The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo.
Starring Brahim Hagiag and Jean Martin.

In a Nutshell: A recreation of the revolutionary battle within the Algerian War.

In 1954, native Algerians began to strike back against French colonists through urban guerilla warfare. French counter insurgency assassinated or captured the leaders of the National Liberation Front (FLN), sometimes acquiring crucial information through torture. While this culminated in a victory for the French in the city of Algiers, the countrywide uprising would help the French lose the Algerian War. Now we come to Gillo Pontecorvo’s film, a frank account of the struggle on both sides of the opposition. Pontecorvo idealizes the FLN, but the French are allowed sympathy, portrayed as dutiful men tasked with an invisible threat. Still a starkly political film, it renders its ideas without sensation thanks to its unvarnished documentary-style of filmmaking.

The film does not weigh on the struggles on any one person, but does obtain the perspectives of two peripheral characters. One is Ali la Pointe (Braham Haggiag) a petty criminal who rides the revolution wave to become one of the FLN’s most prominent figures. The second is fictional French commander Mathieu (Jean Martin) who accepts his job with taciturn resourcefulness. Ali contrasts with his callow and radical ways, ready to give plenty of malevolence to the French. Both have the necessary pathos to extend to their troops waging their own horror. Pontecorvo’s impartiality leads to extremities in Algerians’ depiction. Close-ups of innocent café patrons are shown seconds before an Algerian woman’s bomb blows them up. However, when the French detonate a terrorist’s house, the soundtrack mourns the bodies being pulled from the wreckage.

With its use of actual Algerian streets and untrained cast members, Pontecorvo is plainly looking for aesthetic realism to support its political honesty. It works, even partisan viewers can value the film’s deconstruction of the French’s strategic errors. Since its release it has been screened before military experts (including a publicized 2003 Pentagon screening) to question the efficiency of brute force and torture. Alternatively, revolutionary parties have used the film as a blueprint. Either appropriation circles back to its historical honesty, offering new answers for the next generation at war.

Raging Bull (1980)

Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Robert De Niro and Cathy Moriarty.

In a Nutshell: The life of self-destructive boxer Jake La Motta.

Like the real Jake La Motta, Raging Bull has been prized for its unforgiving, brutal nature. For a biographical film with a firm pulse on the emotions that constituted Taxi Driver’s forlorn soul (inadequacy, jealousy, hatred) it is a far more effective portrayal than a study. Much has been written about the process, and it deserves no less than the accolades previously bestowed. Perhaps its insight can only rise from the technique that Scorsese, writer Paul Schrader and Robert De Niro bring to their recreation. Even the real-life La Motta’s work as a technical advisor does not yield a picture that burrows into his mind. The insecurities portrayed are vast, complex. Could La Motta have answered these questions? Without being privy to that knowledge, one can only draw their conclusions from the screen’s output. It would be foolish to praise this film for its objectivity, but it succeeds without the need to comment or blame.

Key to this method is Jake’s many relationships with the supporting characters that play off of his intensity. To them, Jake is an angry, paranoid, dangerous brute (a very deserving view, mind you) to be engaged gingerly, then rejected after reaching rock bottom. Schrader’s script gives the surest definition of La Motta by utilizing his repeated motif of character study through solitude. La Motta’s anguished cries curse the burden of his inexplicable self-destruction. Violence and his unbearable sexual anxiety have consumed him; La Motta’s redemption does not triumph over these primeval emotions nor does it render them dormant (as the end of Taxi Driver suggests). Raging Bull’s catharsis champions our self-forgiveness, knowing that men like La Motta can never escape such feelings. It is material Scorsese never has to explain beyond the bare authenticity. The result is visceral, devastating.

Sansho the Bailiff (1954)

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka and Yoshiaki Hanayagi.

In a Nutshell: A family is cruelly separated, each member on their own journey back.

Based on Mori Ogai’s writing, Sansho the Bailiff is a tale of grand tragedy, blessed by the compassionate nature it extols. Social tyranny and divine sacrifice strike an aristocratic family, united through their redemption and love, if not on this earth. The plot unfolds simply, with its characters at odds with their own parallel suffering and catharsis. A bullying military force exiles a deputy governor for defying the draft. The governor’s wife (Kinuyo Tanaka) is sent to live elsewhere with her two children, but while en route, she loses them to kidnappers and is sold into prostitution. Under the rule of the cruel slave master Sansho (Eitarō Shindō), elder son Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi) evolves into an obedient torturer while Anju (Kyōko Kagawa) continues to practice her father’s teachings, never losing hope for freedom. As she labors, Anju continually hears her mother’s voice calling for her children. The children plan for escape, setting the stage for Zushio’s salvation.

Mizoguchi opens with the quote; “This tale is set during the late Heian period an era when mankind had not yet awakened as human beings.” There is a simple directive to the characters’ portrayals; power aligns with cruelty as Zushio and Anju’s father demonstrates the foolishness of kindness within the hierarchy. True to this mythical structure, it boxes its characters into firm definitions. The titular Sansho exemplifies this. Not just as a villain who wields his influence the way his minions wield branding irons. But in his static characterization, firmly couched in his role, existing in the past, remembered only for the destruction he has caused for the present. It is a storytelling technique used throughout. Mizoguchi traps his characters within a variety of framing devices. Each sweeping camera movement defines their fate, tracking every ascension, retreat, descent or progression as a careful notation for the future. The camera also acts as storyteller, cherishing intimacy and shielding pain.

But for this entry, an excess of technical deconstruction pales behind the sheer emotive power of this film (pardon the hyperbole). Tragedy comes not just from its characters’ physical separation, but the separation from their own compassion. Its resolution may be bitter, but it celebrates our humanity and our ability to discover our compassion and find redemption. Mizoguchi has constructed a film of passion and understated delicacy, a film that can be touted as a purely emotional experience. Such cinematic beauty is almost impossible to further scrutinize. Perhaps one can justly sum it up by quoting Gilbert Adair’s proclamation, “Sansho the Bailiff is one of those films for whose sake the cinema exists…”.

Le Cercle rouge (1970)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Starring Alain Delon and Bourvil.

In a Nutshell: A thief enlists a murderer in a heist while pursued by the police.

Cigarettes, trench coats, fedoras, deception. Le Cercle rouge is heaven for noir fetishes, and a refreshing example of conduct for film’s sake. Its characters seem to act in spontaneous harmony like jazz musicians, all within the unspoken code of criminals. But it is fate’s will that noir’s fatalism shall bury them in the end, their fate orchestrated by its master Jean-Pierre Melville. Le Cercle rouge could be a case study of the actions of men, if such actions existed outside of the hard-boiled universe that only novels and films can entertain. Alain Delon stars as Corey, a thief who in true Alain Delon fashion, broods intensely behind a guarded blue gaze. Upon prison release, he encounters a man named Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté) who escaped from the grasp of police captain Mattei (Bourvil). Corey enlists Vogel and ex-cop Jansen (Yves Montand) for a heist while Mattei pressures nightclub owner Santi (François Périer) for information.

Everything unfolds and collapses for the men with Melville stripping down any frills and redundancies. Sparse mise-en-scène and clipped dialogue complements the men’s bare characterization. Even with such austere “cool” assigned to the players, Bourvil and Montand skillfully play up their respective character’s pathos, while Delon, Volonté and Périer squirm and bluff under the heat. The mannered tough-guy aesthetic makes every plot twist and coincidence feel fated, but understated enough that its artifice does not feel self-aware. It is the most advantageous stylistic move by Melville, and the folly of each man rolls out with unforced precision offering a complete view of this gangster world. Undeniably studied, but fewer films hold its internal laws to such rigor.

If.... (1968)

Directed by Lindsay Anderson.
Starring Malcolm McDowell and David Wood.

In a Nutshell: A group of boarding school students form a revolt against their superiors.

“Violence and revolution are the only pure acts,” youthful musings of the restless and lost. Director Lindsay Anderson’s film studies the subculture of an English boarding school, a storm that has rebellious student Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) smirking in its eye. If…. is a unique film; it subverts realism without falling into stylized trappings that would fetishize its anarchic thunder. Yet Anderson manages a finely detailed portrait, all fading into the larger picture. What that larger picture “is” the film never concretely outlines, as the 60’s provided plenty to rebel against. But Anderson is not interested in that sort of statement, at least not enough to find the humanity in his characters. As the chief instigator, Travis is embodied by McDowell as an imp and dreamer, with just a glint of devilishness. His wide-eyed ruminations and refined cultural sensibilities inject romanticism into his deeds, albeit steeped in naïveté. As a poster child for the audience’s rebellious cravings, he is indelible.

Travis’ world is deftly constructed. Though filled with archetypes, a talented array of character actors infuses Anderson’s character sketches with life and personality. Anderson catches small moments of the microcosm, defining a whole world with little exhibition (the blossoming love between one of Mick’s revolutionaries and a prepubescent tells its entire story in as little as three scenes). One odd touch is randomized scenes devoid of color, explained by Anderson as cost-cutting measures during interior filming (though Anderson would have preferred to shoot entirely in black and white). Narrative-wise, the scenes carry no additional pattern but a dreamy ambience, carrying into the boys’ waking fantasies.

Such tones of revolt, wistfulness and dark humor do not seem to contrast, but flow to capture the tumultuousness of youth. Anderson was suspected to be closeted, and the burning rage and despair he might have felt emanates through the boys’ desire to break free. Its much-discussed ending encapsulates the film’s tone into pure action, carried forth by the surrealism. Is it necessary? Particularly as the ending shatters the satirical context into pure protest. It may be hard to judge from a modern context, but could not blame If…. for having its finger on the pulse of youth, requiring such a scene to hammer home their frustration. And as Mick would argue, it stands as one of the film’s purest act.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)

Directed by John Cassavetes.
Starring Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassel.

In a Nutshell: A club owner must commit a murder to pay off a gambling debt.

In response to his detractors, John Cassavetes once quipped, “A movie tries to pacify people by keeping it going for them so that it's sheer entertainment. I hate entertainment. There’s nothing I despise more than being entertained.” Perhaps there is a hint of facetiousness, though it is still a statement worth considering while viewing this film. Its premise suggests noir pulp, but Cassavetes pushes all that into the background for an unapologetically realistic character study. And that character may be John Cassavetes. His protagonist Cosmo Vittelli (Ben Gazzara) is a man proud of his meager lot in life. When we meet him, he has just paid his last debt to acquire full ownership of the strip club Crazy Horse West. As entertainment, Cosmo offers tawdry peep shows boasting a low-rent artistry. His shows are earnest, deeply personal but humiliating in their faux-sophistication. Too soon, Cosmo accumulates a heavy gambling debt with some mobsters who offer him a way out; kill a Chinese bookie.

True to the noir genre, Cosmo is fatalism-infected scum, and knows it. The pride he takes in his strip-theater performers seems born of sweaty desperation. He has little else for show, all the better than to cling to what you got. The artist id is split between Cosmo and the Master of Ceremonies, Teddy aka Mr. Sophistication (Meade Roberts) who is self-pitying and yearning for audience approval, when not upstaged by the girls’ bare breasts. He is the counterweight to Cosmo’s workingman ethic, yet naked with his insecurities while Cosmo struts a faux-suavity. Only when the inevitable comes in full terror by the end, does Cosmo try to pin down his facade as motivation for the troupe. Everything is fraud, just “choose a personality.”

That is only what the film is, but how is it? The original cut is flourished with diversions featuring the film’s supporting characters including some extra performances. Though to say diversions may be missing the point of Cassavetes’ film; it is these cinéma vérité moments that he is interested in, not the bookie business (save what it can tell us about Cosmo and the gangsters). Cassavetes keeps the camera bare inches from the characters’ faces, thrusting this world at us and magnifies the barest quiver underneath Cosmo’s facade. Similarly, Cassavetes hides his character turmoil in full view within the gangster-noir murder plot (you know, “macho” stuff). We are left to explore this world and his lost characters, looking for art, looking for love, meaning, anything at all. Before the relief of the final curtain.

Fires on the Plain (1959)

Directed by Kon Ichikawa.
Starring Eiji Funakoshi and Osamu Takizawa.

In a Nutshell: A private in ailing health struggles to survive WWII combat.

1959 yielded two humanistic war films intent on tarnishing the legacy of military nationalism in WWII-era Japan. Masaki Kobayashi's sprawling The Human Condition witnessed the slow, grinding demise of idealism and the human spirit. Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain depicts quick, ugly cruelty. It tests the will of man’s survival when reduced to the barest of resources. When Private Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) becomes stricken with tuberculosis early on, he is ordered to consider two choices: find medical care (to continue fighting) or suicide. The battlefield offers far worse. Ichikawa tracks Tamura through the hell of combat with each repugnant side inflicting different brands of hostility. But there is purity to Ichikawa’s study of the human will at odds with the bleakest of frontiers.

It is an unnerving film, with Tamura’s journey void of the rigor and civility that keeps society from folding in on itself. Ichikawa is not shy in revealing the haunting details, cut with occasional shots of scenic beauty too heartbreaking to smack of irony. But it is that compassion that reverberates with Tamura’s arc and his dogged refusal to submit to the elements. With his ambiguous ending (deviating from the novel) Ichikawa suggests little else is worth claiming. The cost is still great; even inner peace rewards no certainty. For Tamura, it becomes the only solace taken into abyss, moving towards the unseen salvation one prays will await on the horizon. In his pitiless rendering of war’s horrors, Ichikawa achieves the same revelation, and never looks back.