1968 – Scene by Green

Teorema (1968)

Pier Paolo Pasolini | 1hr 38min

Though Pier Paolo Pasolini imbues Teorema’s structure with the same rigidity as the bourgeoisie’s arbitrary social conventions, his fleeting cutaways to Mt Etna’s chaotic, elemental landscapes are never far away. The volcano is a natural catalyst of transformation and destruction, with its fissures blowing sulphurous steam across slopes of black dust and threatening to erase any semblance of social order within its reach. It wreaks turmoil and madness, both predating and outlasting the entire span of time that humans have lived on Earth. When a mortal being truly grasps a force as primordially unfathomable as this, the effects are wildly unpredictable, though the entropic family portrait that Pasolini paints here captures the complexity of such a world-shifting spiritual experience with mystifying acuity.

*The barren, steamy landscapes of Mt Etna make for inspired formal cutaways, punctuating this rigorously structured film with visions of wild chaos.*

*Sunlight accompanies the Visitor in divine lens flares, framing him like a Renaissance sculpture.*

In the case of Teorema’s lonely aristocrats, it is not the secrets of God’s earthly creation which they must grapple with, but rather a mysterious figure who seems to come from another realm altogether. The Visitor’s eyes are a bright blue that seems to pierce the defences of whoever gazes into them, and at times he is even accompanied by a blinding sunlight forming a halo behind his head. The ease with which he falls into the family’s life is surprisingly intimate, but also offers them a strange emotional healing from their private insecurities.

When Emilia the maid attempts suicide with a gas hose, the Visitor rescues and consoles her. As Pietro the son lies in bed at night, his new roommate soothes his fears. Outside on the grass, he approaches the sexually frustrated mother Lucia sunbathing in the nude and wraps her in his arms. The immature young daughter Odetta invites him into her virginal white room, opening herself up to new experiences. And finally, the ailing father Paolo finds a comforting peace in his guest’s presence, as both walk along a misty river and talk among wild, overgrown bushes.

*Terrence Stamp’s Visitor is often found sitting with his legs open – is he a Christ figure, or is he just sexy? The bourgeoisie could easily mistake one for the other.*

*Picturesque long shots of the Italian countryside, misty and cold.*

These are not merely innocent encounters, but Pasolini connects these characters’ spiritual awakenings to physical self-discoveries through explicit sexual seductions. As a result, each family member is individually bound to parallel journeys, methodically unfolding in the same, formulaic sequence established in the first act, and referenced in the film’s title Teorema – or ‘theorem’ in English.

Following the announcement of the Visitor’s imminent departure, it is according to this order that Pasolini subsequently moves through their confessions in their respective locations. They have all faced the transmutation of their own souls, and now all they can do is contemplate the irrelevance of their old lives, and the uncertainty of their futures. “I no longer even recognise myself,” Pietro reflects in his bedroom. “I was like everyone else, with many faults, perhaps, mine and those of the world around me. You made me different by taking me out of the natural order of things.”

Out on the lawn, Lucia reveals the “real and total interest” the Visitor filled her life with during his stay, and inside Odetta expresses thanks for helping her grow up and explore her sexuality. As for Paolo, who has always believed “in order, in the future, and above all in ownership,” this guest has destroyed everything he understands about himself and the world. The only way he can imagine rebuilding his identity would be through “a scandal tantamount to social suicide,” separating himself from the materialism and ego of the modern world to seek a deeper truth in his existence.

*A green lawn, green furniture, green gates – Pasolini is committed to the colour in his mise-en-scène that slightly lifts this world out of reality.*

As for Pasolini’s stance on the sanity of it all, he approaches the matter with both delicate consideration and savage criticism. This wealthy family have been living a superficial lie for many years, consumed by worldly distractions and capitalist privilege, and so cinematographer Giuseppe Ruzzolini infuses these scenes at their Milanese estate with a pristine fragility. Characters are blocked in rigorous arrangements worthy of paintings as they lounge on the lawn and seat themselves symmetrically around the dinner table, though these meticulous visuals carry a strange tension with Pasolini’s naturalistic, handheld camerawork. The stylistic contrast is unsettling, subtly detaching the family from the reality of the working class witnessed in the opening scene’s documentary footage, while containing them within a dream of sepia filters and ethereal green hues weaved through the mansion’s gates, lawn, cars, and décor.

*Rigid symmetry in the house of the bourgeoisie, holding together a pristine, fragile facade of order.*

*And in contrast to the curated blocking is the documentary footage of the opening, associating the working classes with a more naturalistic aesthetic of handheld camerawork.*

*The sepia filter Pasolini occasionally applies is otherworldly and alien, setting up this bourgeoisie family as people we cannot relate to.*

Not that the extremity of their spiritual conversion is any less insane than the absurdity of their bloated privilege. Pasolini heavily implies that these nobles are so emotionally repressed they may simply be confusing the ecstasy of intercourse for divine revelation, further suggesting that the only two forces capable of tearing down oppressive class structures are sex and God – or at least, the unadulterated belief in them. Theological art and texts thus become ornamental in Teorema’s satire, displacing Ennio Morricone’s gloomy jazz score with Mozart’s haunting Requiem, and pondering Bible verses in contemplative voiceovers. Even here though, Pasolini is quoting the Book of Jeremiah to consider religion’s erasure of identity through sexual metaphors.

“You have seduced me, O Lord, and I have let myself be seduced. You have taken me by force, and you have prevailed. I have become an object of daily derision, and all mock me.”

*Christian icons torment Lucia following the Visitor’s departure, stranding her in spiritual emptiness.*

On one level, Pasolini is adopting the transcendent awe of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s films, gazing at impossible miracles of fasting, healing, and levitation performed by Emilia when she returns to her hometown. As the only main character here who belongs to the working class, she alone has the capacity to truly perceive and absorb the sacred, being unattached to the bourgeoisie’s material lifestyle. Her eventual sacrifice through live burial and self-immolation is even shot with an astounding beauty against the orange Italian sunset, capturing a glimpse of the sacred as she humbly resigns her body to the Earth.

*Only the maid’s transformation truly intersects with the divine, performing astonishing miracles that cannot be explained.*

*Emilia’s hair also turns green, tying her into the ethereal colour palette.*

*Pasolini uses magic hour exquisitely in Emilia’s self-burial and immolation, resigning her body to the Earth.*

Pasolini’s rigorous blocking of the family around Odetta’s catatonic state also visually alludes to the tragic funeral of a devoted believer in Dreyer’s Ordet, but there is no profound resurrection to be found here. The rest of this newly inspired family is as lost as ever, seeing Lucia aimlessly search for fulfilment through affairs with younger men, and Pietro express his lustrous longing for the absent Visitor through abstract painting. Art may be elevated in the eyes of upper-class society, but the son’s internal self-worth is thoroughly degraded as he recognises the lowliness and misery of any honest creator.

“Nobody must realise that the artist is a poor, trembling idiot, a second-rate hack who lives by taking chances and risks, like a disgraced child, his life reduced to the absurd melancholy of one who lives debased by the feeling of something lost forever.”

Odetta’s physical decline evokes the visual solemnity of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet. Rather than a divine resurrection though, Pasolini cynically displays a spiritual death in this superbly blocked composition.

*Lucia goes searching for the physical intimacy that the Visitor once provided, only to find emptiness in carnal pleasures.*

Pietro is driven to abstract artistic expression in the absence of the Visitor, trying and failing to capture the essence of the sublime. Each family member’s reaction to realising the desolation of their own souls is diverse and indicting.

This extends further to the other members of this family who now spend their lives searching for an irrecoverable connection to a higher purpose, though perhaps Paolo understands the insanity of it more than anyone. Driven mad by his own empty existence, he enters a train station and strips himself completely nude, before handing the entire factory over to his workers. A victory is secured for Pasolini’s Marxist politics, returning the means of production to the industrial proletariat, while the black, desolate dunes of Mt Etna which have appeared intermittently throughout Teorema beckon a demented Paolo away from civilisation.

Unfortunately, whatever secrets the ancient volcano holds are inaccessible to this former capitalist, whose renunciation of all material possessions has only exposed his own hollowness. He runs through these landscapes in agony, as if trying to find some justification for his total sacrifice, but there is no power great enough to heal those souls eroded by pride and entitlement. Finally seeing themselves for what they are, all the bourgeoisie of Teorema can do is scream into a void that even God dare not touch, devolving into a state of repulsive, primal desperation that Pasolini knows can never be fulfilled.

*Paolo’s reaction to losing the Visitor is the most insane of the lot, shamefully bearing his naked to the public and exiling himself to the wilderness.*

*A brilliantly mystifying formal pay-off to the Mt Etna cutaways as Paolo screams into the void, unable to find the answers he seeks.*

Teorema is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the DVD and Blu-ray is available to purchase on Amazon.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick | 2hr 19min

Beyond the apparent plotlessness of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and within its constant shifting of perspectives, there is a single, guiding figure uniting the eons of time that pass through Stanley Kubrick’s awe-inspiring cinematic vision. The monolith may only appear for less than ten minutes of screen time, and yet is our most consistent companion in this film, curiously emerging at each new leap in evolution as the human species moves steadily further away from home. It towers above them as a large, black rectangular prism, bearing no mark of its purpose or origin, yet the mystery it projects is compelling. It is as much a celestial phenomenon as the stars, planets, and moons above us, and even aligns with those astronomical bodies in perfect symmetry as if writing our biological and technological advancement into the inextricable code of the universe.

As much as primates from across the evolutionary spectrum are driven to reach out to it in wonder though, it projects a soul-shaking fear from its imposing aura. Kubrick’s decision to replace Alex North’s score with pre-existing music was harsh yet inspired, and in this instance, he associates the monolith’s unnerving presence with a haunting, atonal requiem by classical avant-garde composer György Ligeti. The first three times we encounter it, sopranos and mezzo-sopranos waver over a twenty-part chorus that almost seems to be screaming in eldritch terror, producing a dissonant tone that simultaneously beckons the human race into an unknown future and exposes the smallness of their existence.

*The monolith is simple in its design but imposing in its formal majesty, marking each key moment of evolution through human history.*

Moons, planets, and stars align with the monolith in a series of elusive, formally recurring shots – Kubrick is deliberately keeping us at a distance from any clear understanding of its meaning, but we can feel the weight of the universe each time the pattern emerges.

The only instance we encounter the monolith without this accompanying music is in its fourth and final appearance, bookending the film with Richard Strauss’ majestic orchestral piece ‘Also sprach Zarathustra.’ More specifically, it is the opening ‘Sunrise’ fanfare that builds to a marvellous crescendo over these twin scenes of human evolution, brightening Kubrick’s austere sterility with bursts of classical artistry. Likewise, Johan Strauss II’s iconic ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz is set against a balletic montage of spacecraft twirling and drifting through outer space like dancers on a stage, imbuing these artificial constructs with a humanity that has not been lost within the centuries of scientific progress. Kubrick’s soundtrack is nothing less than ground-breaking, boldly diverging from the tradition of original scores five years before American Graffiti would correspondingly popularise using pop and rock songs as film music.

Kubrick made the right choice to use classical music for his soundtrack, bringing both ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ and ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz back into the cultural consciousness and forever associating them with outer space.

*It is worthing stopping to admire Kubrick’s spaceship models, envisioning humanity’s future space exploration in stunning detail.*

Within 2001: A Space Odyssey though, art is not the sole bedrock of life’s essence, but just one pillar of humanity’s evolving sophistication. As much as Kubrick is branded a misanthrope for his statement on humanity’s inherent evil in A Clockwork Orange and his cold treatment of history in Barry Lyndon, his belief in our species’ potential to keep outdoing itself with enormous feats of intellect and willpower transcend all of that, tracing that lineage right back to our roots as primitive lifeforms.

This is where Kubrick’s ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence opens, where our vegetarian ancestors hide from predators in caves, howl at rival clans trying to drink from the same waterhole, and live peacefully alongside tapirs. With the first arrival of the monolith also comes their initial step towards becoming the humans we are today, drastically shifting their place in this world of pure animal instinct. When one primate discovers how a bone might be used as a deadly weapon against his foes, infinite new possibilities open up – no longer do they have to simply run from danger, or feast on local plant life. By fashioning tools out of available resources, they effectively become the dominant species of their environment, and win this round in the game of natural selection.

*John Alcott took over from Geoffrey Unsworth when it came to shooting the ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence, capturing the primal landscapes of Earth’s prehistory.*

*The match cut every student learns about at film school, leaping millions of years across time through a pair of technological devices.*

The graphic match cut which then leaps ahead millions of years may lay claim to the single greatest edit of film history here, connecting humanity’s past to its future by a pair of technological instruments – the bone, and a satellite in orbit above the Earth. The history of an entire civilisation is economically laid out in this cut, defining these distant relatives as members of a single family bound by their instinctive drive to keep pushing boundaries beyond what their bodies are capable of on their own. That their reliance on manufactured tools threatens to erase their human warmth only concerns Kubrick to an extent. His direction of actors to communicate with the same deadpan sterility to both colleagues and family members may pose a demoralising vision of the future, but on the other hand, he also isolates something unique about humanity beyond its social relationships. Even when these characters are millions of kilometres from loved ones, the drive to simultaneously survive in the most hostile environments and pursue a deeper knowledge of the cosmos endures, defining the wondrous evolution of life at its most basic level.

Through sheer aesthetic precision and formal rigour, Kubrick adopts this ambition on every level of his film’s construction, crafting a staggering work of art that measures up to the cosmic scale it is shooting for. His regular cinematographer John Alcott may not get enough credit for the gorgeous African landscapes on display in the ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence, though it is quite clearly Geoffrey Unsworth who comes out looking even better in this collaboration, coordinating the camera with revolving sets that seem to disobey all known laws of gravity. As astronauts walk up walls, across ceilings, and around the circumference of rotating sets, he and Kubrick leave us awed at sights of humans accomplishing the impossible, and lay the groundwork for the sort of mind-bending practical effects that Christopher Nolan would later innovate in Inception.

*Kubrick’s rotating sets make for some spectacular practical illusions. Even just watching the behind-the-scenes of how he coordinated the camera with the stunts is mind-boggling.*

*Creative and highly stylised production design with the red Djinn chairs in a clinical white corridor.*

When oblique angles that divorce the camera from any upright orientation aren’t Kubrick’s focus, he is often using symmetrical designs as the basis of his visual style. There is even an element of silent filmmaking we find seeping into many of his shots, as he frequently returns to matte paintings and miniatures that evoke the godfather of science-fiction epics, Metropolis. Lengthy passages of time are spent in the vacuum of space gazing at these vast metallic vehicles from a distance, but even inside docking bays and on the moon’s surface we find impressively intricate models, often with tiny humans superimposed for scale. Meanwhile, neo-futurist aesthetics shape Kubrick’s geometric interiors, with red Djinn chairs decorating a stark white corridor where a group of bureaucrats meet, and rounded corridors mirroring identical textural details across both sides of the frame.

A monumental use of miniatures to create vast sets on spaceships, docking bays, and the moon, often including humans for scale. The sheer amount of detail in these designs is remarkable, and it is hard not to note the connection back to Fritz Lang’s silent science-fiction epic Metropolis.

*Symmetry and geometry in Kubrick’s rigorously curated mise-en-scène – some of the best in history.*

The presence of red hues that Kubrick weaves through his mise-en-scène is impossible to ignore as well, flooding rooms with vibrant washes, bouncing control panel lights off the characters’ faces and helmets, and of course embodying pure danger in the terrifyingly simple design of HAL 9000. This unblinking, all-seeing crimson dot is essentially the brain of the ship that Dr. Dave Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole are travelling on to Jupiter, and is tasked with ensuring the mission’s success.

When it comes to narrative power, the ‘Jupiter Mission – 18th Months Later’ section is easily the most traditionally structured, as for the first time in the film we find characters running up against a clearcut villain. This brand of artificial intelligence is supposedly infallible, and yet when it makes a technical error Dave and Bowman are forced to consider shutting him down in a private discussion that they do not realise HAL can lipread every word of. Douglas Rain’s monotonal line deliveries as the supercomputer are chillingly calm as it reasons with utmost rationality why it must kill all humans onboard, but given the self-preservatory nature of its actions, one must also question whether HAL has developed the natural flaws and instincts of living organisms.

*How strange it is that the most human-like character from 2001: A Space Odyssey is an AI supercomputer. Certainly no mistake on Kubrick’s part.*

In a stroke of formal brilliance, we are reminded that Kubrick set this conflict up back in the ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence. Domination over other life forms is an integral part of evolution, and violence is the quickest path to achieving that, thus reflecting the ape’s murder of their rival at the waterhole in Dave and HAL’s struggle to respectively assert themselves as the superior species. Perhaps HAL has gained enough sentience to experience real fear as Dave disconnects him, or maybe he has just gathered enough insight into weaker minds to understand how one might manipulate their emotional vulnerabilities. Either way, as Dave enters the red processor core bathed in HAL’s brilliant red light, the supercomputer’s pitiful begging ironically expresses the most human sentiment of any character in the entire film.

“I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it.”

The stinger in this scene is the ailing rendition of the folk song ‘Daisy’ that HAL sings as he reverts to his original settings, displaying the tiny piece of humanity contained in his basic programming which now dies with his slowing, deepening voice. Once again, the elimination of a foe has made way for our species’ climb up the evolutionary ladder, guaranteeing safe passage to Jupiter where yet another monolith waits to be discovered.

*One of cinema’s most beautiful scenes inside the processor core as HAL is shut down, bathing Dave in red light pouring from every inch of the set and reflecting on his helmet.*

The transition that Kubrick makes from what is a relatively straightforward plot into the most avant-garde filmmaking of his entire career is abrupt, yet exactly what we need to enter the right mindset for what’s to come. Luminous colours from all across the spectrum explode in a vortex of light as Dave is sucked through a wormhole near the Jupiter monolith, and Kubrick enlists the help of visual effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull to execute this psychedelic Star Gate sequence. Fluorescent dyes, smoke, folded lenses, and slit-scan photography are the primary tools in his arsenal here to create galaxies, stars, and waves of plasma swirling through space, though the exceptional beauty of this spectacle is also jarringly offset by the intercut freeze frames of Dave’s painted, contorted face as he is pulled through it all. The bizarre look of the alien planet he soon finds himself flying over is achieved through similar technical experimentation, colouring the negative film prints of skies, deserts, canyons, oceans, and mountains, as well as the extreme close-ups of his eye that change hue with each terrified blink.

Douglas Trumbull’s Stargate sequence is psychedelic and totally entrancing in its experimental construction. Almost fifty years later he would come out of retirement and recreate a more delicately spiritual version of this in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.

Lasting almost ten minutes, this hypnotic montage is enough to disorientate us completely by the time we reach Dave’s last destination – the location that each monolith was pointing to along the way. The small, windowless room he lands in might almost resemble a neoclassical home with traditional furniture and art were it not for the nonsensical, inhuman design of everything else, from the lights beaming up on the floor to the clinical white palette which consumes it all. If this is where he has been led by higher alien life forms, then it could very well be the enclosure they have built for him, attempting to replicate his habitat in much the same way a zoo might for their caged animals. Foreign noises reverberate just outside the walls, indicating the presence of something observing him further, while time slips away like water. Kubrick’s editing is precise in its perspective shifts, in each instance catching the glimpse of another figure within Dave’s new home, only to discover an older version of him who we latch onto. Who should he meet at the end of his current life as well, but the monolith which has been guiding him this whole time? Just like the apes and the astronauts who found it on the moon, he reaches out, ready for whatever comes next.

Another feat of production design in the alien habitat designed for humans. Lights shine up from the floors, windows and doors are completely absent, and the whole room is almost entirely stripped of colour.

The newly reborn Star Child that Dave evolves into has the uncorrupted, infantile appearance of a human baby, and yet its wide eyes gaze upon its home planet of Earth with a knowing enlightenment, prepared for new beginnings. That this is the third and final form of humanity as depicted in Kubrick’s film is subtly crucial to the ternary structure that he has been building from the start, integrating it into the three dividing chapters, the three versions of Dave who live in the alien enclosure, and the three astronauts hibernating aboard the Jupiter ship. Even György Ligeti’s requiem plays on three separate occasions with the monolith, save for its aforementioned final pairing with ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’, in which he conclusively separates it from the discordant terror of the unknown and opens us up to a wilful embrace of the transcendent. With his indisputable talent as an avant-garde storyteller, Kubrick accomplishes a level of formal perfection in 2001: A Space Odyssey that so few artists have ever come close to, boldly reaching out to touch the infinite, and revealing a glimpse of its sublime wonder as it reaches back to us.

*Kubrick’s ternary structure echoes through 2001: A Space Odyssey, repeating this motif of reaching for the monolith on three separate occasions across characters and chapters.*

*A strangely optimistic ending for Kubrick as humanity reaches its next phase of evolution, embracing their infinite potential and heading towards an unknown future.*

2001: A Space Odyssey is currently streaming on SBS on Demand, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

Shame (1968)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 43min

The rapid destruction of civilisation by the fictional, unnamed war in Shame is split into two halves, each mirroring the other in chilling severity. The first part of society to crumble are the homes and lives of its citizens, spelling out apocalyptic horror in almost every shot from the moment bombs start falling. Only when social order has been extinguished can the second seal be broken, twisting the souls of survivors into distorted shadows of their former selves. It is with their total moral defeat that Ingmar Bergman settles an all-encompassing hopelessness over the only war film of his career, taking this study of human violence to its logical, haunting end.

It was only a few months after Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow wrapped production on Hour of the Wolf that they collaborated with Bergman to play another couple tormented by inner and outer demons. Jan and Eva’s minor frustrations at the start of Shame are nothing compared to what awaits them down the road. They are but humble farmers who have retired from careers as violinists, and even as hints of an impending invasion accumulate in tolling church bells, armoured vehicles, and radio broadcasts, they still find time to sit down and speak casually of their futures over lunch. Learning Italian, playing music, having babies – the expectant optimism of their conversation is only vaguely disrupted by Eva’s dig at Jan’s selfishness, which he nevertheless takes in his stride.

*The last moment of lingering peace in this four-minute shot, holding on Ullmann’s expressive face before the bombs start falling.*

The four minutes we spend studying Ullmann’s sensitive face in this unbroken shot makes the emotional whiplash a mere few moments later land with shattering formal impact. Bergman’s frenzied editing of jets flying overhead and exploding bombs drastically accelerates the pacing, as Eva drops to the ground and Jan gazes up in terror. It is at this point in Shame that both embark on an emotional odyssey of confusion, fear, hatred, guilt, and anger, while the contentment we witnessed earlier in the scene becomes little more than a distant dream.

Perhaps their subsequent slog across desolate landscapes of burning buildings, dead bodies, and bombs kicking up dust on the horizon had some cinematic influence over later war films too such as Apocalypse Now and Come and See, as Bergman brings an enormous visual scope to his cheerless narrative. Sven Nykvist’s cinematography is as crisp in its monochrome austerity as ever, panning with the characters across cataclysmic set pieces larger than anything he had shot before, while Bergman strips back dialogue to hold us in the grip of his visual storytelling.

*Bergman’s camera pans with the car across devastating landscapes, revealing the extent of the apocalyptic horror.*

*Ullmann’s eyes are bright and honest. You can virtually see the terror of the war reflected in these close-ups.*

It is in these wordless sequences that entire worlds are built beyond the scope of the immediate plot, revealing lives that were once as vivid as Jan and Eva’s, yet which have been painfully extinguished. Here we witness the true extent of the war’s destruction – the charred husk of church in the distance hosting a small funeral procession for example, and a boat of refugees floating atop an ocean of dead bodies. Even this far away from the mainland, Shame’s disturbing symbolic imagery continues to haunt its survivors.

*Cataclysmic imagery of burnt-out churches and bodies floating in water, detailing the lives and deaths of others as they tangentially intersect with Jan and Eva’s.*

Bergman’s colossal set pieces are not a departure from the interior lives of his characters though, but rather an extension of their troubled minds, where the stakes for the second part of this battle are waged. Here, a new question is posed – if it takes a nation’s military to topple structures and end lives, then what sort of psychological forces does it take to kill the human spirit? Gaslighting innocent people through scare tactics is one viable method, as we see footage of Eva doctored to make her sound sympathetic to the enemy, thereby eroding her trust in authority. Self-disgust is a powerful weapon too, as former mayor Colonel Jacobi manipulatively offers Eva and her husband protection in exchange for sexual favours. Perhaps the most crushing weapon of all though is the mutual contempt that manifests between lovers, preventing any return to domestic tranquillity even when the immediate danger has faded.

*Gunnar Björnstrand is solid in his supporting role as Colonel Jacobi, bringing a fascinating power dynamic to Jan and Eva’s home life – and especially when it completely flips.*

The incredible composition of Jan’s profile obscuring Eva’s face as both rest their heads after the first day of the invasion started might be the last true moment of peace they share in this film. When they finally return to their farm afterwards, no longer is Eva the same calm, strong woman she was before. One day when she discovers Jan weeping, her only acknowledgement of his feelings comes as a short, savage jab – “Cry if you think it helps.” The prospect of having children is now out of the question, and her bright, honest eyes are widened in fear and sorrow.

*Bergman’s trademark composition of faces brings a sombre gravitas to this moment, finally giving Jan and Eva a chance to rest their heads.*

Perhaps even more shocking is Jan’s transformation from a coward into a ruthless killer, nihilistically participating in the dog-eat-dog world that has risen up around him. Jacobi is the first to suffer a prolonged, painful death at his hands when he fatefully requests the return of a large sum of money, and later when the married couple meets a young soldier on the road, Jan doesn’t hesitate to murder and rob him too.

*Shame is unusually bleak even by Bergman’s standards, capturing Sweden’s harsh, desolate scenery as an extension of his characters’ immense emotional trauma.*

Where the internal and external violence of Shame intersect most acutely is in the eventual fiery ruin of Jan and Eva’s home, mercilessly set alight by the military for Jan’s refusal to pay up the money that would earn Jacobi his freedom. This daunting set piece simultaneously represents the brutal destruction of everything they have built together over many years, and the easily avoidable consequences of Jan’s stubborn greed – the money that he pretended not to have was hidden in his back pocket all along. The disbelief written across Ullmann’s face upon this reveal might almost be read as fury if it wasn’t so completely drained of emotional energy. Like so many of the greatest war film directors, it is Bergman’s profound ability to draw such profoundly personal stakes from widespread trauma which shape his severe, pensive ruminations. From there, Shame just keeps descending into an irreversible degradation of innocence, love, and compassion, dehumanising the same people we might have once trusted to restore sanity to a broken world.

*This fiery, calamitous set piece marks the end of Jan and Eva’s stable home lives, rendering the destruction of their relationship on a huge scale.*

*Crushing betrayal written on Ullmann’s face as von Sydow pulls out the hidden money.*

*A melancholy long dissolve pulling us from this long shot of a single, black boat on the ocean into an intimate arrangement of weary faces, echoing the composition from earlier.*

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

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

Ingmar Bergman | 1hr 28min

Symbolic contemplations of spiritual isolation, broken identities, and human mortality have long instilled an existential unease in Ingmar Bergman’s films, and yet as we trace back the steps of one mentally unwell painter leading up to his death in Hour of the Wolf, it becomes clear that none have come this close to outright psychological horror. The demons that pour from Johan’s mind onto blank canvases are almost Lovecraftian in their eerie, abstract creation – he is haunted by an old woman whose face comes off with her hat and the terrifying Bird Man, along with the meat-eaters, the schoolmaster, and the cast-iron, cackling women. That they are simply figments of his tortured imagination makes them no less dangerous, or any less real. After all, they are also fully visible to his wife, Alma. Her recount of Johan’s final days may not offer hard answers to the many lingering mysteries left in his wake, and yet in her abiding love, compassionate understanding can be found.

It is surely intentional on Bergman’s part that the name Alma was used in his previous film, Persona, similarly characterising a woman who acts as the mouthpiece for an interdependent couple. Where Liv Ullman played the mute Elisabet there though, she openly invites the audience into the film as the Alma here, directing her narration directly to the camera. She is nothing less than astounding, following up on Persona with another viscerally interior performance, now torn between complete helplessness and determined support for her husband. It is her point-of-view that Bergman frequently takes in Hour of the Wolf’s visuals and narrative, often mirroring the fearful delusion embodied by her co-star, Max von Sydow. Much like Persona, this is a study of dual identities blending in isolation, only with its focus shifted to lovers rather than acquaintances.

*Liv Ullmann’s second role in a Bergman film comes two years after Persona, connecting directly with the camera as the troubled wife of Johan, and further revealing the extent of her acting range.*

Besides Alma, Johan, and his evil spirits, there is another presence on this small island where they reside. Visions of his ex-lover Veronica disturb him with small talk and seductions, lulling him into dreams of the past which in turn add to the mounting shame his demons feed on. The letter she reads to him does not have an explicit sender, but given its menacing, apocalyptic undertones, it is safe to assume their identity.

“You don’t see us, but we see you. The worst can happen. Dreams can be revealed. The end is near. The wells will run dry, and other liquids will moisten your white loins. So it has been decided.”

*Ingrid Thulin is Veronica – one of Johan’s past lovers, and perhaps the most dangerous hallucination of all.*

Neither is it terribly difficult to guess the conspiratorial truth that lurks behind the guises of Johan and Alma’s bizarre neighbours who frequently drop by without notice. One of them, Baron von Merkens, appears kind enough to extend an invitation to his castle for a large dinner party, though anyone with the vaguest understanding of Gothic storytelling conventions will know to take this as an ominous warning.

As the guests settle at the Baron’s large table, Bergman’s camera rapidly circles them in a dizzying 360 shot, before manically whipping between POV close-ups of them talking right down the lens as their conversations bounce across the room. Afterwards, one of the men performs a candle-lit puppet show, though Alma is far more preoccupied by his leering face staring down at her, partially concealed by a shadow crossing his mouth like a wide, dark smile. The Baroness’ reveal that she has hung Johan’s painting of Veronica directly in front of her bed ends the evening on a note of uncomfortable humiliation, and leaves behind a lingering dread as they return home.

*An almost Hitchcockian shot with the 360-degree spin, circling the table as guests settle down for dinner.*

*An incredibly subjective camera with its whip pans between close-ups, and characters talking right down the lens.*

*Ullmann’s eyes drift from the puppet show to the man in the rafters, shot with the shadow of a beam cross his face like a dark, clownish smile.*

Bergman’s framing of his entire ensemble is almost always confronting, but those intimate scenes consisting solely of Johan and Alma are often just as sensitively composed. The camera’s deep focus intensely studies the insecurity that crosses von Sydow and Ullmann’s faces in breathtaking arrangements, and as Johan speaks of that dark hour every night “when nightmares come to us,” his tormented expression is lit but nothing more than a single match. Outside too, it similarly becomes apparent that this couple has built their house on uneven foundations, with the steep, rocky hills of this rural island throwing off the balance of Bergman’s exterior shots.

*A combination of lighting, framing, and staging gives us Bergman’s inspired compositions of faces, expressing a deep melancholy in Johan and Alma’s love.*

*Bergman shoots on the steep slopes of Fårö for his scenery, using its off-kilter, rocky terrain to throw off the visual balance.*

While much of this story takes place through Alma’s flashbacks and her perusal of Johan’s diaries, Hour of the Wolf continues to sink us another layer deeper via his personal, distorted memories of one fated summer vacation. His violent struggle and murder of a young boy on the edge of a cliff is brightly over-exposed, separating us from reality and forcing us to question how much of this scene is merely symbolic, while in place of diegetic sound we simply find Lars Johan Werle’s unsettling, dissonant score. Mouths open, but no screams can be heard, cruelly stifling the painter’s raw expressions of agony.

Perhaps this boy was yet another demon that resided inside Johan, who even after being killed and thrown into the ocean simply floated back to the surface. Maybe the scene is closer to a representation of truth than we might like to believe, revealing another dimension of darkness to the painter’s subconscious. Either way, it has left a guilt within him which cannot be killed, and given the long dissolve which transitions from this dream back to Alma’s horrified face, we can clearly see that it haunts her just as much.

*A dream in high-contrast, highly-exposed black-and-white, revealing the surreal depths of its protagonist’s mind much like Wild Strawberries.*

When these spirits inevitably re-enter at the deepest point of Johan’s breakdown, all pretensions of civility are dropped, and that vague unease manifests as phantasmagorical terror. Bergman had already proven himself a talented surrealist in films like Wild Strawberries, but the aberrant horror he crafts in images of the Bird Man revealing his wings, the Baron walking up walls, and the old woman finally ripping her face off is downright chilling. After powdering Johan’s face and dressing him up like a cadaver prepared for the grave, these mischievous figures push him to his final stop – Veronica’s naked, dead body. He runs his hand over her skin from top to bottom, perversely drawn to her lifeless figure, and even as she starts cackling, he tries to kiss her. Her head tilts back into the light, casting harsh light and shadows across her sadistic face, and then all of a sudden, we realise the other demons are watching too.

A sequence of deeply unsettling images unfold as Johan returns to the mansion, and the demons reveal themselves. The elderly woman tears off her face, the Baron walks across walls and ceilings, and finally he is brought to the death bed where Veronica’s body lays.

The wide shot of this diabolic ensemble cackling at the camera in twisted positions makes for a frighteningly morbid composition, with two peeking around corners, another perched in a window like a bird, and another still lifting her dress in vicious mockery. Johan, with his make-up now smeared across his face, can only resign in defeat and recognition of his mutilated ego.

“I thank you… that the limit has finally been transgressed. The mirror has been shattered. But what do the shards reflect? Can you tell me that?”

*Bergman mastered the art of the close-up, but none are so haunting as this, as Veronica throws back her head into the harsh light and cackles, upside-down.*

*The more one studies this shot, the more disturbing it becomes, as Bergman builds Johan’s humiliating torment to a peak.*

His lips continue to move yet no sound emerges, much like in his murderous dream, and again later when he meets his end at their hands in the woods. Bergman’s montage editing throughout his death is fast and violent, weaving in close-ups of ravens, eyes, and blood, and Alma is there to witness it all. In pensive reflection, she returns to a passing thought that crossed her mind earlier in the film, which might answer why these demons were visible to her as well.

“Isn’t it true that when a woman has lived a long time with a man… isn’t it true that she finally becomes like that man? Since she loves him, and tries to think like him, and sees things like him. It’s said that it can change a person. Is that why I began seeing those spirits? Or were they there regardless?”

*One of Max von Sydow’s great performances, suffering through shame and self-loathing as make-up is smeared across his face.*

To extend that line of questioning even further, did those demons truly die with Johan, or do they now simply live on in her mind? Through this psychological blending of identities, Hour of the Wolf warps our most intimate attachments into our greatest vulnerabilities, denying us even the sanctuary of Alma and Johan’s love to fall back on as a source of security.

At the same time, it doesn’t seem as if Bergman would have it any other way, especially considering the selfish contempt between couples which is present in so many of his films, and yet which is mostly absent here. Alma is a troubled woman, but she may also be one of his most purely compassionate characters he has ever written, surrendering her own stable mind to ease her husband’s heavy mental load. Even when faced with the existential horror which Bergman so surreally instils in Hour of the Wolf, there is still grace to be found in that hopeless, sacrificial love.

Hour of the Wolf is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Funny Girl (1968)

William Wyler | 2hr 35min

If you were to ask Elvis Presley, making the move from singing to the silver screen is not an easy leap to make. Though Frank Sinatra was substantially more successful in this regard, he would have agreed too, taking over a decade to finally hit his stride in The Man With the Golden Arm. As such, Barbara Streisand’s comical wit and vibrant musicality in her film debut in Funny Girl is nothing short of remarkable, proving her to be a naturally magnetic presence whether she is clumsily falling over her roller skates or taking the spotlight with soulful ballads pining after her gambling lover, Nicky Arnstein. Based on the stage musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the life of comedienne and Broadway star Fanny Brice, Funny Girl finely balances a rollicking showcase of its leading woman’s talents against the drama of her personal troubles, radiating an upbeat irreverence that was so uncommon among female performers of her era.

Loneliness bookends both sides of this film, wedging the extended flashback of Fanny’s life story between scenes set in 1927 where her relationship with Nicky has drawn to a cold, dark close. Though she is in virtually every second of this film and leads every single musical number, William Wyler knows when to subdue her dynamic presence with a subtler cinematic touch, introducing her with a long take hanging on the back of her head as she silently enters the empty theatre where her production, the Ziegfeld Follies, headlines the billboards. It isn’t until she settles in front of a mirror that we see her face for the first time, drained of the passion and laughter that we will soon see her younger self embody.

*A slow crawl into the theatre, hanging on Streisand’s back, before finally revealing her face in a mirror.*

When we do finally see her light up, it is apparent that Streisand is uniquely suited to translating this role to the screen, with her bright, slightly crossed eyes and distinct profile setting her apart from more conventionally attractive alternatives. Fanny’s physical comedy is there in Streisand’s performance, as she shows off a range of physical comedy talents in a cartoonish, balletic parody of Swan Lake, and appears as a bride with a fake, pregnant belly in a musical number she irreverently turns into a straight-up charade. But even offstage, Streisand deflects invasive media questions with quick-thinking wit, and in one high-stakes poker game that she is invited to observe, her rapid shift between expressions of nail-biting anxiety and blank impassivity is incongruently hilarious.

*Sending up Swan Lake, making her bride character pregnant, a slapstick routine on roller skates – Streisand’s comedic talents are on full show and it is wonderful.*

Unlike Streisand, Wyler was a mainstay of big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas by the time Funny Girl came around, crossing into the movie-musical genre for the first time after a long career of directing romances, dramas, and historical epics. As one of the relatively few filmmakers whose artistic voice flourished during the glory years of America’s studio system, he is well-acquainted with stunning displays of interior production design, here crafting velvet red dining rooms, vibrantly purple bedrooms, and a muted green restaurant of rattan decor and indoor plants. Crucial to the filming of these sets is his trademark deep focus photography, handsomely capturing the bustling crowds that fill Fanny’s family’s bar, and he even experiments a little in the realm of editing with freeze frames that ring an angelic echo of “Nicky Arnstein” around in Fanny’s head when she first falls head over heels for him.

*William Wyler’s opulent production design revels in his gorgeously curated colour palettes.*

Most of all though, Wyler proves to be especially versatile in his staging of his major musical numbers, moving beyond the theatre with the end of Act 1 showstopper, ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’. Up to this point, soundstages have allowed him the flexibility to crane shots around handsomely mounted sets in sweeping motions, but here as Fanny decisively risks her career to chase Nicky across America and start their new life together, she emerges into the real world. As she rides her train through a forest, she hits each consonant with unwavering force, and when the final chorus finally arrives, Wyler blasts us with a helicopter shot of her steamboat cruising past the Statue of Liberty, swooping the camera right up to her face and out again in a single, extraordinary take.

*One of the boldest shots of the film at the climax of her show-stopping number ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’, flying in close and then out again in one brilliant helicopter shot.*

Love and prosperity surround Fanny at every turn in the early years of her relationship with Nicky, situating them on either side of a pink sun setting over a waterfront as they properly commit to each other. As was foreshadowed in the very opening scene though, such good fortune cannot last forever. Nicky’s corrupt business ventures and gambling losses have put them in deep debt, but even more devastating for Fanny is his lack of moral support, missing her show’s opening night and wearing away at her radiant optimism. The pressure to hide such tragic circumstances from the public and maintain the image of a “funny girl” is difficult enough on its own, but the final gut punch arrives when her own husband, of all people, places that label on her.

*The sun sets between the two lovers as they commit to each other on the waterfront – beautiful natural lighting and framing.*

In this way, the final number ‘My Man’ is a retort to everything that has built up in Fanny’s life to this point. With her black dress blending in with the black curtains, Streisand’s body sinks into her surroundings, though Wyler sharply carves out the shape of her face against the backdrop to light up her aching, melancholic expressions, yearning for the man who can’t take her seriously. Whatever compassionate respect Fanny was denied in her lifetime, Streisand and Wyler make up for in their representation of her as a sensitively layered figure here, examining the energetic drive behind this subversive innovator of female roles in the show business of 1920s America.

*Consumed by blackness in her final number, Streisand balances out the darker aspects of her character with the lighter, comedic moments.*

Funny Girl is currently streaming on Paramount Plus, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

If…. (1968)

Lindsay Anderson | 1hr 51min

Within the long hallways and hallowed grounds of the British boys boarding school in If…., the seeds of an uprising are sprouting. At the top of its centuries-old hierarchy, there is the headmaster, distantly reigning over the housemasters below, who in turn grant special privileges to the prefects. Beneath them, there are the younger years who have not yet reached seniority, and then right at the bottom are the junior boys – children who are forced into servitude by the prefects. The soon-to-be leader of the looming rebellion is Mick Travis, played be a pre-A Clockwork Orange Malcolm Dowell whose wry smile, pointed intonation, and simmering rage sets a prototype for troubled youth that Stanley Kubrick would study three years later with even greater finesse. Here though, he is but one figure in an empire of leaders, subordinates, and slaves, each of whom are assembled into a microcosm of 60s British politics and its restless, burgeoning counterculture.

There is no surprise that this school’s demographic is incredibly male-dominated, with only women of note in the film being those employees and wives upholding the system that safeguards their social status, and the nameless Girl who is recruited into Mick’s revolt. With such close quarters between teenage boys and such little female contact, the homoerotic implications are clear, as corrective punishments are turned into a sublimination of latent sexual desires, and sex into a weapon of humiliation wielded by the ruling classes to enforce the status quo.

*There is frequently a sexual connotation to the prefects’ punishments and displays of dominance, picking at the homoerotic undertones of competitive male relationships.*

In this way, there is little privacy to be found. Even shower times see the boys strip down and wash themselves together under the keen eye of the prefects, who on a whim can turn the water to cold and force their inferiors to stay under just for the sadistic pleasure of it. Later when they exact punishment on Mick and his friends through a beating, the bent-over, submissive position they are coerced into can barely be looked past as anything but sexual abuse. As they yelp in pain, we cut to other rooms in the school where fellow students simply listen on in silence, and we quite curiously cut to one of their views beneath a microscope – bacteria steadily multiplying on a petri dish. It is an image of multiplication growing greater numbers, but it is also notably a form of asexual reproduction, hinting at a mounting wave of anti-establishment contempt that wields power not through sex, but through sheer, overwhelming masses.

*Sadomasochism – bending the inferiors over to beat them from behind, caught in a long take.*

*A curious cutaway to the binary fission of bacteria, asexually reproducing and growing in numbers.*

What Lindsay Anderson lacks in visual style in If…. is compensated by his narrative’s electrifying formal texture, dispensing with straightforward plotting in favour of chapters that tease out random pieces of life within this institution. Along one storyline, a secret relationship is struck up between Mick’s friend, Wallace, and a younger boy, Bobby. The moment that infatuation strikes in the gymnasium is rendered in swooning slow-motion, while the school guns that surround their secret rendezvous in the storage room stand erect in as phallic symbols. Further up the food chain, Denson and his fellow prefects court their housemaster over private dinners, manipulating him into granting them greater power. Meanwhile, Mick continues to stew in his dormitory, darkly ruminating that “War is the last possible creative act” and that “One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place.” He is not a hero in any conventional sense, but his dangerous philosophy looks to be the only way for anyone to break free of the school’s tyrannical rulers.

*An effective set piece in the gun storage room, standing them upright as if erect.*

*Malcolm McDowell easily gives the best performance of the film as Mick Travis, it is easy to see why Kubrick picked him out for A Clockwork Orange.*

Anderson’s sharp political allegory might almost be considered a piece of realism with its location shooting in authentic schools, if it weren’t for the intermittent rupturing of our belief in this setting as a rational, coherent system. The surrealism that emerges in brief passages brings a wholly unexpected layer of incongruence to these characters, at times purposefully marking the point of distinction from reality as we slip into Mick’s animalistic fantasy of wrestling naked with the Girl, but more often simply dropping absurd images into otherwise normal situations.

*A surreal dream of naked, animalistic wrestling between Mick and the Girl, breaking free of society’s cultural restraints.*

There is good cause to believe that such surreal scenes as the naked stroll of the housemaster’s wife through the dormitories are purposefully shot in black-and-white to mark a divergence from reality, though the lack of consistency here creates a more disorientating uncertainty than anything else. When ordinary church scenes are rendered in monochrome and the hilariously unexpected rise of the school chaplain from an office drawer appears in full colour, any theorising about the device’s formal meaning beyond its prominent bewildering effect is undermined, leaving it as a strange, unexplained anomaly like so much else we witness here.

*Realism and surrealism, black-and-white and colour photography – the distinctions aren’t always clear, but they both offer a nice formal texture to the film.*

As If…. approaches its vicious, final minutes, Anderson only continues to ramp up its eccentricity and irony, introducing the school’s Founder’s Day celebrations with an amusingly generic speech on honour, freedom, duty, and upholding traditions while a man wearing full knight armour sits in the audience. As smoke rises from the floorboards and the audience starts coughing, the drone of the speaker persists, proudly ignoring the emergency unfolding in front of him until he is forced to usher everyone outside. There, Mick and his fellow students pour gunfire onto the crowd, who feebly take up their own arms and fight back.

No such luck for the status quo though – the counterculture of an oppressed people is on the rise, and Anderson’s political parable positions it as the only logical outcome of a civilisation so divided among its classes. The implication of the title If…. is not a question, but an unfinished dream, conjecturing a world parallel to our own that cannot bear the weight of its own brutal, twisted, and nonsensical bureaucracy.

*An apocalyptic finale, bringing the school’s oppressive, rigid hierarchy to an end through violence.*

If…. is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon Video.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Franklin J. Schaffner | 1hr 52min

Before we see any of the creatures promised in the title Planet of the Apes, we spend a good thirty minutes wandering around a mysterious landscape of dunes, waterholes, and open fields inhabited by mute humans. Charles Heston leads the way as George Taylor, an astronaut from 1972 and captain of a space crew that has crash landed on an unknown world some two thousand and six years into the future. Its environments and civilisations are built slowly and thoroughly, and besides the use of some clumsy camera zooms that insist on pushing our attention in the most obvious directions, Franklin J. Schaffner’s majestic style of epic filmmaking is well-suited to the material. It is when we first see the rustling stalks of corn and an army of apes on horseback bursting through the vegetation that Planet of the Apes moves into truly exciting territory though, whisking us away to a city of prehistoric stone structures and non-human primates.

*The introduction of the apes thirty minutes into the film, riding through the corn field on horse back while the humans scatter like animals.*

This entire set is an impressive feat of production design for Schaffner, cleverly combining elements of caveman civilisations and modern technology to craft a world that can’t be placed in any familiar time. Rudimentary labs, courtrooms, churches, and streets carved from rock become a playground for his boisterous narrative of chases and escape attempts, though the apes themselves who are in control of it all possess a far greater intelligence than those that Taylor is familiar with. There is a similar integration of primitive and contemporary sounds in Jerry Goldsmith’s discordant score of exotic percussion and orchestral instruments, hauntingly underscoring the environment’s otherworldly qualities.

*Tremendous design of Ape City, carved from stone like some advanced caveman civilisation.*

The culture that has evolved here is also one that has been thoroughly tipped on its head. The re-invention of popular monkey-centred idioms that place humans in subservient positions can be somewhat glib at times (“Man see, Man do” is one notable offender), but otherwise this subversion of status is one that Schaffner cunningly incorporates all through the structure of this upside-down civilisation. Hunters take proud photos with their human game, theories abound that apes evolved from “dirty” men, and most fascinatingly, cultural conflicts between faith and science are a constant point of contention between different factions of the city’s inhabitants. In these parallels, Schaffner makes his point bluntly but powerfully – the advanced intelligence of any species does not make them inherently special, but rather exposes their ties to their primitive, evolutionary roots.

*Schaffner uses his marvellous sets to create frames and dividers in his images, each one building on his characters’ relationships.*

Then again, perhaps there is a single inherently human quality that separates one genus of primates from another. Schaffner paces his narrative well in his final act leading to this discovery, transforming Planet of the Apes into a western of sorts in which a band of allied apes and humans venture across a harsh desert to uncover the “Forbidden Zone”, where it is said one can find evidence of a pre-ape civilisation. The warnings of the apes’ religious leaders fall on deaf ears, describing man as a “harbinger of death” who makes “a desert of his home.”

As Taylor trudges along an empty beach towards what he believes is his freedom, Goldsmith’s eerie score continues to play beneath with a nervous anticipation. The discovery that they eventually reach at the other end is simply gut-wrenching, not just because of the anguish that reverberates through Heston’s voice, but Schaffner’s framing of the shot itself, slowly bringing those iconic spikes on the Statue of Liberty’s crown into view from behind, before we cut to a wide and realise the full, bleak context. There are no close-ups or frantic cutting to be found here at all. In a few stark, simple shots, humanity’s desire for ultimate dominance is uncovered as the trigger for its own destruction, the pieces of this mystery fall into place, and Schaffner effectively immortalises Planet of the Apes as an immortal touchstone of cinema history.

*A gut punch of an ending, and an immortal image of humanity’s lost hope.*

Planet of the Apes is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Sergio Leone | 2hr 55min

Sergio Leone isn’t exactly known for his conciseness, and yet there are few directors as skilled as him in stringing along audiences through extended sequences of agonising suspense rendered in painstaking detail, right down to the timing of each sound effect and cutaway. We cling to these minor shifts in mood like drops of water in an arid desert, promising to quench our thirst for action if we hang on for a little longer. Just as cutting Once Upon a Time in the West down from its epic 175-minute run time would be a grave mistake, so too would it be to cut down its 15-minute opening scene, as it is partially through the sheer length of both that we feel the gravity of the situation at hand, and remain compelled to learn the clandestine motives of the mysterious characters we spend time with.

On the surface of this opening, we are watching three gunmen swagger into a train depot and forcefully take it over with barely a word spoken, but then in the background a windmill-powered pump squeaks to its own rhythm, a fly buzzes around the men, and water drips slowly into a bucket. Leone’s status as one of the great cinematic montagists who can stand proudly alongside Sergei Eisenstein is on full display here in the precise rhythm of each individual edit, and the understanding of how a simple cut from a wide to a tightly-framed close-up can keep us in the grip of the narrative. These shadowy men continue to wait around, and although very little happens, we can’t tear our eyes away. Then, very faintly, we hear the whistle of a train, they all stand to attention anticipating some unknown arrival, and we too lean forward in our seats.

*One of cinema’s great montagists at work in the opening credits spread out over fifteen minutes. Totally gripping with very few words of dialogue and no musical score.*

*A fluid transition from one remarkable composition…*

*…to yet another, without so much as a cut.*

If that first scene feels like it stretches out to oblivion, then it is even more astounding that Leone holds off for a full 21 minutes to bring in Ennio Morricone’s glorious score – a minor chord struck on an electric guitar, punctuating the moment a young boy runs right into a close-up and is hit with the devastating realisation that his entire family has been massacred. As for the identity of the perpetrators, we are left to watch from a low angle as several men in flapping, dark coats emerge from the distance, lit from behind like angels of death. And then, as Leone’s camera moves into close-ups, we finally discover their identities. Henry Fonda, the Hollywood actor known for his characters of pure goodness, appears with his bright blue eyes appearing more malevolent than we have ever seen them before, piercing through his greasy visage. Charles Bronson’s turn as the heroic gunman Harmonica certainly impresses in his quiet reservation and mystique, but there is no competing with Fonda as the frightening outlaw Frank, delivering a landmark performance that belongs among the best of both the Western genre and his own illustrious career.

*Outlaws emerging from the bushes and advancing towards the camera in this low angle like angels of death.*

*One of the most terrifying western villains of the screen, played by Henry Fonda no less.*

As outlaws, lawmen, and pioneers face off against each other in wide, open spaces for precious resources and personal vengeance, the impact of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films on Leone’s exquisite staging of actors in both static shots and action scenes becomes visible, manifesting the imposing presence of these characters and the tension between them. This widescreen aspect ratio may not be designed for close-ups, and yet with his deep focus photography he still continuously finds the most exciting ways to frame them against their environment, often with his subject off to the side while another occupies the background next to them in equally sharp focus.

*Tremendous depth of field in Leone’s staging of actors.*

*Leone filling his widescreen images with faces, each in separate layers of the frame.*

His flair for staging goes beyond small groups though, as in one early scene we follow Mrs McBain, a new arrival in town, along the outside of a train station, before we are lifted high into the air through a magnificent crane shot, expanding the scope of this environment before our eyes as we discover an entire bustling town of horses, carriages, and villagers. Just outside its borders, we find a photographic vision of Monument Valley that hasn’t looked this beautiful since The Searchers, caught in some of the film’s greatest establishing shots. Much like Kurosawa, Leone possesses a keen eye for compositions that range in scale from personal to epic, and here in Once Upon a Time in the West he puts that to use in delivering a tale that creates mythical figures out of complicated, nuanced characters.

*One magnificent crane shot lifting the camera from here…*

*…to here, elevating this film to an epic scale.*

That said, it is hard to ignore the fundamental difference between the chosen genres of the Italian and Japanese directors. Given the abrupt nature of pistol duels, the climactic eruptions of violence that Leone promises in his long, tense build-ups are often over far quicker than a sword fight. It is almost cruel, given how much of everyone’s lives seem built around the anticipation of conflict. Still, these pay-offs are never unsatisfying, as it is in Leone’s compelling characters that he invests his time and attention, even more so than the physical struggles themselves, and so the moment that their survival is decided in a lightning-fast pull of a trigger becomes absolutely paramount to all our hopes and fears.

*Leone’s first western shot in America, and he makes great use of its identifiable natural landscapes.*

As for those motivations which drive such vicious confrontations, one must dive a little deeper than the surface level plot that follows a conflict over land ownership. These characters are complex and fluid in their loyalties, shifting their allegiance to whomever aligns most with their own personal objectives, whether that is a business tycoon’s desire to build a railroad that will let him see the ocean before he dies, or a former prostitute’s hope of a more prosperous life. For the two forces of good and evil that circle each other at the centre of this narrative, Harmonica and Frank, we are left for a long time wondering what specifically is binding these adversaries together within such a complicated, thorny relationship. We are assured though that any answers we might receive regarding Harmonica’s true nature will emerge “only at the point of dying”, whether that it be Frank’s or his own. Within this cryptic piece of foreshadowing lies a quiet acknowledgement of death being the single moment in our lives that we gain all the perspective and wisdom we could have ever wished for, even if it arrives far too late.

And indeed, it isn’t just the source of Harmonica’s motivation that is revealed in these final minutes though, but the very creation of his essence in the cruel hands of Frank himself. In a poetic mirroring of the past and present, both men deliver the humiliating gesture of placing a harmonica in the mouth of their incapacitated victim, though Frank’s defeat carries more mortal consequences. Just before collapsing in the dirt, he nods with a conspicuous look in his eyes. Is it regret? A recognition of his own sins? The resigned acceptance of a fate he inadvertently carved out for himself decades ago? Just as its title suggests, Once Upon a Time in the West is more a legend than anything else, and so perhaps as he looks back on his life with his dying breath, that is exactly what Frank is seeing – his own despicable place in the saga of American history, immortalised as a monster for centuries to come.

*Another sweeping camera movement from the above close-up into this horrifying wide, gradually revealing the peril of the situation.*

*Poetic justice in Frank’s fate, and a haunting silent recognition in his eyes.*

Once Upon a Time in the West is available to stream on SBS On Demand, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.