Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

This movie opens with plain white-on-black opening credits without music, which finish with this full-screen card:



We then see a man lurking outside of an apartment building in Rome in full daylight. He looks smug and confident, and is looking up at a window where, behind billowing curtains, a woman is smiling down at him. He goes through the gate, ascends the stairs, and enters her apartment. They embrace, and she says to him, "How will you kill me this time?"

"I will cut your throat," he replies.



She gets into bed and reads a yellow paperback book while she waits for him to undress. This is a giallo, a kind of Italian mystery novel that has become synonymous with convoluted, stylised and sexualised murder stories, mostly because of movies that were made around the same time as this one.



The man then gets into bed and pulls the covers over the two of them. After a few seconds the woman rears up and then collapses, and the man sits up, covered in blood. He wipes himself off on the sheets then goes to take a shower. Once he has washed the blood off himself he goes around the apartment and methodically leaves his fingerprints and footprints on as many surfaces as possible. He takes jewelry from her drawer, but pointedly leaves a large roll of cash behind. He steals a blue tie, plants a shred of it under the dead woman's fingernail, then wears it. He calls the police and reports the murder, being very careful to make sure that they have the address right. Then he takes two bottles of champagne from the fridge and leaves, making sure to be noticed by a young man who is arriving at the same time.



The man then takes the two bottles of champagne to his work and shares them with his colleagues to celebrate his last day as the head of the Police's Homicide Unit, before starting his new position as head of the Political Crimes Unit.

As opening scenes of movies go, this is a really good one. Ennio Morricone's score certainly helps, with its striking mixture of goofy sound effects and sinister strings. The mixture of suspense, black comedy and political satire combine to make Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion a striking and unusual movie that Franz Kafka would have loved.



Gian Maria Volonté (Le Cercle Rouge, A Fistful of Dollars) is outstanding as the unnamed policeman, only referred to as "Il Dottore". He makes for a thoroughly unpleasant and strangely compelling character, who at first seems to have committed murder just to see if he can get away with it, but who is revealed in a series of flashbacks and surreal set-pieces to have much more complex motives. He gives a remarkable monologue at the press conference covering his new appointment where he says that every criminal is politically subversive, every subversive is a criminal, and all of them are motivated by sexual deviancy. He receives thunderous applause for this fascistic speech - which, of course, is mostly describing himself.



As he goes through his day, bullying and intimidating his subordinates and members of the public while toadying to his superiors, every piece of evidence he has planted comes back and is then routinely dismissed. The more this happens, the more reckless he becomes, until at a certain point the movie loses all touch with conventional reality and enters fully into surrealism. Those looking for a realistic thriller will be disappointed, but as a black comedy, a political satire, and an analogy for the corruption and abuses of power and authority, the movie is watertight.



Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1970, as well as a raft of other awards including the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and an Edgar for Best Film from the Mystery Writers of America. It was a smash hit in Italy and helped to pave the way for a number of other subversive thrillers. Unfortunately it seems to be largely forgotten today, and is very hard to get hold of in an English-friendly version.

Although it's obviously a product of its time, from the fashions to the awesome interior decorating to the topical political references (co-writer/director Elio Petri was a Marxist and fills the movie with references to pro-Communist protests; it's probably a lot harder to sympathise with Stalinism and Maoism knowing what we do now) the essence of the movie remains topical. It's hard not to associate Il Dottore with a certain Italian Prime Minister.



See this movie, if you can.





Part of Todd Mason's Tuesday's Forgotten Films lineup. Thanks Todd!

Black Dynamite (2009)

Somehow, I have not yet written of Black Dynamite.

Black Dynamite was unexpected. Black Dynamite is co-written by and stars Michael Jai White. When I think of Michael Jai White, who played the lead role in Spawn and, more recently, was on hand just long enough to be killed by the Joker in The Dark Knight, I don't think "Now there's a first-rate comedy writer and actor." Maybe I'm crazy, but to me he just doesn't look the part.



A lot of people did not get down with Black Dyamite, but I thought that Black Dynamite was the funnest movie that I have seen in a long time. I'm talking that kind of embarrassing "I can't breathe" honking laughter that had barely troubled me since I was a small child. That's right -- Black Dynamite is Road Runner funny.

Black Dynamite tells the story of a man called Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) and how raises hell when his younger brother is killed by drug dealers. Black Dynamite is like a combination of Shaft, Dolemite and Hammer.



A lot of people did not get down with Black Dyamite, but I thought that Black Dynamite was the funnest movie that I have seen in a long time. I'm talking that kind of embarrassing "I can't breathe" honking laughter that had barely troubled me since I was a small child. That's right -- Black Dynamite is Road Runner funny.

Amid the many laughs, Black Dynamite actually has a fairly complicated plot that kept me engaged throughout. The supporting cast is also very funny, especially Tommy Davidson as Cream Corn.



The movie also has a great funk/soul soundtrack that amusingly describes the action as it happens.

Look, I can't possibly tell you if you are going to enjoy this movie or not (unless your name is Bruce Norris, in which case you've surely already seen it). If you enjoy blaxploitation movies, especially the cheap ones, you'll almost certainly get a kick out of it.

Here's a clip that I found hilarious in context, but which might just make you scratch your head and say, "What?"

Coming Soon

Movies recently seen

Crumb (1994)

I first saw this documentary about underground comics legend Robert Crumb in 1996, with my then-girlfriend. It is not a date movie. Crumb's comics are notorious for their misogyny and racist imagery, while at the same time he is regularly acclaimed as a genius. Although his surname is a common word, a Google image search on the word "crumb" brings up nothing but images relating to his comics. This is despite the fact that he has never been published by any of the "major" comic book companies, and has actually self-published much of his own work. He is a strange-looking guy (skinny and gawky with coke-bottle glasses and deliberately old-fashioned clothes) who is apparently very shy, but on film he has a real charisma. He's a mess of contradictions, and this movie is a fascinating portrait of his work, his family, and himself.

The movie takes you through quite a but of his comics work, some of which is very disturbing, and gives equal time to his defenders and his critics. It's interesting that Crumb does not actually defend himself; he says that he made a decision many years ago to never censor himself and to let all the most disturbing images in his head come out onto paper, and that his creative process is largely unconscious and he doesn't know where his stories are going until he draws them. He says that sometimes he thinks perhaps he should not be allowed to draw this stuff and that maybe he should be locked up and have his pencils taken away from him, but at the same time it seems clear that drawing his comics is what keeps him on an even keel.

We don't learn too much about how Robert Crumb ended up the way he is, apart from some references to his father being a domineering and violent tyrant, but the interviews with his brothers and his mother make it pretty clear that Robert is the most well-adjusted member of his family, at least among those who appear in the movie (his two sisters declined to be interviewed).

This is a top-notch documentary that is best watched when you are not already feeling depressed.



Peeping Tom (1960)

Set in the sordid milieu of under-the-counter pornography, this movie is about Mark, a young photographer who is making his own snuff movies. It has some interesting parallels with the same year's Psycho, directed by the expatriate British director Alfred Hitchcock in America. The main difference is that while Psycho solidified Hitchcock's position as the master of thrillers, Peeping Tom caused director Michael Powell's reputation to plummet; he had been at the very top of his profession to this point, but was subsequently unable to make any more movies in Britain and ended up settling in Australia.

Melodramatic in the extreme and rather dated, Peeping Tom still has a curious power. Mark is very open to the idea of being caught, and manages to get caught between falling for a young woman in his apartment building and feeling driven to complete his "work". I found the comic relief scenes tiresome, but they actually drew big laughs from the audience I saw it with so that must be a matter of personal taste.



The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Vincent Price stars as a crazed organist who is bringing the Ten Plagues of Egypt down on the surgeons he holds responsible for the death of his wife. He also talks through a gramophone horn connected by a tube to a hole in his neck. He has somehow convinced a beautiful silent woman to assist him in his murderous task.

As you can tell from the above plot description, this is the greatest movie ever made.

Hallowe'en movies

I watched three movies on Hallowe'en.

Fellini Satyricon (1969)

Oh dear. This movie was very lavish. I'm sure it was also very artful. It certainly was bugfuck insane. It consistently kept me off-balance, did things I didn't expect, and everything about it was very inventive and bold.

So why was it so terribly dull?



The story involves two students in ancient Rome who have picaresque adventures while fighting over the favours of a svelte young slave boy. These largely involve people going on & on & on at great length against extremely elaborate backgrounds and on extremely elaborate sets. It felt like an extremely wordy stage play that was barelay adapted to an extremely expensive movie, and then filmed by people who were very stoned.

As Michael pointed out, it felt a lot like an Alejandro Jodorowsky movie in terms of how completely weird it is. But for me, it had little of the intelelctual and spiritual charge of Jodorowsky's movies, and almost none of the interest.

I hope that Fellini's earlier movies turn out to be more interesting. This one was just self-indulgent wank. His fellow countryman Mario Bava, who worked in much more low-brow fields, was able to accomplish a lot more with a lot less many times. (And he seemed to know it; Fellini was a huge champion of Bava and was known to give his movies standing ovations - as well as the ultimate compliment of ripping him off; Fellini's Toby Dammit draws extensively from Bava's Kill Baby Kill.)

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

My favourite Hammer horror movie pits an imperious authoritarian figure (Christopher Lee) against a free-thinking mystic (Charles Gray). It feels like the establishment railing against some goddamned hippies, but I liked it anyway. Gray is superb as Mocata, the black magician inspired by Aleister Crowley (Dennis Wheately, who wrote the source novel, met Crowley once and seemed to take a lot of influence from him).



The best scene involves Mocata having a conversation with Marie Eaton (well played by Sarah Lawson) in which he methodically lulls her into submission and takes over her mind. If you watch the movie, pay attention to the editing of this scene; it's brilliantly put together.

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Probably the best horror anthology movie I've ever seen, edging out the George Romero/Stephen King collaboration Creepshow (which it resembles in some ways), Trick 'r' Treat was a complete delight. It tells four stories that take place on the same Hallowe'en and in the same neighbourhood, which is being watched over by a creepy little urchin who seems to embody the spirit of Hallowe'en. The only cast members I recognised were Brian Cox (made up to resemble John Carpenter) and Anna Paquin (pre-True Blood). (I guess first-time director Michael Dougherty must have brought them over from X-Men 2, which he co-wrote.)



All of the stories in Trick 'r' Treat were smarter than I expected, and the EC comics-style twists were perfectly realised. The Hallowe'en atmosphere was perfect, and the stories overlap in a fun way that reminded me of Pulp Fiction. More horror movies should be this well made and this much fun.

More movies seen recently

Touch of Evil (1958)

Pulp grandeur. Orson Welles wrote and directed, as well as playing the villain. The wonderfully dark and oppressive black & white cinematography is by Russell Metty, but it is of a piece with Welles's filmography and is unlike anything else Metty achieved (Welles was known to be heavily involved with lighting his own movies). This was at the Embassy in the version restored by Walter Murch; if you haven't seen Touch of Evil your movie knowledge is woefully incomplete. And watching this, damned if it wasn't clearly a huge influence on Hitchcock's Psycho.

Kick-Ass (2010)

Terrific fun, this is both a satire on comic book conventions and a splendid action movie in its own right. Unlike most other modern action movies I've seen, it was both clever and coherent. The controversy is unsurprising, but misses the point.

The Leopard (1963)

Luchino Visconti's masterpiece about the reunification of Italy from the point of view of a Sicilian prince is, well, a masterpiece. I'll admit that it made me sleepy at first, but as it went on I was more and more captured by it, until I finally reached the climactic 45-minute ball sequence - one of the greatest setpieces I've ever seen. Just the part where Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster) dances with Angelica Bertiana (Claudia Cardinale) would be the mark of a master filmmaker on its own. Again, seen at The Embassy.

Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

Jean-Pierre Melville's existentialist heist movie is long, slow, and immensely cool. The news that Orlando Bloom is starring in a remake is just appalling. Someone please convince that guy to join a monastary or something.

Any Wellingtonians who haven't been seeing these classic films at the Embassy on Sundays are really missing out. There are only two left, and I've already got tickets to both.

And just to prove that it's not a complete love-in here at He's Got a Knife Headquarters:

Gladiator (2001)

Ridley Scott's multiple Oscar-winner, starring Russell Crowe as a Roman general turned gladiator, is the worst movie I've seen for a while.

It was a great shame that it turned out to be Oliver Reed's last movie, but at least he got to drink himself to death.

This movie was so dull, it was sort of depressing. The high-point was Joaquin Phoenix's performance as the insane, incest-obsessed Roman Emperor, Commodus. He was terrible, but at least he was flamboyantly terrible.

Also appearing was Connie Nielsen as Commudus's sister Lucilla, who is also Maximus's former lover.

What else can I say? This movie sucks. I think it may mark the end of my Ridley Scott marathon.

I think I may have seen some other bad movies lately and forgotten them.

Movies seen recently

People keep emailing me and saying that I should update my blog more often. I swear, I keep meaning to. I have some lengthy posts in preparation. But in the meantime, here are some movies I have seen recently.

A Single Man (2009)

This movie was flat-out brilliant. Anchored by a sublime lead performance from Colin Firth, it tells the story of a man who, eight months after the death of the love of his life, has decided to end it all. Which sounds like the movie should be downbeat and depressing, but in fact it is exactly the opposite. A Single Man celebrates life in its every frame. It's based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, which I am going to have to read.

It was very hard to believe that this was co-writer/director Tom Ford's first movie. Almost everything about it is confident and assured. I've never been particularly impressed by Firth in the past, but he is just spectacular here. It's amazing how deep inside the lead character's head we get - something that's very difficult to do in film. Ford and Firth deserve major awards for their accomplishments here. The supporting cast (including Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult and Matthew Goode) are uniformly excellent, the movie looks gorgeous, the music is swooning and beautiful. You should see this movie, and someone should fund Tom Ford to make more (he apparently paid for this one out of his own pocket).



Slipstream (2007)

Anthony Hopkins wrote, directed, scored and starred in this movie. It is baffling. It involves a scriptwriter whose movie seems to be taking on a life of its own. Or maybe he's dead and the whole movie is his life flashing past his eyes. Or maybe he's come "unstuck in time" like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. Or maybe something else - I don't know.

It's nightmarish, funny, clever, and completely weird. If this is a peek into Hopkins's mind, then he is clearly a very strange man.



Kingdom of Heaven - director's cut (2004)

Ridley Scott's movie about the Crusades is very nearly a masterpiece. It's only significant flaw is the miscasting of its lead character; Orlando Bloom is just not convincing as a charismatic leader. It's easy to see why, as Robert Fisk reported, this movie was cheered in Lebanon; this is far from the sort of jingoistic racist crap you'd probably expect from a Hollywood Christians vs. Muslims movie made in the wake of 9/11. A superb supporting cast, rousing battle scenes and plenty of Ridley Scott's trademark gorgeous visuals are the icing on the cake.

This is a movie where surrender can be noble, and people are more important than ideals. If only it had starred someone more impressive - Edward Norton, in a small role as the King of Jerusalem, manages to be a far more inspiring presence despite playing a character with leprosy who is swathed in bandages and keeps a silver mask over his face.



Blade Runner - the final cut (1982)

Ah, Blade Runner. This movie is a bastardisation of a great book, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In some ways it is the complete inverse of the book.

And yet, it's a masterpiece. I have much to say about this, and currently no time in which to say it.



Lupin III: the Secret of Mamo

This is the first movie featuring the character Arsène Lupin III, the Japanese grandson of the fictional French gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. Lupin III had previously featured in a series of manga and two seasons of an animated series. This movie features Lupin, his sidekicks Jigen and Goemon Ishikawa XIII, nemesis Zenigata, and love interest/rival Fujiko as they are all entangled with a seemingly immortal criminal mastermind known as Mamo.

The last time I watched this movie, I had problems with how obnoxious and unlikable the lead character is. I had previously seen the second Lupin III movie, The Castle of Cagliostro, which was written & directed by Hayao Miyazaki and which softened the character considerably. In the meantime I have seen the first season of the tv show (also largely directed by Miyazaki) and came to realise that Lupin was much more fun when he was self-centred and randy than when he was altruistic.

The Secret of Mamo is weirdly paced and a bit too long, but it has a great psychedelic design sense, and is very much a tribute to such European anti-heroes as Diabolik, Fantomas, Raffles and Irma Vep. I enjoyed it.

The Duellists (1977)

The Duellists is based on a short story by Joseph Conrad, but the movie is all about the visuals. Ridley Scott was making his feature debut, but had actually directed a number of tv series and thousands of commercials.

The story involves two French officers in the Napoleonic Wars who become involved in a series of abortive duels over an obscure matter of honour. Armand d'Hubert (Keith Carradine) finds himself having to constantly look over his shoulder in case Gabriel Féraud (Harvey Keitel) is around. Féraud seems to want to kill d'Hubert just for the sake of killing him; d'Hubert goes to every length to keep his distance, but Féraud keeps popping up regardless. The movie looks like an historical epic, but it feels like a Western.

I'm a big fan of Westerns that are not set in the American Old West, from No Country for Old Men to Mad Max 2, and as it turns out I am a big fan of The Duellists as well. Its appeal is almost entirely in the way that Scott uses his amazing powers as a designer and a camera operator. The Duellists looks amazing from start to finish. Almost any frame of the movie could be printed up and hung on the wall.













The cast fares less well. Keith Carradine is wooden, as he almost always is. (The only notable exception I can think of is his Wild Bill Hickock in Deadwood.) Harvey Keitel would later develop into one of the best actors os his generation, but he was not there yet. Diana Quick and Christina Raines are there as set decoration, and are unable to do much with their underwritten roles. Albert Finney is fun as Joseph Fouché, but he's only in one scene.

However, the actors all look marvellous and the authentic-seeming duels are magnificently staged. Despite the acting deficiencies, the thin script and the jarring voice-over (nicely delivered by Stacey Keach but as unnecessary as that later foisted onto Ridley Scott's third - and best - film Blade Runner) I was enthralled throughout.

Scott was never an intellectual director, despite Blade Runner, and The Duellists is not an intellectual movie. It is sensual and sensuous, exciting and entertaining, and utterly beautiful from start to finish.

I liked it.

Review: Centurion (2010)

This movie follows the misadventures of the Ninth Legion as they invade Scotland in 117AD. Although inspired by real events, it is a work of complete fiction. It is also a work of complete shit.




I won't bother getting into historical inaccuracies or "Roman soldiers didn't fight like that" trainspotting nonsense. You don't care about that, and neither do I most of the time. Unless it's a particularly glaring mistake, that sort of thing does not spoil a movie for anyone who is not being a dick about terms.

Centurion could have been a good movie. The disappearance of the Ninth Legion could certainly be spun into a fascinating story, and writer/director Neil Marshall is definitely interested in making the story morally ambiguous. The protagonists are the Romans, who are out for dominion; the villains are the Picts, who are fighting off invaders who plunder their lands, enslave and kill them, and (in the course of the story) murder their children. Marshall himself is Scottish and there is a clear, intentional irony in his depiction of the Picts as savage and dehumanised proponents of guerilla warfare, and also in the way that the Romans speak Latin as English with pronounced English accent, while Pict is guttural and inhuman (and Picts speaking Latin do so in a Scottish brogue).

Unfortunately, Neil Marshall is the director of Dog Soldiers, The Descent and Doomsday, all pulp horror/action movies. If Dog Soldiers was "Aliens with werewolves" then Centurion is "Dog Soldiers with Scottish people" with all of the third-hand self-referential problems that suggests.

The movie is packed with good actors (Michael Fessbinder, Liam Cunningham, Davic Morrissey, Dominic West) but you wouldn't know that they were good just from watching this. It's filled with violent action scenes that are completely unexciting. It doesn't trust the audience to have a clue; every plot and thematic point is hammered home with expository dialogue and endless amounts of voice-over narration. Both the dialogue and narration are head-slappingly obvious, so predictable that I was able to mouth along with the actors at many points.

This movie casts a model as a cliché mute "woman warrior" - presumably to safeguard against non-acting. The only major female character to have any dialogue may as well have "love interest" carved into her forehead. (And if she's exiled to live alone, why does she wear so much modern-looking makeup?)

The battle scenes are filled with heads and limbs being lopped off and CGI blood spraying everywhere, in almost a textbook case of "more is less". Compare them with the battle scenes in Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight for a lesson in the difference between mere excess and genuine impact. These battles are clearly influenced by those in Chimes, though I would wager that the influence is actually via intermediary movies such as Braveheart.

In summary, this is a terrible movie that isn't even a guilty pleasure. It's a shame, as The Descent seemed to mark Marshall as a filmmaker to watch.

Movies seen recently

I've seen a few, at the movies and on DVD. Here are some of them.

Enter the Dragon

Bruce Lee's American movie is great fun, although the fight scenes are not as well-staged or well-filmed as the ones in his best complete movie Fist of Fury or in the the footage released from the incomplete original version of Game of Death. Enter the Dragon functions better as an American exploitation movie (poor Jim Kelly doesn't fare as well as he would have in a real blaxploitation movie though). John Saxon is miscast as a kung-fu expert; I would much rather have seen Rod taylor in his role.

But Bruce Lee's charisma saves the day, and although the ending is a straight copy of the superior ending of Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai it still works here.




There Will Be Blood

A bona-fide masterpiece. Daniel Day Lewis is superb, and the movie earns its two and a half hour length. Worthy of an entire post, so it'll get one.



The Haunted Palace

Roger Corman directs Vincent Price from a Charles Beaumont script based on H. P. Lovecraft's longest story, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. It was shoehorned into the Corman/Price Edgar Allan Poe series with a retitling and some brief readings of Poe's titular poem. Great fun, and with the next one will be an entire future post.



The Resurrected

Dan O'Bannon's early '90s adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's longest story, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, was mangled by its producers in post-production, leading to some obviously-truncated scenes and unnecessary voice-over. What remains takes a while to warm up, but emerges as a superior Lovecraft adaptation in its final act. Chris Sarandon actually tops Price as Charles Ward and, er, another character, and the two movies contrast in a fascinating way. A whole post will soon compare both movies with the original story.



Robocop

An old favourite, this action-packed satire of the Reagan era is still hilarious. Superstar Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's best American movie; packed to the gills with great scenes.



Piranha

John Sayles's first script is far from his best, but director Joe Dante and a great cast (including Kevin McCarthy - who just died aged 96, '60s Italian horror queen Barbara Steele, Sterling Hayden, Paul Bartel, and of course Dick Miller) make it all fun.



Piranha 3D

Hilarious intentional-comedy makes great use of 3D effects, and even of Jerry O'Connell! Big, dumb, silly fun with a great in-joke cameo in the opening scene. Recommended to people who loved Gremlins and Mars Attacks.



I'm sure there were more. I'll remember later. It was a good weekend.

Darker Than Amber

It's a crime that Darker Than Amber is impossible to get hold of without resorting to bootlegs. It closes with one of the best fight scenes ever captured on film, in which Rod Taylor and William Smith go at it. The video quality is terrible, but just check this out.

Satoshi Kon R.I.P. 1963-2010

My favourite animator has passed away, aged only 46. I loved cartoons as a kid, but it wasn't until I saw Perfect Blue that I had any regard for them as a grown-up.

Maybe I should do a career retrospective. He made so few films, it wouldn't be hard.