An excellent under-the-radar spy and social drama: The Same Sky

The Same Sky - a highly intelligent spy thriller from Germany - is one of the many Netflix imports that flies well below the radar; I saw it mentioned in an article, but I don't know anyone else who's seen it or even heard of it, which is a shame because it has a lot going for it. Set in 1974 (the Nixon impeachment comes up from time to time in the back story), the narrative focuses on a young East German agent sent into West Berlin as a "Romeo," that is, his assignment - closely monitored and controlled by his bosses - is to meet a woman target (she's working in a top-secret NATO surveillance center), engage her in romantic and sexual relationships, and pry out of her vital information about allied forces in Germany. In addition to this main story line, dramatic and disturbing as it is, we get a few secondary narratives - all of them clearly related and tied together closely by various family relationships, notably a teenage girl pressured into competition for the Olympic team from EG, which entails massive doses of illegal hormones, and a young h.s. teacher in East Berlin, who is gay and who hopes to begin a new life in the West, against all odds. Throughout, we see not only the spy story itself but we get a sense of the daily life in East Berlin, under the constant surveillance of the state, with families, workers, children kept under constant pressure to rat on one another and to toe the line. But the West is no utopia, either, and we actually have a sense of the nobility of those in EG who truly believe in a socialist rather than a capitalist state and economy - although holding fast to this belief become increasingly irrational and troubling over the course of the brief (6 episodes) season. At the end, all major characters are under stress and forced to question their beliefs and their relationships to one another, sexual, romantic, familiar, and otherwise. My only quibble is that 6 is not enough; many plot developments are far from resolved at the end of Season 1. Leaving some opening lines at the end of a season is fully expected, of course, but there is so much unresolved the end of this season it feels as if the narrative stopped in midcourse. (Maybe there are more episodes but just not read for English-language viewers?)

An experiment in documentary filmmaking: Chronicle of a Summer

Chronicle of a Summer (Paris 1960), directed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, is considered a seminal work of "cinema verite," and w/ good reason - it's an unusual, experimental documentary, of course w/out actors, but also without conventional boundaries: we see not only the film that M&R are directing - a investigation into whether people in Paris at that moment in time consider themselves to be "happy" - but also we see the directors and crew planning the film, discussing the progress they're making along the way, and near the end we see those interviewed in the film gathered for a screening and then asked their opinions about the film - in which they're honest, finding some of the interviews (as did I) to be trivial and insincere - and finally we see the two directors in an ambulatory discussion about the project they've just completed - so there are many layers to this project, something much imitated in later movies and fiction from the '60s. As to the film itself, it begins w/ the hiring of a young woman (trained in sociology?) to help w/ interviews, and then we see her stopping people on a Paris street and asking "Are you happy?" Of course, she gets trivial responses and many brush-offs. Later we see longer sit-down interviews, though it's unclear how the directors chose their subjects (some seem to be their friends). As the French will do, we get much esoteric puzzling about what is happiness, plus some commentary on work and alienation - including some good footage inside a Renault plant. Other strands develop, including what all concur is the most powerful segment, two interviews w/ a young woman who's moved to Paris from Italy and feels frighteningly alone and alienated (Mary Lou, I think), plus one genre-breaking segment about the young woman helping w/ the film whom we learn had been imprisoned in a concentration camp - her story told in voice-over narration as we see shots of her walking near Concorde (Marceline, I think her name is). Viewers today will be struck by the apparent poverty rampant then in Paris - so few cars!, and no evidence of tourists, nor of lavish bistros, bars, shops (even in a sojourn to St Tropez). Though in its day the film was avant garde, oddly, today it feels like a time capsule.

Further thoughts on William Greaves and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm

Last night I watched an hour-long documentary on the direct William Greaves, which cleared up some of my confusion about his astonishing and unique documentary/drama, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. The documentary made it clear that Greaves had a lot of acting experience in his youth, including training at the famous Actors' Studio in NYC, where he was imbued with the technique of Stanislavski: Actors inhabit and create the characters; use of lots of improvisational exercises to learn the craft. Greaves walked away from a promising acting career and studied documentary film and became an extremely successful and appreciated documentary filmmaker, focusing primarily on various aspects of black life and culture in America (his work includes what may have been the first documentary bio on Muhammed Ali). All this before he began to shoot Symbio (in 1968). So with that background it's obvious that Greaves knew exactly what he was doing in shooting Symbio and all the directorial bumbling, the indirection, the unfamiliarity with equipment and with shooting protocols, the weird instructions to the actors, the lack of clear instruction to the crew - all this was an act, playing a role - with the goal of provoking the crew the bridle at the director, to express their doubts about his skill and about about the whole project, and to begin a mini-revolt against the project itself: 3 layers, in a sense, with Greaves at the center, playing the role of a director in over his head; the "actors" several man-woman duos of pro actors whom Greaves directs (or misdirects) in various readings of a lovers' dispute,\ (the script is intentionally bad) seemingly auditioning for a part in a movie to be; and the crew (not actors, just the actual team of photographers, production managers, sound and light, etc.) filming the project, itself in 3 layers, one filming the "actors" as if that's to be an end product in itself, the 2nd filming the making of this film, and the 3rd instructed to shoot anything of interest, including people passing by in Central Park. When Greaves pulls it together in the final edit, we have a film that like non other shows the filmmaking process and captures the anxieties and tensions among cast and crew.

A film (like none other) about the making of a film

William Greaves's quasi-feature/quasi-documentary from 11968, Symbiopschotaxiplasm: Take One (you know I had to look that title up to get the spelling!) is an experimental and unconventional film, to put it mildly, like no other film that I've ever seen and not a film that produced a host of imitators, either, but it will make you think and will open your eyes to some of the challenges of filmmaking, and it will make you laugh, too, at times - though, echoing Samuel Johnson on Paradise Lost, none I think will wish it longer. In essence, this is a documentary about the making of a film, sort of: Greaves and his crew, shooting en plein air in Central Park, run a series of actor couples through a short scripted scene involving a fight and a breakup (the movie focuses on one of the couples, a pair of pro actors who clearly dislike each other,  but we see I think 3 other "couples" take on the same scene briefly). As was common in the era, Greaves's directing is open and unobtrusive, encouraging the actors to "live the parts" and come up w/ their own dialog - again, a common drama-class exercise in the time and probably still. While one camera if filming the actors in a conventional manner, another, or sometimes 2 cameras, are shooting the production in progress - as well as some of the goings on in the park (a group of kids watching the filming, ambient noise from passing traffic, etc.). On one level, Greaves seems to be an incompetent director - confused about the production equipment and process, unclear in his instructions to cast and crew, completely weird in some of the instructions he gives (he asks one couple to sing their lines, to the befuddlement of the crew). But in other ways he's perhaps a genius, and we even at times wonder whether the whole scene is not really a documentary but scripted to look like one (I doubt it, but I had that thought at times). In fact, there are 2 long sequences in which the crew gathers to in what may be an apartment or hotel room to discuss the film-in-progress - Greaves, apparently, is not present (though the production manager says that someday audiences may watch this scene and surmise that Greaves is present off camera - which again I doubt) and some of them raise doubts about Greaves's competence while others defend his artistic vision - exactly the debate that viewers have watching the film today. Kind of amazing that Greaves kept these sequences in the final cut. Sure the sequence with the homeless man who'd been watching the shooting should be 1 minute, not 5 - but overall it's a film worth watching (once) as there's none other like it nor will there most likely ever be. 

An Agatha Christie adaptation that's pretty good except for the title

The worst thing about the Agatha Christie 3-part adaptation on Prime is its title; I've watched all 3 episodes over past 3 nights and honestly can never remember the ridiculously abstract title and am looking it up now, it's: Ordeal by Innocence. OK, got it. Title aside, it's a fun and intriguing series w/ the well-known Christie traits of a plot like clockwork (in fact the gears of a huge timepiece are a recurring motif, signaling a flash-back); each of the 10 or so characters is a potential subject in the murder of the wealthy Lady Argyll, each has a motive and in a fun way we're guessing throughout and trying to figure out which one clobbered Lady A to death: Any of her 5 (all adopted) children, her husband, his new wife-to-be, the strange visitor who shows up out of nowhere years after the murder, the corrupt attorney, the maid, am I leaving anyone out? The series has the high production values of practically all British imports; the cast is largely unknown (to me) although I think it had some Downton alums (doesn't every British show?) plus Bill Nighy as the widower. As w/ all Christie works, or so I have heard, every element is accounted for; readers/viewers are never left wondering: But what about this? that? I all makes sense - even if, on some level, it's all pretty much beyond the pale. But worth watching as a mind-teaser and for the fun of the guessing game. (For the record, I guessed wrong - and as always once it's know we think Why didn't I figure that out?)

A completely weird survior-of-nuclear-disaster film from 1959

Recent Criterion acquisition The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1959), directed by Ranald MacDougall and starring Harry Belafonte has a few cool moments worth watching but overall it's so odd and out of date that it has to be chalked up as a curiosity piece deserving of its obscurity. In brief, an unexplained nuclear disaster wipes out (virtually) all human life on the planet; HB survives as he'd been trapped underground in a mine for the duration of the event. He emerges to find that he's - he thinks - the only survivor. He makes his way to an abandoned NYC where eventually he finds another survivor - a beautiful young woman (Inger Stevens) and, later, another male survivor. The two men face off in a sexual rivalry, leading to a shoot-em-out, manhunt and a somewhat odd conclusion, which I won't divulge. What's right w/ the movie and makes in at least a little worth watching are the fascinating scenes of HB in an abandoned NYC; I have no idea how they shot these scenes in 1959 - maybe via permits to film in the early morning, or maybe using streets marked for demolition (as they did for filming West Side Story), or maybe with sets and photograph backdrops? The other plus: the film directly deals w/ the issue of race (HB is black, the other 2 are white), leading to some provocative and disturbing arguments among the characters. On the down side, however, the film is completely absurd as a sci-fi fantasy, never even attempting to explain how or why NYC is completely abandoned: Where dia ll the bodies go? All the cars? All the animals (well, pigeons seem to have survived - no way to clear them out of a NY set I guess)? Moreover, the characters do not in any way behave as if they are the last survivors of a global disaster - virtually no mention of their past lives, no mourning nor distress nor fear - they're like 3 people on a camping expedition. In particular, the HB- Stevens scenes (before the arrival of the other man) are painfully ludicrous (MacDougall - screenwriter for The Breaking Point, which I recently watched, again shows himself to be a dialog-hack), and couldn't they have at least used HB's musical skills to better advantage? Over the years there have been many lone-survivors-of-disaster movies - I remember years ago seeing a Czech film that blew me away - but this one is one of the weaker, if one of the weirder as well.

Sometimes we quit watching a miniseries

I don't chronicle every miniseries that we start to watch and then abandon - there are lots of them! (most recently the Japanese Midnight Diner, a cool idea - late-night chef meets various people in his restaurant, each w/ a tale - that translates poorly from Japanese culture to American - but sometimes when we're drawn into a few episodes before we jump ship it's worth at least a mention, and that's where we are with the British comedy, now in Season 3?, Catastrophe. The story - about a couple that meet in a London bar (he's a visiting American businessman), have sex, stay together for a few days of sexual adventure, then he goes home to the U.S. and she calls him shortly thereafter to inform him she's pregnant. She plans to deliver and mother the child - she in her late 30s and senses the bio clock - and he, being a mensch, agrees to come back to London and work things out; soon, they're engaged - but they hardly know each other. That's the premise from the first episode, which was cute and funny at times, and the 2 leads are very likable - but by the end of ep 3 we had to wonder where this series was going. They quickly ran out of narrative ideas, it seems. He meets some of her family and so-called friends, all of whom are extremely unlikable. We get a little bit about the professional lives of the 2, she a schoolteacher and he an ad salesman for a small NYC firm, but their careers seem to play only a minor role in the story line. Many of the scenes, though broadly comic, are not at all credible - Why would this nice man have such an idiotic lout s his best buddy in London?, for ex. We can suspend a ton of disbelief for a good comedy, but it's important that we buy into the lives of the central characters, no matter how eccentric. In this one, we have to wonder: Why do these attractive, successful, witty adults seem to have virtually no life outside of each other? Things don't work that way - except in the movies, so to speak.

An old-fashioned and occasionally good Hemingway adaptation: The Breaking Point

Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point (1950) was an old-fashioned movie even in its time - seems a throwback to the big-screen melodramas of the 30s and less like the character-driven crime dramas of the 50s and beyond - but still worth watching, once anyway, for Curtiz's effective handling of the shipboard scenes in particular. The film - based on Hemingway's 1937 novel, To Have and Have Not (which was also filmed in the 30s) - is about a tough, decorated war veteran, Harry, who captains a charter fishing boat out of Newport, California, and who's facing serious financial troubles that threaten his marriage - leading him to take on some undue risks to earn quick cash. The best scenes are the underworld scenes: the visit to Mexico where the guy who chartered the boat loses big at gambling and stiffs Harry; the abortive smuggling of Chinese workers into California, the meeting w/ gangsters who want to charter the boat to escape following a race-track robbery, Harry's reckless heroism aboard the boat now under the control of the hoods. Far less effective are the domestic scenes and the scenes in which Harry flirts w/ (and ultimately resists) the sexy blonde who picks up rich guys in the marina. The family scenes in particular - with the long-suffering wife, the cute children, the neighboring black family (and, yes, it's always the black guy who dies - though Curtiz handles this well in the closing image of the film); some of these scenes, in fact most of the scenes in the film, seem to be after-dubbed in studio, giving the movie a slightly abstract look and unnatural pacing. I wonder how much of the occasional clumsiness comes from H's source dialog, and will probably read his relatively little-known novel to pursue that point.

Call My Agent hinting at a more international (i.e., American) series at end of Season 2

Season 2 of the fine French miniseries Call My Agent (Dix pour Cent) maintains the conceit of having each (of the 6) episodes focus in part on one French actor/actress and how the members of the Paris agency ASK help each actor/actress through the crisis, usually involving the actor/actress's outsized ego. But I would say that Season 2, now that the main characters are more firmly established and defined, has more of a focus on the personalities of the agency - the various complicated relationships, including sexual and amorous, that develop among them and their attempts to balance the needs of their personal and professional lives. Season 2 ends w/ the likelihood that a third season will involve links to an agency in NY, which makes sense: The series seems a natural for an American remake (a la The Office, e.g.), so why not pre-empt that possibility and make this series more international (Americans will never take en masses to a series w/ subtitles) - we see the same trend emerging in the great Israeli series Fauda, building toward an international rather than local milieu. It's been great to see that show develop over time and evidently to increase its star character, as the central figure in the final episode of the season was Juliette Binoche, the first major international star in this firmament (Isabelle Adjani a possible 2nd place). A series definitely worth watching w/ a great ensemble cast - and a particular not to the extremely likable Fannie Sidney (Camille).

Some reasons to watch Becker's Casque d'Or

Jacques Becker's 1952 gangster drama, Casque d'Or (Golden Helmet/Headpiece - a reference to Signoret's hair-do?), shows its age in some ways - doesn't have anywhere near the pace, the morbid overtones, the malignancy, or the stark violence that we have come to expect, and to accept, in contemporary gangster-crime films and TV series - but it has a tightly knit plot, set in about the 1890s and centered on 3 rival suitors for a beautiful "moll" (Simone Signoret). The opening sequence - when a group of the gangsters and their "girls" row upstream to an outdoor dance pavilion is a classic 15 minutes of film, culminating in a terrific moment when a gang member and an outsider - whom SS has been eyeing and flirting w/ - go face to face. In fact, some of the best scenes throughout the film are the exteriors, which Becker uses really well to create moods of menace as well as a brief pastoral retreat for the 2 lovers. Becker is great at creating a mood of menace - including the great knife-fight sequence, the visit to Manda while he's carving up wood in a carpenter's workshop, the final sequence (won't give it away) when SS and one of the gangsters rent a room on the top floor of a cheap hotel. Sure, the gangsters at times look and act like comic miscreants - something like the mobsters in Some Like It Hot - but the story line works (a rarity in crime drama, where so often you feel like the plot has been spun out of improbabilities and coincidences), the tension is maintained throughout, and there are a # of powerful and beautiful sequences. Despite the period setting and occasional drollery, the film is a strong example of 1950s crime drama - rising above the cliches of the genre and one of the few crime films to center in a female protagonist.