NO PATH THROUGH FIRE (Gleb Panfilov, 1967)

The same year as the enormously expensive, spectacular War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1967), another war film emerged from the U.S.S.R.—this one, modest, in black and white, and twenty times better. Gleb Panfilov’s V ogne broda net is a tremendous achievement.

In 1917 civil war-torn Russia, as the Revolution approaches, young Tanya, a peasant, works as an orderly on a hospital train, dabbling in Bolshevik artwork, and eagerly awaiting what nothing can hold back. She desires death for all the “tormentors”; “The people,” she laments, “are suffering.”

Life is something that is stolen in the meantime. Tanya falls in love with a soldier; they frolic in a field she finds “beautiful.” A commissar onboard the train feels useless tending to the Red Army’s wounded; he wants to get to the front.

So much expectancy; so much anticipation.

I don’t know how many times I’ve watched scenes in other films where lovers part as the boy boards a train that will take him into combat. The one here devastates as no other. Indeed, the entire film is urgent and overwhelming. This is the rare film that really does seem to transport us back into the past. Panfilov’s camera is liberated; every shot aches with immediacy.

The closing shot is a freeze frame on Tanya’s face as her hopes for the future snap in the face of her own imminent death by a White Army officer after she sees that someone she knows has been taken prisoner. The closing shot captures Tanya’s struggle to hold onto her innocence.

This is the film that made a star of Panfilov’s wife, Inna Churikova, who plays Tanya with great resourcefulness and passion. Tarkovsky’s Anatoliy Solonitsyn is brilliant as Commissar Yevstryukov.

Winner of the top prize at Locarno.

 

B(U)Y THE BOOK

MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=16

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=19

THE MAN WHO LIES (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1968)

Writer-director Alain Robbe-Grillet’s L’homme qui ment—essential viewing, this—begins in a wooded expanse as a youngish man, nicely dressed, pursued by armed soldiers, ducks behind trees to avoid their bullets and, despite the cascades of bullets aimed at him, escapes uninjured: a fantastical (and visually gorgeous) opening that visually translates this man’s propensity for telling whoppers. What that he says can we believe?

He tells us, he is “Jean Robin,” a hero of the Resistance; no, now he says he is “Boris Viasso,” Jean’s best friend; no, no, they had a falling-out and Jean was a traitor; no, no, no, he—Boris—was the traitor. No one in Jean’s hometown seems to recognize him; they all recognize him, he says, including Jean’s father; they are all ignoring him. Perhaps they are suspicious of this outsider who seems hell-bent on insinuating himself into the consciousness of the town, including Jean Robin’s mansion, that is, Jean’s widow’s domain. Whoever this soul is, he’s a fictionist who, instead of writing down his fictions, spins them in talk and activity.

What is this film about? Someone has suggested that Robbe-Grillet is testing the limits of narrative. Well, most writers are doing that. Surely Robbe-Grillet is also commenting on the lack of clarity of action and personality that war and resistance leave in their wake. We celebrate those we declare our heroes, but we don’t always really know who they are. Sometimes, those who are simply doing whatever it takes to survive slip into the categories of either “traitor” or “hero.”

War unsettles identity because, for better or worse, it is transformative. It leaves no one and nothing as it was.

Jean-Louis Trintignant is hilarious and engaging in yet another great role.

This film sparkles and delights.

 

B(U)Y THE BOOK

MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=16

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=19

TIME OF THE GYPSIES (Emir Kusturíca, 1988)

Dazzlingly made by Emir Kusturíca (best director, Cannes), Dom za vešanje (which is in Serbian)—literally, Home for Hanging—is a gripping, engrossing Yugoslavian melodrama about Perhan, who descends into petty crime to pay for his crippled sister’s hospital care and for the house he wants built for himself and his grandmother. It is also a colorful, intermittently magical, altogether stupendous tapestry of Romany life and Romany dreams.

This being a Kusturíca film, there are lots of animals, including Perhan’s pet turkey, countless honking geese, a drowning cat that Perhan rescues, and others.  

Through young Perhan’s story we see a vast variety of human characters as well, some loyal and loving, like Grandma, others vile and opportunistic, like Ahmed, who impresses children into his criminal enterprises. The extreme vulnerability of Perhan, his sister, his bride and his four-year-old son underscores the larger portrait of a vulnerable community living outside familiar society. Perhan’s odyssey, from near Sarajevo to Milan and back again, suggests rootless Romany existence. Perhan possesses telekinetic powers, but these do nothing to save him in the end. Ultimately, Kusturíca’s robust comedy turns into tragedy.

Perhaps the most hopeful events in Dom za vešanje are weddings. However, these also turn into hopelessness and violence.

Given the hardship of Romany life, it is no wonder that dreams figure prominently in Perhan’s life. His dreams of his grandmother—or are they her own dreams? or both?—include an indelible one in which she is tossing into the air a red ball, which supernaturally hangs in the air: a symbol of hope or the heart’s desire.

Much of the film unfolds in flurries of short shots: the formal expression of chaotic, fragmented, combustible lives.

Davor Dujmović, who himself died at 29, is splendid as Perhan.

 

B(U)Y THE BOOK

MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=16

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=19

BLOOD RELATIVES (Claude Chabrol, 1978)

A co-production of France and Canada, Blood Relatives (Les liens de sang) is set in Montreal. Adapted from an Ed McBain novel by Claude Chabrol and Sydney Banks, the plot involves a brutal murder crossing two overlapping circles of family incest. Chabrol directed.

The opening on a rain-soaked street at night, mysteriously, hauntingly in black and purple, depicts the slashing of two teenaged girls, cousins, on their way home from a party. The same color scheme reappears when the surviving cousin is led to the room at police headquarters where she is asked to identify from a lineup, if possible, the assailant who killed her cousin. Chabrol and color cinematographer Jean Rabier suggest that the survivor is thus compelled to relive the crime.

Chabrol’s police procedural is patient and cumulative, with the head detective’s reading of the murdered girl’s diary occasioning flashbacks of events leading up to the crime, interrupted—and grounded—by glimpses of the detective’s marriage and home life. The surviving cousin’s brother, with whom the deceased had an affair, becomes a suspect. A meeting with someone else ultimately occasions the flashback that gives us a full view of the crime.

Donald Sutherland, one of my least favorite actors, gives an uncharacteristically sensitive performance as Steve Carella, the thoughtful and intelligent detective; but St éphane Audran, a great actress, comes off poorly, dubbed flatly and emphatically into English, as the alcoholic aunt of the murdered girl.

The deceased, an orphan, lived under the same roof as her two cousins. With the camera withdrawing down a long, dark hallway, her voice is heard from her diary expressing her fear of the place.

However minor, this film is a knockout from start to finish, even if one correctly guesses “whodunit.” It is bewitching—and spooky.

 

B(U)Y THE BOOK

MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=16

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=19

LINE OF DEMARCATION (Claude Chabrol, 1966)

The Germans have already invaded France. In the winter of 1941, in a village in the Jura Mountains, the Loue River divides Free France and Occupied France. The bleak grayness of Jean Rabier’s immaculate black-and-white cinematography in writer-director Claude Chabrol’s La ligne de démarcation expresses the sadness of the French people, and the defeatism of some, such as Pierre, the Count de Damville (Maurice Ronet, superb), a military officer just released by his German captors. But just as the river divides Unoccupied France and Vichy France, it also divides the attitude of the people: Pierre’s English-born wife, the Countess de Damville (Jean Seberg, acting amateurishly—the film’s one weakness), maintaining hope that France can reverse its defeat, aids Resistance fighters.

This tense, engrossing, unsentimental film juxtaposes activities of the Resistance with activities that draw our ire rather than admiration: a smuggler of people who are desperate to escape Occupied France; he exacts for his assistance everything they own. A Jewish family perishes as a result of his inhumanity. Poetic justice: he is ultimately forced to dig his own grave.

Perhaps the highest value of the film, though, is the density of its communal portrait—the interrelatedness of its inhabitants. For the most part, it is an army of civilians living their diminished lives and keeping hope alive. The film’s finale is immensely moving. At the same time, it restrains itself from employing the cliché that the outcome of the war provides. These people are defiant, not triumphant.

I recently wrote that another Chabrol film is “inhuman”; not this one: it is engaged and committed, real and humane.

Perhaps its authenticity comes from its source: Colonel Rémy’s, that is, Gilbert Renault’s, memoir Mémoires d’un agent secret de la France libre et La Ligne de démarcation.

 B(U)Y THE BOOK

MY BOOK, A Short Chronology of World Cinema, IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM THE SANDS FILMS CINEMA CLUB IN LONDON. USING EITHER OF THE LINKS BELOW, ACCESS THE ADVERTISEMENT FOR THIS BOOK, FROM WHICH YOU CAN ORDER ONE OR MORE COPIES OF IT. THANKS.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=16

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Dennis+Grunes&x=14&y=19