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Mixed Reviews: Guilty Pleasures
From 1970s Euro sleaze to Italian Neorealist classics, it's time to admit some guilty pleasures.
(Page 3)
From D’Amato to that other great master of Italian cinema, Vittorio De Sica. (Yes, I’m kidding.) I have no confession to disclose about Bicycle Thieves (1948, better known as The Bicycle Thief but given a more accurate translation for this special edition). It is considered one of the great classics of cinema, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that. If anything, Criterion’s wonderful new two-disc special edition ($39.95) only confirmed that for me. Perhaps the film most closely identified with the Italian Neorealist movement by Americans (though it’s much more sentimental and contrived than Rossellini’s work from the same period), Bicycle Thieves deserves more analysis than space permits here. Simply stated, it’s one of those DVDs that every self-respecting cineaste must own (watch it on a triple bill with Criterion’s discs of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru and René Clément’s Forbidden Games and see which one makes you weep the most). De Sica’s deceptively simple portrait of one man’s determination and defeat remains a profoundly moving film, and Criterion’s set also provides an excellent overview of both De Sica’s career and the Neorealist wave of cinema, with a second disc of noteworthy extras.
Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948) is a film that I loved years ago—and I still remain excited by the stunning New York location shooting (the climactic Williamsburg Bridge chase remains a knockout). But after having seen so many other examples of film noir in recent years, I can’t help but find Albert Maltz and Marvin Wald’s screenplay plodding and turgid. Despite the fact that it does give the film one of cinema’s most famous final lines, the incessant narration now grates my nerves. But I’m in the minority. The Naked City is one of two Dassin films just released by Criterion (both $39.95), but I prefer its less well-regarded predecessor, the prison escape drama Brute Force (1947). The storyline may be more formulaic, but Brute Force is enlivened by forceful performances from Burt Lancaster as the con with a yearning for freedom and Hume Cronyn as the sadistic head guard. Ultimately though, both are great releases, with informative commentary tracks and several new video interviews.
A final confession: I have always loved Scorpio Rising and Lucifer Rising, two later films by famed experimental moviemaker (and Hollywood Babylon muckraker) Kenneth Anger, so I awaited Fantoma’s long-delayed The Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume 1 ($24.98) with great anticipation. Now that it has arrived, I wish my expectations hadn’t been so high. Not that I’m not grateful for its release—or that there isn’t extraordinary material on the disc. But while the company’s desire to carefully catalog Anger’s short film work in proper chronological order is admirable, Fantoma has subsequently begun their series on this director with a disc that has just as many unsatisfying fragments as it does fully realized work.
Truthfully, I found the first three shorts—Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949) and Rabbit’s Moon (1950)—to be of little more than pure historical interest (though, to be fair, the latter two are only excerpts of unfinished works). But Anger definitely matured with the sublime Eaux d’Artifice (1953) and, of course, his surreal and hallucinatory magnum opus, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), which is still entrancing. Still kicking at age 80, Anger also provides commentary on the five shorts, and there’s a beautiful 48-page booklet featuring essays by everyone from Martin Scorsese to Anais Nin.
Okay, so I live in Philadelphia, I don’t like The Naked City as much as I used to and I enjoy the occasional slice of 1970s Euro sleaze cheese. Twelve Hail Marys should cover it, right?
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This story was published in the Summer 2007 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
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