THE OLDEST PROFESSION (1967, Kino Lorber)
Originally titled Le plus vieux métier du monde ("The Oldest Profession in the World") and subtitled "Love Through the Ages," this French/Italian/German co-production is a mixed bag anthology of shorts documenting prostitution as it developed from prehistoric to futuristic times. Kino's BD disc includes both the original French release from Gaumont (with English subtitles), and a kind of recreation of the US release, dubbed into English but using the restored French element and its screen titles.
The first two stories, Franco Indovina's "Prehistoric Era" and Mauro Bolognini's "Roman Nights," are scripted by Ennio Flaiano, Fellini's screenwriter on all of his great works from LA STRADA through JULIET OF THE SPIRITS, as well as Antonioni's LA NOTTE and Petri's THE 10TH VICTIM - and they prove that great directors were essential to his best efforts. These, which respectively feature Michèle Mercier as a cave girl and Elsa Martinelli as an Empress who must present herself as a whore to the Emperor to arouse his philandering interest, are not as compelling as they might have been. Things pick up with Phillippe de Broca's splendidly shot "Mademoiselle Mimi," scripted by Daniel Boulanger (Godard's BREATHLESS and de Broca's standard writer) and featuring Jeanne Moreau at her most bewitching.
When the film was initially released in America in 1968, it was somewhat mispresented as a starring vehicle for Raquel Welch, who does manage to eclipse all of the aforementioned femme stars in Michael Phlegar's "La Belle Epoque," co-written by Georges and André Tabet. Relieved of the responsibility of delivering finished dialogue, Welch - a lady of the evening hoping to hook a rich husband in plump, aging banker Martin Held - plays to the camera with masterful acuity, and the sketch is a delight of recaptured period atmosphere and little piquant details. This episode also features Edgar Wallace krimi-regular Siegfried Schurenberg as Held's brother and banking partner. Claude Autant-Lara's "Today," written by Jean Aurenche (FORBIDDEN GAMES), is a passably amusing story about an aging songstress (Nadia Gray, looking great regardless) and young hooker (France Anglade) who pool their resources to use an ambulance as a "hotel room on wheels" and get themselves into trouble on their first outing.
But all of this is preamble to Jean-Luc Godard's futuristic "Anticipation" (written and directed by him), which is shot in black-and-white with what we might call color accentuations. It revisits his previous feature ALPHAVILLE in that it's set in a future where love is forbidden, meted out by robotic women with erotic specialities - one is played by Marilù Tolo (who, surprisingly for a 1967 film, walks across the screen completely naked from head to shin) and the other, a specialist in literary lovemaking, is embodied by Anna Karina in her last collaboration with Godard. This 40m short - with features a cameo by Jean-Pierre Leaud as a bellboy - is nothing short of astonishing, like ALPHAVILLE conjuring up a future without artificial special effects, and telling the most elegant of stories with surprisingly minimal means. Godard's disruption of this monochromatic scheme with color is one of the great moments in his filmography. This short is so exquisitely French that I thought it might be the sacrificial lamb for the significantly briefer English version... but the English version of "Anticipation" is not only present but even more visually arresting and experimental. Apparently, Gaumont objected to Godard's wishes to tint his black-and-white footage with various color hues, yet his wishes were respected by the US version, which tint the airport scenes a lysergic orange (perhaps inspiring the look of Fellini's TOBY DAMMIT?) and introduce other color-cues as they are stated on the soundtrack. Some nudity is obscured by solarization and the full-frontal shot of Tolo is snipped out, resulting in a delightful edit that has her now "invisibly" crossing the room. In short, an uneven but surprisingly essential release.
DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME (2017, Second Run UK)
Chicago-born Bill Morrison is one of the most interesting documentarians working today. His work - mostly in the short mode - returns again and again to the theme of the mortality of the filmed image, and this feature-length picture is no exception.
Unlike his early feature DECASIA (2002), an hypnotic dance of death consisting solely of badly eroded footage that has survived from silent features now lost in their entirety, DAWSON CITY has a similar basis but a more solid documentary foundation. Dawson City is a small town on the Yukon River in northwest Canada that once thrived during the time of Gold Rush fever, and during that brief blink in time, its need for entertaining its people was divided between gambling, prostitution, and cinema. It was not a big enough spot to command new films, and it became the last stop for many silent pictures that were so battered by use that theater owners were instructed by the studios to dump them, rather than return them.
This film, using documentary footage from the time, fascinatingly reconstructs the Gold Rush period in greater detail than I've ever seen, and then brings the story of Dawson City up to date with the discovery of buried silver nitrate prints of numerous recovered "lost" films found as a building there was undergoing demolition. We are treated to numerous excerpts from these works, shuffled as illustrations into the story being told, and it is a sobering reminder of innumerable talents that were once thrown away without any thought of their value to future generations. The first thought that comes to mind with something like this is, "Did they find LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT?" Well, no. However, among the generous extras included with this marvelous set are eight original reels from the Dawson City Film Find, which includes recovered reels from the Thomas Edison Studio, D.W. Griffith, and Tod Browning - Reel 2 of THE EXQUISITE THIEF (1919), and it's remarkably involving.
Second Run's set includes both BD and DVD discs, with bonus director's commentary, complete period newsreels, and other remarkable ephemera that challenge the viewer to dig deeper and deeper.
Since viewing this disc, it's come to my attention that Kino Lorber handles the film on BD and DVD in the States, with most of the other set's extras. (Exclusive to the Second Run set is a new interview with Morrison and his 2018 short film THE LETTER.) The Kino Lorber disc can be found here.
BLOOD HUNGER: THE FILMS OF JOSÉ LARRAZ (Arrow Video US/UK)
I had a hand in this box set, providing an audio commentary to Larraz' first feature, WHIRLPOOL (1969), which here enjoys its first home video presentation in a frankly stunning visual presentation. To speak candidly, it's the weakest film in this set; Larraz had a good sense of pictorial composition and knew from his years as a cartoonist how to build drama and suspense visually, but he wasn't yet familiar with where all the pieces should go. So the film ends with the stunning information that would have given the middle a potent turning point, and opts not to conclude the story under construction. However, in doing so, Larraz threw down a gauntlet that undoubtedly inspired other filmmakers - most notably, Wes Craven with his LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT - to create the horror genre's most nihilistic works of the early 1970s. This seminal quality is also true concerning the film's even more emphatic eroticism, which (for a 1969 feature) exceeds most Adults Only films up to that time, and certainly other recipients of the X rating. (WHIRLPOOL was the first horror film to receive the MPAA's X.) In my commentary, I frankly discuss the film's faults and its seminal values, as well as the critical reception it received.
Larraz' best-known film, VAMPYRES (1973), is handsomely included with a new Kat Ellinger commentary. (The disc does not port over the Larraz commentary from the earlier Blue Underground DVD release, nor its other extras.) Ellinger, who is proficient in Spanish, brings to her talk a greater familiarity with Larraz himself, having read his autobiography, and brings forward many points essential to a correct reading of his work - his dislike for supernatural subjects being of particular relevance, considering the film's ambivalence about exactly who or what its "vampyres" are. In contrast with WHIRLPOOL, its sex elements remain on par but its depictions of graphic horror were quite outrageous for the time, and remain startling. Silent film actress Bessie Love, best-remembered as the heroine of 1925's THE LOST WORLD, had her last screen appearance in the film's tongue-in-cheek coda.
But, for me, the great thrill of this box set is THE COMING OF SIN (1978), a far more fundamentally Spanish film that begins as a mundane story set in the commonplace - a couple leaving on vacation ask a rich, reclusive female neighbor if she might look after their young gypsy housekeeper while they're away - that gradually coalesces and ascends to the level of a mythic entanglement between the hostess, the gypsy girl, and a satyr-like gypsy man who rides nude on horseback through the nearest countryside. The film focuses firmly on matters of money, property, and class yet the atmosphere that is conjured around these firm practicalities is slippery, erotic, and mystical. It builds to a somewhat familiar Larraz finale, but this - with SYMPTOMS (1974, not included here) - is easily his most accomplished work, ideally embodied by an unknown trio cast, and magnificently photographed by Fernando Arribas. The commentary for this one is by Kat Ellinger and her DIABOLIQUE cohort Samm Deighan, and though their talk has a lot of agreement in it, I feel they are both at their best when sharing a track, as each tends to raise the other's game. They note the value of certain painters whose work is presented in the story, and while neither is able to specifically note the fables that Larraz likely drew upon, they know they must be out there - pointing in a necessary direction for further research. They also fully explore the film's horrible past history as a hideously, mockingly dubbed English version known as (forgive me) VIOLATION OF THE BITCH and its hardcore Italian variant that goes by the name SODOMANIA. Please do Larraz and his memory a favor by ignoring this version, which is included.
Remarkably, there is very little informational crossover between the three commentaries, the excellent essays included in the color booklet, and the other supplements, which include cast/crew interviews (one the hilarious story of a WHIRLPOOL extra whose 10 seconds of screen time were parlayed into international fame), a rollicking Kim Newman ramble through Larraz' early filmography, detailed examinations of different versions of the films by Marc Morris, and much else besides. This is a fabulously meaty package and incontrovertible evidence of Larraz' value not only as an important master of Spanish horror, but as a distinctive sidebar of British '70s horror as well.
(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
