Vanderbeek, 1963) – Visibles (Re:Voir) – This is a somewhat dated idea (though, to be fair, it would have been a little less dated in 1963): images of bourgeois consumption (drawn from contemporary advertising, movies and TV) subverted by intimations of mortality (also blunt and obvious: death’s heads, mushroom clouds and such). What enlivens the film is Vanderbeek’s kitchen sink approach to technique and the gusto with which he creates wild juxtapositions through montage and collage. There’s animation here, pixillation, over-painting, pantomime and much, much more. The scattershot approach leads to some exciting textural play (especially in those shots that employ terribly degraded TV broadcast images as a backdrop for cut-out animation) and several arresting effects that blossom for a couple of seconds and are never revisited (the bit where Marilyn’s face transforms itself into a surrealist landscape deserves to be iconic). And it certainly doesn’t hurt that Vanderbeek has the smarts to make extensive use of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ Dada masterpiece ‘I Put a Spell on You’ on the soundtrack.

Marvo Movie (Jeff Keen, 1967) – GAZWRX: The Films of Jeff Keen (BFI) – A very interesting comparison piece to Breathdeath, since this film too amounts to a veritable catalogue of everything the filmmaker figured he could do with his resources. They even exploit some of the very same techniques, such as the pixillated overpainting of popular culture images. Keen is operating in even more pinched circumstances than Vanderbeek, and with even more intense demonic invention. Images are densely overlaid, as is the whispery soundtrack, and everything hits with such relentless force that all you can really do is lie back and think of England. An England of cut-price superheroes, leopard women and horribly abused baby dolls.

Galician Caress (of Clay) (Jose Val Del Omar, 1961) – Val Del Omar: Elemental de Espana (Cameo) – Fire in Castille is the go-to Val Del Omar masterpiece, and it’s the film that will make my personal list but I thought this less-raved-about gem also deserved a spotlight. It sort of goes without saying that the film is visually stunning (ominous tracking shots printed in negative, images distorted by VDO’s uncanny mirror machines). There’s also the vestigial narrative thread of a clay-encrusted boy and the somewhat more solid elemental thematics (lots of fire, water and air to go with all the mud), but primarily this is a tour-de-force of technique. Some of the films I’ve highlighted have had a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to technique, and have had fantastic results with that approach, but Val De Omar is much more orchestral. Even if the big picture remains elusive (which is part of the pleasure of his mysterious films), there’s a strong sense of structure and rhythm to the way he assembles his amazing images.

[zedz]

Intervals (Peter Greenaway, 1969) – The Early Films of Peter Greenaway (BFI) – This is a rather modest achievement alongside some the major works he’d come up with the following decade, but it’s quite addictive. Lots of shots of walls and buildings in Venice, all shot frontally so they fill the frame, and some with people walking in front of them (one person, two people, lots of people, foregrounders and backgrounders). Greenaway catalogues them in various arrangements – what else would Greenaway do? – and builds up some nice, complex visual rhythms in doing so. Along the way there are some superb graphic images. My favourite involves a flock of pigeons cutting across corrugated iron that’s adorned with poster scraps – a superb composition (apologies for the crappy can-hardly-see-the-pigeons resolution).


Which incidentally reminds me of the cover of Wire’s Document and Eyewitness:


Remember, you can only vote for this film for the 60s list with the sound turned off. Greenaway’s soundtrack is brilliant, and represents a complex contrapuntal cataloguing of lots of different possible soundtracks (music, sound effects keyed to visual events, wild sound, (incongruous) narration), but it was added in 1973.

[colinr0380]

Intervals is also great because it is filmed in Venice but filmed in such a way that you never see the canals themselves - the closest you get are the boats sailing/driving past the camera in different directions acting just like cars on any other street.

[zedz]

Une histoire d’eau (Godard / Truffaut, 1961) – The Last Metro (Criterion) – Now here’s an interesting test case. I’m sure some people would argue that a lot of Godard’s work in the 60s should be considered ‘experimental’, and I grant that it is, in a mild sense and within the confines of commercial narrative cinema, but I consider there’s a fundamental difference in kind between even the edgiest commercial narrative cinema (and you can find much more adventurous test cases than Godard when it comes to 60s cinema) and the experimental filmmaking tradition I’ve been talking about. So why have I included this film, which on the face of it doesn’t really seem that much more adventurous or radical than any other Godard short? Well, I agree with that assessment, and if all I knew about the film was what was onscreen, I’d never have included it on a list of experimental films. This is actually a unique case (in my meagre catalogue) of a film that’s experimental in process but not really in form, since it was Godard’s repurposing of footage shot by Truffaut and abandoned in 1958. The repurposing of found footage is an avant garde procedure with an esteemed pedigree, and that pedigree is what gets this film on my list. In fact I find it rather intriguing that this particular creative process can result in a film that’s so utterly ordinary, if perfectly charming, and pretty much indistinguishable from works which were produced by Godard in his normal fashion.

[zedz]

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (William Greaves, 1968) – Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (Criterion) – It’s not far into this film before I start to grin. When we start out, it looks like we’re in for a Cassavetes-style acting exercise, but a little more ridiculous, a little less accomplished, and a lot more self-conscious, since they’re also filming the filming of the film. But these initial refractions just keep multiplying. It’s a dramatic fiction, it’s cinéma vérité; it’s directed by William Greaves, it’s not directed by William Greaves; it’s the record of a happening; it’s the making-of of a film that wasn’t made; the best description we get is that it’s “a feature-length we don’t know.” The beauty of the film is that it’s all of these things at once, and not even combined or layered in conventional ways. For instance, it’s not a dramatic fiction that’s shot ‘in the style of’ cinéma vérité, it’s both of those simultaneously, in different facets of the whole. Just as the actors say to one another “stop acting” in the course of their dialogue, we get guerrilla segments shot without Greaves’ knowledge in which the participants announce “this is not part of the film.” The status of everything is up for grabs. At one point Greaves mentions that the name of the film they’re making is ‘Over the Cliff’, and we have no way of knowing if this is the actual working title of the whole project, the name of the film within the film, or just another fiction. Of course, when we cotton on to the actual nature of the project, that fake title becomes a pretty good joke (as is the actual title of the film).

Basically, it’s a movie in which everything is provisional and contestable, and in which participants at every level (the actors, the crew on the set, the crew on their own, various onlookers) are continually reflecting on what they’re doing and why. Well, everybody except the director, who’s vague and unhelpful to a fault, and funny as hell, somehow turning the gentlest passive aggression into a creative force. When a random drunk hogs the camera, and the crew move in to try and move him on, Greaves just lets him go on and on, cameras rolling; when the actors seek feedback on their performances, he responds with hopelessly generalized psychobabble or bonkers suggestions (why don’t you sing the dialogue?) The people around him respond as people would to an infuriating and confusing work environment, with anger, with passivity, with strained attempts at understanding and rationalization.

It’s all a very shaky basis for a movie, and with less aplomb on the part of Greaves, the whole thing could very easily have fallen apart. It’s very easy to imagine, for example, that if Greaves were this infuriatingly vague and less personally charming then people would have been walking off the film after a day, or that it would have become a film about a David Brent-like ‘director from hell’. Instead, we get a remarkable balancing act in which the project manifests itself simultaneously as a matrix of levels and angles that could be organized in an infinite number of ways (something that the form of the film reflects when it moves in and out of small insets). And it sure doesn’t hurt that the film’s soundtrack is the greatest album of 1969.

[zedz]

Mammals (Roman Polanski, 1962) – Knife in the Water (Criterion) –Like most of Polanski’s shorts, this film harks back to the madcap-allegorical-narrative model of earlier experimental filmmaking modes, with the formal play subordinate to thematic oddity. But this is one of his most effective shorts because of its visual starkness. It’s entirely composed of dark figures against a snowy backdrop, so every shot has a real graphic punch, and Polanski makes the most of his mise-en-scene and extremely high contrast photography to accentuate that starkness and punch. Then there’s a brilliant fillip towards the end when one of the characters begins to wrap himself in bandages that effectively make him invisible against the hard white of the snow, a great visual gag worthy of Keaton.

[knives]

Director's Guide Finale
Here's the end to my inane little project. If you guys liked it/ thought I did a half decent job I'll try to come back for the '70s with hopefully some slightly less known filmmakers. On to the show.

Jean-Luc Godard
Le gai savoir (1969)----------------------R1 Koch Lorber/ R4 Madman
Sympathy for the Devil (1968)--------------R B Carlotta
Un film comme les autres (1968)------------R2 Gaumont
Week End (1967)--------------------------R A Criterion
La chinoise (1967)-------------------------R1 Lorber
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)-----R1 Criterion
Made in U.S.A (1966)---------------------R1 Criterion
Masculin féminin (1966)--------------------R1 Criterion
Pierrot le fou (1965)-----------------------R A Criterion (OOP)
Alphaville (1965)----------------------------------R1 Criterion (OOP)/ R2 Optimum
Une femme mariée (1964)-------------------------R0 MOC
Band of Outsiders (1964) -------------------------R A Criterion
Contempt (1963)---------------------------------R1 Criterion/ R A Lionsgate
Les carabiniers (1963)----------------------------R1 Lorber
Le petit soldat (1963)----------------------------R1 Wellspring (OOP)
Vivre sa vie (1962)-------------------------------R A Criterion
A Woman Is a Woman (1961)---------------------R1 Criterion (OOP)/ R2 Optimum
Breathless (1960)--------------------------------R A Criterion

As you can tell from this comical list Godard had a more than reasonable output this decade so I'm ignoring his shorts and anthology films (though Ro.Go.Pa.G., Six in Paris, and especially Amore e rabbia are necessary viewings). As to the features Breathless isn't the big explosion its made out to be. The editing is fine, but really only goes above and beyond during the sequence when Belmondo talks to himself in the car. Really it's that, the performances, which make the film more than your ordinary French gangster film. Le petit soldat, second made fourth released, though is kind of a miracle film showing a focus that doesn't really characterize this decade of Godard's work. The story, if you want to call it that, is pretty much the same as Breathless' but with a hard political edge added on. It shows with the film making though a pretty drastic jump in quality that I'm still flabbergasted it came so early in his career. A Woman Is a Woman feels more like that sophomore stuff with Godard in a rather fascinating way battling with all of the sides of his resulting in a very crooked and mangled that is probably his worse overall and yet is far more entertaining than many of his films which work. Vivre sa vie on the other hand works absolutely in ways that are completely Godard and at times seems beyond Godard. Les carabiniers is another one that works in a lot of way typical of Godard, yet its biggest strengths being so unusual. If it weren't so dank and cynical it would almost feel like his sentimental look as politics. The last scene of the letters should be framed. I love Contempt for the self introspection and Band of Outsiders for the humour, but they're great even beyond that. Une femme mariée is when it starts to get hard talking Godard as all of his films begin to unify in form and especially narrative toward the artist he would become. It's very exciting and great from an auteurist standpoint, but can get a bit dull until he meets Gorin next decade. Of course a masterwork like Alphaville flat out disproves that remaining the best Dick adaptation we'll ever see even if it is not one. Pierrot le fou might be a better example though this one is so loved my indifference is probably an anomaly amongst fans more than anything. Ditto Masculin féminin which is average for the decade, though it has the standout scene at the theater which is the best of Godard's little cheeky excursions. The next two Criterion approved titles have some gorgeous cinematography, but nothing else. If you want the film equivalent to an asleep at the wheel Heidegger have at it. What I'm saying is Godard was clearly bored of being Godard at this point. By itself La chinoise is an enjoyable comedy, but in context the film's failure everywhere perfectly set the stage for Godard's self destruction which personified itself in the fantastic howl of Week End which might just be his best film ever. Murdering himself again and again and than laughing hard the film is in such broken chaos it can't help but be the masterpiece. After such an act of madness Un film comme les autres makes sense, but that doesn't help it from being a dull POS that covers its subject in a way that even those involved can't be arsed on. Near the beginning I said on compositional grounds A Woman is a Woman is probably Godard's worst, but on any grounds this is. Sympathy for the Devil is a journeyman job that Godard does enough fun things with with such a kicking tune that even though it doesn't amount to much remains fairly enjoyable and replayable. I'm not sure where to place Le gai savoir in this mess (or the one of the next decade), but it's easily his best since Week End with his essay styling finally matching his cinematic sense. I'm not sure if I can call the film great, but it comes close enough.

Shohei Imamura
Profound Desires of the Gods (1968)--R B MOC
A Man Vanishes (1967)----------------R0 Icarus
The Pornographers (1966)------------R1 Criterion
Intentions of Murder (1964)----------R1 Criterion
The Insect Woman (1963)-----------R1 Criterion/ R B MOC
Pigs and Battleships (1961)----------R1 Criterion/ R B MOC
Nianchan (1960)--------------------N/A

Nianchan doesn't typically get treated as a major film in Imamura's career especially in the face of Pigs and Battleships' reception, but it is probably the first great and full Imamura film ever made with a stylish camera and use of setting identical to the rural lands that would occupy the later films. It might be lacking ever so slightly in the punch of his best films, but even by that standard it stands as masterful. Of course upon watching Pigs and Battleships there's really no arguing why its exploded so powerfully. This is a jaw dropping statement of comedy and violence that almost makes one believe it is the final word on post-war Japan through sheer power of design. Though his next three films deal with that same issue in masterful and completely different swoops though The Insect Woman sticks out the most to me if just for who much its story has become the basis (indirectly most likely) for a certain sort of feminist story.Dismissing it as just that though seems ridiculous as there are so many different goals to the film I've be here all day just listing them. I have to admit I agree with Oshima's comments on A Man Vanishes in a lot of areas even though this very sloppiness saved Imamura many a time in the past. The film rambles a lot and is not narratively sound, yet the basic trick it works under is pulled off so successfully I'd say it is an even greater magic trick of the cinema than Welles' F for Fake which of course is genius like few others. I don't have any such problems Profound Desire of the Gods (or however you wish to translate it) which to me is as perfect a film as could ever have been made and the defining feature of Imamura's career to me. It has every stylistic, thematic, and tonal concept ever considered by the man featured in such a way that almost makes any other statement redundant. Just must see in a fashion the goes beyond words.

Arthur Penn
Alice's Restaurant (1969)----MGM R1
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)-----Warner R A
The Chase (1966)-----------Sony R1 (OOP)
Mickey One (1965)----------Sony R1 (DVD-r)
The Train (1964)------------MGM R1
The Miracle Worker (1962)---MGM R1

From day one Penn was a heavy experimenter taking in everything that was going on in film at the time and practicing it. Sometimes it made him feel a bit without voice, but I think this has more to do with him subtly developing these techniques for his own voice. That said The Miracle Worker is anything but subtle loudly trumpeting its French inspiration though in a way that benefits the story. Penn easily could have Kramered it, but instead develops Keller and her problems like an adult mimicking Bancroft's performance perfectly. Penn was fired almost immediately from The Train, but this is probably my only chance to bring up the American existentialist John Frankenheimer who expertly turns Penn's love letter to art appreciation into an existential play for the irresponsible. Here the Nazi like the stranger in a perfectly internalized performance by Paul Scofield keeps to a behavior even as he knows it is dooming him. The sole Penn penned masterpiece for me is Mickey One a psuedo-comedy that bring his new wave obsession to its loudest and least commercial point as Beatty goes about destroying himself. The film actually mirrors the previous in a lot of ways. The Chase too is very masterful, though not as much as it could have been. Supposedly Penn shot the movie twice with a studio friendly version and one completely of improvised lines where Brando actually gave a damn. The studio took the film away from Penn and used almost only the former footage. How true this I don't know, but even if so what we get is a fantastic film that deal with small town ennui and evil like a Jim Thompson novel. Bonnie and Clyde is one of those big movies that whether you've even seen the movie you probably have some opinion on it and frankly that's a bit much. The movie is typical in a lot of ways for Penn which means it's fantastic, but not unique leaving only the amazing performances to explain why it's the one everyone remembers. Finally is the bizarre song adaptation Alice's Restaurant which is out of character in a lot of ways. It's a fairly unassuming musical comedy that toys with the reality of the situation in fairly novel ways. There's a political element going on as the spine but it almost leaves itself as the least interesting element especially after multiple viewings.

Sam Peckinpah
The Wild Bunch (1969)------------R1 Warner
Major Dundee (1965)-----------------R1 Sony/ RA Twilight Time
Ride the High Country (1962)-------Warner R1
The Deadly Companions (1961)-----Optimum R2

For such a giant talent who's reach such great levels respects he started very modestly. Even beyond his apprenticing under Don Siegel and television work (which often revealed a lot of what his work would later contain) his films from this period are almost exclusively failures which build to what made him great. Look for instance at The Deadly Companions which has a lot of his DNA in the theme and character interaction even if it looks cheaper and more television than his own television episodes. This leaves things lethargic and wooden even when it does manage a few crazy moments specifically from the two villains Keith shacks up with. Ride the High Country fairs a lot better if just because Peckinpah now has the budget to pain his ideas with. Things are a little stiff and he still has trouble coming from under the shadow of the genre, but there are enough daring ideas to be unmistakable. Major Dundee is both a major step forward and an enormous step back. He's basically a fully formed filmmaker at this point with his visual grammar and thematic concerns on full display. Yet the film itself is an absolute mess that in no form could work. If anything it seems like a lot needs out to focus the film down to its essentials. The Wild Bunch does just that earning its reputation as the American western of the spaghetti generation.

[swo17]

Thanks for all that work, knives! (You too, zedz, though I don't know if you're finished yet.)

[zedz]

A handful still to go, by my count. So, what's on TV tonight?:

625 (W + B Hein, 1969) – Materialfilme (Edition Filmmuseum) – This is quite possibly the most consciously provocative film I’ve selected to highlight, and I can certainly understand the violent reaction that met its initial screening. In the sixties, television was the enemy, of cinema as an art form and of experimental cinema most of all. Sticking more than half an hour of TV static up on a screen and calling it art (and let’s not forget that this kind of lousy signal was a banal, everyday sight at the time, not anything exotic or retro). As soon as the audience realised what it was watching, and that it wasn’t going to change any time soon, large numbers of them began to get enraged. But that also meant they weren’t really looking hard enough at what was on screen.

The Heins were preoccupied with how differences in media, transmission and reproduction changed content, and this film might be their purest expression of that interest, since the ‘content’ – swarming patterns of static – is about as basic as it can get. By choosing to shoot just static, the Heins foreground a visual element that would usually be considered background, or worse, not even part of the image at all. However, the film on which they’ve captured these patterns has in turn been damaged, and the parts of the screen where the image has been scraped away or obscured with dirt are much sharper than the slightly fuzzy TV static, so again an ‘inadvertent’ element ‘interfering’ with the image is foregrounded. The normal hierarchy of visual elements is overturned at each level, and those levels are only really properly visible to the unusually attentive. Unless your gaze is fixed (and, soon enough, transfixed), you won’t even see the single-frame damage interruptions, and unless your gaze is (trans)fixed on the static, you won’t see it as a pattern that’s worthy of consideration as a filmic image.

And then funny things start to happen. The Heins begin (I presume) to treat the imagery differently, downgrading it, superimposing it, and thirteen or so minutes in, the image gets blown out and begins to ripple like you’re watching it through a layer of water. But you also have to consider the impact of your own fixed gaze, which allows your brain to start playing its own tricks and make its own peculiar adjustments. Despite these effects of the film and of the viewer, the Heins have the gumption to stay the distance and maintain their outrageous minimalism. It makes for an interesting counterpoint to Pat O’Neill’s joyously psychedelic Screen (1969), which also takes television static as its subject, but puts it through the optical printer wringer so that the four-minute loop seems to present every colour you’ve ever imagined and about a dozen others as well, a sensory overload where the Heins opt for a drought.

Sun in Your Head (Television Decollage) (Wolf Vostell, 1963) – Flux Film Anthology (Re:Voir) – Another instance of your domestic television being employed as an abstract-imagery-generating-device. Vostell has pointed his camera at the TV set, blown out the contrast, and screwed around with the vertical hold and synchronisation to set up a constant flicker and scrolling bars, which in turn establish and vary the rhythm of the film. By ‘incorrectly’ presenting and processing both the televisual image and its filmic reproduction, he achieves some terrific effects: facial textures are coarsened to Drew Friedman levels, and footage of aeroplanes in flight becomes ominous and explosive. It’s like he’s stripping away the banality of heavily processed domestic imagery and exposing the grim truth underneath.

[Cold Bishop]

Hong Kong, 1960s, the "New Wuxia Pian": Five Swordplay Classics

Wuxia is a Mandarin-language term that literally means "martial arts chivalry" and pian simply means "movie." Wuxia itself represents a uniquely Chinese variety of storytelling that dates back long before the advent of filmmaking, at least as far as the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It is defined by stories that combine China's wushu (martial arts) tradition with deeds of heroic chivalry performed by men and women. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), these tales became epic novels such as Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Protagonists were often sword-bearing warriors of great virtue, who, like Robin Hood or King Arthur, would apply their fighting skills to vanquishing injustices with the edge of their blades.

Within these wuxia novels, a fictional realm developed that blended elements of fantasy with history. This became the jiang hu, or martial world, in which Chinese knight errants living by a code of honor could perform superhuman feats, channel chi energy into magical palm blasts and battle mythical beasts. This essentially became China's version of what Western culture defines as fantasy, where fighting sorcerers, elves, orcs, and halflings live....

As the cultural and commercial center of China in the early part of the 20th century, Shanghai quickly became home to China's burgeoning film industry following its birth in 1913. During the 1920s, predominately fantasy-oriented wuxia pian became very popular. Over thirty film companies filled silent movie screens with purely populist martial arts features that experimented with animation, trick photography and wirework to create their fantastic action... By the end of the 1920s, wuxia pian had reached a commercial peak, with over 250 movies released within two years alone. But the genre soon suffered a setback. Concerned with the effects that wuxia pian and other less-socially responsible movies were having on audiences, an increasingly hard line nationalistic Chinese government created the National Film Censorship Board in 1931 to ban works deemed inappropriate for public consumption. This began a migration by wuxia filmmakers to Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong to carry in on their trade. Japan's invasion of Shanghai in 1937 and the Chinese Revolution of 1949 would drive more filmmaking talent out of mainland China

The era of wuxia filmmaking in Shanghai was over, but in Hong Kong it was slowly gearing up for greater success. From roughly 1935 to 1960, Hong Kong put out a nearly steady stream of Cantonese-language wuxia movies like The Lady Protector (1947) and A Sword against Five Protectors (1952), where stunt work using trampolines, wires and fantasy special effects continued to evolve. But it wasn't until the mid-1960s that wuxia pian made its first real advancement since the advent of sound.

Essentially, by the 1960s, wuxia made it to the screen in two forms. One, made by the major Mandarin-language studios (essentially Shaw and MPGI/Cathay) were Huangmei Operas. Opposed to their later form, they were musical, they were romantic, the "fighting" were not action scenes but displays of ballet and acrobatics. More importantly, the films were female-dominated, with female stars and a large female audience. The other variant, mostly produced by the Cantonese-language indies, were the cheap B&W action films, typified by the long running Wong Fei-Hung series. These were in some respects closer to what we'd see later, but they were sillier and more fantastic, and the majors largely turned their nose up at the genre, much in the same way I imagine the major Hollywood studios looked down on poverty-row serials.

But the time they were a-changing, and the writing was on the wall. The 60s was the emergence of the action film, and soon Shaw couldn't ignore the popularity of Samurai films, Westerns both Hollywood and Spaghetti, Men-on-a-Mission films, James Bond, etc... After cornering the lucrative Taiwanese market with their Huangmei Operas, they decided their next step was to revamp the wuxia as a decidedly modern, action film genre. The beginning is arguable. Late 1965 saw the release of Temple of the Red Lotus, generally considered the first of the "new wuxias". However, many of the late Huangmei Operas already allowed a certain a level of violence and action, for example The Butterfly Chalice earlier that year, which had a whole middle section directed by Chang Cheh. Likweise, a year earlier, Chang Cheh made his experimental b&w Tiger Boy, but the perplexed Shaw Bros. kept it on the shelves for over a year, until they eventually released it to fairly big success. Plus, a lot of the early wuxias still had many fantasy and romantic elements owing to the Opera films (Ho Meng-Hua's Journey to the West tetralogy is a perfect example). There are three films that are really categorized as cementing the future potential of the genre: King Hu's Come Drink With Me, Hsu Tseng-Hung's King Cat, and Chang Cheh's The One-Armed Swordsman, none of which are my favorites, but worth a look. The last, especially helped establish the "yanggang" ("staunch masculinity") style, which was the ultimate rejection of the female-centric domination of the genre. These are the ultra-macho, ultraviolent films which would quickly morph into the Kung-Fu films of the Seventies. Of course, that transformation didn't come complete until around '72/'73, and the appeal of the "new wuxia" is precisely in seeing people mess around with the form, mixing the old and the new.

This list is undoubtedly skewed toward Shaw Brothers Studios, because, well, 'dem be the breaks. These are by and large the films that are available and, to be fair, they were the trendsetters; it was this genre which allowed them to ascend to domination of the "Chinese" box office. While the explosion of the genre was one of the deathblows against MPGI/Cathay Studios, which folded in the early 70s, they tried playing catch-up, and it's my understanding they have more than a few worthwhile films. Likewise, the late 60s was the period that Taiwan put forth an effort to build its own industry and prevent Hong Kong films from cornering the market. One of their responses was to copy the popular genre, but beyond King Hu, you find very little writing on this period. Also, while it would take for the formation of Golden Harvest in 1970 to revive the HK indie studios and producers, many were still holding on during the period. However, good luck finding most of these films: Celestial has serious problems in their handling of the Shaw Legacy, but they've at least put these films out in editions which mostly honor their original form.

I'm not stating these five films are the "Five Greatest", simply that they are five excellent films which provide a strong entry point for those who don't know where to begin, and which I hope give an overview of what exactly was going on with the genre during the second half of this decade.

If you want to dig further, I'd highly recommend the Silver Emulsion blog, where Will has taken up the ridiculous task of watching EVERY Shaw Bros. Martial-Arts film. He even has a decade top 10 which has some surprising overlap with mine.


The Invincible Fist (Chang Cheh, 1969)
While critics and historians spill all their ink over Chang Cheh's collaborations with Jimmy Wang Yu, this obscure box-office flop is the shining masterpiece of Chang's early Swordplay films, perhaps the greatest film produced by Shaw Brothers in the Sixties. Its narrative is deceptively simple. During the opening credits, a group of bandits pull off their most recent, bloody robbery. As a response, Lo Lieh's titular character - equal parts police constable and bounty hunter - is given the task of bringing them to justice. And that's pretty much it: a cat-and-mouse film with the lawmen hot on the heels of the gang of thieves. The narrative doesn't get much more complicated than the two groups coming together for the occasional skirmish before pulling apart again to continue the chase. The extent of character development comes in establishing whether a person is a cop or criminal. Even melodrama is kept to a minimum in what amounts to a surprisingly barebone and taciturn film. So what's the big deal? This is the Swordplay film stripped of everything superfluous, a film of remarkable economy and skill. In parring down his narrative to only the most basic of pieces, Chang is able to attend to each piece with laser-like precision, imprinting them with a flair that's uncommon even for this groundbreaking stylist. Such a cool and reticent film may seem a departure for Chang Cheh, the auteur of melodramatic excess, where the outpouring of viscera is only matched by that of macho sentiment. But this isn't some film devoid of emotion and passion; it's there, suppressed behind a veneer of glowering intensity, like a coil pulled back so tight it seems likely to violently spring back at any moment. For this task, he's helped immeasurably by Lo Lieh. In a largely silent, stone-faced performance, he is able to give his character depths of smoldering fury, world-weariness and even a sense of profound sadness, all of which is simply not there in the narrative or dialogue. He's almost what would happen if one of Chang's angry young men didn't die young: now older, wiser and disillusioned by the violent life of the "hero". He carries the weight of the film in a way I can't imagine Wang Yu ever could, and he gives the film a poignancy as it reaches the final stretch, which, given Chang Cheh's Nicholas Ray influence, may very well have been inspired by On Dangerous Ground. Furthermore, in boiling down the Swordplay film to its essence, he has unlocked its universality, the way it corresponds and overlaps with such genres as the Western and Samurai film. Brian at Cool Ass Cinema go as far to conflate it with the Spaghetti Western, although I feel it has more in common with the life-and-death bullring-exactitude of Budd Boetticher. More accurately, for a director heavily influenced by Japanese cinema, it may be the single most chambara-esque film of his career. During an early standout scene - a swordfight in a field of overgrown reeds, one of the many amazing fight scenes in the film - you may be convinced you're watching a genuine jidaigeki. More than any of his other films, this film could easily, with only the slightest of changes, be transplanted into a Samurai film. What's more, even in an absolutely stacked decade, it could hold its head as a classic of the genre. The film's failure was an early disappointment for Chang, leading him to, among other things, abandon Lo Lieh as a leading man (the two never worked together again) and perhaps reinforcing his impulse to stick to tried-and-true formulas (an exhausting trait of his nearly hundred films). A shame, as it's not only one of his crowning achievements, but a masterpiece of 60s action cinema.

Availability: Unfortunately, still only available through Celestial/IVL. Its soundtrack's been remixed to 5.1, as usual, and there's some odd mixing of background-foreground levels, but thankfully, the music sounds original, and the added foley sounds are fairly inconspicuous compared to the original sounds. Also, to my eyes, it seems to have been DNR'ed a little less than usual.


Dragon Gate Inn (King Hu, 1967)
Come Drink With Me may be the easier film to see, but I've always had serious problems with the way it peters out in an anti-climactic thud. Not King Hu's fault: the meticulous craftsman instantly butted heads with the brothers Shaws over that film, and it should have been no surprise when he made the sudden leap over to Taiwan, which was quickly emerging as the most lucrative market for Chinese cinema, even as its filmmaking infrastructure was still primitive. Among that fray, King Hu released this, one of the major and most influential blockbusters of its era, and a film that for many defined the emergence of Taiwanese cinema. In true wuxia fashion, it finds King Hu mixing the historical with the fictional. A little Google-friendly primer for those who can't keep up with the opening narration: Emperor Zhu Qizhen was a Ming Dynasty emperor who was captured and held captive by the Mongols. In his absence, his brother was installed emperor by the minister Yu Qian. When Zhu Qizhen returned, he was immediately place under house arrest for years by his brother. When he finally managed to seize control again, his set out to purge his enemies, making use of a eunuch-led secret police, and executing Minister Yu as a traitor. That brings us to where the film begins... Yu's children are exiled to beyond the borders of the empire. Fearing a future reprisal, the eunuch Tsao Shao Chin (Pai Ying) and his "Eastern Agency" are sent to clandestinely execute them. The plan: to intercept them at the frontier, at Dragon Gate Inn. However, owing both to happenstance and design, several chivalrous swords(wo)men arrive there at the same time. And so the intrigue and battle of wits begin...

I always felt you could rename the traditional wuxia pian (as opposed to the ultra-masculine and violent "yanggang" variant, that Chang Cheh and co. would soon morph into the Kung-Fu film) as the "Roads & Inn" genre, as they invariably alternate between those two settings. You could also divide them into two types, depending on which of the two they emphasize. Invincible Fist, while "yanggang", is clearly a "Road" film, as the characters are constantly journeying forward, the inns serving as nothing more than pitstops. Despite its opening, however, Dragon Gate Inn settles into clearly an "Inn" film. It's almost as he took the opening tavern duel from Come Drink With Me, easily the best scene of that film, and decided to expand and design this whole film around it. It's a place with special privilege in King Hu's cinema. Like Ford's stagecoach, it's a special cross-section where the rich and poor, good and bad, corrupt and heroic can meet on seemingly equal footing. As a place on a borderland, it marks a crossroad between the peaceful and chaotic, the oppressive and the free. At times, it's the last refuge among the unrest on one side of the border (think Rick's in Casablanca), at others it's ground zero for that chaos (think the remote hotel in Five Graves to Cairo). More importantly, here it represents a cross-section between Chinese culture new and old, as Hu weaves the action cinema of the wuxia pian which dominated cinemas of the time with the pageantry and balletic form of the traditional Beijing Opera. It doesn't just find the meeting point between history and fiction, but between history old and history new, as this real chapter of Ming Dynasty subterfuge is loaded with modern day references to the Cultural Revolution, the White Terror, the Chinese diaspora, and even Western espionage (this brns article establishes its historical context). As the film outlines nothing more than the uniting of several people, for a variety of reasons, against a force of political oppression and evil. In fact, it is this communal, even democratic aspect that may be most surprising touch here. As the heroes at Shaw Bros. were increasingly turning into one-man-armies, Hu's heroes, as skilled as they are, ultimately have no choice but to stand united if they intend to prevail. But none of this does justice to the pure gracefulness with which King Hu tackles everything. Everything here - the unfolding of the narrative, the choreography of the action, the camera movements and framing, the rhythms of the editing - are as clean and pure as the landscapes that dwarf his characters. It's a movie that's simply told, but complex in its implications and bountiful in its pleasures.

Availability: This, like nearly all of Hu's have been completely mistreated by the DVD format. The Taiwanese Hoker and German New Entertainment are your best bets: both are non-anamorphic, but with English subtitles (I suspect they're the same transfer). They are also, from what I can see, OOP. Be warned that there is also a dubbed, pan-and-scan German release. The PanMedia is a bootleg, right down to the fan-generated subtitles. In all honesty, given its sorry state, this is the sort of film you can probably torrent with few pangs of conscience.


Bells of Death (Griffin Yueh Feng, 1968)
While it's easy, while writing on the topic, to focus exclusively on the two auteurs above, the fact is, given their factory line approach, Shaw produced nearly four dozen "new wuxias" within the first five years of the genre. Many are fairly routine (or worse), but among them is the occasional jewel. This is one of them, and probably the most readily accessible one. A trio of bandits terrorize and slaughter a rural family, unknowingly allowing the eldest brother to survive. Five years later, after mastering the martial arts, Chang Yi sets out on a path of revenge, his only memorabilia being his mother's bracelet, the titular "bells of death". In short, this is one of the most fierce and violent of all those early Swordplay films. Perhaps too violent - as a handful of jump-cuts attest - but it rarely wavers from its grim tale for any romantic interludes, comic asides or scenes of fantasy commonly found here. Like Invincible Fist, it's a simple film, but one whose simplicity allows for economy and precision, each of its parts tackled with an uncommon flair. And like Invincible Fist, there's a certain universality to the film: if that film struck me as the most chambara-esque of all the early wuxia pians, this film could easily be transplanted into a Spaghetti Western. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Yueh's previous film was a riff on A Fistful of Dollars.) I even have the title: Three Men from Now. The film is essentially divided into three chapters, with Chang finding and stalking a different culprit in each. Appropriately, each chapter ends with a fairly impressive fight. In 1968, the genre was still novel enough that most filmmakers still felt they could get away with simple fights with a lot of flaying swords and gobs of blood. Not Yueh: here he goes out of his way to stage each fight in a unique manner. One fight takes place in a bamboo grove, the Bavaesque quaility of the lighting and the "disembodied" sound design giving the whole segment a ghostly quality. A later fight takes place in alternating light and darkness, the fighters largely unseen, all with a premise that makes you wonder if more Tarkovsky films should have ended with a swordfight (you'll get it when you see it...). If anything, the film starts to run out of steam in the final chapter. It doesn't do anything particular wrong, it just gets a little too pat and conventional to satisfyingly cap all that came before, even as the film reaches for some tragic significance. What may be most impressive is that the film came out of this director in this year: Chang and Hu were seen as young turks whose relative youth made them especially appropriate for this new genre. Yueh Feng, on the other hand, in his sixties, was a veteran reaching the twilight of his career. To see him respond to this new sudden wave of action films with such savage gusto is unexpected, even as it is this very assured professionalism, the mark of a veteran, that distinguishes the film. While I've yet to see another Yueh Feng film as satisfying as this, it has me interested enough to keep looking, both before and after the '65 kung-fu divide. Revenge films are rarely as satisfying as this, and I have no doubt this established something of a standard at the studio, one which the genre's many ensuing entries aspired to.

And for those taking score: I have no doubt whatsoever that the opening of this film was a major inspiration on Inglorious Basterds. Likewise, a later turn of events call to mind similar happenings in Django Unchained.

Availability: Originally released by Celestial/IVL, it has since been ported over Image. However, it seems some pressings had problems with the aspect ratio/anamorphism that I'm hoping were cleared up. Be warned. They have, however, restored the mono soundtrack.


The Sword of Swords (Cheng Kang, 1968)
If Chang Cheh and King Hu were the two superstars of Shaw Bros. first phase of martial-art films, the lesser-known Cheng Kang, for consistency alone, can comfortably slide in at an easy third place (And considering how abbreviated Hu's stay was at the studio, you could argue he's #2). A workman-like professional who'd quickly be assigned many of Shaw's big wuxia epics (before the initial bubble burst on the genre), he's certainly less idiosyncratic than those two. Nonetheless, in his films I've noticed both a certain relentless pacing (his films often begin in media res), as well as something of a grim undertone that unexpectedly permeate his seemingly populist films. No undertone here; I can't imagine Shaw Bros. produced a single crueler film this decade. Jimmy Wang Yu stars as Lin Jenshiau, a disciple who is given the unenviable task of protecting the titular sword, a supernatural blade powerful enough it can make nations rise and fall. Appropriately enough, a group of barbarians seek the blade, and after giving his sifu his word of honor to protect the sword, he immediately has that promise challenged. Obviously meant to cash in on the Chang Cheh/Wang Yu collaborations, Cheng Kang responds not only by adopting those films' tone of extreme melodrama and violence, but also by one-upping them for plain downbeat brutality. Chang Cheh's ultraviolent, tragic cinema still has nothing but awe for his men of action, and that is where this film precisely deviates. The film's theme is a common, nationalistic one, as Wang Yu sacrifices seemingly everything for the higher purpose of preserving the "empire". There's a near-allegorical simplicity to the tale, with Wang Yu put through the wringer like a kung-fu Job. Yet, these slings-and-arrows become so overbearingly numerous and awful, Wang Yu's character is dragged to such a sorry and pitiful state... you can't help but feel that Cheng Kang is calling such blind idealism into question. Just when you think he can't sink any lower, the film comes up with another plague-like torture to visit upon him. Some may feel the film gets a little long in the tooth near the end, when it starts to more openly mimic the One-Armed Swordsman films. But, it's to Cheng's credit that, by this point, we're so disgusted by the villains, so traumatized by Lin's suffering, that we have to to stick around for some sort of meting of justice. The fights, done with Chang Cheh's team of Lau Kar-Leung/Tong Gai, are among the most impressive of its era, with a special care given to one-on-one duels; one fight in particular, a classic duel in snowfall, stands out both for its technique and its cruelty. Yet, Cheng is careful to not adopt Chang's troubling relationship to violence; it's telling that in the final duel, when Wang Yu should be privileged for some well-deserved vengeance, he suddenly finds himself victim to perhaps the most sadistic act of deception in the film. Make no mistake: this films unrelenting nasty streak can get to be too much. I wouldn't be surprised to find it's Lars Von Trier or Michael Haneke's favorite kung-fu film. But in refashioning the wuxia into pure tragedy, the film sticks with you, and even the last few seconds of studio-imposed happiness can't erase the film's near-unbearable grim power.

Cheng Kang's son, Ching Siu-Tung, would later become a major director in Tsui Hark's Film Workshop stable, gaining credits for such modern wuxia pians as Duel to the Death and A Chinese Ghost Story.

Availability: Originally put out by Celestial/IVL, the R1 Funimation is the one to get. Both progressive and with the original mono. It's too bad Funimation seemed to get the leftovers after Dragon Dynasty and Image, since they've done the best job in getting these films out there.


Dragon Swamp (Lo Wei, 1969)
Now for something completely different... While many of the highlights of the initial genre are precisely those that broke the mold by being especially brooding and violent, it's easy to forget that the wuxia pian genre's not all angry young men and blood spurts. While it's nice to categorize the wuxia as China's equivalent to the Western, that's to overlook that it's just as much it's answer to the fantasy genre, to dime-store adventure fiction, and to even the mythological. What we have here is the old-school of the old-school, a martial-arts film taking place in the traditional jiang-hu world, where good and evil are easily distinguishable, where fights are done with broad swords, and where supernatural feats of strength and agility are possible. It's also a surprising triumph for Lo Wei, who is notorious among kung-fu fans as something of a sub-Corman huckster and opportunist. While hardly a director who's praises are often sung, something must be said that his mercenary approach of following popular trends and imitating established hits - in this case, the films of King Hu and Ho Meng-Hua - pay off when he's backed by the very professionals behind said hits. Come Drink with Me's Cheng Pei-Pei pulls double duty as both mother and daughter in this convoluted, lighthearted fantasy wuxia, which finds various factions once again squabbling for a mythically powerful sword. Don't come in expecting Hu's balletic elegance or poignancy; in fact, Lo's directing style is nothing to write home about here. But that's fine; the story moves quick enough and is dense with enough twists and novelty that he mainly just has to get out of the way. He's also helped by a more than able cast, led by the always charming Cheng Pei-Pei and frequent co-star Yueh Hua, and filled with pleasing familiar faces in roles big and small, from Lo Lieh to Simon Yuen. Even some of Lo Wei's worst habits pay off: the single best scene in the film is nothing more than a rip-off of Come Drink with Me's iconic tavern fight, right down to using what looks to be the same set. It's to the credit of the well-oiled machine being ran here that not only does the movie not suffer from the comparison, it pulls it off deftly, with some wonderful tension as Cheng slowly-but-gracefully ascertains the danger she's in. And despite being the sort of light-hearted, low-stakes film that I imagine children must have flocked to on a Saturday afternoon, it's still unafraid to introduce more than a touch of the violent, tragic and morally ambiguous by the time the film ends. The film even, surprisingly, manages to stick to a coherent theme, namely that of damaged families torn apart by evil deeds. Dragon Swamp belongs to a lineage of a films that would take years to be picked up again: starting vaguely with Chor Yuen's re-popularization of the "chivalrous swordsman" film in the late Seventies; more pronounced in the FX heavy fantasy films of the Eighties, Zu Warriors, Duel to the Death, etc.; and only making it overseas with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with which it shares more than a few traits. This film isn't likely to make anyone decade's list - it probably won't be anyone's favorite of these five wuxia films - but in embodying a traditional, populist, even feminine side of the genre that would quickly get swept aside by the ultra-macho yanggang films, it's a very pleasant place to dip your toes in.

Availability: Celestial/IVL. Soundtrack, naturally, is a remix, and HK Digital seems to think it has some added foley sounds, but I can't say I noticed anything out of the ordinary. Subtitles, however, are a little wonkier than usual.

[YnEoS]

Wonderful write up Cold Bishop. I'm mostly familiar with Chang Cheh and King Hu stuff from this period, so I definitely plan on checking out some of the additional films you mentioned.

For anyone who wants to see a superior example of a Taiwanese wuxia films from this period outside of King Hu, I'd like to also recommend Joseph Kuo's King of Kings (1969) which is available region 1 on the Fusian DVD label for a few dollars. Again, I'm not very knowledgeable about this period myself, so I'm going to defer to a harsh but informative review from Mark Pollard from KungFuCinema.com

KING OF KINGS is one of a handful of early wuxia titles from noted Taiwanese martial arts filmmaker Joseph Kuo, best known in the west for producing and directing a number of classic kung fu hits including THE SEVEN GRANDMASTERS and THE MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING. Although this film is definitely up to Kuo’s typically high standards, KING OF KINGS is less a representation of his style of filmmaking and more of an example of the brief, late-1960s boom of epic wuxia movies spurred by the breakout success of filmmakers King Hu and Chang Cheh.

One thing Kuo never excelled at was originality, but he usually managed to make better knockoffs of leading studio hits than most of his indie peers. In action and storytelling, KING OF KINGS is conventional for the era, but well made and generally entertaining despite a number of flaws.

It rehashes the popular theme of orphaned children growing up in the martial world with the sole mission to avenge the death of a father figure at the hands of a rival master.

(...)

Per usual, the story is simplistic in its execution, especially by today’s standards. However, the drama that develops in the evolving relationship between the Devil Blacksmith and Siao Tung is surprisingly meaningful. Even though the available English translation mangles some of the dialogue, it’s evident that the script has some sharp literary leanings with a Confucian flavor. A great example is when in one concise sentence the Devil Blacksmith compares Siao Tung to a weapon made of good material, yet lacking in refinement. The same could be said of the whole movie.

There is a large amount of action on display, particularly in the first half. The choreography style is typical of the times. There is virtually no wire use, but there is a lot of trampoline-powered leaping, stylized posing reminiscent of Japanese chambara, unsophisticated trick editing, and noticeable undercranking. It’s dated stuff, but the sparring is still unusually complex and makes me wonder who was responsible for it.

The best fight occurs when Peter Yang battles a gang of sword-wielding thugs with his bare hands. He uses a series of disarming techniques and smooth evasions simultaneously against multiple opponents. It’s a long sequence with long takes involving an impressive series of dynamic, group movements. I would recommend the movie for this scene alone.

Unfortunately, the many sword duels, while nicely choreographed and executed, grow monotonous for lacking the creativity and symbolism that Shaw Brothers movies like HAVE SWORD, WILL TRAVEL offered.

The production is excellent in places and mediocre in others. I suspect the cinematographer and his equipment was imported from Japan because the film is shot with sophisticated techniques rarely seen in Taiwanese or Hong Kong filmmaking. There are very smooth zooms, track panning, angled crane shots, and transitional wipes often seen in the works of Akira Kurosawa. The film’s color palate appears intentionally muted, unlike most Chinese period productions that are drowned in gaudy colors. Costumes are above average also and reminiscent of the clothing used in King Hu’s films.

The film uses a very common theme song repeatedly. It’s a song I have yet to identify, but I hear it about as often in Chinese martial arts movies as I hear the folk tune “On the General’s Orders,” which has become the unofficial theme song for any Wong Fei-hung movie.

[zedz]

Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1964) – Magick Lantern Cycle (BFI) – Perhaps the most praised underground film of the 60s, but certainly not the most overpraised. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this, but it’s always just as sharp, dark and funny as the last time, or the next. And it’s one of the landmark filmic treatments of popular culture, with Anger subversively inter-breeding pop culture and the avant-garde at a time when the latter was still heavily influenced by ideas like ‘visual music’ and reflexively nuzzling up to high art. And Anger’s take on pop culture is radical and witty, effectively saying to wowserish middle America, “you know all your worst fears about the influence of popular trash on the delicate psyches of your children? Well, it’s much, much worse than that!” And so we get this giddy conflation of queer sex, fetishism, violence and Satanism, all delivered with tongue firmly in cheek and scored to a killer rock and roll, pop and doo-wop soundtrack. It’s not just that the ominous visuals are undermining the sugary pop of Bobby Vinton, it’s that the sugary pop is undermining the darkness of the images: they’re like two viruses infecting one another, to the point that you can’t rightly tell, when they’re racing against one another, whether Scorpio is parodying Christ or Christ is parodying Scorpio.

[Cold Bishop]

While I love Scorpio Rising, this go around, if I'm voting for an Anger, I'm probably going for Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I like how it takes a very basic problem - which is: how to overlay and cross-dissolve color images in a beautiful manner, something that was infinitely easier and more common with monochrome photography - and then he just runs with it. It's simply one of the most beautiful and eye-popping color films ever captured.

[zedz]

Nothing against Pleasure Dome, but it's ineligible this round as imdb lists it as 1954. It's release and version history is a bit murky, like a lot of Anger's work, but I think the '66 release was just a re-edit (and probably not as major an overhaul as the ELO version). So go ahead and vote for Scorpio!

[zedz]

Brutality in Stone (Alexander Kluge & Peter Schamoni, 1961) – Abscheid von Gestern (Edition Filmmuseum) / Die Oberhausener (Edition Filmmuseum) – Ostensibly a documentary about Nazi architecture, this dense marvel is a highly organized historical timebomb. Kluge and Schamoni construct a musical ‘animation’ of architecture through the rhythmic montage of abstracted detail and percussive camera movements, anticipating what Svankmajer would do in The Ossuary ten years later. The imagery is accompanied by a complex, layered soundtrack that complicates the dramatic grandeur of the visuals. Music swells and fades abruptly, orchestras tune up, silence descends, and archival commentary, including an account of the transports, spews up all the dark truths that the neo-classical splendour of the architecture was intended to suppress.