Looping the Loop (Arthur Robison, 1928)

 

Arthur Robison’s 1928 silent film Looping the Loop is never less than sturdy, and often captivating, rooted in a well-lived-in sense of circus life (it’s a sometimes disquietingly good source of footage of now-taboo sights such as performing bears and elephants). The film is capped by its protagonist Botto the clown, his white face and bald head and baggy clothes making an indelible visual impact, at once hilarious and poignant and somewhat unnerving, especially as his act involves a dummy that’s his exact double, and that in the film’s most nightmarish sequences appears to be the more alive of the two. Botto is consumed with the idea that a woman could never fall for a man she knew to be a clown, and therefore tells his younger love Blanche that he’s an engineer who has to work at night; despite all his efforts, she falls for a colleague of his, the acrobat Andre (Warwick Ward), enthusiastically depicted as one of the most single-minded and shameless horndogs in the history of film. The title refers to an ambitious set-piece into which Andre pulls the untrained Blanche as an assistant – one of the film’s most striking reveries (which would seem like a deliberate echo of King Kong if this movie hadn’t been there first) has a giant Botto towering over the apparatus, his fist clenching around the tiny Andre, before dropping him to the ground and crushing him underfoot. The film flags at times, but has a good feel for the limited choices available to women - Blanche’s parents all but push her into the arms of the blandly well-to-do engineer, her ultimate return to him appearing as much a fatigued strategic retreat as a heartfelt realization of where her heart lies - and a very enthusiastic performing dog, who unsurprisingly lands the closing shot.

Parking (Jacques Demy, 1985)

 

Jacques Demy’s poorly-received Parking, his modern-day musical version of Orpheus (decades before the wonderful and obviously much better known Hadestown), barely rates a mention in many accounts of the director, as if pushed into its own underworld. Indeed, much about the film is dated (man oh man, those hairstyles) or jarring, and on its own terms it often seems shakily plotted and superficial; Michel Legrand’s music is too often thudding and grating in comparison to his other work for Demy (which actually might speak to the composer's skill in channeling coarser cultural norms). The film works best if taken as a more despairing and desperate expression of Demy's bittersweet, often ambiguous romanticism: despite Orpheus’ great love for his wife Eurydice, it’s suggested that he’s bisexual, and another character (albeit not one of the human ones) refers to having married her uncle (not the only instance of incest in Demy’s work); there are also references to pimping and drug use and intimations of kinky sex. The film takes an intriguingly tangible, low-tech approach to evoking the beyond, as an environment of greys and whites and splashes of red, its administrative structure evocative of Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death but with a more industrially grungy vibe – the title refers to an unprepossessing parking garage that contains an entry portal (a particular spot on the wall becoming visceous and permeable, allowing the intermediary’s black Porsche to travel through). That’s just one respect in which Demy's take on the myth evokes Cocteau’s; another is the casting of Jean Marais as Hades, but for every instance in which such references are meticulous and pleasing, there’s another in which they’re rushed and cursory. Still, the film certainly channels Demy’s wondrously singular sensibility, and is utterly cherishable for all its weaknesses and peculiarities.

The Ugly American (George Englund, 1963)

 

George Englund’s The Ugly American might have turned out to be a memorable instance of an inexperienced director biting off more than he could reasonably hope to have chewed: a complex political-charged South East Asian narrative with major logistical demands, built around Marlon Brando in one of his most waywardly uncooperative periods. Given the challenges, the result remains at least respectable, albeit limited by any amount of over-compression and simplification. Brando is MacWhite, the newly-appointed ambassador to “Sarkan” (largely shot in Thailand), his qualifications based in part on a long friendship with anti-government activist Deong: at his confirmation hearing he defends Deong against charges of being a Communist (and in turn of leading a potential military uprising) but later changes his mind and accordingly adjusts his policy positions in a pro-Government direction, before dramatic events and realizations change his perspective yet again. Brando is laconic and amused at times, steely and resolute at others; he’s inherently fascinating at every turn, while failing to make MacWhite particularly credible or comprehensible as a human being, let alone one who might plausibly be nominated as an ambassador. The character goes through whiplash-inducing changes of perspective, making up major US policy seemingly on the fly, which does of course succeed in conveying the arbitrary nature of international realpolitik, the malleability of the concepts of allies and adversaries; MacWhite’s final address pointedly underlines that the US’s choices in this regard don’t consistently reflect its founding values (and the movie’s final shot succinctly indicates that plenty of people just don’t care). The film handles the chaotic spectacle ably enough, and if nothing else is an intriguing historical reference point: for instance, MacWhite’s proposal to reroute a so-called Freedom Road through the largely unspoiled north of the country and open up “economic development” doesn’t arouse an iota of environmentally-minded objection.  

Madame Freedom (Hyeong-mo Han, 1956)

 

Hyeong-mo Han’s ironically-titled 1956 film Madame Freedom isn’t as potently accomplished as some of the similarly-themed Japanese films of its period, but it’s an absorbing portrait of thwarted material and sexual ambition. The unfulfilled Madame Oh, married to a self-absorbed academic, mostly stuck at home with her young son, takes a job in a store selling high-end imported goods, rapidly getting drawn then into liaisons with other men and involvement in shady financial schemes, such that she’s almost never home; the husband meanwhile has his own, much more restrained quasi-flirtation with a young woman who attends a nighttime grammar class he teaches for a group of typists. The film focuses mainly on a narrow, relatively privileged echelon of Korean society, defined in part by the perceived superiority of Western products and culture (standards like Someone to Watch Over Me and Autumn Leaves dominate the soundtrack) and material striving, a reference point which allows its female characters a new-found confidence and sense of achievement, but at significant personal risk. The film gains much from the withholding quality of lead actress Jeong-rim Kim, her almost mask-like appearance contributing to a productive ambiguity: even as she blatantly flirts with and makes arrangements to meet with other men, it’s unclear how far her desire truly stretches (some of the quietly saddest moments involve the little boy, perpetually sitting alone at his little desk). The ending however leaves no doubt that if her husband, now aware of her conduct, allows her to remain in the home, it will only be as a properly dutiful and compliant mother and wife, in this context a fate at least preferable to that of some of her business associates. The film slows down along the way for several musical numbers, often again Hollywood-influenced, including a charming if drastically out of place “mambo” number.