Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Killer Couples: "Double Indemnity" (1944) and "The Getaway" (1972)

I saw these in the before time as part of an IFI season of films about couples who kill. Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, is a definite noir classic about a guy who thinks he is pretty smart (Fred MacMurray) and a dame (Barbara Stanwyck) who is playing him for a chump. If you have not seen it, the title comes from a term in life assurance policies whereby the insurer pays out double for particularly unlikely events, in this case a fatal accident on a train. As can be imagined, the plot involves a life assurance policy with just such a clause and a murder made to look like a fall from a train. The film is a masterful depiction of obsession leading to folly and delusion, with a typically noir inversion of the moral code through making the murderous insurance salesman the protagonist.

Billy Wilder made a lot of films and I don't know to what extent he is seen as making films with recurring themes, but there are definite elements here that find echoes in his other work. William Holden in Sunset Boulevard appears to have taken over the insurance salesman's apartment; in certain other regards the protagonists of both films follow a similar trajectory. The closing scene between the salesman and his loss adjustor colleague (Edward G. Robinson) recalls the ending of Some Like It Hot with its faint suggestion of homosexual attraction (though I could be reading too much into what is actually a more traditional paternal relationship). And similar to those other films, there is an air of loucheness to this one. In the opening it is presented as entirely normal that an insurance salesman would engage in lewd banter with the wife of a potential client, while later a minor character talks about how much he is looking forward to seeing a visiting "osteopath".

The Getaway meanwhile is a Sam Peckinpah directed film about a crim (Steve McQueen) who has to make a getaway after a heist goes wrong when other crims try to double-cross him. He is aided and abetted in this endeavour by his lovely wife (Ali McGraw). The film starts well with largely wordless scenes showing the crim in jail, the machinery of the jail juxtaposed with the mechanistic tasks pursued by the prisoners. It goes downhill once he gets out. The whole heist-gone-wrong plot is a bit plodding and predictable while the film as a whole has a tiresome air of macho blokey bollocks to it (see also: all other Sam Peckinpah films).

Peckinpah films are sometimes like artefacts from an era of unreconstructed offensive sexism and The Getaway is no exception in this regard. The scenes in which for reasons a rival crim kidnaps another couple and then starts shagging the woman, who turns out to love getting some good lovin', leaves a nasty taste, particularly as it is all largely played for laughs.

The various scenes where Steve McQueen's character slaps Ali McGraw around are also quite distasteful, not least because they were in a real-life relationship at the time that was reputedly characterised by domestic violence. Some of the other quirks of the Peckinpah style also grated with me. The slow-motion arcs of blood in the death scenes were a bit comedic; these may once have seemed ground-breaking but now (and perhaps already by the time this film was made) they are little more than Peckinpah cliché.

But for all that, the film has a strong visual sense. As previously noted, the images of jail life are stunning. Another scene that gives rise to some striking images is one where McQueen & McGraw escape emerge in a dump having escaped from the cops in a garbage truck's trash compartment. Neverthelss the film remains fundamentally not that good but might be of interest to film history types or fans of domestic violence. Otherwise don't bother with The Getaway: watch (or rewatch) Double Indemnity instead.

images:

Double Indemnity (Guardian: "My favourite film: Double Indemnity")

The Getaway (Basement Rejects: "The Getaway (1972)")

Monday, February 21, 2022

Two compilations: "Bob Stanley Presents 76 in the Shade" and "Cafe Exil: New Adventures In European Music 1972-1980"

These are two of those compilations released by Ace Records and put together by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne (in conjunction with Jason Wood in the case of Cafe Exil). They're both collections of music from the 1970s. In 76 in the Shade we are back in the notoriously hot summer of 1976. Thanks to England's Dreaming (Jon Savage's brilliant account of the Sex Pistols and their milieu) I think of 1976 as the year of punk, for all that 1977 was when it went overground and exploded into the living rooms of olde England. But there's none of that here. Instead the album has a collection of languid tunes that evoke a sense of being too damn hot to do anything.

It is in the nature of the music that individual tracks should not really stand out, but two tracks that really catch my brain are Lynsey De Paul's "Sugar Shuffle" and 10cc's "I'm Mandy Fly Me". With "Sugar Shuffle" I may perhaps be drawing of memories of when Lynsey De Paul used to appear on 1970s TV a lot, most notably when she competed in the Eurovision. She was a total sizzler and little me has a massive crush on her. "Sugar Shuffle" sees her seductively inviting listeners to join her doing said sugar shuffle. Sadly De Paul's style of music was swept away by punk and new pop, and she went on to go Tory, but hey, nobody's perfect and for a brief period in the mid 1970s she made perfect sense.

"I'm Mandy Fly Me" meanwhile takes its title from some innuendo laden advertising campaign where named lovely lady air hostesses would beckon businessmen to fly with their airline. The lyrics are ambiguous and could be about a plane crash or someone completely losing it, but it has an oddly disconcerting quality that brings it away from the mainstream of these heat-drenched tunes.

If the thoughts of 10cc and Lynsey De Paul providing the compilation's best tracks fills you with dread then you might want to stay away from 76 in the Shade.

Cafe Exil meanwhile is conceptually a compilation of interesting European music from the 1970s, together with tunes from some similar UK acts. Looking at the roster it is a bit krautrock (Faust, Amon Düül II, Michael Rother, Popol Vuh and Cluster all appear), but not exclusively so. The odd things is that although the acts here are all of the cool variety, unlike the mid-70s AOR and MOR terrors on the 76 in the Shade record, the overall feel of this is not too dissimilar from the other record, making it an ideal compilation for late night listening.

One Cafe Exil track that really stands out for me is Annette Peacock's "Pony", on which to an electronic accompaniment (at least partially her own) Ms Peacock sings about her fondness for her pony in an oddly strangulated tone. And then there is the Jan Hammer Group's "Don't You Know", a cheesy but laid back groover that sounds like it would be right at home on 76 in the Shade.

So yeah, two fun records. I'm looking forward to seeing what treasures Bob Stanley unearths next.

images:

Bob Stanley presents 76 In The Shade (Ace Records)

Cafe Exil - New Adventures In European Music 1972-1980 (Ace Records)

Sunday, February 20, 2022

Film: "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain" (2021)

Directed by Will Sharpe, this is a biopic of that late Victorian guy who painted pictures of cats, with Benedict Cumberbatch shining in the lead role. Before seeing the film my thumbnail understanding of Louis Wain's life was that he painted pictures of cats and then went mad, with there being some debate as to whether his mental deterioration can be traced in the development of his art style (some of the cat pictures are completely bananas but it is not clear that he painted them after the more conventional ones). The film throws in a couple of other sad facts about his life, revealing first that he scandalised his family by marrying his sisters' governess (wonderfully played by Claire Foy) but was then parted from her prematurely when she died of cancer. Also one of his sisters also goes mad (before his own breakdown); as presented in the film you get the sense that oddness ran in the family, with his more sensible elder sister (played by the always wonderful Andrea Riseborough) coming across as someone permanently putting on her game face to present as normal.

And yet, it is a far less miserable film than that potted summary of Wain's life suggests. He has his ups and downs and yes he does end up permanently institutionalised, but following a fundraising appeal by his admirers he is brought to a nice asylum where he gets to both keep a pet cat and paint away to his heart's content. There are worse ways of passing your days.

images:

Louis Wain cat art (Wikipedia)

A human, a cat, and another human (Screen Rant: "The Real Meaning Of The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain's Title Explained")

My cat pictures (Flickr) "I will now outline my plan for world domination"

Saturday, February 19, 2022

Film: "The French Dispatch" (2021)

This Wes Anderson film is set in an alternate universe in which for no obvious reason The New Yorker was published from a provincial French town. It's an enjoyable confection and probably best if not subjected to too much analytical thought. Anderson has settled into his own aesthetic to the extent that his films are now instantly recognisable and made in such a way that they are only going to appeal to people who already like Wes Anderson films. Oddly, the director this one most reminded me of was the USSR's Sergei Parajanov, particularly his The Color of Pomegranates, with which The French Dispatch shares a colour palette and a fondness for tableaux, combined with a disdain for anything approximating to a plot.

I have found myself thinking about whether this film would be eligible for the Hugo Awards, which recognise works in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. You would struggle to make the claim that The French Dispatch is a science fiction film, but you might be on better ground arguing that it counts as fantasy. After all, the eponymous French Dispatch newspaper never actually existed. The film is not just set in a made-up French town but in a fantasy version of France, so its connection to the real world is pretty tenuous. But I think it unlikely that it would attract so many nominations that the Hugo administrators would have to decide on its eligibility.

images:

The editorial office of The French Dispatch (Deadline: "Cannes Review: Wes Anderson’s 'The French Dispatch' ")

A tableau from The Colour of Pomegranates (New Minds Eye: "Subverting the Pomegranate—Is the Colour of Pomegranates Actually a Subversive Film?")

Saturday, February 12, 2022

film: "Licorice Pizza" (2021)

Everyone loves this; everyone except me, for I found it to be dull and fundamentally inconsequential. It follows an odd semi-relationship between a precocious teenage child actor mutating into a kid entrepreneur and a somewhat aimless woman in her 20s. And it's set in 1973 or 1974 with the post-October War oil crisis in the background (at one point a truck runs out of petrol and rolls down a hill, which I think might be a metaphor of some kind). It all looks great and has a great soundtrack and features great performances, not least from the principals (Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim), but I found it really hard to care about the story or the characters. I think maybe a lot of this is down to the characterisation of Gary Valentine, the kid entrepreneur. Basically I hate entrepreneurs and having to spend time in the company of some 15 year old and his stupid business ideas was like a sojourn in hell. Alana Haim's character (also called Alana, which suggests a lack of imagination on somebody's part) was a lot more appealing but that made her association with the kid entrepreneur all the more disturbing.

But as noted, nearly everyone else in the world loved this. The only other gripes I saw focussed on the age difference between the semi-couple at the story's heart. At the start he is 15 while her age is somewhere into the 20s. There's no suggestion that they are even approximating to getting it on but that still is a whomper of an age difference; if a film featured a romance between a man in his twenties and a 15 year old girl then there would be uproar. I have to say though that the age difference did not jar so much with me while I was watching the film. Partly I was preoccupied with how boring the film was but I think also Gary's precociousness masked how young he was, while Alana's slight frame and lack of focus in her life made it easy to subconsciously think of her as younger than she was. Also I am so used to films in which women in their 20s play teenagers that the age difference was easily forgettable when they weren't ramming it down our throats.

People also did not like that there is a racist minor character in the film.

Overall though I think this film is like The Master, a previous Paul Thomas Anderson: full of strong performances and scenes that linger in the memory, but something that was an ordeal to get through when I was actually watching it.

images:

Gary, Alana, and some other kid in a car (Hollywood Reporter: "Analysis: A Close Reading of 'Licorice Pizza's’ Japanese Wife Scenes")

film poster (Wikipedia)