Ken's Rainbow

That was a nice wave of affection for Ken Russell who died recently, at the good age of 84. BBC here in England ran WOMEN IN LOVE the other weekend, terrific to see it again after some decades - it remains his "prestige" film, they also showed the lesser known THE RAINBOW from 1989, also by D.H. Lawrence, with the same lead character Ursula Brangwen when younger.

WOMEN IN LOVE is so exhuberent - there is just so much in it, so much plot, so much happening, so many vivid characters, Ken here in his prime has great material to work with and a great cast and comes across like an English Fellini, creating great moods and images, it is so very 1969. I had forgot how marvellous Alan Bates was in his prime, and it must also be Oliver Reed's finest moment, Eleanor Bron is also terrific. Russell was a visionary who marched to the beat of his own drum and WIL remains a film that is both visually striking and rich in narrative. Perhaps the more apt comparison is to Orson Welles, a fellow auteur who started his career in the good graces of the critics and then began making more challenging films that were interested in stretching the medium.



Ken too while "hot" did some challenging films: THE MUSIC LOVERS (I have a new dvd of that to watch, so a report later) and I understand a new complete print of THE DEVILS will be unveiled (but not sure if I want to see that again....) and he kept working to diminishing returns after the success of TOMMY. I loathed VALENTINO and he seems to have lost his mass audience around then, but kept making movies even ending up making them in his garage. THE SAVAGE MESSIAH should be a re-discovery, and perhaps the amusingly awful LISZTOMANIA , and his forays into American movies ... (I recently also got BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967) to complete my Francoise Dorleac movies.)

The BBC also showed a new documentary on him, great to see clips from his "Monitor" days, those black and white films on composers like Delius and Elgar. THE RAINBOW though is a curious trifle - almost D.H. Lawrence lite, or a parody of those themes. IMDB says: Ken Russell's loose adaptation of the last part of D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow" sees impulsive young Ursula coming of age in pastoral England around the time of the Boer War. At school, she is introduced to lovemaking by a bisexual physical education instructress. While experiencing disillusionment in her first career attempt (teaching), she has an affair with a young Army officer, who wants to marry her. Unable to accept a future of domesticity, she breaks with him, and eventually leaves home in search of her destiny.

Ken obviously inspired a lot of affection so appearing here must have been a labour of love for Ken's regulars like Glenda Jackson and Christopher Gable as Ursula's loving parents with their bohemian (for the time) marriage. David Hemmings is simply marvellous as Uncle Harry - before he got too florid - and he brings a lot of humour and grace to the role. The unusual looking Sammi Davis is Ursula, and Amanda Donohue (later the star of Ken's bonkers LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM) is the school teacher who teaches Sammi the joys of sapphic love as the girls strip and run around naked in the rain ... Amanda soon though latches on to Hemmings and marries him and has a baby, while soldier Paul McGann shows Sammi the joys of hetero sex, as he too strips and runs around naked. Add in school teaching with lecherous teachers and the scene is set for the usual Ken histrionics. So, an enjoyable romp, another of those British films of the era exploring sex in those restrictive times, like that other 1970 D.H. saga THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY by Christopher Miles, who also gave us the later DH bio THE PRIEST OF LOVE with more stripping off by Ian McKellen and Co in 1981 - reviews at costume drama label.


I also recorded THE BOYFRIEND - also not seen that for decades, should be fun again, as Ken's regulars like Max Adrian, Glenda, Gable, Georgina Hale, Antonia Ellis, Vladek Sheybal, Graham Armitage and the very gauche Twiggy [now starring in Marks & Spencer clothes advertisments] amuse and entertain us back in 1971.

Marcello & Romy ! !

Another new Italian discovery: I hadn't realised that Romy Schneider and Marcello Mastroianni had teamed up for FANTASMA D'AMORE in 1981, one of her last films, the year before her death in '82. This is another one we were denied in London, though surely there would have been an audience for it then when the art circuit was still going and international stars like these were still popular ... I have now though seen some scenes from this Dino Risi drama on YouTube and have ordered an Italian only dvd,so a full report in due course ...

Priest of Love

PRIEST OF LOVE. Only 1 review of this 1981 film on IMDb? Ian McKellen’s first starring role in 1980 as D.H. Lawrence, didn’t attract too much attention at the time; I passed over it myself as I did films like RETURN OF THE SOLIDER, perhaps there was a glut of costume dramas at the time, all those Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson films. This was directed by Christopher Miles (brother of actress Sarah) who also directed the Lawrence tale THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY in 1970 and is another look at that Lawrence era of the 1920s lovingly recreated. Here D.H. and his German wife Frieda (a rather too strident Janet Suzman) have to leave England in 1914 due to the outbreak of World War I and they travel to the United States pitching up in Taos, Santa Fe as guests of wealthy patron Mabel Dodge Luhan (Ava Gardner, enjoying herself hugely) and Lady Dorothy Brett (Penelope Keith, ideal as their deaf companion and fellow artist). Later we move to Italy as Lawrence’s health deteriorates after the banning of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and the burning of “The Rainbow” and the raid on the art gallery showing his explicit paintings. John Gielgud is very diligent in his pursuit of the filth in Lawrence’s books, having to re-read them to extract full value.



The casting here is the thing, even to the smallest role. It intriguingly begins suggesting D.H.’s bisexuality showing him leaving his Cornish farmhouse and sleeping wife for an early morning naked swim where he is joined by a strapping Cornish farmer – Graham Faulkner, required to strip again but showing a more robust physique than he did as St Francis in Zeffirelli’s BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON. In Italy too the manager of their estate, Italian pop singer/actor Massimo Ranieri is pleased to disrobe to pose for D.H.’s paintings. Other names in the extensive cast include Julian Fellowes (now writing DOWNTON ABBEY) and Gareth Forwood (the actor son of Glynis Johns and Anthony Forwood, later Dirk Bogarde’s partner). Scripted by Alan Plater and filmed at the places the Lawrences stayed at it looks handsome and perfectly in period. Miles directs with a sure touch (his sister Sarah appears in one of the deleted scenes) and the new dvd has extensive interviews (including a new one with McKellen) and additional material. One wonders how that other Lawrence expert maestro Ken Russell would have souped it up?



For Miles's THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY review, see Franco Nero label.

Movies I love: Dona Herlinda and her Son

This 1985 film from Mexico is as delightful now as it must have been then. Director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo presents a comedy of manners raising the lid on sexuality in Latin America, and how a family can resolve things so everyone gets what they want.



Rodolfo is the surgeon son of Dona Herlinda, a wealthy widow, expertly played by Guadalupe del Toro, Rodolfo is having a relationship with Ramon, a music student, but they can never find time to be alone at the cramped house where he lives. Dona Herlinda, who obviously must know what is really going on between her son and Ramon, invites the young man to move to her large house in Guadalajara, but Dona Herlinda also wants Rodolfo to marry and present her with a grand-child. The film is endearing, the characters very much alive, and the many twists and turns on the story make this movie funny and poignant at the same time. Arturo Meza (Ramon), Marco Antonio Trevino (Rodolfo) and Leticia Lupercio (Olga) suit their roles perfectly. Hermosillo seems the only openly gay Mexican director and he is still making movies. I shall have to investigate further ...



Rodolfo, who must cover his true nature, begins to see Olga, a young woman from his same circle. He proposes and marries her, breaking Ramon's heart in the process. Dona Herlinda, who is more intelligent than she is given credit for, pulls strings to keep Ramon at her home and decides to expand the house so that Rodolfo and Olga can move in with the grandson and live together happily ever after. Olga wants to study and travel so the arrangement suits her, and the boys can be together too.







Of course, the film is in simple terms a fun story, but deep inside it touches a lot of themes that have been taboo in so many societies. Usually mothers aren't as accepting as this Dona Herlinda, who acts as a procurer for the son she loves by inviting the young lover, Ramon, to come live with her. One deeply amusing scene has Dona Herlinda and Ramon together at a music event, while Rodolfo and Olga are away on honeymoon. Ramon is affected by the music and begins to cry, as Dona Herlinda without a word passes him a hankie. It ends with the expanded family all together as the son toasts his wonderful mother, who smiles serenely back at us.



Hermosillo seems a very interesting director, I should see other of his films, I caught one on television once, another gay related story, starring Fassbinder's muse Hanna Schygulla. His movie reminds me a lot of Almodovar of whom more later.

Fassbinder & Fox and his friends, 1974

This powerful and harrowing melodrama from 1974 is one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most accessible movies, and is a must-see for all those interested in intelligent film making.

The tragic story of Fox is masterfully and poignantly handled by Fassbinder, while never slipping into sloppy sentimentality, but unfolds with grim inevitability. Fassbinder was inexhaustible. In his 15 year career he made 40 feature-length films, 3 shorts, directed 24 stage plays, wrote 33 screenplays collaborating on 13 more, developed 2 series for television and took on 36 acting roles in not only his, but the films of his contemporaries as well. He remains a key figure as the Enfant Terrible in the New German Cinema of the 70s, along with Wim Wenders and Herzog. It was his ability to work quickly on a shoestring budget that allowed him to take advantage of government grants that enabled him to continue working at breakneck pace, often taking on the roles of producer, editor, composer, production designer and cinematographer in order to ensure the quality of his work.
FEAR EATS THE SOUL and THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT were big hits one had to have an opinion on at the time, and then came FOX AND HIS FRIENDS....like Polanski playing the lead in DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES it is odd seeing Fassbinder himself playing the lead as the lumpy fairground worker who is convinced he is going to win the lottery [the woman who sells him the ticket is Brigetta Mira, the heroine of FEAR EATS THE SOUL - and other Fassbinder regulars pop up too]. Add in Carl Boehm (from the SISSI films and PEEPING TOM etc) as the wealthy gay Fox initially hooks up with, and Peter Chatel as the object of his affections and we get a rapacious gay milieu which Fassbinder presents before us.

Below: FEAR EATS THE SOUL / The lush THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT


Fassbinder’s fatalistic outlook was reflected in the extreme brutality and sorrow that permeate his films. That quality, combined with his gritty, naked in your face drama often left film critics and viewers speechless, while utilising melodrama like Douglas Sirk, a big influence on him. His first film LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH in 1969 was poorly received and died a slow painful death. THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT was an art-house success in 1972 and concerns the idea that power is the ultimate goal in all human relationships. MARTHA in 1974, explores cruelty of traditional marriage; FEAR EATS THE SOUL brilliantly re-works Sirk's ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS in a working class milieu as the cleaning woman's marriage to the Moroccan immigrant outrages her family and friends, until they get used to the idea and need her for work and baby-sitting duties, and FOX AND HIS FRIENDS the same year showcases the cruel side of homosexuality. This story centers around a good-natured young adult who wins half a million in a lottery, then naively hooks up with a lecherous man who, aided by his family, drains him of all his money and love, leaving him to die alone on the floor of a train station. These movies (plus a period drama EFFI BRIEST) were staples of London's indie revival houses (like the "Screen on the Green" where I used to hang out all the time), and the BFI also did a major retrospective.

He capped his career with a trilogy of films, the highly regarded THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN in 1978, LOLA in 1981 and VERONIKA VOSS in 1982 all centered around women (usually Hanna Schygulla) in post-fascist Germany; and DESPAIR with Dirk Bogarde, which according to Dirk, the by then drug-addled Fassbinder ruined in the editing just before its screening at the Cannes film festival.



Fassbinder lived hard and partied hard. One of his relationships with men included El Hedi ben Salem, the male lead in FEAR EATS THE SOUL and Fassbinder’s longtime lover, who hanged himself while in jail. Fassbinder did not live to see his last film QUERELLE in 1982, a lurid success about a good-looking sailor, a thief and hustler (featuring Franco Nero, Brad Davis and Jeanne Moreau), because he died from a lethal combination of sleeping pills and cocaine, a few days after his 37th birthday. His short remarkable career influenced some of today’s most imaginative directors like Pedro Almoldovar, Richard Linklater, John Waters, Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant.

The ending though to FOX is a tragedy beyond description - Love is colder than Death indeed ... fascinating though the look of that early '70s: the clothes, the interiors, and the characters fascinate: Boehm as the wealthy gay who observes, the alcoholic sister wanting her money back, Chatel as the venal boyfriend with his own boyfriend poised to return once Fox has been cleaned out, the purchasing of the antiques and the trip to Morocco, and the money invested in the parents' failing company, and that ending at the railway station ... what a bleak universe. Interesting now to compare with the newly restored TAXI ZUM KLO, Frank Ripploh's vivid diary of his gay life in Berlin circa 1980. FOX though can be exasperating: does he not realise what is going on, is he complicit in his own destruction, if he is looking for love does he not realise he will not find it here? Is he so unloved?


A personal memory here: I worked for a London university bookshop in the late 70s, imagine my surprise one day when a guy came into my office and sat on my desk, waiting for my colleague, Monica a German friend, to return. It was Peter Chatel - who died in 1986. Fassbinder's main films though will endure and continue to fascinate.

Next: Mexico's joyous DONA HERLINDA AND HER SON by Jaime Hermosillo.

R.I.P. - Nick Ashford

Any compliation [or mixtape - remember those?] of '80s classics would have to include Ashford & Simpson's "Solid (as a rock)" - a bit of a chiche now, but looking at the video again the other day it is still joyous, uplifting and rocking and a great memory of that time - mid-'80s funk and disco.

I have just read that Nick Ashford, one-half of the legendary Motown songwriting duo Ashford & Simpson that penned elegant, soulful classics for the likes of Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye and funk hits for Chaka Khan and others, died Monday at age 70.
Ashford, who along with wife Valerie Simpson wrote some of Motown's biggest hits, He had been suffering from throat cancer.
Though they had some of their greatest success at Motown with classics like "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Reach Out And Touch Somebody's Hand" by Ross and "You're All I Need To Get By" by Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Ashford & Simpson also created classics for others, like the anthem "I'm Every Woman" by Khan (and later remade by Whitney Houston). They also had success writing for themselves: Perhaps the biggest known hit sung by them was the 1980s hit "Solid As A Rock." Their first major success occurred when they came up with "Let's Go Get Stoned" for Ray Charles. That song became a huge hit, and soon, they came to the attention of Motown Records and began penning hits for their artists. The duo, who were married for 38 years, helped sell millions of records for several artists.

Blondie

Blondie's PARALLEL LINES (which has just been given away free here in an English newspaper) is a classic album featuring brilliant singles and it turned the group Blondie into massive international stars. It brings back a lot of memories of that late '70s early '80s time and its great hearing those songs like Heart of Glass, Picture This, Hanging on the Telephone, Fade Away and Radiate etc again. It has driven me back to their other material, classics like Rapture, The Tide Is High and Debbie Harry's I Want That Man.

This album shows the band at the peak of their powers. It reached Nr 1 in the UK charts in February 1979 and heralded a period when the New York group was one of the biggest in the world. I was just in my 30s then and it was all very relevant to me. They were 5 boys and one drop-dead gorgeous girl who burst on the music scene highlighting that New York vibe of the time. Female rock stars like Madonna and Lady Gaga owe many of their ideas to Debbie Harry.

PARALLEL LINES now looks like a vivid postcard from a cool, mixed up corner of late '70s New York, a time when disco, punk and art collided. The New York of those years was not the affluent city of today but was a lethal semi-derelict place where Blondie made their headquarters. Chris Stein the band's guitarist was Debbie's boyfriend and so-founder of the group. Their contemporaries were legends-in-waiting like Talking Heads but it was Blondie who bottled their sound and vision of the sound and attitude of New York and exported the city to the world's pop charts.

Their Call Me was also another giant hit, used over the opening credits of Paul Schrader's hymn to the era, AMERICAN GIGOLO. Their momentum stalled in 1982 when Stein developed a rare skin disease and Debbie Harry retired from the spotlight to nurse him back to health. They returned in the late '90s with more hits like Maria and a hit album, and there is a new album out in January - 3 of which tracks are on this free giveaway. It does whet one's appetite for more Blondie. Blondie are arguably the greatest band of New York City and those years and PARALLEL LINES captures every element of their brilliance. It was good too to see Debbie during her solo years and when she performed with the Jazz Passengers. Cool is the word.

Just a gigolo

I noticed AMERICAN GIGOLO was showing late in the tv schedules so I decided to record it and have another look. I have the dvd of course but I would never have got around to playing it. So I had another look - and I loved it all over again!

Sometimes one can love a movie too much - you can become obsessed about it, go back to see it several times [this is before video, let alone dvd...], one gets the poster, the soundtrack album, it becomes part of that period of your life. Then you get over it and never want to go back to it but it will always be there for you: EAST OF EDEN, THE MISFITS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, 2001, EL CID, CHARADE and THE PINK PANTHER, KLUTE for Jane Fonda's Bree Daniels, Isabelle Adjani stunning me in THE HISTORY OF ADELE H, Genevieve Bujold in OBSESSION, MODESTY BLAISE, BLOW-UP [ideal when I was 21], UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME, A BIGGER SPLASH, THE PASSENGER, CHINATOWN, TAXI DRIVER, BARRY LYNDON and AMERICAN GIGOLO for my early 30s. It caught that end of the 70s and into the 80s vibe exactly and made Los Angeles a dream city, Hockney-esque as Richard Gere drove around to Giorgio Moroder's score and Blondie's "Call Me".

That sequence is still perfection: Gere full of himself laying out his clothes in that apartment I wanted to live in, as Smokey Robinson sings that perfect song which the scene seems to be edited to: "We used to meet in romantic places .... the way you wrecked my life was just like sabotage ... the love I saw in you was just a mirage". Pity the song wasn't included on the soundtrack album, but I found it on a Smokey compilation! and then of course for the disco scene with all those macho guys dancing - how very 1980 - Cheryl Barnes' "Love and Passion".

By the mid 70s Paul Schrader was the guy to watch with his scripts for TAXI DRIVER and OBSESSION and being lionised by the likes of "Film Comment" - then his gritty early movies like BLUE COLLAR and HARDCORE emerging from his Calvinist upbringing. Then the glossy AMERICAN GIGOLO caught the moment perfectly and sealed Richard Gere's reputation after those roles in those key movies like DAYS OF HEAVEN, LOOKING FOR MR GOODBAR and Schlesinger's YANKS. Oddly enough I had no interest in him after that - I didn't want to see the big hit AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN (which like TOP GUN became symbolic of the era) and seeing some of the BREATHLESS remake on television confirmed that he was now playing to his admirers.

But as Julian Kay, alone in his apartment with his weights and his clothes and learning Swedish for a new client he does not realise the enemies he is making by falling out with Nina Van Pallandt's madam who created him, or the pimp Leon - before he knows it he is framed for murder and has to turn on himself and wreck his apartment to find those hidden jewels. His clients and socialite friends desert him - but there is Lauren Hutton as the woman he is finding out how to love another person who stands by him. Hutton has hardly been accused of acting, but I love her here; she is perfectly in tune with the film and displays great vulnerability and layers of character. Gere too steps up to the mark with Schrader's exploration of his vulnerabilities and why he does what he does, including that nude scene. One could hardly picture John Travolta doing it. He is so central to the movie, like how Antonioni idealised David Hemmings in BLOW-UP.



This is a perfect summation by Jed Medina of its themes: "A slick Los Angeles callboy finds love and redemption in Paul Schrader's ultra-stylish drama. High-living prostitute Julian Kay has it all: the Mercedes, the clothes, access to Beverly Hills' swankiest establishments, and a stable of rich, older female clients. But it all falls apart after he does a favor for his former pimp (Bill Duke) and the trick turns up dead a short while later; Julian's actual client won't give him an alibi, and police detective Sunday (Hector Elizondo) doesn't believe the gigolo's denials. The one person who can help him is frustrated politician's wife (and sole non-paying bedmate) Michelle (Lauren Hutton), if only Julian could let down his defenses and accept her gesture of love. Mixing his admiration for European art cinema with a voyeuristic view of the seamier side of sex and affluence, Schrader renders Julian an inscrutable, emotionally disengaged purveyor of pleasure, decked out in Giorgio Armani clothes coordinated with Ferdinando Scarfiotti's meticulous production design.
With some audiences reportedly showing up for repeat viewings of Gere's seductive charms, it became a moderate hit, turning Gere into a star and Armani into the new fashion sensation. Whatever reservations one may have about the movie, it provided two indelible images of 1980s decadence to come: Gere's perusing his "artist's palette" of shirts, ties, and jackets, and cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in his convertible to the New Wave strains of Blondie's "Call Me"."

The other elements - the stylised apartment, Moroder's score, the set design of Ferdinando Scarfiotti (a victim of the 80s Aids crisis), the Armani clothes and Schrader's script and direction, all those serpentine camera movements - blend to create a perfect zeitgeist movie for its time, like Fosse and ALL THAT JAZZ. And of course those Robert Bresson influences, like that ending echoing PICKPOCKET as Julian finds redemption by finally accepting love. It all still works now. Nice to have seen it again and put it back for some other future time. Schrader went on to his intriguing remake of CAT PEOPLE and LIGHT SLEEPER and then after a dip while exploring his demons, returned the other year with THE WALKER, with its echoes of AMERICAN GIGOLO and another great central performance one would not expect from Woody Harrelson. Hopefully there will be more Schrader films to fascinate us. The older Gere is also turning out the occasional interesting movie as well as some very disposable ones!