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The Leopard Man
The Letter
A Letter to Three Wives
Letter From Iwo Jima
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
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The Leopard Man 1943 Jacques Tourneur 3.0 Dennis O’Keefe in low-key, uninteresting portrayal of man trying to solve the mystery of the murders, Margo as Clo-Clo the good time party girl and entertainer, who is killed in the third murder sequence. One of the earlier Lewton creepy, low-key horror films and the last directed by Tourneur. Some great understated horror sequences. The first is the best: the teenage girl walks through the darkness, down streets, over fields, under a railroad bridge; lots of shadows and eerie sounds; surprises as the train passes overhead, and then the sight of the leopard in the shadows; she is killed by the leopard at her mother’s door, the latter having locked her out as a punishment; we experience the murder from the inside through growls, screams, and finally blood flowing under the door. The second is of the wealthy girl looking for her lover in the cemetery (the photography makes us wonder whether the attacker is the leopard). The third is of Clo-Clo tracked through dark streets, where there are shadows, cigarette on the ground, followed by a scream. Film set in American Southwest with a lot of references to the Indian background (slaughtered by the Spanish), Spanish speaking people, and creepy processions through the streets to commemorate the murders; also a fortune teller (cards) who seems to have predictive powers; overall the supernatural atmosphere less convincing and pervasive than ‘Zombie.’ Film is very well directed and photographed, but has to deal with unsatisfactory script: the characters of the couple protagonist are developed awkwardly; they learn to love somehow (redemption), perhaps through the guilt they feel at being responsible for the escape of the black leopard (puma?). Halfway through O’Keefe insists that a man did all but the first killing, and though the script tries to hide the killer’s identity, it is pretty obvious that he is the pseudo-scientist/museum curator. He has a final sequence in which the sound effects seem to be in his head rather than in the environment as they had been in previous sequences, and then he is tracked down by the good guys and confesses before he is killed. His confession does not clear up for the viewer why he killed. Sometimes engrossing; interesting for Tourneur fans.


Less Than Zero 1987 Marek Kanievska 2.5 Andrew McCarthy as somewhat saintly Beverly Hills friend returned home from one semester in an Eastern elite school, Jami Gertz as his basically non-acting, coke-head ex-girlfriend who pleads with him to help her save the soul of…, Robert Downey Jr. very dramatic as the third of the Beverly Hills High threesome who in a short time has completely gone to seed with dealing drugs, coke use, and selling his body to pay off his debts, James Spader in early role as rather low-key bad guy who won't let his friend Downey off the hook of his $50,000 debt. Based on infamous novel by Bret Easton Ellis, film about drug use among the rich elite in Beverly Hills, the radical decline of two of the threesome, death of Downey in clueless shot in the desert, and then salvation for McCarthy and Gertz – McCarthy takes her back to the Eastern school with him to save her from the perils of life in the West. Story seems considerably cleaned up for Hollywood. Very hard to believe the moralistic story line (don't use drugs, and check into a recovery clinic before you die) since the director films the whole movie in glitzy, cool shots – lots of scenes in cool nightclubs where the beautiful people get nosebleeds from coke use, impeccably appointed homes and loft apartments, uninteresting cool shots of McCarthy and Gertz having sex against the wall with their clothes on, McCarthy driving everyone around in his very cool 50s red Corvette, audacious angles and moving camera where there is no reason for such. Reflects the drug scene of the 80s, where parents step back from their children and refuse to have anything more to do with them – "tough love," you know. Very annoying in its glitzy coolness. Generates a little pathos as we watch Downey slide downhill, and his friends, who love him dearly, can do nothing about it. His death in the Corvette in the Mojave Desert is sad, but effect is rather undercut by useless helicopter track over the Joshua trees to the car to find his head slumped on the shoulder of McCarthy. ""Less Than Zero" is noodle-headed and faint-hearted, a shallow swipe at a serious problem, with a happily-ever-after ending yet…. dumber and duller than primordial ooze " (Washington Post) – well, perhaps not that bad.


Let the Right One In 2008 Tomas Alfredson (Sweden) 3.5 Kare Hedebrant (Oskar) as intently blond, somewhat snaggle-toothed loner boy living with his mother in a Swedish suburb – he is an outcast, more or less abandoned by his mother and bullied mercilessly at school; Lina Leandersson (Eli) as equally lonely 12-year-old girl next door, who happens to be a vampire; Per Ragnar as old fart, who appears to be Lina’s father and who collects blood to feed her. Very original take on the vampire franchise. Set in a quiet, abandoned feeling Sweden of the 1980s; it is winter, very cold, snow crunching everywhere, people bundled up, everything moves slowly, if at all. The two lonely children obviously need one another, since Kare’s parents barely pay attention to him, and Lina loses her father in a horrifying scene in which he eats away the right part of his face with acid. Vampire lore is interesting and horrifying: Lina has to ask permission to enter anyone’s house, and when once she doesn’t, she begins to bleed copiously from every visible orifice – the horrified Kare quickly blurts out that she is welcome; Lina’s father (?) prepares an icky blood-collecting kit (including a funnel) when he gets ready to collect blood for Lina; when one woman is hospitalized after being non-fatally bitten by the ruthless Lina, she catches on fire and is consumed when the doctor opens the window (light is not good for them!); Lina is ravenous, growling low like a mad dog when she feeds on someone, batting upon them tenaciously and ruthlessly until she emerges with black blood and gore smeared on her mouth; she is able to climb trees and walls like Dracula in the original novel; when Kare is close to being drowned in a swimming pool, the underwater camera catches glimpses of Lina’s rescue efforts – a head falls into the water, feet skitter across the pool just underwater, a bloody, severed arm falls between the camera and Kare’s now released head. The horror is balanced by some light moments, e.g., a very proper French poodle interrupts the dad’s collecting blood from a body that he has chloroformed and strung up head down on a tree limb. More important is the sympathy and pity that the director generates for the two lost children; Lina has the willpower to resist her impulse to feed off her friend; she slips her hand into hers; he asks her to be a girlfriend, and she accepts; she rescues him from the bullies in the swimming pool. The final shot has Kare riding alone in a train compartment with Lina’s large box sitting on the floor next to him: one wonders whether one should be happy that they are now united as a couple (and lovers eventually?) or whether one should be horrified by the probability that he will replace the father in gathering blood for his beloved. A masterpiece of atmosphere; an imaginative amalgamation of horror and a love story.


The Letter 1940 William Wyler (Warners) 3.5 Bette Davis in another show-stopping performance, Herbert Marshall subdued and low key as the clueless, emotionally dependent husband with less than average intelligence and powers of observation, James Stephenson as rather suave defense lawyer who endangers his career to defend Davis, Gale Sondergaard (from ‘Black Cat’) as the Eurasian wife of the murdered man – mysterious and inscrutable, Victor Sen Yung (Charlie Chan’s Number Two son) as Stephenson’s legal assistant who acts as go-between to get hold of the letter that we think in the beginning of the film will incriminate Davis. Excellent, gripping melodrama centered on riveting performance of Bette Davis who keeps our attention in her every scene, and makes us wonder until the end whether she is a cold-blooded killer capable of any manipulation or lie, or whether she has erred only from an excess of passion (there is never a doubt that she killed her lover). Although she is not beautiful, she looks great – notice her smooth ankle-length white gown with the metallic buttons all the way down the front, the perfectly tapered pearls she wears in evening clothes, etc.; she is pretty. Script is excellent – we are always in suspense and wondering what will happen next; nothing is predictable. Film continues after Davis is found not guilty of the murder: Will Marshall find out that Davis and the lawyer have used the money to buy back the incriminating letter from Sondergaard? Is Davis really remorseful? Will Marshall forgive her for the infidelity? Will she succeed in her thought of committing suicide with the knife she had picked up in Chinatown? Excellent ending – the knife that was lying outside Davis’ door has been removed by Sondergaard, and when Davis emerges into the garden, she and her man (Davis’ “head boy”) grab Davis, and Sondergaard stabs her to death with a knife; so, it turns out that Sondergaard had sold her the letter so that the state would not get the opportunity to punish her – that she will do herself. The vengeful wife will not even allow Davis to commit suicide; she must be executed. Film is exceedingly well directed – seamless, flowing and elegant. Wyler uses his trademark deep focus photography and moving camera to tell the story beautifully. The first scene is memorable: the camera pans over the sleeping Malay workers on the rubber plantation, then focuses on a bird, who flies away abruptly when several shots are fired, and then Davis and her victim emerge from the house whereupon she fires two or three more rounds into him – all of this in one shot (reminds one of Orson Welles). Another outstanding scene is the one in which Davis opens the door to her room, finds the knife gone, and then stalks through the garden in search of…. with the camera gliding after her. Motifs and symbols abound – the lace (crochet) that Davis works on as a symbol of her domesticity (she is good-hearted despite all; it is left behind in the last shot after Davis’ murder); the moon that finally disappears behind the cloud just when she is murdered. The white folk in the film enjoys the privileges of a caste society: all the British colony is whole-heartedly behind Davis, even though it is obvious that she committed the murder; Davis’ jealousy of her lover’s wife was exacerbated by her being Chinese with her white face and her spangly earrings; Chinese characters tend to be rather shiftless, secretive, inscrutable, dirty, at least one of them smoking opium in a smoke-filled den. Film is sometimes talky, especially in the middle portion; and it probably would have benefited from five minutes of cuts. Collaboration between Wyler and Davis primed for the next year’s ‘Little Foxes’.


Letter from an Unknown Woman     1948    Max Ophuls (Universal)    4.0 Joan Fontaine in one of her best roles as young woman hopelessly and obsessively in love with a concert musician; Louis Jourdan as the gifted, feckless, although quite romantic musician who treats her essentially as just another conquest.  The classic Ophuls film.  The narrative is told in flashback, as Fontaine, about to die, like her nine-year-old son, from typhus, reveals the details of her life and romance with Jourdan in a letter to Jourdan.  "Unknown" is ironic, since Fontaine has had a one-night affair with Jourdan and conceived her child, but when she returns to him years later, he does not recognize her but courts her for another seduction -- she leaves before it happens again when she realizes that he does not remember her.  As he reads the letter, Jourdan appears to have his memory jogged; he feels remorse, and, although he has previously told his servant that he has no intention of fighting his challenger in a duel, he then steps out to face a probably fatal duel with Fontaine's husband.  The film is quintessential soap opera -- girl hopelessly in love from a young age; rejects a good marriage because of her (one-sided) fidelity to the object of her affection; has a brief affair, conceives a child after he abandons her, but refuses to reveal his name; raises her son and marries a good, wealthy man for the sake of her son; and then – the gods do not smile in this film -- mother and son die from typhus.  Film is suffused with the Weltschmerz of early 20th-century Viennese writing (Schnitzler and Zweig, and of course the piercingly bittersweet waltzes of Johann Strauss) -- everybody is seeking erotic happiness, but most things don't work out; if you are doing well, don't expect it to last long; the happiness of being with your lover is mitigated by the certainty it will not last.  The course of your happiness is determined by fate (a specific statement in the film), and fate is not usually kind.  Art direction evokes wonderfully the atmosphere and environment of Vienna -- the spiral staircases, the glass doors of 1900, the carriages in the streets, the snow on the ground, the typical vendors in the streets, the smart officers with their distinctive caps and mantles thrown stylishly over their shoulder, the gemütlich characters in the streets, the military bands playing the 'Radetzky March' as they march through the streets.  Ophuls' famous camera -- panning gracefully, moving even more gracefully to follow characters, turning as the lovers climb the curved staircase to Jourdan's apartment -- evokes the instability and evanescence of Fontaine's happiness; life is in continual movement; one seizes happiness on the wing, but you never know how it will turn out or how long it will last.  Film could be smarmy, but the restraint and taste of Ophuls makes it a moving and haunting commentary on the human condition.  


A Letter to Three Wives 1949 Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Fox) 3.5 Jeanne Crain, Anne Southern, Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Thelma Ritter. Mankiewicz women’s film (concern mostly with their domestic dramas) with much dialogue but seemingly more attention to direction than in ‘All About Eve.’ His dialogue is often witty and interesting, but it seems a bit forced and self-conscious. Set in upper middle class suburb outside of New York with big houses and dinner at the country club. Addie (the invisible semi narrator, who never appears in film but about whom we learn a lot from all the other character’s conversations) sends letter to three women off to help poor kids that she is running off with one of their husbands; the mystery and suspense is which one? The women can’t find out until they get back from their trip (film would not work in the age of cell phones). From introduction we already have reason to suspect two of them. Then three flashbacks that give us more reason to suspect especially Kirk Douglas and Paul. The men are all still attracted to Addie, whom they all had known in high school, as “classy,” and the women fear her as a woman with power over men; at one point Paul Douglas stares longingly at her portrait on his table, but we are not allowed to look! Southern flashback has some intense satire of radio drama and American advertising that is not particularly funny – seems dated; and Kirk comes off as a snob is his confident superiority over American popular culture (Brahms’ piano concerto keeps coming on to the soundtrack). Best one was the Darnell flashback. She was from the wrong side of the tracks, and there is witty, natural dialogue between her mother and Thelma Ritter, who is constantly sassing the rich people in the film. A clerk in a department store, she pursues her boss, and since he is firmly hooked, he finally – wearily – agrees to marry her. Funny running gag about their house in the wrong part of town shaking every time the train comes by; it shakes especially hard when Linda finally kisses her future husband (poor substitute for sex?). Ending has some surprises. Southern is now more firmly in love with her high school teacher husband; Crain thinks her husband is the one since he sends her a note saying he would not be home for the night; turns out that the man was Paul Douglas, who had run off with Addie, but then changed his mind and came back to Linda Darnell. The latter two are reconciled, and it seems that despite the mercenary beginning of their relationship, they have truly fallen in love over the past three years of marriage. All go off to dance, and the ghost (?) of Addie gaily tips over a crystal champagne glass that breaks; mission accomplished (?)! It seems that Addie was well-intentioned, and just wanted everyone to love better?


Letter From Iwo Jima 2006 Clint Eastwood 4.0 Ken Watanabe as charismatic and controversial Japanese general Kuribayashi commanding the defense of Iwo Jima; Ryo Kase as soldier suspected by the others of being a political spy, but who has just as many doubts about ‘fight to the death’ as many of the others; Kazunai Ninomiya as Saigo, a rural baker who is drafted and who never believes in the heroic death for the Emperor; Tsuyoshi Ihara as the aristocratic Baron Nishi, who won the 1932 Olympics equestrian competition and who along with Kuribayashi serves also as a link to the USA. Wonderfully understated, yet sensitive treatment of the experience of Japanese soldiers who gradually learn in their defense of Iwo Jima that they have been abandoned by their High Command and that their only choice is to fight to the death with honor. Eastwood is astounding in his ability to make a Japanese language film so successfully; it is also researched and written so carefully that its treatment of the Japanese characters rings true even in Japan. The film is shot in unsaturated color that often looks like black and white – an impression abetted by most of the film taking place in caves. Japanese characters, who are individualized to get the viewer involved, are nuanced and human. Saigo is a simple person who is attached to his wife and child and who doesn’t buy into the sacrifice ethic of the Japanese army; Shimizu is similar in his inability to be brutal (in a flashback he refuses to shoot a dog that is barking too much in a civilian neighborhood); Nishi had spent time in Los Angeles, had met Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and he treats a wounded American soldier (the Japanese soldiers usually finished them off) and mourns him when he dies; Watanabe is fanatically devoted to the cause of the Fatherland and the performance of his duty, but he is a sensitive family man (his letters home are illustrated) and he has emotional attachments to things American (he wears an American revolver that he commits suicide with at the end) and he rues the decision of the government to go to war with this industrial behemoth. Violence and death throughout film is grueling and unrelenting: Japanese soldiers die in their caves from flame throwers, and are mowed down mercilessly by American firepower when they go into the light of day. An American soldier shoots two Japanese prisoners in cold blood, when they get bored guarding them; Japanese soldiers do the same thing to captured Americans on a couple of occasions. The film challenges the cult of suicide from the beginning: the soldiers discuss it constantly, a bunch of them perform it by exploding hand grenades in front of their bodies (gore everywhere), and three of the soldiers, including Saigo, surrender (only 126 of the 20,000+ Japanese soldiers on the island actually surrendered). Saigo, who fervently desires to live and return to his family, actually survives the battle when American captors hold their fire, and the last scene has him lying on a stretcher next to wounded American soldiers – perhaps a concession to the Hollywood need for a happy element in the ending. Soldiers seem similar to American soldiers, although they probably gripe and bitch less; senior officers sometimes display a certain humanity and breadth of vision; junior officers seem brain-washed and fanatic even to the point of beheading two soldiers they think are shirking in battle. A remarkable achievement depicting the horrifying cost of war on the Japanese side.


The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 1943 Michael Powell (Britain) 4.0 Roger Livesey as the inimitable Major General Candy; Anton Walbrook as his good German friend Theodor Kretschmar-Schuldorff; Deborah Kerr as three women who play important roles in Candy’s life. Fresh, original, endearing long Technicolor film about a British officer who is first presented as a fat, blustering old fool (a junior officer makes him furious by making fun of his mustache and his belly), but whom we get to know as a sensitive, sensible, dedicated, romantic officer. Film begins with a war game performed in the British Home Guard in 1943, in which Candy is deceived by an eager young officer who does not wait until the formal beginning of the games to arrest the opposing side (Candy himself!). Long flashbacks then take us back through his life – hero of the Boer War, British officer in Germany to contradict the anti-British propaganda common at that time, colonel in World War I when he gets the opportunity to visit Theo in a prisoner of war camp, and then finally World War II, when he is reappointed to be in charge of the Home Guard. We know from the beginning of the flashbacks that Candy is a good, if sometimes foolish, person. He is a romantic: he falls in love with Kerr, playing an Englishwoman in Berlin, only to lose her to Theo; he seeks out and marries Kerr’s sister (played again by Kerr) in England, although she dies in 1926; when at the beginning of World War II, he has to find a driver, he chooses a working-class woman who is again the spitting image of the original woman. He also maintains a life-long friendship with Theo, despite their fighting on opposite sides of the first war. The attitude of the film toward Germany and patriotism in World War II (1943) is somewhat ambiguous, explaining why Winston Churchill was strongly opposed to releasing it. The film does not demonize Germans: Theo is a good and honorable man, a good friend to Candy and a good husband to his wife. He arrives in England just before the beginning of the Second World War and in a beautifully delivered speech, he explains why he is leaving Germany to come to England, his true home; Germany has been ruined by the Nazis, even his own children have been seduced by them; in a second speech (almost as moving) he urges Candy to quite being so old school and to be willing to break a few of the old rules of fair play in warfare to defeat the criminals who have seized control of Germany. In a postscript, Candy decides not to persecute the rash young lieutenant, since he now understands that England needs that kind of initiative. The film is very different from the usual wartime propaganda; it strongly defends the thesis that Germany is decent and capable of future friendship. It leaves an unforgettable warm glow in its aftermath.