heather_m1986 Reviews

Notorious (1946)

Romance -- Hitchcock style

[9/10 · 3 January 2010]

Dark, cruel, beautifully photographed, and deeply erotic, Notorious in one of Hitchcock's very best. It's remarkably sexual and sophisticated story from a time in Hollywood where the power of the Breen Office was at its apex. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is the daughter of a convicted Nazi. American agent Devlin (Cary Grant) contacts her and convinces her to spy against some of her father's Nazi colleagues in Brazil. The chief of these of Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), one of the most genial Nazis depicted on the silver screen, who has a crush on Alicia. Of course, Alicia has fallen madly in love with Devlin, and he with her, though he could never admit it, and instead pushes her to seduce Sebastian to obtain his secrets. He wants her for the mission when she accept, he brands her a whore. Only a whore would sleep with a man for his secrets, right? Hitchcock gathers some of Hollywood's best and casts them against type. Ingrid Bergman, who hitherto had played a fair number of virginal ingénues, plays Alicia Huberman, a powerfully sensual woman but also a drunken nymphomaniac. You get the sense that she can merely stroke Devlin's cold, frozen face and bring him magically to life. The great comic-acrobat-sophisticate Cary Grant is cast as the emotionally stunted and almost sadistic T.R. Devlin, a mysterious secret agent who recruits Alicia to work for the government. Cary Grant utilizes his inherent reticence to create a character who is isolated and closed off, who can lash out and act disinterested so easily toward the woman he loves. Claude Rains, with his rich English voice and amiable face plays Nazi Alex Sebastian, a rather nice fellow who happens be plotting against the United States. He is genuinely in love with Alicia and when he learns of her betrayal, his despair and terror is palpable and moving. Madame Constantin, imported especially by Hitchcock from Germany for this film is the brilliant and icy cold Madame Sebastian, Alex's powerful mother. In one particular scene she smokes a cigarette with a malice unequaled by any actress in Hollywood history. It's like she has it clasped in her talons. Louis Calhern is Devlin's boss, breezy, narrow minded, and casually misogynistic.

Notorious is a very stylish production. Ingrid Bergman, who usually wore little makeup in her films, has a very natural sensuality and wears lovely 40s hats and suits very elegantly. Cary Grant is hitting his stride as the fashion icon he later became in the 50s. The suits are slimmer than they were in earlier roles and help emphasize Grant's lean and powerful, but graceful, physicality. Hitchcock's camera is characteristically authoritative, shaping the audience's impressions. It is very open to Bergman and very closed to Grant. Bergman is often shot in close ups and medium shots, and in flattering soft focus, and in accessible to the audience. Her heartrending luminosity, used so brilliantly in Casablanca is used again here by Hitchcock. Grant, on the other hand, is several times shot with his back to the camera, looking away from from the camera or with his face obscured by shadows. You suspect, but you never really KNOW what Devlin is feeling for the majority of the film. Grant is inscrutable and here is really demonstrating his economy --and brilliance-- as a performer. Sometimes he does seem a bit too stiff, especially since we know that he's capable of doing Dr. David Huxley and Editor-in-chief Walter Burns, but most actors wouldn't have dared to give such an understated performance as Grant does here.

The world of Notorious is very insular. Most of the film, with the exception of the love scenes, is indoors. Any other scenes that find the characters outdoors find the characters closed off. Barricaded between objects or people. All this gives the film a claustrophobic feel, like Devlin and Alicia have no place to hide and no place to breathe. People said that Hitchcock disliked actors. I don't think that's true, but Hitchcock seems to have extraordinary control over the technical aspects of filming. In order scenes to work actors must explicitly follow direction; they are the tools of film-making. All this attention to detail is absolutely necessary considering the complex composition of many of his scenes. The reputed "Longest kiss in film history" where Devlin and Alicia embrace and talk and kiss for several is a very intricate piece of blocking as the characters move from one room to another, Devlin speaks on the phone, reach, turn etc... If Hitchcock worked like someone like Howard Hawks, for instance, this sort of scene wouldn't be possible.

Since this is a Hitchcock film, people may be mislead into thinking that it's a thriller. It's not. It's really a perverse romance. The characters are more intricately drawn than they are in thrillers. Indeed, plot and character development seem to be equally important. The story does not move quickly but you don't really notice, you're too busy being immersed in Hitchcock's world. Thrilling, sexy, and moving, Notorious is highly recommended

Factory Girl (2006)

The Rise and Fall of the Tragic Muse

[8/10 · 1 January 2008]

"Factory Girl" is a fascinating period piece about a woman who embodied a moment in American culture and her tragic and almost too predictable demise.

Sienna Miller perfectly embodies socialite Edie Sedgwick, wither her joie de vivre, her fragility, and her complete disintegration into drug addiction. Hers was a lonely life lived all to briefly at the centre of a glittering and completely artificial world. Some criticize Miller for being nothing more than a fashion plate and celebrity girlfriend, but this film definitely show that Miller is, first and foremost, a talented actress. She manages to portray Sedgwick's manner, movements, diction, and style without making a caricature of her, someone that would have been easy in a less confident actress. Sienna, unlike many young actresses, brings a tremendous dynamism to her roles, with energy and a strong physicality that serves her well playing Sedgwick. Guy Pierce, despite being considerably handsomer than the real Warhol, does well with a difficult role. Andy Warhol himself was something of a self-manufactured entity. The man who best portrayed Andy Warhol was Andrew Warhola. Pierce's Warhol has a simian quality that differs from previous portrayals like that of Jared Harris in "I Shot Andy Warhol" and it make Warhol into, for better or for worse, into an ambiguous and even sinister character. Of the three main leads, Hayden Christensen's performance was by far the weakest, but on the other hand, he was also given the nearly impossible task of portraying Bob Dylan without actually being able to play Bob Dylan. His performance is superficial, as is his role within the story. He grasps Dylan's style but the character has no heart, a fatal flaw considering Dylan's position as one of the authentic and soulful voices of his generation.

Attempts to conform the story to a more Hollywood formula have distorted some of the ambiguity and contradictions that make it compelling. Edie Sedgwick undoubtedly was a victim of her dysfunctional family, and the ambitions of powerful men, but she was also reckless and spoiled. She would only travel in limos, and disparaged at taking cabs or the subway, and economizing was replacing her eyeshadow with watercolour paints. The film portrays her as a bon-vivant, whose lavish lifestyle caught with her rather as a reckless and foolhardy young woman who lacked a sense of personal and financial responsibility. She may have been confined to a mental hospital because she witnessed her father having sex with her neighbour, but was also an anorectic and bulimic, a fact was that was compounded by her habitual use of amphetamines, with her weight eventually dwindling to nearly 90 lbs. At the end of the film, Edie says that nobody is to blame for the failures in her life, and that her bad actions resulted in eventually disastrous consequences, however, the blame of Edie's downfall is never really put on Edie's shoulders, rather on those of Musician and Warhol. Absolving Edie of the tragedy of her life seems a rather Hollywood way to make her more sympathetic but it diminishes from the power and dimensions of her character. Another flaw in the film is the Musician-Edie relationship. He is supposed to come off as a bard of authenticity, in opposition to Warhol, the shallow priest of glitter and mirrors. However, the Musician character is not sufficiently appealing to convince the audience that Edie would leave the Factory for him. In reality, Edie left the Factory for Dylan's milieu and the promise of a Hollywood career, and eventually took up with Dyaln's manager. "Factory Girl" is fundamentally the story of an artist and his damaged muse, their estrangement, and her eventual downfall. Everything else is simply unnecessary. However, unlike what many reviewers of the film seem to think, these are not fatal flaws, and while the story does suffer from them, the film is still a compelling work of art.

The sets and costumes are particularly vibrant and colourful and evocative in creating a beautiful, stylish, and carefree, and insidious world. A film like this can make or break on the accuracy of the sets, costumes, and the general "period feel". Tremendous attention is paid to costuming, particularly in achieving Edie's iconic look. Sienna Miller looks magnificent with Edie's Kohl-rimmed Cleopatra eyes, black leotards and mod wardrobe. The production uses replicas of pieces that Sedgwick actually wore, and they are worn in such a way that one does not notice that there are actually very few actually pieces (Edie, for instance, wears a pair of butterfly shoulder dusters several times throughout the production) until about the fifth viewing. The Factory with its aluminum plastered and assorted doppelgangers, is alternately an absurdist Wonderland and psychedelic cesspool Indeed, the entire production evokes an entire world of easy glamour, hedonism, and creativity, which no longer exists. Some schizophrenic camera work is fashionable and typically for films of the psychedelic genre, and the director pushes the technique to the utmost borders of cliché, but does not enter it.

In all, Factory Girl is not the disastrous embarrassment that it is made out to be but a fascinating if flawed period piece about a young woman's high flight to the epitome of glamour and fame, and crash into misery, addiction, and degradation

Timeline (2003)

Book Excellent movie....OK

[6/10 · 2 March 2007]

First of all i'd like to go with the trend that the book is much better! It's much longer and goes more in-depth into the technology and the middle ages part of it. (It's very hard to put a 400 page book into a movie though) That thing that peeved me off the most was taking out the best scenes (the tournament scene was the scene I was waiting for when I watched this)Also the complete change in character, Doniger was originally a charming handsome young man, Kramer and Gomez were women! And Marek was Dutch...not Scottish but I love Gerard Butler anyways.

The acting was okay. I've seen much better in my day but considering the low budget it was fine. Gerard Butler was very good in this film being a strong actor as usual (physically too!) fitting perfectly into the role of medieval guru.

I was really upset that the took away from the action scenes. A darker shot adds suspense but too much darkness and you cannot see what is going on. And the face the the camera angles where too close you couldn't see the full actions in the fight sequence, of which I was very exited for. But the scenery was beautiful and looked perfect for the movie (GO CANADA!) I was very upset that this movie wasn't better but I liked it as a fun movie just to watch and I do recommend it anyways.

Anna Karenina (2000– )

A Taut Adaptation of a Daunting, Sprawling novel

[8/10 · 15 August 2006]

This Masterpiece Theatre production gives life to Tolstoy vast and ambitious masterpiece. It's a formidable task considering that Tolstoy was often a deeply psychological writer and spent hours probing the souls of his characters. That being said, the cast in this adaptation do a marvelous job in conveying their character's profound and often misguided humanity.

Tolstoy co-protagonists, Anna Karenina and Constantine Levin are both idealists searching for love and meaning. Helen McCrory is not an obvious choice for Anna but the character has suffered from being played by picture perfect actresses who have trouble conveying Anna's passion. Helen McCrory's is believable as a mature woman who is seemingly very comfortable in her skin and has the grace and power to make men fall easily in love with her.

Douglas Hensall plays Levin with gentleness as a sensitive, conflicted man plagued by doubt and his own inadequacies.He romance with Kitty is sweet and understated. His Scottish accent, beard, and awkward manners lend to his rusticism. However, as with any adaptation of Anna Karenina, much of Levin struggles with his own conflicted personal morality and faith are left out.

The best performance comes from Stephen Dillane as Anna's dour, principled husband. A man who believes in keeping his emotions in check, Dillane's Karenin is a man who's suffering his wife's betrayal and is conflicted between the desire to punish her and his love for her. In the novel Karenin is a homely man in his fifties, but here he is far handsomer and about 10 years younger which is helpful because it prevents viewers from believing that Anna deserts old, ugly husband simply because he is old and ugly.

Also of note is Mark Strong as Anna's bon vivant brother, Stiva, who, as in the book, remains likable despite being irresponsible and faithless to his wife, Dolly. Paloma Baeza, Amanda Root and Kevin McKidd also turn in fine performances and Levin's sweetheart, Dolly and Anna's lover, respectively.

The film's use hand-held cameras, quick cuts, and odd angles were at times interesting and at times, very distracting. Admittedly,it was nice to see a period film not shot in the very staid and static fashion of most period films. This production is full of movement: train chug by, people run upstairs, skirts billow, couples argue violently.

It has been said that readers should take Anna Karenina as a "piece of life" and this adaptation has an accessibility and realism and lacks that daunting glossy "period film" sheen. These people are people who could live in our time or any time