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.
Noni Ford, contributor | Schumacher (2021)
Similar to many American fans, I didn’t know a ton about open-wheel, single-seater formula racing until watching the popular Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive. The series fueled me to watch most of the live races in the past year and learn about the history of the sport. There are many memorable figures, still talked about today, in the 72-year history of racing, but the most popular one in modern times is Michael Schumacher. Schumacher is a documentary about his career and private life told through memories of those he inspired, worked with, and loved. The legend of Schumacher and his incredible seven World Driver Championships’ seems an easy story to tell, one of triumph and racing mastercraft. While we do see plenty of footage of some of his most amazing performances, we also see the pressure he was under, even during his dominance in the sport. He could be ruthless at times, and during a sizable amount of his career, he wrestled with the idea of total perfection. The documentary gives unprecedented background into what pushed him to the top of his vocation and the sacrifices he made to deliver success.
So many of the Formula 1 drivers of today acknowledge his legacy and dream of emulating his greatness. He gave himself fully to his team on race days, but off-track he was a family man, always protecting his private life. In memories shared of him by his kids and wife, along with home footage, we see a daredevil, skydiving with a smile on his face, and a comedian, breaking into karaoke and joking around. He shared some parts of that personality with his team, famously memorizing everyone’s name and asking after his engineers’ wives. It’s easy to go on YouTube and watch all his races, or look up his stats, but much harder to tell who he really was everyday, beneath the helmet. The film effectively shows us Schumacher as a person, a man whose heart and drive will forever cement him as a beloved figure in racing.
Laura Ivins, contributor | L’avventura (1960)
The thing that captivates me about L’avventura is the way the central mystery haunts the rest of the plot. Anna (Lea Massari) disappears, and we have scant clues on what happened to her. Did she drown? Did she get picked up by a boat we hear but never see? Suicide? Accident? Murder? A desperate gambit to escape an unsatisfying life?
These questions hang over our main characters, but really the film isn’t about Anna at all. In a switch of perspective that somewhat mirrors Hitchcock’s Psycho of the same year, we begin the film focusing on one character, but find ourselves with a new main character after the first act.
In the case of L’avventura, we turn our attention to Anna’s friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), who wrestles with feelings of irresolution and guilt in the aftermath of Anna’s disappearance. Vitti plays Claudia as hesitant in many of her gestures, a contrast to the decisive action of Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), Anna’s former boyfriend and Claudia’s new love interest.
Director Antonioni has talked about taking a neutral perspective on the morality of his characters, but because we grow close to Claudia throughout the film, we experience her as the moral center. She wrestles with her own judgment, taking us through the complexities of human relationships.
Michaela Owens, Editor | Not Wanted (1949)
I’ve always been an admirer of Ida Lupino’s — how can you not adore a woman who was both a fiercely terrific actress and a bold writer/director/producer when there were very few in Hollywood? — but it wasn’t until this month that I really studied her work. What I found, unsurprisingly, was a fearless woman whose artistry was intrinsically tied into ideas of stolen innocence, psychological trauma, compromised ambition, and complicated romance.
Although I recommend all of Lupino’s directorial efforts (my personal favorite is probably The Trouble with Angels, thanks to the effervescence of Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills), the one that stood out to me the most this month was her first, Not Wanted. While Elmer Clifton is the credited director, Lupino took over when Clifton suffered a heart attack just days into production. Interestingly, she wasn’t a flashy filmmaker, instead preferring a kind of no-nonsense, neorealist style to better fit the stories she wanted to tell of everyday people and the controversial social issues they face, like bigamy, rape, and, in the case of Not Wanted, unwed motherhood.
The unmarried mother in question is Sally (Sally Forrest), a small-town girl whose infatuation with a worldly pianist leads to a one-night stand. When she follows him to another town, she meets Drew (Keefe Brasselle), a young, disabled veteran she becomes close with after she is jilted by the pianist. Sally’s heartbreak is furthered when she discovers she is pregnant, causing her to run away and leave lovesick Drew behind.
The main focus of Not Wanted is Sally’s struggle with her pregnancy and whether or not she should give up her child, but what I wasn’t expecting was the tender romance she shares with Drew. Keefe Brasselle’s earnest, sweet portrayal is positively dreamy, and his character’s unwavering love for Sally makes her decision to disappear without an explanation all the more devastating. I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say that the final frame is something I’ll never forget. To see two characters ache with such palpable loneliness and fear — one with their heart on their sleeve and the other terrified of being hurt again — reminded me just how extraordinary cinema can be.
Note: I couldn’t find a trailer, but, like most of the films directed by Lupino, Not Wanted is a pretty easy movie to find online.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | Don’t Play Us Cheap (1972)
Melvin Van Peebles is a fascinating and very versatile figure in cultural history. He was most famous for directing films — most notably Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song — but he was also a novelist, playwright, and composer. All of these talents are on display in one way or another in his underappreciated film Don’t Play Us Cheap, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Van Peebles adapted Don’t Play Us Cheap from both his French-language novel La Fête à Harlem (1967) and his Tony Award-nominated musical of the same name. Both the novel and the musical take place at a house party in Harlem, which the benevolent Miss Maybell (Esther Rolle) is throwing to celebrate the 20th birthday of her niece Earnestine (Rhetta Hughes). An imp from Hell named Trinity (Joe Keyes Jr.) infiltrates the party, eager to ruin it to gain his “imp wings.” But Trinity finds himself being moved by the generosity and kindness of the party’s guests and falling in love with Earnestine. Soon, not even his fellow imp Brother David (Avon Long) may be able to help him achieve his original purpose of ruining the party.
Don’t Play Us Cheap is an ideal vehicle for many of Van Peebles’s talents. Its structure, which moves its story forward at a good pace while also finding time for interesting scenes which add color and texture to its characters, is a reflection of his great writing skill, which he honed by writing French-language fiction (four novels and one collection of short stories). The imaginative story, with its supernatural subject matter and opening monologue/song from a rat and a cockroach, owes to his love for larger-than-life subjects and his theatrical ability to pay tribute to the absurdities of real life. But where it stands out from his other, more famous film work is how much it displays his exceptional skills as a songwriter. His music makes fantastic use of jazz, blues, and gospel to draw you into the joys of the party, while his lyrics give you immediate access to the rich emotional lives of all of its characters. That Van Peebles is able to use all of these artistic gifts while not losing sight of the greater messages of his story — namely the joy and resiliency of Black people in the face of evil and how that joy and resiliency can function as acts of resistance — is a testament to his facility for directing.
Some of the most thrilling parts of the movie are its musical numbers. Van Peebles makes great use of his expressive editing style, which includes freeze frames and superimposed images, but he also knows when to let the camera record a performer in the act of performance. One example is when Jo Armistead sings “You Cut Up the Clothes in the Closet of My Dreams.” The scene doesn’t propel the plot forward, but her voice is so beautiful and it generates such a joyful reaction from the other party guests (which sets up the world of the party in a great and immediate way) that it becomes one of the best moments in the film. Van Peebles is so eager to make the audience feel the great joy of this song that he zooms in as Armistead sings with ecstasy, the better to involve the viewer in this special moment.
Van Peebles was a unique artist. Few other filmmakers had adapted one of their films from a novel they had written in French. Don’t Play Us Cheap was actually the second film which he had directed that he had first written in French as a novel, since he had already adapted La Permission (1967) into his debut film The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1967). It’s also worth noting that Don’t Play Us Cheap was the second musical Van Peebles wrote for the stage. His first was Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, which earned him two Tony nominations and won him a Drama Desk Award. There is currently a revival of it in development which will be directed by Kenny Leon and produced by Van Peebles’ son Mario (a great filmmaker in his own right whose underappreciated western Posse is a favorite of mine). His legacy will live on in that upcoming production and in the Criterion Collection’s excellent new boxset Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films, which contains Don’t Play Us Cheap.