Synopsis: A famous psychologist, Margaret Ford, decides to try to help one of her patients get out of a gambling debt. She visits the bar where Mike, to whom the debt is owed, runs poker games. He convinces her to help him in a game: her assignment is to look for “tells”, or give-away body language. What seems easy to her becomes much more complex.
Quote: Hong Kong, 1980. The Vietnam War has been over for five years and the ethnic cleansing of Chinese has begun. As the “boat people”, refugees of Vietnam, flood out of the country, Hong Kong becomes know as “port of first asylum”. Among these boats is Wu Yiet (Chow Yun-Fat), a former South Vietnamese soldier still recovering from the ravages of war. For him, Hong Kong is the first step for life in the United States, and he soon falls for fellow immigrant Sum Ching (Cherie Chung). Yet the promise of a new beginning doesn’t come easy: the refugee camps have been infiltrated by murderous Viet Cong agents, and an act of violence forces Wu Yiet on the run and deeper into a vortex of crime and brutality. Can he and Sum make it to the United States, or will he forever be stuck in the perpetual cycle of killing inherited from the war? Cora Miao (The Terrorizers) and Lo Lieh (all sorts of bad-assery) co-star in Ann Hui’s grim study of immigrant life. Alfred Cheung’s writing famously won Best Screenplay at the 1st Hong Kong Film Awards.
After tackling the mystery film in The Secret and the horror comedy in The Spooky Bunch, The Story of Woo Viet provides us with Ann Hui’s take on the urban crime drama. Yet, even among the various gritty, realist crime dramas that trickled out of the Hong Kong New Wave, Woo Viet deserves special notice. Perhaps more than any other, Hui’s film breaks with the commercial ambitions of Hong Kong cinema, more attuned to the social-realism of 70s Western cinema (and which was slowly creeping into Chinese and Taiwanese films at the time). While the basic outline of a genre film is perceptible, Hui’s film owes very little to the Action and Melodramatic tradition of HK filmmaking. Films like The Club and Man on the Brink may have provided a look at a social milieu until then ignored by HK cinema, but they were still in essence action films. A movie like Dangerous Encounters – 1st Kind may have been uncommercially bleak and violent, but you can’t deny the kinetic thrill provided by Tsui Hark’s various setpieces. The entire New Wave itself was initiated by a kung-fu film: Jumping Ash. The “action” here isn’t mannered or precisely choreagraphed; they’re brief and unsettling bursts of violence which happen too quickly and too shockingly to thrill.
The influence of the crime genre isn’t absent: the theme music purposely brings to mind film noir, a late scene is a riff on one from The Godfather, and in certain ways, it echoes Oliver Stones’ treatment of Cuban refugees in Scarface (and with the film getting a wider release than usual, including a screening at Directors’ Fortnight, you must wonder whether he saw it). Yet, Hui’s focus isn’t on subverting genre thrills, but instead on social realism, on the plight and vulnerability of the Vietnamese immigrant, as well as the capturing the psychological turmoil of her characters as they find themselves stuck in a perpetual cycle of violence and hopelessness. Her film is subdued, mininimalist and quietly intense, in line with anguished cries of urban squalor like Taxi Driver and The Claws of Light (if not as good as either).
It’s a byline she would carry to its conclusion with the following year’s The Boat People, a film which owes nothing to HK Genre cinema, and which is about as close as the industry got to “art” cinema at the time. In fact, that may ultimately be Hui’s ultimate legacy to the New Wave: directors like Tsui Hark, Kirk Wong and Alex Cheung were harbingers (and later participants) of the “Second Wave” of the latter 80s, where the techniques and styles of the New Wave were re-appropriated in a completely commercial form which disregarded its most radical aspects. Yet Ann Hui, along with Patrick Tam and Allen Fong, were perhaps too far ahead of the curve: their films point towards the “Third Wave” of the 90s, the emergence of a serious, personal and independent cinema in HK, epitomized by the films of Wong Kar-Wai, Stanley Kwan and Fruit Chan. It’s no surprise that after these two films, she would retreat to more commercial fare, lending her deft touch to romantic dramas and period pieces (with the occasional excursion back like Song of the Exile and Ordinary Heroes). The Story of Woo Viet isn’t a perfect film, but it is an emblem of how uncompromising and unconventional the films of the HK New Wave could be.
Katalin Varga is a 2009 directorial debut of Peter Strickland, he used the money from a bequest from his uncle to fund the project. Filmed over several years in a Hungarian-speaking part of the Romanian region of Transylvania, Strickland completed the project for £28,000.
In the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian Mountains a woman is traveling with a small boy in a horse and cart, looking to punish those who once abused her. For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Órban serves as a living reminder. When her village discovers her secret, Katalin’s husband rejects her. With nothing to lose, she is free to seek revenge on the perpetrators. As she puts human faces to horrible acts, she is forced to consider that morality might not be as black and white as she had imagined. ~Santa Barbara Intl Film Festival
Apart from the literary influences, Strickland must surely have taken something from the severe and austere cinema of Béla Tarr, whose films move at a glacial pace, but which, weirdly, have plots which could be thrillers and noirs. The rackety bars here are the location for much central European-style hillbilly-sinister dancing, promising a violent denouement in the darkness outside. It is very like Tarr, and the suspicious farmer who first lets Katalin and Orbán stay overnight is Tarr-ed with that brush. With his neck brace and his moment of semi-nudity in a pair of horribly tiny underpants, he is scary and funny – but mostly scary.
Strickland’s film-making steers away from Tarr’s tendencies towards indulgence and conceit, however. He keeps the storylines reasonably taut and his characters are capable of normal human smiling. Péter’s performance is not catatonic-deadpan in the cliched, high arthouse style: she can be the harassed refugee, or the pained single mother, or the seducer, and her face seems to change radically in each incarnation, as if in the grip of the classic abuse-victim’s multiple personality disorder. It’s the kind of story that could be happening in the city, not the country, on concrete pavements and in the glare of neon rather than sylvan hillsides and golden sunsets. This is a film that glows from the inside with its own awful secret. ~Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
Synopsis: A distinguished English gentleman has a secret life–he is the notorious jewel thief the press has dubbed “The Amateur Cracksman”. When he meets a woman and falls in love he decides to “retire” from that life, but an old friend comes to him with a predicament that entails him committing one last job.
Maria (Soraia Chaves) a sensual call girl, is hired by Mouros (Joaquim de Almeida) to seduce Meireles (Nicolau Breyner), the Mayor of Vilanova, so that he can authorize a multinational to build a high quality resort. However, Madeira (Ivo Canelas) and Neves (Jose Raposo), PJ police detectives, discover the evidence of corruption and begin to investigate Meireles. Everything becomes even more complex when Madeira finds out that Maria, the passion of his life, is the bait that will force the politician to give way.
Quote: Having previously been married to a criminal, Jane Foster (Jane Hylton) takes over a coastal pub named ‘The Quiet Woman’ to start a new life with the help of her loyal and protective employee Elsie (Dora Bryan). She is indignant to discover that the previous owner had allowed an amiable local artist and part-time smuggler Duncan McLeod (Derek Bond) to use the pub for storing contraband goods but despite this, a romantic attachment develops between them. Helen (Dianne Foster), an old flame of McLeods, tricks her way into staying at the pub to pose for him but becomes jealous of Jane and taunts her about knowing her past and threatens to expose her. Pressure then mounts on McLeod when an old Naval colleague Inspector Bromley (John Horsley) arrives at the pub to stay for several weeks. He now is working as a customs officer. And then Jane’s escaped convict husband turns up and demands her help.
This is a pretty typical British B picture of the period with flimsy plot and the minimum of props, much being made of outdoor filming and studio-bound back projection of seascapes in the latter stages that fail to convince the viewer the action is taking place in mid-English Channel. The best aspects of this film are the solid acting from a cast of well-known character actors/actresses of the period. In particular Dora Bryan gives a nice performance as Jane’s trusted friend who is fiercely protective of her employer while keeping the romantic aspirations of McLeod’s sidekick Lefty (Michael Balfour) at bay. The pleasant coastal photography gives the film a genuine seaside atmosphere.
If like me, you grew up with second feature films like this in the early 1950s, then you accept them as entertainment and enjoy the way things were done in those far more innocent times. If you criticise them, it should only be done against the criteria that prevailed then and not by today’s standards. Given that, the only disappointment for me was the weak, improbable ending. I have the distinct impression that the scriptwriter suddenly decided he had better things to do than invent a plausible finale. A pity. (~IMDB)
Synopsis: Pre-code melodrama starring John Gilbert as Jack Thomas, rich, penthouse-dwelling playboy with a brand new fiancee named Marjorie (Leila Hyams) and his own English “gentleman’s gentleman” (just given orders to burn his gallery of photos and phone numbers). Called to meet his guardian “Papa Mario”, Jack is informed he has a brother named Frank and a father who has been shot and is calling for his long-lost son from his deathbed. This is all news to Jack who didn’t know about this family at all (he thought he was an orphan). Arriving at the rundown Hotel Ritzi, Jack finds out the whole truth – that his father and brother are bootleggers/gangsters, that he is actually an Italian, and his real name’s not Jack, it’s Giacomo! Okey dokey. Frank (Louis Wolheim) is a (very) rough-faced, tough talker who forces Jack to take the rap for some stolen emeralds given to Jack by the dying dad. Unfortunately Jack had already gifted the emeralds to Marjorie, who finding out he’s a “thief”, writes him a “Dear John” letter and leaves town. So – Jack decides to join the racket with his brother, then ends up saving his brother’s life from a rival gang. Now the rivals are out to get the man who shot one of their own, and it all comes to brew at a “Peace Banquet” at the hotel.”
Synopsis Maloin leads a simple life without prospects at the edge of the infinite sea; he barely notices the world around him, has already accepted the slow and inevitable deterioration of life around him and his all but complete loneliness.
When he becomes a witness to a murder, his life takes a sudden turn.
He comes face to face with issues of morality, sin, punishment, the line between innocence and complicity in a crime, and this state of scepsis leads him to the ontological question of the meaning and worth of existence.
The film is about desire, man’s indestructible longing for a life of freedom and happiness, about illusions never to be realised – about things that give all of us energy to continue living, to go to sleep and get up day after day… Maloin’s story is ours – all of those who doubt and are able to question our humdrum existence.
Quote: Compulsion is a compelling, stylish thriller, loosely based on the famous 1924 murder trial of thrill-killers Loeb and Leopold, two homosexual students who murdered a young boy to demonstrate their intellectual superiority. Artie Straus (Bradford Dillman) is a sadistic, mother-dominated bully. Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) is a submissive, introverted sissy. Having been raised by wealthy, arrogant families, both Artie and Judd consider themselves above conventional morality. Unfeeling and conceited, the boys, after the killing, take delight in offering to aid in finding the culprits. It is this arrogance which leads to their capture and prosecution for the murders. Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles), playing a Clarence Darrow-like criminal defense attorney, takes on the case, and puts on a defense, without the cooperation of his clients, who will offer no explanation for what they have done. Bradford Dillman gives an outstanding performance, as does Dean Stockwell as the utterly unsympathetic murderers. Orson Welles is flamboyantly imposing as Wilk, who must use all his wits to try to save the boys from execution. Compulsion is a suspenseful courtroom drama, even though most viewers will know the outcome. Tautly directed by Richard Fleischer, the film is an outstanding, believable courtroom drama.
Marcel Carné and Jacques Prevert’s classic of French poetic realism stars Jean Gabin in one of his most famous roles as François, a rough, barrel-chested loner who hides out in his apartment awaiting for the police to arrive.
Damon Runyon’s Broadway fable The Lemon Drop Kid was filmed twice by Paramount Pictures, but only the 1934 version with Lee Tracy paid more than lip service to the original Runyon story. The second version, filmed in 1951, was completely retooled to accommodate the talents of Bob Hope. Known far and wide as the Lemon Drop Kid because of his fondness for that particular round, yellow confection, Hope is a bookie who finds himself deeply in debt to Florida gangster Fred Clark. Magnanimously, Clark permits Hope to head to New York to raise the money–but he’d better have the dough ready by Christmas, or else. Ever on the lookout for Number One, Hope decides to exploit the Christmas spirit in order to get the money together. With the help of unsuspecting nightclub-singer Marilyn Maxwell, Hope sets up a charity fund to raise money for an “Old Doll’s Home”–that is, a home for down-and-out little old ladies. He claims to be doing this on behalf of big-hearted Jane Darwell, but he has every intention of double-crossing Darwell and all the other elderly women by skipping town with the charity funds and leaving them at the mercy of the authorities. By the time Hope has seen the error of his ways and tries to do right by the old dolls, Maxwell’s boss Lloyd Nolan has decided to muscle into the racket by using the ladies’ home as a front for a gambling casino. To set things right, Hope finds it necessary to disguise himself as a fussy old spinster at one point. The best line in the film goes to William Frawley, playing one of many Broadway toughs who are being pressed into service as street-corner Santas. “Will you bring me a doll for Christmas?” asks a little girl. “Naw, my doll’s workin’ Christmas Eve” is Frawley’s salty reply. The Lemon Drop Kid is the film in which Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell introduced the enduring Yuletide ballad “Silver Bells”, written (reportedly in a real hurry) by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.
Quote: From Spencer Selby’s Dark City: Serving time in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, a man becomes hard and embittered. One of several noirs which were remade from thirties crime pictures.
Synopsis: A couple traveling through the countryside strike a man on a bicycle. When they get out of their car to examine him, they find that he is injured but not dead. But instead of helping the man, Juan (Alberto Closas) and Maria Jose (Lucia Bosé) do the unthinkable. They flee – rather than reveal that they have been carrying on a long-term affair.
When they return to Madrid, the couple pay a terrible price for their deception. Guilt begins to gnaw away at them, especially at Juan, who is also experiencing conflict with his young students over an ethical issue at the university where he teaches…
Another Kayo-eiga (Pop Song Film), inspired by the hit Ukikusa No Yado sung by Hachiro Kasuga. Although the singer has a co-starring role, the movie was designed as a star vehicle for the new Nikkatsu hunk, Hiseaki Nitani. He plays a young gangster wanna-be, framed for a murder and sent to prison. Upon release, he gets revenge against the yakuza boss who set him up.
Quote: This wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel is classic Luis Buñuel. Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder—and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.
Synopsis: Ordinary man-in-the-street Arthur Ferguson Jones leads a very straightforward life. He’s never late for work and nothing interesting ever happens to him. One day everything changes: he oversleeps and is fired as an example, he’s then mistaken for evil criminal killer Mannion and is arrested. The resemblance is so striking that the police give him a special pass to avoid a similar mistake. The real Mannion sees the opportunity to steal the pass and move around freely and chaos results.
Synopsis: To his Victorian London friends, Stephen Lowry is a heartbroken widower. Only his housemaid Lily knows that far from dying of gastroenteritis his wife was slowly poisoned by her husband – information she is happy to use to improve her position in the household and to make sure she stays close to Stephen. As his own prospects improve with a business partnership and a romance more of his own class, Stephen decides that Lily must go. Unfortunately for him, his first attempt gives her even more of a hold over him.
Filmed in 1948 as Senza Pieta, this Alberto Lattuada-directed effort came to America the following year as Without Pity. The film’s sensitive subject matter caused problems in distribution and approval; Lattuada was never known to shirk from a sociopolitical statement, even when it meant loss of revenue overseas. The plot is based on an actual postwar dilemma: in Northern Italy, dozens of black American GIs chose to go AWOL rather than return to a racially divided United States. John Kitzmiller plays an occupation soldier named Jerry, who decides to remain in Italy when he falls in love with a blonde, Caucasian local girl named Angela (Carla Del Poggio). Reviewers in 1949 felt that Lattuada exercised poor taste in depicting the interracial romance: while these scenes cannot realistically be described as offensive when seen today, they are still quite frank by 1940s standards. A “regular” in Italian neorealist films, Michigan-born black actor John Kitzmiller went on to win a Cannes Film Festival award for his performance in 1957’s Sergeant Jim. — Hal Erickson (allmovie.com)
Synopsis: In Tokyo, a ruthless gang starts holding up U.S. ammunition trains, prepared to kill any of their own members wounded during a robbery. Down-at-heel ex-serviceman Eddie Spannier arrives from the States, apparently at the invitation of one such unfortunate. But Eddie isn’t quite what he seems as he manages to make contact with Sandy Dawson, who is obviously running some sort of big operation, and his plan is helped by acquaintance with Mariko, the secret Japanese wife of the dead American.
