Tough-minded Klute (1971), directed by Alan J. Pakula, is one of those urban film dramas of the Seventies, working better than most of what Scorsese and Lumet did at this time. There is a psychological focus on the prostitute Bree, enacted by Jane Fonda, who is nothing short of great, of course. Her Bree is bright and borderline sassy and professionally nice, and corrupt. She never wants her self-confidence to slip. Thanks to Fonda, we believe she aspires to become an actress. We see how a small-town detective like John Klute could fall in love with her. Klute is played by Donald Sutherland, in too subdued a fashion.

An artistic thriller, Klute loses some plausibility in its last 25 minutes. It is worthwhile, even so, blessed with capital performances by Charles Cioffi and Roy Scheider. And with Michael Small’s chilling music.

A doctor, Massarel, living in a town called Canneville represents, in Guy de Maupassant‘s short story “An Affair of State,” the political radical whom events make gleeful. Post-Napoleonic France will again be a republic! In fact, Massarel is prompted to call a couple of his patients “stupid” when they interfere with his activist activity.

But the doctor is in the midst of “listless villagers.” They couldn’t care less about France becoming a republic. For them, affairs of state are not affairs of the heart—or of the ailing body. The Canneville mayor and, apparently, the curate support the Regime. The radical’s enthusiasms are not the enthusiasms of others. Maupassant shakes his head over the fanatical partisan, blind to opposing positions, in this wonderful, even amusing story.

As evidenced by Robert Bresson‘s 1962 Joan of Arc film, The Trial of Joan of Arc, the actual interrogation and testimony of Joan are fascinating in what is an always harrowing story. It makes the Church look bad while Joan is an enduring but also vulnerable Christian. Florence Delay, slight and not unattractive, does not really act in the part of Joan, but has been directed by Bresson for his purposes. This is par for the course. With its threatening air and spare power, this is, I believe, one of Bresson’s best pictures. Currently available on Max.

(In French with English subtitles, and in English)

Characterization in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) is not exactly ideal, but Martin McDonagh‘s film is spiky and probing and absorbing all the same. Here, on an isle off the coast of Ireland in the 1920s, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), chooses pragmatism over morality and good manners by suddenly dropping his close friendship with the “dull”—but usually inoffensive—Padraic (Colin Farrell). Padraic refuses to accept this and mopes a lot.

As with Madame Bovary, there is provincial boredom and disconnectedness. There is loneliness. The “banshees” of the isle, Inisherin, do not scream to herald the death of a family member, but they’re there. They’re represented by a disagreeable old woman called Mrs. McCormick. Death? Along with one literal human death, there is on the isle the death of hope. Colm tells the local priest he is still harboring despair. Indeed, clutching to himself a kind of pragmatism makes sense, but it is still a bad choice. Banshees is a painful tragicomedy from an artist who has come a long way since his limp play The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

Scott Teems is to be congratulated for trying to summon a Christian vision for the films he directs and co-writes. He scripted The Exorcist: Believer, about which I know nothing, but The Quarry (2020) and That Evening Sun (2009) are his would-be artistic pictures. Although the former is a failure, based on a novel, at least it is fundamentally religious; and for a long time a good drama.

It begins with a stumbling, failed preacher (Bruno Bichir) picking up in his van an unconscious man (Shea Whigham) who must elude the law. The preacher senses that the man, now conscious, needs to confess something. He does, but is annoyed by the preacher’s urging and ends up inadvertently killing him. All this is sobering footage, sensitively directed by Teems.

About an hour after this, The Quarry goes awry. Practically everything that is done with a Hispanic fellow called Valentin (Bobby Soto, one of the film’s dandy actors) puzzles us. Teems ought to study a bit the sophisticated, truly Christian novels of Mauriac and Bernanos if he wishes to craft the personal screenplays of a believer. I hope he receives the opportunity to be on the right track.