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The Gangs of New York
Gegen die Wand (Head On)
The General Died at Dawn
Gentleman’s Agreement
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Ghost Ship
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The Gangs of New York 2002 Martin Scorsese 3.5 Leonardo DiCaprio does credible job as Amsterdam, young son of Irish immigrant who works to extract revenge from rival gang for the death of his father, Daniel Day-Lewis in riveting performance as Bill the Butcher reveling in his role as leader of Nativist gang and for a while the real ruler of the New York Five Points district, Cameron Diaz fetching and effective as larcenous street moll who has antagonistic love affair with DiCaprio, Jim Broadbent as oily and terminally corrupt Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall and it appears the man who really runs New York. Amazingly energetic, violent, hard-hitting, tale of revenge in New York between 1846 and 1863. Scorsese’s visual anthropology dissects his version of what New York (and America) was before the end of the Civil War – a checkerboard of tribal loyalties that include various Irish clans, the Nativist Protestants under Bill, the Tammany Hall machine under Boss Tweed, and the uptown rich who rarely go downtown. The Irish and the Nativists settle their differences in stylized combat – the two sides appearing in numbers and fighting it out bloodily and murderously with deadly weapons but not including firearms: reminds one of Early Medieval Germanic combat in great numbers. Shot in bright, even garish color; the decors are very gritty and realistic (hard to believe that lower Manhattan was so dirty and ramshackle) – movie often seems alike a long street fair with every human type known to man depicted in the streets; the culture is brutal and violent – bear-baiting in the streets, knife-throwing contests, public hangings to set an example (and the victims don’t seem to mind that much!). All the performances are excellent, but Day-Lewis, speaking an early version of New Yorkese, absolutely revels in his evil and monopolizes the camera in all his scenes. Film has important historical theme. Instead of the mainstream idea that America’s democracy and prosperity were made by the inevitable march of progress, modern New York here emerges out of tribal chaos and violence. Second part of film takes place during the Civil War, when the poor are drafted to be sent to their deaths (graphically depicted in photographs) the moment they set foot off their boats. Major event of the end of the movie are the 1863 draft riots, in which the poor mob ransacks authority and wealth in New York, denounces the draft, and kills every Black they can find. The riots are put down very brutally by the army, who fire into crowds with no compunction, beat mob members on the ground; even the final Armageddon between the Irish and the Nativists is spoiled by the firing of artillery shells from Union gunboats in the harbor. Amsterdam, who narrates: New York “is a cauldron in which a great city might be forged;” “our great city was born in blood and tribulation.” It is through the application of catastrophic federal force/violence that modern American society is born out of the tribal loyalties and conflicts of the previous era. The non-stop weight of violence, the lack of credible female characters, the overwhelming weight of décor and history perhaps keep this movie from four stars.


Garden State 2004 Zach Braff 3.0 Zach Braff stars low key in his own film as kid living in LA trying to be an actor and returning to New Jersey to attend the funeral of his mother; Natalie Portman totally charming and fetching as sometimes ditzy girl who is an habitual liar and strikes up a relationship with Zach; Ian Holm as stern father who has insisted for years that Zach take anti-depressants to help him get over the death of his mother (the father thinks Zach was responsible); Peter Sarsgaard as Zach’s grave-digging, pothead high school buddy. Kind of romantic comedy, coming of age movie about guy zonked out by psychotropic drugs; he stops taking them when he returns for his mother’s funeral and gradually works out the first stages of some of his issues (he has to get off the drugs he has been on since childhood and realize that he was not responsible for the death of his mother), experiences some quirky adventures, and meets the love of his life. Especially the first part of the movie is engaging with attention-grabbing scenes, but the second part is characterized by long waits – perhaps the longest being the semi-surreal sequence in which Zach’s buddy takes him on a voyage to a family living in a converted boat at the bottom of a quarry in order to recuperate his mother’s favorite piece of jewelry that the friend had stolen from the corpse (!); the sequence is supposed to be the final part of Zach’s voyage of discovery, but it is vague and endless. Piquant moments: most of Zach’s old high school friends are doing odd jobs – the grave diggers who casually steal jewelry off the corpses they are burying and the cop who asks Zach how he is doing after he makes a hyper-macho traffic stop are amusing; Zach meets guy who has retired on the royalties he received from silent Velcro invention – he now walks around in medieval armor and lives in a house without furniture decorated in medieval style; in first visit to Sam’s (Portman) house Zach is assaulted by two Dobermans (called off by mother who tells them that they won’t eat unless they leave Zach alone) and Sam has to bury the hamster that died because he couldn’t handle the hamster wheel. Portman is the pièce de résistance: she is terminally cute smile, charming and zany but with a heart of gold and a head on her shoulders; she knows that Zach has been in trouble, but she knows that he is a good guy. In places, self-conscious inverted references to 1967’s – ‘The Graduate’ with Zach playing the Dustin Hoffmann character; the difference is that Zach rediscovers the virtues of home and family, Ann Bancroft is muted into two endearing hippie-like moms who mean well, and the moral seems to be appreciate your roots rather than have contempt for them – Zach seems on the way to reconciliation with his dad. Entertaining small movie. It has a standard romantic comedy ending with Zach embracing Portman at the airport instead of returning to LA to face his demons alone; lots of tears as the lovers resolve to face life’s challenges together.


Gaslight 1944 George Cukor (MGM) 3.5 Ingrid Bergman charming, beautiful and moving as young woman who marries on impulse and then is practically driven crazy by her husband; Charles Boyer as the charming foreign born pianist-composer who has a passionate fixation on jewels (reminiscent of E.T.A. Hoffmann?), 17-year-old Angela Lansbury in her first movie role as cheeky, impertinent, disquieting housemaid who makes things psychologically more difficult for her mistress (but who is not, it turns out, allied with Boyer in the plot); Joseph Cotten in rather flat role as the outside force of good who finally irrupts to save Bergman from her husband, and who gives signs in the end that he would like to marry her (do we have to wait for the execution of the arrested Boyer?); Dame May Whitty playing the amusing batty old maid that we are used to (‘Lady Vanishes’!). Very effective melodrama taking place in foggy London; the art direction of the Victorian interiors of Bergman’s Thornton Square apartment are detailed, sumptuous, and period accurate earning an Academic Award. Cinematography is also effective – detailed with a lot of shadows and expressive angles. The narrative engenders good tension (will Boyer succeed in driving his wife crazy by suggesting to her that she is gradually losing her mind? and will Cotton intervene in time to save her?), but the primary pleasure of the film is watching the strong performances of the principals, especially Bergman, bathing in the reflected glory of Hollywood’s front-line stars at the height of their fame, and vicariously enjoying the splendid and lavish decors. Has there ever been a classic studio film that looks so good (admittedly the print is beautifully restored so we can enjoy the images to the fullest)? The script exploits well the subjection of wives to husbands in Victorian (1890s?) society; the viewer is a little frustrated that Bergman is so dependent – financially despite the fact she pays and psychologically – upon her husband. Film sometimes gives the impression that it is too polished with the rough edges filed off: What happened to the initial murder? What about the implication of adultery between Boyer and Lansbury? The traces of the Breen Office are apparent. The film received seven AA nominations with awards going to Bergman and Art Direction.


Gegen die Wand (Head On) 2004 Fatih Akin (Germany) 3.0 Birol Ünel as a true suicidal bum who collects discarded bottles for a living, looks like a street person and has nothing to live for except his love Sibel; Sibel Kikelli – 20 years younger than Cahit, Sibel is yearning to break free from her straight-laced family and ‘fuck as many men as she can”; Stefan Gebelhoff gentle, loyal and loving as friend that poses as Cahit’s uncle when he makes courting visits to Sibel’s family. Disturbing love story between two impossibly matched Turkish Germans. Film takes place first in the lower reaches of Hamburg with a lot of time spent in dive bars, and then to the streets of Istanbul, where life is not much better. Sibel is looking for a Turkish husband who can conclude a mariage de convenance with her so that she can get away from her strict Muslim father and her thuggish brother, who tells her that she is dead meat if his father suffers from her misconduct; they live a wild and unconnected life with Sibel finding her lovers in bars and then leaving them contemptuously; Cahit goes to prison when he kills one of her lovers; Sibel then goes to Istanbul, where she thinks she might settle down and wait for her husband, but she goes on a drunken spree and then settles down (apparently, since the process is not depicted in the film) with a middle-class husband and a daughter. Film has a reputation of being one of the first about the plight of Turks living in Germany, but in fact it deals little with cross-cultural observations and focuses on the impossible destiny of two completely mismatched lovers – the rebellious slut and the Bukowski-like drunk – and their inevitable disasters. Very dark, crummy, dilapidated surroundings, foul language, much substance abuse including alcohol and drugs, and a great deal of violence, including three suicide attempts (one of Sibel’s with blood spurting all over a bar) and a brutal, bloody beating of Sibel in an Istanbul alley (she provokes it with her obscenity-laden insults of three macho guys she runs across). We always wonder what makes Cahit tick, since the author gives us a little background information about him, and we wonder what in the world attracts Sibel to him! Seemingly a lot of ellipses in film – we see the faces of the main characters, but we get little illuminating dialogue or action. The most enjoyable passage is the visit that the shaven Cahit makes to Sibel’s parents toward the beginning to ask the skeptical father and brother for her hand. Film ends very ambiguously – Cahit comes to fetch Sibel from her middle class domesticity, and at first she seems willing to go with him; but then she – apparently – changes her mind and Cahit has to ride off in the bus alone. Different chapters of the narrative are interrupted by a Turkish band photographed on the straits and singing about love. Film has an engaging energy.


The General Died at Dawn 1936 Paramount: Lewis Milestone 3.0 Gary Cooper long, lanky and terrifically handsome as O’Hara – he carries a little monkey on his shoulder and he is for oppressed people because he has been oppressed himself; Madeleine Carroll in first American movie as daughter of Hall – she is sent to seduce Cooper; Akin Tamiroff inscrutable and humorous as repressive war lord General Yang (nominated for Academy Award); Porter Hall as skittish, weak, whiny agent of General Yang – all he wants it to earn enough money to get out of China; William Frawley hard-drinking arms merchant waiting for Cooper to show up with money; J.M. Kerrigan as rascally Irish blackmailer who provides a plot complication. In war-torn China hard-pressed war lord General Yang needs money to support his army against popular movements; adventure film with lots of twists and returns (baroque plot structure?) combined with humor (the supine Porter) and some hope for romance. The twin narrative issues are the fate of the suitcase of money that Cooper was supposed to have used to help the opposition to Yang, and whether (inevitably) the pending romance between Cooper and Carroll will pan out. “We could have made beautiful music together”, says Cooper to Carroll toward the end of the film. Indictment of war lords in China, who are just “merchants of war” with no concern for the well-being of the Chinese, whereas Cooper is an idealist fighting for the good of the masses. Beautifully restored print photographing sumptuous sets – on a train in the provinces; an elaborate set of a hotel in Shanghai with windows and glass doors everywhere; a large Chinese junk in the misty river where the climax of the film takes place. Cinematography is Milestonian moving camera and arty framing – always fun to watch, although perhaps not appropriate for the story. Script somewhat preachy in its disapproval of war lords and money-grubbing opportunists. Dialogue is often memorable (Clifford Odets), but many scenes give the impression of needing drastic cutting to avoid pointless silences, repetitions, and longueurs. Romance is a bit incredible, since at one point Cooper kills Hall; Carroll is predictably upset, but she gets over it to have her face photographed side by side with Cooper’s in the last shot of the film. Climax of film is violent and melodramatic: Yang is fatally wounded (by Frawley!); at first he wants to have the foreigners shot, but after Cooper persuades him that he needs to leave them alive to tell his story, he has his soldiers kills one another with their revolvers!


Gentleman’s Agreement 1947 Elia Kazan (20cFox) 3.0 Gregory Peck as intense crusading writer who takes his job of writing magazine series about anti-Semitism very seriously – he poses as a Jew for two months to experience discrimination, Dorothy McGuire as his upper class, reserved girlfriend, John Garfield as Peck’s Jewish friend who appears in second half of movie, Celeste Holm as one of magazine editors who is openly anti-anti-Semitic and falls for Peck too, Dean Stockwell as ten-year-old son of Peck, Anne Revere as stiff upper lip mother of Peck, Albert Dekker as enthusiastic and supportive editor who hires Peck for the series. Rather tedious and repetitive film à these against anti-Semitism among polite upper classes in USA – not the hate spewers, but the denizens of Darien, Connecticut who disapprove of overt anti-Semitism but who don’t have the courage to stand up against their peers; discrimination consists of being excluded from swank hotels in the White Mountains (I am sorry there are no rooms available), of being turned down for a good job is your name is Greenberg instead of Green, of having your son called “a dirty kike” by kids down the street, of having queer looks from other employees when it is discovered that you are a Jew; the “gentleman’s agreement” is the mostly tacit agreement among homeowners in an upper crust neighborhood not to sell to Jews. Several of the Jews have changed their names and recommend that they just ignore the issue in the conviction that it will go away. However, Peck is very passionate about his assignment, and he becomes a crusader as he gets more deeply into it – with some fire in his eyes. Romance is between him and the aristocratic McGuire, who had suggested the assignment in the first place: although they intend to marry, sparks fly from the friction between Peck’s insistence that deploring anti-Semitism privately is not enough, but you must act and stand up for your beliefs to end the scourge, and McGuire’s tendency to let things ride so as not to embarrass herself with her Darien peers. A bit of tension is built up by the possibility that Peck might hook up with the earnest Holm instead, but thanks to McGuire’s quick study under Garfield’s tutelage in a swank restaurant, the two are reunited in an ending shot kissing in the doorway. Best thing is the star quality of Peck, etc. The film is preachy and often tedious; Peck is particularly adept at delivering sermons. Peck has usual effective moral seriousness (see ‘Twelve O’clock High’) but McGuire comes across as obtuse, weak and indecisive; as a result, we are disappointed when Peck chooses her over the plucky Holm. It would seem the film won Academy Awards because of the topicality of the issue right after World War II.


Get Carter 1971 Mike Hodges 3.5 Michael Caine charismatic, determined, and extremely vicious as a London gangster who travels to Newcastle to find out who killed his brother Frank and to exact plentiful revenge; Ian Hendry, John Osborne, Tony Beckley, Britt Eklund et al. as a host of more or less interchangeable Newcastle hoods and their molls that may have been involved in the murder. Film resembles a detective story as Caine, not knowing what happened to his brother but gut-sure that he was murdered, arrives in overcast, working-class, bleak, and depressing Newcastle and then follows his leads from one character to another. After an initial effort, the viewer has no hope of keeping all of his interlocutors straight – they all look like low-life British hoods, but you basically don’t care, since the environment is seedily fascinating and Caine’s steely determination and ruthlessness rivets our attention (not to mention that frank sex and nudity scenes). What adds to his rage is the discovery that Frank’s daughter, Doreen, whom the viewer met in the initial stages of the film, was forced to make a pornographic film (one wonder Caine’s actual relationship with her – perhaps biological daughter?). We expect him to be harsh with the guilty persons, but we are not prepared for the punishment he deals out to characters only peripherally involved: the businessman who is thrown over the side of the multi-story parking deck; the girl who introduces him to the fateful porno movie is locked in the trunk of his car (why?) and then apparently drowned when the London hoods push the car into the river; one of Frank’s girlfriends is stripped, murdered by injection, and then dumped in the river next to the mob’s mansion house apparently to frame them for the murder. He finally catches up with the guilty man; he chases him breathlessly across a bleak Newcastle beach, and when he catches him, he forces him to down a bottle of whisky, as Frank had done, and then he is murdered and dumped in the ocean. To add to the sense of nihilism, Caine is then executed by a hit man sharpshooter as he strolls down the beach thinking that his mission was accomplished. There are several scenes with sex and nudity that places the film squarely in the early 1970s. Caine’s rough, amoral character, the frank sex scenes, and the dilapidated moral and physical environment are reminiscent of ‘The French Connection’ produced about the same time.


The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 1947 Joseph Mankiewicz (20c Fox) 3.5 Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney, George Sanders, Edna Best, Natalie Wood (8 yrs old). Touching and compelling romantic fantasy about English widow, who breaks away from her tyrannical in-laws, takes a house by the sea (beautiful and atmospheric shots of the Devon or Cornish coast), and meets and falls in love with the ghost of a sea captain. Harrison good with his gravelly seaman’s voice and gruff but sincere manner. He settles down with her to write an account of his life, which she later sells to support her and her daughter in the real world. Tierney really makes movie work – beauty, sensitivity, sensibleness: the viewer roots for her and feels for her; her beauty deepens the tragedy because we are convinced that she deserves the best. Scenes between Tierney and Harrison could be corny and embarrassing, but impeccable taste of director and actors carries it through. Tierney meets George Sanders, who seems like a cad, but presents self as her romantic destiny; turns out he is married and Tierney has to accept her destiny, which she does with courage and aplomb; instinct of the viewer turns out correct. The passage of 40 years is shown touchingly by the action of the sea and the wearing away of the stele on the beach that has daughter Anna’s name on it. An aged Tierney dies of heart trouble in the same chair where she first slept when she had entered the house 50 years before; the ghost captain enters, and Tierney rises into the screen rejuvenated and beautiful, and with a wistful look back at the dead woman, the two phantoms walk off into the light for an eternity together! Sounds corny, but it works wonderfully. It is possible to interpret the story as a pre-feminist account of a woman moving toward independence in a world where she need not lean on the arm of a man; perhaps the ghost is not “real” but Tierney’s alter ago leading her to an independent life free even of the George Sanders of the world; living alone for all those years is not so bad; the final scene indicates that that life has its own rewards. Very poetic.


Ghost Ship 1943 Mark Robson; Val Lewton: RKO 3.0 Richard Dix as very normal seeming psycho killer who is captain of a freighter; Russell Wade as young third officer just out of the academy. Another high quality low budget feature by Lewton group. RKO ordered him to make a cheap movie using the same set used in a former 1938 movie. (The film disappeared for a long time due to legal problems.) The ship set is wonderful – very detailed, rich textures, camera following characters up and down stairs (moving from the subconscious to the conscious?); and of course it is shot with atmospheric contrasts of light and dark, with a lot of shadows. All outdoor shots have back screen projection. Dix’s captain is an intriguing character: he is cool and collected on the surface and is quite popular with the crew and has the loyalty of the first officer; a possible tip-off is his remarks on his absolute authority over his crew (the film’s disapproving attitude perhaps reflects the democratic critique of totalitarian powers during World War II). Tension is quietly ratcheted up when he murders two of his crew whom he considers disloyal and trouble-makers. Wade is the only one who notices the captain’s wrong-doing. Last twenty minutes has him finally able to turn the tide when Captain makes a false step; he is finally stabbed to death in a fight with one of his crew. Mysterious atmosphere enhanced by having Wade meet a musical blind man before he gets on the ship, and then the viewer encountering the voice-over thoughts of a weird-looking dumb crewman on board (the one that finally kills the Captain). Dix’s excessive insistence on presenting the Captain’s avuncular side makes it a little difficult to see him as a threat. Although only 69 minutes, the pace of the movie is slow. But it is solid.