European auteurs did not abandon artistic cinema beyond 1963. No, it continued and some of their films were very good. 90 Degrees in the Shade (1965) is no Closely Watched Trains, but it’s another black-and-white art film that manages to be meaningful. A Czech-British production, it was audaciously directed by Jiri Weiss—ah, those closeups—and has jazzy, quirky music in it. The movie is about desolation and immorality, not necessarily in that order. British actress Anne Heywood, in an affecting performance, plays a shop worker involved in illegal activity with her unsatisfactory married lover. I saw Shade on Tubi. Unusual and more or less sensual, it deserves to be available and seen.
Kris Kristofferson‘s first cinematic vehicle Cisco Pike (1972), written and directed by Bill L. Norton, is dark and offbeat but not very successful. A cool dude, Cisco Pike, has quit selling drugs but must submit to a hypocritical—and damaged—establishment figure, Gene Hackman‘s police detective. The cop is driven to force Cisco to raise money for him—yes, through selling drugs. Some effective details crop up, but the story is vacuous and wispy. The ending is worthless . . . The acting of Hackman and Harry Dean Stanton is solid. Kristofferson, though, is uninteresting as Cisco. He mainly goes around just looking wary. Karen Black (as Cisco’s girlfriend) is terrifically attractive both clothed and in the nude. But she is not histrionically “natural” enough to portray a character, this woman.
The 1951 Billy Wilder film, Ace in the Hole, is one of those wherein Wilder expresses his anger over deception and skulduggery, the bilking of the innocent or vulnerable for the sake of money or prestige or sex. A newspaper reporter (Kirk Douglas) “befriends” a man trapped under rocks during a mountain cave-in, but cruelly arranges for a third-rate rescue operation in order to prolong the man’s predicament. This, the reporter believes, will make for a more important scoop, one that will possibly guarantee for the gent a New York City position.
That the lousy rescue plan is devised is not quite credible, and, unlike other Wilder films, Ace is disturbingly gray, chilly. Even so, it is one of his best. The whole of Wilder’s personality is evident in it; it’s intelligently cynical and morally meaningful. Neither Wilder nor Douglas makes the reporter a caricature; the former aims for too much unHollywood-like honesty to commit such an error.
Cover of Ace in the Hole – Criterion Collection
I wish the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol (2023) had not been necessary to make, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine did take place, the city of Mariupol an early target. Associated Press journalist Mstyslav Chernov shot the film, adeptly, over 20 days, and the wreckage and grief are very troubling. Right away homes are destroyed; people hide in basements (not bomb shelters). Parents agonize over the deaths of their offspring. Putin is killing children. A maternity hospital is bombed. A Mariupol university stands quiet and empty and flatly ruined by shelling. All the work of a murderous aggressor. The footage is moving and stunning.
After seeing Mariupol, I’m convinced the previous U.S. appropriation of billions of dollars to Ukraine was justified. I don’t believe Ukraine can win the war, however—alas. And there must be a ceasefire.
In the 1972 The Valachi Papers, directed by Terence Young, a (real-life) gangster, Joe Valachi, informs the authorities about the Mafia and mob boss Vito Genovese in exchange for vital protection from Genovese. (Both men are in the same prison.) The flick is never boring, but it is a tad too pushy and overwrought to be quite as realistic as it ought to be. What really vitiates it, though, is Charles Bronson‘s self-conscious acting as Valachi, although there are failed performances from other actors, such as Jill Ireland, as well. On the other hand, Lino Ventura (Genovese), Gerald O’Loughlin and a few others, mostly Italians, succeed. But they don’t render this a worthwhile film.
Valachi was rated PG in ’72 despite its brutality and brief nudity. Ain’t for children.