THE PASSION OF ANNA

I didn’t know what to watch last night after Donna turned in, but I knew I needed something for my soul. My random pick was Ingmar Bergman’s THE PASSION OF ANNA, which I last saw so long ago that it made little impact and slid out of memory. Watching it this time, it felt almost tailor-made for me. It’s a film about mid-life isolation, in the wake of relationships to which we’ve given our all - and in the background, a harrowing horror film unfolds, about a marauder on a small island community who is going around killing his neighbors’ animals. (Expect some distress from this angle.) The island’s few residents are consequently turning suspicious of one another. One innocent man ends up paying the price, ramping up the horror. In the midst of this, a lonely man (Max von Sydow) meets his neighbors and befriends them. The film is supposedly about his relationship with the troubled Anna (Liv Ullmann), who lost her first husband in a traumatizing car wreck, but first comes his affair with her married but lonely sister-in-law (Bibi Andersson). Her cold husband (Erland Josephson) is a self-absorbed photographer and architect, all of whose scenes Bergman films with a bizarre, Fellini-like flair; they are literally like seeing flamboyant Italian footage dropped into a more stoic Swedish film. We see the Sydow/Andersson affair commence in great detail, and it seems the more promising relationship, but Bergman withholds everything of how the more fractious relationship with Anna began. She is a far more intense, troubled, and volatile woman and perhaps Bergman didn’t know how it began, only that it had to. When we rejoin the story some months into their cohabitation, they are already comfortable with one another - and also believably uncomfortable. We see them play chess and later, when we see them breakfasting together at a small table, they eat together as though getting through breakfast itself was a series of tense chess maneuvers. We also see them watching the world fall apart while watching television at night. (Ullmann has a moment in this film when she is utterly terrifying.) In a very odd touch, the panic-driven story is punctuated with brief interviews with the four principal actors, talking about how they see their characters - these really offer nothing except a margin of suspicion toward the whole venture, as they feel pretentious at best and prefabricated at worst. I think we are meant to feel some hostility toward them, as this is basically a film about being navigating a path through a forest of human distrust after having let your guard down once too often. On the Criterion Channel.

(c) 2021 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Warner Archive's THE GHOST SHIP (1943) Reviewed

THE GHOST SHIP (1943, Warner Archive):

This was the fifth film produced at RKO by Val Lewton after an impressive four-classic streak - CAT PEOPLE (1942), I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943), THE LEOPARD MAN (1943), and THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943) - and continues with the latter film's director, Mark Robson. Though it doesn't quite attain the level of those past accomplishments, this film  conjures a mood all its own, alternating between the grounded emotions of people on dry land and the fears aroused by otherworldly mystery of the open sea. 

Full speed ahead into mystery, with Richard Dix (right) as Captain Stone.

When new naval academy graduate Tom Merriam (Russell Wade) joins the ship Altair as its new 3rd Officer, he is genially welcomed by the well-named Captain Will Stone (Richard Dix), whose gentlemanly courtesy at dry dock turns more cold and merciless as they head out to sea. There, Stone - who insists on a tight ship, a clean ship - revels in an authority he has accepted as his personal philosophy; he believes his command over the crew is justified because their security is entirely dependent upon him, his judgment. When a brash young crewman (an uncredited Lawrence Tierney) is horribly killed in what outwardly appears to have been an accident, Merriam finds himself in position to know that Captain Stone was responsible. At the next port, he leaves the ship and files an official complaint prompting a murder investigation at the next port; when the charge is dismissed by a maritime judge friendly to Stone, it is arranged that Merriam be subdued and brought back aboard where he finds himself at the Captain's mercy, as the frightened crew all look the other way. 

Ship mate Skelton Knaggs.

THE GHOST SHIP occupies a place in the great tradition of ominous stories set at sea, from the legend of the Flying Dutchman to Melville's MOBY DICK to such films as Michael Curtiz's THE SEA WOLF (1941, possibly a commercial impetus) and John Carpenter's THE FOG (1980). It could also be said that its unusual storyline reflects the tenor of its times. In 1943, the number of US Army and Navy personnel doubled over the previous year and many were now living at sea; meanwhile, those who remained behind saw paranoia spreading throughout the home front, fueled by war-endorsed propaganda, the wholesome, all-embracing symbol of Uncle Sam giving way to uglier expressions of governmental authority such as the recently founded House Un-American Activities Committee and Japanese interment camps.

The film belies its cash-grab title by eschewing any and all aspects of the Supernatural, finding quite enough to occupy its running time in exploring the outré mindsets of men who elect to spend their lives on the open sea, a voluntary society of men apart from the society of women. Our hero Merriam is sketchily delineated as a loner, someone who's never known a real home or a real friend, and he quickly warms and conforms to the camaraderie of the crew and the Captain who provides the Altair, his new home, with what initially sounds like a strong moral code, a reassuring center of gravity. The initially warm relationship between the Captain and his 3rd Officer eventually sours when their shared personal intimacy reaches a philosophic impasse, and it's only at this point that a female presence (or female option) finds its way into the story. She's a correspondent of Captain Stone played by the bird-like, neurotic-looking Edith Barrett, a veteran of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (and also the first Mrs. Vincent Price). When she mentions to Merriam the existence of a sister, she seems to be throwing her to him like a life preserver - and when he meets this sister at the end of the film, we are only shown her shadow on a crate, a mystery in female form defined just enough for us to accept her as whatever might be lacking in Merriam's life - someone warm and caring enough to counter his urge for going. 

As with earlier Lewton films, there are a couple of classic set-pieces, including a marvelous PIT AND THE PENDULUM-like sequence as the crew attempt to secure a menacing swinging cargo hook that has come unmoored in a storm, and a crewman's awful fate while securing a heavy length of chain in one of the ship's holds. The cast brings back Sir Lancelot  from I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and the later THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, as well as the ominous Ben Bard from THE SEVENTH VICTIM. It also plays host to a remarkable gathering of uncredited supporting players, including the aforementioned Tierney, Cliff Edwards (PINOCCHIO's Jimmy Cricket), Preston Sturges' favorite Dewey Robinson, Herb Vigran (familiar from several ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN episodes), and Skelton Knaggs (whose role as a mute, observing crew member has a distinct parallel to the mute asylum inmate in BEDLAM). However, the film is dominated by Dix's effective central portrayal, which becomes quite ogreish in the final third and led to his being hired by Columbia to head their new film franchise based on radio's popular mystery-suspense series THE WHISTLER. Owing to an unresolved copyright claim against the production, THE GHOST SHIP was quickly removed from circulation and never released to television; in fact it was withheld from public view for 50 years. 

3rd Officer Tom Merriam (Russell Wade) at the mercy of Captain Stone.

Roy Webb's brooding score captures our interest from the very start, and what follows is splendidly photographed by Lewton series ace Nicholas Musuraca. Warner Archive's double feature Blu-ray (which pairs it with Robson's final Lewton production, BEDLAM, 1946) is a beauty, but of course it comes with certain consequences. While the 1080p presentation works wonders with textures, depth, and detail, it also reveals many rear-screen projection shots as exactly like what they are, which detracts from the semi-realism the film had when it was bootlegged in coarser 16mm transfers, while also enhancing its considerable achievement as a work of filmed theater. 

(c) 2021 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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R.I.P. Michael Nesmith (1942 - 2021)

Donna and I are very sad to learn of the passing earlier today of Michael Nesmith - Liquid Paper heir, one hell of a songwriter, folk musician, Monkee ("Wool Hat"), actor, country rock pioneer, music producer, film and television producer, home video and music video pioneer, novelist, philosopher, and visionary. He was 78. He was also some kind of genius and many things to many people. Each of his solo studio albums is some kind of cockeyed, spiritual masterpiece and he had a beautiful singing voice - earnest, deeply probing, pure. 

Though I never had the pleasure of meeting him, he was directly responsible for making my first trip to Los Angeles possible when he hired me to write and tape a Video Watchdog segment for his short-lived OVERVIEW project, an attempt to publish a video magazine on videotape, back in late 1986. There I was at age 30, staying at the Hollywood Hyatt on his expense account, being driven to a spot in the industrial district where I was used as the sole actor performing to a full 35mm production unit - an amazing, surreal memory. I didn't meet him but I got to see his office, use the john in his Winnebago, and meet his son Christian - who has been playing guitar onstage with him for the past several years, and also magnificently produced his final live album. 

We kept in intermittent touch over the later years, always briefly and a little magically. One of my favorite Facebook memories is of the time when he dropped in on a thread about my favorite song, "Telstar" noting that he had heard everything I was saying about it from fellow musicians over the years - "Music from another place," as he said. So I knew he was peeking in from time to time. We got to see him in concert with Micky and Peter some years back, and I've been following his most recent work with Micky and also his steel guitarist Pete Finney; he had an extraordinary musical connection with them both.

This is a major loss, one that will take time to fully process. Our sympathies and condolences to his close friends, family, to Micky of course, and all of those who - like us - were profoundly touched by his art, craft, and unique vision.

Happy Trails, Nez. Thanks for passing through.

(c) 2021 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Quick Recommendation: DIARY OF A HIGH SCHOOL BRIDE

If you, like me, are tired of waiting to see Donald Trump held accountable for all his crimes and misdemeanors, may I direct you to the overlooked 1959 AIP release DIARY OF A HIGH SCHOOL BRIDE for a modicum of satisfaction? 

Chris Robinson plays Chuck, the former boyfriend of a newlywed girl who starts stalking her because he's acquired "a taste for married women." Robinson is terrific, in that he's utterly loathsome - your basic arrogant, entitled hard-on in a letterman jacket - and (best of all) he's a dead-ringer for a younger, leaner Trump... and boy, is he ever in a grabby mood!

Before the movie's over, he picks a fight with the wrong husband and pays the price, and then tries to rape the missus before he pays the ultimate price. In 1959, this added up to "Obvious Villain of the Piece," but today it's impossible to watch this guy in action without thinking "Future President."

If I haven't sold you on this already, his character also turns out to be the son of the mogul behind "Harco Studios" - the company that allegedly brought us such hits as THE SCREAMING SKULL! At one point, he lures his ex (this guy never gives up) to his passion pit, which is decorated with the framed original art for THE SCREAMING SKULL, HELL SQUAD, SUICIDE BATTALION, and other AIP acquisitions! 

There's also beatnik coffee house scenes, some rock 'n' roll, and a Spanish flamenco performance, as well as some staid old parents who just don't understand. It's streaming on Amazon Prime, maybe elsewhere. Heartily recommended.

(c) 2021 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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