39: Alice Goodbody (1974, Tom Scheuer)

Owned version: The Blu-ray released in 2017 by Code Red, packaged with Those Mad Mad Movie Makers (the sanitized retitle of the film better known as The Last Porno Flick).

Acquired: Late in 2017 or early in 2018 from Diabolik DVD.

Seen before?: No.

After the deep diving of the last couple pieces, it feels a bit refreshing to splash around in a puddle. Alice Goodbody is a silly Hollywood sex comedy about a sweet, naive woman sleeping her way up the ladder of fame in exchange for an ever-mounting big break in an epic about Julius Caesar. It has nothing grand to offer aside from the breathtaking body of Sharon Kelly. It is instead content to tell the same joke with slight variations - Alice finds out who she has to sleep with next while going down on "2nd assistant production manager" Myron Mittleman (that last name, I know I know), tries to accommodate the weird sexual proclivities of whomever she's been given with a modicum of success, finds her role subsequently increased and then suffers an on-set accident that puts her out of commission and demands a delay on set. This goes through five cycles, after which Scheuer hits the blackout on a hoary eye-roller of a punchline.

Much to my surprise, I found it kind of charming.

A lot of that has to do with the wide-eyed gee-shucks charm of the voluptuous Ms. Kelly, who has the difficult task of playing this material light and cheeky without letting the innate misogyny sour it or making Alice seem like too much of a dupe. She is blessedly more than up to the task, making Alice into a sunny and optimistic sort who's up for whatever because, hey, you gotta pay your dues and who wouldn't want to be in the movies? Or maybe I'm just responding to the fact that Scheuer skirts the edge of dizzy-dame stereotypes by turning Alice into a hardcore, omnivorous cinephile - if she's spacey, it's not that she's stupid but that she's lost in her head thinking about the film she just saw or looking forward to the one she's going to see later. Seriously - her first line of dialogue sees her waxing rhapsodic about Borzage's 7th Heaven, her fateful date with Mittleman sees her exclaiming, "This is exactly how June Preisser was discovered!" and one injury is met with, "I bet nothing like this ever happened to Maria Montez!" I'm just saying, I relate to being at your job and thinking about whatever you stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to watch, how could I not, I'm weak like that.

Ms. Kelly, with her open face and big easy smile, also serves as a beacon towards the script's feathery cheer. The light touch is critical in that it manages to differentiate it from the reams of contemporaneous comedies that come off as flat sitcoms, all sledgehammer jokes and dead-air timing (e.g. the film with which it shares a disc). It feints towards setting up a dichotomy between the wonder of the movies felt by Alice and the cynical sausage-grinding that actually produces those movies, but it never gets too insistent on that cynicism - it's too busy being goofy. There's a point-of-view shot from inside Alice's vagina. The director is a dime-store spoof on Erich Von Stroheim about whom is said at one point, "He thinks De Mille mighta made it if he didn't think so small!" The legendary George "Buck" Flower figures in a food-slathered sex scene that either doubles down on Tom Jones or prefigures Hot Shots!, I can't quite decide. Flower also has a bit where he spies on a neighbor of his having sex with a man in a gorilla costume. The accidents on set, as they get more elaborate and Scheuer starts to have fun with the fact that we know a crack-up is inevitable, start to seem like a lost Final Destination entry. An elephant psychiatrist boasts of having shown a frigid female elephant pornographic films. ("Of people?" "No, of elephants!") Hell, scratch that - all you need to know is that there is an elephant psychiatrist in this film. I can't defend Alice Goodbody on any real merit. I can't say it holds up over feature length. I can't even expect I'll ever watch it again. But it was a nice surprise to actually enjoy a '70s smutcom, to a degree, and that's more value than I had expected.

38: Akira (1988, Katsuhiro Otomo)

Owned version: The two-disc DVD released by Pioneer in 2001.

Acquired: Most likely around Christmas time in 2001, either from the Times Square Virgin Megastore or the Tower Records that was next to Lincoln Center. (Neither storefront is there any more, to my everlasting chagrin.)

Seen before?: Four times - once in the early '90s from the old Streamline dubbed VHS (the original version, not the later version co-released with Orion), once in probably 1998 or 1999 from the subtitled VHS Streamline released in the mid-'90s, once in April of 2001 during the theatrical re-release that featured the new Pioneer dub and once from this disc on March 9th of 2010, which led to this sorry punt of a review. As I'm typing this, I'm noticing that without meaning to my fifth viewing of Akira occurred exactly nine years after my last one.

The impression I feel I'm giving here is that everything on my previous Tumblr was tossed-off garbage. Which... I dunno. There's a lot of quick-sketch nonsense there, that's true. I was having trouble balancing my work demands with my viewing desires, as I often am. So a lot of what I threw up there was to get stuff out of the way so I could feel good about moving on to the next film. I feel less able to do that nowadays - if I'm writing something here, I want it to be worthwhile, and if I want to just toss off a bit of snark I've got Letterboxd for that. That said, there's a few times I went longer over there that I'm still a little proud of. In particular, I got a few decent pieces off the idea of the "Rosetta shot," a shot capped from a film that seemed to sum up the whole of the endeavor, whether for good or ill. (Here's an NSFW example.) To start my trip through Akira, I'd like to resurrect that idea. So here it is:

This is, in the middle of a melee, a riot cop shooting a protestor point-blank in the chest with a gas grenade. I'd never really registered this moment in my previous runs through this, because it's not really meant to be noticed - it's a small touch, a quick dose of grim color with which to add definition to the world Otomo has built. But it stuck out for me this time, if for no other reason than my brain kept entertaining the slim possibility: What if this guy wasn't a protestor? What if he was just an urban scavenger who happened to be in the vicinity, saw a piece of piping and a helmet that would be useful to him, and tried to make off with it before the situation exploded around him? And even if he is a protestor... does that mean he deserves a gas charge to the chest at point-blank range when he's already clearly affected by the gas from previous charges? This is, at bottom, a stark illustration of the heedless exercising of power; that it's quietly tossed off in the middle of a larger setpiece does nothing to water down the elemental truth it gets at regarding Akira. For this is absolutely a movie about power, about those who wield it and what they do with it and how that leaves any number of relative innocents crushed under concrete and steel.

Otomo is not subtle about this. His characters are aware of the forces they're given to control (or not control) and often discuss the morality of that duty towards these forces. (Upon being presented with Tetsuo's brainwaves by excitable Einstein-looking egghead Dr. Onishi, "Maybe we shouldn't touch that power," is the response of Colonel Shikishima - the closest thing to a good guy on the governmental side of the story, and even he stages a military coup later in the film out of what he deems necessity.) But... well, let's take a look at the context for the above shot. The protestor comes staggering out of the cloud of gas, head bowed, unable to see the cop. The cop sees the protestor, who poses no clear threat, takes a minute, draws a bead and fires away. This is not a heat-of-the-moment snap decision - this is as considered an attack as can occur under these circumstances. The cop knows not who he's firing upon, just that he's firing upon someone who isn't a cop, which means therefore in this situation they're an automatic enemy, something less-than. He's under the grip of The Suspicion. The Suspicion is enough to warrant action, to reaffirm the right of the strong over the weak lest the weak become the strong. The Suspicion is never wrong.

So it goes with any figure in this film with a certain level of power - they must demean, dismiss or otherwise dehumanize their targets so as not to feel conflicted about their actions. Onishi overlooks Tetsuo's humanity for the sake of advancing science, realizing too late that he's unleashed something uncontrollable; the ministers on the government board downplay Shikishima's authority and ignore his fears so they can justify their own station; the bike gangs fight as squadrons rather than individuals, in the manner of any war or biker film. By the time Tetsuo's immense rage (borne of a life of being bullied, of being seen as less-than) manifests into immense psychic powers, he's learned thoroughly how not to consider the effect - the crucial test is his first attack on other humans, in the hallway of the hospital where he's being kept, and Otomo depicts it from the far end of said hallway, in the distance and at a remove that matches the casual, almost accidental way Tetsuo turns what he views as his adversaries into streaks of blood on the ceiling.

This sort of power, this ability to kill with a thought that turns men into callous gods... the application of such seems a logical end point for the post-WWIII society depicted by Otomo, a society on the edge of disaster hurtling heedlessly towards another attempt at self-extinction. One of the shriveled children who serve as one of the lines of defense against Tetsuo has a premonition of this extinction, proclaiming, "The city will crumble, and so many people will die..." Yet it can be said that the city is already crumbled, already gone to seed under the weight of anger and political discord and grotesque self-interest and The Suspicion. Decay is all around, over and under and through the remains of the old city left to fester alongside the gleaming neon distraction of Neo-Tokyo, because all flesh will die and all flesh will rot and even a god can be reduced to component body parts hidden underneath a stadium. And if all flesh will die, and the world built by people can said to be an extension of them, what does that say about the permanence of the world? Skin splits, glass shatters, stone crumbles, metal buckles - everything is impermanent in the face of the kind of power that can crack the earth in two. That kind of power... should it even be in the hands of people? What positive application could it have? What could it be other than a gas grenade into the chest of society?

Yet Otomo also finds beauty in the destruction. His stirring compositions, skewed and emphasizing the enormity of the edifices and the lack thereof of the people dwarfed by and wandering through them, are consistently gorgeous. When windows blow out, the glass floats down like crystal rain; when smoke billows it does so in enveloping clouds like cumuli crashing to the firmament. His indulgence of body horror has a grotesque and memorable poetry, whether it be bodies erupting in blood like fountains, milk leaking from nightmarish evil toys or Tetsuo's flesh ballooning into an undulating mountain of undifferentiated slime-tissue. A brief jaunt into space is a beautifully silent ode to breakdown. More than a visual beauty, though, there's an emotional beauty in the ways its characters find to push back against The Suspicion. If unchecked power reigns free and gruesome self-interest is the way of the ruling class, defiance is still an option - a foolhardy one, but that's better than no option at all. Kaneda ropes a group of revolutionaries into trying to free Tetsuo and nearly succeeds. Ryu, head of the revolutionaries, gets betrayed by and shot by the government mole who's been feeding him information, yet still manages to outlive the man who shot him, however briefly, and achieve a sad sort of grace. Shikishima fires his pistol at the rapidly mutating Tetsuo, knowing he'll be overwhelmed by the tidal wave of flesh and willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of the three psychic children; his selflessness is repaid when Akira is reborn. And Kaneda rides into battle with just a laser gun and the knowledge that Tetsuo was once his friend, trusting that this will be enough to save him, willing to even leap into the heart of a cataclysm to try. If this does all lead to destruction, maybe something new can be built from the wreckage. Maybe something better - the birth of a new universe. One where The Suspicion holds no sway. We can dream.

37: After the Rehersal (1984, Ingmar Bergman)

Owned version: The Blu-ray released by Criterion as part of the massive Ingmar Bergman's Cinema box set they released this past November.

Acquired: Christmas gift from my mother, though it didn't arrive until late January due to the overwhelming interest in the set.

Seen before?: No.

"Many directors' paths are lined with the corpses of actors. Have you ever tried to count your victims?"

Ingmar Bergman's After the Rehersal does not open with a title card. It instead opens with the above image, a shot that drifts over the length of a dressed stage to find its protagonist, director Henrik Vogler, with his head down on a desk. Is he dozing or just collecting his thoughts? No matter - at any rate, he slows stirs himself into upright, conscious life. Soon Anna, the lead actress in the production of Strindberg's A Dream Play Vogler is currently rehearsing, will arrive on set, claiming to be searching for a lost bracelet. Vogler assumes this to be an excuse, that's she's actually looking to talk to him - and he's proven right in quick order. Their two-handed verbal and emotional sparring, with a midfilm break for another back-and-forth between Vogler and older actress Rakel, comprise the body of After the Rehearsal. Just as Autumn Sonata was built out of the sparring between Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann, and as Persona was built from the tension between Ullmann  and Bibi Andersson, and as Scenes from a Marriage was crafted from the arguments between Ullmann and Erland Josephson... who plays Vogler in After the Rehearsal.

So this is familiar ground for Bergman - indeed, why should we expect anything less from a late-career work from a master with such an identifiable stamp? The value here is in how Bergman embraces the familiar - indeed, weaves it into the fabric of the work. Anna, played with beautifully by Lena Olin, is the latest muse for Vogler, but her connections run deeper than a simple working relationship - one of Vogler's previous muses, Rakel, was in fact her mother, and the role she plays in A Dream Play was one that her mother had previously played for Vogler. This is, in fact, the fifth time Vogler has directed A Dream Play, and there is much discussion not only of Rakel but of another actress, Maria, who had also performed the role previously. Both these actresses, it's revealed, are deceased. Further, it's not just the material that has been reused - the set dressing is also a hand-me-down, with the centrally-placed couch in particular cited as being a holdover from a production of Hedda Gabler. Ghosts and echoes abound this production, and that's even before a literal ghost drifts in for a chat.

But there's something else, another angle that I think makes the idea of old, repetitive material into something productive. Early on, Vogler chastizes himself in voiceover for "...this parody of conviction that's gone sour and crumbled," speaking to a weariness with something well-trod; when he follows this up with, "Why justify myself to this young person who doesn't care what I say?" there's a sense that he's struggling to find his place in the modern way of things. Making Vogler a theater director invites a temptation to read this as autobiography of sorts for Bergman, a temptation the material certainly encourages when, say, Vogler tells Anna, "I make sure the audience loves you," and the film cuts to an over-shoulder shot from Anna's point of view, placing us in Anna's shoes as The Director Himself talks directly to us. But it's more than that - there's a feeling that this is all foregone, that these arguments are not new, that the carpet on the stage has a path worn into it that is currently being followed because that's the way Vogler (and by extension Bergman) wants it. Olin follows in the path of her mother because Vogler demands it; even when she protests about her ability to tackle this demanding role, he responds with, "You can only be that bad if you're talented." Rakel shows up because Vogler incarnates her as a way to expunge lingering issues regarding her and her daughter, and when he says, "Not a day goes by that I don't think of you," is he working out his guilt for having let the elder woman irreparably down or justifying why he's sucked himself into her daughter's orbit? When Anna throws a wrench into the narrative Vogler has dedicated himself to playing out, he responds by charging ahead anyway and narrates in full a fantastic love affair for the two, directing it down the cruelest possible path that results in maximum misery for both parties no matter how Anna tries to get ahead of or redirect this narrative. There's a telling moment during this long sequence where the two are strolling around the stage as Vogler spins his preferred future - at one point, Bergman lets them walk off frame and then zooms down to the stage floor, highlighting the swatches of gaffer's tape that serve as marks to be hit during the play. That's quite the hand-tip there.

If Vogler is then controlling the narrative, as a director is wont to do, sending it along a certain line that satisfies him, it's instructive that we come back to the first shot. Vogler is at his desk in repose. Maybe he's thinking, maybe he's slipped into a cat nap. The film that follows is inexorably tethered to his perspective - he's the only one who we hear on voiceover, he talks to Rakel even though she's dead (with Anna out of focus in the background), and when the story doesn't go to his liking he starts telling a different one. With all the back-and-forth about sadness and aging and death ("I breathe decay. You think I don't know that?"), combined with the pointedness of making the central production A Dream Play and the openly-fantastic interlude with Rakel, I suspect what we have here is not a case of a director breaking down the psyche of a young actress but a director breaking down the psyche of an old director. This is, on at least one level, a feature-length argument Bergman is having inside his own head, and if the chamber up there leaks out some echoes onto the stage where his characters are standing, so be it. Everything around him has gone silent save for the voices in his head yelling at one another; when Vogler muses right before the blackout, "What worried me most in that moment was that I couldn't hear the church bells," it suggests that even God has gone silent. Bergman might know something of that.

36: A.K. (1985, Chris Marker)

Owned version: This is included as an extra on the 2005 Criterion DVD of Ran, of which this is a chronicle of that film's making. Of sorts.

Acquired: Probably in April or May of 2009, shortly after Criterion announced that the disc was going out of print, from my then-local Borders.

Seen before?: No.

"We will try to show what we see the way we see it."

I really should have written about this back when I saw it at the end of January. But I waited too long, and now most of what I thought I could say is lost in the fog of my brain, much as the horses that fade into the fog in a striking shot captured by Marker in this, a stirring and unique portrait of one great artist observing another great artist and creating art from what he sees. All I have are my notes, which are as always a rough sketch of things that caught my interest, meant to provide a path forward for the piece I intend to write. Try as I might, I cannot grasp the shape of that piece as of now. So, I'll put in pin in this. I'll note that Marker's resolutely observational approach here, an inspired choice, reveals this sort of epic, expansive filmmaking to be as arduous as stop-motion animation and not too far removed besides - both involve laborious, time-consuming setups meant to capture mere minutes of footage at best. I will refer to a few images that caught my eye - a series of extras being made up and armored for a battle scene, with one man stretching his jaw in a way I found worth comment; the film's composer strolling through the mist like a purposeful phantom; a period-appropriate army marching past a small cadre of parked cars, two time periods smashing together at an odd angle; a man carrying a sheaf of grass painted an absurd and eye-catching shade of gold; lighting rigs framed and shot so that they appear to be closeups of suns hanging in a fading blue sky; Kurosawa himself in the midst of all this chaos, exuding an extraordinary calm.

If the typical making-of featurette is a demonstration of how something came to be, it stands to reason that they exist as testaments of activity - memory aids for things that happened, films made to help us remember. In that, Marker exploits this, draws it out, makes it text - tape recorders, VCRs, these "imperfect inventions" are devices of remembrance. And, as befits this project, they are then objects of creation. As Marker says at the outset, "Memory is what you create from." His creation stands interlinked with Kurosawa's creation. And my writing about his film about Kurosawa's film would then be a further responsive act of creation. Yet I fall down at this task. My memory, in this instance, fails me. But I must move forward or stagnate. I will come back to this another time. It deserves better.