Shane (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Directed by George Stevens, Shane (1953) is a Western—interestingly, one in which everything points to America still being a relatively young country.  Men try to make a living in a spacious land where deer approach farms and a muddy ground fronts a needed dry goods store-cum-tavern.

Here and there the script by A.B. Guthrie Jr., based on a novel, is laughably weak.  (Why does Joe Starrett [Van Heflin] show himself to be naïve about the angry Ryker?)  But the film’s violent action—everything from the shooting of Torrey to the final showdown—is sobering and riveting, and there are exquisite epic images in a non-epic movie.  I am prompted also to observe that, what with all the doings of Brandon De Wilde‘s Joey, Shane is practically a children’s film.

I’m unable to tell how valuable are the stories of Jamie Quatro that are heavily influenced by the literary avant garde.

But it’s different with a story like “Better to Lose An Eye,” whose conventional narrative shows, I believe, artistic merit.  Quatro’s fiction is set in the American South and has its share of Southern Christians.  The characters in “Eye” are a young girl, her quadriplegic mother and her grandmother, Nona; and we learn that the mother once lived a pretty fast life until a former boyfriend caused her paralysis by shooting her.  The one born-again person in the story, the industrious Nona, nevertheless proves insensitive to the mother’s condition—to me, a rather cheap shot from Quatro.  It is an otherwise effective story.

More satisfying is another non-avant garde tale called “The Anointing” (which, like the story above, is found in the 2013 collection, I Want to Show You More).  Mitch, the suburban husband of Diane, falls into a deep depression, refusing to leave his bed.  Diane is incessantly concerned.  It can’t be helped that her Christian faith begins “waning,” yet she freely allows her pastor and five church elders to come to the house and anoint Mitch with oil in the name of the Lord.  But there is no healing, and a problem with trust involving one of Diane’s two children crops up as well.  A possible truth in the story is that Diane is anointed to love her family, which she does fiercely.  Part of the last sentence reads, “She would do anything to save them,” and she loves them even as she suffers.  In point of fact, she loves them in a Christ-like manner.

“The Anointing” is a smoothly, unerringly written 12-page gem—and not the only good short story Jamie Quatro has purveyed.  Read “Georgia the Whole Time” too.

Reggie (the Audrey Hepburn character):  Do you know what’s wrong with you?

The Cary Grant character:  What?

Reggie:  Absolutely nothing.

But wait.  Reggie believes this because she’s infatuated with the Grant character and doesn’t really know him.  Doesn’t the charade in Stanley Donen‘s Charade (1963) break down, revealing Grant to be a big-time thief and even a murderer?

A murderer— with the kind of wit he displays?

Later, Reggie falls in love with Grant, but more frequently she adverts to her fear, to how afraid she is.  She might be snuffed out by one of the movie’s criminals.  Charade has honesty, as well as appealing improbable twists.  It is a funny thriller directed with perfect smarts by the careful Donen.

‘Twas a great vehicle for Hepburn too.

Cover via Amazon

In his review of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Charles Thomas Samuels wrote, “Bunuel’s film doesn’t deserve to be called surrealistic because its dislocation of reality isn’t dictated by theme but by narrative opportunism.”  Is there a theme in this French-language attempt at surrealism?  I think so:  the theme that the middle class is blind—to everything.

Bunuel himself was blind.  He and co-writer Jean-Claude Carriere produced a script wherein “the dislocation of reality” and frequent satire do not mesh at all.  When Bunuel satirizes a clergyman who kills the murderer of his parents, before which he introduces a working-class woman who murmurs, “I do not like Jesus Christ,” he is merely indulging his atheism.  Too, fascinated as he is by domestic terrorists, he appears to be a political ignoramus; but, as Samuels indicated, it is only the narrative opportunism and not this political dimension that’s behind the surrealism.  Or “surrealism.”

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Frenchman Jean ceases to love Helene, who in turn plots to avenge herself on him.  She starts financially supporting Agnes, a destitute cabaret dancer, and Agnes’s mother with the objective of introducing Agnes to Jean, sensing that he will fall for her.  He does, but without knowing that Agnes is less than respectable—as ashamed, indeed, as she is cynical.

This is what goes on in  Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1944), Robert Bresson‘s second film.  The tale is lifted from a Diderot novel, though it seems very Henry Jamesian, infused with Bresson’s perennial Catholic morality.  With a moving last scene, it’s quite a good love story (between Jean and Agnes), and by no means are the characters two-dimensional.  They are intelligently acted by Maria Casares (Helene), a not-miscast Elina Labourdette (Agnes), and Lucienne Bogaert (Agnes’s mother).  Paul Bernard, however, is deplorably charmless as Jean.

(In French with English subtitles)