Movie Round-Up

Billy Liar is based on the novel by Keith Waterhouse (first turned into a play, then this film), and was directed by John Schlesinger; it stars Tom Courtenay (who had followed Albert Finney in the role on stage) and Julie Christie (briefly but memorably). Billy "Liar" is a disaffected dreamer of a young man who, trapped in his own solipsism, doesn't much consider his impact on the people around him (including his two mutually unknowing fiancees). Courtenay is very believable in the role, but doesn't, to my way of thinking, pull the audience into his fantasies; perhaps there was no intent to do that, but, watching the character from an exterior perspective, he's rather off-putting. That makes the film, ostensibly comic, actually rather sour and eventually quite sad; the ending (beautifully done) is an unexpected slap that would be unthinkable in an equivalent American film of that time. Billy Liar is, ultimately, a serious, substantial, must-see movie.

Dark Passage, based on a novel by David Goodis and directed by the underrated Delmer Daves, teamed Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall for the third of their four movies together. Because the noir plot hinges on a plastic surgery operation, the audience doesn't actually see Bogart's face until the last third of the movie; most of the first third is shot from a subjective camera perspective (well done). There is terrific location footage of San Francisco throughout the film, which looks to me to have been a definite influence on Hitchcock's Vertigo (one shot in particular, a fall from a window, is startlingly reminiscent of the later film). Dark Passage is especially strong in juicy supporting performances; even the actors only on for one scene give it their all. Tom D'Andrea is a standout as a sympathetic cabbie; less than thirty seconds into his first scene, you know you're seeing something special. Anyone who responds to film noir or Forties melodramas ought to catch this movie.

I didn't care for Kill Bill Volume One at all. That's my review.

A much better use of my and your time is the excellent documentary Storm the Skies, directed by Jose Luis Lopez-Linares and Javier Rioyo, on the subject of Leon Trotsky's exile in Mexico and his eventual murder by Ramon Mercader, a Catalonian who imbibed Stalinism with his mother's milk (quite literally; the mother, Caridad Mercader, was a piece of work). Absolutely everything about this content is completely fascinating, and the material is put across exceptionally well; my only complaint is that the directors really needed to run tags at the bottom of the screen for all the interviewees -- they're great, but who are they? Sometimes you can figure out from context, sometimes you can't. Names and descriptors would have helped. Still, that's a minor blemish on a terrific film. The movie is readily available through Netflix.

I have a particular affection for the culturally and geographically vast world of the Iberian-speaking peoples (Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latin American, Caribbean, Brazilian, Luso-African, etc.). I just wish my Spanish was better!