The Paradine Case (1947)

The Paradine Case is quite a less known film within the celebrated director Hitchcock's work, which is strange, for it comes close in excellence to the 1958 film Vertigo, which I regard as his finest film. The two films have much in common, too: a mysterious woman (not just a crude femme fatale), a clever, upright man abandoning his reason in his obsession with that woman, a smart, slightly cynical but romantic, not very feminine girl or woman (a foil to the mysterious woman, to so speak) who acts as a friend to the man but probably has an unrequited love too at her heart. Now these features are often found in some other Hitchcock films, too, not just these two: it's amazing how many little-differing variations of them Hitchcock has tried them out in different circumstances. In the case of The Paradine Case, a film set in Britain, Hitchcock also throws in a third woman: feminine but with no mystery, devoted and loyal, loving, mother like. She plays the man's wife in this case.

So the man is Anthony Keane (played by American actor Gregory Peck), the mysterious woman is Paradine (played by European import Valli), the not very feminine, smart woman is Judy (played by Joan Tetzel) and the loyal and loving woman is Gay (played by Ann Todd). The film on the face of it is a very simple, tragic story of unfulfilled passion and its tragic consequences; it also serves as a social commentary, though not much emphasis has been put on that aspect, and rightly so. But the film also serves as a brilliant exposition on the difference between love and obsession. Keane, engaged to defend Paradine who has been charged with murdering her husband, is a highly celebrated barrister: and yet, he neglects even the most fundamental tenets of his profession, when he is repeatedly browbeaten by Paradine because of his obsession for her to not even get to know the full details of what really happened. Usually, one would assume the lawyer even knows whether the client did it or didn't, but Keane, it seems, doesn't even want to know the truth, rebuffing any attempts indignantly to enlighten him. He believes in Paradine, but tremulously so: he doesn't want his belief to shatter, so shuts his ears off to any possible warnings. This is quite different from, let's bring in a very different climate and character, the Jatil Yadav character played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Raat Akeli Hai: Yadav keeps on going and does not hesitate to accuse Radha of indeed being the murderess but still doesn't abandon her. For Yadav may also be a little obsessed by Radha, but he is also in love with her, whereas Keane is obsessed by the elusiveness of Paradine, rather than in love with the woman. He doesn't want to know the past so well, for it could break the idol he has made of her in his world of imagination.

Another highly significant meaning of love is brought to the film by Keane's loving and loyal wife Gay herself: one of the exchanges between the couple is one of the finest exchanges one would have seen between a couple on screen, at least certainly in a British or American film. Gay, unlike her husband, does not want to escape from reality or shut herself to it: she wants to take it on, for love cannot stand upon illusions and faked reality. She has the intelligence and courage to know and feel it. And it is Gay's character which indeed elevates the film above scores of films playing on the same theme: after all, there have been a lot of films with this very same story but focusing just on the man and his object of obsession, with either no wife or a silently suffering wife. Gay is neither non-existent nor a silently suffering, weeping one. To complete this portmanteau of men-women relationships, there is also the quite-underdeveloped (and understandably so) relationship of the womaniser, lecherous judge Horfield (played superbly by Charles Laughton) and Lady Horfield (also played brilliantly by Ethel Barrymore, though her role is very brief). And this another variety of a relationship doesn't detract or subtract from the film's main story: it adds to it and doesn't seem an add-on, unlike, to take another example of a recent Indian film, the clumsy attempts of Thappad. And then there is Judy: energetic, highly intelligent, not very feminine in habits or appearance and probably therefore often seen as a pal rather than a desirable woman by men. In Vertigo, there's Midge, more apparently in love with Scottie; in here, Judy doesn't have that possibility as Keane is already married happily, but she does allow herself the imagination to think so, if only to teach a lesson to the likes of Keane.

And finally, besides the brilliant character parts of the film, what really makes the film a great little gem is its marvellous editing and cinematography. In a nutshell, brilliant direction from Hitchcock. What a way to show Latour (played by Louis Jourdan) the first time! Or can it even be called showing? Neither a jealous Keane, nor the smug trap driver and nor the curious viewer will ever be sure of who this man is. The lecherous gaze of Judge Horfield on Gay's nakedness: the camera also looks covetedly. The respective first entries of Paradine and Latour the first time in the court room: the world burning its judging looks onto Paradine, while Paradine, even without daring to turn her face, burning to look at Latour with every fibre of her consciousness. And the portrait of Paradine following Keane, unable to leave him at rest: the man's obsession evident. All this executed by a cinematographer who did what he was asked to, the director who had the vision to think of this and the editor who cut out the unneeded where needed.

A fine film that deserves to be known more and better.

Plemya

It is said that Eugène Ionesco felt himself lifted off the ground one fine summer day as a child: when he came back from that ethereal feeling, he realized the depravity of the world around him. This is what the extraordinary commentary on the human condition Plemya (also called as The Tribe) is all about: a sharp look at human bestiality. The film is about the absence of Hope: and of what it makes men of. When Hope is limited to pillage calls as for scavengers; when Hope can find for itself no expression but having a good fuck with one particular girl; and when that minuscule expression is also crushed, the new horizon opens black like a day, yawning like the cruelties now living in your soul, unforgiving like the gods you reject.

This new horizon is the camera. Not of the biologist who is examining human species under the microsope. Not of the film director who is interested in aesthetics. Not of the storyteller who wants to say, "And then, one fine day ...". For there is no fine day in this tale of the eternally dumb: the modern humans. The camera is of the atman: untouched directly by good and bad alike, not even defining what is good and bad, not laughing with the comic and not tearing up with the tragic. It is the gaze which we lose, which we are not one with, which is neither interested nor uninterested. It is the vision that gazes, not observes; that sees, not looks. It tells stories of mirages, just like Ionesco did in The Killer: mirages that are universal, the maya, that can come in the shape of a pimp knocking at your truck door, or a wad of cash in a railway coupé, or a cheap T-shirt mentioning L'Italia. But this camera is not far away, as in Lean's Lawrence of Arabia: no, there is no near, no far here. This camera is mid-distance: it is just playing. There is no judgement of the near, and no contempt of the far; there is no shock of the near, and no intellectualization of the far; there is no sympathy of the near, and no charity of the far; there is no spoken word of the near, and no silence of the far. But with this beautiful camera to which a feature-length film plays out like a documentary without ever being one, accompanied by not a single dialogue or commentary or caption, the film invites you into the heart of human darkness, especially as common in the West and fast-modernizing parts of the East. The film is a story of civilisation: of grand projects like European Union and complicated manmade systems in place (whether they be schools or they be codes of bullying), but wherein man finds the ennui to return to his primitive state: the beast.

Dekalog, piec (TV)

The beauty of Kieślowski's films is that they are not humanist: they are human. The Dekalog series travels wide and far in its range of characters and lives, in its stories, so much that it is difficult to believe that one man can produce so much work of the highest quality, with the same themes echoing through such diverse multitude of humanity. This short film of less than one hour, the fifth part of the series, is at par with Victor Hugo's works in their human understanding and with Dostoyevsky's works in their plumbing to depths unexplored before. Can there be a higher praise for any creation than being said to carry both Hugo and Dostoyevsky in its womb?

This almost twenty-five-year-old film carries particular significance in today's society, where people often demand death penalty for those who commit rape or other crimes condemned by the system, or where there are those who are simply intellectually opposed to capital punishment, and yet have never bothered to think themselves as responsible when a crime has happened. And yet, isn't it they who are responsible? And yet, they have the temerity to judge, condemn and murder? The lawyer feels guilty because he was in the cafeteria when the condemned was toying with the rope, tortured by guilt, hate and the need of being loved and accepted.

We seek acceptance through conforming or rebellion, through declaring love or declaring hate, through creating or destroying. All expression, all communication is nothing but an attempt to seek acceptance, to seek respect, to seek a place. We seek it in people's hearts, in their memories, in their words, in their deeds. Sometimes, when we are too tired of seeking it there, we seek it even in a system. And when the system fails us, we hate not only the system but all those who comprise it. A film that raises questions about the moral tenets that society holds and keeps howling about, and raises doubts among each one of us about our duties, what we are doing, and if it is enough: it is not just life but it is the human spirit first of all that "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

City Lights (2014)

In a way, the film City Lights is all about what not to do: fine performances, especially from the lead actor Rajkummar Rao, beautiful music, and a story made for a gritty thriller all fail to uplift the film to being a classic, which the film could easily have been with a bit more reflection, bit more getting lost in the world of no-hopefuls. And yet, the film remains a beautiful etching on the Indian cinematic canvas, and the effort to make it an honest one: most importantly, the film rises above being a crime drama and becomes a beautiful film about marriage and love, a typical story from the heart of India. For in India, we have arranged marriages and we are fiercely loving, loyal and understanding of our other half: self-sacrifices are commonplace and more often than not, love reigns supreme. It is something foreign to the "my liberty"-searching Western mind-set (and newer generations of Indians), but Rao and Patralekha (playing his wife) remind one of what a typical Indian couple are: their love, their fleeting joys and omnipresent lurking dangers, their struggles for a better material life, their ability to sacrifice everything for their love, their honour, their children.

Where the film does suffer is a lack of coherent vision about what the film wants to be. Manav Kaul, playing Rao's mentor and colleague Vishnu, is given too much screen time: unfortunately, the film is not about crime and gangs, nor about how to carry out a heist. The film is about a little family of three, and Kaul's unneeded, constant presence in the film eats into the soul of the film. In fact, to put it bluntly, the film could have been twenty minutes shorter, and with a differently shot climax. Bad editing is a feature of the film elsewhere: there was no need of some of the characters; the background music is unable to be weaved in with the story by the director though the music is wonderful; small things like unnecessary references, both visually and aurally, to lights of a city could have been avoided (especially when abruptly introduced like at the intermission if you watch this one in an Indian theatre); and the grand finale could have been more high-octane, much more thrilling. Right now, there's nothing grand about it. The film is essentially a love story, a story of survival: not just a crime drama. The film fails to realize this; however, the one place where some thrills were badly needed is where the film fails to provide them.

However, for someone who's not lived in a materially poor society, the film may certainly be a gem to watch. The performances are marvellous, complete with Rajasthani accents. The film is also well shot, and some of the meandering shots are brilliant: I particularly remember one of the shots at the beginning of the film of dim, yellow light reflecting on the steel utensils typical to any Indian home. I think I will remember that shot for a long time into my life: in that shot is hidden the song "Muskuraane ke vajah tum ho" ("You are the reason for smiling"). If only the filmmaker could have drawn out that connection!

À tout de suite (2004)

The much-underrated film À tout de suite (int’l title: Right Now) came as a major surprise to me: luminous and intense throughout, the film is a completely different take on the often-shot theme of bank robbery in French cinema. The film is rather all about the young girl who’s fallen hopelessly, and for ever, in life-changing love with a sensitive bank robber. It’s completely her story, that of her life, her emotions, her releases, her attempts to keep living: and the robbery and even her love are in the backdrop or serve only as props to that. Needless to say, the actor playing such a role needs to be superb and come across as vulnerable, exposable - beautiful Isild Le Besco as Lili gives one of the finest performances of French cinema.

I saw the original version in which Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” is used: I’ve heard that there is another version with some other music. “Shine on You” punctuates the film brilliantly (it’s another matter that the same music serving to bolster the story’s pathos kept me reminded throughout of Buongiorno, Notte). The decision to shoot the film in black & white serves also well the film: Le Besco seems more beautiful than she may have looked otherwise, the nude scenes seem artistic and voluptuous instead of crude as often the case is otherwise, and the film gets the grainy look of a life lived among raw emotions, not some color canvas expertly prepared for delicious consumption.

The best praise that I can think of the film is that it can give Carax’s Boy Meets Girl a stiff competition and worthy company.

The Third Man

A film from that golden era of English films, whether coming from Hollywood or Britain, the 1940s, when films dared to be grey, realistic and yet fogged in a halo of street lamps, Carol Reed's The Third Man boldly tries things which few films have done throughout the history of cinema, until today. A music that grows on your nerves rather than forming a complementary to the plot; a key man of the plot being introduced when you had almost forgotten of him (and what an introduction!); and some never-to-be forgotten dialogues that give the film a human relevance much beyond what its film noir look would have done so: these are things that are hardly done nowadays, when directors claim to be "experimental," let alone back then in that era when women often had nothing to do except being the love interest. Alida Valli also doesn't have to do more than that, but in walking off from the blundering positive protagonist, Joseph Cotten, she makes a statement to rival that made by Maj-Britt Nilsson in the Swedish film Sommarlek, interestingly from the same period: the statement that a nearly similar film, at least as far as the atmospherics are concerned, George Cukor's Gaslight, failed to make, in spite of a remarkable performance by the talent of Ingrid Bergman.

Apart from the music, the film's strengths lie in its unconventional cinematography but conventional editing, and actors very well suited to their parts except Welles to a large extent and Valli to a certain extent. However, since Welles' role is primarily that of bringing a shock value at points in the film, it does not matter that much; it is the ensemble of the self-pitying but still-searching Joseph Cotten and the very internationally diversified world around him in the post-War Vienna that form the crux of the cast and the strength of the film. Where crisp cinematography, Valli's eyes, and Cotten's performance are already ruling the roost, it's a feat to even be noticeable: Austrian actress Hedwig Bleibtreu rather manages to illuminate the whole film, in the matter of hardly minutes, with that minor role of the landlady of Valli she has. Not only that, but in the context of the post-Welles film, she - more than any gangrened patients in the hospital, who should've been shown by the camera (this is one major flaw of the film; I don't know if it was due to any production code issues or merely that fine detail of avoiding hurting people's sensibilities) - it is she who represents one of those obscure "dots," which hardly matter in the scheme of things. While Raskolnikov's old lady might have been portrayed as mean and not in a flattering way, here is another such obscure dot, waiting to be exterminated: but this time this dot is brimful with life. Life not in the sense of doing great things, rushing from one city to another, or unbounded laughter or sex; but life in that ultimate sense of living, that love for living which permeates so many of us, which only gives meaning to everything we do.

A lot has been said of that brave shot at the end of the film, and even after having watched hundreds and hundreds of films, I, too, find it a really brave shot: I hadn't expected it at all. Only Lean's entry for Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia rivals it, but I would say even that wasn't as brave a shot as this one is: to set such a shot at the climax of the film, with around 2 mins of screen time without wavering from that simple walk that rejects the pretender, could not just be termed brave, but could have been called visionary, had the later filmmakers learnt anything.

Talking of other things, Trevor Howard gives a fine performance, as does the Austrian actor Ernst Deutsch in a vampirish-looking role. The accent of Bernard Lee makes a delightful addition to the film. And the end of Welles is probably even more remarkable than the entry of Welles in the film: clutching and grasping. For? Money? Or this time, life? Salvation? Or trying to escape from being a once-upon dot?

Kaminey

A film throbbing with Mumbai life, Bombay underbelly, and taking potshots at various social and political stunts that pull wool over people's eyes, Kaminey's biggest strength is its pulsating theme music that rivets the viewer to a weak storyline hovering around two twin brothers getting in and out of each other's shoes, each other's truths. One imagines the world in pristine colors but is too diffident to change it; the other is brash but knows that all in this world are kaminey; nothing rises above money. And yet both win their own battles and bury the ghosts of past, as the numerous fringe characters that dot a metropolis, especially Bombay, are brought to life superbly by a cast brilliantly picked by Vishal Bhardwaj. Not a very experienced cast outside of the lead trio of two Shahid Kapoors (playing Charlie and Guddu, the brothers) and Priyanka Chopra, in what is easily the best performance for me of both of them ever.

I don't think how without the music the film would have fared, since in the end it is just more and more an increasing number of disparate parties behind a cocaine package, interspersed with the sentimental stuff about twin brothers who don't see eye to eye now. What at least the film does is pack a punch, and powerfully enough, at those politicians who play the caste and religion cards, and expose them ruthlessly. It doesn't even spare those so-called nation's consciousness wakers with a penchant for changing city names to anything they think "looks" rustic or not of a British age. It also shows starkly how the world outside of dreamed ideals exists: a world where nothing counts but money, and more money, where the only thing that overrules it in the final loss of the dice is survival. Survival so that you can get one more chance of turning the tables and wresting back the initiative; and play the dangerous game again. Since who's going to win without taking the shortcuts?

The film only hints at the massive diamonds/drugs/arms nexus which funds wars in African countries like Angola and Sierra Leone; and it would have been better if the film had tried to be a complete thriller in itself, focussing on this shady international trade that finances terrorists and guerillas the world over, rather than setting up a story over why and how the two brothers parted ways somewhere in the past. The viewer needs better understanding of what's happening, not something very explicable (two brothers on different ways). The way it tries to compensate is by use of multiple languages: dominantly in Hindi, the film also uses quite a lot of Marathi and Bengali, along with smatters of English and Portuguese, to give it the mosaicy feel it required.

The actors are impressive, the technical aspects are slick, and of course the music, from the ever-present Go Charlie Go theme to the soft title song sung by Vishal himself, is simply great. Composed by Vishal and written by Gulzar, the songs had to be anyway great. But though another feather in his cap, this was not the best effort by Vishal, and even though he has done almost everything right.

Au Coeur du Mensonge

For those used to slick American fare, where the reasons are spicier and the drama is more vivid than life itself, Au Coeur du Mensonge (1999; US title: The Color of Lies) is not the film. The usual French cinema's habit of concentrating solely on human emotions and behavior is taken to the extreme in this touching film, on outside just a thriller mystery, but on inside anything but that, rather the story of deeply intertwined love of a couple for each other, played by Jacques Gamblin and Sandrine Bonnaire.

Bonnaire had earlier impressed me with her suppressed performance in the 1998 Jacques Rivette film Secret Défense; however this time she has little to do except looking the part. It's the lesser known Gamblin however who gives the film all its pain: playing the part of a tormented lover, a fine painter, a man who is intelligent and too sensitive, who knows what he can give to her and yet is acutely conscious of his physical shortcomings. The film is advertised to be dealing with the mystery of a minor's rape and thus a whodunnit; rather it is sharply focused upon the Bonnaire-Gamblin couple and betrayal in relationship. True love can make the other's crime its own, which is what the film so beautifully brings out. And even the guilt.

Diva

Sophisticated brilliance: this was enough to turn the world of French and world cinema upside down, and catapult France from the New Wave to the Cinema of Look. Jean-Jacques Beineix's debut feature, Diva, started it all: cinema du look; and stories with preposterous settings, uncanny twists, unimagined camera angles, and unexplained monstrosities in the storyline came into being. But yes, all forgiven: once you have Beineix's Diva or Luc Besson's Nikita.

The film is not at all shallow in spite of being nothing more than a crime noir with not too great a story and no punches hidden in the screenplay. The cast, the camera work, and the director's vision and energy take you by storm before you realize anything else. The film is an interesting study on solitude, what I call the "fetish of personal", and how much right does the world have to infringe upon it, and how much right are we to deny that. How much of our space is ours? The film plot itself hinges upon two recordings: one of a singer's voice, who believes her voice, her emotions, her singing would be reified if recorded and hence is against it; the other which could incriminate and expose a respectable man who is running a ring of prostitution and drugs. A postman (Frédéric Andréi), a medium of people's voices and nothing more, is the hero who must take care of both these recordings. Quintessentially, the film remains the slow French film, in spite of being a crime thriller. So that even the long double chase sequence of Andréi, shot so stunningly by Phillipe Rousselot, remains a visual treat of slow motion; and the cast of Richard Bohringer and Jacques Fabbri itself gives some extra gravity to a film already reeling with some kind of dazed energy.

The visual spacing, the sets, lighting and colors, and the strange sort of unexplained knick-knacks of the story as well as the decor further add up to the message of privacy that should be violated. No one knows what is the exact relationship between Bohringer and 14-year-old Alba (played remarkably well by Thuy An Luu), nor what exactly Bohringer does: equally abstruse are the waves that balance in his large studio-cum-residence, nude photos of Alba hanging all round, and a bathtub right in the centre of the vast, vast dark expanse. And almost completely opposite, garish, and equally over-the-top is the garage where Andréi himself lives: not the least the means of access to it, which plays an important part in the climax. Beineix believes in going over the edge, and this is what he has done right in his debut feature: and we enjoy going jusqu’au bout with him. Life is a little more than simple black and white, simple and rigid ethics, a simple question of what’s right and wrong, a simple seen and unseen: which is why we have actions occurring in people’s sunglasses, we have a bright shining red helmet almost through the film, we have people’s shadows and silhouettes framed against artificial lights equally well as the sun, and we have a lighthouse coming in with equal ease as the Champs-Élysées. À voir absolument.