Daily Archives: November 5, 2007
Peeping Tom (1960)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: A disturbed filmmaker (Carl Boehm) literally kills with his camera in this ahead-of-its-time shocker from revered British director Michael Powell. Like the same year’s Psycho, this film’s combination of voyeurism, eroticism and horror repelled some 1960 critics, but its cult reputation soared in later years. Moira Shearer (star of Powell’s The Red Shoes) makes an appearance, as does Powell himself (as Boehm’s father in flashback).
REVIEW: Included in Ebert’s first volume of Great Movies (the same review is on the film’s Netflix page), this film explores voyeurism and childhood trauma evenhandedly and deftly, but I feel that the director was conveying his feelings on the whole concept of filmmaking as well. When it was released in 1960, the film was regarded as so controversial that it ended the career of the acclaimed British director, even though the media press was fairly kind to it. The film’s classic reputation as we know it today was helped by its revival by Powell’s #1 fan, Martin Scorsese.
Peeping Tom is a tale of a disturbed man obsessed with filmmaking – specifically snuff films. He likes to film his victims’ last expressions as they are confronted with their own deaths. Peeping Tom opens with one of these films being filmed as we look at the screen through the filmmaker’s viewfinder upon a prostitute who invites him up to his room. You know that death is imminent when you see the victim’s expression change while she shields herself from the bright light in her face, a common denominator among all the victims.
In the scene with the brilliant and effervescent Moira Shearer, where she plays an extra on a film for the studio for which Boehm works, Boehm continually directs her – where to stand, where to sit, where to dance, where to go, how to express. He eventually directs her to her death when he coaches her how to express fear. He has an obsessive, clearly unhealthy relationship with his camera – it seems to be the only way that he takes pleasure (or perhaps more accurately, comfort) in viewing the world and he never goes anywhere without it. Tellingly, he only reluctantly leaves it behind when the friendly girl downstairs takes him out on a date – perhaps the only time in the film we see him carefree.
The film reveals that Carl Boehm’s father was a psychologist specializing in the study of fear, specifically how children react to fear, and he was always conducting experiments on Boehm as a child. There’s one reel of film that Boehm shows to the nice girl who lives in the same building who takes an interest in him that is particularly jarring – it shows scenes of these experiments, which range from his father dropping a lizard on him while he’s in bed and filming his reaction, to him being filmed next to his dead mother. I suppose the sympathy that we feel for Boehm is part of what makes this film so controversial, but I felt it an effective exploration of how trauma inflicted in childhood can affect your behavior as an adult.
Though released in 1960, Peeping Tom doesn’t feel dated (other than the title). It is entertaining throughout and, even for the most jaded fans, the ending is quite surprising. There’s great art direction here as well, not just the technicolor contrasted against the dark shadows of Boehm’s screening room, but the scenes where we’re made to feel like voyeurs taking part in this sad situation. Specifically, there’s a fantastic image where we see only the back of Boehm’s head looking at the screen and Moira Shearer’s face frozen in terror is projected onto the screen and the back of Boehm’s head.
Final Rating: 4 stars.
Audrey
The Lives of Others (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Set in 1980s East Berlin, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s debut feature (which earned an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film) provides an exquisitely nuanced portrait of life under the watchful eye of the state police as a high-profile couple is bugged. When a successful playwright and his actress companion become subjects of the Stasi’s secret surveillance program, their friends, family and even those doing the watching find their lives changed too.
REVIEW: Cast: Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Mühe, Ulrich Tukur, Thomas Thieme, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Volkmar Kleinert, Matthias Brenner, Charly Hübner
Awards:
2007 Academy Award®: Best Foreign Language Film
2007 Independent Spirit Awards®: Best Foreign Film
Review: Phenomenal. This film is utterly moving, gripping and enlightening. The main character is Captain Wiesel, who is in charge of Mission “Laszlo,” a mission to conduct surveillance on a playwright-actress couple living in East Berlin in the German Democratic Republic before the period of glasnost. In viewing this film and the surveillance of the Stasi (the German state police whose motto is “the swords and shields of the state”), I got a very nuanced, deeply-delving, serious examination of East Germany’s government and policies during the period.
Lest my opinion sound as clinical and unpassionate as a medical exam, I assure you that this film is anything but – in fact, it is the struggle for humanity (for the love of the arts, for music) in a period when ideas and expressions not condoned by the state were prohibited. The Culture Minister suspects that the playwright is not the ideal Socialist citizen that all his comrades think he is and has every inch of his apartment wired, all telephones tapped and attempts to get his female companion Marta, a successful but unconfident actress, to inform on him. Captain Wiesel, who is a professor of interrogation techniques and a straight-up party-line man, is the point man for the surveillance mission – listening to all their conversations, dutifully transcribing them into reports for the Stasi. But the twist in the story is that, as he becomes immersed in their world listening to their conversations 24-7 and all the life that comes in and out of that apartment, he finds himself questioning the ideals that he has believed in all his life.
For instance, in one scene where he knows that Marta has just slept with the Culture Minister (as “protection” for being able to perform on stage without repercussion etc.) and is being dropped off at the playwright’s house, Wiesel, from his surveillance station, makes the apartment doorbell ring incessantly until the playwright answers the door. Knowing that the playwright will see Marta dropped off across the street, disheveled with her blouse open, from the Culture Minister’s car, Wiesel anticipates a big argument from which hopefully he can get some useful information about any dissident activities and remarks “Time for some bitter truths.” In a twist that shows Wiesel that human behavior is not as simplistic to understand than the Stasi would have him believe, the argument never materializes because the playwright understands Marta’s actions – even though they never speak and thus none of this is caught on tape. Empathy and compassion, as we see from Wiesel’s subsequent appointment with a prostitute, are things he realizes he needs as well.
In another moving scene, the playwright finds out that one of his best friends, a director who has been unable to direct for the last ten years despite his prior success because the Stasi have essentially blacklisted him, has killed himself because of the hopelessness for his career in future. The playwright takes out the gift that his friend had given him at his 40th birthday party, a musical work entitled “Sonata for a Good Man,” and begins to play it on the piano. Of course, Wiesel is tapped into the apartment and hears the playwright playing it and is moved to tears, including the playwright’s remark to Marta of a quote attributed to Lenin: That had he heard Beethoven’s Apassionata, he would never have been able to finish the revolution. Music is an important theme in the film – and, as you would expect, the score of the film is absolutely beautiful and appropriate for the various different scenes.
The actors’ performances are flawless – bereft of the histrionics and overacting that would accompany a weaker film. The script is perfection. There really is no aspect of the film which needs improvement.
This film dives into the premise from beginning to end of the surveillance, then 2 years after, then 10 years after, then 20 years after. It leaves no ends untied and, as you will see, the ending comes around full circle (without me saying more for fear of spoiling it). This accounts for the longer running time, but you don’t feel it because every scene has a purpose. There are also many comical lines in the film that lighten the mood, but it is truly a wonderfully-nuanced look into humanity. This should have been the best film of the year at the Oscars – not just the best foreign film. It was one of the best films of that year in any language.
Final Rating: 5 stars. Do not miss out on seeing this film!
Audrey
Tous Les Matins Du Monde (1991)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Racked with grief after his wife’s untimely death, gifted viola da gamba player Monsieur de Sainte Colombe (Jean-Pierre Marielle) moves into a small house in his garden to keep himself and his two young daughters (Anne Brochet and Carole Richert) safe from the outside world. But their solitude is broken when a young musician comes calling (played by Gerard Depardieu‘s son, Guillaume, and later by Depardieu himself) in search of a lesson.
REVIEW: This is a quiet, subtle movie about a man and his relationship with his music. The story is told by Marin, the outsider who is trying to find his own music. After Marin’s own devasting news he comes to Colombe for viol lessons but Marin gets more than he bargained for, which he realizes in reflecting back on his own life. Even Colombe’s daughters are starving for their father’s attention so they learn to play to satisfy Colombe.
The music is fantastic and you get to hear a lot of it from the main characters. I left the movie knowing they all play this instrument brilliantly, the detail to every note is magic. I have seen a lot of movies with musicians but this has to be one of the best with Colombe explaining where music comes from and what makes a true musician.
If you get a chance, check this movie out.
4 stars
Bear
Netflix Cinemajig 