Category: 1958

Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

Louis Malle | 1hr 31min

After assassinating his boss, staging the scene to look like a suicide, and stealthily exiting the office building after hours to run away with his victim’s wife, all it takes is a single loose end to trip Julien up. The rope he used to scale the wall still hangs from the balcony, and the only way to retrieve it is to get back up, remove the evidence, and take the elevator down before making his getaway. No one will be in until Monday morning though, so surely all of this shouldn’t be too much of a setback?

Unfortunately for Julien, the fatalistic pull of destiny has other intentions in Elevator to the Gallows, playing malicious games that intertwine his tale of love and crime with a younger, more reckless couple. Louis and Véronique are a Bonnie and Clyde for 1950s Paris, but not nearly as clever in their spontaneous rebellions. Just as security turns off the building’s power and unknowingly traps Julien in the elevator for the night, these foolhardy lovers impulsively decide to steal his car, possessions, and identity, found tucked away in his wallet. After a friendly German couple they have been drinking with call out their fraudulence, Louis is similarly driven to homicide, though it is fortunately not his name that was written on the motel registration. As a result, a manhunt begins for one Mr. Julien Tavernier – just not for the crime he has actually committed.

Julien’s seemingly straightforward plot to murder his boss to run away with with his wife lands him in the titular elevator – an expressionistic box of shadow and light that Malle’s camera is endlessly creative with.
A pair of criminal lovers in parallel, both committing murder and seeking to escape the consequences of their actions.

With such sophisticated formal patterns knitting together these parallel plotlines in Louis Malle’s narrative, it isn’t a stretch to imagine a more comical version of this film that possesses the dry, morbid humour of the Coen Brothers, contemptuously observing amateurs botch and cover up murders. As an off shoot from Classical Hollywood’s film noir and a precursor to the French New Wave though, Elevator to the Gallows is as deadly serious as can be, prioritising a dark, seductive atmosphere over intricate plot machinations. The melancholic score warrants priority in such an analysis, typifying the jazzy musical style that many falsely associate with American noirs, even though the inspired innovation first occurred here with Miles Davis improvising trumpet lines over a steady accompaniment of piano, saxophone, double bass, and drums. Never has there been a greater sound to match Jeanne Moreau’s dour, brooding expression than this, reverberating a sombre loneliness as she saunters past streetlamps dimly illuminating her rain-drenched face, before sinking her back into the shadows of Paris’ wet, gloomy streets.

Moreau’s face in the rain, the bleary lights of Paris behind her, Davis’ sultry jazz score accompanying it all – Malle lays the noir atmosphere on thick with tremendous results.
Shooting on location in Paris, bouncing lights off wet pavement and shrouding actors in darkness.

As Julien’s lover Florence, Moreau is merely one player in Malle’s ensemble, but every scene she shares with a co-star inevitably sees her intoxicating presence dominate the screen. After working in the film industry for almost a decade, Elevator to the Gallows marked her true breakout, and would propel her on to fruitful collaborations with other French directors including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Demy. Her introduction here through extreme close-ups and hushed whispers over a telephone line is treacherously intimate, inviting us into a shady urban world our gut is telling us to steer clear of, yet which nonetheless piques our curiosity. Despite her direct implication in her husband’s murder, our heart still breaks when she is led to believe she has been betrayed, while Malle’s breathtaking location shooting sets her morose depression against bleary backdrops of Paris’ lights and vehicles.

Moreau is only one player in this ensemble, but she singlehandedly walks away with the film’s best performance, earning Malle’s close-ups with her disillusioned expression.
Malle possesses an extraordinary eye for composition and lighting, resourcefully using headlights and street lamps in his mise-en-scène.

Alongside Malle, credit must also go to the expressionist photography of Henri Decaë as well, who in 1958 was already on a trajectory towards greatness through his collaborations with Jean-Pierre Melville. The Venetian blinds, chiaroscuro lighting, and skilfully blocked compositions are evidently signs of two visual artists well-acquainted with film noir conventions, and how they can be manipulated to breed suspense. At the same time, the lack of studio polish in Elevator to the Gallows also signals a purposeful engagement with cinema’s avant-garde potential. Malle is clearly looking to its future here just as much as he is calling back to its past, and isn’t afraid to let his narrative wander off on tangents that we trust will eventually tie back together, paying off on the intriguing formal mirroring between these couples.

Venetian blinds calling back to the Hollywood noirs of the 40s.
Harsh lighting and shadow thrown across this close-up, highlighting Julien’s scheming eyes while the mouth is blacked out.
A superb use of deep focus to build tension, centring Julien in these shots that draw multiple sets of suspicious eyes to him from all across the frame.

By the time Julien manages to free himself from the elevator the next morning, his picture has already been posted in local papers for the crime committed by Louis and Véronique, who in turn have attempted suicide back home to avoid capture. Time passes slowly in the black void where Julien is captured and interrogated in a black void, drifting by on long dissolves while Florence works desperately on the outside to absolve him of his false accusation. Just as Julien’s rope had ruined an otherwise flawless murder and cover-up, so too are Louis and Véronique incriminated as the German couple’s killers by the roll of film they had stolen from Julien’s car, and carelessly left behind at the motel. Unfortunately for Florence though, so too does it contain photos revealing the truth of her affair with Julien, and thereby expose them as her husband’s executioners.

Dissolves in an empty void of an interrogation room, as time slowly drifts by.

Not only that, but Florence’s own future seems far rockier now that she has been implicated too, while the death sentence that Julien was previously facing seems to be downgraded to a few years in prison. As Davis’ wistful trumpet croons, Malle’s camera sits on those photos of Florence and Julien slowly developing in the rippling water, just barely catching the upside-down reflection of her sombre face.  “No more ageing, no more days. I’ll go to sleep. I’ll wake up alone,” her voiceover murmurs, resigning to a destiny she still hopes will one day set her free.

“Ten years, twenty years. I wasn’t indulgent. But I know I still loved you. I wasn’t thinking of myself. I’ll be old from now on. But we’re together here. Together again, somewhere. You see, they can’t keep us apart.”

If fate can find its way back to the perpetrators of two near-perfect crimes by unexpectedly converging both, then surely it can also one day reunite these sweethearts whose love must be similarly preordained, Florence reasons. Given how much destiny seems to have a mind of its own throughout Elevator to the Gallows though, it is not so easy for us to rely on the faith of a condemned, lovesick woman, desperate to find hope in a perilously mischievous universe.

Moreau’s face distorted in the rippling photographic chemicals, her guilt exposed.

Elevator to the Gallows is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the Blu-ray is available to purchase from Amazon.

The Ballad of Narayama (1958)

Keisuke Kinoshita | 1hr 38min

There might not be any reliable historical record that the ritual of ‘obasute’ was practiced anywhere outside of Japanese folklore, and yet it is exactly in that heightened, mythical realm where The Ballad of Narayama dwells. In the small valley where the 69-year-old Orin lives with her grandson Tatsuhei, it is tradition for elders to be carried to a mountaintop when they turn 70, and then left alone to perish. This form of customary senicide is not something to be feared, just as the natural course of ageing is not to be shied away from. In fact, Orin’s 33 intact teeth are even a point of shame for her, becoming the subject of a mocking song that is quickly spread between neighbours, cruelly suggesting that she struck a deal with the devil.

“In a corner in the back room

My granny found herself a set of 33 demon teeth.”

The other implication here is that Orin’s appetite is unusually large for a woman of her age, and in this starving village, a gluttony like hers is worthy of public humiliation. Whether for celebration or punishment, singing is the medium through which ideas are shared among the locals, turning rumours into stories, and stories into lyrics. As implied by the title The Ballad of Narayama, narrative and music are strongly intertwined in the film’s very form, paying homage to the traditions of kabuki theatre with a singer introducing scenes and offering poetic commentary. “The harvest in autumn brings sorrow, Even as the rice ripens to a golden hue,” his wavering voice croons to the twanging of his three-stringed shamisen, evoking colourful images of workers labouring away in yellow rice fields that are only outdone by the bright, saturated visuals Keisuke Kinoshita matches to the lyrics.

Kinoshita’s frames are paintings rendered through theatrical staging and autumnal colours, visualising the lyrics of the sung narration with an incredibly saturated aesthetic.
Each scene is given its own distinct colour palette, cloaking these characters here in vibrant red leaves.

While his Japanese contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu were still working in black-and-white around this time, the lesser-known Kinoshita was boldly venturing into the realm of colour cinematography – still a relatively new technology in late 1950s Asia, yet one which has rarely been put to better use than it is here. Within the widescreen Shochiku GrandScope, the earthy yellows and oranges of autumnal landscapes are detailed in vast, painterly compositions, while the colour palette’s eventual shift to greys and whites as snow starts to fall visually ushers in a dreary seasonal change.

Kinoshita eventually drains his mise-en-scène of colour as winter replaces autumn, shedding a light grey snow across spectacular sets.

Michael Powell’s Technicolor visuals no doubt influenced Kinoshita here, especially with matte backdrops of expansive mountain ranges heavily evoking Black Narcissus, and yet the village’s fluorescent green wash at night and its striking contrast against a bright pink sky makes for an electric contrast that was still quite novel in 1958. The potential of neon lighting was established from there, paving a path for Seijun Suzuki and Mario Bava’s stylistic genre experiments in the 1960s, though it wouldn’t be until Peter Greenaway’s brightly coloured satires in the 80s that we would see another filmmaker adopt and even match Kinoshita’s grand, theatrical artifice.

The Ballad of Narayama features some of the first neon lighting in cinema, striking a jarring visual contrast in the deep greens and pinks.

Because as a visual and formal statement, that is what The Ballad of Narayama is – a heavily curated representation of traditional Japanese storytelling, adapted to a modern medium. Kinoshita never hides the fact that these sets are built on highly controlled soundstages, but also never lets its limitations impose on his vibrant worldbuilding. The lighting dramatically shifts with the sentiment of each scene, at one point dimming to a spotlight on two characters consumed by darkness, and later casting an angry red wash over Orin’s disturbing arrival at a festival with several of her teeth smashed out.

A two shot contained within a spotlight, emphasising their connection through the negative space around them.
An angry red wash is cast over the scene of Orin’s arrival at the festival, revealing that she has smashed several of her own teeth out.

Of course, all of this is entirely in line with kabuki theatre conventions as well, maintaining that invisible fourth wall between the scenery and the viewer as Kinoshita’s camera tracks parallel to the action, and frames interiors in wide shots like dioramas. These sets are incredibly dynamic, often moving walls and props to transition between scenes where one might expect to find a cut, and thereby manipulating our perception of time through theatrical rather than cinematic conventions.

This is not to say that Kinoshita’s direction is stagebound though, as there remains a very sharp attention to detail in his depth of field, mimicking the look of multiplane animations by dividing his frame into separate layers that move at different speeds when the camera drifts past. It is especially the final act of the film following Tatsuhei’s journey up the mountain with Orin on his back that Kinoshita delivers some of his most immaculate cinematic scenery, largely excising dialogue as grandmother and grandson traverse great mossy boulders, cascading waterfalls, and trees that grow more withered with the rising altitude.

Excellent visual storytelling in the editing and camera movement, journeying up the mountain through perilous terrains. The soundstages make for some incredibly rich compositions, obstructed by trees in the foreground while mountain ranges are painted out in matte backdrops.

Atop the craggy peak, the only sign of life are black crows standing over a number of skeletons – foreboding imagery for sure, and yet this pilgrimage is nevertheless one of serene acceptance. Through the ritual of obasute, generations are united in a cycle of life as enduring as the seasons themselves, which just so happen to shift at the exact point Tatsuhei begins his journey back down. Snow begins to fall, and again we move through the same shots as before, though this time in reverse order and with a soft, white powder concealing the vibrant colours.

Fog and death hangs in the air, littering the mountaintop with the skeletons of elders who have perished here before.

Though there may be peaceful closure within Tatsuhei’s family, the burst of violence that disrupts his descent is a culmination of several disputes we have witnessed up to now. His neighbour Matayan is at a similar age as Orin, and yet he does not embrace his encroaching death with such grace. Conversely, his son couldn’t be more ready to rid himself of the old man, finally resorting to dragging his fearful father up the mountain against his will. The brutality and selfishness of these villagers was also firmly established earlier with their lynching of a starving man who tried to steal food, and now as we watch Matayan and his son struggle on a cliff’s edge, we witness another cold-blooded murder. The son’s patricide is an unadulterated perversion of tradition, demonstrating an eagerness to escape the burden of the past rather than let it go with dignity as the conventions of obasute dictate. Grasping for some sort of justice as a bystander, Tatsuhei unleashes his fury upon his neighbour, and eventually succeeds in sending him plunging to his death too.

The village’s disrespect of elders pays off in this terrible struggle between father and son, sending the senior tumbling over the clifftop.

As if sectioning this entire tale off into a sad, distant dream of Japanese folklore, Kinoshita’s epilogue removes us completely from the vibrant sets and theatrical storytelling that have dominated The Ballad of Narayama up until now. Colours are desaturated into a miserable black-and-white, and for the first time the mountain scenery is entirely authentic, seeing a train pull into a modern-day station. The only indication of the region’s history is etched on a sign, giving the station its name – “Obasute”, or the “abandonment of old people.” A term that once carried great pride has become one of mourning, implying a desertion that is not merely symbolic, but loaded with cruel dispassion. Perhaps we can at least find some solace in the preservation of Japan’s forgotten legends through this cinematic ballad of lush, vibrant colours, healing that division between past and present with a painterly reinvention of theatrical and film conventions as we know them.

The epilogue is a powerful formal shift to black-and-white location shooting, returning us to the modern day where trains run through the old village.

The Ballad of Narayama is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD is available to buy on Amazon.

The Magician (1958)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 40min

The Magician has neither the severity of Ingmar Bergman’s more metaphorical dramas nor the light-hearted grace of his comedies, and yet there is an offbeat blend of both here which thrives in the performative scams of one travelling troupe. Max von Sydow is their bearded leader, Albert, specialising in ‘animal magnetism’ and conducting an aura of mystery through his apparent muteness. He is joined by his talkative assistant Tubal, his wife Manda who publicly presents as her male alter ego Mr Aman, and Granny Vogler, an old crone with an affinity for potions. Their driver Simson guides the company’s carriage through stark landscapes and misty forests, wary of authorities who may be tracking them down, and yet as a collective they nevertheless relish their bohemian lifestyle.

Bergman opens The Magician with these gorgeous long shots, framing his sharp horizons and misty forests to perfection.

Their arrival in a small, Swedish village headed by the curious Consul Egerman offers them an audience of varied interests. Public officials bet on Albert’s apparently supernatural abilities, with Dr Vergerus leading the sceptical charge against them. Elsewhere, the consul’s wife Ottilia desperately requests that the travelling charlatan contact her dead daughter, and a pair of naïve maids fall easily for Granny’s stories. While Sanna fearfully submits to the lie that the old woman is a 200-year-old witch, Sara wilfully consumes rat poison that Granny has disguised as an aphrodisiac, and ventures off to dark room with Simson in tow.

If these are the spectators of Albert’s grand lies and performances, then the magician may be representative of Bergman himself – an artist who is as equally frustrated by his blindest followers as he is his harshest critics. Perhaps he lumps himself in that latter category as well. When Albert steps away from the stage, his insecurities rise to the surface, peeling off his fake beard with quiet regret and recognising the hollowness of his act. There is little reward to be found in this profession, eventually leading Granny to abandon it altogether, and Manda to confess her guilt to a smarmy Dr Vergerus.

“Pretense, false promises, double bottoms. A miserable, rotten lie through and through. We’re the most pathetic rabble you could find.”

Bergman stages his actors across multiples layers of the frame with a magnificent depth of field, crafting tension in his ensemble.

With an ensemble as rife with conflict as this, The Magician’s deep focus photography flourishes in its tensions and alliances, visually dividing them into units which themselves are internally fractured. Such rich illustrations of character relationships are not unusual for Bergman, who just the previous year delivered his strongest films to date in The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, but new to his stylistic repertoire here are the dolly shots pushing in on his actors’ faces. It is a fitting match for these characters who demand the attention of audiences. The shadows that Bergman elegantly passes across their features in these cropped close-ups draw us even deeper into their shame, fear, and menace, though he reserves his greatest plunge into an unstable mind for Albert’s greatest con.

Cropped close-ups and sharp lighting drawing us into Max von Sydow’s largely silent performance.
Bergman’s blocking of faces is always on point, casting Sanna in a soft light and Granny’s with harsher lights as she looms over the young maid.

After briefly humiliating the Police Superintendent’s wife and a local stableman with his hypnotic tricks, the charlatan appears to collapse onstage, dead from a heart attack. Dr Vergerus takes on the task of his conducting the autopsy, though soon he begins to feel the presence of some unsettled spirit. Bergman’s cinematography and storytelling here moves directly into the realm of psychological horror – disembodied hands creep slowly into frames, dirtied mirrors catch skewed angles of ghostly apparitions, and the production design itself seems to trap the doctor in its dusty, Gothic clutter. Albert lurks in the shadows, often cast in either pale light or complete darkness, eventually leaving his indistinct profile to loom over the face of a terrified Dr Vergerus.

Bergman submits to psychological horror as Albert haunts his the sceptical Dr Vergerus, pulling out some magnificently eerie shots with his Gothic production design and lighting.

This isn’t just an act of revenge for Albert, but an attempt to definitively prove that even the most hardened cynics can be duped with the right spectacle. Even then though, this struggle between faith and reason is not so easily put to rest. The arrival of police in the film’s final minutes might seem to be the end for these fugitive performers, giving Dr Vergerus good reason to gloat over their defeat – until they are extended an invitation to perform at the Royal Palace by the King’s own request. Bergman’s sharp and sudden veer into comedy at the film’s conclusion marks a final victory for his seemingly indestructible artists. They are scapegoats, bohemians, and cheats, but to root these parasitic entertainers out of a free society is an impossible task in The Magician. It is a nifty metaphor that the Swedish director uses here to turn a critical eye towards his own craft, and in his underhanded visual and narrative manipulations, he lightly exposes the fraud that unites him with his critics.

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

Man of the West (1958)

Anthony Mann | 1hr 40min

The archetype of morally grey heroes with a shameful past was nothing new to the Western genre by the time Man of the West was released in 1958, but few films confronted their protagonist’s historic misdeeds as explicitly as Anthony Mann does here in his world of crumbling ghost towns and old, battered farmhouses. Deep in its dry, Texan desert, one of these ranches is inhabited by a small gang of vicious outlaws headed by Dock Tobin, a grey, weathered men with a haunting cackle and drunken manner that doesn’t seem to sway the respect his henchmen hold for him. Beneath his greasy beard and bushy brow, Lee J. Cobb is entirely unrecognisable, putting forward a truly sordid character with a contemptibility even more intense than his similarly antagonistic Juror 3 in 12 Angry Men. It is entirely a coincidence that Tobin’s nephew and former protégé, Link Jones, is on the train that his gang chooses to hold up, but it is that unfortunate meeting which brings a reckoning for both men, undermining the identities that they have crafted for themselves as bold, steadfast leaders on opposing sides of the law.

Protégé and mentor, Gary Cooper in one of his best performances and an unrecognisable Lee J. Cobb. An important film for the legacies of both actors.

On the spectrum of cynicism that stretches from John Ford’s idealistic mythologising to Sam Peckinpah’s dog-eat-dog nihilism, it is unusual to find a 1950s Hollywood Western sit so far up the latter end with its bleak resolve and depictions of sexual abuse. Especially striking though is just how much Mann’s specific brand of pessimism bears resemblance to Sergio Leone’s, though obviously preceding his gritty Spaghetti Westerns by just a few years.

Like the Italian auteur, Mann shows real mastery of establishing shots in capturing spectacular sets upon a widescreen, Technicolor canvas, impressively using them in the opening scene to stretch a crowded ensemble across a large train station platform. It doesn’t take long though for us to move away from civilisation into open, desert plains, where that huge scale persists through majestic crane shots of worn-out settlements and actors set against an orange sunset.

The most populated scenes of the film are towards the start before it tapers off into more intimate drama, but Mann makes the most of his ensemble in these long shots.
Gorgeous magic hour shooting, 15 years before Malick would start doing something similar in Badlands.
An excellent compositions using the ridiculously huge depth of field, directing our eyes to the speck in the background through Cooper in the foreground.
Grand establishing shots revealing Man of the West’s dusty, ramshackle settlements.

Perhaps the even greater artistic triumph here though is the meticulous staging, pushing the widescreen format beyond epic landscapes and into confined spaces where Mann’s intimate character portraits unfold, making excellent use of the full frame. While Link first meets his two future companions, Sam and Billie, between the narrow walls and low ceiling of a train carriage, the farmhouse where he previously lived out his days as an outlaw soon becomes the rustic setting of the film’s most significant interactions, staging some remarkable arrangements of characters.

Confined interiors combined with Mann’s masterful blocking staggering actors through layers of the frame.

There in that ranch, Link’s uncle Dock Tobin has built up a new crew over the years, and being an older, wearier man than he was in the old days, he now sends them to his dirty work for him. In wider shots here, Mann often frames the scene beneath a slanted ceiling that subtly tips the dynamic off-balance, though his blocking remains immaculate all throughout regardless of where the camera is placed, consistently staggering his actors across layers of his compositions with a beautifully deep camera focus. These compositions are purposefully driven by the guilt, humiliation, and fear of his central characters, particularly as he alternates between a pair of shots during Billie’s forced strip, sequentially relegating her humiliation and Link’s helplessness to the background.

A pair of shots viewing a single scene from different angles, both superbly staged. While Billie is cruelly forced to strip, all eyes are on her, minus Dock Tobin as he slouches in his chair facing the opposite direction – so much character detail packed into these compositions.
The low angle cowboy shot down at the hip, years before Leone would innovate it further in his Spaghetti Westerns.

Still, traces of more classical Hollywood filmmaking are very much present here, as cinematographer Ernest Haller relishes the bright colours of the scenery, and Mann whisks the narrative along to a lush, expressive score from Leigh Harline. Perhaps the strongest connection back to traditional Westerns though is the self-assured performance from Gary Cooper who, while not always offering the strongest onscreen presence in his lesser roles, here rivals his career-best work as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon. Cooper’s portrayal of Link is heavy with stifled guilt, as even before we discover the details of his past, he shrinks back from the gaze of men with suspicious eyes, passing himself off under a different name just to afford himself some peace. When it becomes apparent that some level of cooperation and deceit is needed to survive the brutality of his old mentor, that shame only sets in deeper, driving an internal conflict between the need to temporarily revert to his old ways and his desire to set them right.

Suspicion and guilt in a single frame, pressing in on Cooper through the window.
A beautifully inspired use of the wagon wheel to obstruct our view of a fight, as the camera slowly drifts to the right.

The shabby ghost town that Link’s climactic struggle against Tobin’s gang unfolds within makes for a particularly haunting set piece towards the film’s end, marking the outlaw’s fruitless efforts to keep their self-perceived glory alive. Mann proves himself to be an excellent editor several times through the film in its action-heavy set pieces, but the brilliant coordination of his actors across hills, atop ramshackle roofs, and beneath brittle floorboards makes especially brilliant use of the set’s expansive geography, attentively keeping track of each adversary as the pacing accelerates. The Leone comparison is more apt than ever here, specifically with the low framing of one gang member’s shooting bearing strong resemblance to Henry Fonda’s death in Once Upon a Time in the West.

Mann makes astounding use of the ghost town’s layout to stage a shoot out that looks a lot like something Leone might direct a few years later. This last shot even looks strikingly similar to Henry Fonda’s death in Once Upon a Time in the West.

To finally destroy the hold that Link’s old life has over him, it must effectively be put down, and it is with this resolve that he returns from killing the other gang members to confront an intoxicated Tobin. “Shoot me!” the old man shouts atop a cliff while furiously waving his gun, and though it seems to be a taunt, it is possible that he genuinely wants to end his miserable life. It is apparent now more than ever that he is not the daring leader that his gang members believed him to be, or that Link once viewed him as. He is simply a tiny speck in the distance, and his voice a quiet echo, drunkenly inviting a fight that he is destined to lose.

Dock Tobin drunkenly shouting atop a cliff in the distance – all that remains of his sad, shrunken legacy.

Though Man of the West eventually sees each of these despicable men meet their sad, pitiful fates, they cannot be forgotten so easily. The discovery that Billie was raped in the short time that Link was away from the group is downright gut-wrenching, and is destined to leave a mark on them both for a long time. They may share a sweet affection for each other, but they also realise that this is not a romance that will last. The old world is crumbling, and new ones must be built in its place. Link may serve his own purpose in that effort, but to do so this trauma and guilt must return to where we found it – deep in the recesses of his mind, where only he can see the pain that quietly lives on.

A hint of Yasujiro Ozu in this framing, segmenting the shot through the vertical wooden beams.

Man of the West is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon Video.

Mon Oncle (1958)

Jacques Tati | 1hr 57min

Villa Arpel looks far more like a modern art instalment than a welcoming home, but nevertheless, it is in this stylish, blockish structure where Monsieur and Madame Arpel plant their roots. Everything, from its clinical, square-cut angles to the white path curved perfectly across their manicured garden, carries an air of high-class posturing, but the design alone isn’t enough for Jacques Tati in his send up of post-war France’s consumerist culture. On top of the comical pretence of it all, the efforts of high-flyers to make the world more efficient through automated contraptions and sleek designs has only made it clunkier. Something as simple as a rocking garden chair makes for a nice piece of décor, but its height, tiny backrest, and imbalanced rocker rails makes for a hilariously awkward experience trying to sit on it.

Geometric shapes and angles at the nearly monochromatic Villa Arpel, “ultra-modern” in its stylish décor but barely practical for everyday living.

This “ultra-modern” home is the setting for much of Mon Oncle, even though our main character, the non-verbal oddball Monsieur Hulot, lives a rather different life to Madame Arpel, his sister. His rundown apartment complex might almost look like a ramshackle Dr Seuss cartoon in its winding passages and angles, but just like everything else in this world, it is still entirely made up of geometric blocks. When Hulot first enters this architectural oddity, we sit in a long shot as he passes by windows, giving a glimpse into the convoluted path he takes which winds through seemingly every room until he reaches his flat at the top. Living in this old-fashioned, decrepit building isn’t any easier or harder than living in a fashionable, automated home, but it at least doesn’t hide its messiness behind any polished, deceitful designs. Furthermore, the windows in both residences are always being used to visually sever individual body parts from the inhabitants, whether it be a low opening focusing on Hulot’s feet, or two adjacent, eye-like portholes in Villa Arpel making its owners’ heads look like pupils. It is a material culture that these characters dwell in, and by cutting them up into segments Tati frames them as objects, dehumanised by the very constructions they live inside.

Tati’s intricate dioramas reflecting their eccentric inhabitants.
The magnificent sets of Mon Oncle comically diminishing the stature of his characters, turning them into dehumanised products of their own material surroundings.

This perfectionistic approach to blocking actors like models in meticulously arranged dioramas would go on to inspire such modern auteurs as Wes Anderson and Roy Andersson, but in terms of those who impacted Tati, Charlie Chaplin must get a great deal of credit. It isn’t very often one can point to Chaplin’s influence as a director (his influence as an actor is an entirely different matter), but Tati is a true acolyte of the silent comedian, as he similarly constructs his film out of vignettes and running gags, all of which formally build on the larger satire at play.
 
Chaplin’s comedy Modern Times looms largest of all, particularly as Monsieur Hulot finds himself in a factory job he just isn’t cut out for. Though he is tasked with managing some sort of long, red tube that keeps pumping out of an engine at an unyielding pace, what exact purpose it serves remains purposely vague. As Hulot loses control, the tube starts warping, and despite there being nothing logical or meaningful about this absurd production process to begin with, he quickly becomes the laughing stock of the workplace.

Clean precision turns to controlled chaos in Tati’s factory scene, throwing back to Chaplin’s Modern Times.

The precision with which Tati blocks visual gags doesn’t just reveal itself in these large set pieces, but even in movements as small as the way a group of party guests pick up all the furniture in a garden party to get away from a water leak, carry it around winding paths, stepping-stones, and platforms, only to arrive back at the same spot that they originally left. Along the way as they move down a small flight of steps, the table tilts, and a jug sitting on it pours itself into a cup in what may be the smoothest motion we see from any inanimate device in this film. How hilariously ironic too – any high-tech contraption whipped up to serve the same purpose wouldn’t do half as good a job as this accidental occurrence.

Through his performance as Monsieur Hulot himself, Tati reveals that his understanding of slapstick comedy goes beyond his direction, as he turns himself into a comic object buffeted about by overly complicated paths and mechanisms. There is just as much of Buster Keaton’s deadpan in his manner as there is of Chaplin’s scrappy Tramp, though the figure that he strikes is entirely unique. The crushed hat which slopes down over his face, the long pipe hanging out of his mouth, the tan trench coat and pants that sit high above his striped socks – unlike his well-to-do sister and her bullish husband, he does not dress to impress for garden parties or white-collar offices, but he rather opts for an outfit that seems both thrown together and completely distinctive. Looming tall over everyone else while springing about on his long legs, he bears the physicality of an overgrown child out of step with his surroundings. Perhaps this is partly why his nephew, Gérard, is so drawn to him over his real father. While Monsieur Arpel brings home a toy locomotive manufactured by his company, Hulot gifts him a dangling, paper clown, and it is clear which one he prefers.

One of the great silent comedic characters, bridging the gap from Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp to Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean.

How curious it is that this film is titled Mon Oncle (My Uncle) as if Gérard is telling us this tale, even though we spend many scenes without him. To narrow our focus though, this title is most tenderly captured in the simple motif of Gérard grabbing onto his uncle’s hand while he is distracted, followed by the two sharing a tender moment of affection. In these moments, we share Gérard’s innocent perspective, and then carry that appreciation of Hulot through the rest of the film, defining him by his status as a funny, endearing paternal figure. While the world is rattling along a jagged path of arbitrary progress, the actual future of the world, the children, are left behind. In the end the only hope that this world isn’t as superficial, self-centred, or tangled as it seems is this playful, eccentric man, who finds himself just as lost among the madness as them, yet always finds joy in its strange curiosities.

Mon Oncle is available to stream on the Criterion Channel, and available to rent or buy on iTunes.