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by Ranald MacDougall and starring Harry Belafonte has a few cool moments worth watching but overall it's so odd and out of date that it has to be chalked up as a curiosity piece deserving of its obscurity.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.

Why to watch Call My Agent

The French 6-part series Call My Agent (Season 1), or if you prefer the French title, Dix Pour Cent (10 Percent, the agent's cut from all contracts, at least in France) is a really good comic drama about a small but powerful Paris agency representing major French film starts, with the amusing kick that each episode involves a star (or 2) playing himself/herself, often against type. (This works better in France, to be honest, as we had never heard of any of the "stars" in Season One.) The pace is good, the dialog is crisp and funny (even in subtitles), the lead actors make a good and credible ensemble. Most of all this series gets at the role of the agent, coddling the fragile egos of the artists and fighting like dogs w/ tempestuous producers and directors. The show feels realistic, only slightly exaggerated for comic effect, and, to boot, it also builds in a good office drama as the team fights on various fronts (and with one another) to secure the future of the agency and to play out various office and family romances and traumas. In some ways it's like a comic version of Mad Men, in contemporary setting and with less chauvinism and more sexual openness and acceptance (particular re homosexuality). All told, a really good series that we will follow into Season 2.

A great contemporary film from Romania: Beyond the Hills

Contemporary Romanian cinema is not for everyone, but for those (like me) who love long and thoughtful narratives about "real" people, movies in the tradition of great 19th-century naturalist (and realist) fiction, Cristian Mungiu's Beyond the Hills (2012) is must-see. The narrative, in brief, set in rural, contemporary Romania, is about a 20-something woman, recently "released" from the orphanage where she was raised (since birth I think) who has now entered a strict Eastern Orthodox convent in the hills beyond the borders of a small city. At the start of the film she is visited by a friend, Alina, who was also raised in the orphanage and is returning from her Germany where she has felt horribly lonely and insecure. We soon learn that the two women had a sexual relationship while in the orphanage, and Alina hopes to draw her friend (I'll call her V) away from the convent so the two can live together. V, however, rebuffs these overtures - she has fully bought into the strict rules of the convent, run by a priest (Father, or sometimes Papa), which perhaps is common in the Eastern Orthodox, I don't know. In any event, the push Alina to make her confession, which leads to a nervous breakdown and many other developments, which I will not divulge. There is a quiet beauty of this film: the sensitive dialog, the examination of a wide range of issues - including medical care, religious faith, social services, as well as personal relationships over time - with at least some sympathy for and understanding of all sides of the many issues. Aside from provoking thought and comment, right down to the dramatic conclusion and the surprising final sequence, there is a visual beauty to this film as well, in particular the re-creation of the austere life in the monastery and the many scenes, including a great scene in the local hospital, where the sisters gather into a group that looks like a late-renaissance portrait and you want to just grab the image and frame it and wish you didn't have to read the subtitles. This kind of movie would never be made in the U.S. (Scorsese's Silence maybe comes close) but at least it's available from Criterion, including streaming.