Cinéma Inhabituel for February 1-15

A Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM 

By Ed Garea

As we all know, TCM is devoting the month of February, along with the first three days in March, to its annual “31 Days of Oscar” festival. Like last year, there’s little that’s new this time around, but the format has again been changed this year. This time around the format is by nominated category, such as Best Original Song Winners, Best Cinematography Winner, or Best Supporting Actor. However, no matter how it’s sliced it still comes down to the same old tried and true. The shame is that there are so many other categories that can be explored. Added to the usual mix this year is an evening of Best Documentary Winners.

And this gets us to thinking. Why can’t there be other, less heralded, Oscar winners, such an evening of Best Short Subjects or Best Animated Films or Shorts? There is a lot that can be mined here, not just the usual parade of the major categories. The point is, TCM, if you’re going to stay committed to this festival, how about opening the sluice gates a little and letting in rarities we don’t normally see? 

February 5: It’s a day and night of Best Documentary nominees and winners. Of the films being shown, only two are premieres, unfortunately. Again, there’s so much to be seen, so much to show.

The day begins at 6:45 am with the acclaimed 1969 French television documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity. Marcel Ophuls' film could not be shown on French screen until 1981 and created a firestorm because it directly challenges one of the primal myths of Occupied France: that it was a country of resisters. But Ophuls doesn’t simply make a case of J’Accuse, his documentary is a complex and entertaining weave of subjects and figures in wartime France as he examines the complexities of survival, resistance, capitulation, and collaboration that defined Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War.  

The four-hour-plus film, set in and around the provincial town of Clemont-Ferrand, is divided into two parts. Rather than show his cards at the beginning, Ophuls unfolds his argument slowly, making his case for how a citizenry could compromise their values not only for survival, but also for personal gain. For instance, one of the nuanced points Ophuls makes is the frequency and extent of the bourgeois’ collaboration with the Nazis for pecuniary gain or to retain their status. On the other hand he subtly points out that it was often the farmers, peasants and working class who displayed the most patriotism and self-sacrifice during the Occupation.

While Ophuls educates us, he also entertains us with exhaustive interviews not just of those who were in the direct line of fire, such as working-class members of the resistance, but also such well-know figures as Churchill's Foreign Secretary, Sir Anthony Eden; Helmut Tausend, a German soldier stationed in France during the war; an aristocratic French Nazi; a British spy in France who worked undercover as a transvestite cabaret performer; and entertainer Maurice Chevalier, defending himself against charges of collaboration with the Germans. 

The Sorrow and the Pity offers us a look at how a conquered nation can metamorphose from resistance to compliance through the use, often subtle, of propaganda and intimidation. To further his point Ophuls includes such rare films as German newsreels seen only in conquered territory and the subtly anti-Semitic 1940 German film, Jew Suss (1940), both of which show that the Germans, rather than creating a climate of hatred, merely took advantage of hatreds already there, especially the undercurrent of anti-Semitism that was a part and parcel of French social life.

This was the best known film of Ophuls’ career. The only son of famed director Max Ophuls, Marcel immigrated to America in the ‘40s, where he attended Hollywood High, Occidental College and the University of California-Berkeley. The Sorrow and the Pity is his best known film, although he made another documentary with the same theme, Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988). It won an Oscar for best documentary feature.

Another fascinating documentary is Lionel Rogosin’s 1957 On the Bowery, a powerful semi-documentary about three days in the life of railroad worker Ray Salyer, who arrives in the Bowery for a drunken spree and finds himself rapidly becoming a denizen as Rogosin ponders the question of whether Salyer can return to a life of work and sobriety or be condemned to a life of homeless alcoholism on the Bowery. The film was a milestone in an era where documentaries were mainly confined to innocuous travelogues or nature studies. It gives middle America a glimpse in that other world, a world that exists beneath the sidewalk grates, a world where each day is a fight for survival. The film follows the inhabitants as they drink, argue, play dominoes, listen to a sermon at the Bowery mission and sleep in a flophouse or pitch camp for the night on the sidewalk. 

Rogosin was one of the pioneers of independent film in America and went on influence many other independent filmmakers around the world. On the Bowery was ignored in America. Bosley Crowther denounced it in The New York Times as “a dismal exposition to be charging people money to see,” noting that, “Indeed, it is merely a good montage of good photographs of drunks and bums, scrutinized and listened to ad nauseam. And we mean ad nauseam!” In the end he dismisses it as “a temperance lecture on film that makes no new points.” But the film picked up steam after it received the Grand Prize for documentary at the Venice Film Festival, a British Academy Award as Best Documentary Feature and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. 

The TCM essay on the film notes that in 2008 it was chosen for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

Turning to the evening, at 8:00 pm Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) premieres. Supposedly an expose of the myths and misconceptions that surround global warming, along with suggestions to prevent it, the film plays fast and loose with the facts and the audience is left with the conclusion that the only really inconvenient thing in this documentary is the truth.

At 9:45 pm, Harvey Fierstein narrates the first-rate documentary about the career and assassination of San Francisco's first elected openly gay councilor in The Times of Harvey Milk (1984). The film deftly combines archival footage with original interviews featuring Milk's contemporaries, as filmmaker Rob Epstein captures the spirit of Milk and also the spirit of time and place: 1970’s San Francisco.     

Milk relocated to San Francisco from New York like other young gay men of the era, looking for a more tolerant society. He opened a camera shop on Castro Street in the city's gay district. His interest in politics, in particular the rights of the LGBT community and small business owners, slowly grew and led him to seek office on the city's Board of Supervisors, to which he was elected in 1977. In office, he sponsored major civil rights legislation and campaigned successfully against state legislator John Briggs's ballot initiative to ban gay men, lesbians and their supporters from working in the state's public schools. However, less than a year into his term, he and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by former supervisor Dan White on November 27, 1978. When White was let off with a reduced sentence months later riots followed in the decision’s wake and a new term was added to the lexicon of pop culture: The Twinkie Defense.

At 11:30 pm many baby boomers get the chance to relive their youth with the airing of Woodstock: The Director’s Cut (1970). And at 3:30 am, it’s the Oscar winning anti-Vietnam War documentary, Hearts and Minds (1974), filmmaker Peter Davis’ examination of America’s involvement in Vietnam. It made its debut at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, just a year after the American withdrawal and mere months before President Richard Nixon resigned his office. 

With debate over the war still ongoing, Davis’ film added fuel to the fire, with critics rightly noting that it was one-sided and anti-American. For instance, the film does not consider the atrocities inflicted upon American soldiers and Vietnamese citizens by the Viet Cong. But Davis attempted to deflect the criticism by stating that it was never his intention to show an objective history of the war. The film’s title comes from a statement President Lyndon Johnson used to justify America’s growing escalation of the war: “The ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there.” 

The TCM essay on the film by Sean Axmaker notes that in 2001 Davis explained that he went into the film with three questions on his mind: “Why did we go to Vietnam, what did we do there and what did the doing in turn do to us? I didn't expect the film to answer those questions, I expected it to address those questions.”  

February 2: In the category of Overlooked Classics comes John Ford’s 1940 drama of a merchant ship's crew as it tries to survive the loneliness of the sea and the coming of war, The Long Voyage Home. Nominated for six Academy Awards, the film features great writing along with deft direction and outstanding performers from its ensemble cast, including John Wayne as the idealistic and homesick young Ole Olsen. It’s beautifully photographed in black-and-white by Gregg Toland, who uses low-key lighting and deep focus photography to establish the film’s pessimistic atmosphere. Toland would later display these talents on 1941’s Citizen Kane. This is a film that is often taken for granted, overlooked when placed aside other Ford classics. But The Long Voyage Home, although it comes across at times as stagebound, stands on its own as an effective and unsentimental portrait of lonely and desperate merchant seamen. Ford cobbled the film together from four one-act plays by Eugene O’Neill (The Moon of the Caribbees, In the Zone, Bound East for Cardiff, and The Long Voyage Home). O’Neill reportedly called the resulting film his favorite work put to film. 

February 8: In an evening devoted to Best Sound Winners, no film could be more apt than David Lean’s 1952 The Sound Barrier, which is airing at 4:15 am. Ralph Richardson stands out as John Ridgefield, designer of the Prometheus, a jet plane he hopes will break the sound barrier. For his test pilot he hires Tony Garthwaite (Nigel Patrick). But there’s one problem: Ridgefield's daughter, Susan (Ann Todd), is married to Garthwaite and she worries that Dad’s designs will get her husband killed. The Sound Barrier is a drama that is gripping, engrossing, and believable due to Lean’s work behind the camera. Even at this late hour it’s a Must See.

February 9: On an evening devoted to Best Costume Design, what could be more apropos than a film about an ambitious model and her climb to the top? 1965’s Darling, airing at 12:45 am, stars Julie Christie in her first starring role as Diana Scott, a gorgeous model who uses her body to get ahead in a vain search for personal happiness and fulfillment. Directed by John Schlesinger, Darling is a trite and badly dated look at the jet set culture that dominated London in the swinging sixties. The film is told in flashback as Scott, an Italian princess by marriage, is being interviewed by a reporter at her Italian villa. She details her climb as she first dazzles intellectual journalist Robert Gold (Dirk Bogarde), who promptly leaves his family to live with her. He introduces her to a more wealthy and social set and she deserts the intellectual Gold to hook up with the well-connected public relations executive Miles Brand (Laurence Harvey). Growing bored with Miles she next takes up with Malcolm (Roland Curram), a gay photographer who takes her to Italy to film commercials. There she seduces and marries millionaire Italian widower, Prince Cesare (Jose-Luis deVillalonga), becoming his trophy wife. Darling is a prime example of debauchery attempting to pass for profundity and grows ever more tiresome as Diana skips from bed to bed. The dialogue is marked by such insights as Bogarde telling Christie that “Your idea of being fulfilled is having more than one man in bed at the same time.” Yawn. The only reason we recommend this is because it rarely surfaces on television and we love bad movies.

February 12: The evening is devoted to Best Director Winners, and Bob Fosse is saluted this night for his wonderful musical, Cabaret, leading off the evening at 8:00. Of all the ‘70s and beyond musicals it’s our favorite by far and is easily Liza Minnelli’s best performance (and most likely her most memorable one). Based on “Sally Bowles,” a short story by Christopher Isherwood (from his collection Berlin Stories), the movie perfectly captures the setting and mood of Berlin just before Hitler became chancellor in 1933. Minnelli is Sally Bowles, a bohemian young dancer who performs at the Kit Kat Club. Joel Grey, who steals the film, is the emcee at the club. Michael York plays Brian Roberts, a bisexual writer (based on Isherwood), who shares his bed with Sally and Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem). Director Bob Fosse took the Broadway musical on which the film is based and increased the focus of the film on the Kit Kat Club, cutting all but one of the musical numbers that took place outside the club. The number he kept in was the harrowing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” a folk song spontaneously sung by young Nazis at an outdoor café. I have seen this film numerous times and the scene still sends a chill down my spine. A point of trivia that’s worth mentioning is that when the musical opened in London’s West End in 1966, the role of Sally Bowles was played by Dame Judi Dench. Cabaret was nominated for 10 Oscars, with Minnelli winning Best Actress and Joel Grey winning Best Supporting Actor.

February 13: A day of Foreign Language nominees and winners is highlighted by several films either making their debut or rarely screened. First up at 8:00 am is Keisuke Kinoshita’s melodrama, Immortal Love (Eien no hito, 1961), Set in 1932, Sadako (Hideko Takamine) is a tenant whose fiancee, Takashi (Kenji Sada), is off to war in China. The landowner’s son, Heibei (Tatsuya Nakadai), has returned home from the war as a semi-invalid. He tells Sadako that Takashi was probably killed in the war. As events progress, he rapes Sadako and she becomes pregnant as a result. Pressure from Heibei’s father (Kato Yoshi) on her father forces her to marry him. But she cannot love the son conceived from the rape. Takashi returns home from the war unharmed, and marries Tomako (Otawa Nabuko), with whom he has a son. Things then really get sticky as Sadako and Heibei’s son kills himself at the age of 17 after learning he was the product of a rape. Their second born son becomes a communist, and their daughter elopes with Takashi’s son, helped along by the connivance of Sadako, who knows Heibei would never give his consent. The film ends in the present day on an ambiguous note, as Sadako and Heibei are trapped in a loveless marriage. 

At 10:00 comes a repeat showing of Jacques Tati’s 1958 comedy, Mon Oncle. The film follows the further adventures of Tati’s Mr. Hulot, the lovable bumble who prefers the simple life as opposed to the modernization going on about him in Paris. His life life is in sharp contrast to that of his sister and brother-in-law, the Arpels (Jean-Pierre Zola and Adrienne Servantie), who live in an ultramodern, gadget-filled home. Tati supplies the humor with a continuous flow of sight gags as Mr. Hulot tries to adapt to the environment of his sister and brother-in-law, who is always trying to find him a job. Though not as good as Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, it’s still an easygoing delight, thanks for Tati and Piette Etaix’s sight gags.

At 2:15 am it’s Black Orpheus from 1959, a sumptuous re-telling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice set in Rio during Brazil’s carnival season to the beat of the Latin American pop music known as “bossa nova.” A largely unprofessional cast led by Breno Mello (as Orpheus) and Pittsburgh dancer Marpessa Dawn (as Eurydice) move seamlessly through the fantasy world of the Carnival. Though it can’t be strictly labeled as a musical, it is nonetheless drenched through with music and dance. Director Marcel Camus makes beautiful use of color, with the film’s energy becoming infectious, almost exhausting at times. Highly recommended, even to those who normally shy away from anything having to do with music or musicals.