Color Me Kubrick and the Cult of Malkovich

After more than 25 years in the movie business, John Malkovich has carved out a unique niche for himself, a cinematic netherworld equal parts post-modernism and cult of personality.

His charisma has always been apparent, whether adding a dash of suave cruelty to Dangerous Liasons (1988) or mercurial menace to In the Line of Fire (1993). But it has been his more recent, more adventurous work in smaller, independent films that has firmly established his reputation as something of a maverick.

Malkovich plays the lead role in Color Me Kubrick, a small, quirky film based on true events that opens this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley. He plays Peter Conway, a con man who passed himself off for months as legendary film director Stanley Kubrick, swindling a string of star-struck victims along the way. He took money from them, slept with them, promised them roles in his films, even offered them financial backing for their own endeavors.

Director Brian Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin were there as the real-life drama unfolded, the former as Kubrick’s assistant director, the latter as his personal assistant. Frewin in fact was responsible for screening the calls that started coming in from irate strangers who would have Kubrick’s head for having fleeced them in the days and weeks previous, in ramshackle bars and nightclubs and taxicabs all over London.

There are many paths that could be taken in adapting such material for the screen. The story could easily lend itself to a psychological drama about a man who seeks escape from his dreary existence by adopting the identity of a famous recluse; or a noirish melodrama of a con artist operating in seedy bars, with plenty of narrow escapes and shady intrigue; or a journalistic mystery perhaps, with reporters unraveling the sordid tale of a smooth-talking seducer taking money and favors from down-and-out would-be stars all over London.

Instead the filmmakers have opted for another approach, one that contains elements of all of the above while playing up the absurdist aspects of the story in the creation of a film that poses more questions than it answers. They have chosen to emphasize the humor and depravity of Conway’s ruse without attempting to divine the motivations behind the charade, electing to make a piece of light entertainment rather than a probing drama. They’ve taken more than a few liberties with the tale, embellishing here and there and working with Malkovich in fashioning the already eccentric Conway into a character even more flamboyant and inscrutable.

The film doesn’t present Conway as a master con artist; he’s clumsy, he gets caught now and then, and when he does escape it’s more often the result of luck rather than cunning. In fact, the character, like the real-life man, doesn’t even know much about Kubrick or his films and doesn’t bother to do much research. Instead he relies on instinct, improvising the character anew with each new situation. An interesting study could have been built upon the various incarnations of Kubrick that Conway creates: For some victims, he portrays the director as a suave sophisticate, sometimes with a British accent, sometimes with Malkovich’s own jaded purr; for others he presents Kubrick as a brash New Yorker, or an arrogant Las Vegas lounge lizard; for still others, a mild-mannered upper-crust American, weary of recognition and thus traveling under an assumed name. On a whim he decides which incarnation best suits his victim and then proceeds to soften him up, flattering him with the attention of one of the world’s best-known but least-visible film directors.

The movie is episodic and slightly discursive, never dull but often rambling. Cook and Frewin never quite manage to find the thread which could pull the whole thing together. Instead the film merely revels in Conway’s deceptions, true and otherwise, taking pleasure in the eccentricity of the man and his brazen scams and infusing them with wry comic touches. For instance, iconic musical themes from classic Kubrick films appear throughout, often providing ironic counterpoint to the action. A particularly effective example shows Conway, after a night of Kubrick-fueled deception and debauchery, stumbling downstairs from his low-rent hovel, crossing the street past the “Bleu Danube” adult shop, and tossing his dirty clothes into an open machine at the laundromat—all choreographed to the delicate strains of Johann Strauss’ On the Beautiful Blue Danube, the piece used to such great effect in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The inspired decision to cast Malkovich is the film’s saving grace, adding a whole new dimension to the proceedings. Since Being John Malkovich (1999), the actor’s image—eccentric, bemused, arrogant, slightly bored but always enigmatic and vaguely dangerous—has in a way become the subject of many of his films. Thus Cook and Frewin are able to employ the actor’s self-relexive persona as a hook on which to hang the film’s increasingly surreal episodes, bringing layers of complexity to an already strange tale. For it isn’t merely Malkovich playing Conway, but rather it is Malkovich playing “John Malkovich” playing Peter Conway playing Stanley Kubrick. And the kaleidoscopic tone becomes even more mind boggling in a scene where Malkovich-as-Malkovich-as-Conway-as-Kubrick regales dinner companions with tales of conflicts with studio management over the casting of John Malkovich in the lead for his next film.

Color Me Kubrick could have benefited from a more direct narrative, a more conventional through-line to tie together its absurdist humor and flights of eccentric fancy. Instead it relies on the cult of Malkovich, showcasing the actor’s strange mystique. It may not be a great film, but if you count yourself among the cult, it’s quite a ride.

Color Me Kubrick (2007). Directed by Brian Cook. Written by Anthony Frewin. Starring John Malkovich. 89 minutes. Not rated. 

Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man

When, in her final column, Molly Ivins called for the people to get out in the streets, bang pots and pans and raise hell, lefties all over the country responded with tributes and clarion calls to heed her message. Meanwhile, for more than six years, many of these same self-described liberals have excoriated the most accomplished and tenacious hell-raiser of them all, Public Pot-and-Pan-Banger Number One, Ralph Nader.

An Unreasonable Man, a new documentary opening this weekend at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley, examines the career of the controversial consumer advocate-turned-presidential candidate, giving much needed context and perspective to a lifetime of public service.

The film argues that it has almost become axiomatic, despite much evidence to the contrary, that Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election, his 19,000 votes in Florida spanning the 537-vote differential between Gore and Bush many times over. The inconvenient truth of the matter, however, is that there were 10 third-party candidates on the Florida ballot and every one of them received more than 537 votes. And nationwide, more than 10 million registered Democrats forsook Gore in favor of Bush. Meanwhile Nader, once a left-wing hero, became a pariah almost overnight, trashed by progressives for defending the very same values and truths for which they claimed to stand. Finally, Democrats could speak with one voice.

An Unreasonable Man documents the efforts, from both the right and the left, to undermine Nader and his causes, from General Motors’ blundering attempts to smear him in the 1960s as well as the more concerted and successful maneuvers by the Republican and Democratic parties to keep him from even attending, much less participating in, the presidential debates. For the most part it’s a simple and straightforward film, presenting the views of Nader’s supporters as well as his opponents, including many who once counted themselves among the former but have since joined the latter. But, even though directors Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan have ostensibly attempted to present a balanced portrait of Nader’s career with the intent of letting the viewer make his own evaluations of the man and his record, at times they tip their hand, revealing their own sympathetic views. For instance, towards the end of the film, as Nader, in an interview, gives voice to the principles that drive him, the directors find it impossible to resist the urge to back his words with a soaring, patriotic score.

But for the most part the filmmakers are able to stay in the background and simply let their subjects do the talking. And they do plenty. Journalist Eric Alterman says it’s time Nader left the country; he’s done enough damage here. Phil Donahue takes issue with those who criticized Nader for claiming in 2000 that there wasn’t a dime’s bit of difference between the two political parties; the Democrats then spent the next six years proving him right, Donahue says, caving in to the Bush administration’s every whim. Some former Nader’s Raiders say their erstwhile leader has lost his way; others consider the man an American hero.

Among the more humorous moments are the appearances of Michael Moore, a man who has made a name for himself with films in which he juxtaposes bits of footage to reveal the hypocrisy of those he targets. Here the tables are turned as we see Moore campaigning for Nader in 2000, asking his audience “If you don’t vote your conscience now, when will you start?”, then spinning 180 degrees around by 2004 to chastise those who took his advice, equating a vote for Nader as a transitory moment of pleasure that can only lead to a lifetime of pain.

One of the more fascinating dynamics that have arisen from Nader’s clash with his one-time loyalists is the pressure that has been brought to bear on the many public interest organizations he has founded. Some of these groups have found it more difficult to do their work; fundraising and outreach efforts have suffered due to the diminished reputation of their figurehead, who, in many cases, is no longer even involved with these groups. It’s ironic that former President Jimmy Carter should count himself among Nader’s critics, as a similar effect was repeated recently with the publication of Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Just as some of Nader’s colleagues feel their work has been hindered by his political campaigns, the backlash against Carter’s book led to the resignation of several Carter Center staffers who felt Carter’s decision to speak his mind on the Israel-Palestine conflict undermined the efforts of the center to continue its role as a mediator and non-partisan monitor of elections in the Middle East.

It’s an interesting question: Should one pursue one’s long-term goals even when that strategy jeopardizes one’s own short-term tactics? Both men are acting on the principle that truth always wins out, no matter the immediate consequences, and that ultimately history will rule in their favor. And both seem secure in the knowledge that their legacies, far from being tarnished by these actions, will one day be defined by them.

An Unreasonable Man (2007). Directed by Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan. 122 minutes. Not rated. 

Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves

Some films carry with them the burden of their own achievements, their reputations so ingrained in the public consciousness that often those who have never seem them convince themselves they have. And when they finally do see those films the expectations can be almost insurmountable, rendering the experience underwhelming. Try explaining to the uninitiated the allure of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca, or the innovation and genius of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. For many younger viewers these films are merely overhyped relics from a pitiful, technologically challenged era.

Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) is one of those films. Those seeing it for the first time, stripped of its historical and political context, may be slightly baffled, and not by its slice-of-life documentary approach, its focus on the everyday lives of common people and ultimate lack of closure. Instead, the problem stems from the fact that these techniques have become commonplace and too often employed in lesser films that only aspire to the humanity and depth of a film like Bicycle Thieves, one of the classics of Italy’s vaunted neo-realist movement.

Criterion has released the film in a new DVD edition that features a pristine transfer as well as extra features that help locate this enduring masterpiece in the cinematic pantheon.

The plot is simple: In Rome, during the aftermath of World War II, when out-of-work men roam the city like dogs, Antonio Ricci gets hired to put up posters around the city. The only requirement is that he own a bicycle. Things are looking up for him and his family for about a day or so, until his bicycle is stolen. The rest of the film largely consists of Antonio and his young son desperately scouring the city for the stolen bike.

De Sica did not embrace the neo-realist label, though this and several other of his works have come to define it. The movement began as a reaction to the rather staid environment in Italian filmmaking at the time. It was a complacent industry, modeled to an extant after the American film industry, manufacturing light escapist fantasy for the masses. The Italian film industry had been built up in the years before World War II by Mussolini as a method of shoring up the fascist narrative, but the machinery he put in place would, once the war was over, serve as a powerful means of documenting the tragic effects of that narrative.

The neo-realists’ idea was to take this unique medium and turn its gaze on the real world, to eschew manufactured sets, tidy plotlines, ornate photography and camera movements and instead simply confront everyday life. The conceit even extended to the casting, as it did in Bicycle Thieves, with De Sica hiring non-professional actors for the lead roles.

Simple touches are sprinkled throughout the film, details which may not seem especially subtle today but certainly were by the standards of most Hollywood fare of the time: The posters Antonio must plaster along the backalleys of Rome feature glamorous images of Rita Hayworth in luxuriant repose, in stark contrast to the run-down environs and egos of the main characters; and when Antonio lifts his wife to a window to peer into the headquarters of his new employer and admire the building’s relative opulence, the window is abruptly closed from within. Thus the message is clearly and effectively conveyed that the finer things in life are not to be had by these down-and-out folks, though optimism and ambition still glitter in their eyes.

Bicycle Thieves presents a moving and compassionate portrait of the working class struggling in the face of deprivation and poverty, and though the film’s reputation may precede it, at times to the point of distraction, the film’s techniques are ultimately as poignant and as timeless as its content.

Bicycle Thieves (1948). Directed by Vittorio De Sica. 89 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles. Criterion Collection. $39.95. www.criterion.com. 

Killing Spree's Aftermath Takes a Toll in Zodiac

Few crime stories have captured the public imagination like the Zodiac murders that terrorized the Bay Area in the late '60s and early '70s. The case has become part of local folklore, transforming the mysterious killer who targeted couples in remote lovers’ lanes and threatened to bomb school buses into the de facto bogeyman for a generation of Bay Area children who came of age in the following decade.

Zodiac, David Fincher’s new film based on the best-selling books by former San Francisco Chronicle editorial cartoonist Robert Graysmith, is the first of the story’s many cinematic adaptations to stay true to the facts. Previous films took liberties with the tale, embellishing, altering and simplifying the details for dramatic effect. Thus far only Fincher has had the clarity of mind to focus on the real drama of the story, which is not the depravity of the murders or the killer’s twisted mind, but the investigation itself and the toll it took on the men involved. 

In adapting Graysmith’s work, Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt have focused on the strengths that constitute the enduring value of the books: that they have served as much-needed compendiums of the facts and theories which had hitherto been far flung among competing agencies in the various jurisdictions where the killer struck.

The film starts with the killer's second attack, after which he sent his first letter and cipher to the press, establishing for the first time in the public consciousness the disquieting reality that a serial killer was at work in the Bay Area. And, with the exceptions of three more scenes depicting later attacks, the film primarily consists of conversations between reporters, editors, detectives and suspects. As such, Zodiac slips into something of a pattern, one familiar from television’s ubiquitous talking head- and dateline-laden forensic dramas. Though the film is well crafted, it still lapses at times into the familiar cliches of the police procedural genre: tense discussions between a skeptical detective and an excited journalist, the latter eager to condense his insights into the “just two minutes” the former has allotted for the meeting; the late-night talks in restaurants featuring notes scrawled on napkins, with utensils positioned as makeshift maps to illustrate pet theories; and why is it that the men in these dramas are so often ravenous, taking huge bites of artery-clogging foods and chewing with their mouths open? Aren’t there any less hackneyed shorthand methods for portraying the driven, the dedicated and the self-destructive?

The actors are forced to bring their characters alive within the limited confines of the procedural genre, and only Mark Ruffalo succeeds fully. Robert Downey Jr. is charismatic and by most accounts effective in channeling the wit and energy of Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, yet he has little time to do so and limited material with which to do it, resulting in a performance that comes across as too cynical, too sarcastic, too one-dimensionally clown-like to ring true. Jake Gyllenhaal too is limited by the material, yet in his case ample screen time actually works against the performance, giving us scene after scene of him nervously jumping about like an agitated schoolboy. We are not convinced we’re witnessing a case of obsession but are instead acutely aware that we are watching an actor employ the standard theatrical devices for conveying that obsession. Again, the details of the performance may be authentic, but sometimes absolute veracity just doesn’t translate well on screen.

But Ruffalo, as San Francisco Police Inspector Dave Toschi, really hits the mark. Toschi benefited and suffered at the hands of Hollywood; Bullitt (1968) made him something of a legend, with Steve McQueen taking many details, including his unique holster, from Toschi, while Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry (1971) maddened Toschi as the hero’s vigilante-like approach to the “Scorpio” killer only helped to increase public frustration with Toschi and the real-life manhunt that consumed the Bay Area. Here Toschi was tracking a killer who was obsessed and inspired by movies and only now have the movies finally given Toschi his due in the form of Ruffalo’s sympathetic portrayal. Ruffalo’s Toschi is brave, bright, articulate and passionate, but at the same time flawed, tormented and ultimately all too human. 

The most significant flaw of the film is its focus on Graysmith, a character who, though integral to the tale, is hardly the most compelling figure in the story. Really the main character should have been Toschi, with a late digression toward Graysmith once the official investigation had wound down, but later returning again to Toschi to show the effect Graysmith’s discoveries had on the retired inspector as new facts, theories and circumstantial evidence pointed time and again to Arthur Leigh Allen, Toschi’s favorite suspect all along. If the premise of the film, according to its publicity, is that that the men who waged the investigation and were in the end undone by it should be tallied among the killer’s victims, why is the dramatic thrust skewed toward the only character who managed to significantly benefit from the case in the form of best-selling books and Hollywood movie deals? 

For the most part, Fincher’s direction is strong enough to overcome these obstacles, managing to create a film that is stylish without being showy. He stages the murder scenes simply and for the most part accurately, and keeps the investigation scenes moving despite the static nature of the format. One shot adds a chilling but subtle flourish to the murder of San Francisco Yellow Cab driver Paul Stine: The scene opens with an overhead shot of the cab as it winds its way through the streets of the city, the camera shifting with each turn as though locked in place with the car, suggesting the care with which the killer choreographed and mapped the encounter, leading Stine on a slow death march from the theater district to the Presidio Heights neighborhood where he would be shot.

Zodiac may be the definitive celluloid incarnation of the case, one that is unlikely to be bettered, but still it encounters the same dilemma that stymied the creators of last year’s low-budget version, The Zodiac: There’s just no way to effectively conclude the film, for there is no definite conclusion to the real-life story. Once again, Fincher turns to the Graysmith character with a scene in which Gyllenhaal finally gets to look the killer in the eye. But whatever emotional impact the scene might have achieved is undermined by the fact that we, the audience, have already looked into these eyes in an earlier scene. Again, a better conclusion might have been wrung from the fates of Toschi or Avery. 

Instead the anti-climactic encounter is followed simply by the standard coda in which we read what later became of each of the characters. It is a strong film, at times even a powerful film, and its strength lies in its adherence to facts. However, veracity doesn’t necessarily make for great art. Reality is rarely obliging in that way. 

Zodiac (2007). Directed by David Fincher. Written by James Vanderbilt. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards. Rated R. 160 minutes. 

'Talk Cinema' Gives Cinephiles a Place to Meet

Every few weeks a group of about 60 film lovers gather at 9:30 on a Sunday morning in the lobby of the Albany Twin on Solano Avenue, to sip hot beverages while waiting in anticipation for the day’s mystery movie. It’s a small room and it fills up quickly with people and chatter and the aromas of coffee and tea and bagels. Enthusiastic as the crowd may be, they’re in no hurry to enter the theater; it’s a Sunday morning, after all, and much too early to move at anything but a leisurely pace. So by the time 10 a.m. rolls around they almost have to be cajoled and herded into the theater. 

The group is called Talk Cinema, a movie club with screenings and discussions led by UC Berkeley film lecturer Marilyn Fabe. The series takes place roughly once a month, with Fabe hosting a preview of an as-yet-unreleased film. Once Fabe manages to persuade the gathered throng that it’s time to get started, and after they have scattered throughout the auditorium to their preferred seats, she lets them in on the secret, finally revealing the name of the film they are about to see along with some background information on the production. 

After the closing credits roll and the lights come up, everyone takes a quick break and then gathers toward the front of the theater for a recap of the previous meeting’s film in the form of a reading of selected audience comment cards. Then they’ll delve headlong into what often becomes a wide-ranging discussion on the vices and virtues of the current film.

Arriving for the Nov. 12 screening of The Painted Veil, it seemed as though I may have arrived a couple of weeks too late. The previous screening, on Oct. 29, had been Borat, the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy that would soon generate rave reviews along with a great deal of controversy. The film had sparked a particularly lively discussion with the Talk Cinema group. The Painted Veil, by contrast, didn’t seem to hold as much promise; a period piece about love and marriage in the time of cholera, on the surface, just didn’t seem capable of sparking as much debate as a guerilla comedy about a bigoted journalist from Kazakhstan traversing the United States in search of Pamela Anderson. 

But once the group settled back into their seats an enlightening discussion ensued. 

Reaction to the film was mixed. Some loved it and some hated it, with the rest of us landing at various points between. The result was a discussion that brought both the film’s virtues and failures to light, granting a better appreciation and understanding if not a better liking for the picture. 

Talk Cinema members bring a wide range of knowledge and interest to these discussions. One man was very knowledgeable on Chinese history and provided a brief summary of the circumstances surrounding the cholera epidemic that provides the movie’s backdrop; several other participants shared their intimate knowledge of the works of W. Somerset Maugham, from whose novel the film is adapted; another member shared insights from his background in anthropology, casting doubt on the Chinese burial practices depicted in the film; and another woman offered a thoughtful comparison between the new film and the 1934 version starring Greta Garbo. 

“That’s what I’m trading on,” says Fabe, “all the wonderful, knowledgeable people of Berkeley with their diverse areas of expertise. It’s wonderful to do this sort of thing in a place like this.”

Which is not to say this is a stuffy intellectual group; far from it. These are movie lovers first and foremost. Participants readily admitted their biases, some confessing to an intense dislike for Maugham, others a strong affection. Some were quite taken with the romance of the film, others not so much. Some found the transformation of Naomi Watts’ character compelling while others found it unconvincing. And while some found the background tale of politics and imperialism to be a complex and fascinating milieu, others thought the use of geopolitical struggles as a metaphor for a couple’s evolving relationship a trite device at best.

Yet all opinions were respected and taken seriously. This is not an academic environment; it is more like a book club. 

“People are hungry for this kind of interaction,” says Fabe. “So many people come up to me and say ‘You know, I’ll go out to see a movie with my friends and afterwards they won’t have a thing to say about it. We just go out to dinner and talk about other things as though the movie never happened.’ ”

Talk Cinema was founded by film critic Harlan Jacobson 15 years ago as an attempt to replicate the experience of attending a film festival. Jacobson himself attends festivals around the country and hand-picks films for the series. A few years ago Talk Cinema started a chapter at the Aquarius Theater in Palo Alto and hired Fabe as host and moderator. A couple of years later she persuaded the company to start a Berkeley chapter, allowing Fabe to avoid the commute to the peninsula and simply “roll out of bed and onto Solano Avenue to the Twin” on Sunday mornings. 

While the audience doesn’t know what they’re going to see, Fabe really does her homework, viewing the films in advance whenever possible and doing copious research into each film’s history, reading reviews, interviews and production notes so that she can start off each discussion on solid footing. 

“If you told them what the film was going to be, they might not come, and they’d miss out on a wonderful experience,” Fabe says, citing the example of The Woodsman from a previous season. “They’d say, ‘I don’t want to see a movie about a child molester!’ and they wouldn’t show up and they’d miss out. People always say to me, ‘If I had known what it was I wouldn’t have come, but I’m glad I did.’ ” 

The Berkeley chapter apparently differs from other chapters in its preferences. The Painted Veil, for instance, did very well with other chapters, but Fabe’s group didn’t take to it quite as readily. 

“They don’t like all that Masterpiece Theater kind of stuff,” she says. “They want something a little edgier.” 

According to the Talk Cinema blog, 40 percent of Berkeley members rated The Painted Veil as “excellent” on comment cards submitted after the show, and another 40 percent described it as “good” for an overall positive rating of 80 percent. This compares with Boston and Dallas with positive ratings of 96 and 97 percent. When asked if they would recommend the film, only 65 percent of the Berkeley crowd said yes, compared with other cities in the series that recommended the film at rates of anywhere between 80 percent and 98 percent.

Comment card remarks ranged from grouchy to enthusiastic to silly. “Watching depressed people for two hours is unpleasant no matter how beautiful the scenery,” remarked one. “Illuminated what mature love consists of and how it comes to fruition,” wrote a second. “A celibate Edward Norton, what a waste!” bemoaned a third. A Dallas participant, quoted on the company’s blog, used a pun to register her displeasure: “A regular Maugham & Pop tragedy.”

The Berkeley series has steadily added patrons, but it’s a for-profit business and will likely need to find a consistent audience of more than 100 if it is to survive beyond this season. If the season is a success, Talk Cinema will return to Berkeley for another season in September. The largest chapter, in Philadelphia, regularly seats 400. 

Patrons pay $149 for the 10-film season, but the cost is pro-rated for subscriptions taken out after the season has begun. Day of show admissions are also available for $20 per person.

Talk Cinema

At the Albany Twin, 1115 Solano Ave., Albany. To register, send check or money order to Talk Cinema, PO Box 686 Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520 or call (800) 551-9221 to subscribe by phone. For more information, see www.talkcinema.com.

The Lubitsch Touch at Pacific Film Archive

Silent film star Mary Pickford famously described director Ernst Lubitsch as a “director of doors,” a man more at home working with the choreography of entrances and exits than with actors and emotions. This acerbic remark, uttered in the awake of an ill-fated collaboration with the director on Rosita, his first American production, has a grain of truth but should be taken with a grain of salt as well.

Pickford was one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood and not inclined to accept a secondary role in a film’s creation. But Lubitsch’s films were not so much vehicles for stars so much as they were vehicles for Lubitsch, for his subtle and distinctive wit, both with images and later with dialogue.

A viewing of Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925) shows the truth behind both sides of the argument. The film shows tonight at Pacific Film Archive as part of a month-long career-spanning retrospective of the director’s work entitled “The Lubitsch Touch.” The series runs through Feb. 16 and tracks the legendary director’s career from his early German silent films to his much-celebrated American comedies of the sound era.

Lady Windermere’s Fan is an adaptation of an Oscar Wilde play that brazenly tosses out the words of Wilde in favor of sly visual humor and cues, replacing Wilde’s verbal wit with Lubitsch’s visual wit. The actors do good work, but clearly the director is in control, for the performances are not inspired but are instead matched meticulously to the staging and camerawork. There’s very little dialogue; most of the information is imparted to us simply through facial expressions, mannerisms and editing.

Many stars appeared in Lubitsch’s films, but Lubitsch himself was the true star of his productions, a noted auteur who guided the performances of his actors down to the smallest detail. Like Chaplin, he acted out each role and instructed his actors to mimic him, and, as with Chaplin again, this at times led to rather stilted performances. The actors were not permitted much leeway in plying their trade. However, the fact that the technique so often found such great results was a testament to Lubitsch’s unique talents.

One scene in particular illustrates Pickford’s dissent perfectly: Lubistch, in order to quickly and comically expresses the increasing intimacy between a couple, gives us two scenes of the suitor approaching the front door of his lady’s apartment. A close-up shows just his hand as he starts to ring the doorbell, things twice, hesitates, pulls out a pocket mirror, replaces it, then rings the bell and politely offers his coat and hat to the maid while waiting to be introduced. A second scene, taking place some weeks later, shows the hand again ringing the bell, this time with no hesitation. The man then walks brusquely through the door and past the maid, hanging his hat and coat without her help before bursting into the lady’s rooms unannounced. All necessary information is conveyed through intertitles, camerawork and editing. The acting is almost superfluous; it’s Lubitsch’s performance through and through.

His technique is not exactly subtle; in fact, Lubitsch’s presence can almost always be felt in his films, and this is a mixed blessing. Just as it is difficult to read Wilde without marveling at his wit, one cannot view a Lubitsch film without being made acutely conscious of the wit and style of the director. At its best it is a seductive technique, one that draws the viewer into an alliance with the director, making one feel as if one is in on the joke, sharing in the sense of superiority toward the objects of that wit; but at times it has a tendency to drain a film of drama and impact, maintaining a cynical distance from characters who are reduced to mere pawns in the director’s cinematic game.

The result is that Lubitsch’s films, though often just as entertaining today as they were in their time, are less art than entertainment, fun for their two-hour span but with little impact beyond the moment the theater lights come up. The “Lubitsch touch,” though deft, is a light touch, one that only lingers playfully amid the more complex, underlying themes of the story, rarely delving deeply into character, motivation or import. He won’t change your life but for two hours he’ll take you for a fun and stylish ride.

Other films in the series include Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, Angel, Heaven Can Wait, Trouble in Paradise, The Marriage Circle, Rosita, The Love Parade and The Smiling Lieutenant. The series runs through Feb. 16. $4-8. 2575 Bancrot Way. 642-5249. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

The Painted Veil: A Long Journey Over Rough Terrain

Based on a novel by Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, opening today at the Albany Twin, tells a mannered and melodramatic tale. The actors are great—Edward Norton and Naomi Watts deliver fine performances as a couple navigating the difficult terrain of both their young marriage and of cholera-ravaged rural China—but it’s just not enough to carry the weight of a burdensome drama.

Watts plays a spoiled and rather petulant young woman who finds herself married, almost against her will, to Norton’s considerate if dull and overly studious young scientist. When her infidelity threatens their fragile marriage he vengefully drags her—over the longest and most arduous route possible—to China, where he is to contribute his knowledge and skill to lessening the impact of a cholera epidemic.

What follows is an intriguing micro/macro staging of themes as the two resist, resent and finally come to respect each other, the drama unfolding against a backdrop of British colonialism in which the two cultures find themselves in precisely the same predicament.

It is a story with great promise and great intentions, but it just doesn’t come off. Aside from the tediously Eurocentric perspective, the trouble is that the enormity of the epidemic, as well as the increasingly relevant themes of Western imperialism and occupation, render the domestic portion of the drama trite and uninteresting. In the context of a never-ending “war on terror” and a disastrous occupation of Iraq, the problems of two little people just don’t amount to a hill of beans, to paraphrase another, more successful geopolitical melodrama. In fact, Casablanca is an instructive example in this case. Michael Curtiz’s 1942 film solved this dilemma by making its characters larger than life and with emotions to match. The Painted Veil by contrast keeps its characters small and thus they are overwhelmed by the international political drama that is intended as their backdrop.

The Maugham novel was written in 1925 as part of the then-popular Westerners Adrift In The Orient genre. Though director John Curran and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner made changes to the story, leavening some of its bleakness with greater understanding between characters and cultures, they curiously retained much of the novel’s chauvinism. While the action concerns cultures getting to know and appreciate one another, the construction of the film itself still sees the Chinese merely as picturesque background material, and indeed much of the understanding the cultures need to come to involves the silly natives simply learning to appreciate the intelligence and integrity of their white savior. Likewise, the domestic plot covers the same ground, with Watt’s selfish young hussy eventually being made to comprehend and bow down to the Great Man that is her husband. Sure, both the husband and Westerners in general are presented as flawed and fallible, but in the end the message is clear: Daddy knows best.

The film hits a few other snags along the way. Too much of Curran’s direction seems borrowed from the Merchant-Ivory playbook of costume drama adaptation, a school of filmmaking capable of reaching great artistic heights but which in lesser hands revels in overwrought staging, with a tendency to lean too heavily on clothing and set design to establish tone.

But the most damning flaw comes in the clichéd final scene, when Watts runs into a former lover on the street. The whole scene is ludicrous, seeking to wrap up the film with one of those ubiquitous bookend sequences that place the protagonist right back where she began. The full-circle conclusion is a valid device of course, but it is frequently abused in so many simplistic mainstream productions, and here it is handled clumsily. The gratuitous encounter only undermines the film’s aspirations toward artistry, confirming the triteness of its design. And to top it off, once she finishes the conversation, Watts turns to walk away while the camera pulls back to over-emphasize the symbolism as she steps across the streetcar tracks, leaving behind a former life and a former self and crossing over to a higher plane.

After two hours of tedium, we’re hard-pressed to care.

The Painted Veil (2007). Directed by John Curran. Written by Ron Nyswaner. Based on the novel by Somerset Maugham. Starring Edward Norton, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber. Rated PG-13. 125 minutes. 

Backstage: Obsession and Celebrity

Backstage, opening today at Shattuck Cinemas, is a story of obsession and fantasy, depicting the relationship between a pop star and one of her fans, a teenage girl who has come to idolize the singer to the point of zealous obsession.

Much of the plot may seem over the top, but director Emmanuelle Bercot based her screenplay on actual fan letters written to pop stars, fashioning these missives into a screenplay that attempts to explore the strange dynamic between the trappings of fame and the marketing of celebrity and the desperation of the young, impressionable consumer who becomes irresistibly drawn to the unattainable. 

If the film seems at times to indulge too greatly in an adolescent world, to dwell on the clichés of the pop star lifestyle, it is important to remember that this is deliberate, that the film is essentially telling the tale through the eyes of a star-struck girl who has romanticized and glorified every facet of her idol’s existence. She is hardly an objective observer; rather she provides a filtered lens that colors the action with her own dreams, desires and pain.

Lauren, the star, is self-centered and melodramatic. She sees her success as something of a trap and her self image as a reluctant celebrity, combined with her troubled romantic life, send her into wildly inappropriate bouts of self pity. But Lucie, the young girl who worships her and, through a chance encounter, becomes her confidant, interprets this drama even more dramatically, seeing Lauren as a martyr, as an artist on a grand scale, and thus any impediment to Lauren’s happiness and artistic success is seen by Lucie as a force of evil intent on destroying a goddess. 

The casting, by Antoinette Boulat and Bercot, is excellent. Emmanuelle Seigner has just the right aura, bringing to the role of Lauren great beauty and ferocity as well as vulnerability and emotional instability. And Isild le Besco plays Lucie with the appropriately ungainly movements of a budding adolescent, the stark, frightened, deer-in-the-headlights expression of a girl forever lost, and the sensual, maniacal, glassy-eyed gaze of a slightly unhinged fan seeking to forever bind herself to the object of her obsession. Supporting roles are often filled by non-actors who hold the same occupations as their characters; the security guard is played by a security guard, the record executive played by a record executive, etc., and the technique succeeds in bringing a certain veracity to the film’s otherwise heightened realism.

There are a few missteps however. Bercot created an entire album of original songs by Lauren and often relies a bit too heavily on them to carry the film’s emotional weight, with too many shots drowned out by music and too many scenes simplistically explained by Lauren’s lyrics. And her use of symbolism can be simplistic and heavy-handed as well. One of Lauren’s possessions, for instance, is a stuffed deer, meant to capture the nature of her own existence: innocence captured, killed, stuffed and always on display, a lifeless commodity used to adorn a hotel room just as posters of Lauren adorn the bedroom walls of teenagers all over France. Had it only appeared once, or perhaps only in the background, it might have been a more subtle and effective symbol. But Bercot features it so prominently it verges on parody. In one scene Lauren appears is profile alongside the profile of the deer, just to make sure we don’t miss the connection; and in another shot, Lucie is seen caressing the deer and nearly kissing it.

But again, we are seeing this story through the eyes of a deranged fan, so perhaps these awkward moments can also be attributed to her skewed perspective. And ultimately that is where Backstage has its greatest success, in the presentation of that perspective. For whatever its faults and however silly its characters may sometimes be, viewers who remember the more dramatic fancies of their adolescence will recognize some degree of truth in Lucie’s delusions and the burden they inflict on the adults around her.

Backstage (2007). Starring Emmanuelle Seigner and Isild le Besco. Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot. Written by Jerome Tonnerre and Bercot. 115 minutes. Not rated. In French with English subtitles. 

PFA Screens Two Italian Art House Classics

A fascinating pair of Italian films will screen this weekend at Pacific Film Archive. The first, Il Posto (1961), could be seen as a sequel to Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, presenting another quietly observant portrait of a young man suffering through a rite of passage. It’s as though the 13-year-old Antoine Donel of the earlier film has now grown into the 18-year-old Domenico Cantoni, sent by his parents into the big city of Milan to find a job.

Directed by Ermanno Olmi, Il Posto fits in with the Italian neo-realism school of filmmaking in its presentation of a humanistic tale of youthful dreams and ambitions sacrificed at the altar of security and conformism.

Domenico seems to dread his entry into the working world, a world presented as one of time-worn adults marking time in soulless, dreary employment. However, a ray of light appears in the form of a young woman named Antonietta (Loredana Detto), and her sparkling presence illuminates the screen as well as the life of the hero. Together they navigate the job application process and take pleasure in each other’s company, the two bright-eyed youths constituting a slightly subversive presence in an otherwise stale maze of corridors, offices and standard-issue furniture.

The key to the film is Sandro Panseri, a non-professional actor with soulful eyes and the gentle, timid face of a youth trying to comprehend and master the ways of a foreign territory. He’s a small, skinny waif masquerading as a grown-up in ill-fitting grown-up clothing. He hits all the right notes and Olmi captures each one, showing us in wordless close-ups the fear, uncertainty, shyness and delight that flitter across the face of the young protagonist.

But about three-quarters into the film, Olmi suddenly abandons the main character for an extended sequence in which we learn something of the personal lives of each one of a number of accountants at the unnamed firm where Domenico has landed. It may seem like a tangent at first, but the sequence marks the opening salvo in a tour de force closing sequence that drives home the film’s major themes.

Domenico is promoted, and in an uncharacteristic but highly effective montage, Olmi shows us why. One of the accountants we’ve encountered has passed away, possibly by suicide, and his desk is turned over to Domenico, much to the dismay of his new colleagues. One, a 20-year veteran, complains to the manager, and when Domenico agrees to move to a desk in the back of the room, a frenzied and ruthless rush ensues as the other accountants begin a mad dash to claim the desk immediately in front of their own, a desperate game of musical chairs for which they’ve apparently been waiting for decades.

The final shot shows Domenico watching a man at the front of the room as he cranks what appears to be a mimeograph machine, feeding paper into one end and removing it from the other as a deafening mechanical whirr dominates the soundtrack. The grind has begun.

Yet as bleak as this conclusion may seem, it is also somewhat ambiguous, for throughout the film we have seen Domenico warmly befriended by the adults in his new environment, receiving a series of reassurances that a simpler life of lower expectations is not all bad but is in fact full of small pleasures. With these gentle moments of camaraderie and kindness, Olmi provides a welcome softening of the film’s sharp edge.

Domenico may have found himself in a dispiriting situation, but there is still energy and vivaciousness and curiosity in his face, a sign that although life is certainly capable of pummeling the spirit out of a young man, he still has a choice—plenty of choices, really—and retains the power to shape his own destiny. And the fact that Domenico is able to so clearly see his predicament in the closing scene leaves us with hope that he has the strength and determination to overcome it, now that he finally understands it.

Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) similarly focuses on a main character with enormously expressive eyes in the form of Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), another youthful spirit facing dire circumstances. But the style and delivery of the tale could not be more different from the observational calm of Olmi’s Il Posto.

La Strada tells the tale of a boorish brute of a traveling sideshow performer, Zampano, played by Anthony Quinn. When his wife dies, he travels back to her remote, impoverished village and essentially purchases her younger sister to take her place. Gelsomina has a clown-like countenance, and eventually she takes on the makeup of a clown, too. Her childish innocence calls to mind silent film comedian Harry Langdon, blending an adult body with an infantile purity that at times confounds us with its ambiguity.

And despite its rather simple story, the film is full of ambiguities. Gelsominia is at once innocent and deeply aware of her place in Zampano’s life. And the Fool, a character capable of both cruelty and martyrdom, provides lessons in life and love for the main characters while treating them with a degree of contempt.

The film itself seems to straddle two realms, leaning at times toward realism and at times toward a sort of fable-like fantasy. Beneath its circus settings, desolate stretches of beach and never-ending highways, it is a simple love story about a man who cannot admit his feelings and a child-like woman who is entirely governed by her own.

La Strada concludes with a powerful shot of Zampano alone on the beach after learning that his dismissal of Gelsomina has led her to madness and death. As he faces the open sea, he glances upwards for a moment, as though discovering God for the first time and begging his forgiveness. And it seems like the first time that he has lifted his brooding gaze from the ground, the first time we have seen the whites of his eyes. But it is too late now, and Zampano simply crumbles to the ground as though merging with the brittle sand.

The two films are showing as part of PFA’s tribute to Janus Films, the American distributor responsible for bringing so many foreign art house films to the United States in the 1950s and '60s. The series concludes next week with a screening of Mario Monicelli’s The Organizer (1963).

Il Posto (1961)

Directed by Ermanno Olmi. 93 minutes. 6:30 p.m. Friday.

La Strada (1956)

Directed by Federico Fellini. 108 minutes. 5 p.m. Saturday.

Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way. $4-$8. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Samurai Classics at Pacific Film Archive

Pacific Film Archive will present a series of seven samurai films beginning today and running through Dec. 17.

Most of the films come courtesy of Janus Films, the great American distributor of foreign arthouse cinema whose 50th anniversary PFA has been honoring in another ongoing series.

But the samurai series ain’t quite as highbrow as all that. Not on the surface, at least. These are popular entertainments, full of action and humor. But look closer and you’ll see films full of art and artistry, of complex themes and human struggle worthy of the highest forms of art, here dressed in violent period melodrama.

Of course no samurai series would be complete without the biggest samurai film of them all, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954). Seven Samurai gave rise to an American version, The Magnificent Seven, but the western version pales in comparison with the original. Kurosawa takes his time with each character, presenting a fuller, richer, more engaging ensemble than the swaggering icons played by Yul Brynner et al.

Kurosawa is represented in the series by two other films as well: Throne of Blood (1957), his samurai adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Yojimbo (1961), a brilliant and funny film inspired by American westerns and later remade as a western, albeit an Italian western: Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars.

But most enlightening films in the series are the lesser-known classics of the genre.

The series starts with this weekend with two films by Masaki Kobayashi, Samurai Rebellion (1967) and Harakiri (1962).

Harakiri is a stunning film, a gradually unfolding tale of heartbreak and misfortune that builds toward a climactic act of revenge. Most of the film consists of conversations in which the characters play out a tense, strategic battle of wills, yet now and then the slow-burning tone is punctuated with scenes of sudden violence.

Kobayashi and photographer Yoshio Miyajima establish themselves quickly as masters of interiors with an opening credits sequence of slow tracking shots which delineate the architectural splendor of a great mansion. The pattern continues throughout the film with beautiful but discreet compositions and graceful tracking shots through corridors and into rooms, with pillars and doors and windows and figures arranged perfectly like stones in a garden.

Kobayashi often maintains a certain distance from his subjects, unobtrusively watching them as they go about their business. But when the action starts and the tone shifts, so too does the camera, zooming in like a Sergio Leone telephoto shot or tilting toward canted angles a la Orson Welles, signaling a shift in the dramatic action as well as the strategic repositioning of characters within fragile alliances. But Kobayashi also demonstrates his talent for outdoor shots with a one-on-one battle on a windswept plain that contains echoes of Bergman.

The plot concerns the requisite lone samurai, this time seeking to destroy the facade of nobility and honor maintained by a great clan, and he does so, for the most part, without action but with words. It is like one of those extended endgame scenes in a James Bond movie where the villain stops the show to explicate in great detail for the hero’s benefit the machinations of his nefarious scheme. Only here it lasts two hours and results in a tour de force of swordfight choreography as Tatsuya Nakadai takes on the house’s company of samurai and by extension the entire feudal system. He smashes down doors, breaks through walls, smears the house insignia with the blood of his enemies and dismantles the interiors that Kobayashi had photographed with such care throughout the film, the architecture that had sustained the house and masked its cowardice.

The series also features two films by director Kihachi Okamoto: Kill! (1968) and Sword of Doom (1966).

While Kobayashi’s work embodies much of what of what is best in the samurai genre, the films of Kihachi Okamoto elaborately deconstruct these elements in gleeful parodies that, like the Italian westerns of Leone, are equal parts satire and homage. Okamoto’s Kill!, made just six years after Harakiri, picks apart the genre’s stock features and embellishes its humor-laced plot with a score that deconstructs the genre’s musical themes as well, combining Japanese instrumentation with the cartoonishly grand orchestrations of the spaghetti western scores of the 1960s.

For more information on the samurai series, see Pacific Film Archive’s website: www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.