THE CHILDREN ARE WATCHING US - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Haunting Vittorio De Sica Classic screened on rare 35mm print at TIFF Bell Lightbox Cinematheque series "MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF: REDISCOVERING THE FILMS OF VITTORIO DE SICA", programmed by the inimitable James Quandt (also available on a lovely Criterion Collection DVD).

The Children Are Watching Us - I bambini ci guardano (1942)
dir. Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Emilio Cigoli,
Luciano De Ambrosis, Isa Pola,
Adriano Rimoldi, Giovanna Cigoli

Review By Greg Klymkiw

On a narrative level, the cruelty and selfishness of a young mother is what lies at the heart of Vittorio De Sica's The Children Are Watching Us and as such, seems an especially appropriate element for the rich and consistent mise en scène to present the entire story from the perspective of a 5 year old child. There are many powerful aspects to this classic motion picture, but the fact that director De Sica wisely places his camera eye-level to the child in question is almost gruelling in terms of the pain he wrenches from the story and the emotion he extracts from the audience.

Though the film slightly pre-dates the period of Italian neorealism which began with Luchino Visconti's Ossessione in 1943 and Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City in 1946, De Sica is already playing with a stark element of realism in the storytelling. We might crave a happy ending, but it would be false, not unlike so many pictures generated in pre-War and wartime Italy.

The Children Are Watching Us was filmed during wartime in 1942, but its politically and socially restful qualities come from the fact that the bombing and shelling did not shock the country into fear and despair until the fall of that year. In addition to utilizing many real locations in tandem with realistically dressed/designed Cinecittà studio work, De Sica cast his central player, Luciano De Ambrosis as the sensitive child Pricò from a non-traditional background. De Sica used the child's already heightened sadness over his mother's recent death to astounding effect in this tragic tale of maternal betrayal.

The film is neatly and boldly divided into 2 parts quite literally as De Sica provides "Part One" and "Part Two" titles to signal the film's two key movements. In the first part, we learn that Pricò's mother Nina (Isa Pola) is engaged in a love affair. When she leaves her husband Andrea (Emilio Cigoli) and essentially abandons her child for the handsome smarmy lover Roberto (Adriano Rimoldi), both father and son are devastated.

Though the loyal housekeeper Agnese (Giovanna Cigoli) is a bedrock, Andrea feels Pricò might be better off with female relatives, but neither of these arrangements come to happy endings and the child is reunited with his father. After a few days of carnal abandon with Roberto, Nina sheepishly returns after ending the affair. Andrea grudgingly allows her to stay for the sake of son needing a Mother. Though he's curt towards her, Andrea allows his bitterness to subside and decides a family vacation at a seaside resort away from Rome is in order.

The second movement is marked by a gradually touching reconciliation between husband and wife. When Andrea confidently returns to work in Rome, he allows Nina and Pricò to remain for a few days in the idyllic hotel with its lush sun-dappled beaches. The happy Hubby feels like some quality time between Mother and Son will be a positive thing and he also secretly decides he'll replace the old curtains (which Nina always detested) with lush new drapes in their flat's boudoir.

Alas, a male dog will always come sniffing around and a bitch in heat will respond in kind. Roberto shows up at the resort and Pricò is left alone whilst Mom willingly receives her lover's prodigious root.

Hell breaks loose in two ways. One is expected, the other is not. Both are unbearably shattering.

De Sica more than superbly handles the performances and scene blocking with the skill of a fine craftsman, but as an artist, he excels with the kind of visual touches that only a filmmaker infused with celluloid in his DNA can do.

We never forget the title for a moment. Our eyes are ultimately drawn to Pricò in virtually every scene as the actions of the adults allow us to naturally shift our focus to the child's gaze. The child, it seems, is not only watching, but always watching, so much so that when Pricò stops training his gaze upon his mother, lulled into a kind of happy complacency during a magic act in the hotel ballroom, we're initially unaware that his eyes are not where they've been for the whole film. Once we realize this, our hearts do indeed sink, and the narrative does not "disappoint" us in this respect when Pricò's eyes shift back to his mother's activity.

It's a heartbreaker of monumental proportions.

De Sica also never lets us forget the eyes of the child with the intelligently placed camera, always at Pricò's eye level, whether we're with him in a specific shot/scene or not. This allows us to always view the dramatic action as if we are indeed the child and that what we see is both what he sees and how he sees it. Again, we are Pricò, and though it's an intermittently joyous perspective, it is, more often than not, a devastatingly sad point of view.

This mise en scène is never oppressive nor heavy-handed. De Sica's touch is pure gossamer in this respect. However, at one point, De Sica uses Pricò's point of view to deliver one of the most haunting nightmare sequences ever committed to film, brilliantly framed in the reflections of a train's window as it speeds along a pitch-black night. The images here are as utterly devastating to us as they would be to a child like Pricò.

As if that isn't powerful enough, De Sica maintains this position during a scene where Andrea begs and finally begins to order Pricò to reveal the truth about Nina's indiscretions - closeups of eyes at a child's eye-level have never been more emotionally calamitous.

Eventually, when De Sica presents the final moments of Nina begging for forgiveness, the camera's position remains fixed as it always has been, only this time we experience how physically tiny, yet infused with strength this child is.

And in spite of this strength, De Sica forces us to experience the child being swallowed up by a world he knows he must face alone. It's a knockout, just as the picture itself ultimately is. The children are indeed watching us and De Sica has crafted one of the most devastating reminders of that fact, one that none of us should ever forget.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****

The Children Are Watching Us plays this summer at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on 35MM. For dates, times and tickets, visit the TIFF website HERE. If you aren't in Toronto for this wonderful experience, the Criterion Collection DVD presents a fine transfer of the film along with two superb added value features, an interview with an Italian critic, but most astoundingly, a great interview with the actor who played Pricò.

Feel free to order the Criterion DVD directly from the following links. You'll be supporting the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner if you do so.

In Canada, order HERE
in the USA order HERE
and in the UK order HERE

THE KILLERS (1946) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Siodmak. Hellinger. Hemingway. Huston. Lancaster. Gardner. Noir. Criterion. Blu-Ray. 'Nuff Said.

The Killers (1946)
Dir. Robert Siodmak
Prd. Mark Hellinger
Scr. Anthony Veiller, John Huston (uncredited),
Richard Brooks (uncredited), Ernest Hemingway (Short Story)
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker,
Jack Lambert, Jeff Corey, Sam Levene, William Conrad, Charles McGraw

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The angst, existential and otherwise, is so thick in Robert Siodmak's classic film noir adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story The Killers, you'd need more than the de rigueur knife to slice through it - a chainsaw, however, would do quite nicely. Hell, even a simple hacksaw might do if the blade is sharp, taut and you have a solid grip. Either way, you're going to hit some raw nerve endings buried in that dense atmosphere.

The first order of business here is to extol the virtues of Mark Hellinger, the film's visionary producer (an advertising man, a newspaper man to the bone, maven of all things Broadway and producer of Brute Force, The Naked City, High Sierra, They Drive By Night, etc.) who revolutionized American cinema with his hardboiled tastes and his savvy for packaging. It's no surprise, then, that the writing here takes as big a centre stage as Siodmak's expressionistically-tinged direction and to-die-for cast. Hellinger not only valued scribes, he was one of the best himself.

Most importantly was how Hellinger took a cue from his Italian Neorealist colleagues across the pond and used real locations whenever possible (and when not, insisting upon studio/backlot art direction and locations which came as close as possible to the real thing).

As for the picture itself, it's cleverly housed via Edmond O'Brien's Jim Reardon, an insurance investigator assisted by cop Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene) in piecing the events of a killing together. This approach allows for a variety of perspectives upon the tale of a heist weighted down by plenty of betrayal, ennui and focusing in particular upon the doomed gang member The Swede (Burt Lancaster), a washed-up boxer who turns down a shot at being a cop to enter a life of crime.

The fractured, but easily-followed storytelling structure, has always had scribes comparing it favourably to Citizen Kane, but this is, I think, a bit of a backhanded compliment (and a typically unimaginatively egg-headed response) since Siodmak's overall approach to the material feels wholly original and his writers have brilliantly addressed how to remain true to Hemingway's original whilst also addressing the fact that they're fleshing-out a feature film.

And what fleshing-out! Adhering closely to Hemingway's short story, the movie opens with two especially scuzzy hit men (William Conrad, Charles McGraw) waiting to whack their quarry at the appropriate time. Their target, the aforementioned "Swede", knows they're coming for him, but is resigned to his fate and waits for their arrival. They eventually show up and blow him away.

Well, if this was a simple adaptation of Hemingway's original, the movie would now be over. It's not. True to the spirit of Hemingway's story, the film fills in all the details leading up to and following the events of the picture's opening minutes with terse, matter-of-fact brutality and provides added post-war ennui to a story originally written during the gangster overload of the Prohibition Era. No flappers here, just the promise of a better life in the 40s which in turn, offers bupkis, bad judgement and shattered dreams.

The biggest shattered dream of the equation is femme fatale Kitty Malone (Ava Gardner in her most delectable Sinatra-baiting prime) who not only lands The Swede 3 years in the hoosegow for stealing a whack of jewels for her, but then takes up as the main squeeze of the mean-spirited criminal mastermind (and eventual construction contractor, 'natch), Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker) who eventually hires Swede and two other thugs, Dum Dum (Jack Lambert) and Binky (Jeff Corey) to assist him in a risky, dangerous, but lucrative heist. Not only is Kitty receiving the root from Big Jim, but she's not above some mega-betrayal to scam a big score for herself.

However, this femme fatale can't be all bad. She seems rather genuine when she explains why she's with an animal like Big Jim. "I'm poison, Swede, to myself and everybody around me! I'd be afraid to go with anyone I love for the harm I do to them!" She's happy to harm, Big Jim. It gives her strength. Alas, she also, for good measure, no doubt, manages to harm those she loves.

Dames. Can't live with 'em. Can't live without 'em. But it's a mug's game that can land any schlub a prime piece of six-feet-under real estate.

The Killers is guaranteed to knock you on your ass. Tense, tragic, often claustrophobic and featuring one of the best heist scenes in movie history. Siodmak's expert coverage and pacing here comes close to holding its own against Jules Dassin's Rififi heist (kind of interesting since two of Dassin's best pictures, Brute Force and Naked City, were also produced by Hellinger). Bolstered by the starkly contrasted black and white cinematography by the great Woody Bredell and an evocative Miklós Rózsa score (and yes, the main theme's opening few notes were eventually ripped-off for the theme of Jack Webb's long-running TV series Dragnet), the picture delivers all the noir goods any serious aficionado of the form would want.

It's a heart-breaker and then some. When insurance investigator Reardon ties up all the loose ends, he's commended by his boss. In true post-war fashion, a prescient reality in the film which has only increased exponentially to this day in the world in which we live in, the boss claps Reardon on the back and offers the following accolade: "Owing to your splendid efforts, the basic rate of The Atlantic Casualty Company - as of 1947 - will probably drop one-tenth of a cent."

Hitler was dead. No matter. "The Man" took his place.

The Film Corner Rating: *****

The Killers is available on the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. In addition to including Don Siegel's blistering 1964 adaptation with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Clu Gulager, Claude Akins, Norman Fell and Rompin' Ronnie Reagan as the scumbag villain, Blu-Ray is loaded with great stuff including a new high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, Tarkovsky’s short 1956 student-film adaptation of Hemingway’s story, a terrific 2002 interview with Stuart Kaminsky, the Screen Directors’ Playhouse radio adaptation from 1949, starring Burt Lancaster and Shelley Winters plus, ever-so delectably, a 2002 audio recording of actor Stacy Keach reading Hemingway’s "The Killers".

Order directly from the links below and contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

In Canada, order HERE

In USA, order HERE

In UK, order HERE

SANDRA (Vaghe stelle dell'orsa…) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Electra Myth Sizzles as magnificent melodrama under Luchino Visconti's masterful rendering, screened on ALL-NEW 4K restoration at TIFF Bell Lightbox Cinematheque series "SUMMER IN ITALY", programmed by the inimitable James Quandt.

Sandra - Vaghe stelle dell'orsa… (1965)
Dir. Luchino Visconti
Starring: Claudia Cardinale, Jean Sorel,
Michael Craig, Fred Williams, Marie Bell, Renzo Ricci

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I can think of few juicier morsels of grand melodrama than Luchino Visconti's Sandra (Vaghe stelle dell'orsa…), a modern re-imagining of the Greek myth involving Electra, the Princess of Argos, who, in cahoots with brother Orestes, spins a mad plot to avenge the death of their father King Agamemnon at the hands of Queen Clytemnestra and their stepfather Aegisthus.

Visconti, however, never content to merely ape his inspirations, takes the aforementioned narrative base and careens wildly into the territory of an opera plunged into the deepest depths of genuinely perverse sexual obsession. (A layer of wartime collaboration, Auschwitz and a reclamation of Jewish Heritage is stirred in for good measure along with attempted rape and suicide for those so inclined.)

With the astoundingly baroque black and white cinematography of Armando Nannuzzi, Visconti spins a (seemingly) measured yarn which mounts ever-so broodingly to a shocking, over-the-top climax and a denouement which is as fraught with irony as it is deeply moving.

Beginning at a swank cocktail party in Paris and winding up amongst petty bourgeoisie squabbling within an ancient, crumbling, family estate in the provincial Italian enclave of Volterra, Sandra is a grandly entertaining belly flop into a pool of madness and incest. It makes the sordid spectacles of Giuseppe Verdi at his most floridly, bombastically romantic seem quaint and subtle.

Where Sandra deviates from the Elektra myth is in substituting the sexuality of Daddy worship (and competing with Mommy for Daddy's love) to a deep sexual spark between the sister (ravishing Claudia Cardinale as the title character) and brother Gianni (dreamy Jean Sorel) as a reaction to the siblings' joint belief that their long-dead Jewish scientist father was betrayed to the Nazis and Fascists by their Antisemitic concert pianist mother (Marie Bell) who has now gone completely insane and the mad matriarch's blusteringly petty lover and eventual second husband (Renzo Ricci).

Add to this mix Sandra's loving, but clueless American husband (Michael Craig) and the hunky town doctor (Fred Williams) who still carries a torch for her and we've got ourselves a heady brew, indeed.

Much of the action is centred within the family estate. Sandra and her hubby are visiting to convene at a special ceremony honouring her late father who died at Auschwitz. It's a nice enough tribute, but its reason for being is that the family fortunes are dwindling and the once massive grounds can no longer be cared for. They've been taken over by the town as a Memorial Park dedicated to Sandra's Dad.

There is much in the manner of slinking and skulking about the corridors, corners and shadows of the once grand old house, along with all manner of hushed whispers, most of them related to the unholy relations twixt Sandra and Orestes. The only time vocal timbres gush out full throttle are when we meet Mad Momma who screeches out her various hatreds and regrets with considerable bile and lung power.

The centrepiece of the entire picture is the voluptuous, pouty-lipped, big-ole-dark-eyed Claudia Cardinale, who manages to acquit herself as both a fine actress and ravishing camera-loves-her sexpot.

As is his wont, Visconti allows us to wallow in the majestic mire of the melodrama to our hearts' content, but for those seeking added noggin stimuli (the noggin that thinks, of course), Visconti handily invests the movie with moments of sheer visual poetry and much in the way of historical, social and class-related ruminations. Happily, one can take one's pick or go for the fully loaded big banana split of sex, sin, art and politics.

It's the Visconti way, God Bless Him.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *****

Sandra is playing in Toronto at the TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX. For dates, times and tickets, visit their website HERE. For those who cannot make it to Toronto, a gorgeous import DVD from Italy is available through Amazon. One hopes it's merely a matter of time before the 4K restoration will be available for sell-through on Blu-Ray.

The Region 2 Italian Import of Sandra can be ordered directly via the links below (and as such, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner).

In Canada order HERE

In USA order HERE

In UK order HERE

LA DOLCE VITA, THE CONFORMIST, UMBERTO D. - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - The TIFF Cinematheque presents the "Summer in Italy" series at TIFF Bell Lightbox. These 3 titles are also available on sumptuous Criterion & Kino-Lorber Blu-Ray/DVD Editions.

It's that time of the year again. The Toronto International Film Festival's Cinematheque at the TIFF Bell LightBox in Toronto presents a whole whack o' classics with a pasta theme, programmed by the illustrious James Quandt with the popular "Summer in Italy" series running June 27 to September 5, 2015 and a great new series entitled: "More Than Life Itself: Rediscovering the Films of Vittorio de Sica" running June 26 to September 6, 2015. Here are 3 important titles in both series that are happening in August. MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!! Those who don't live in Toronto and/or can't get to Toronto and/or are agoraphobic can choose the sumptuous Blu-Ray/DVD editions from the Criterion Collection and Kino-Lorber. Buy your advance tickets to these great TIFF Bell Lightbox presentations (they sell out, don'cha know) by clicking HERE.

Saturday Aug. 1, 2015 @ 5:30pm @ TIFF Bell Lightbox and/or Criterion Blu-Ray

La Dolce Vita (1960)
dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Yvonne Furneaux, Anouk Aimee,
Anita Ekberg, Alain Cuny, Walter Santesso, Nico, Alain Dijon, Lex Barker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It has been said that in death we all end up alone. If we are alone in life, bereft of love, is existence itself then, not a living death? For me, this is the central theme of La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s great classic of cinema – a film that never ceases to thrill, tantalize and finally, force its audience to look deep into a mirror and search for answers to questions about themselves. This is what makes for great movies that live beyond the ephemeral qualities far too many filmmakers and audiences prefer to settle for - especially in the current Dark Ages of cinema we find ourselves in. It’s the reason why the picture continues to live forever. What makes La Dolce Vita especially great is that Fellini – as he was so often able to achieve – got to have his cake and eat it too. He created art that entertained AND challenged audiences the world over.

Most of all, though, La Dolce Vita is cool – cooler than cool, to be frank.

READ THE FULL REVIEW OF "La Dolce Vita" HERE

Thursday Aug. 7, 2015 @ 9:00pm @ TIFF Bell Lightbox
and/or Kino-Lorber/RaroVideo Blu-Ray

The Conformist (1970)
Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You're never going to see a more gorgeous movie about fascism than Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist.

He was only in his late 20s when he made this 1970 adaptation of Alberto Moravia's novel and the picture still crackles with urgency, dread and horror. It's furthermore infused with a winning combination of political/historical smarts, deeply considered intellectual rigour and an eye for heart-aching, stunning and dazzling visual artistry.

Working with ace cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), there isn't a single composition, lighting scheme or camera move in the entire photoplay that's anything less than gorgeous. The sheer physical beauty in interior decor, architecture and the natural world is an effective and complex juxtaposition within the story of a man driven by pure ambition.

READ THE FULL REVIEW OF "The Conformist" HERE

Sunday Aug. 16, 2015 @ 6:00pm @ TIFF Bell Lightbox
and/or on The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray

Umberto D. (1952)
dir. Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Carlo Battisti, Maria-Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari, Flike

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The old man Umberto (Carlo Battisti) must bid goodbye to the only thing he genuinely loves in the whole wide world, a tiny dog called Flike. He's so poor he must check himself into a hospital to treat a simple case of Tonsillitis. This allows him to get free meals for a few days so he can save enough money to avoid eviction. De Sica takes us on the road of this one man's life - a life that could belong to any one of us. This man's journey is harrowing, to be sure, but we're all the better for taking it with him.

READ THE FULL REVIEW OF "Umberto D" HERE

HOT DOCS 2015: ARAYA - Review By Greg Klymkiw *****

Araya (1959)
Dir. Margot Benacerraf

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If the idea of watching sheer pain and utter drudgery in one of the most desolate corners of the earth sounds like your idea of a must-skip, think again. Araya is one of the most moving, powerful and poetic documentaries ever made.

In the late 50s, filmmaker Margot Benacerraf took her cameras to the furthest reaches of a forlorn peninsula in Venezuela to capture a day in the lives of several families who make their living as workers in a natural salt "farm". From early morning, through a blistering day and even deep into the night, we get a profoundly uplifting look at pure survival. These are people who live to work and they work harder than most of us couldn't even imagine.

Every element of their existence is work - hard, brutal, physical labour under the unrelenting rays of a sun that never ceases to beat down upon them. We experience the backbreaking toil of culling the salt, breaking it down, forming it into pyramidical shaped bricks, hauling it to get ready for shipping and then, doing it all over again. The only respite for some includes re-stitching fishing nets, casting them into the ocean and harvesting the food they need for sustenance.

We also get detailed insight into the domestic chores on the home front. This is all accompanied by haunting, astonishing black and white cinematography, moving poetic narration (as information packed as it is sweetly lilting) and heart rending music (plus meticulously captured natural sounds).

These are men, women and children. Nobody here is exempt from a life of hardship - a life born out of slavery and colonialism and continuing to this day under corporate slavery.

This is potent stuff. It might be even more valuable to us now than when the film was first released.

Acclaimed by some of the world's greatest directors (everyone from Jean Renoir to Steven Soderbergh), Araya disappeared off the radar for over half a century until it's revival and restoration. Now, it can be see in all its glory on both the big screen and at home.

Araya has been made available through the restoration efforts of the legendary Dennis Doros and Amy Heller at Milestone Films. For tickets, visit the Hot Docs 2015 website HERE. The film is also available on gorgeous home video transfers vie Milestone.

HOT DOCS 2015 - GRASS: A NATION'S BATTLE FOR LIFE ***** Review By Greg Klymkiw

Grass: A Nation's Battle For Survival (1925)
Dir. Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You won't see many greater documentaries in your life than this one.

When I taught filmmaking at "Uncle" Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, I'd often chide my charges with their pathetic lack of life experience and how it related (or rather, not) to their desire to make movies.

"Strap these fuckers on for size," I'd bark before relaying a brief biographical snapshot of two genuine pioneers in the art of filmed documentary and dramatic cinema. "They don't make filmmakers like Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack anymore and any pathetic desires you harbour to make movies about your petty bourgeois lives in the suburbs of whatever cozy enclave you were coddled in are total shit compared to this."

You see, by their early 20s, these two young men lived lives most artists could only dream about - that is, if those purported contemporary "filmmakers" actually had the wherewithal to conjure up the sort of life experience Cooper and Schoedsack gained before making some of the greatest motion pictures of all time.

Schoedsack ran away from his comfy home in Iowa (Council Bluffs, no less) as a teenager and worked as a surveyor before getting a job as a cameraman for the legendary Mack Sennett studios. He enlisted in the signal corps and served on the bloodiest fields of battle as a cameraman in France during World War I. He did the same thing in Ukraine and helped refugees when Russia and Poland duked it out for the rich fertile breadbasket of Eastern Europe and, adding more cherries to his ice cream sundae of life experience, he did the same damn thing during the war twixt Turkey and Greece.

Merian C. Cooper also fled his idyllic American nest, enrolling in the naval academy, resigning in disgust over his belief in the superiority of air power over sea power in battle, joined the national guard and embarked on the mission to chase down Pancho Villa in Mexico, enlisted in the airforce during World War I, flew DH-4 bombers, got shot down by the Hun, suffered such horrible burns to his arms that most people would just give it up, but after serving time in one of the Kaiser's POW camps, he continued as a pilot with the Red Cross in France, then joined up with the Polish airforce to kick Russian ass, served in a Russkie POW camp, escaped the clutches of the evil commie hordes and was given the highest military honours by the Polish government.

How d'ya like them apples, losers?

Schoedsack and Cooper, both born in 1893, met in Vienna and became fast friends and partners and formed a motion picture production company which not only made groundbreaking documentaries, but as a team were responsible for one of the GREATEST motion pictures of ALL TIME, 1933's King (FUCKING) Kong.

Grass: A Nation's Battle For Survival was made in 1925. Schoedsack and Cooper teamed up with the legendary (and gorgeous) spy and journalist Marguerite Harrison to capture one of the most astounding documentary films by ANY standards. Following a Bakhtiari in Iran (then Persia), the trio stunningly captured the migration of 50,000 people and 500,000 animals to better pasture over a 20,000 foot high ICY mountain range (the tribe was mostly barefoot) and the dangerous rapids of a massive river.

You will see images in this film that are not only gorgeous, but imbued with all the properties which can be rightly described as a "terrible beauty". These are real people, real domestic farm animals, really living, really dying, really suffering and really braving every danger in order to continue actually living.

They don't make 'em like this anymore. The movies, that is, AND the movie makers.

Grass: A Nation's Battle For Survival has been restored by the legendary team of Dennis Doros and Amy Heller of Milestone Films (winners of one of the highest accolades from the New York Film Critics Circle for their Shirley Clarke restorations as well as their important life's work). The movie has probably not looked as gorgeous since its release 80 years ago and it features a stirring new Iranian musical score.

This is an absolute must-see. You can do so at Hot Docs 2015 and also via home entertainment release from Milestone Films. Try to see it on a big screen if you can. For showtimes and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

Greg Klymkiw presents his HOT DOCS 2015 HOT PICKS #3: GRASS: A NATION'SBATTLE FOR SURVIVAL ***** and ARAYA *****

Greg Klymkiw presents his HOT DOCS 2015 HOT PICKS #3

For the next fourteen days I will only review movies I liked, loved or that totally blew me away during the 2015 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto, Canada. Life is short. I won't bother reviewing movies that were godawful, mediocre or just plain okay. Note my picks, mark your calendars and save some precious hours, days and weeks of your life on planet Earth. Instead, spend it travelling the world via one of cinema's most vital genres.

Grass: A Nation's Battle For Survival (1925)
Dir. Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You won't see many greater documentaries in your life than this one.

When I taught filmmaking at "Uncle" Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, I'd often chide my charges with their pathetic lack of life experience and how it related (or rather, not) to their desire to make movies.

"Strap these fuckers on for size," I'd bark before relaying a brief biographical snapshot of two genuine pioneers in the art of filmed documentary and dramatic cinema. "They don't make filmmakers like Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack anymore and any pathetic desires you harbour to make movies about your petty bourgeois lives in the suburbs of whatever cozy enclave you were coddled in are total shit compared to this."

You see, by their early 20s, these two young men lived lives most artists could only dream about - that is, if those purported contemporary "filmmakers" actually had the wherewithal to conjure up the sort of life experience Cooper and Schoedsack gained before making some of the greatest motion pictures of all time.

Schoedsack ran away from his comfy home in Iowa (Council Bluffs, no less) as a teenager and worked as a surveyor before getting a job as a cameraman for the legendary Mack Sennett studios. He enlisted in the signal corps and served on the bloodiest fields of battle as a cameraman in France during World War I. He did the same thing in Ukraine and helped refugees when Russia and Poland duked it out for the rich fertile breadbasket of Eastern Europe and, adding more cherries to his ice cream sundae of life experience, he did the same damn thing during the war twixt Turkey and Greece.

Merian C. Cooper also fled his idyllic American nest, enrolling in the naval academy, resigning in disgust over his belief in the superiority of air power over sea power in battle, joined the national guard and embarked on the mission to chase down Pancho Villa in Mexico, enlisted in the airforce during World War I, flew DH-4 bombers, got shot down by the Hun, suffered such horrible burns to his arms that most people would just give it up, but after serving time in one of the Kaiser's POW camps, he continued as a pilot with the Red Cross in France, then joined up with the Polish airforce to kick Russian ass, served in a Russkie POW camp, escaped the clutches of the evil commie hordes and was given the highest military honours by the Polish government.

How d'ya like them apples, losers?

Schoedsack and Cooper, both born in 1893, met in Vienna and became fast friends and partners and formed a motion picture production company which not only made groundbreaking documentaries, but as a team were responsible for one of the GREATEST motion pictures of ALL TIME, 1933's King (FUCKING) Kong.

Grass: A Nation's Battle For Survival was made in 1925. Schoedsack and Cooper teamed up with the legendary (and gorgeous) spy and journalist Marguerite Harrison to capture one of the most astounding documentary films by ANY standards. Following a Bakhtiari in Iran (then Persia), the trio stunningly captured the migration of 50,000 people and 500,000 animals to better pasture over a 20,000 foot high ICY mountain range (the tribe was mostly barefoot) and the dangerous rapids of a massive river.

You will see images in this film that are not only gorgeous, but imbued with all the properties which can be rightly described as a "terrible beauty". These are real people, real domestic farm animals, really living, really dying, really suffering and really braving every danger in order to continue actually living.

They don't make 'em like this anymore. The movies, that is, AND the movie makers.

Grass: A Nation's Battle For Survival has been restored by the legendary team of Dennis Doros and Amy Heller of Milestone Films (winners of one of the highest accolades from the New York Film Critics Circle for their Shirley Clarke restorations as well as their important life's work). The movie has probably not looked as gorgeous since its release 80 years ago and it features a stirring new Iranian musical score.

This is an absolute must-see. You can do so at Hot Docs 2015 and also via home entertainment release from Milestone Films. Try to see it on a big screen if you can. For showtimes and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

Araya (1959)
Dir. Margot Benacerraf

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If the idea of watching sheer pain and utter drudgery in one of the most desolate corners of the earth sounds like your idea of a must-skip, think again. Araya is one of the most moving, powerful and poetic documentaries ever made.

In the late 50s, filmmaker Margot Benacerraf took her cameras to the furthest reaches of a forlorn peninsula in Venezuela to capture a day in the lives of several families who make their living as workers in a natural salt "farm". From early morning, through a blistering day and even deep into the night, we get a profoundly uplifting look at pure survival. These are people who live to work and they work harder than most of us couldn't even imagine.

Every element of their existence is work - hard, brutal, physical labour under the unrelenting rays of a sun that never ceases to beat down upon them. We experience the backbreaking toil of culling the salt, breaking it down, forming it into pyramidical shaped bricks, hauling it to get ready for shipping and then, doing it all over again. The only respite for some includes re-stitching fishing nets, casting them into the ocean and harvesting the food they need for sustenance.

We also get detailed insight into the domestic chores on the home front. This is all accompanied by haunting, astonishing black and white cinematography, moving poetic narration (as information packed as it is sweetly lilting) and heart rending music (plus meticulously captured natural sounds).

These are men, women and children. Nobody here is exempt from a life of hardship - a life born out of slavery and colonialism and continuing to this day under corporate slavery.

This is potent stuff. It might be even more valuable to us now than when the film was first released.

Acclaimed by some of the world's greatest directors (everyone from Jean Renoir to Steven Soderbergh), Araya disappeared off the radar for over half a century until its revival and restoration. Now, it can be see in all its glory on both the big screen and at home.

Araya has been made available through the restoration efforts of the legendary Dennis Doros and Amy Heller at Milestone Films. For tickets, visit the Hot Docs 2015 website HERE. The film is also available on gorgeous home video transfers vie Milestone.

PORTRAIT OF JASON - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stellar Milestone Film and Video Blu-Ray of the legendary Shirley Clarke Doc focusing on early 60s Gay African-American Raconteur

In anticipation of the upcoming 2015 Toronto Hot Docs International Festival of Documentary Cinema, herewith is a review of the Milestone Film and Video Blu-Ray of their Shirley Clarke restoration series featuring one of the greatest documentaries ever made: Portrait of Jason (screened during the 2013 Hot Docs festival) and now available to own. See this important work NOW and possess it FOREVER.

Ingmar Bergman proclaimed Portrait of Jason as being “the most extraordinary film I’ve ever seen in my life.” Its first screening in 1967 included an audience of Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Terry Southern.

In spite of this, decades passed, yielding little more than a film that disappeared - so cast away that the original elements were thought to be lost, thoroughly and utterly untraceable. The prints that existed, crude 35mm blow-ups to begin with, were so worn and scratched, they were beyond salvation.

After a painstaking search that took years, Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, God's Gifts to saving what was thought to be unsalvageable, eventually found and identified mislabeled “outtakes” as the original 16mm inter-positive negative of Portrait of Jason.

For this, we must all feel beholden to these efforts.

Portrait of Jason is with us now and here to stay.

Forever.

Portrait of Jason (1967)
Dir. Shirley Clarke
Starring: Jason Holliday (aka Aaron Payne)

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To be gay in America right now shouldn't be so fraught with hate and invective, but attitudes and legislation in many pockets of the Red, White and Blue still seem so frustrating and backward. As such, gay bashing and murder are still a real threat.

To be Black in America right now is to also be a target of hate-filled repressive castigation, often ending in murder at the hands of racist police.

To be Black and Gay in America in 2015 - well, let's not even go there - especially not states like Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi or, say, Arkansas, to name but a few. Stay away. Stay far away. Don't believe for a moment that any useless amendments (or lack thereof) made to their boneheadedly hate-filled legislation will do anything to stem the tide of hatred.

Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason, a stunning, groundbreaking feature documentary has always held a place of importance in both cinema and, most notably, in its power and insight into what it must have been to be Black and Gay in American during the 1960s. First released almost fifty years ago, it's a window into racial and sexual politics as presented by one of the most fascinating subjects one will find in that period of documentary film. Clarke's picture will indeed have equal resonance in today's era of intolerance; maybe even more so, in light of the aforementioned current conditions plaguing much of America, land of the not-so Free.

Restored and released by the visionary Milestone Films and Video, the film's importance to the art of film and gay history can't be stressed enough. Current attitudes towards both the gay and of-colour communities that still exist in so-called "progressive" societies means, due to Milestone's commitment to saving, preserving and showcasing forgotten and/or lost works, that this vital film can now be experienced by whole new generations of audiences all over the world and, no doubt, for generations to come.

Portrait of Jason is the essential cinéma vérité doc that focuses upon the irreverent gay American houseboy, hustler and wannabe cabaret perfomer, Jason Holiday. Shot over the course of one very long night in Clarke's home in the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York, the picture is essentially a monologue performed by her old friend as he tells the story of his extraordinary life with equal parts humour and sadness.

Captured in glorious standard-frame black and white 16mm film stock, the camera never leaves the realm of Jason save for cuts or fades to black and occasionally, to sound with no picture when the camera needs to change film rolls. This real exigency of production led to a superb, imaginative editing approach to the picture. Clarke uses the blacks as breathtaking exclamatory bridges between the various segments, which provide an indelible series of transition points in the "narrative" flow of the work itself.

Stylish, dapper and adorned in his trademark heavy-black-framed coke-bottle lenses, often armed with a fortifying drink in one hand and cigarette in the other, Jason recounts both his philosophies of life and extraordinary life story. For good measure, he tosses in plenty of hilarious impersonations and jokes. These are the bountiful maraschino cherries on the - ahem - ever-so delectable Chocolate Holliday Sundae.

His tales begin entertainingly and amusingly enough, but as the film progresses, Jason adds copious reefer ingestion and booze swilling by the bucketful, until the whole affair slowly unravels into a veritable Walpurgisnacht.

What we learn during the 105-minute confession seems mostly truthful, albeit tempered by Jason's abilities as a born raconteur. He gives us snippets of his childhood, his relationship with parents and other family, in addition to friends, employers and lovers, life on the streets, in the baths, in the bars and in the homes of those whom he worked for as a houseboy" (and the various permutations - mostly implied - of what that entailed). He shares his secrets in the arts of hustling, cajoling, stealing, "borrowing" and making his way through life with as little effort as possible.

"I'm lazy," he declares, "I've always really wanted to jump into it, but I kept avoiding it somehow. I always made an excuse for accepting other people's problems and putting down my own. I always became this one or that one's flunky - anything to keep from facing what I really wanted to do and now, I want to do it."

Doing it won't be as easy as he thinks.

His first order of business is a moniker makeover. Jason's given name not only brought back "unpleasant memories", but led to states of deep "despression." Changing his given name of Aaron Payne to the decidedly flamboyant "Jason Holliday" not only helped to erase (or at least suppress) the past, but ultimately gave him the strength to pursue his dreams.

"If the name rings a bell to you, makes you feel well, then take the name," he states emphatically when describing his epiphanies in San Francisco's famed Gay Mecca of Castro Street, a magical place where he met way too many cool "cats" with "hip" names, that he decided his own rebirth was in order.

Hence, a new name.

"I was created in San Francisco," he says with pride, then, with a smile, "and San Francisco is the place to be created in. Believe me!"

By the time Jason is in front of Clarke's camera, he's left San Francisco to be back in his beloved hometown of New York. Here, Jason hopes to rekindle his dream of being a nightclub performer. As Clarke's film proves, he's imbued with more than enough talent to do so and most notably, he's certainly not without material. However, he has one hurdle to overcome - not wanting to work. He relays an anecdote about a close friend who works as a teacher in the public school system; she's so devoted to teaching that after work, she goes from house to house in her neighbourhood teaching kids who either don't go to school or need the kind of additional tutelage and attention they don't get in school. What she says to Jason is as inspiring to him as it is a tool in which to morph his notion of hard work into doing as little as possible.

"One day she said something to me that was really hip. 'Jason', she said, 'everyone in New York has a gimmick. Mine is teaching school.' And from her I learned that mine was hustling."

Jason, of course, prides himself on the diverse nature of his skill. "I have more than one hustle. I'll come on as a maid or a butler; anything to keep from punching the clock from 9-to-5, because every time I've punched that clock it's been a job that's such a drag it makes you sick, and what I really wanna do is what I'm doing now [in front of the camera] and that is to perform."

In the same breath, he subtly drops the aforementioned subject of "performing" and brilliantly segues into a whole new patter. Well, it's an old patter, really, but Jason's crafty enough to know that everything old becomes new again. "I'm scared of responsibility," he continues. "I'm scared of myself, because I'm a pretty frightening cat, as people who know me will tell you." He's quick to elaborate: "I don't mean any harm, but the harm is done. A friend of mine keeps telling me that I'm always going to find a way of fouling it up, but I'm always trying to get in there and pitch." Then, just as smoothly and brilliantly, like he's been doing standup comedy for decades, he segues into a very telling, but funny story about seeing a psychiatrist:

"These head shrinkers are very interesting cats. Sometimes they let you talk. They keep wanting to know who you sleep with. Someone asked me, 'What do you do? ...Do you please them?' I say, "If I don't please them, it's because I'm not trying."

THEN, he uses this to leap into a riff on sex:

"I've spent so much of my life being sexy, as you can see!" he cheekily exclaims with the flourish of a runway model's twirl of the head, until, with his ever-impeccable timing, the requisite self-deprecation and a winning smile, he returns to the theme of his sloth: "Lord knows, I haven't gotten anything else done."

Jason is clearly gifted and it's to Clarke's credit that she's made this film if only to capture Holliday's crazy genius and by extension, fashioning a macrocosmic view of a life and lifestyle which feels at once, locked in time and yet, replete with resonance to our modern world.

He describes one of his employers as "a tall, lanky, sad looking blonde from Alabama." With giddy delivery he recalls, "She'd say 'Jason, fix me some of that chicken.' They always want chicken, cuz, of course, all coloured folks know how to fix chicken, so I'd be in the kitchen, frying the ass off this chicken, 'Yas'm, I'd say.'" He then takes a deeply racist slur and turns it into a joke: "One time she says, 'You know Jason, I never really much liked niggers, but you're the first one I ever really cared for.' And I said, 'Well that's very sweet of you, I guess that means I should have this job for a very long time."

As masterful as Jason's delivery is, it's tempered with seep sadness: "I think as a house boy I really suffered" he admits with genuine sadness before flipping it around with: "But this hasn't all been a waste. They think you're just a dumb, stupid little coloured boy who's trying to get a few dollars. They think they're gonna use you as a joke, but the real joke is this: who's using who?"

By expressing deep pain over the prejudicial views assailing him at every turn, he's clearly able to turn the tables on his oppressors. Though it doesn't seem like mere rationalization, one gets the sense that the tit-for-tat is probably more one-sided; that the notion of empowerment is imbued with a high degree of self-delusion. This surely speaks to anyone and everyone who has been the target of deep-seeded hatred and sought to fight back, only to find that they're using a shield to repel the blows that in fact, have virtually no genuine resonance upon the attacker.

Clarke deftly takes hours upon hours of footage and recreates a powerful dramatic arc in which Jason, by his words and actions, eventually takes his shield and transforms it into an ostrich hole of drug and alcohol abuse, and in so doing, Clarke captures an encapsulation of generations upon generations of prejudicial abuse and its effects upon even the most accomplished and intelligent human beings who were, and frankly, continue to be targets of ignorance.

This has got to stop. One hopes a fifty-year-old film will have the requisite power to do so.

As important as the film itself, is its restoration. Milestone Film and Video's work earned the company's founders Amy Heller and Dennis Doros a Special Award from the 2012 New York Film Critics Circle for preserving "the work of pioneering indie filmmaker Shirley Clarke." The greatness of Clarke's Portrait of Jason cannot be underestimated, nor, frankly, can the painstaking work of Heller and Doros.

The film must be seen by as wide an audience as possible and the Milestone Film and Video Blu-ray should be in every home of anyone committed to great cinema as well as work that stands as a testament to those who fought, lost and won in the battle for dignity and the most basic human rights.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars (for both the film and the stunning Milestone Film and Video Blu-Ray)

The Milestone Film and Video Blu-Ray of Portrait of Jason includes: Where's Shirley? (25 mins) a lovely, heartfelt documentary from Milestone's original crowd funding plea to have the film restored and detailing a bevy of important information about the painstaking efforts to bring the film back into the public eye, The Lost Confrontation (7 mins), Jason in Color! (2:30 mins), Trailer (2 mins), Jason: Before and After (1:30 mins), Butterfly (1967, 3:34 mins) Shirley Clarke in Underground New York (1967, 9:37 mins), Jason Unleashed (Audio outtakes. 35 mins), Pacifica Radio Interview with Shirley Clarke (1967, 53 mins), The Jason Holiday Comedy Album (1967, 54:00 mins, audio) and SDH Subtitles

Read the original Film Corner crowd funding plea for the film's restoration in 2012 HERE

Feel free to read my RAVE reviews of other great Milestone Film and Video releases: ON THE BOWERY HERE. My Review of THE DRAGON PAINTER can be read HERE. And be on the lookout for my full-length Film Corner reviews of RAGS AND RICHES: THE MARY PICKFORD COLLECTION HERE, CUT TO THE CHASE!: THE CHARLIE CHASE COLLECTION HERE and ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S "BON VOYAGE" & "ADVENTURE MALGACHE" HERE.


Don't forget you can order PORTRAIT OF JASON from the Amazon links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of the Film Corner:


In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Portrait of Jason - HERE!

In Canada - BUY Portrait of Jason HERE, eh!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Portrait of Jason - HERE!

THE ASCENT and WINGS - Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw - Susan Sontag called Larisa Shepitko's harrowing anti-war film THE ASCENT "the most affecting film about the horror of war I know." Shepitko focused on suffering, slaughter and senseless strife and did so in a stunning allegorical portrait of Christ and Judas during the German occupation of Belarus. The movie was miraculously rendered under Communist oppression in the Soviet Union. With WINGS, Shepitko delivered a powerful, romantic look at Russia's fighting women of the Second World War in a post-war world. Shepitko's eye, like a mad pit bull's jaws, always clenched furiously on its quarry and never, ever let it go.

This is a perfect time to take another look at two films about war by the late Ukrainian filmmaker Larisa Shepitko (a protege of Dovzhenko and the wife of acclaimed director Elem Klimov). Ukraine has been at war with Russia since the Maidan revolution in Kyiv just over one year ago which ousted the Putin-backed gangster-President Yanukovitch. Since that time, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and organized an army of terrorists to take control of two provinces in Eastern Ukraine. In recent days, Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea have suffered massive discrimination and even death, all Tatar and Ukrainian books in a historical Crimean library have been chucked into the streets and publicly burned, Putin is rallying his nation to publicly protest Ukraine's freedom and just yesterday, during peaceful rallies in Ukraine to celebrate freedom from Russia, Moscow-backed terrorists exploded a bomb in Ukraine's second-largest city Kharkiv which killed and wounded many innocent people. The farcical and cowardly EU-backed-and-negotiated truce might only instigate the break out of a large-scale war. Here are my reviews of The Ascent (Christian allegory set in WWII) and Wings (examination of post-war female soldiers) by Larisa Shepitko.

The Ascent (1977) *****
dir. Larisa Shepitko
Starring: Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Sergei Yokovlev, Anatoli Solonitsin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Is there an antidote to the perennial seductiveness of war? And is this a question a woman is more likely to pose than a man? (Probably yes.) . . . No photograph, or portfolio of photographs, can unfold, go further, and further still, as does The Ascent (1977), by the Ukrainian director Larisa Shepitko, the most affecting film about the horror of war I know." - Susan Sontag, "Looking at War: Photography’s view of devastation and death", The New Yorker

Survival and sacrifice are at the forefront of Larisa Shepitko’s harrowing World War II drama The Ascent – only fitting since the film, at once simple, at the next complex, is ultimately an allegorical portrait of Christ and Judas in a world turned topsy-turvy by the senseless strife and slaughter during the German invasion and occupation of Belarus. That notion of faith, extracted as it is from the New Testament and applied to such issues as love and betrayal of country are completely at home within the context and backdrop so vividly and evocatively portrayed.

For the Ukrainian-born Shepitko, herself a student of Master Ukrainian filmmaker Olexander Dovzhenko, it is clear why this story resonated with her and why she applied such staggering Dovzhenkian compositions to the picture. Coming from Ukraine, a country and culture that had been under the yoke of occupation and suppression almost from its very beginnings and having been mentored by a brilliant filmmaker who himself had been repressed and censored by Joseph Stalin, the mixture of frank political material coupled with a story and central relationship derived from the opiate of the masses, is illustrative of Shepitko’s artistic bravery at such a relatively early stage of her career in the repressive Soviet regime that frowned upon anything that deviated from the State disavowal of all things based in faith.

The story is a simple one. It is also both tragic and compelling. Ultimately, however, it is the simple narrative backbone that allows Shepitko to inspire an audience’s engagement in the proceedings as well as opportunities for contemplation and reflection both during and after seeing the film.

Following a rag-tag band of partisans through the snowy steppes and forest of Belarus, we are introduced to our pair of mismatched protagonists, the hardened, practical Rybak (Vladimir Gostukhin) and the physically weak, but thoughtful Sotnikov (Boris Plotnikov) as they volunteer to journey through the bitter cold of the dangerous, Nazi-infested region to find food for the tired and starving freedom fighters. The journey begins to take, almost from the beginning, a series of increasingly disastrous and dangerous detours as Sotnikov becomes sicker with bronchitis and a bullet wound while Rybak becomes so intent upon survival that he begins to question all the sacrifices he is enduring. They both find themselves face-to-face with having to make the ultimate sacrifice for each other, those around them and most importantly, home and country.

Given that most of us are more than aware of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, it is also a testament to Shepitko’s cinematic storytelling prowess that we are still gripped by the proceedings in spite of having a good inkling of where the story will go. In fact, it is the inevitability of where things are headed that keeps us glued to the screen – we keep hoping against hope that the inevitable will be circumvented and, of course, Shepitko plays the portent with harrowing assuredness and style.

Interestingly, The Ascent is not dissimilar to another great Soviet war picture, Grigori Chukrai’s Ballad of a Soldier. On the surface, both pictures deal with soldiers who have a specific goal, but on their journey they face a series of obstacles and detours that painfully keep them from reaching their ultimate destination. The difference, however, is that Chukrai’s film (also full of lush, gorgeously composed exteriors in the Dovzhenkian mold) involves detours routed firmly in sacrifice wherein the central character is kept from visiting his destitute mother because he is continually sidetracked by being duty-bound to helping other people with their own challenges. In The Ascent, it is both betrayal and survival that provide the obstacles. This basic difference highlights why one picture feels romantic and the other is overwhelmingly tragic.

That said, The Ascent is equally powerful and perhaps even more so since the will to survive – at any cost – becomes so poignant. Sacrifice, which involves principles rather than that of the plight of individuals, takes The Ascent into (ironically) political territory that mirrors the struggles of everyone living within the Soviet system. As an audience we are forced to confront a system of repression (Soviet-ruled Belarus) that is also being occupied and repressed by a foreign aggressor (Germany). The enemy is sadly, from within and outside so that our characters are surrounded – almost in futility. The domestic collaborators with the Nazis are at once evil and altogether human. We understand the need to collaborate while condemning it at the same time.

Living in a system of repression like Belarus and under the yoke of a madman like Stalin, the Nazis provide a way out of the madness – an alternative to Stalin. Two of the supporting characters in this narrative are perfectly emblematic of this. One is a village elder (Sergei Yakovlev) who is a reluctant collaborator while the other is a local Nazi interrogator (Anatoli Solonytsin), a cold, practical bureaucrat. The former is a man who seeks safety in collaboration for his family and friends, while the latter is a pure opportunist – someone who is just as happy serving the dictator du jour (Hitler) as he would be engaging in a Stalinist purge. These dichotomous personalities brilliantly mirror Rybak and Sotnikov – especially since their journeys and the inevitable outcomes are so similar: suggesting, of course, that notions of sacrifice and betrayal, collaboration and resistance, good and evil are almost always grey areas in war, and in particular, within repressive regimes.

What is not a grey area in The Ascent is suffering – represented not only by the physical pain and death of violence, but by the land itself. Here is where Shepitko’s kino-eye is especially evocative. The bitter cold and the endless, bone-chilling whiteness of snow overwhelm all the exterior shots. One of the more intensely powerful moments involves Rybak dragging a sick and wounded Sotnikov through the snow – for what seems like forever – as Nazi bullets fly at them. Shepitko’s camera is like a mad pit bull’s jaws clenching at its quarry – it seems to never let go of these two men as they painstakingly make their way through the snow.

Throughout the film we see the actors enduring literal physical hardships. Seeing The Ascent again, I was reminded of the genius of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, a movie that has suffered unnecessarily over the years due to the hype surrounding the mad German (and ethnically Slavic) director’s decision to force his own cast and crew to drag a riverboat through the jungle and over a mountain. When writing at an earlier juncture about Shepitko’s Krylya/Wings I was also reminded of Herzog – in that case, it was the documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly. Visually, Herzog and Shepitko are very different. Herzog’s visuals in drama and documentary, while stunning, have the immediacy of cinema vérité while Shepitko is rooted in the classical, sumptuously composed imagery her mentor Dovzhenko was known for. What Shepitko and Herzog share, however, is an unflinching search for truth in image, and in particular, the use of truth in image in the telling of stories cinematically.

Speaking of sharing, it is also worth noting that some of the finest war films of all time were made under the Soviet system – many of which put the best American examples of this genre to shame. That said, Ukrainians appear to have directed the very best Soviet war films. Olexander Dovzhenko (Arsenal, Schors and his WWII documentaries), Sergei Bondarchuk (Destiny of a Man, War and Peace), Grigori Chukrai (Ballad of a Soldier, Cold Skies, The 41st) and Shepitko have powerfully and evocatively portrayed the horrors and even glories of war and share Ukrainian ethnicity. Perhaps it is coincidence, or perhaps it is worthy of further study. In any event, it is certainly worth noting. It is also worth reiterating that all the abovementioned filmmakers come from a country that has always been dominated and repressed by other powers. With The Ascent, it is finally survival and sacrifice that drives the picture and makes it a film that is haunting, unforgettable and tragic.

Ukrainians, it seems, and others who have lived under repressive regimes, have always known something about survival, sacrifice and war.

Wings (1966) dir. Larisa Shepitko
Starring: Maya Bulgakova

*****

By Greg Klymkiw

The romance of war has seldom been so heartbreaking than in the hands of the great Ukrainian-born director Larisa Shepitko who made this first feature after a few short films and studying under the watchful eye of fellow countryman and master film artist Oleksander Dovzhenko. What’s especially bittersweet is that Wings is set in a post-war Soviet world where the lead character Nadezhna (Maya Bulgakova) struggles to settle into a life of seeming normalcy and, compared to her career as a fighter pilot, complacency. Now in her fortieth year, she works as a schoolmistress and goes about her daily tasks with professionalism and commitment on the surface, but always yearning and dreaming of the days when she soared above the normal world – touching Heaven, surrounded by the billowy clouds and racing through the air, dipping and swooping like a bird of prey.

Shepitko, part of that breed of Soviet filmmaker that rejected the occasionally overwrought montage-heavy storytelling of the likes of Eisenstein, tells her delicate tale with the same kind of editorial restraint common to her generation. Favouring gorgeously composed tableaus and a stately pace, Shepitko aims her lens at the realism of Nadezhna’s life, but with such a keen eye that the commonplace becomes extraordinary.

And what is it about the “normal” that nags at Shepitko’s central character?

The bottom line is this: The girl just wants to fly high. But alas, it is not to be – Nadezhna’s place in servitude to the Soviet ideal is now in the shaping of minds – youthful minds that live in a peaceful world that cannot even begin to comprehend the horrors of war. Nor are her students (and most others – adults AND children) equipped to fathom the mad, youthful rush accompanying Nadezhna’s idealism which led her into the cockpit of a bomber and into the arms of a fellow high-flyer, a dashing young man who eventually dies in a fireball before her very eyes – an image that haunts her constantly.

Shepitko expertly juxtaposes the romance and tragedy of Nadezhna’s life during the war with a series of poetic flashbacks that always help move the story forward when the drabness of her current existence reaches its nadir. One of the more moving sequences has our protagonist watching as a group of schoolchildren in the local museum are shown a display devoted to her heroism during the war. With the love of her life long dead and a schlubish museum director vying for her attentions – Nadezhna’s own life has become a literal and figurative museum piece.

Her daughter Tanya, a ravishing beauty, has married a much older man and Nadezhna can only think of her long-lost lover and how this prissy egghead who cohabits with her progeny can only pale in comparison. While Tanya has married for love, Nadezhna’s lover died for love – not necessarily for romantic love, but for the romantic ideals and love of flying that he shared with her.

With such a pedigree, can anyone ever be good enough for Nadezhna’s daughter?

While Wings shares much in common with Dovzhenko and Grigori Chukrai (Ballad of a Soldier), this is, unlike the work of her male colleagues, a relatively contemporary film by a woman and about a woman, which builds towards a conclusion as soaring and heartbreaking as the one that ends Nadezhna’s story. Werner Herzog’s astounding 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly still can evoke tears when one recalls the final images as the title subject has a dream come true. A similar and extraordinary sequence occurs at the end of Wings and delivers the kind of impact that only movies can bring when a dream comes true.

In both cases the wish fulfillment is endowed with both elation and heartache.

Shepitko firmly roots her character in a past that seems so far away and yet, truth and redemption are found in the reclamation of that past – albeit a reclamation that embraces the present and includes an acceptance of the future.

Shepitko only made three features following this debut. Her life was tragically cut short in a car accident while on a location scout for what would have been her fifth feature.

Like Nadezhna’s dashing flyboy lover, Shepitko died while doing what she knew and loved best.

Great art and life are never that far apart, are they?

Wings and The Ascent are available in one set on Criterion's Eclipse DVD label

In Canada - BUY LARISA SHEPITKO movies HERE!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY LARISA SHEPITKO movies HERE!