The Fury (Brian De Palma, 1978)

I'm closer to understanding why I cannot stand The Fury. The fireworks don't begin until 47 damn minutes into the film when Gillian (Amy Irving) has her staircase vision. (If you're going to tell me the first nosebleed or even the toy train scene are anything to write home about, then you've got a lot of calisthenics to do). And, okay, I dug the Celine and Julie Go Boating-ish vibe of Gillian's visions. But it's too little, too late. There need to be more "numbers" in the first half and all throughout. It's not preposterous enough! Femme Fatale is redonkulous from the very first scene (compare The Fury's opening scene and weep despite the great close-up of Cassavetes' feet). I knew Showgirls would be the greatest film of 1995 ten minutes into it. The Devil is a Woman astounds from frame one to frame last. Etc. And this is to leave out The Fury's prehistoric sexual politics. So despite all the smart people who dig if not adore this film, I'm moving on to campier pastures. Oh and one more problem: Andrew Stevens' body is underutilized so voilà:

Grade: C+

The film maudit - my favorite film genre!

J. Hoberman has a (mostly) terrific new piece in Sight & Sound on the film maudit, my favorite film genre ever! Translated literally from the French as a "cursed film," a film maudit is one that is "widely panned even as it is staunchly defended by a devoted minority." My real-time example of the film maudit process is Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995) which, as I never tire of proclaiming, I saw on opening night and deemed a masterpiece within ten minutes. But Hoberman dives into the long history of the genre including its origin in the Festival du Film Maudit, a counter-Cannes organized in 1949 by André Bazin and Jean Cocteau to showcase those films that in “their indifference to censorship and the demands of exploitation were cursed like the books of certain poets," as per Cocteau.

The gambit worked since many of the titles shown at the festival have long since passed on to masterpiece status: L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934), The Long Voyage Home (John Ford, 1940), Les Dames du Bois de Bologne (Robert Bresson, 1945). But I know of no maudit energy surrounding The Flame of New Orleans (René Clair, 1941) beyond a brief, warm mention in Henri Agel's 1950 Hollywood Quarterly piece "What is a Cursed Film?" And I'm intrigued by the inclusion of Mourning Becomes Electra (Dudley Andrew, 1947), a three-hour adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play that always seemed like a slog to me but has suddenly risen near the top of my must-watch list, especially since Bazin considered it “the film maudit par excellence.”

But here's where the messiness of generic boundaries seeps in because Hoberman loses me in trying to define this genre. To my mind, there must be something of the preposterous to a film maudit. Thus, Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970) and Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977), both masterful but sober, don't count, not even as rehabilitated films maudits just because they "suffer[ed] all manner of indignities before being hailed as national treasures." And then there's the matter of determining both the panning and the defending necessary for a film to become maudit. Hoberman claims Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970) "remains unredeemed." But he should check out David Scott Diffrient's 2013 Cinema Journal article "'Hard to Handle': Camp Criticism, Trash-Film Reception, and the Transgressive Pleasures of Myra Breckinridge" which details the film's redemption. And I know a vocal minority who hail Cats (Tom Hopper, 2019) as a masterpiece and "not just a titanic flop," even one Hoberman calls "ridiculous" as if such a designation weren't central to the maudit process.

Weirdest of all, Hoberman claims the genre is no more, a situation he blames on social media. Wondering if Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2006) might be the last film maudit ever, he concludes that "the net has fostered a cinematic counterculture capable of embracing, defending and blessing nearly anything." But that's always been true even during the era which Hoberman perplexingly labels "the great age of cinephilia (1945-2000)" (huh?). From "Charlton Heston is an axiom" to the Gay Girls Riding Club to the Psychotronic encyclopedias, plenty of energy has been expended on blessing all manner of cinematic detritus and it will continue to happen. Cats is proof of that. Cameron Crowe's 2015 fiasco Aloha might be too although I've yet to see it. I imagine there's a candidate ripe for mauditation among the nominees and winners of the Golden Raspberry Awards (there was a Basic Instinct 2??). For sure, M. Night Shyamalan has enjoyed the most maudit career of any mainstream Hollywood director this century with at least two fabulous films maudits, my beloved Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008), and one irredeemably awful movie, The Last Airbender (2010), to his name. His gripping new Apple TV series, Servant, is suffused with maudit energy, continually threatening to jump the shark but never yet doing so over the course of two seasons. As a panning and defending machine, the internet will keep all this maudit energy alive. 

Still, Hoberman's essay is a fantastic repository for the cursed and the adored that put my mind in overdrive. I should finally get to that Shelley Winters/Liberace entry South Sea Sinner (Bruce Humberstone, 1950). Was Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah, 1965) really maudit? I've never even heard of Kid Blue (James Frawley, 1973). And I should really watch my beloved Skidoo (Otto Preminger, 1968) again sometime soon. 

Happy Birthday, Showgirls!

 I saw Showgirls opening night with a couple of friends. Barely five minutes into the film, Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is in a Las Vegas parking lot where she discovers that the suitcase carrying all her possessions has been stolen. She bangs on a random car in rage. The owner of the car, Molly Abrams (Gina Ravera), suddenly appears and yanks her off. The two scuffle, Nomi throws up, and Molly tries to console her. Nomi runs off into the road and almost get hits by oncoming traffic. But Molly pulls her to safety and the two embrace. The moment takes up less than a minute of screen time. But it was enough for me to turn to my friend and say, "This will be the greatest film of the year."

And I was right. 

Happy 25th birthday, Showgirls! 

The Other Side of Midnight (Charles Jarrott, 1977)

You know what film is better than Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)? The Other Side of Midnight! I make the comparison only because according to Wikipedia, Fox worried that the budget-busting Star Wars would flop whereas they assumed Midnight, based on Sidney Sheldon's 1973 blockbuster novel, would soar on to box-office glory. Midnight performed better than history remembers but nowhere near as well as the Lucas/Diznee franchise that refuses to die (to be fair, though, Sheldon fed his franchise jones by writing a sequel called Memories of Midnight in 1990). And today, it's largely forgotten when not being dismissed as trash. But as a portrait of the straitjackets placed on women by patriarchal capitalism, it stings like Valley of the Dolls*, if not Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995).

One might expect a slog given Jarrott's sterile filmography including the disastrous 1973 musical remake of Lost Horizon. Instead, its 165 minutes become increasingly agitated and desperate, connecting the fates of two women, Noelle (Marie-France Pisier) and Catherine (Susan Sarandon), to one good-for-little hunk, Larry (John Beck), who winds up ruining both their lives. Noelle uses her body to get ahead, Catherine her smarts but both wind up dogged by Larry who cannot keep his cock in one continent (moral: don't ghost!). Catherine's devolution into alcoholism is unconvincing even in terms of raw screen time (we barely see her with a drink), leading to the conclusion that the creators could not imagine a fate for women beyond being wed, dead, or sequestered in a nunnery. But maybe that's just the filmmakers' way of being honest. To imagine otherwise might open up the film to empty fantasy. Andrew Britton, one of the few (only?) critics to take the film seriously, comes to a similar conclusion at the end of a brilliant 1981 review (available in The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew Britton):

"The dramatization of the oppression of women, as is so often the case in even the most distinguished melodramas, builds in the impossibility of the struggle against it, so that patriarchal relations seem at once intolerable and mysteriously impermeable and women are compelled to assume the role of 'victim.' This clearly limits the film’s achievement, but it doesn’t outweigh or invalidate its substantial insights, or diminish one’s gratitude for it at a moment when Urban Cowboy (1980), Honeysuckle Rose (1980), and the rest are setting the tone for a systematic antifeminist reaction" (284).

Britton died of complications from AIDS in 1994. But given the above insights, I have full confidence that he would have recognized Showgirls for the masterpiece that it is.

Grade: A-minus

*the novel, not the dull 1967 film although Midnight may loosen me up to its charms on a rewatch