Rocco and His Brothers

ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS        A  
Italy  France  (175 mi)  1960  d:  Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti was heir to one of Milan’s richest families, as his mother inherited the Erba Pharmaceuticals fortune, where young Visconti grew up training and breeding racehorses before fashion designer Coco Chanel introduced him to French filmmaker Jean Renoir, where he began his career as Renoir’s assistant director.  Despite living in great luxury in a palace on the Italian island of Ischia, where today there is a museum dedicated to his work, possessing original works by Picasso and Gustav Klimt, he was also an avidly outspoken Communist after the war and openly gay, where throughout his film career he also worked as a theater and opera director.  This apparent contradiction in class consciousness lies at the heart of his films, as along with Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica, and others, they forged an Italian neorealist movement in the late 1940’s, much of which was forced upon them as they had no money, featuring non-professional actors, or poorly paid stars, often shooting on the street as many film studios were destroyed by the war, mostly in the rundown sections of urban areas, featuring the plight of the poor and the lower working class, focusing on their everyday struggles to survive the economic disaster that was postwar Italy.  Despite his connection with neorealism, Visconti also revealed an operatic flair for artificiality, beautifully expressed in White Nights (La Niotti Bianche) (1957) which was shot entirely within the artificially constructed world inside the Cinecittà studios.  Visconti is acknowledged to be one of the greatest directors of women, including Clara Calamai in OBSESSIONE (1943), Anna Magnani in BELLISSIMA (1951), Alida Valli in SENSO (1954), Maria Schell in White Nights (La Niotti Bianche) (1957), and Annie Girardot in this film, where the latter two, Austrian and French-speaking, were both dubbed in Italian.  Manipulating men for sport, in each case these women are representative of dominating forces men can neither resist nor overcome.  Released the same year as Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes, and Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA (1960), which won the Palme D’Or, the film was up against stiff competition, winning the FIPRESCI and Special Jury Prize at Venice. 

Often viewed as a flawed masterpiece, there remains an unreconciled tension between the realist, near documentary-style vision of a Marxist society and several over-the-top melodramatic moments where characters exhibit an operatic flair for excessive theatricality.  While not ruining the film, the exaggerations stand out as obvious contradictions to the otherwise low-key and brutally realistic style.  Adapted from the Giovanni Testor novel The Bridge of Ghisolfa, the story has an historical but also epic sweep about it, spanning more than a decade, following the continuing hardships of the Parondi family as they leave behind their traditional rural home in Southern Italy for a major city in the industrial north, apparently one the first films to portray a North/South migration, where the nation’s so-called economic miracle occurs almost entirely in the North.  The film captures the essence of postwar Italy and the politics of class, set in the housing projects and working class sections of Milan, the city of Visconti’s birth, becoming a historically relevant time capsule portrait of a vanishing era.  As the title points out, there are five brothers, each represented by a different chapter in the film, including the oldest, Vincenzo (Spiros Focás), who is already living in Milan, in the midst of an engagement party with the family of his fiancé, Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale), when the rest of his family arrives in mass out of the blue, carrying all their belongings as they pay him a surprise visit.  It’s a surprise, all right, when the perspective bride’s family realizes they haven’t come to congratulate the happy couple, but to migrate permanently to Milan, where they certainly pose an immediate logistics problem of where they can stay.  As quickly as they are welcomed with glasses of wine, the proud mother, Rosaria (Katina Paxinou, whose stereotypical long-suffering matriarch routine is almost cringe-worthy), realizes they’re seen as a financial burden and angrily grabs her sons, vowing never to return. Thus the family conflict begins. 

Given the ingenious advice by a relative to move into the cheap housing projects by paying first month’s rent, but after awhile, if you stop paying, they won’t throw you out on the street, suggesting this was quite common in Milan, as they’re already living in the city’s cheapest housing.  Simone, Renato Salvatori’s best role, is the next oldest, becoming completely smitten by the sexual exploits of a willfully manipulative local prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot), whose family lives upstairs but continually kicks her out, so she takes refuge prancing around this house of brothers where Simone can’t take his eyes off her, much to his mother’s regret.  Jobs are scarce, but Simone picks up a few bucks in the boxing ring, but his first few wins go to his head, as he spends all his winnings on Nadia, filled with the deluded notion that his future is lined with victories.  But he drinks, smokes, and womanizes, refusing to train hard, which eventually catches up to him.  Enter the next brother, Rocco (Alain Delon, also dubbed), the quiet one with the pretty face, who initially works in a dry cleaners run exclusively by women who are all enthralled by his presence.  When Simone steals some clothing to impress Nadia, Rocco can’t go back to work there, so he follows his brother into the ring.  This habit of forgiving his brother and bailing him out of jams that he continually gets himself into is the central theme of the film, as Simone’s troubles only escalate, contrasting the traditional macho sexuality of animalistic men who think they own women as their exclusive property with those who feel genuine love and respect for them.  Envisioned by Visconti as the saintly Prince Myshkin from Dostoyevski’s The Idiot, “a representative of illustrious goodness as an end in itself,” Rocco is seen as the only saving grace holding the family together, even persuading Nadia to give up prostitution after spending a year in prison. 

But the story only grows bleaker, as Simone’s trajectory spirals further out of control, becoming a drunken brute that turns on his brother when he takes an interest in Nadia, enraged that Rocco is stealing “his” girl, as if he still owns her, even though he hasn’t seen her in years, leading to a horribly violent rape of Nadia in front of Rocco, followed by a vicious beating when his younger brother won’t apologize for what he’s done.  In a strangely baffling and utterly appalling moment framed atop the Milan cathedral, Rocco changes course and urges Nadia to return to Simone, knowing he’s a toxic entity, thinking this is somehow good for the family.  This is perhaps the key moment in the film, as Rocco’s saintly concern is not for Nadia, who’s been brutally raped, but for his brother’s fragile lack of self esteem.  The result is pathetic, of course, becoming a devastating critique of masculinity as seen through the lives of both Rocco and Simone, the two most developed characters of the film, especially when Simone and Nadia move under his mother’s roof, bringing nothing but endless shame to the family.  This is underlined further through a homosexual subtext, where a wealthy boxing promoter is attracted to Simone’s descent, where the promoter’s ultimate satisfaction is sexually taking advantage of fallen fighters that are so desperately in debt they’re willing to submit to anything.  This corrupt promoter ends up blackmailing the family afterwards, where Rocco signs away his future boxing earnings to pay off his brother’s enormously inflated debt.  In doing so, he becomes another wage slave while also abandoning his dream of returning to the South and reclaiming their lost land. 

The highly mobile, black and white cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno veers between ultra realism and heavily stylized film noir effects, with heavily darkened scenes during particularly murky moments, while Nino Rota’s musical score continually finds the right emotional counterpoint.  The film is clearly an influence of Martin Scorsese’s RAGING BULL (1980), where in each the fight sequences are beautifully handled, and also Francis Ford Coppola who chose Nino Rota to score his epic GODFATHER (1972, 1974) films.  At nearly 3-hours, allowing thorough exploration of the characters, the true scope of the film is an apocalyptic Greek tragedy played out within the context of larger historical forces, where perhaps the key to understanding the family’s psychological descent are the social circumstances they have to deal with, where the horrors of urban existence are all too common as jobs remain scarce.  But as Pauline Kael noted, it’s sexual passion that destroys the family, where the performances by Salvatori and Girardot are nothing less than stunning, culminating with a scene right out of Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck, a bleak, working class nightmare where in a crazed, jealous rage the protagonist kills the woman he loves, refusing to allow anyone else to have her, where it’s suggested this is due to the accumulated effects of poverty and economic exploitation, continually being beaten down by a society that allows him to have nothing.  The surreal nature of the act defies all moral boundaries and may be an irredeemable sin.  Simone’s crime destroys the unity of the family and their hopes of ever returning home, beautifully expressed in the bleak emptiness of the elegiac final shot, suggesting freedom, as represented by Rocco’s idealized hopes and dreams of being able to save Simone and/or his family, exists only in the abstract, while working class people must walk to the beat of the factory whistle where being a wage slave, exactly what they left the South to avoid becoming, is the only reality.

The Day He Arrives (Book chon bang hyang)

THE DAY HE ARRIVES (Book chon bang hyang)      B                     

South Korea  (79 mi)  2011  d:  Hong Sang-soo

No one makes films like this anymore except Korean director Hong Sang-soo, who has become something of a master of the minimalist feature, breaking everything down into small, compartmentalized pieces, where like thoughts turned into memories, they replay in his head over and over again, a bit different each time in an existential examination of identity.  Certainly since WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN (2004), Hong has been making variations of the same film, where a professor or esteemed professional meets with a group of students or admirers, spending the duration of the film smoking and eating noodles, also drinking profusely and behaving badly or awkwardly, often leading to regrettable sexual encounters that he’d just as soon forget, where drinking and his boorish behavior are the centerpiece of the film, showing men behaving badly in a culture that is otherwise dominated by male power.  Beginning in Hong’s next film TALE OF CINEMA (2005), narrative strands began to intersect in his films, where the same moment is reshot from another character’s perspective, offering impressionistic glimpses that show life continually moving and evolving, never remaining static, where thoughts and memories have a life of their own.  WOMAN ON THE BEACH (2006) is one of Hong’s most mature works, where he begins to feel comfortable with his developing style, writing his own films except his first feature, using a complex set of characters in an intricate exploration of obsessions and personal relationships through drunken scenes revolving around food and drink in restaurants where characters speak ill of one another, followed by solitary, reflective moments smoking, and also intimate scenes in hotel rooms that nearly always go wrong, usually with tears and intense self-loathing, motifs that occur throughout his filmography.  THE DAY HE ARRIVES is one of his sparer efforts where the entire story is composed of bits and pieces of conversation, most all of it in the exact same places, a reliable Korean Noodle House and a completely intimate and relaxed neighborhood bar interestingly enough called Novel that is so comfortable, it’s like a figment of one’s imagination, as often the patrons are the only ones there, helping themselves to whatever they want, where payment apparently is on the honor system.  

Men almost always dominate a Hong film, as often they’re the only ones with an actual career, but they are nearly always surrounded by younger and more attractive women, where it’s the women who make the films interesting, and this film is no exception.  Sang-joon (Yu Jun-sang) is a film professor in an outlying university, but earlier in his career he was a filmmaker, making four films in Seoul before moving away from the city.  Back in Seoul for a few days, he’s there to meet an old friend, but initially gets sidetracked and is instead invited to join a group of male film students in drinking, spending the day and night getting plastered, ultimately turning on the students and telling them to get lost.  Dropping in unannounced, dead drunk at the door of an ex- girlfriend, Kyungjin (Kim Bo-kyung), someone he hasn’t seen in two years seems like the right thing to do, under the circumstances, and she calls him on it right away, embarrassed by his all-too-belated feeble gesture where he pitifully cries in her lap, claiming she’s the only one for him, confessing his undying love.  Why this works, who knows?  But he spends the night, seen leaving in the morning where he vows never to contact her again and urges her to do the same.  The guy is a lout, but she obviously has long-standing feelings for him, where she’s sad to see him go.  By this time, he’s heard from his friend, Young-ho (Kim Sang-jung), an older film critic who has brought along an attractive female colleague, Boram (Song Seon-mi), who’s seen his films and they meet in the noodle house before retreating to a back-alley neighborhood bar where they are the only customers.  When the owner arrives, she’s the spitting image of Kyungjin, named Yejeon, played by the same actress.  Over the course of three nights, they repeat their exact same routine, meeting at the noodle house before retreating to the bar, where each time they are the lone customers, where the proprietess arrives much later, but joins into their rambling conversation, where the camera simply observes, interestingly shot in Black and White.

Each night the barroom conversation is so similar, talking about the exact same thing, it’s as if it was queued up from the night before only to begin again where it left off, where it plays out like different takes on the same event rather than consecutive nights in the same place.  What it really comes down to are the thoughts playing out in Sang-joon’s head, each given a slightly different perspective, where he’s also receiving text messages from Kyungjin, confessing her longing for him, playing piano each night as well while engaging with his friends and taking a similar interest in Yejeon.  There’s a beautiful scene in the snow that recalls Visconti’s heavily romanticized but fleeting affair in White Nights (La Niotti Bianche) (1957), where Sang-joon takes a break and has a smoke out the back door overlooking the alley, watching the snow fall in silence, eventually joined by Yejeon who eagerly wants to buy some dumplings, where they have a chance to kiss in the snow, leading to an exact replica of the evening with Kyungjin, where Sang-joon pledges his everlasting love, that he’ll never leave her, making love through the night, leaving in the morning promising to never see her again.  The men in Hong Sang-soon films are like broken records, where fidelity never enters the picture.  Boram, on the other hand, is the alluring centerpiece between the two male friends, where both obviously enjoy her attention, as she’s likely smarter and perhaps more talented than either one of them, but held back as a woman, as men in Korea are slotted into career positions, not women.  While Young-ho exhibits a kind of drunken outburst of support for Boram that’s really rather pathetic, neither man engages in any sense of sexist outrage on her behalf, or even acknowledge there’s an issue of second class status, but they’re certainly aware of cultural practices that exist in Korea where men are the favored group over women, receiving all the advantages.  So it’s a bit ironic that Sang-joon’s *former* film career receives constant attention, even though he’s no longer making films, claiming he hasn’t the “energy” anymore, but is instead teaching at some outlying university where he’s too ashamed to even acknowledge his lowly salary.  After three nights of this, there’s not a whit of difference between what happens in any of them, as there’s nothing to indicate Sang-joon has learned from his mistakes or would do anything differently the next time.  The cycle of repetition is a stinging comment on the unchanging, predetermined status quo that exists in perpetuity in Korea, where life goes on exactly as it did before.         

White Nights (La Niotti Bianche)

WHITE NIGHTS (La Niotti Bianche)     A-                 

Italy  France  (97 mi)  1957  d:  Luchino Visconti

1957 is a significant year in world cinema, as it is uniquely connected to historical events, coming one year after the spirited idealism of the Hungarian student uprising of 1956 was crushed by an invasion of Soviet tanks mowing down dissidents in the streets of Budapest, also one year after the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party where Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a speech denouncing Stalin and the Stalinist purges as well as the gulag labor systems, leading to the Russian release of THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957), the first film after the death of Stalin to put a human face in Russian films, which went on to win the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1958.  What’s unique about this era is a political thaw, an opening of doors previously closed, where art could once again flourish and express itself freely and openly without having to follow the dictates of a heavy handed, State-controlled social realist agenda.  This also led to a changing style in Italian cinema, where the post-war Neo-Realist movement softened its grip, allowing greater freedoms onscreen than ever before, which led to Fellini’s NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957), featuring the incomparable Giuletta Masina, which arguably stands up to anything Fellini ever created in his lifetime, and also this film by Luchino Visconti, which couldn’t be more unlike his earlier works, moving from naturalistic, on-site locations into a completely artificially constructed world inside the Cinecittà studios, much of it set in a dreamlike layer of fog, beautifully illuminated by street lamps.  The set design of this film is hugely imaginative, transporting Dostoevsky’s short story White Nights from the closely observed detail of St. Petersburg to an Italian city of bridges and canals, loosely based on the city of Livorno.  Bresson remade this film in Paris as Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur... (1971), and what the two versions have in common is a beautifully idealized construction of a utopian vision, something rarely seen in cinema. 

Opening pensively with the enchanting Nino Rota theme heard here Nino Rota - Le Notti Bianche (1957) on YouTube (2:48), Marcello Mastroianni as Mario finds himself alone on the city streets at night after spending a pleasant but uneventful afternoon in the country with his boss and extended family.  A recent transplant to the city, he knows no one, so he takes in the rhythm and atmosphere of the streets around him, where a realist element continues to exist in the way the walls are crumbling and the paint peeling, with piles of garbage swept off to the side of the street where he unsuccessfully attempts to make friends with a stray dog.  What catches his eye is a woman standing alone on a bridge trying to hide her tears, German-Austrian actress Maria Schell, who he immediately befriends.  But despite his polite manner, she quickly runs away, evading his every advance, but eventually relents and agrees to meet him on the bridge the next night.  While it should be noted that there was always an unreconciled tension between the socialist agenda of neorealism and the operatic theatricality of Visconti, who after all, filmed three versions of Verdi’s La Traviata in his lifetime, it is also often said he is one of the greatest directors of women, including Clara Calamai in OBSESSIONE (1943), Anna Magnani in BELLISSIMA (1951), Alida Valli in SENSO (1954), Annie Girardot in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960), but also Ms. Schell as Natalia in this film.  In each case, these females use men for sport and wreak their havoc with a psychic force men can neither resist nor overcome.  Natalia is a perfect example, though some might find her performance overly simple and childish, living at home, never leaving the side of her blind grandmother, she is the picture of innocence and naïveté, yet when the floodgates of emotions are released, she is a force of nature, revealing a hidden dimension of love held in reserve for a lodger (Jean Marais) in her grandmother’s house that she met and fell in love with a year ago, briefly seen through flashbacks, but he had to abruptly leave, agreeing to meet her on the bridge in exactly one year.  Finding this story fairy tale-like and delusional, Mario can’t help but suspend his disbelief if only to comfort her, as she is in considerable pain at the thought he won’t show up.

Over the course of four nights, they meet on the bridge, where by the last night, Mario is tired of being sucked into her continuing melodrama.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, Natalia lives in constant hope, believing with the purity of a child, where to dispel her notion is simply cruel and unethical, leaving Mario no choice but to play along.  What’s especially interesting is to see how Dostoevsky’s story of a hopelessly adrift male dreamer attaches himself to an even more innocent girl, whose own dreamlife simply overwhelms his, where Visconti shows Mario grounded by the poverty of his economcis, as he’s so regrettably poor, awakening in his pitiful room every morning to the gossip and chatter of his intrusive landlady, who has a way of getting into everybody’s business, where there is nothing remotely evident of a private thought.  With Natalia, however, hearing her hold fast to her illusions has an almost calming and tranquil effect, as it takes the dreariness out of his own miserable life.  By the final night, however, Mario is convinced their own love can work, little by little building up his courage in admitting how he feels, which is perfectly expressed in a dance sequence where he starts out confessing his shyness, knowing nothing about dance, remaining coy until another man shows an interest in his girl, where he suddenly lights up the room in an outrageously intoxicating sequence set to the music of “Thirteen Women” by Bill Haley and the Comets seen here:  Le Notti Bianche on YouTube (6:08).  This sets into play a deliciously romantic set of sequences where Mario confesses his love, where his heart literally opens up in such a delightfully natural fashion, where Mastroianni is nothing less than divine in the role.  As the snow begins to fall, so beautifully captured by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, it’s as if their storybook lives have an enchanted touch of grace after all, adding a poetic layer of innocence to their lives, which is suddenly bright and new, reversing courses suddenly, evolving into sheer ecstasy and exaltation on the part of Natalia, who rushes off at the sight of her lost love waiting for her on the bridge, leaving Mario heartsick and utterly devastated, all but crushing his spirit, as if the air suddenly rushes out of his lungs, finding himself once again alone in the world, even more isolated than before.       

Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur)

FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur)          A                    

France  (87 mi)  1971 d:  Robert Bresson

One of the hardest Bresson films to track down, nearly inaccessible for 30 years, yet one of the most exquisite reveries in cinema, also one of the few Bresson films with an optimistic sense of humor, a perfect antidote to the searing realism and depths of despair from Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), often viewed as the end of the French New Wave and the best expression for the end of optimism from the 60’s, where Eustache’s suicide confirms a terminal collapse of will and hope, though this is actually one of the better 60’s films out there, perfectly capturing the love of an ideal, only instead of viewed through the politics of student protests and demonstrations this is seen through the unique vantage point of two young lovers who meet accidentally in Paris.  Easily Bresson’s most luminous and stunningly beautiful film, whose use of music, color, and gorgeous locations perfectly capture the gentle tone of innocence and the first pangs of love, a film that simply takes one’s breath way.  Like his previous film Une Femme Douce (1969), this is another film of transience, a film nearly defined by fleeting moments, like an impressionist stream-of-conscious series of thoughts strung together over a short period of time that literally radiate with bursts of life.  Adapted from another Dostoevsky short story, White Nights, gorgeously made by Visconti with Marcello Mastroianni in White Nights (La Niotti Bianche) (1957), but rather than dwell on the wrenching disappointment of a lost dream, Bresson amusingly accentuates the fickle behavior of youth, often showing groups of young bohemian kids singing and playing music on the streets as characters pass by, much like the mod kids seen in Antonioni’s BLOW-UP (1966), which serve as momentary interludes of love poems, where the characters stop and listen before moving on with their lives.  Told with a decided existential twist, the film expresses how isolated and self-absorbed kids are in the innocent throes of youth, where they’re still discovering who they are and what they believe in, not sure yet where they fit into society, yet ready to impulsively make that leap.       

After spending a delightful sunny afternoon walking through the countryside (Four nights of a dreamer - Robert Bresson - YouTube see the opening ten minutes of the film), a young painter Jacques (Guillaume Des Forêts) returns to the picturesque Pont Neuf bridge over the Seine River in Paris, where the despondent Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten, who also appears in Eustache’s film) is contemplating jumping off.  In this manner, they introduce themselves, as Jacques quickly persuades her to change her mind, but only if they agree to meet in the exact same spot the following night, which continues over the course of four nights.  When she asks about himself, he bashfully responds he has no story, which is quickly followed by a humorous sequence entitled “Jacques’ Story,” where he dreams of finding an idyllic love, wordlessly following girls on the streets of Paris, one after another, imagining how each could be his one and only love before returning alone back to his studio apartment where he paints and records personal reflections on a tape recorder, an inner monologue of his secret desires, often playing it back as he paints.  His recordings are the source of continued humor throughout, as he often plays them back in public places, like buses, where they're completely out of place.  What follows, of course, is “Marthe’s Story,” which is a little more involved, a young girl living at home with her mother, feeling imprisoned, like a caged bird who dreams of flying away.  In one of many poetic sequences of the film, Bresson, with his typical economy of means, wordlessly shows how she falls in love with their roomer, a young man renting the room next to hers, who she has never even seen, but only imagines in a kind of innocent ballet, alone and naked in front of the mirror, yet she loves him the moment he enters her room.  Since he’s leaving the country for a year to attend school, they agree to meet at the bridge in exactly one year, and if they still love one another they’ll get married.  Marthe is dejected as she believes she has lost him, that he has moved on without her. 

Jacques, of course, harboring his own secret love, agrees to help her get him back, appealing to various friends, reminding the absent partner of the urgency of their planned rendezvous.  Over the next few nights, they spend most of their time walking through the illuminated streets of Paris, hearing musicians on the street, watching the lively street life, and seeing the boats pass by on the river, where perhaps the most intoxicating scene of the film is discovering what may be Portuguese singers Bateau Mouche (from Bresson's "Four Nights Of A Dreamer", 1971 ... on YouTube (3:40) on an evening dinner cruise in a glass-covered boat along the Seine, following them with heightened interest as they gently drift by, another perfect example of the idyllic romanticism of Paris.  What happens, of course, is that these two quickly become more than just friends, as they’re continually pouring out confessional secrets to one another, where it’s as if they only have each other to hold onto in the entire world.  Marthe holds out hope that she still loves her roomer, but what does she really know about someone she’s only spent a few minutes with?  Insistent that he’s still the one, Jacques plays along, offering full support and encouragement until by the fourth night she’s convinced he’s disappeared, left her for another, finally settling on Jacques as the kind of man who’s really right for her, gentle and kind, with an easygoing manner and someone who definitely appreciates her.  While she realizes this, it’s a mix of heartbreak and illusory love streaming through her veins, comforting herself with the thought as the gentle waves of the Seine lap to the shore, where the peaceful flow of the river harmoniously represents a transitional change.  No sooner are they rapturously in each other’s arms, problems solved, lovers for life, where a surge of happiness floods the screen, until she awkwardly spots her absentee lover, quickly offering Jacques a kiss and an embrace before she runs away with him, disappearing quickly from view.  In Visconti’s movie and the book, the man is devastated by the wrenching agony from the sudden shift of his changing fate, but Bresson’s film takes a lighter view, making a prescient comment on youth itself, suggesting nothing is permanent at an age when hope springs eternal. 

Day of the Outlaw

DAY OF THE OUTLAW                     B+

USA  (92 mi)  1959  d:  André de Toth

You won't find much mercy anywhere in Wyoming.          
—Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan)

A spared down, low budget, mercilessly bleak, Black and White American “B” western from the late 50’s, adapted from a Lee E. Wells novel, the last western made by this director known for his grim psychological dramas, this one defined by the tough as nails intractability of the lead characters, none of whom can stand up to the barren ruggedness of the natural outdoor landscape, which kicks human butt in this movie.  Shot on location in the Oregon Cascades during the winter, featuring the visibly identifiable Three Sisters Mountains as well as Mt. Bachelor, a lone peak that stands alone.  When one thinks of winter movies set in the snow, THE THING (1951) and again in (1982), DR. ZHIVAGO (1965), MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), QUINTET (1979), THE SHINING (1980), FARGO (1996), THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997), and WINTER SLEEPERS (1997) come to mind, most all shot in color, but this movie is set at the end of the road, where “the trail ends in this town. There's no place to go but back.”  Of course, in this film, back is not an option.  One must defy death. 

Taking place in a small isolated settlement of only twenty people in Wyoming, the ire of cattle rancher Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) is raised when farmers begin to place barbed wire fences around their property, which violates the original credo of the free and expansive American West.  This is no small disagreement, as men’s livelihoods are at stake, where everything depends on protecting what’s theirs, and if neither side backs down, something’s got to give.  Femme fatale Tina Louise as Helen Crane is married to one of those farmers, but as women are scarce in this neck of the woods, she’d been carrying on an affair with Starrett before she married her husband.  Yet when a shootout looms, she’s willing to throw herself at Starrett if it means he’ll spare her husband’s life.  Not so easy.  This is the West where men are used to having their way and not letting anyone interfere, especially a “pig-belly farmer.”  Just as a bottle is about to drop off a bar spelling the sign for the bullets to fly, they are quickly interrupted by a rag tag group of cutthroat outlaws who grab the men’s guns and immediately take over the town in a psychologically unsettling siege, completely shifting the balance of power. 

Led by Burl Ives as deserting Army Captain Jack Bruhn, carrying sacks of stolen gold, they are just ahead of the tracking cavalry but need to ride out the night in a safe and warm place, where Bruhn needs a bullet extracted from his chest, but despite his men’s preference for women and whisky, Bruhn tells the local folk to hide their liquor and protect their women, as both are hands off to his men, claiming he needs them all sober when they leave at dawn.  With his men itching to get what they want, knowing there’s a long ride ahead, they continually press the boundaries and tempt fate.  Bruhn always seems to magically appear just as his men are about to stray, bullying them into backing off.  But they do convince him that there’d be no harm if he’d allow a social dance with the town’s four women.  “We only want to borrow them - - we'll give them back.”  Diametrically opposite to the grace and sweep of most dance sequences, think of the opulence of Max Ophuls or the legendary grandeur of Visconti’s THE LEOPARD (1963), this one is painfully difficult to watch, as the endless barroom piano music never ceases, growing more and more physically aggressive as the men try to catch a kiss as the women continually back away in disgust.  This is as raw and primitive as it gets, but in some strange and delirious way an antecedent to Béla Tarr’s hypnotic but mind numbingly repetitious dance in SÁTÁNTANGO (1994).

When morning comes, Bruhn is barely alive, but he’s too stubborn to recognize it, commandeering Starrett to lead them safely through the mountains, though the snow has made them completely impassable at this time of year, a fact Bruhn comes to realize but withholds from his men, but that doesn’t stop them from what feels like a suicide march, telling Starrett:  “I guess every fool has his reason.”  If Bruhn’s deteriorating condition is not enough, the elements have turned so hostile, where frozen breath can be seen coming from both the men and their horses, with snow up to their bellies, completely covering the landscape, the horses can barely find a way to take one step after another, yet they’re forced to push on.  Rarely are animals seen exerting themselves in this level of difficulty where there are no CGI special effects, they are simply staggering to keep their feet in the brutally harsh conditions.  Beautifully shot by Russell Harlan, knowing what’s inevitable only adds to the pounding psychological dread of this death march, as the men soon start to turn on one another in an insatiable display of greed and avarice, where the music by Alexander Courage is heavy handed and amped up to the max.  Imprisoned by the snow around them, it’s apparent there is no escape, as first horses and then men do start to die in the blistering winter cold where the wind is too ferocious to even light a fire.  It’s telling that in this exceedingly concise rendering, there are no shots of the cavalry, and by the end, no one is pointing a gun at these men’s heads, yet they feel a compulsive desire to follow this mythical trail to that elusive freedom that never arrives, to make that last great escape.  Instead they ride into their own trap.  The story isn’t entirely bleak, as de Toth even adds an element of dark humor to show the demise of one of the last holdouts.  By the end, however, none of the original issues that were worth dying for at the time hardly seem to matter any more.