Every month, A Place for Film brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
Laura Ivins, contributor | Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
James Whale’s Frankenstein films are surprisingly human. This sequel to the 1931 film picks up where the former left off. The Monster did not burn to death, but has pulled himself from the ashes and sets about a complicated path where he finds friendship, grief, rejection, and his own moral center.
The title — Bride of Frankenstein — is somewhat misleading. Although her emerging presence hovers over the plot, the Bride has very little actual presence in the film. However, the screentime she does have is iconic. Played by the same actor (Elsa Lanchester) who plays Mary Shelley in the film’s opening scene, the Bride is transfixing for every second she’s onscreen. Shot with a low key light that accentuates her cheekbones, sharp eyebrows, and dark lips, she moves her head around like a bird, flitting her head this and way and that in a jerky motion. She embodies photogénie.
The Bride is a new thing, born into a situation with no choices. Though she appears only briefly and meets a sad fate, her striking screen presence ensured her legacy. The character of the Bride has taken on a life of her own in subsequent decades, and she is a popular character in satires, cartoons, and camp reimaginings of the Frankenstein tale.
Michaela Owens, Editor | The Amazing Mr. X (1948)
Saddled with a terrible title and an unfortunate home in the public domain, The Amazing Mr. X (also known as The Spiritualist) is a film that I’m still thinking about three weeks after watching it. To say too much about the plot would ruin half the fun, so I’ll just offer this: a woman still grieving the death of her husband meets a mysterious psychic who she hopes will help her when she begins to feel like her husband is haunting her. You’ll have to see the movie to find out all of the great twists and turns that follow!
Although The Amazing Mr. X boasts mesmerizing work from Turhan Bey as the psychic as well as a tender performance by the vastly underrated Lynn Bari, the real star of the film is cinematographer John Alton. His magic, rendered in inky blacks and shimmering whites, made my jaw drop. The beauty of every frame also made me incredibly sad (and a touch angry, if we’re being honest) that this film has become so forgotten. I often mourn what we lost when we gave up on shooting movies in black and white, and The Amazing Mr. X will now forever be one of my go-to examples of why it was such a gorgeous art form.
Note: I did find a trailer for the film because The Film Detective just released it on Blu-ray (huzzah!), but be forewarned that said trailer does have some major spoilers. I will also reiterate that since this movie is in the public domain, it’s, uh, pretty easy to find online if you’re skittish about buying it sight unseen.
Jack Miller, contributor | Vitalina Varela (2019)
Pedro Costa’s most recent feature, Vitalina Varela, needs to be seen in nearly complete darkness to register with the viewer. Costa pushes the intense use of the color black in his frames to an extreme here, with many compositions being lit only in fractured, abstracted ways; any light obstructions in the room may prove disastrous for someone trying to make heads or tails of his remarkable compositions. In some ways, Costa’s use of black here recalls Carl Theodor Dreyer’s use of searingly-hot white in his Gertrud (1964).
The film follows its title heroine, a Cape Verdean woman who arrives in Lisbon after her husband’s death and searches for the scattered remnants of his life, through a series of desolate chambers and dilapidated ruins. Costa films his real-life subjects in a style that might be called “epic portraiture”: filming Vitalina in the most dignified and exalted way imaginable within the chiaroscuro of charged and mysterious spaces, he arrives at a kind of ecstatic truth all too rare in contemporary cinema.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | DekaDonen 9: Dekalog: Nine (1988) / Two for the Road (1967)
(Once a month, Jesse will watch a double feature he calls the DekaDonen, which consists of an episode of Krzystztof Kieslowski’s miniseries Dekalog and a film by Stanley Donen. He’ll be watching and writing about these double features until November.)
This pairing is one of the more thematically consistent ones in the DekaDonen. Both Dekalog: Nine and Two for the Road are about marriages rocked by infidelity. But they occupy different places in the careers of their directors. This episode of Dekalog marks a beginning of sorts for Kieslowski’s later work in feature films, while Two for the Road is a type of ending for a stage of Donen’s life as a director.
Dekalog: Nine begins with a surgeon named Roman (Piotr Machalica) learning that he is impotent. He tells his devoted wife Hanka (Ewa Blaszczyk) that she should find a man with whom she can have sex. Despite her love for Roman, she initiates an affair. Roman becomes jealous and starts to spy on them, only to make a surprising discovery.
This penultimate episode of Dekalog features many of Kieslowski’s narrative and technical trademarks. Like the other episodes in this series, it centers on ordinary people navigating ethical grey areas. One subplot — Roman trying to figure out what advice to give to a young patient — recalls a similar one in Dekalog: Two. Kieslowski directs this episode with his typical technical excellence. He depicts the early calm of Roman’s marriage with a single two-shot of them sitting silently at a table, enjoying the ease of living together for years. Later, Kieslowski films a scene of Roman spying on Hanka with a well-composed shot from his point-of-view.
But what makes this episode a fascinating part of Kieslowski’s body of work beyond Dekalog is how it anticipates beloved elements of the films he would make shortly after completing this series. This episode features the first mention in his oeuvre of the fictitious composer Van den Budenmayer. “His” music (actually composed by Kieslowski’s longtime collaborator Zbigniew Preisner) would be featured in Kieslowski’s later films The Double Life of Véronique, Three Colors: Blue, and Three Colors: Red. In addition, Kieslowski and his co-writer Krzystztof Piesiewicz liked the character of the young patient who debates getting heart surgery in order to pursue a singing career so much that they used a slightly different version of her dilemma in their film The Double Life of Véronique. This makes Dekalog: Nine a particular treat for Kieslowski fans and an interesting look at an artist finding the elements that he will refine in his later work.
Two for the Road is the last film that Donen made with Audrey Hepburn. It tells the story of an older married couple named Mark and Joanna Wallace, respectively played by Albert Finney and Hepburn. On the way to a business function for Mark, they debate whether to get divorced and remember their past journeys together, which include moments of infidelity by both of them.
This film is one of the best from Donen’s late period. It’s slightly similar to his musicals because it also depicts relatable emotions through innovative filmmaking. But instead of having its characters sing, the film fluidly cuts across time to depict the love and frustration Mark and Joanna have felt for each other across the years of their relationship. It’s worth watching for the seamless non-linear editing by Madeleine Gug and Richard Marden alone, but Two for the Road is perhaps best known for its performances. In particular Hepburn does some of her best work as Joanna, whose feelings for Mark go from youthful love to aging acceptance of his flaws before our eyes. It is a great performance and fitting capstone for her collaboration with Donen, who also directed her in Funny Face (1957) and Charade (1963).
While Dekalog: Nine feels like the beginning of Kieslowski’s later work, Two for the Road marked an ending of sorts for Donen. Though he would continue to make interesting films that included The Little Prince (1974) and Movie, Movie (1978), and tried to make a film from a script written by longtime companion Elaine May when he was 89, Donen would never direct a film like this one. Two for the Road is as popular as it is innovative, a portrait of a relationship to which many could relate as well as a beautiful work of art that is indelibly cinematic. It’s the type of film that reminds you why Donen was one of the best directors American cinema ever produced.
Dekalog: Nine and Two for the Road work well when paired together. They both depict marriages rocked by the same issue, reflect their directors’ sensibilities, and end on a note of tentative reconciliation. They’re also fascinating to watch in conversation when you take into account that Dekalog: Nine features Kieslowski slowly discovering things he would use in his later work while Two for the Road is a type of farewell to a moment in Donen’s career. Watching both works in succession is like watching someone wave hello to you while someone else waves goodbye. It makes for surprisingly poignant viewing.
You can view a trailer for Dekalog here.