The Shape of Water & Atomic Blonde

*****

The Shape of Water

(2017 Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Story by Guillermo del Toro.  

Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor.

119 minutes.

Cast: Sally Hawkins (Elisa Esposito), Richard Jenkins (Giles), Michael Shannon (Richard Strickland), Octavia Spencer (Zelda Fuller), Doug Jones (Amphibian Man), David Hewlett (Fleming), Nick Searcy (General Hoyt).

This film is one that I had been looking forward to for some time.  When I read about Guillermo del Toro working on it my hope was that it would be as good as I knew it could be.  As you may be able to tell from some of the other content on F&TVReview, I was a fan of the Universal horror films.  The Creature from the Black Lagoon was always a favorite of mine.  I think it was because it was a step away from the more familiar gothic horror like Dracula and the Wolfman that we were more common then.  It was so different and the underwater photography was incredible.

In a year of offbeat films, this one was far and away the most unusual (Colossal was a close second in the offbeat category–but both of them are poignant, each in their own way).  The writer/director‘s love for the source material is evident in every frame of The Shape of Water.  The casting is astonishingly good.  In short, the film rocketed beyond my wildest hopes for it.  It earned every word of praise that it has received and every award.  It exceeded my expectations in ways that I didn’t even suspect were possible.  He visulized the creature in a way that is more realistic as well as more fantastic.  He imagined the unimaginable and made it work with dignity and grace.  The alien is not always so far away that the distance cannot be breached with love and understanding.

Sally Hawkins is perfect as the woman that falls in love with the creature.  Her empathy is apparent from the moment that she realizes how the creature is being treated.  Richard Jenkins’ Giles is a faithful friend who understands her plight.  They know that they have to free the poor creature and don’t care that the task is impossible.  They push beyond all reasonable odds.  It is good to see justice, even if it’s fantasy justice. The photography is lush and beautifully sea colored throughout this Valentine to a bygone Hollywood and an unfinished beauty and the beast story.   At a time when Universal is attempting to reboot it’s golden age of horror, maybe they should take a look at The Shape of Water to find the shape of things to come.

*****

Atomic Blonde (2017 Focus Features)

Directed by David Leitch.  Screenplay by Kurt Johnstad.  Based on Oni Press graphic novel series, The Coldest City.

Cast: Charlize Theron (Lorraine Broughton), James McAvoy (David Percival), Sofia Boutella (Delphine Lasalle), Eddie Marsan (Spyglass), John Goodman (Emmett Kurzfeld), Toby Jones (Eric Gray), James Faulkner (Chief ‘C’).

115 minutes.

You will not find an action film with more well executed action and mayhem anywhere.   Charlize Theron has topped Gina Carano in Haywire (2012), but that’s unfair because Carano had it in her but her director just wasn’t up to it.  David Leitch unleashes a typhoon of action in the form of Lorraine Broughton played with a fervor that will have you ducking in your seat by Charlize Theron.  This is a full tilt spy story that moves fast and brutally takes you down with it.  You feel every blow and even anticipate what’s coming.  In a particularly violent fight scene when Lorraine suddenly grabs a corkscrew you will be thinking, “Oh no–don–” but that’s as far as you will get.  Yes. It’s a long vicious ride through the dark of neon nights of spy vs counterspy backstabbing and gunfire.

Charlize is unstoppable as an actress and as a spy.  The supporting cast is deep under the cover of the parts they play.  The story unfolds in flashbacks as Lorraine is being debriefed.  This works well for Leitch because it adds to the suspense by adding an element of uncertainty.  Who’s telling the truth?  James McAvoy is an agent in Berlin in 1989 and an MI6 agent has been murdered.  The agent was carrying a list of agent identities when he was killed.  You know how that goes–everybody wants the list!  The McGuffin is typical spy stuff, but the opulent visuals, incredible action, and the sensual scenes between Lorraine (Theron) and Delphine (Sofia Boutella) keep you from thinking too hard about how you’ve seen this plot before.

What you focus on is up to you, as far as I’m concerned–they had me with the title.

 

In a Lonely Place (Santana Productions/Columbia Pictures 1950)

Criterion Collection #810   

Directed by Nicholas Ray.  Produced by Robert Lord. 

Screenplay by Andrew Solt.  Adaption by Edmund H. North. 

Based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes.

Cast: Humphry Bogart (Dixon Steele), Gloria Grahame (Laurel Gray), Frank Lovejoy (Brub Nicolai), Carl Benton Reid (Captain Lochner), Art Smith (Mel Lippman), Jeff Donnell (Sylvia Nicolai), Martha Stewart (Mildred Atkinson).

 

In a Lonely Place is a milestone of noir for a number of reasons, not the least of all is its having been produced by Bogart’s Santana Productions.  It holds not only what is arguably his best performance, but Gloria Grahame’s (Crossfire, Macao, The Big Heat) as well.  It boasts a taut screenplay by Andrew Solt loosely based on the popular Dorothy B. Hughes novel.  I also feel it is Nicholas Ray’s best effort.

It is the story of screenwriter Dixon Steele whose volatile personality leads to him becoming a murder suspect until he is given an alibi by his attractive neighbor, Laurel Gray.  Laurel is slowly drawn to him even though he is being investigated for the murder by the police.  They fall in love, but his personality gets worse and worse.  His behavior becomes more and more erratic until she begins to have her doubts about him.  Her changed behavior only serves to further agitate him.  He becomes unstable to the point that she fears him and tries to escape.

Bogart plays the screenwriter with his usual cool, but the anger breaks through to a frightening level that is all nervous energy and loss of control.  Graham’s ability to inject humor into the bleakness and Bogart’s Jekyll and Hyde performance combine to make this a dark gem.  Nicolas Ray’s direction is at its peak, which is a paradox because his marriage to Gloria Graham was falling apart while the film was in production.

With a beautiful score by the avant-garde composer, George Antheil (Knock on Any Door, Sirocco), and photography by Burnett Guffey (Mr. Sardonicus, Bird Man of Alcatraz, Bonnie and Clyde), Ray constructs a memorable noir while living through a personal lonely place that serves to enhance his performance as a director to a level most never achieve.

The extra features on this Criterion Blu-Ray include 2k Digital Restoration for  incredible picture and sound quality.   Commentary by film scholar Dana Polan.  An enlightening documentary from 1975: I’m a Stranger Here Myself about Nicolas Ray.  A new interview with biographer Vincent Curcio (author of Suicide Blonde: the Life of Gloria Grahame) about actor Gloria Grahame which gives insight into both the relationship between the director and his wife and how their relationship inspired Ray’s interpretation of the characters.

 *****

Ride the Pink Horse (1947 Universal International Pictures)

Criterion Collection #750

Directed by Robert Montgomery.  Produced by Joan Harrison.

Screenplay by Ben Hecht & Charles Lederer & Joan Harrison (uncredited). 

Based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes.

Cast: Robert Montgomery (Gagin), Thomas Gomez (Pancho), Wanda Hendrix (Pila), Art Smith (Bill Retz), Andrea King (Marjorie), Fred Clark (Hugo).

Ride the Pink Horse is one of those films that is so well done that you have to wonder why it isn’t better known.  In reviewing the film’s credits from the adapted original novel to the screen writers and producer it’s not difficult to understand how well made the film is, and Robert Montgomery’s portrayal of Gagin is only surpassed by his direction.  Dorothy B. Hughs also wrote the novel that In a Lonely Place was based upon.  Joan Harrison worked as an assistant to Alfred Hitchcock and was soon contributing to scripts.  She wrote the script for Rebecca with Robert E. Sherwood.  Ben Hecht wrote the scripts for Rear Window and Notorious.  The film is beautifully photographed by the incomparable Russell Metty (Touch of Evil, The Misfits).

Gagin is a tough guy that has come to Mexico to find Hugo.  Montgomery plays the part like as classic hard boiled character, mostly silence and short sentences.   He’s mean spirited, arrogant, and condescends to the Mexicans me meets including a teenage girl who gives him a charm to ward off danger.  The only thing he will say is that he’s there to see Hugo for his friend ‘Shorty’.  A man that claims to be an FBI agent whose name is Retz approaches Gagin and wants to know what he wants with Hugo.  Retz tells Gagin that he has been tailing Hugo for some time.  He does seem to know more than Gagin does about what is going on, but Gagin won’t talk.  Retz tries to appeal to him as an American citizen to do the right thing.  Gagin’s a disgruntled veteran who feels he owes nothing to anyone.   It is clear that Gagin is in trouble. The Mexican girl gives him the charm of protection for no reason, and now this man is warning him off of Hugo.  Things are adding up, buy Gagin doesn’t seem to be paying any attention.

The film holds a lot of surprises.  Wanda Hendrix’s wonderfully underplayed Pila as a very concerned and possibly psychic Mexican girl, Thomas Gomez’s over the top Pancho that keeps you guessing, and Fred Clark as a cold and ruthless mobster.  Art Smith has his moments of comic support as does Thomas Gomez, but all the humor is dead pan.  All in all this deserves all five stars and then some.  A great disc to add to any collection.

The extra features on this Criterion Blu-Ray include 2k Digital Restoration for  incredible picture and sound quality. Audio commentary featuring film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini.  A wonderful new interview with Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City.  Lux Radio Theater adaptation of the film from 1947, featuring Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, and Thomas Gomez.  An essay by filmmaker and writer Michael Almereyda.

  *****

VAL LEWTON at RKO

(Header: Robert Wise, Mark Robson, and Val Lewton)

Cat People (1942)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

The Leopard Man (1943)

The Seventh Victim (1943)

The Ghost Ship (1943)

The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Mademoiselle Fifi (1944)

Youth Runs Wild (1944)

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Isle of the Dead (1945)

Bedlam (1946)

My Own True Love (1948)

Please Believe Me (1950)

Apache Drums (1951)

Cat People  * The 7th Victim *  I Walked with a Zombie

Val Lewton was born in Yalta in 1904.  He was brought to America in 1909 by his mother and was raised by his mother and his aunt, the famous actress/writer/producer Alla Nazimova.  He grew up to be a  writer of novels, radio scripts, and news articles.  One of his novels, No Bed of Her Own became a film called No Man of her Own in 1933 directed by Wesley Ruggles and staring Clark Gable and Carol Lombard.

He began working as a story editor for MGM through the influence of his famous aunt.  Working on David O. Selznick’s staff as a story editor (actually writing scenes for Gone with the Wind), he eventually left to work as a producer at RKO.   The first film he made there was Cat People (1942).  From 1942 to 1946 he was instrumental in saving the ailing studio in the wake of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.  Ironically two of his editor/directors had worked as editors on the two films that almost bankrupted the studio.  Robert Wise and Mark Robson found themselves on Lewton’s team when Orson Welles left the Studio.

While Cat People is said to be a title that was suggested to Lewton who suffered from ailurophobia,  because of his morbid fear of cats it is not surprising that he would choose it when he was put in charge of a B picture unit specializing in horror.   His job was to create films to compete with  the successful and popular Universal horror films.  His dread of cats is transferred to the screen in one of the most memorable horror films of the period.  A tremendous feat considering that he was limited to a budget of no more than $150,000.00 per film.

   

Cat People (1942) Produced by Val Lewton.  Directed by Jacques Tourneur.  Screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen.

Cast:  Simone Simon, Tom Conway,  Kent Smith,  Jan Randolph,  Jack Holt and unbilled, Elizabeth Russel.

Jacques Tourneur was the director on the first three Lewton films at RKO.  Cat People remains one of the most enigmatic and atmospheric of horror films.  Due in part to the low budget, much is left to the viewer’s imagination.  The swimming pool scene remains one of the most terrifyingly chilling moments in horror.  The impact of the unseen is still evident even as we watch it from the distance and experience of more than half a century.

Lewton and Tourneur had worked together on the second unit at MGM on A Tale of Two Cities.  Tourneur went on to direct I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man for Lewton.  Later, Tourneur would direct Out of the Past (1947), an exceptional Film Noir in a career that would continue through the mid 1960’s. The Seventh Victim (1943) Produced by Val Lewton.  Directed by Mark Robson. Screenplay by Charles O’Neal and DeWitt Bodeen.

Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Kim Hunter, Evelyn Brent, Erford Gage, Ben Bard, Hugh Beaumont.

In an interview for The Celluloid Muse, Mark Robson spoke of Lewton, “Val didn’t know much about film, physically speaking.  He knew stories very well; he had a great fondness for directors and writers.  But he was fundamentally a writer, a poet, a novelist poet, an historian.”  Robson went on, “He thought of his unit –and he had his own little horror unit—in terms of the producer, the writer, the director and the editor; a kind of team in which we all worked extremely closely together.”

Mark Robson was assigned to Lewton’s unit as an editor and by 1943 was promoted to direct The Seventh Victim. Prior to this, he had been editor with Robert Wise on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.  Also doing the final editing on Ambersons to restore it to Welles’ vision.  This was at a point when Welles all but abandoned the project.

Jean Brooks starred in  The Seventh Victim, a problematic film that purports to be about a group of devil worshipers but really feels like it is about something else.  What?  Well, that’s just it.  The evidence on the surface is minimal, but looking into Lewton’s development sheds some light on what is mostly conjecture.  In an interview for the book, Women in Horror: 1940’s, Val Lewton Jr. told writer, Gregory William Mank that he felt that the Jean Brooks character (Jacqueline) was based on his father’s  famous aunt, Alla Nazimova.

Nazimova was not only a star of the stage and silent screen, but also is credited with coining the term ‘sewing circle’ as a cover for the lesbian activities in Hollywood.  She claimed among her lovers, Dolly Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s niece.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943) Produced by Val Lewton.  Directed by Jacques Tourneur.  Screenplay by Curt Siodman and Ardel Wray.

Cast:  Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, James Bell and Christine Gordon.

After Cat People, Jacques Tourneur‘s next project for Lewton was the uniquely atmospheric, I Walked with a Zombie.  Although its title and short running time of 69 minutes may put some off–it is a mistake to miss this classic.  This is a chilling and well produced entry in the horror genre that stars Frances Dee, Tom Conway, and Christine Gordon.  Like Lewton’s Cat People and The 7th Victim, it remains in a class by itself.

 

Once again, Lewton’s production has much more that the usual B movie in every facet of the film; the shadowy photography by J. Roy Hunt, inspired art direction by Albert S. D’Agostino and a solid script by Curt Siodman and Ardel Wray.

A Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson,  Alfred Knopf, 1995.

The Celluloid Muse, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, Henry Regnery Company, 1969.

Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, David Thomas, Alfred Knopf, 1992.

The Sewing Circle, Alex Madsen, Birch Lane/Carol Publishing Group, 1995.

Women in Horror, 1940’s, Gregory William Mank,  McFarland & Company, 1999.