Le Cercle Rouge (1970, France, Jean-Pierre Melville) AKA le Zen du Noir
Even before the lads of La Nouvelle Vague, fellas like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffault, made it hip to reinvent American genre films, Jean-Pierre Melville was crafting intelligent variations on films noir while plying his trade outside of the French studio system. Often filming on location and "on the fly" without the benefit of permits or professional actors, little did Melville know that he was using the techniques that the New Wave would later champion as vital to reinvigorating French cinema. Bob le Flambeur is rightfully regarded as a classic in the field, and clearly anticipates and informs Godard’s Breathless and Truffault’s Shoot the Piano Player. Long an admirer of all things American, Melville’s adoption of the surname of the 19th century American writer, his lifelong habit of sporting a Stetson and driving a Chevy convertible, offer up tangible proof of his Yanqui-philia. Fittingly, Melville’s penultimate film Le Cercle Rouge falls firmly within the noir tradition, though with enough quirks and quarks to distinguish it from the herd of post-noir pretenders.
Le Cercle Rouge begins with a quote from Siddharta about how some men’s meeting is inevitable, and signals a fatalism that runs throughout the film. Matinee idol Alain Delain is cast as Corey, a newly-released ex-con who is partnered with a mentally fragile ex-cop, played by Yves Montand, and plotting an elaborate jewelry store heist. While Delain, whose reserved and icy coolness made him a particular favourite of Melville’s, often strikes me as unnecessarily stiff in the title role, Montand is completely convincing as his partner Jansen. Popular singer Andre Bourvil, who portrays Mattei, the cop who winds up on the trail of the thieves, is a quiet revelation. Mattei is a dignified man who has the force’s best record for the previous fifteen years, and refuses to believe his superior’s dismissal of all humanity as corrupt, preferring to cling to his hope that we are all redeemable. Mattei pursues the crooks not only to get the bad guys, but also to redeem himself for allowing to escape his custody a suspect named Vogel (Gian Maria Volonte, who makes little impression after his exciting entrance into the film), who ends up (in one of the film’s great coincidences) in cahoots with Corey and Jansen. In order to accomplish this goal, Mattei must use informers and insiders, doing his "work through others" which is as close to a statement of artistic philosophy as Melville offers up in this film.
With its playful camera work and bracing irony, Le Cercle Rouge has a Hitchcockian feel to it. Melville’s depiction of the near-psychotic Jansen’s nightmare visions is a particular treat, as his neuroses are visualized in an effectively demented manner, and add another layer of chase to the film, as Jansen is being pursued as feverishly by his internal demons as Corey and Vogel are by their external ones. While still tilling the soil of noir in his cultivation of incessant cynicism and bleak moodiness, as well as his abnegation of all things female and feminine—the only women here are, in typical femme fatale fashion, either call girls or "dancers"--Melville also allows himself the luxury of fully developing several characters, rather than one or two, thereby broadening the scope of the film, while also contributing to occasional lapses into narrative slackness. Indeed, Melville’s film is perhaps a little to complex and convoluted for its own good, as it proves quite the challenge to keep the many characters and their stories moving and involving. Still, you have to admire his ambition to make a sophisticated "b-movie" that is moody, intelligent and consistently engaging.
Score: 83/100
Wherein bon vivant Ben Livant and I (Dan Jardine) speak our minds about movies, mostly.
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Sunday, September 12, 2004
The History of Rock ‘n Roll (1995, USA, numerous directors) AKA I Like It
Rock and roll is more than a specific and immediately identifiable sound, it is a sensibility. It is the soundtrack of our youthfulness (as opposed to youth), the rousing voice of our disaffection, anger and angst, as well as a celebration of peace, love and understanding. Rock ‘n roll is about challenging the established order, refusing to accept without question that this is the way it will and must be. You can find it in the music and attitudes of acts are disparate as Little Richard and Johnny Cash, The Beatles and The Sex Pistols, Ray Charles and Public Enemy. And now, thanks to the efforts of Time Life video, a fact that causes your humble narrator more than his normal fair share of cognitive dissonance, we have a ten hour-long tome to that very same irreverent, anti-establishment spirit that is the essence of rock ‘n roll. While the series suffers from its fair share of problems, most of them are relatively minor, so that ultimately it must be admitted that The Man has indeed found a way to celebrate the music of the counter-culture while simultaneously making yet more money off of it.
For those who wish that they could have been sitting in the School of Rock classroom when Jack Black, standing in front of a chalkboard crammed with the names of Rock Gods through the Ages, taught the kids all about the long and winding road that is rock and roll, this series is going to be something of a wet dream. And yet, to some extent, undertaking a task this large is risky business, in that it will be impossible to satisfy fans of particular musical genres or specific artists, because in order to the cover five decades in ten one-hour programs that each focuses on distinct genres and movements, such as its early explosion out of country, jazz and blues music, through to the influence of soul and R and B and the development of punk and new wave, that mark rock’s musical evolution, you remain unable to dive deeply into the work of any single era or artist. In the process of lining up the 600 minutes of information from over 200 interviews and 1800 performance clips, the filmmakers risked giving the same sorta stone-skipping treatment to the material that you can find in those literary survey courses that are the bane of many a first-year student—those of the "If this is Tuesday, it must be Milton" variety. And you can also be sure that applying such an analytical approach to something as amorphous, variegated and beloved as rock and roll will almost certainly get you hated by those who would prefer a straight-up celebration over a more serious or scholarly critique. Fortunately, the makers of this series do a pretty decent job of walking the tightrope between fanboy banality and intellectual aridity, and while it will never be mistaken for the Final Word in Rock and Roll, The History of Rock ‘n Roll is a fine achievement nonetheless.
To a certain extent, it is clear that some of the content of these episodes is determined by the footage the filmmakers could acquire and the interviews they could land, so you see things like Fabian and Neil Sedaka getting signficant on-screen time, and the much more popular and influential John Fogerty and the rest of Creedence Clearwater Revival receiving nary a mention. Still and regardless, the series does a solid job of establishing not only the musical context, but the social and political as well. So we witness how the conditions of each era affected the development of the music, and how the cycle was complete when the music then went on to affect the times. The History of Rock ‘n Roll also does a very nice job of connecting the dots between the wide variety of musical influences that would influence the evolution of rock and roll, while also making a strong case for the inclusion of hip hop/rap under the same banner. Some material, including moments featuring the young and cheeky Bob Dylan sparring with critics and journalists and footage of some of little Robert Zimmerman performing selections of his most seminal work, prove downright riveting. Indeed, it is the older pre-MTV era footage, like quick glimpses of Louis Jordan and Hank Williams that proves most rewarding. Rarely-seen material, such as the first television performances of Elvis Costello and Led Zeppelin proves equally fascinating, and helps put a stamp of authenticity and relevance on the series.
Now, it would’ve been nice to have seen a few music critics in the league of the dearly departed Lester Bangs or the still alive-and-kicking Robert Christgau involved in the discussion to provide slightly more insight into the music than some of the more pretentious pronouncements by Ray Manzarek or the self-conscious seriousness of Bono, which can prove a bit overbearing; however, just when you begin to lose hope, a figure like Brian Eno, Joe Strummer or Pete Townsend appears. Unafraid to calls ‘em as he sees him, Pete often rides to the rescue with an astute comment or a biting attack on musical sacred cows, including entire decades (the 70s, which he refers to as the "decline of the Roman Empire") and fellow musicians (he complains that he never liked a single thing Led Zeppelin did). The frequent insertions of clips from This is Spinal Tap also proves effective at deflating some of the hyperbole and reminding us of just how numb-skulled a lot of these musicians were and continue to be. As Eric Burden reminds us very early on, while jazz is aimed at our head, rock n’ roll is the music of the groin.
As soon as something strikes a chord with an audience, it is destined to be pasteurized and homogenized by corporate interests in order to reach a wider audience. So, Little Richard is covered and whitewashed by Pat Boone, the raging Sex Pistols get softened into a petulant Green Day, and Public Enemy’s pointed politics get re-imagined as the innocuousness that is MC Hammer. Yet, even though every generation ends up being cannibalized by the next, and one generation’s underground becomes the next one’s popular music, there’s something shark-like about rock ‘n roll. Despite its apparent limitations, rock and roll remains an ever-evolving form of musical expression, and The History of Rock ‘n Roll does a dandy job of capturing the essence of what makes that music our music, the music of our eternal youthfulness.
Score: 78/100
Rock and roll is more than a specific and immediately identifiable sound, it is a sensibility. It is the soundtrack of our youthfulness (as opposed to youth), the rousing voice of our disaffection, anger and angst, as well as a celebration of peace, love and understanding. Rock ‘n roll is about challenging the established order, refusing to accept without question that this is the way it will and must be. You can find it in the music and attitudes of acts are disparate as Little Richard and Johnny Cash, The Beatles and The Sex Pistols, Ray Charles and Public Enemy. And now, thanks to the efforts of Time Life video, a fact that causes your humble narrator more than his normal fair share of cognitive dissonance, we have a ten hour-long tome to that very same irreverent, anti-establishment spirit that is the essence of rock ‘n roll. While the series suffers from its fair share of problems, most of them are relatively minor, so that ultimately it must be admitted that The Man has indeed found a way to celebrate the music of the counter-culture while simultaneously making yet more money off of it.
For those who wish that they could have been sitting in the School of Rock classroom when Jack Black, standing in front of a chalkboard crammed with the names of Rock Gods through the Ages, taught the kids all about the long and winding road that is rock and roll, this series is going to be something of a wet dream. And yet, to some extent, undertaking a task this large is risky business, in that it will be impossible to satisfy fans of particular musical genres or specific artists, because in order to the cover five decades in ten one-hour programs that each focuses on distinct genres and movements, such as its early explosion out of country, jazz and blues music, through to the influence of soul and R and B and the development of punk and new wave, that mark rock’s musical evolution, you remain unable to dive deeply into the work of any single era or artist. In the process of lining up the 600 minutes of information from over 200 interviews and 1800 performance clips, the filmmakers risked giving the same sorta stone-skipping treatment to the material that you can find in those literary survey courses that are the bane of many a first-year student—those of the "If this is Tuesday, it must be Milton" variety. And you can also be sure that applying such an analytical approach to something as amorphous, variegated and beloved as rock and roll will almost certainly get you hated by those who would prefer a straight-up celebration over a more serious or scholarly critique. Fortunately, the makers of this series do a pretty decent job of walking the tightrope between fanboy banality and intellectual aridity, and while it will never be mistaken for the Final Word in Rock and Roll, The History of Rock ‘n Roll is a fine achievement nonetheless.
To a certain extent, it is clear that some of the content of these episodes is determined by the footage the filmmakers could acquire and the interviews they could land, so you see things like Fabian and Neil Sedaka getting signficant on-screen time, and the much more popular and influential John Fogerty and the rest of Creedence Clearwater Revival receiving nary a mention. Still and regardless, the series does a solid job of establishing not only the musical context, but the social and political as well. So we witness how the conditions of each era affected the development of the music, and how the cycle was complete when the music then went on to affect the times. The History of Rock ‘n Roll also does a very nice job of connecting the dots between the wide variety of musical influences that would influence the evolution of rock and roll, while also making a strong case for the inclusion of hip hop/rap under the same banner. Some material, including moments featuring the young and cheeky Bob Dylan sparring with critics and journalists and footage of some of little Robert Zimmerman performing selections of his most seminal work, prove downright riveting. Indeed, it is the older pre-MTV era footage, like quick glimpses of Louis Jordan and Hank Williams that proves most rewarding. Rarely-seen material, such as the first television performances of Elvis Costello and Led Zeppelin proves equally fascinating, and helps put a stamp of authenticity and relevance on the series.
Now, it would’ve been nice to have seen a few music critics in the league of the dearly departed Lester Bangs or the still alive-and-kicking Robert Christgau involved in the discussion to provide slightly more insight into the music than some of the more pretentious pronouncements by Ray Manzarek or the self-conscious seriousness of Bono, which can prove a bit overbearing; however, just when you begin to lose hope, a figure like Brian Eno, Joe Strummer or Pete Townsend appears. Unafraid to calls ‘em as he sees him, Pete often rides to the rescue with an astute comment or a biting attack on musical sacred cows, including entire decades (the 70s, which he refers to as the "decline of the Roman Empire") and fellow musicians (he complains that he never liked a single thing Led Zeppelin did). The frequent insertions of clips from This is Spinal Tap also proves effective at deflating some of the hyperbole and reminding us of just how numb-skulled a lot of these musicians were and continue to be. As Eric Burden reminds us very early on, while jazz is aimed at our head, rock n’ roll is the music of the groin.
As soon as something strikes a chord with an audience, it is destined to be pasteurized and homogenized by corporate interests in order to reach a wider audience. So, Little Richard is covered and whitewashed by Pat Boone, the raging Sex Pistols get softened into a petulant Green Day, and Public Enemy’s pointed politics get re-imagined as the innocuousness that is MC Hammer. Yet, even though every generation ends up being cannibalized by the next, and one generation’s underground becomes the next one’s popular music, there’s something shark-like about rock ‘n roll. Despite its apparent limitations, rock and roll remains an ever-evolving form of musical expression, and The History of Rock ‘n Roll does a dandy job of capturing the essence of what makes that music our music, the music of our eternal youthfulness.
Score: 78/100
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