Hands Over the City (1963) - #355

See how democracy works?

There was a time not too long ago when Hands Over the City ranked very close to the bottom of my "can't wait to see it" list of Criterion DVDs... if it even warranted consideration at all. Just going by the description, it's the kind of film that I would have probably skipped altogether if I had not made that fateful decision several years ago to go "Triple C" and become a Criterion Collection Completist. The thought of spending an hour and forty minutes exploring the backroom politics of urban Italian real estate speculation in the early 1960s doesn't exactly fire up the ol' synapses, no matter how much excited verbiage ("ferocious," "blistering," "devastated," "breathlessly," "cataclysmic," "passion," "outrage") is thrown at me on the back cover. That was back before I knew who the director Francesco Rosi was, when his breakout film Salvatore Giuliano was an equally opaque mystery to me, and the name Rod Steiger, though familiar, didn't really do much to stir my interest, other than to wonder how a Hollywood star like him wound up in an obscure Italian art house film. (But then again, Burt Lancaster was filming The Leopard right around the same time, so I guess "doing a film in Italy" must have been a thing back then.)

So Hands Over the City sat there on my shelf for the past few years, patiently awaiting its moment to show up in my queue. As it turns out, the wait was worth it. With the government of the USA pretty much locked down these days in a turgid quagmire of obstructionist capitalist scumbags intent on squeezing the last drops of profit from the population they seek to control, I found myself primed to receive Rosi's message. The timing was perfect for me to discover and appreciate this surprisingly relevant and topical study of systemic corruption and exploitative ambition that still drives Western society some 50 years after Rosi offered what he hoped would be a change-inducing expose on the rotten core of modern political economy. He had, after all, provoked enough controversy with Salvatore Giuliano to trigger some official investigations into the role that the Mafia played in Sicilian affairs, which resulted in legislative initiatives significant enough to justify further reformist ambitions. And with Italian cinema of that era enjoying new heights of cultural prestige and international acclaim, who could fault him for investing hope in the idea, naive and delusional as it may seem to us now, that a well-crafted movie with an intelligent, morally invigorating message might actually change the order of things and help to usher in a new era of truth, justice and freedom? Ah, the Sixties, such a blessedly idealistic phase in our cultural history...

Still, as a child of that decade who has never outgrown my longing for the utopian dream of world peace, social equity and universal harmony to be realized, I remain constantly on the lookout for new sources of reinforcement. Hands Over the City is hardly optimistic in the story it tells, but its mission of straightforwardly revealing the full extent of banality, greed and cynicism that drives so many big decisions in our world is enough to light my candle and encourage me along the way.

The story is pretty simple, with the most dynamic action occurring within the first several minutes of the film. In a nutshell, before the opening credits roll, we meet the real estate tycoon Nottola (played by Steiger) who previously succeeded in getting himself elected to the city council of Naples, Italy. He's on the outskirts of the city,  on a tract of land that's remained undeveloped over the centuries, mainly because it's geologically rugged and until now has been too far from the city center to be worth the effort. But as Italy's economic miracle fosters new growth and expansion, the time has come, in Nottola's view, to exploit this new frontier. He just needs his fellow councilmen to affirm the opportunity he lays before them, by approving the sale of public land to his development corporation, modify the zoning ordinances and basically pave the legal path for his scheme to come to its full and privately profitable fruition.

Meanwhile, construction continues in an older, working class district of Naples. The buildings in this part of town are older, survivors of wars, earthquakes and the general decay that time and the elements inflict upon us all. Urban renewal efforts are underway to replace the decrepit, overpopulated tenements with sleek new, hastily built high-rise apartment blocks, but disaster strikes, in a small, localized way, when an exterior wall, several stories high, collapses in the middle of an afternoon, killing two people and crippling a child who got caught under the falling rubble. The building is owned by Nottola, and his son happened to be the guy in charge of the construction crew working nearby, as a pile driver was rhythmically pounding the ground, laying foundation for a new structure. What led to the failure of that structure? Who is responsible for the damage, the injury, the fatalities? The citizens of Naples demand answers, and they look to their elected representatives to supply the answers.

The inquiry aimed at informing that response, and managing the ensuing scandal so as to not upset the delicate political advantages of those currently in power, makes up the substance of what follows in Hands Over the City. In more conventional hands, even under the guidance of activist, politically-minded directors with whom I'd most likely agree, the plot and dialog would circle around for awhile until they pointed at some particularly egregious example of hypocrisy or self-serving greed on which to pin the blame. But Rosi's objective is different - he's more interested in examining the process than in focusing on the personalities. He recognizes the cheap satisfactions that come with offering audiences a convenient villain to boo and a valiant hero to cheer for. And he already knows that it's easy enough for us to draw the conclusion that to businessmen like Nottola, the collateral damage of a few dead workers or a child injured for life is simply an unfortunate downside, the cost of doing business. His personal profits, and his sincere conviction that as a "great man" and leader, he's helping to create a more prosperous and dynamic city, are enough to salve Nottola's conscience. To him, having a clear head for business, dispensing all the emotions and hesitations that result from caring so much about the people directly about his deals, is all that matters. Rosi takes that for a given, and presents it to us in a gesture of respect that acknowledges our own understanding that this is indeed how the world operates. He gives us enough of a look at Nottola's exterior actions to draw that judgement, but he doesn't waste time trying to get inside the man's head or heart - he just recognizes that the world is full of men like him, who behave and decide so predictably as to require no deeper analysis of what makes them tick.

Nor is Rosi all that intent on inspiring us through the example of Councilman De Vita, Nottola's main antagonist and the moral counterpart to Nottola in Hands Over the City: the man concerned not with his individual fortune and perpetual control over the levers of commerce, but rather on the collective well-being of the ordinary working folk he represents. De Vita is a communist, a man of the people, chief spokesman for the council's leftist contingent, who strives to infuse a moral conscience into the official deliberations and fact-finding efforts. At least, that's the face-value surface  reading of how he's presented in this film. From the political right's point of view, he's a self-serving rabble rouser who merely exploits and perpetuates the poverty of those he advocates for, thriving on their resentment of the powers-that-be and doing little more than impeding the inevitable march of progress and the rightful authority of the free market.

My hunch is that most viewers sympathetic to Rosi's perspective will find more to like in De Vita's character than in Nottola's, and the conflicts between their two points of view certainly do stir up many of the films more dramatic moments. I found myself mostly just "respecting" De Vita for his courage and commitment, not necessarily wanting to be him. But the most significant tensions, and most diabolically difficult to resolve, are those that stem from the inertia imposed by the largely anonymous members of the council. These men, bland, fatuous and complacent in regard to the privileges entrusted to them, line up dutifully to bolster the ranks of those leaders who issue order, provide direction and fully understand the threat that a principled commitment to economic and political equity presents to their grip on power. The various floor debates, public announcements, closed-door committee meetings, backroom negotiations and off-the-record bargains, threats and maneuvers, are almost entirely aimed at managing perceptions, creating and enlarging loopholes and providing airtight legal cover to the assorted rip-offs and shenanigans that these politicians contrive. It's that bald candor, that frank portrayal of the fact that the kind of people drawn to these positions of power, in both politics and in business, tend to be selfish preening assholes, with little if anything that resembles a coherent ethical core when it comes to considering the interests of the broader society as they pursue their own ambitions.

This video clip, a fine student edit that condenses Hands Over the City into about 10% of its full running time, offers a generous sample of the film that I think should give most readers a sense of whether or not they want to take the full plunge. And for those who've seen it already, it's an excellent refresher.

Hands Over the City is a serious movie, one that requires close attention and a fair amount of concentration to understand the significance of what takes place in the many verbal exchanges between various stakeholders in the controversies. Fortunately, Rosi's directorial skills are such that he's created a film that succeeds on the basis of its drama and cinematography as well, with stark and crisply defined, high contrast monochrome images assisting our eye in staying focused. (A second viewing, when one doesn't have to pay as much attention to the subtitles, is recommended in order to appreciate the visual dynamics.) And the musical soundtrack is also quite striking; though most of the soundtrack is diagetic, mainly the sound of people talking, there are several key scenes where the emotional impact strikes through a combination of picture (cityscapes or characters in contemplative isolation) and Piero Piccioni's thundering, percussive orchestral score. You can hear a snippet of it at the tail end of that clip embedded above, but the music is probably the biggest "missing piece" that got left out of the edited sampler.

So as I said earlier, I finished up my watch of Hands Over the City feeling a bit recharged and encouraged, mostly just taking some solace in the fact that a smart and talented guy like Francesco Rosi understands what's going on and has made a film that strips bare the pretense that most political leaders, even those I'm inclined to support, still try to maintain in justifying their actions. It's not too far of a shift from that realization to a more depressing and sobering acknowledgement that the establishment of our enculturated power and control systems is such that it becomes highly resistant toward the entertainment of broadly humanitarian concerns. The political status quo, both then and now, is more pliable to the kind of devious bastards like Nottola and his ilk who work on the micro-level to craft small phrases and clauses within the syntax of the law that offer advantages to those who know where to find the obscure passages, as well as comprehensive legal immunity for any damages inflicted on the real people who suffer most egregiously on account of their avarice and manipulation. Just ask the residents of West, Texas... Mayflower, Arkansas... Calhoun County, Michigan... the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia... the families of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig... and many other industrial disasters, each of which were attributable to gross negligence in the pursuit of expanded monetary gain. Too often, Hands Over the City are the same hands pilfering our bank accounts and grabbing us by the throat.

Next:  The Silence

Shock Corridor (1963) - #19

Am I the only loony in this ward?

Last Sunday, after a week spent immersing myself in the solemn, rigorous austerity of Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped, I posted my review of Criterion's recent Blu-ray release of the film. As loaded as that disc is with illuminating supplements on Bresson's principles of cinematographe, and through the sheer power of his arrogant confidence in his methods, I was easily converted to champion his cause and adopt, if only for the sake of a column, his condescending attitude toward conventional cinematic methods. Attracted to the purity of the Bressonian vision, in which all the non-essential theatricality and vulgar sops to win audience approval are stripped away, I found myself poised to delve back into Bresson's filmography, and from there, perhaps explore with renewed zeal some of his antecedents, like Dreyer, or Ozu, following the lead of Paul Schrader who wrote a famous book about that trio of directors. Out with all artifice, melodrama, sentiment and hokum! Let's whittle away that winking cleverness, the garish spectacles, superfluous sight gags and crude emotional manipulation, in order to apply our artistic talents to create films that touch those viewers discerning enough to truly see and feel with a more subtle but profound sensibility.

Later in the evening, I undid all that by popping Shock Corridor into my video player.

Except for the absence of a genuine "movie star," I'm not sure that I could have selected an art film more fundamentally un-Bressonian than Shock Corridor, one of the last two films made by Samuel Fuller in the Hollywood phase of his career, just before his iconoclasm and persistence in exploring provocative new territory apparently became too difficult for the studio system to handle. (Quite ironic, considering all the upheaval that the movies were about to go through in the latter half of the 1960s.) In this film, as in practically all his others, Fuller employs professional actors, contrives snappy dialogue, uses camera tricks, jarring visual effects, simultaneously panders to and provokes our baser instincts, and injects unrealistic, arbitrary plot twists in order to force a reaction and make his unambiguous point. Not only that, the film was conceived and shot very quickly, with occasional ham-handed edits and manic action sequences that reveal a "one take and done with it" aesthetic - all quite the opposite of Bresson's methodical perfectionism in which simple gestures and spoken words might be shot (no exaggeration) fifty times or more in order to realize precisely what the director had in mind. Shock Corridor gives every appearance of being a haphazard production, a low-budget, below the belt exploitation film hastily brought to completion and aimed at luring in the masses through promises of lurid titillation and giddy outrage, just for the sake of making quick money.

But there is, of course, much more to it than that.

Perhaps the thread of connection, thin though it may be, between directors like Bresson and Fuller is that they both pursued their artistic visions with little regard for compromise, and a strong intolerance of any interference from studio execs and other meddling nincompoops from outside their circle of trust. In that sense, and in the distinctiveness of their immediately perceptible styles, we can hang the label of "auteur" on both in a way that allows the word to signify something meaningful. Beyond that, it remains difficult to conceive of much that overlaps between their respective approaches to filmmaking. Even the story lines of these two films are a stark contrast to each other; in A Man Escaped, a condemned prisoner patiently designs an elaborate plan to break himself out of a locked facility for the sake of his life and freedom, while in Shock Corridor, a news reporter concocts a ruse designed to help him gain admission into a securely guarded institution, to pursue a goal of professional self-promotion and vain ambition. But both movies do use peephole shots.

Back to that theme of conceited ambition... it's the motive that drives struggling but determined beat reporter Johnny Barrett to develop a scheme aimed at fooling the  psychiatric staff of a mental hospital into thinking that he's really sick in the head. Johnny wants to generate the misleading diagnosis because he smells a promising story in the case of an unsolved murder. A patient confined to the hospital died from stab wounds not too long ago, but nobody knows who did it. The only witnesses to the event are three men, each of whom are delusional and psychologically incompetent. What law enforcement and hospital regulators were unable to discover, Barrett feels confident of finding out for himself, if he can only infiltrate the asylum, win the trust of the witnesses and get them to talk. Once the murder mystery is solved, all Barrett has to do is write up a juicy account of his undercover adventures and voila, the Pulitzer Prize is sure to be his!

That pursuit of the Pulitzer makes Shock Corridor a cousin of sorts to Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951), a variant on the theme of the reckless, striving newspaperman who compromises his ethics in pursuit of a big story that will catapult his career to a new level. The opportunistic set-up taps into that expectation of self-made greatness drilled into many young American men as a core motivational principle, to go out there and win in whatever competitive arena life happens to thrust them into. As is often the case though, Johnny has to work through resistance from the woman in his life, who doesn't like the heavy risk he's taking - in this case, wagering that his sanity will remain intact over the months of confinement and treatment it may take to break the story. Cathy wishes he could accomplish his goals in a more conventional manner, even though she's taken on a job as a night club stripper to make better money than she could in more traditional lines of "women's work." But Johnny isn't one to settle for mediocrity - he has to put it all on the line - big time or bust, that's the gamble.

Cathy's part is acted, rather demonstratively, by Constance Towers, a tall, classy blonde whose most prominent roles prior to the two films she made with Fuller were under director John Ford. In an interview included on the disc, Towers recounts her first meeting with Fuller at a cocktail party where he first proposed casting her in one of his films. She comes across as a smart, elegant woman of sound education and upbringing who was a good sport in taking on the challenge of breaking out of the "prim and proper" persona that her poised mannerisms and Ford's casting had locked her into. Here, beyond the obligatory strip dance routine (once her occupation was mentioned, you just know we have to see her in action), she's asked to fluctuate between the portrayal of two identities locked up into one character: the first, as Johnny's lover, the other, as his make-believe sister with whom he's incestuously preoccupied, a symptom of the perversion that he mimics in order to gain access to Shock Corridor and the patients who hold the answer that he seeks.

And it is shocking indeed. Two years before The Mothers of Invention released their debut album Freak Out!, Fuller had his actors doing just that, breaking through taboos and the collective weight of several generations worth of sexual and cultural repression with wild, uninhibited fury. This clip features one of Barrett's auditions to convince the doctor he's nuts, and winds up in one of several messy and destructive brawls that occur throughout the film  The frenzied, shrieking chaos comes from a deep and disturbing place in the psyche of Peter Breck, who plays Johnny, and several of his fellow inmates. It must have been rare to see characters lose it so thoroughly on screen back in that era, and it's still quite rattling to watch it today. Their meltdowns seem much more visceral and unnerving to me than the well-rehearsed and minutely choreographed fight scenes we see so often in movies nowadays. There seems to be a real risk of actors and stuntmen getting hurt when all hell starts to break loose in Shock Corridor.

Fuller's portrayal of the causes and behaviors associated with mental illness admittedly hasn't aged well. If one is at all interested in viewing films that offer an insightful study of that aspect of the human experience, I wouldn't suggest this one. You're better off with Bergman than Fuller in that regard. Here, the concept is that "insanity" is a kind of refuge from the terrors and traumas of life, a false identity that one takes on in order to escape the dreadful entrapment imposed by a real identity based on one's own actions and shaped by the external pressures that accompany our various roles in society. Underlying the notion of assumed personalities that characterizes each of the individualized characters among the patients in Shock Corridor (besides those who just lurch and stagger around the hallway as extras) is a Freudian concept that sanity collapses when the mind cannot withstand overwhelming stress. There's nothing all that scientific or even realistic in the dramatized explanations provided about how these characters went off their rocker, but that's only of secondary importance, as Fuller's higher aim is to confront American society and reveal it as a madhouse of much larger and even more barbaric proportions than what we see going on within the institutional confines.

These stereotypical cliches of "contagious" mental illness offer additional convenience to the plot, as we see insanity portrayed as a state one can slip in or out of due to environmental conditions, almost on a moments notice. It's what creates the dangerous tension for Johnny as he associates for hours, days, weeks on end with the sickies, forced to summon all his strength of will to keep the howling demons of madness at bay. And it provides the opening for his witnesses to find their all-too-brief moments of lucidity in revealing their clues, before once again lapsing into the fog of an airtight schizophrenia that has them convinced they're somebody that they're not.

Even more primal, and most definitely relevant to the majority of Shock Corridor's viewers, is the undulating thread of sexual jealousy and insecurity that permeates Johnny's quest for the Pulitzer. He could have chosen any kind of deviant behavior to create his alibi for admission... but he went with incest, even to the point of asking his girlfriend to pose as the sister that he's obsessed with and on the verge of raping, if he hasn't already. Putting the woman you love in a horribly awkward situation like that for the sake of your career ambitions is a special kind of twisted, but then, it's only the degree of artifice, not necessarily the severeness of the cruelty, that distinguishes Johnny's scam from the routine exploitation that many men inflict on the women in their lives. Despite Johnny's attempts to exert control over Cathy, he found himself tormented by her memory, her image (significantly, in her stripper outfit), and his worst imaginings of how she might be keeping herself busy in his absence.

On top of all that, Johnny's choice created circumstances of peculiar intensity and challenge. Surrounded by fellow patients who are grotesquely obese, crippled by shame into inadvertent celibacy, contentedly neutered and sexless ("I am impotent, and I like it!") or, on the other end of the spectrum, helplessly incapable of resisting their carnal urges ("Nymphos!"), Johnny has a tough gauntlet to get through to keep his libido functioning in a healthy way.

He harbors powerful, unresolved erotic anxiety over Cathy's role in his life, unclear as to her true nature and motives: is she at heart an exhibitionist stripper who gets some kind of a thrill flaunting herself on stage in front of a bunch of mouth-breathing Neanderthals? Or is she who he thinks she is, a brainy intellectual who's merely saving up for a tranquil domesticated future? Can she be both? Might she be neither?

As I read Johnny, it's the sexual insecurity and angst that take their toll on his fragile ego, not the supposedly contagious mental diseases or barbaric psychiatric interventions, if we require an explanation as to what the most plausible driving force for Johnny's subsequent breakdown. But perhaps that was the track he was already on in his relationship with Cathy, whether or not he ever allowed himself to be hospitalized.

Shock Corridor also offers rich, blunt and memorable commentary on prominent political issues of the day there were indeed ripped directly from the current  headlines. Racial segregation, lingering neo-Confederate resentment harbored by adherents to overblown notions of militaristic honor and valor, and unbridled nuclear apocalyptic Cold War paranoia all get their turn to twist at the end of Fuller's skewer as he shines a bright, hot and unrelenting light on the absurdity of those right-wing bugaboos that, having mutated this way and that over the past fifty years, still manage to seep into and pollute the public discourse of our own times.

As we learn in The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera, a 1996 documentary on Fuller's life and work that accompanies last year's edition of Shock Corridor, the director was a true master of storytelling who used various media throughout his career to convey his powerful and provocative messages. Starting as a copy boy in a New York City newspaper room, he tried his hand at cartooning, urban journalistic reporting, wartime correspondence, short stories, novels, screenwriting, and directing, succeeding with increasing degrees of proficiency with each new discipline he adopted. He even did a bit of acting here and there, becoming quite a beloved character in his biggest role of all, as Sam Fuller, the cigar chomping, charismatic gadfly whose quick wit and broad experience of life gave him an anecdote to relate for any occasion and the brash bravado to casually override whatever delicate sensibilities might have inhibited others from telling some of those stories in full detail. The doc is a fine primer and overview of Fuller's career, utilizing clips from nearly all of his films to create a compelling character arc of the man himself. Perhaps more importantly, the documentary demonstrates the ongoing resonance of Fuller as an archetype for contemporary American directors of the auteurist sort. It features extensive commentary from Martin Scorcese, Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch on the influence that Fuller had on their work, and even contains some geek-dream footage of Tarantino, Jarmusch and actor Tim Robbins rummaging through Fuller's garage, loaded as it is with personal memorabilia and scattered relics from so many of the movies he made over the years. In shifting our focus from a story told by Fuller to the impact made by the storyteller, the supplement brings all the way around, "fuller" circle we might say, as we recognize that in a way, Shock Corridor was quasi-autobiographical. The author of the story did indeed plunge headlong into a crazy house known as the USA, made acquaintance with its inhabitants, witnessed both their bouts of madness and the occasional breakthrough of clarity. The main difference was that, unlike Johnny Barrett, by no means did Samuel Fuller ever lapse into mute insanity. Indeed, he never lost his voice, or his focus. It's just that eventually, the authorities made it difficult for him to be heard.

Next: Hands Over The City

Billy Liar (1963) - #121

I turn over a new leaf every day, but the blots show through.

Much like its protagonist Billy Fisher, whose incessant daydreaming and over-active fantasy life earned his nickname, Billy Liar faces a long uphill climb if it ever wants to escape its present obscurity. Released by the Criterion Collection back in 2001 after a successful run on the revival circuit sponsored by Rialto Pictures, the disc sadly went out of print in 2010 after Criterion's distribution deal with StudioCanal fell through on quite a few of their titles. Prior to that, its stars Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie exerted enough hipster appeal to have inspired Yo La Tengo to capture their own daydreaming fantasies in this song:

...but that was back in 1995. Now, with the film languishing in limbo and perhaps feeling a bit dated as one of the last pop snapshots of pre-Beatles England, I'm not quite sure how well it would do in connecting with a younger generation of today's viewers. Maybe I'll have to watch it with one or more of my young adult children to gauge their reaction.

But as for me, I enjoyed myself tremendously as I revisited this sharp, witty exploration of post-adolescent consciousness, filtered so exquisitely through the perspective of that pivotal generation of UK baby-boomers to whom we owe so much, who were just on the brink of launching the British Invasion that changed American culture, and my life, all for the better. Billy Liar, a funnier, more winsome companion to its rougher, rowdier cousin This Sporting Life, captures that moment of transformation in English culture as the last bits of wreckage left over from World War II were finally getting cleaned up and pushed aside, so that a modernized populace could put the hardships and deprivations of the previous decades behind them. Of course, the indications of changes to come were embedded all around, sneaking up on them in such a way that few if any were aware of the transitional moment they inhabited. It's only in hindsight, as we see the clear demarcation of what took place in the years immediately following 1963, that the shift in eras becomes so obvious.

Billy Fisher is a young man working as a clerk in a funeral parlor in a drab northern town. Still dependent on his parents for shelter and sustenance, he possesses a restlessly creative artist's imagination. He's gifted with the ability to synthesize random bits of news, history and pop culture into internally visualized scenarios that provide brief but sanity-preserving moments of escape from the tedium of his present circumstances - a lot in life that seems wholly inadequate for Billy's talents and potential, especially as viewed through the precocious, narcissistic lens of his own self-regard. Besides the dearth of opportunities provided to such a bright young man in that mediocre setting, Billy has a couple of other over-arching problems - he's not sufficiently understood and appreciated by the people nearest to him, and he has an unfortunate knack of mucking things up in both his professional and his romantic relationships.

His audacious fantasies, projecting himself into positions of heroic greatness and commanding leadership, provoke plenty of laughs, especially among those of us who can fully relate to the delusional habits he so willingly indulges in, and which are so vividly realized on screen. Stuck in an entry-level desk job that will require years of patient, subservient toil to ever advance beyond, if he decides to stick with it, Billy resorts to frequent mental vacations that help him avoid the teasing harassment of his peers and the accusatory glare of his boss, Mr. Shadrack.

But the imaginary escapades also take their toll on his performance. The most egregious of his errors, failing to mail out a batch of 200+ calendars at the end of the previous year and idly spending the postage money given to him for the task, has triggered a crisis: what to do with the damning evidence? Why he doesn't just toss them in some anonymous trash bin anywhere in town is never quite explained, but his desperate attempts to cover his tracks got me laughing anyway.

Likewise, his fumbling efforts at juggling two girlfriends that he's each allowed to be considered his fiancee, even to the point of "sharing" an engagement ring, prove to be pretty uproarious, as the rope he's been stringing them along on turns into a self-tied noose around his ardent neck.

The women each epitomize one of the types that a man like Billy is likely to marry, whenever he gets around to making up his mind. There's Barbara: sweet, almost syrupy, domesticated and prudish when it comes to public or private displays of affection, the kind who will keep her man productive and in check through quiet, passive-aggressive means as the years go by. And there's Rita: sharp-tongued, insistent and demeaning, but ready to go a little further with carnal explorations in the here and now, the kind of wife that will leave little room for doubt about how she's feeling and won't grant Billy a moment's peace for the rest of his life if she thinks he needs to step up his game in any way.

In contrast to the stark, oppressive realities of dead-end job and ominously constricting romantic troubles, there's Liz, the free-spirited, charming and empathetic young woman that Billy's become enamored with from a distance. They've known each other for some time, but while Billy has been stuck in his rut, Liz has been taking her first tentative steps away from the bondage imposed by the home town they're both so eager to leave behind. She's visited London and gotten around a bit, and in the process, she's become aware of the larger world, the expanded possibilities of what life could offer to those who dare step out of the mold predestined for them. She's the one person who takes Billy's supposedly vain ambition of being a comedy sketch writer seriously; not too seriously, since she really has no idea whether or not he'd be successful at it. But she knows that it's a risk worth taking, since he has so little to lose, really.

So after the very funny amusements of Billy Liar's first half run their course, things become much more serious. A decision needs to be made, after we realize just how wretchedly stuck Mr. William Fisher really is, and he discovers the tempting plausibility of Liz's offer to help provide his long-sought escape. His momentous wrestling with the choice he has to make, the whims he entertains, the weight of the responsibilities he accepts and the bitter draught of disappointment he has to swallow as he declines that one-way ticket to London, rivet our attention in the film's final moments, culminating in Billy's stalwart march back home at the head of his imaginary troops (either as a bold victorious conqueror, or leading a processional of surrender, it's left up to us to evaluate and decide.) As it turns out, for all the inconvenience and frustration that Billy's habitual deception caused to his family, friends and co-workers, the biggest lies he ever told were the ones he directed toward himself.

...and here's one more pop music reference to Billy Liar:

Next: Shock Corridor

2013 LAMMY AWARDS NOMINEE: "Best Classic Film Blog"

To anyone dropping in on my blog for the first time (ever, or in a long while) due to the fact that my efforts here have received substantial recognition from the Large Association of Movie Blogs (LAMB), I extend this warm and sincere welcome. And to my regular readers: Bear with me! :) It's not very often that I break out of my usual format of only posting reviews of Criterion Collection films, saving the banter and other off-topic content for my Facebook page or Twitter feed. Really, the only time I do so is at the end of each calendar year, when I assess where I'm at in this long-term project of blogging my way through Criterion's vast and impressive library of important classic and contemporary films. But today I'll make an exception, because of the unique circumstances. 

First, let me say THANK YOU SO MUCH to the dozens or maybe even hundreds or thousands of you (I really have no idea!) who gave my blog your click of endorsement that led to the nomination. I'm truly gratified to place that banner atop the right hand column here - it's enough to refill my tank of enthusiasm for this project, just knowing that there's a significant group of people who read my stuff and want to see me continue. I do enjoy writing for its own sake, and my movie viewing definitely benefits from the extra measure of discipline instills to this task of expressing my thoughts about these films. So I'd gladly keep at it even if The LAMB and its members weren't paying as much attention as they obviously are! But I'm extra-motivated now, just based on this encouragement.

I know that as a movie blog, Criterion Reflections is about as specialized a niche as there is to be found anywhere in the online cinephile community, bordering on obsessive/compulsive territory as I maintain my singular focus, bypassing many other great films that I could write about, while I meticulously update my database with each month's announcement of new releases from that venerable authority. I also know that with my plain layout and somewhat infrequent posting schedule, I'm hardly the most innovative web designer (sorry, I just write, I don't do coding) or socially-engaged film writer in this scene (though I do invite anyone who's interested in delving further into my take on the movies to connect with me on Twitter, on Facebook and thru my contributions to CriterionCast.com.) 

Having stuck with this project since January 2009 (after spending the latter half of 2008 getting my bearings and figuring out what I was trying to do here), I know how hard the slog can be at times, as real life has this habit of intruding on our happy-go-lucky blogging time. So I want to congratulate my fellow nominees, the "friendly competition" for this award:

BEST CLASSIC FILM BLOG 

LAMB #299: Where Danger Lives

LAMB #683: Criterion Reflections

LAMB #742: 100 Years Of Movies

LAMB #1267: Journeys In Classic Film

LAMB #1390: Once Upon A Screen 

...and in all the other categories, who've done their own share of toiling in anonymity and soul-searching to develop their distinctive voices. In that process, the other Classic Film bloggers in particular have summoned the courage to share their opinions on older films, some of the most challenging of all movies to write about. Finding new and original things to say about films that are either excessively familiar or obscure and seemingly irrelevant to today's audience can present a monumental challenge, and these folks make it look easier than it really is. I've enjoyed the time spent over the past few days exploring their blogs as well as others who've been nominated in this year's ballot. I wish them all the best and gladly submit myself to whatever verdict the voters come up with over the next few weeks. I'm genuinely thrilled and grateful just to see my link included on the list, and today, more than ever, I'm proud to be a LAMB! :)

Lord of the Flies (1963) - #43

Bollocks to the rules! We're strong. We hunt!

I've given Lord of the Flies three chances now, and while I can agree that it meets the definition of an "important classic" film, as billed by the Criterion Collection's mission statement, that's not enough to earn my admiration or enjoyment of this admittedly interesting and risk-taking project that Peter Brook put together back in 1963.

I suppose that a big reason for my lack of enthusiasm is that I've simply aged out of that phase of life when William Golding's heavy-handed symbolism and allegories of the brutality of human nature might have proven more intriguing and impressive to me. The famous story, about a group of English schoolboys stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash that took the lives of all the adults accompanying them, has been institutionally canonized for decades now. Reading the book is an almost obligatory rite of passage for any high school student doing more than the bare minimum of literature studies, and even those who haven't read Golding's novel are familiar with the basic trope: that even the most properly raised and culturally civilized among us will inevitably descend into crude, primal brutality toward our fellow humans if the thin veneer of laws and social pressures keeping us in check are even briefly removed. It's a thesis that certainly exerted a broad appeal among the intelligentsia of the decades following World War II, a generation that had indeed witnessed the most horrifying and degrading examples of widespread cruelty to persecuted minorities, now captured for posterity and made undeniably real to those not personally involved, through the media of film recordings and a multitude of eyewitness accounts.

Golding's focus, though, wasn't so much on a hypothetical, transcultural core of human nature as it was on the critique he wanted to level against British society in particular. That's why he made the story about a selection of England's finest young specimens: choir boys, sons of privilege, born and bred to manage their emotions as discreetly and prudently as the material fortunes that most of them will eventually inherit. This specificity does help to clarify what Lord of the Flies is really about: that the "civilization" that modernists of that time considered (rather presumptuously, it now seems to me) to represent humanity's highest achievements was in its own way every bit as savage and barbaric as the under-developed heathens that had provided the foundational levels of Britain's imperialist social hierarchy. It's just that "we" (I speak as a descendant of those imperialists) had tidied up the appearances a bit, with respectable customs, deliberate procedures, rules of debate and inquiry, all the formalities that at least aspire to give everyone a fair hearing, even if the eventual outcome consistently tilts in favor of those whose power is already established, and for whom the laws are crafted to ensure their continued dominance.

Golding's (and by extension, experimental theatrical director Brook's) vehicle for demonstrating all this is to concoct a narrative in which this group of a couple dozen boys initially attempt to replicate as best they can the customs and principles they learned from their now-absent elders. Ralph and Piggy, the first two boys we meet after an introductory still photograph establishing sequence inescapably reminiscent of Chris Marker's La Jetee, each serve a specific function in making these points obvious to us.

Ralph is the voice of conscience and propriety, while Piggy is the too-easily mocked and persecuted voice of fairness and common sense, the near-sighted, asthmatic fat kid who was dealt a bad hand by life but who ought to deserve consideration anyway because he is, after all, "one of us." There's also Simon, the beatific Christ-figure, a willowy blond-haired boy who's main purpose is to droop forlornly at most every outburst of violence committed by his peers.

Regardless of the differences and tensions that might exist between Ralph, Piggy and Simon and their respective methods of handling conflict, they're all presented as basically honorable and sympathetic. Over against them, we're given the obvious "villain" of the story, Jack. He's a bit taller than the rest, candidly aggressive and charismatic, quite conscious of his multiple talents in the art of persuasion. Back in England, he'd been promoted to the student leadership of his boy's choir, so he's already a budding alpha male who relishes the freedom to exercise his manipulative gifts to the fullest. He sows strife and rebellion, leads expeditions and hunts, commands his underlings to kill, builds his little empire in the finest tradition of the Old Dominion.

So with these two poles established - either reinforce the tenuous connection between the ideal of judicious egalitarianism or descend without inhibition to the raw, bloody embrace of a "might makes right" ethos - Brook's film of Golding's novel proceeds to illustrate the stark madness of it all. Jack's unadulterated viciousness earns the loyalty of the gullible masses and winds up killing the saintly Simon and the pleading Piggy, and nearly costs righteous Ralph his life too, before the adults return to clean up the mess. In the process, presumably, we're supposed to reflect on the irrational fears and prejudices that permeate our own local customs and communities, with the preferred response veering toward finding ways to be more aware of the plight of the less fortunate around us and to keep our selfish exploits to a minimum. Or, if that message doesn't quite connect, I guess we're just left to re-examine ourselves the next time we look in the mirror and conclude that once we scratch below the surface, we really are just a bunch of heartless, greedy, amoral bastards after all.

So my problems with Lord of the Flies stem mostly from the obtuse heavy-handedness of its moralistic message, even though I can concede that it's probably one worth grappling with in our youth as we begin coming to grips with the deeply ingrained hypocrisies that are embedded in all that we take for granted. The rote use of metaphors and symbols employed here are just too on the nose for me to get into: the obvious parallels to the roots of organized religion in primitive fears and superstitions (the "beastie" and its attendant rituals) just seem so passe, at this time in my life, anyway.

I don't have as much of a problem with the amateurism of the acting (by a bunch of boys cast more for their availability than for their on-camera experience) as many of the film's detractors do. I just wish that the script had found better lines for the boys to deliver to each other - they do way too much explaining of their inner thoughts and motivations, leaving me at least with the feeling of being talked down to. It's a sensation I'm used to feeling when I'm listening to preachers, teachers or politicians who over-explain themselves, making points best delivered by nuance and allusion almost unbearably dull by excessive reinforcement, in the hopes that we really get what they're trying to tell us because it's really really important! That's not what I come to cinema looking for, and that's why Lord of the Flies doesn't really work so well for me.

Once I set all that aside (and unfortunately, it's too apparent all throughout the film for me to easily overlook), I can grant that there are some effective and impressive visual and dramatic sequences scattered throughout the film. Typically they're the scenes with little or no dialog, whether it's showing the boys foraging the island's shoreline and interiors in wandering packs (reminding me of similar explores I went on when I was their age) or Brook's dabbling with various forms of cinematic experimentation. Evocative edits and framings are deftly mingled in with the more prosaic expository sequences. Listening to the commentary and exploring the other special features in this well-rounded package of supplements, learning more about the unusual conditions that he'd established for the shoot, earns my respect for the audacity of what he had in mind. Given the impact that the book made on Western culture at that time, I am glad to see that someone as adventurous as Peter Brook took on the assignment of adapting it to film, and doing so in a way that went against the conventional rules of production that were in place at that time. I'm just not sure how eager I'll be for a return visit to Lord of the Flies when the inevitable blu-ray upgrade is released, most likely later this year.

Next: Billy Liar

Youth of the Beast (1963) - #268

I want to kill you but I promised to keep you alive. So it's just three fingers today!

There's a scene at the end of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low in which we follow that film's villain, a poor medical intern-turned-kidnapper due to his obsessive rage over the unfairness of life, through the grimiest precincts of early 60s Yokohama, a wasteland inhabited by zombie-like drug addicts, fittingly named Dope Alley. I have no idea if Kurosawa's story line was familiar enough to his peers among Japanese directors like Seijun Suzuki at that time to have an influence on Youth of the Beast. It seems doubtful, since the films were released a mere seven weeks apart. But the overlap between the two movies, including their depictions of desperate, practically subhuman junkies staggering helplessly under the influence of their insatiable cravings, is such that it's not at all difficult to see Youth of the Beast as a kind of demented follow-up to Kurosawa's foray into contemporary crime-noir genre filmmaking - a hard left turn, as it were, executed so severely that it was all Suzuki could do to stop the production from spinning quite madly out of control.

The hollow promise that Western, and specifically American, culture extended to then-modern Japan by the quick gratification of material desires, and a casual indifference to traditions of the past, was critiqued by Kurosawa as he patiently, masterfully drew us into the tangible but flimsy prosperity of Gondo's world: his fancy house, with all its modern technological conveniences and the commanding view of the city from its hilltop perch, and his carefully constructed but swiftly dismantled strategy for achieving supremacy in the business world. What Kurosawa achieved, quite memorably, in that portrayal was essentially captured in just one quick transitional scene at the beginning of Youth of the Beast, as we see the face of a deceased police officer, shot in black and white, his equally dead lover draped semi-clothed across his chest, in a grim double-suicide scenario complete with explanatory note from the woman who discloses her fatal plan, for the sake of her mother's conscience and the bewildered confusion sure to be felt by the cop's widow. That stark moment, in which the officer's profession and downfall are simultaneously revealed to the detectives investigating his death, is immediately followed up by a burst of color, laughter and brash rock 'n roll music - a scathing mockery of what older viewers would most likely consider a sad and somber fate deserving a more solemn reaction.

And if that flippant rejection of propriety wasn't enough, within a few seconds, we're thrust into the first of several brawls that occur throughout Youth of the Beast, usually filmed from a detached distance, without much in the way of close-ups or visceral action shots - more like a jaded observation of the brute savagery that men with little or nothing to lose will descend to when they feel their honor or advantage has been insulted.

And thus it is that we have a clear marker that distinguishes directors of Kurosawa's generation and that of his successors, of which Seijun Suzuki was, for a time, one of the most prominent. Though High and Low was adapted from popular, pulpy source material, markedly less sophisticated and highbrow than Kurosawa's usual literary adaptations, his tough but sensitive aesthetic and inherent humanism are simply too elevated and refined to stay in the gutter for very long. Not so with Suzuki, who seems rather comfortable wallowing in the sleaze, but doing so with a vivid artistic sensibility. I suspect that this quality of his played a big part in earning him such a generous representation within the Criterion Collection - going back to the earliest phases of that library's development with a pair of films (Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill) that he released within the next several years. Seven films of his, altogether, have warranted release, and there's no doubt in my mind that his fan base is ready to support more. One of them, Take Aim at the Police Van, came out in 1960, back when Suzuki was still cranking out genre potboilers at a furious pace - five films that year, six in 1961.

Youth of the Beast, with a title attached to it simply because it sounds wild, rambunctious and awesome (there is no particular "youthful beast" to be found in the story), is regarded as Suzuki's big breakout film after directing around thirty prior to that, though I'm not sure what exactly made it so different from its predecessors. The widescreen color cinematography certainly made a vivid impression, and Suzuki's increasingly confident and creative compositions indicate a growing fluidity, maturity and daring by that point in his career. His fortuitous partnership with lead actor Joe Shishido also helped, a director/star pairing that proved almost as fruitful (but never as poetically sublime) as Kurosawa's collaborations with Takeshi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune  and Tatsuya Nakadai. But without any deliberate intention of slighting the increased proficiency of Suzuki's effort, it may have well been the case that Japanese pop culture was just reaching the point where Suzuki's wild recklessness spoke more immediately and accessibly to the audience. Despite High and Low's commercial and critical success, Kurosawa's influence and fortunes were teetering on the verge of a rapid decline, whereas Suzuki and his brawny, testosterone-fueled action thrillers were ascending to new levels of popularity.

So enough with that background - what is Youth of the Beast actually about? As a story, it's fairly simple - Joji Mizuno, a ruthless assassin-for-hire, recently released from prison, takes an interest in the dead officer we learn about at the film's beginning. His personal, unsolicited investigation into the facts of the matter that led to his death uncovers the role that rival gangs played in setting up the morbid scenario that led to his demise. Driven by his internal demand for justice, and personal loyalties that are gradually revealed over the course of the film, Joji proceeds, Yojimbo-like, to exact his revenge in an elaborate scheme that pits the two yakuza factions against each other, both of them easy prey as he manipulates their jealousies and greed to put them in attack mode.

There's probably more depth and nuance to be explored in Youth of the Beast's story, if I were to take the time to ponder it at length and subject the film to multiple viewings, but I'd then run the risk of over-thinking what is better appreciated as a feisty adrenaline rush of bright colors, brash impulsive action and weird sado-masochistic brutality all rendered with a glossy sheen that seeks to grab viewers by the throat and leave them gasping for air. Even a second or third watch is better spent sorting out the convoluted plot twists and reversals, or simply reveling in the stylistic splendor of Suzuki's frames and violent choreography, rather than searching for philosophical profundity and an application to one's own life circumstances. At least, that was my experience. Not exactly mindless entertainment, not at all - there's clearly a sharp intelligence at work here - but certainly more visceral, more stylized and surface-oriented than the heady offerings like 8 1/2, High and Low and The Leopard that I've taken in most recently on this blog. And that makes Youth of the Beast a rather refreshing and enjoyable change of pace.

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Next: Lord of the Flies

The Leopard (1963) - #235

I belong to an unfortunate generation, straddling two worlds and ill at ease in both.

Even though it's a long movie, with passages as dry and desolate for novices to Italian history as the Sicilian foothills that loom over its events, I think it's necessary to watch the film a few times in order to get beneath the opulent surface and discover what's beating at the heart of The Leopard. At least, that's my appraisal for those who, like me, are limited to watching this magnificent beast of a film at home. Perhaps the sensory overload of a legitimate, as nature intended it viewing on the large screen, preferably in CinemaScope, would prove to be so galvanizing that the full weight and importance of The Leopard would come through in one theatrical sitting. But even on a good-sized monitor, in the high-def resolution that's provided in the Criterion blu-ray that came out last year, I found myself working through three distinct layers of comprehension over multiple viewings that I had to experience before I was really ready to compose my thoughts in this space.

The first, and most obvious level of The Leopard is in its visual beauty. Earlier this week I tweeted "One could spend the three hours it takes to watch The Leopard just pondering the architecture and interior decor." That's not an exaggeration, at all. There is so much going on just in the woodwork, the wallpaper and stuff hanging there or suspended from the ceilings, that it wouldn't be a waste of time to just totally ignore the story and drink with one's eyes all of that incredibly rich, authentic attention to detail. Same goes for the costumes, the artifacts and bric-a-brac, the place settings and menu items, the streetscapes and landscapes... all sumptuously designed and thoroughly realized at a depth far surpassing the illusions we see captured on-screen. On the commentary track, Peter Cowie expresses his confidence that the gourmet dessert served during The Leopard's famous ballroom sequence was indeed fully and expertly prepared using the exact ingredients described in the novel on which the film was based. Visconti's meticulous, aristocratically trained eye and aesthetic could accept no substitutes, and this deeply embedded verisimilitude works wonders in absorbing us into a distinctive time and place, even if the terrain and culture are completely foreign to us to begin with.

The second layer of encounter with The Leopard resides in the unique and iconic star power that it presents. Starting with Burt Lancaster, who was something like a third or fourth choice for the role of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, patriarch of an ancient Sicilian family dynasty who realizes the imminent demise of the old order that he was born into. The story goes that Lancaster was given the role to secure the Hollywood financing that was needed to bring this spectacle to the screen, without Visconti's consultation. That definitely started the working relationship between these two titans of cinema off on the wrong foot, but they came to deeply respect and admire each other through the ordeal of making this movie, and I have to think that Lancaster exceeded most everyone's expectations in pulling off this performance. Even though he didn't speak Italian, and was given the privilege of voicing his lines in English (which proved useful in the eventual American release, which I'll discuss a bit later), he powerfully embodied the role with a full range of authoritative expressions and body language, from indignant and imperious to melancholic and wistful. In a career full of milestone achievements and deservedly famous films, The Leopard has to be regarded as one of Lancaster's peaks.

In supporting roles that are absolutely pivotal to The Leopard's overall impact, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon are also quite effective. They each represent the vitality of a rising generation that is filling the void created by political and cultural upheavals in mid-19th century Italy, while also portraying very specific characters of their own, with individual stories and concerns that mark them as distinctive among their peers. Cardinale portrays Angelica, the daughter of a rich merchant whose exceeding beauty and ample dowry usher her into a high place in the social hierarchy that her class origins would never have permitted in earlier decades. While she's not quite as transcendently sexy as she was in her smaller role in 8 1/2, Cardinale's radiant voluptuousness still finds a way to burst through the confinements of her period attire and hairstyles, no doubt about it. Even though The Leopard is named after its male protagonist (and the creature at the center of his family's coat of arms), Angelica proves to be a cunning and determined feline prowler herself.

And Alain Delon is every bit as appealing and winsome in epitomizing the gorgeous male of the species in his role as Tancredi, a dashing son of privilege, the nephew of Don Fabrizio who is in fact his de facto son and heir, even though the prince fathered a boy of his own that he seems to rather neglect, for reasons never made all that clear, other than he's just not that impressive. The Leopard followed up Delon's previous work with Visconti in Rocco and his Brothers (which I hope will be a Criterion release someday) and helped establish him as a rising star. His role here earned him a Golden Globe nomination as "Most Promising Newcomer," and I think it's quite fair to say that Alain Delon went on to fulfill that promise, and then some.

So as a star vehicle with three of the most iconic faces of their times, and surrounded by a fine, well-chosen cast of lesser-known actors, The Leopard has a lot to offer. But there's more to it than that.

The third stratum to get through in excavating The Leopard is the damnably obscure and complex details of Italian/Sicilian political rivalries and social institutions that permeate its story. This is where the Criterion package really comes into play, for those who want to get some comprehension of the events being reenacted on the screen. There's a lot more depth of information than I will go into here in the commentary and supplements that will fill you in on Garibaldi, the Risorgimento (unification), the functions of the Roman Catholic Church, the various militias and armies, and the mutual disdain that prevailed between residents of the Italian North and South. There are also some brief but interesting side glances at the Sicilian Mafia as it existed at this time, which makes this film a worthwhile companion piece to Salvatore Giuliano and Mafioso, two other contemporaries that profoundly influenced the development of later films about organized crime, Italian style.

Until some of this contextual background is sorted out and understood, there's a risk that The Leopard might just come across as an excessively gold-leafed saga of a rich old prince who's having a sad because the red-shirted socialists are swarming in to ransack his palace. Or because he's just too old and gray to have a realistic chance of getting underneath Angelica's billowing ballroom gown, despite their obvious mutual attraction.

Beneath these admittedly substantial and laudable surfaces then, each worthy of celebrating in their own right, I think The Leopard's most lasting impact comes through its evocative depiction of the sorrows we all experience, inherent in the simple passing of time. Much has been made of the parallels between Don Fabrizio's life story and that of Visconti's, himself a born aristocrat, the "last of a dying breed," as the accompanying documentary puts it. That high profile certainly adds a lot of spice to the mix, with all the wealth, privilege, art work and exquisite refinement on display, to go along with the fact that we do live in a world in which the decisions, whims and frailties of a few influential power-brokers can have massive impacts on the lives of millions. So all that adds up to some compelling drama.

But in our own way, those of us who live long enough to feel that sense of being displaced by a younger generation, as new attitudes, values and assumptions supersede what we've become accustomed to, will find various points of connection with the prince as we watch him contemplate his weary face in the mirror and come to terms with a diminished vitality that's (hopefully) compensated by an increase in wisdom and magnanimity. At its heart, The Leopard is a beautifully told story of people in transition, and for those who care to reflect on its lesson, even a note of admonition to its younger viewers to not get too caught up in believing that they're on the crest of something utterly new, unique and lasting in making improvements on "the old ways," since they too will find themselves going through the same shifts of consciousness and customs that they're now imposing on their elders.

Luchino Visconti, and Italian cinema in general, were both in their prime when The Leopard was released in early 1963. This lavish epic went on to establish a checkered history of its own, winning the Palm d'or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, earning an Academy Award nomination for Costume Design and piling up a decent resume of other award recognitions in various European competitions. On the downside, it proved too lengthy and cumbersome for Hollywood to digest, despite the casting of a prominent star in Burt Lancaster as its lead, so the 200+ minutes that Visconti originally debuted were trimmed down to a "manageable" 2 hours, 40 minutes for the American release. Criterion does us the favor of offering the English-language cut, for those obsessive enough to do the comparisons, and you can get a sense of how the film was marketed - kind of an Italiano take on Gone With the Wind - from the trailer embedded above.

Suffice it to say that this version of The Leopard wasn't as well received as the studio bosses had hoped, and it wound up bankrupting Titanus Studios and its producer. That led to the film getting somewhat of a "flop" reputation, and when that happens to big bold audacious films like The Leopard, the vultures inevitably swoop down to make new cuts and salvage the project however they think they can. A few decades of ignominious dismissal had to be endured before The Leopard received the restoration and lasting respect it deserved. There are still a few deleted scenes from the original cut that haven't been reinserted into the Criterion edition (which follows the current authorized release.) They're available on YouTube, as of this writing, in French with English subtitles, if you're really curious. I think the 3 hours we find here is plenty enough. But for those who want to just revel in a sampling of The Leopard's eye-pleasing splendor, here's a nice five-minute tribute video compiling some of its memorable moments. Too bad the A/R is off, but it just skinnies everyone up a bit, if you don't mind!

Next: Youth of the Beast