Category: 1953

The Earrings of Madame de… (1953)

Max Ophüls | 1hr 45min

French noblewoman Louise regularly visits the local Catholic church in The Earrings of Madame de… to pray for prosperity, though the tenets of her faith do not fall in so neatly with the Christian doctrine of 19th century Europe. The intended recipient of her invocations is not necessarily God, but rather a fatalistic universe which has already miraculously proven itself to be on her side, whether by chance or providence. As for the sacred charm which she venerates as an icon of good fortune, one needs to look no further than those precious diamond earrings which she had previously tried to part with to pay off her enormous debts, and yet have since returned through pure happenstance. This of course can’t just be coincidence, she decides, and thus these pieces of jewellery are imbued with a mystical sentimentality that she alone has conceived of in her mind.

If destiny does exist within The Earrings of Madame de… though, then it isn’t one that can be influenced simply through prayers, wishes, or talismans. It is cold and indifferent, guaranteeing that whether it is Louise’s husband André or her paramour Fabrizio who ultimately wins their contest, she will be left heartbroken by the loss of the other. Max Ophüls may have been German-born, and yet these lyrical contemplations of fate’s ironic passages position him as perhaps the greatest inheritor of France’s poetic realism in the 1950s. Moreover, this lofty status is only strengthened by his use of Jean Renoir’s favoured cinematographer Christian Matras, crafting long, elegant tracking shots that carry the legacy of his cinematic forefathers.

Exquisite use of frames all throughout the film, wrapping characters up in ornately designed mirrors and trapping them behind windows.

There are few visual devices that match so gracefully to the film’s predeterministic perspective as this, seeing the camera trace the winding paths of objects and people before settling on extraordinary frames that Ophüls has perfectly arranged as the camera’s destination. Right from the very first shot, he is already laying the groundwork for this overarching aesthetic in a 2-and-a-half minute long take that begins on those fateful earrings, follows the movement of Louise’s hands through dressers and armoires, and finally catches her reflection trying them on in a small, oval mirror. As a result, she is immediately introduced as a woman defined by her abundantly lavish possessions rather than her innate qualities or relationships.

Ophüls opens his film with a masterful tracking shot that starts on the titular earrings, before following Louise’s hands through her wardrobe and dresser, and eventually revealing her face in a mirror.

Ophüls is not one to cut corners on his production design either, consuming Louise in a cluttered opulence that evokes Josef von Sternberg’s busy mise-en-scène, yet without the harsh angles of his expressionism. Hanging around the edges of her bed are thin gauze drapes patterned with floral emblems, often framing her face or lightly obscuring it as the camera peers into her intimate domain, while elsewhere dining tables laden with candelabras, glassware, and bottles obstruct our view from low camera angles. Behind the seated guests, a giant mirror stretching the length of the wall turns the ballroom dancers into a lively backdrop, surrounding Louise with upper-class splendour on every side. Even when she grows depressed, she remains totally consumed by this material lifestyle, as Ophüls sinks her body into a large armchair that leaves only her head visible at the bottom of the frame. Just as exorbitant wealth incites Louise’s romantic interest, so too does it stifle relationships, including her marriage to André whose large bed sits in the same room far away from her own. Though she has taken his surname, Ophüls underscores its complete irrelevance to her identity all throughout The Earrings of Madame de…, frequently censoring it with diegetic interruptions and convenient camera placements.

Hanging around the edges of Louise’s bed are thin gauze drapes patterned with floral emblems, often framing her face or lightly obscuring it as the camera peers into her intimate domain.
Behind the seated guests at the ball, a giant mirror stretching the length of the wall, turning the ballroom dancers into a lively backdrop and surrounding Louise with upper-class splendour on every side.
When Louise grows depressed, she remains totally consumed by her material lifestyle, as Ophüls sinks her body into a large armchair that leaves only her head visible at the bottom of the frame.

That the earrings which Louise decides to sell were a wedding gift from André speaks even more to her disinterest in their marriage, motivating her pretend to lose them during a night out at the theatre, before actually pawning them off to local jeweller Mr Rémy. At least her husband returns the sentiment, or lack thereof, as once Mr Rémy secretly sells them back to him, he presents them as a farewell gift to his mistress Lola before she leaves for Constantinople. During her travels, they are again used to pay off personal debts, winding up in the hands of another jeweller who in turn sells them to a passing traveller – handsome middle-aged gentleman, Fabrizio. That he should later run into Louise twice in the span of two weeks and eventually fall in love with her seems too strange of a coincidence, and when he unassumingly gifts her the earrings that she once owned, she too recognises the remarkable journey they took to return home.

The earrings travel from Paris to Constantinople and back again, passing through the hands of multiple strangers yet always being guided by fate.

Within this web of affairs though, André is no fool. He indulges Louise’s pretence of losing her treasured earrings for some time despite knowing the truth through Mr Rémy, and his observations of her apparently platonic relationship with Fabrizio stoke suspicions. From his position of power and knowledge, he maliciously toys with her, and even forces her to give the earrings to his niece who has recently given birth. Quite remarkably though, Ophüls sees them sold to cover debts for a third time in his narrative, and thus Louise is given the chance to buy them back from Rémy much to her husband’s dismay. After all, no longer do they represent their matrimonial union, but rather her relationship with Fabrizio which has reliably conquered the stacked odds against it.

With Ophüls’ dextrous camera manoeuvring the ups and downs of this affair, it isn’t hard to fall prey to Louise’s romantic idealism either. The coordination of his cranes and dollies through scenes with multiple actors become a delicate dance of blocking – quite literally too in a montage that breezes through several weeks of illicit encounters at balls. As Louise and Fabrizio waltz through large crowds, the camera delicately weaves with them, drifting further and closer to their quiet conversations in rhythmic patterns. With each individual dalliance being linked by long dissolves, Ophüls creates the impression of one long, uninterrupted dance, blissfully contained inside a dream that Louise will keep prolonging for as long as destiny wills it to live.

A splendid montage of long dissolves weaving together multiple meetings between lovers, each time with the camera freely tracking their movements across the ballroom.

As far is Louise is concerned though, this is barely an obstacle. “Will we meet again?” Fabrizio asks on their second chance run-in, to which she replies with absolute confidence, “Fate is on our side.” Of course, this faith rests on flimsy foundations, imbuing material objects with arbitrary meaning in much the same way her friend applies clairvoyant readings to ordinary cards. Ophüls’ formal construction of this character through multiple belief systems is impeccable, eventually rolling them into one when she returns to the shrine of St. Genevieve in the closing minutes of the film, and leaves behind her earrings as an offering to whichever God may be listening.

Louise is a woman who relies on multiple belief systems, twice visiting the church to pray for good fortune, and giving Ophüls a solid excuse to return to this marvellous composition.
Ophüls is an early adopter of canted angles, subtly throwing the mise-en-scène off-balance as the drama winds out of control.

Is it fate then which coincides Fabrizio’s death with her relinquishing of these jewels, or was this merely the random winds of chance delivering a long overdue tragedy to a woman who has never known true heartbreak? Perhaps this vast, erratic cosmos does not care so much for the life of any one individual after all, with the only meaning in it being imprinted by those actively seeking out patterns. Imposing formal structure upon chaos may very well be Ophüls’ job too as a storyteller, but in what is likely the strongest shot of The Earrings of Madame de… he also recognises the human soul’s slow fade into insignificance with romantic poignancy, watching the scattered shreds of a torn-up love letter blow out a train window and join a flurry of snow. Just as it is impossible to find any meaningful configuration in their singular paths, their destinations are similarly unknowable, and yet to follow their journey upon gusts and breezes in this beautiful, fleeting moment is to truly comprehend the inscrutability of life’s unpredictable paths.

An astounding transition from pieces of a ripped-up letter to falling snow, blowing in the wind along unknowable paths.

The Earrings of Madame de… is streaming on The Criterion Channel and is available to purchase from Amazon.

I Vitelloni (1953)

Federico Fellini | 1hr 47min

Every so often, something genuinely interesting happens in the coastal Italian village where idle womaniser Fausto stirs trouble with his friends, and Federico Fellini eagerly latches onto those fleeting breaks from the monotony. As for the moments in between, I Vitelloni’s mysterious narrator has no issue condensing entire months into a few seconds, briefly noting the facial hair that Fausto’s friends grow as the most exciting thing to happen between their ringleader’s momentous return from his honeymoon and his first scandalous affair. This first-person voiceover is tinged with nostalgia, assuming the perspective of the entire group looking back on their youth, while largely resisting being pinned down to any individual. Still, it very gradually becomes apparent which of them in particular its attitude most aligns with – the only one to have broken free from those small-town constraints, and whose reflections come from a poignant distance.

Moraldo is not the main character in I Vitelloni, let alone his own story, though he is clearly the most introspective of his friends. While the others are chasing women, fame, and glory with a middle-class arrogance, he finds himself wandering the town’s cobbled stone streets at night, recognising his immediate surroundings as the source of his listless discontent. The trivial drama of Fausto’s sleazy escapades can only keep one entertained for so long before they grow wearisome and the call of grander adventures become louder, fading his formative years into memories kept alive through stories like these.

I Vitelloni was Fellini’s Mean Streets long before Martin Scorsese would break through with his own plotless hangout film in 1973, dwelling in vignettes languidly strung together in the lives of young, immature men.

It would be incorrect to label I Vitelloni as an autobiographical film for Fellini, though the essence of his own youth lived by the Adriatic Sea visibly carries from life into fiction. The meandering plotlessness of this hangout narrative would go on to influence everyone from Richard Linklater to the Coen Brothers, but first and foremost it left its mark on the global New Wave movements of the 1960s and 70s. The resemblance between Fellini’s work and Martin Scorsese’s breakout Mean Streets is especially striking, with Fausto’s philandering and Johnny Boy’s troublemaking both building towards a pair of crises that erupt with brutal consequences. Outside of these climactic reckonings, vignettes are also effortlessly strung together into landscapes of celebration and struggle, trapping characters in loops that continuously cycle between both.

Even if it diverges from Roberto Rossellini’s examinations of post-war destitution, I Vitelloni is a film to make Fellini’s neorealist mentor proud, resourcefully shooting on location in small Italian towns and crafting tremendous visuals from their historic stonework.

Much like Scorsese’s film, I Vitelloni similarly marked the first true work of cinematic brilliance from Fellini as well, though the introduction of characters through a floating camera and descriptive voiceover is purely Goodfellas. Even if it diverges from Roberto Rossellini’s examinations of post-war destitution, this is a film to make his neorealist mentor proud, resourcefully shooting on location in small Italian towns and crafting tremendous visuals from their historic stonework.

The heightened emotions of classical Hollywood are nowhere to be found here, replaced by day-to-day interactions and complex relationships that are consistently developed in Fellini’s naturalistic blocking. There is also no external conflict in our characters’ walk down to the town’s deserted beach on a windy afternoon where they playfully consider of how much money they would jump into the water for, and yet the bleak beauty of his coastal scenery, the uneven arrangement of their bodies, and their impassive expressions reveal an unspoken, disenchanted aloofness. Fellini’s staging in such moments often illustrates the indolence of these men who are described in the film’s translated title as layabouts, and yet never quite so explicitly as his magnificent shot of them lounging across chairs outside a café, alternating directions far into the background.

A wealth of meaning packed into the staging of bodies along the edge of a pier, staggered into the background as the men passively gaze out at the ocean – the sheer edge of the only society they have ever known.
Bleak coastal scenery set beneath an overcast sky, with jagged metal wires foregrounded to the left. Fellini never simply throws away his frames.

At least the small routines and traditions of this community connect them to some sense of cultural identity, even if they don’t quite keep them out of trouble. Whether they are attending the annual Miss Mermaid beauty contest or preparing for the chaotic carnival season, these festivities simultaneously break up the monotony of everyday life, and yet paradoxically become part of that predictable annual cycle. It is often during these events that Fellini’s camerawork, editing, and mise-en-scène grow busier too as extras fill his scenery, enveloping Fausto in intoxicating atmospheres that spur him on to make poor decisions.

Traditions, rituals, and celebrations bring some excitement as they periodically break up the monotony of everyday life, and yet they also paradoxically become part of its predictable cycles.
Fellini designs the frame at festivals like Josef von Sternberg before him, cluttering the mise-en-scène with extravagant, maximalist detail and streamers.

Not that it takes much for the playboy to rush headfirst into impulsive exploits and affairs, even after his shotgun wedding to Miss Mermaid contest winner, Sandra Rubini. His disloyalty borders on sociopathic, seeing him slyly flirt with another woman at the cinema while his wife curls up on his arm, before abruptly leaving and following the beautiful stranger home. Later when he is forced to finally get a retail job, he even tries on multiple occasions to seduce his boss’ wife Giulia, and retaliates with petty vengeance when he is fired in a far more gracious manner than what he deserves.

Fausto is easily the greatest character of I Vitelloni – a man his friends call their spiritual guide, yet who is completely devoid of responsibility and shame, leaving his wife at the cinema to cheat on her with a fellow moviegoer. As such, he becomes a complete representation of masculinity at its most immature and self-serving.

Of course, Fausto’s friends aren’t entirely blameless in all of this. They are enablers of the worst kind, convincing him to steal Signore Michele’s angel statue to compensate for the weeks of work he has lost, and directly lying to the hopelessly naïve Sandra about his cheating. They call him their “spiritual guide,” but it is clear that they are young men simply electing the coolest, most confident peer in their vicinity as their leader. Only when Sandra discovers his infidelity and runs away from home with their baby is Fausto forced to accept responsibility for his family, having thoroughly humiliated himself by crying to his old boss and being belted by his father. Whether or not he will fall prey to his lustful impulses in the future remains uncertain, and yet his illusion of self-composure has nevertheless begun to weaken, loosening his grasp over those who once held him as a paragon of masculinity.

Fausto is a fitting name for the playboy of the group, constantly seeking out hedonistic excitement at the ultimate cost of his own freedom.

The time has come to move on, these men realise, and yet only Moraldo has the motivation to set himself free from the past. He doesn’t know where his train will take him, but as he looks back for the last time, Fellini rapidly cuts through a montage of his friends lying in bed and becoming little more than distant memories. They too will grow old and perhaps even find success, but within I Vitelloni’s ruminations they are frozen in an eternal, static youth of idle recreation and empty pleasure, lazily hoping for the day that the world might finally give their lives greater purpose.

A poignant ending, flitting through a montage of each friend asleep in their bed, before farewelling the only one among them with the courage to leave town and make something of his life.

I Vitelloni is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, the Blu-ray is available to purchase on Amazon.

Tokyo Story (1953)

Yasujirō Ozu | 2hr 16min

There are very few filmmakers who can accurately be called one of cinema’s great minimalists while detailing compositions with such organised clutter, revealing intimate details of an apartment building’s residents through the placement of a tricycle in a hallway, or the neat rows of white laundry hanging on a clothesline. For Yasujirō Ozu, it virtually came as second nature by the time he reached the pinnacle of his craftsmanship in Tokyo Story. There is a clean, precise order to the lives of the Hiryama family, precariously balancing traditional ideals valued by grandparents Shūkichi and Tomi against their children and grandchildren’s desire to keep striving towards a more independent future, and binding all three generations together through the meditative routines of everyday life. As the centrepiece of this narrative, they form a delicate microcosm of post-war Japanese culture, gently tugging further apart over time yet never reaching any sort of breaking point.

Bodies are staggered from foreground to background with care, here blocking each actor in a separate layer of the frame. This is a family drama, but there is division even among the children.
Ozu is on the short list of cinema’s greatest masters of mise-en-scène, composing his shots with the sort of detail that turns settings into extensions of characters. Here, it is the tricycle in the foreground, the sake bottles off to the right, and the hanging laundry in the background which tells us about the residents of this apartment building.

For Shūkichi and Tomi, negative emotions are sealed tightly behind beaming smiles and quiet hums, only ever expressing difficult sentiments in private conversations. “We have children of our own, yet you’ve done the most for us,” Shūkichi warmly thanks his widowed daughter-in-law Noriko, expressing gratitude for providing the hospitality during his visit that Shige and Kōichi were too busy to offer. They too are polite in their outward mannerisms, but are far less adept at concealing their frustration over the burden of their parents’ visit. “Crackers would have been good enough for them,” Shige scolds her husband when he buys them expensive cakes, and she can barely hide her disappointment when they return early from a spa vacation organised to get them out of the house.

Indeed, tension is rife in Ozu’s family drama, though comparing it to the bitter dynamics of an Ingmar Bergman film or the overflowing Hollywood melodramas of Douglas Sirk reveals few similarities. Ozu’s friction does not beg for urgent resolution, but would much rather dwell in silent acceptance, evoking a Zen state that finds harmony in the paradoxes of the modern world. Smokestacks, powerlines, and train tracks impose their harsh edges on the curves of natural formations and traditional architecture, becoming the conflicting subjects of Ozu’s characteristic pillow shots. Where a more conventional director might use a simple establishing shot to transition from one scene to the next, we instead slip through elegiac clusters of exterior views, lifting us outside the narrative flow and into a state of transient suspension. Perhaps just as uncommon as a talented minimalist with crowded mise-en-scène is an all-time great editor who does not push their pacing beyond an easy, measured rhythm, and with roughly ten or so seconds dividing each cut in these montages, Ozu claims this rarified space as well.

Smoke stacks reach for the sky, and powerlines intersect them at corresponding angles, imposing a geometric rigidity on the scenery of modern Japan.
Compare those harsh edges and angles to the elegant curves of traditional Japanese architecture and sculptures – a huge visual contrast between the country’s past and present is represented in Ozu’s pillow shots.
Perhaps the single greatest image of industrial progress, disrupting a peaceful seaside village with a steam train running right through its middle.

Even beyond his pillow shots though, he remains averse to the idea of only staying in a scene for its drama, frequently cutting to an empty room before it is filled with people, and lingering there for a short time after their conversations have ceased. This is not quite the tragic neorealism of Vittorio de Sica or Roberto Rossellini, but rather a naturalism that elevates mundane, everyday living to a level of spiritual transcendence, stripping away obtrusive distractions to encompass us in a contemplative stillness. Besides one deliberate tracking shot when Shūkichi and Tomi sorrowfully head back home from Tokyo, the camera never moves, consistently sitting low to the ground at roughly the same height as the characters in their traditional kneeling position. As if following the rigorous consistency of the family’s routines, he selects a handful of these compositions to repeat throughout the film too, connecting us back to established visual beats. This does not only synchronise us with Shūkichi and Tomi’s symmetrical ‘there and back’ journey across Japan, but it also transforms the act of dutiful repetition into a formal, contemplative poetry that stretches through the entire film.

Ozu will return to a select few compositions throughout Tokyo Story to create a formal rhythm, underscoring the repetition of his characters’ routines and physical journeys.
These two shots demonstrate another use of repetition. They appear roughly ten minutes apart and capture the exact same location in the house, but Ozu pushes the camera slightly further forward the second time round to study the movements of his characters more closely.

Ozu’s delicate timing and framing of these shots are also far more unified with his settings than his characters, often only observing family members from a passive distance as they drift through corridors and rooms. Just like the parallel lines and intersecting curves of the outside world, there is a geometric logic to his careful arrangement of each household item as they fill in negative space, obstruct compositions, and layer hallways with a vivid depth of field. Even when characters are not present, these homes carry the spirit of their day-to-day lives, carving out an unassuming beauty from each sake bottle, pot plant, and umbrella that sits in stasis between uses, yet which makes these spaces feel truly lived in.

Ozu wisely sits in rooms for slightly longer than his characters are actually present, letting us study the incredible detail of his compositions – the pot plant in the foreground, the frames within frames further down, the storage packed close to the ceiling. He uses every part of his shot to beautiful effect.
Another intricately composed shot, revealing the life that persists in domestic settings even while his characters are absent – the hanging decorations, the cabinets along the right side of the frame, the low table slightly obstructing the shot in the foreground.

As we rest in the soothing passage of these still images, time very gradually becomes visible in Tokyo Story, delicately tracing Japan’s shift away from its complicated past and into an equally complex future. As innocent as Shūkichi and Tomi are in their old-fashioned nostalgia, their disappointment in their children at times seems firmly out-of-touch with modern demands, and Shige also recalls with disdain how her father would often come home drunk late at night when she was a child. Her desire to keep moving forward is not out of place among her generation, particularly given the recent traumas of World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Shōji is rarely discussed in Tokyo Story, but his absence silently carries the trauma of World War II, driving home a point of tension between those clinging to the past and those moving into the future.

Having lost their beloved Shōji in the Pacific War, the Hiryamas should understand this all too well, and yet the pain of his memory hurts differently for each family member. Noriko hangs on dearly to the memory of her deceased husband, but when Shūkichi and Tomi notice their son’s framed photo still up in her house, she can barely address it without making a convenient excuse to exit. Later when Shūkichi gently encourages her to let Shōji go and remarry, she accepts her new path with tender grief, finally taking on the lesson that her father-in-law has spent weeks learning the hard way.

For that older generation, the realisation of their fading relevance and mortality has trickled in very slowly. As Tomi sits atop a hill and watches her grandson play, she quietly wonders what he will be when he grows up, before pausing on a sad, poignant question – “By the time you’re a doctor, I wonder if I’ll still be here.” Later during their getaway at the hot springs, Ozu foreshadows her eventual death further with a brief dizzy spell, and at least partially suggests that the commotion of modern Japan is somewhat responsible for her ailing health. The noisy city nightlife certainly doesn’t help either, as there is a subtle restlessness in Ozu’s cutting between Shūkichi and Tomi trying to sleep, the rowdy patrons down below, and those empty, perfectly aligned slippers sitting just outside their room.

Excellent editing at the spa as Shūkichi and Tomi struggle to sleep, conveying a restlessness as Ozu cuts to noisy nightlife below and the slippers just outside their room waiting to be worn.
Even when he isn’t filling his frame, Ozu still uses lines and figures to create these gorgeous minimalist compositions.

Not one to let life-changing events break through his emotional restraint, Ozu refuses to even show Tomi suddenly falling sick on the train home from Tokyo, nor her eventual death back home in Onomichi. This information is instead shared second-hand through other family members who are finally united under a single roof in grief. Ozu’s rigorous blocking of mourners at the funeral holds together a modicum of tradition that survives Tomi’s passing, and her children even contemplate their regrets over not being around more – “No one can serve his parents beyond the grave.” Unfortunately, their empathy is short-lived. Out of her father’s earshot and barely noting his loneliness, Shige tactlessly expresses her wish that he was the one to go first, and not long after she and her siblings have once again disappeared back to their lives in other far-flung cities.

A rigorous arrangement of bodies at the funeral – structure and tradition represented visually.
Outside, Ozu cuts to the cemetery of clustered gravestones, mirroring his blocking of living people – cycles of life and death are embodied in this formal connection.

As flawed as the Hiryama children may be, Ozu’s meditation on generational changes is far from a condemnation of their modern values, and much more an elegiac reflection upon the natural course of life. Following his wife’s passing, a solitary Shūkichi gradually grows more isolated in Ozu’s mise-en-scène, mirroring the upright stature of two old stone pillars as he gazes out at the rising sun, and later sitting alone among his furniture as his home’s sole remaining occupant. These settings are visual extensions of their occupants, but so too are these characters equally consumed by their dynamic environments, drifting along a steady, one-way stream into a fading past. Few directors have found such an eloquent formal match between their aesthetic and their profound contemplations, yet even by Ozu’s standards Tokyo Story stands as his most carefully composed expression of melancholy acceptance, creatively distilling the experience of time’s unyielding passage down to the transient distance between one lingering instant and the next.

A solitary Shūkichi grows more isolated and one with his environment, with his posture reflected in the vertical sculptures around him.
A melancholy final shot framing Shūkichi off to the left of the shot, leaving negative space where Tomi once sat.

Tokyo Story is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD is available to buy on Amazon.

Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 33min

Life is a circus, Ingmar Bergman posits in Sawdust and Tinsel, creating entertainment out of backstage affairs and laughter out of humiliation. It travels long, grey roads from one location to the next, never staying anywhere long enough to grow roots and thrive. It has a strange pull over those trapped in its cycles – the ringleader of this specific troupe, Albert, dreams of leaving it all behind, but realistically this is not something he could ever be satisfied with. When he meets his estranged wife, Agda, who has since settled down and found peace, there is nothing about her stagnant existence that is even slightly appealing to him.

“Year in and year out… everything stands still. For me it’s fulfillment.”

“For me it’s emptiness.”

Therein lies the irreconcilable difference between the nomadic buffoons of Sawdust and Tinsel and the ordinary people they fall for. Albert and his mistress, Anne, will find disappointment wherever they go, but at their very core is a desire for those perpetual distractions which save them from self-pity. In the very first scene as a trail of wagons ascends hills and crosses bridges, Albert joins the coachman to hear the story of how the circus clown, Frost, pathetically tried to cover up his wife as she went swimming in front of nearby soldiers. Bergman renders his flashback through overexposed film, like a bright memory fondly living on in everyone’s minds save for Frost himself. Albert would do well to take the clown’s mistake as a lesson rather than mere entertainment, though given the parallel trajectory that he heads down in Sawdust and Tinsel as a cuckolded man trying to save face, it appears that his embarrassing story may too one day be recounted as a light-hearted joke at his expense.

Over-exposed footage in this initial flashback like a dream, which foreshadows the struggle of sexes that will play out as the film’s main narrative.

Bergman’s wry sense of humour is stronger than ever here, marking a shift in his career away from the troubled romances of youth and towards more philosophically minded dramas with sharp, witty edges. So too does it mark another step forward for him as a visual filmmaker, pairing for the very first time with cinematographer Sven Nykvist who would go on to shoot seventeen more of his films right into the 1980s. In many exterior scenes, and especially that opening montage of wagons trailing across grassy landscapes, the horizon looks as if it has been smothered by a giant grey blanket and pushed right to the bottom of the frame, along with the lowly people who traverse it.

An elegant montage of the traveling circus, its reflection bouncing off calm rivers and rising up over the horizon at sunrise.

As we move indoors, a Wellesian deep focus takes hold of the camera, letting Bergman’s typically excellent blocking emerge in dressing rooms and theatres. It is here where divisions are drawn between characters, both in the layers of visual depth and the cluttered production design, as Frans’ seduction of Anne in his trailer frequently splits them between mirrors in beautifully fragmented compositions. Bergman works wonders with this sort of framing, in one shot catching Frans’ reflection while he stands behind the camera, and having him dangle an amulet right in front of the lens. With a simple image, Anna is tempted away from the life she has grown sick of, and a physical barrier is simultaneously drawn between them. When they are united in this cramped space though, it is of course the mirror which brings them together, inviting an intimacy which she cannot find in her relationship with Albert.

Some impeccable blocking in the mirrors of Frans’ trailer, first dividing them on either side of the frame, and then uniting them in a single reflection.
More division in the blocking, though this time through Bergman’s depth of field splitting Anna and Albert across layers of the frame.

Whether in his personal or professional life, Albert can barely catch a break from anyone, as even when he approaches the local theatre director, Mr Sjuberg, and asks to borrow costumes, he is turned down with a savagely poetic soliloquy. From a low angle, Gunnar Björnstrand stands against an imposing backdrop of the stage’s ornate ceiling and chandelier, drawing a snooty distinction between creators with noble ambitions such as himself, and those like Albert who belong at the bottom of society’s ladder.

“We make art. You make artifice. The lowest of us would spit on the best of you. Why? You only risk your lives. We risk our pride.”

A truly Wellesian low angle, slightly askew and using the deep focus lens to turn the ceiling into an imposing backdrop.

Only an artist with as much self-awareness as Bergman could write a passage so sharply satirical of his own profession. To consider one’s ego as more precious than life is to deem oneself above the material world, and to equally condemn those material beings such as Albert to the “world of misery, lice, and disease” they have always known.

As an actor in Mr Sjuberg’s cast, Frans is just as much an advocate of this classist thinking, topping off his cuckolding of Albert with one final act of sadistic humiliation in the hapless ringleader’s own circus. Starting with a few sexual taunts thrown Anne’s way as she rides a horse around the tent, Albert quicky gets involved too, whipping off Frans’ hat in a show of petty power. It is a brutal, bloody brawl that follows – a struggle of masculine dominance which simply ends up asserting the same rigid hierarchy which makes Albert, Anne, and their troupe the butt of society’s joke.

Albert’s humiliation rendered as circus entertainment, building on Bergman’s potent metaphor of life.
Bergman’s blocking of faces in close-up is among the best in the artform’s history – a lot of this has to do with the lighting, the depth of field, and of course, the actors.

There is nothing but a sorrowful look shared between these two lovers before it is time for them to move on again, riding across monochrome landscapes with the rest of their misfit crew in much the same way they came in. Life’s tragicomic farce continues, undercutting dreams of escaping its stranglehold with constant reminders of their own inadequacy. If there is any solace, at least those embarrassing stories will make for great comic fodder down the track, offering momentary distractions from their sad, squalid circumstances. Bergman needles the existential drama of Sawdust and Tinsel with a fine, sophisticated point, and in his extraordinary staging finds both sympathy and outright pity for its wayfaring circus performers doomed to eternal ridicule.

Sawdust and Tinsel is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Summer with Monika (1953)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 36min

Ingmar Bergman treads familiar ground in the tragic tale of one young Swedish couple’s idyllic summer fling, and yet there is something about Summer with Monika which goes down even smoother than many of his previous ill-fated love stories. Perhaps its laidback pacing can be given some credit for this, dispensing with his usual flashback structure to meet Harry and Monika at their most innocent and linger in their escape to the Stockholm archipelago. Maybe it is also Harriet Andersson’s remarkable debut film performance, the best in any Bergman film at this point, utterly charming us with warmth, poignancy, and honest expressions of sexuality. Certainly though a large portion of this film’s humble beauty can be traced back to the sensitivity of his visual artistry, studying the expressive contours of the actors’ faces in close-up and gracefully traversing their city and island homes.

Rocky coastlines and oceans winding around these young lovers in gorgeous long shots.
Bergman blocks his actors’ faces like few others in film history, and his camera is especially drawn to Andersson’s face throughout Summer with Monika.

With the city’s infrastructure and rivers forming a backdrop to the early stages of Harry and Monika’s relationship, Bergman borrows a few neorealist qualities from the Italians, mounting pressures on both in their individual lives. The camera uneasily hides with a small child behind a wagon wheel as Monika’s father stumbles drunkenly from the local pub with his friends, and though he seems to be in a good mood for the moment, there is still suspense back home as his family carefully walks on eggshells. Slowly, the camera tracks to the side where it settles on Monika’s face anxiously anticipating an outburst – which of course arrives the moment she snaps at him to stop standing on her new shoes.

Meanwhile at Harry’s job, he is visually hemmed in by colleagues criticising his work ethic, and Bergman further crowds the shot with a handsomely constructed composition of glassware lined across its foreground. With the men around him dissipating, Harry’s decisive resignation in this moment feels truly freeing, even seeing him cheekily push one of those glasses off its shelf.

An inspired arrangement of the frame, pressing men in on Harry from the background, and the set dressing from the foreground.

In the surrounding Swedish islands where both seek refuge, city views are replaced with rocky coastlines and oceans, turning this gorgeous rural scenery into their new home. There are plenty of long shots here that Bergman lavishes upon them, framing them within the gentle curve of seashores and atop a pier as they slow dance at dusk, and as he moves his camera closer, they are infused even more with their surroundings. Still landscapes are disrupted by their faces rapidly moving into the foreground, and their silhouetted reflections ripple in ponds like natural extensions of the environment.

Long shots of Sweden’s islands ruptured by faces suddenly entering the frame – playful blocking from Bergman.
Looking up at the sky via reflections in a pond, where Andersson’s own silhouette ripples in the water.
A dilapidated boathouse, a lone dinghy, and a wooden pier reflected in the water – a quiet, romantic composition for Monika and Harry as they slow dance together.

Within the context of the 1950s, Andersson’s intermittent onscreen nudity was considered particularly transgressive, though within this ‘Paradise’ it also carries implications of an Adam and Eve-type fable, much like Summer Interlude from two years earlier. This is a romance that is allowed the time and space develop without external pressures, and Bergman’s close-ups of their faces resting against each other intimately expresses that delicate sentiment.

The appearance of Monika’s jealous ex-boyfriend to destroy their boat though effectively serves the same role as the allegorical snake, bringing moral corruption to the islands where they bask in their simple lives. Small arguments arise as time languidly drifts on, and soon they realise that their days of shirking responsibility are coming to an end. “We have to make something real out of our lives,” Harry ponders, though neither he nor Monika are particularly well-equipped to handle the soul-sucking drudgery of adulthood. Unlike the sudden deaths of previous Bergman melodramas, the downfall of these lovers simply comes through those rites of passage one must shoulder in a society of strict moral standards. Settling down, having babies, the woman staying home as the man goes to work – it is a contrived dynamic that they never had to consider as runaways, and which now wears away at their own self-identities, love, and happiness.

Divisions drawn in the mise-en-scène, with faces at different depths in the frame. Bitter disconnection rendered visually between the two lovers.

Divisions are drawn in the mise-en-scène as their quarrels turn into vicious arguments, and even the bars of their bed frame become oppressive visual obstructions when a fight turns into physical abuse. Yet amid such tragic conflict, Bergman still finds the time to hang on his empathetic close-ups, once capturing their tender love, though now only finding melancholy isolation. When Harry comes home and catches Monika in the middle of an affair, we don’t even get a reverse shot of what he is seeing, but instead we simply linger on his seething dismay. Later after they have separated and all their possessions are being carried out, he catches his own reflection in a mirror and almost seems to stare right at us, as Bergman dissolves into all the memories of their summer paradise.

Bergman shaping Lars Ekborg’s face in close-up through shadows as he wistfully reminisces the romance he has lost.

Easily the strongest and most memorable shot from Summer with Monika is that which hangs on Andersson’s sad, prolonged gaze for over thirty seconds, letting her lock eyes with the camera while she slowly puffs on a cigarette. Though she is sitting in a club next to the man she is cheating with, she clearly feels no emotional investment in any of it, as Bergman gradually tracks in on her passive face and dims the background lighting into complete darkness where she is totally isolated. Jaunty jazz music keeps playing, but there is no joy to be found anymore. Bergman guarantees the loss of innocence in his characters’ lives as sure as seasonal changes, and it is in that contrast of light nostalgia against the demoralising fatigue of urban living where he sinks in a poignant recognition of what modern society has so cruelly stolen from its youth.

Maybe the single strongest shot in the film. Andersson locks eyes with the camera in close-up, which tracks forward as the background lighting dims.

Summer with Monika is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Howard Hawks | 1hr 31min

Casting a glamorous cultural icon as magnetic as Marilyn Monroe in a film directed by a master of gender comedy like Howard Hawks could only ever lead to the wildly vibrant musical romp that is Gentleman Prefer Blondes. A luxurious cruise liner to France is the stage upon which the young star performs as naïve showgirl Lorelei, teaming up with Jane Russell’s sharper-minded Dorothy to deliver a series of duets that charm and entertain, while behind the scenes both women pursue different lines of love. Given that their audiences consist largely of suited men enraptured by their sultry enchantment, it often seems as if they are swimming in a sea of potential lovers, and even in one song taking place offstage, Hawks cleverly turns scantily clad male gymnasts training for the Olympics into background dancers for Dorothy’s playfully pining number ‘Anyone Here For Love?’

There can be no ignoring the major musical set piece of Hawks’ film though, which marks one of the finest moments of both his and Monroe’s careers. ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ may be the purest visual manifestation of the star’s compelling allure, not just over her audience, but towards the choreographed crowd of handsome men gathering around her like a band of besotted devotees. Her pink dress stands out brilliantly against their black-and-white attire and the dazzling red background, shining a deep vibrancy that seems to radiate out from Monroe. As she glides across the stage, Hawks’ camera remains glued to her face, tracking it with adoring infatuation. Around her, women in black dresses become candelabras and chandeliers, and others dance in attractive ballroom formations wearing flowing, pink dresses – though none so tight-fitting or vivid as that which adorns Monroe.

There are few images that so evocatively capture the image of a Golden Age Hollywood starlet as this, offering a brilliant visual panache that the rest of the film never quite delivers again. Still, this is not to say that Gentleman Prefer Blondes is a one-trick pony, as around his musical numbers Hawks builds out an unusual buddy comedy that indulges in Lorelei and Dorothy’s unlikely friendship. Where Monroe’s blonde bombshell speaks with a breathy whisper and falls into comically unfortunate situations through her own guilelessness, the wiser, more sensible brunette Dorothy keeps an eye out for her friend, all while pursuing more conventionally attractive men.

Still, there is something unassumingly shrewd about Lorelei’s own attitude towards the opposite sex, gradually revealing a more perceptive mind than she is given credit for. Though she has a fiancé back home she is perfectly happy with, she is also well aware of the effect she has on men, and is happy to use this to her advantage in feeding her love of diamonds – especially if that man is the affluent elderly businessman, Piggy. As superficial as her desires may seem, she is fully conscious of the double standard being held against her.

“A man being rich is like a girl being pretty. You don’t marry a girl because she’s pretty, but my goodness doesn’t it help?”

Hawks does not seek to make any grand, insightful social commentary, but instead his keen subversiveness rises organically in his genre archetypes, pointedly observing modern gender roles by revealing their artificial limitations. Lorelei and Dorothy’s expectation that a wealthy man onboard may be a potential suitor is hilariously overturned when, after specifically arranging to be seated with him, they discover that Henry Spofford III is in fact a seven-year-old boy with the comically straight-faced mannerisms of an adult.

“I expected you to be much older.”

“I’m old enough to appreciate a good-looking girl.”

Hawks draws in this wonderfully deadpan character again later when he discovers Lorelei stuck climbing out of a porthole from Piggy’s room. When Piggy approaches, some quick thinking and resourcefulness turns Spofford into Lorelei’s lower half hidden beneath a shawl, while her head pokes out the top. This wafer-thin façade is all it takes to trick an old fool like Piggy, who still does not suspect anything even after kissing Spofford’s hand and noting its small size.

In these situations where wealthy, powerful men fall over themselves just to win the attention of attractive women, there is an amusing status-reversal that the two friends have learned to skilfully manipulate. Hawks’ superb command over physical comedy plays an important part in underscoring this, incrementally removing his narrative from reality with each consecutive visual gag, so that by the time Dorothy has invited an entirely male courtroom into a wild musical number, it has fully transformed into a madcap fantasy. There are few Golden Age Hollywood directors as willing to embrace the comical leading power of his female stars as Hawks, but it is through Monroe’s mesmeric screen presence carrying entire songs and visual gags that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes becomes all the more flamboyantly intoxicating.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

The Band Wagon (1953)

Vincente Minnelli | 1hr 52min

A couple of decades before Vincente Minnelli took to The Band Wagon with his excitable camera and lavish colour palettes, it was a musical revue on Broadway, playing through comedic sketches and musical numbers with no great connective thread other than a consistent dedication to entertaining its audience. Fred Astaire headlined the show, though this would be one of the last theatrical productions he would perform in before becoming a major movie star at RKO Radio Pictures. When he returned to it again in 1953, it took a very different form – not as a revue, but rather a full-fledged movie-musical, with a story that plays out a fictionalised account of its creation and triumphant acclaim. Much like Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon’s boisterous examination of the thin line that divides failure and success in the entertainment industry rolls along with grace and zeal, marking it as one of the finest musicals of Golden Age Hollywood.

A top hat and cane to open the film, emblematic of Fred Astaire.

Even before Astaire appears onscreen, his presence is already announced from the very first shot of the iconic top hat and cane held through the opening credits. Then without so much as a cut, we pan to the left and discover the significance of such items within the film – nothing more than relics of a washed-up actor who can barely make a dime off his old props and costumes. The ever-churning Hollywood dream machine has effectively written Tom Hunter out of its story in favour of younger actors, though one last shot at reviving his career arrives in the form of his good friends Lester and Lily, whose musical comedy script could set the stage for his comeback. The only obstacle is the vision of one Jeffrey Cordova, the chosen director whose background in traditional theatre barely masks his camp, tasteless sensibilities, leading him to interpret their creation as a retelling of Faust.

Given the theatre sets that form the basis of many scenes through The Band Wagon, it is no surprised that those stage performances make for some gorgeously expressionistic set pieces. Minnelli indulges in a deep red lighting setup early on when we first meet Jeffrey in a production of Oedipus Rex, complete with ancient Greek robes and Doric columns to fill out the mise-en-scène, and later Cyd Charisse’s young starlet Gab Gerard bursts forth from the frame as she sings ‘New Sun in the Sky’, matching the bright yellow set with a sparkling dress. The camera glides and swirls around these performances, rushing up to meet the actors in elaborate entrances and quietly following them around as they tap dance across the screen.

We don’t spend a long time in this set, but every frame of this Oedipus Rex production could be a painting in its matte texture and colours.
A bright sunburst in ‘New Sun in the Sky’, marked by an explosion of red in this marvellous costume.

This is a level of cinematic energy that Minnelli maintains all throughout the film, not just in those musical numbers that the characters self-consciously perform for audiences on stages. The film starts off steady with Astaire’s solo number ‘Be Myself’ and a set of long tracking shots that capture his jazzy, prancing dance around an arcade in ‘Shine on Your Shoes’. ‘That’s Entertainment’ might as well be this film’s version of ‘Make ‘em Laugh’ in its vaudevillian comedy that continues to show off the talents of the broader cast, but it is when The Band Wagon finally reaches the instrumental piece ‘Dancing in the Dark’ that the bravado of Minnelli’s full spectacular vision is unleashed.

‘That’s Entertainment’ is one of the most energetic numbers, showing off the dancing, singing, and vaudevillian talents of our main cast.

As Tony and Gaby stroll through a city park at night, the camera sweeps in a majestic crane shot over a garden of couples dancing in close embraces, accompanied by a small chamber ensemble off to the side. As the only pair still holding their inhibitions between them, they independently make their way through the crowd, until they reach a hidden courtyard shrouded by trees imprinted against a matte backdrop of tiny city lights off in the distance. Their dance movements start slow with matching footsteps and a twirl, before they both strike a pose. From there, the entire story of their relationship unfolds in their unified movements. It also calls to mind ‘A Lovely Night’ from La La Land which was almost certainly influenced by Minnelli’s narrative setup and elegant visual execution here, but ‘Dancing in the Dark’ even more significantly evokes Astaire’s traditional 1930s movie-musicals with those long, sweeping camera movements that seem to dance with him in synchronisation.

The camera swoops over this crowd of dancing couples in one long tracking shot, anticipating the romance about to unfold.
Elegant choreography to make you swoon, and not a single sung lyric – ‘Dancing in the Dark’ is an easy highlight to pick out with both Astaire and Charisse moving in harmony.

Even outside his musical numbers, Minnelli’s attention to detail in his exquisite production design continues to astound, surrounding characters with deeply sensual and highly curated colour palettes. It is a fortunate thing too that he possesses such a keen eye for spectacle given that the revue The Band Wagon as it exists within the story opens as a major flop. Unlike its theatrical source material, there is narrative tension driving this piece forward, and much of it comes down to the chaotic direction of the production itself. One could imagine a young Mel Brooks watching this and conceptualising The Producers in all its zany ambition, with flamboyant characters taking charge of a disastrous show destined for failure, and Minnelli too fully manifests a catastrophe of grand proportions. On the night before opening, he simply sets his camera back in long shots to watch the chaos comically unfold, with wired actors flying across the stage, the cast breaking down in confusion, set pieces moving up where they should move down, and down where they should move up.

No stage or musical number in sight, and yet Minnelli can’t help colouring in his shots with deep reds and golds – then adding a gorgeous splash of green in the middle of it all.
Masterfully blocked visual comedy, staged to look like pure chaos as everything that could go wrong on this stage does go wrong.

After audiences leave in disturbed confusion from whatever they just watched, the cast and crew party, revelling in what they describe as a “good old-fashioned wake” as if celebrating the death of something they couldn’t get out of their lives sooner. Upon being offered some ham and devilled egg, Tony responds with a sardonic “I think I’ve had enough of both for one night,” trying to keep the tone light, though it doesn’t take long for sobering artistic integrity to kick in. To give up on this show would be to compromise their commitment to entertainment. All it might need is a makeover and back-to-basics revision, without any pretensions of heavy thematic material.

It is with the thirty remaining minutes of The Band Wagon that Minnelli delivers what is essentially the closest thing to a direct depiction of the original revue that the film gets. A medley of musical numbers cascade across the screen, taking the cast from city to city on a wave of success. Astaire finally gets the tap performance with a top hat and cane that is so characteristic of his style, but he also becomes a pulpy detective hero in ‘Girl Hunt Ballet’, a twelve-minute episode that could very well mark the high point of Minnelli’s career. Fight choreography blends seamlessly with dance as the set expands beyond the stage and becomes its own boundless world much like the ballet sequence from The Red Shoes, offering him the opportunity to vivaciously spin and twirl his camera in conversation with this heightened mini-story.

The ‘Girl Hunt Ballet’ is a visual treat, with Astaire taking the role of a hardboiled detective and finding himself in a heightened world of deception and reflections that Minnelli relishes staging.

Needless to say, both versions of The Band Wagon end up a resounding success, though it is far easier to speak to the artistic accomplishment of the film over the revue. The process of creation organically melds into its very narrative construction, and with a director like Minnelli taking charge of the difficult task to render it in cinematic form, it flourishes in becoming far more than just a string of disconnected songs and dances. The Band Wagon lands as one of Hollywood’s most exceptional movie-musicals, fully realising the potential of movements behind the camera to bring exhilarating, propulsive dimensions to that which unfolds onstage.

There is simply no understating the power of Minelli’s colour palettes – a master at work.

The Band Wagon is currently streaming on Binge, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Shane (1953)

George Stevens | 1hr 58min

Shane is recognised so widely as the western that launched a thousand genre conventions, it is easy to forget how much of it takes the form of a 1950s melodrama. The threat of the cattle baron is only really secondary to the central story here of a mysterious man emerging from the Wyoming mountains and changing a family for the better, affecting each member in different ways. George Stevens’ blocking of his actors is integral to these relations, offering layers of subtext and revealing their unspoken feelings. There always seems to be interactions going on between the foreground and background, Stevens using the direction of their eye lines to indicate where their attentions lie, in spite of, or in conjunction with, their physical distance. Shane and the Starrett family are also always being trapped within all kinds of frames – windows, doorways, fence posts, broken slats on saloon doors, even the legs of a horse. Even though they live in this vast, open landscape, their surroundings are visually closing in around them.

Foregrounding of the axe as Shane takes note of it from the background – foreshadowing through Stevens’ pragmatic framing.
Staggered blocking of actors – Kurosawa was crafting compositions like this around the same time. An air of tragedy and melancholy hangs around these silhouettes.

The family dynamic is efficiently set up in the choreographed movement of the opening scenes. Joe Starrett is a man who feels shame in his powerless to protect his family against an indomitable threat. His wife, Marian, loves him dearly but can’t access the same emotional connection they used to have. Their son, Joey, remains oblivious to the serious stakes at play, but the respect he has for his father is gradually eroding.

Joe in the foreground, Joey in the midground, Shane far in the background, and everything is faced towards him. Fantastic layering in Stevens’ staging.

In introducing Shane as the catalyst right away, we immediately see how these dynamics start to shift. He offers them the protection that Joe can’t provide, bringing with him a strength that Joey admires and a sturdiness Marian might even desire sexually. During the community dance scene, Shane and Marian engage in what should be an innocent interaction, but the closeness of their bodies captured in the background while Joe watches them in the foreground from behind a fence visually demonstrates the silent love triangle emerging. Though they are drawn to him, we see restraint and inaccessibility in Alan Ladd’s performance, indicating a lack of emotional support that only Joe can offer. Rather than leaving Joe on the sidelines, Shane bolsters his confidence, thereby giving him the opportunity to win his family’s respect back.

Joe is no fool though. He understands the connection growing between Marian and Shane, but he isn’t angry or bitter. His first priority is that his family is safe and happy, and he sees Shane as a sort of backup plan if he himself were to die.

Joe looking in on Marian and Shane’s relationship from the outside. There is more character development packed into Stevens’ blocking than any dialogue could ever achieve.

Meanwhile, there is strong metaphorical undercurrent of guns that runs through the film. During Shane’s fights and shootouts with the villains, Stevens keeps cutting back to close-ups of Joey looking on in awe, admiring the sheer physical power and violence that the heroic gunman projects. Shane even offers to teach him a few tricks, but Marian is rightfully worried. After all, who is to say that when Joey is an adult he will use his guns for purposes as noble as Shane’s? There is constant tension between his philosophy that a gun is simply a tool “as good or as bad as the man using it”, and Marian’s desire for there to be not “a single gun in the valley”. Neither are wrong. His skill with pistols certainly put a stop to the villains and their firearms, but what’s even better than a good guy with a gun is no guns at all.

Shane isn’t easily separated from them though. Violence is such a significant part of his past, it has infected his conscience with guilt and anger. He is an outsider in this valley, which is a haven for more civilised folk. Stevens keeps framing the breathtaking Wyoming mountains in the background as a reminder of where both Shane and Ryker, the cattle baron, first emerged from – a rougher terrain, and an older era where disagreements were settled with violence. Shane is familiar with men like Ryker, and knows how to deal with them. There is never really much doubt whether he will ultimately win out in that arena. What Stevens invests us in is whether he can deal with them and still live a normal life.

The Wyoming mountains make for a magnificent backdrop to this classical Western story. Like Shane and Ryker, they are coarse and rough, and belong far outside this new civilisation.

Shane realises that is impossible though. The mere fact he so easily bests Ryker and his henchmen in every confrontation tells us that he is no stranger to murder. It is likely he may have even done bad things in his past, as Stevens just keeps painting out the parallels between the two of them. In the end, what distinguishes them is how they decide to use their power in this moment, with Shane choosing to defend the vulnerable. He also realises though that in the act of killing someone, there is little chance for redemption. Though Joe vehemently desires to take on Ryker himself and protect his family, Shane holds him back. Not just because he is worried that he might get himself killed, but because even he were successful he would become a “gun” like Shane, and thus unfit to build his family a nonviolent, prosperous future.

Intimidating framing of these villains, lurking in backgrounds and behind broken slats.

“No guns in the valley”, Shane recalls after winning the climactic shootout. Neither he nor Ryker belong in this valley, and now that Ryker is gone, so is Shane’s purpose for staying behind. Ryker was bitter that younger families were living off the land that he tamed, but Shane recognises that pioneers belong to the past. This new civilisation is one that requires stability, cooperation, and growth – what else was it that the pioneers were building towards anyway? All he can do now is return to the mountains that he came from, bookending the film with a mysterious entrance and exit.

Superhero movies owe a lot to Stevens, as the central theses for so many have emerged from Shane’s own struggle between power and peace. It isn’t without its flaws, since Brandon deWilde’s “gee whiz” performance as Joey Starrett is more than a little forced. But even he delivers in the moments that matter, including the closing scene where he calls after Shane as he heads out of the valley. Regardless of where deWilde’s performance lands, it is only minor compared to George Stevens’ masterful blocking of his actors against open landscapes and confined frames, bringing layers of cinematic excellence to an already outstanding screenplay.

A fantastic composition contrasting the structures of civilisation on the right side of the frame, and the open wilderness on the left, just before a devastating shootout.

Shane is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Pickup on South Street (1953)

Samuel Fuller | 1hr 20min

The early Cold War paranoia of 1950s America pervades Pickup on South Street, where a pickpocket, former prostitute, and street-smart tie-seller unassumingly collide with a Communist plot to secure confidential government information. Much like North by Northwest which would come six years later, the MacGuffin here is microfilm, upon which this data is stored. Beyond this, the stakes of national intelligence barely matter. It is Samuel Fuller’s storytelling around these three ordinary people who come from the pits of society which crackles with chemistry and tension, letting each one use the skills they have honed in their individual professions to navigate tricky negotiations, duplicitous dealings, and sensual seductions.

Fuller is a skilled visual storyteller, often using the staging of his actors and lighting to create superb compositions like these.

Perhaps it is chance which first brings Skip and Candy together on a New York subway train, but his theft of her wallet is all it takes to send them both tumbling down a rabbit hole of spies and secrets. It is a silent opening of superb visual setups that Fuller commands here, drawing the thief out of a dense crowd before moving into close-ups, cutting between their shared glances and the main target of his desire – her white, ornate purse.

One wouldn’t suspect from this skilfully staged opening that Pickup on South Street would be a film especially notable for its bubbling, effervescent screenplay, and yet that is exactly what Fuller delivers, especially once Thelma Ritter enters as police informant, Moe. Though she has always shone in supporting roles, her impact here is sizeable enough to stand next to Richard Widmark and Jean Arthur as our romantic leads, lifting what could have almost been a throwaway character to a career-best performance. She is confident, chatty, and fully understands the savvy power that Moe holds over everyone else, and it is through this marvellous characterisation that her death packs an even greater punch than it might have otherwise, setting up tremendous stakes for our surviving couple.

One of Thelma Ritter’s best performances – she is confident, chatty, and street-smart, selling ties as a front for her work as a police informant.

It is upon those unlikely lovers, Skip and Candy, that Fuller absolutely delights in hanging his camera, recognising the power of both these actors when left alone together. All throughout the film Fuller’s camera moves like its own character, tracking in and out of close-ups and weaving through scenes with intrigue, though in Skip and Candy’s first official meeting after the subway incident he lets it linger on their nuzzling faces for two straight minutes. Skip’s intimate seduction only thinly masks his sly interrogation, though with soft murmuring and sensual kissing like that, we can’t blame Candy for falling right into his trap. Meanwhile, Leigh Harline’s smooth, jazzy score lays the eroticism on thick, lending an extra salacious edge to these stakes of life-and-death.

This film is just burning with passion in the dialogue, performances, and blocking.
An excellent frame here, using the bars of the bedhead to isolate Skip.

Though there are other characters floating around this story who make their own mark, it is predominantly through Skip, Candy, and Moe that Fuller drives his powerful narrative, even bringing it full circle back to the opening subway train where Skip’s pickpocketing skills once again prove useful in lifting a handgun from a Communist spy. Pickup on South Street is a triumph of writing, character, and stylistic camerawork for Fuller, and it is in the marriage of all three that he crafts a compelling thriller soaked in the fizzing tension of Cold War stealth and espionage.

Mirroring in the narrative bookends, bringing this scene from the beginning…
…back into this story at the end. Skip’s pickpocketing skills are both the cause for this narrative’s complications and the resolution.

Pickup on South Street is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Roman Holiday (1953)

William Wyler | 1hr 58min

After Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this is the version of Audrey Hepburn that stands tall in the public consciousness – a young, fresh-faced actress who, while not yet entirely refined in her craft, exudes such natural magnetism that she can carry entire scenes solely with her reactions. This performance, paired with that of the handsomely confident Gregory Peck, makes for a breezy two hour hangout in the streets of Italy.
 
Aside from the clear acting talent on display, Roman Holiday is also all the more effective for its location shooting in the nation’s capital, with William Wyler clearly relishing every opportunity to frame his actors against bell towers, sculptures, cars, stairs, columns, and historical monuments. The seeping of Italian neorealism into American film culture is evident here as early as 1953, even if the product is more hybridised than directly imitative. It isn’t like the studio system of this era to step beyond its backlots and sound stages, but the extra effort pays off here in emphasising the emotional immediacy of the characters and their environment, thereby letting the plot take a backseat much like the films of neorealism.

Shooting on location makes a real difference in setting this film apart from so many other Hollywood films of this era, drawing on the influence of Italian neorealism though with a distinctly more romantic tone.

The tension that underlies the narrative is twofold – firstly in the lie that Joe is maintaining to get a good news story out of the runaway Princess Ann, and secondly in Ann’s own concern about being pulled back into the restrictive royal lifestyle she has grown tired of. We get just enough of these complications recurring through the ensuing adventures that they are never forgotten, but they are not so present that they dominate the sheer joy and romance of the film.

A fantastically efficient character introduction in these sly cutaways to Ann stretching her feet beneath her dress during a formal engagement.

The minimal exposition is especially notable, as all it takes is a few cutaways of Ann slipping her feet out of her heels and stretching during a formal engagement to understand her dissatisfaction. Likewise, the ten-minute finale which wraps up Roman Holiday resolves every single lingering emotional thread with nothing but a few looks and words between the two lovers at a public press conference. Though these words hold little significance on their own, they are brimming with the subtext of coded lovers language. You could mute this scene and understand everything purely through their expressions – Ann’s disappointment in realising the lie Joe has told, his shame at her discovery, her silent forgiveness, his gratitude for their lives crossing, and finally, a mutual, bittersweet understanding that they are set on different paths.
 
Most of all, Roman Holiday is proof that “sweet and charming” doesn’t necessarily mean “small and modest”. William Wyler is a director with an eye for deep focus imagery, and he puts it to good use here by turning Rome’s architecture and geography into a living, breathing environment, providing Ann and Joe the romantic, challenging adventure that both needed at this point in their lives, whether they knew it or not.

A moving end to this brief relationship, everything resolved in pointed subtext and then a silent, satisfied walk away.

Roman Holiday is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.