The Place Beyond the Pines (US 2012)

USA 2012. In colour and anarmorphic. Director Derek Cianfrance.

This film has received good reviews and appears to be doing well at the box office. A younger, savvy friend of mine suggested this to be mainly down to one of its stars, Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling also starred in Cianfrance’s earlier film Blue Valentine (2010) and I think the two films are the best of his performances that I have seen. In fact the two films cross over thematically in their stories of failed love and problematic parenting. I don’t want to write about the plot because the film contains one of the most impressive reversals that I have seen for ages.

The narrative comes in three parts or acts, separated by in each case by a black screen. Each part focuses on a different leading protagonist. But the plotting constantly draws parallels across time and space, in character actions, in settings and mise en scène and in the central themes, especially of fathers and sons.

Early in the film I thought we would end up in Rebel Without a Cause territory (1955). Then I gradually realised that the film is in fact a thematic variation of Steinbeck’s great novel, East of Eden. I think this is a conscious parallel as the film also reminded me of Elia Kazan’s great cinematic adaptation (1955). There seem to be numerous narrative, character and visual parallels between these art works.

Beyond the Pines was shot on Kodak film stock, and it looks great. There are many fine settings and landscapes and there is impressive use of a Steadicam and some excellent tracking shots. The parallels across the characters and their lives are reinforced by visual motifs. The most intriguing of these is the US Stars and Stripes. I did not notice one in the first part but I suspect logically there should be one. In part two a carefully framed shot draws attention to a Stars and Stripes as four men [policemen] leave a house on a dubious errand. In part three there are two shots of the flag at houses which seem mainly part of the settings. Then in the closing shot the flag is again discernible in the mid-distance. Two supporting themes in the film relate to gender and “race”, and these seem unresolved by the closure. However, the flag possibly signals an ironic and critical take on this aspect.

Lincoln (US 2012)

Dreamworks and C20th Fox. Director Steven Spielberg. Screenplay Tony Kushner, based on the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski. Editor Michael Kahn. Music John Williams. Sound Design Ben Burtt. Costume design Joanna Johnston.

Academy Award for Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Academy Award Best Production Design Rick Cater and Jim Erickson.

Stephen Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s award winning film is a reconstruction of a key moment in US history and the US Civil War. In another sense it is also a biography of the most famous of US Presidents, using a key moment in his life and career rather than providing an overall picture of the man. The key moment is the point at which the US Congress, sited in Washington and the Unionist North’s territory, finally approved a constitutional amendment that abolished slavery. In a sense this was an act that addressed the unfinished business of the founding fathers when they proclaimed all men equal: except of course the enslaved Afro-Americans or Negroes (the politest term in use in that period).

This is an epic production running for two and half-hours. The cinematography, sound and production design are all of a high standard. The film’s score is impressive if occasionally overly sentimental. Daniel Day-Lewis as the President has already received widespread praise, but the whole cast is excellent. This combination of talent and performance gives the film credibility both as an absorbing story and as a history lesson. The conflicts and machinations that preceded the historic vote in the House of Representatives seems to have been bought to the screen with reasonable accuracy, though there is now a debate about the veracity of the Connecticut vote in the film: an odd lapse in what seems a convincing reconstruction.

The central figure of Lincoln emerges partly in the familiar guise seen in earlier biopics: we several times see and hear his famed ability to produce a story appropriate to every occasion. A skill that often exasperated his colleagues but also frequently effectively disarmed his opponents. Less familiar is his foray into political corruption, using patronage to manipulate the vote where morals and rhetoric have failed.

Critics have already remarked on the absence of Afro-Americans from the central focus. The film opens with a strong and brutal depiction of one of the early hand-to-hand battle involving newly recruited Negro soldiers and Confederates. But after that the plot relies mainly on Elizabeth Keckley (Gloria Reuben), a dressmaker and confidant of Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Fields), and William Slade (Stephen Henderson) the male manservant in the White House. Absent, except perhaps as part of a group of Black men who attend the day of the actual vote, is the noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass. This could be seen as an accurate reflection of the period: the preoccupation of politicians was the Union, and genuine proponents of equality between black and whites were a small (though vocal) minority. However, this dominant focus on the white, male élites has been apparent in the earlier work of Spielberg. Schindler’s List has as its main characters the Aryan Oscar Schindler and Amon Goeth: Munich (also scripted by Tony Kushner) is pre-occupied with Israelis rather than Palestinians: Amistad, like Lincoln, has as lead characters the white members of the political élite. The exception is The Colour Purple where the focus is clearly on oppressed Afro-American women.

This, of course, is part of a larger representations found across Hollywood production. The 1989 Glory, which has a much greater attention devoted to Negroes fighting for the Union in the Civil war, still relies on the character of the white officer of a Negro regiment for much of its drama. It does offer Frederick Douglass a few lines of dialogue. Spielberg has a strong sense of Hollywood conventions and history. In one of the nicer touches in the film Senator Thaddeus Stevens, a noted abolitionist, takes the House of Representatives amendment home to read to his black housekeeper and partner. This is clearly a rebuttal of the notorious The Birth of a Nation, where Stevens is presented through the character of Senator Stoneman, who is suborned by his black housekeeper and paramour.

This is the point in the film when we hear the actual amendment, read by Stevens to his partner after the historic vote on January 31^st 1865.

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (There is a second paragraph concerning implementation).

No mention of black people or of equality for black people. It points up the limitations of the Unionist North, the Amendment and the political establishment of the 1860s. Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, shows another side of this problematic: the riots in New York against compulsory service in the Civil War armies. My sense of the US myths is that these limitations are not commonly part of the iconic representation of Lincoln. Indeed Spielberg seems to want to rescue Lincoln, assassinated just after the end of the war, from any culpability for the carpet-bagging exploitation of the defeated South and the reneging on promises to Negroes. Frederick Douglass wrote after the end of the Civil War that the Negro was “free from the individual master but a slave of society. He had neither money, property, or friends.  … He was turned loose naked, hungry and destitute to the open sky.” But the film ends with a flashback to Lincoln’s second inaugural address then held in March 1865: later in the year than in contemporary elections. The speech ends with the prayer, “With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds … to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Of course, this end scene plays into the inevitable comparisons when we have the first black President just starting his second term in the White House. Some of Barack Obama’s election speeches clearly played into the Lincoln tradition. In that sense, though this has been a long cherished project of Spielberg’s, the film speaks especially powerfully to contemporary USA. Despite the celebratory tone at the end of this film the project of what the film calls ‘racial equality’ has yet to complete its long, violent and demanding journey: as indeed has the States yet to achieve peace with all nations. This has probably played large in the sensibilities of both the Academy members and audiences. The Guardian newspaper (g2 film & music 22.02.13) handily provided some comparisons between the box office performances of Academy Award front-runners. Lincoln is out in front in the USA ($177 mill) ahead of Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Argo and Life of Pi. But overseas it trails behind all the other five titles ($59 mill to Life of Pi’s $466).  And in the UK it is followed by Argo trailing the other four, (£6.9 mill to Les Misérables £36 mill). The actual Academy Awards were spread across these films (and others) but Lincoln with twelve nominations only gained two Oscars. There seems to be a disjuncture between the Academy and the indigenous audience.

It is a cerebral movie, and outside of the USA the political machinations of the Washington élite in the 1860s may lack excitement and panache. Some of the reviews offered strong put-downs. However, despite its lack of action it is absorbing from beginning to end. And Spielberg and Kushner know how to ring the changes. The historic congressional vote combines the drama in the chamber with some nicely judged scenes around the waiting Union. And the so famous assassination is quite daringly different. Hollywood can still turn out a winner when the subject and the filmmakers are fully in tune.

The Black Pirate

USA – Elton Corp. – United Artists, 1926. Directed by Albert Parker. Scenario Lotta Wood, adapted by Jack Cunningham, story by Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks).

This is one of the popular starring roles of Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920s. Having cemented his popularity as Zorro, one of the Four Musketeers and Robin Hood, Fairbanks now took on the larger than life character of a C17th pirate. In fact, there is more to his character than just that, because this is a swashbuckling tale with disguised heroes, bloodthirsty pirate crews, a threatened princess and lots of sea-borne action. Fairbanks always exercised careful control over his films and his on-screen grace and agility is seen in a number of carefully composed and exciting sequences.
The same care was excised on the new fairly new two-strip Technicolor film process. Many silent films had colour added – by hand, by tinting and toning or stencil painting, and by devices such as revolving filters. But Technicolor had developed a process that incorporated colour in the film stock: later they successfully developed three-strip process, which produced the full range of the spectrum. The two-strip process recorded red and green, but not yellow. Fairbanks and his production team went to great lengths to maximise the way they used this palette: even the leading lady was tested for her suitability for the filming in colour.
Of course, it is an old film and the original two-tone colours have to be processed on modern film stock. And the print is likely to show some signs of the wear and tear of years. However, Douglas Fairbanks remains a charismatic and visually engaging star whilst the early Technicolor has its own distinctive palette.
The film is screening at the Nation Media Museum in Bradford on Sunday February 3rd. As an added bonus there will be a live accompaniment with Darius Battiwalla at the piano.

Gangster Squad (US 2012)

Director – Reuben Fleischer, USA 2012.

A couple of reviews suggested that this was a fairly entertaining cops versus gangster story, based loosely on actual events. One lone honest cop recruits a small band of ethnically diverse fellow cops and takes on a vicious and powerful Los Angeles gangster supremo, Mickey Cohen. It turned out to be an uncredited remake of the 1987 success The Untouchables. Given the earlier film was scripted by David Mamet, directed by Brian de Palma and that it had a score by Ennio Morricone, this seems a somewhat foolhardy exercise. Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and company are not quite in the class of Sean Connery, Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia. And Sean Penn’s Cohen is a pale variation on De Niro’s Al Capone. Plus the CGI is less impressive than the earlier film’s Art Direction of William A. Elliott and Hal Gausman.

There should be credit for viewing the earlier film and/or script with close attention. This was most obvious in the final shootout, set in the grandiose foyer of a Chicago hotel and at the foot of a marble staircase! [Note though, I could not spot any homage to Eisenstein]. At one point Brolin throws Gosling, not a gun, but an ammunition clip. A little later a single deadly accurate gunshot is taken in exactly the same pose of that of Garcia in the earlier film, [here we get a homage to Cagney framed as a pieta]. The distinctive elements are stronger roles for the women: a more ethnically diverse team: and a brutal fistfight between Brolin and Penn, this replacing the rooftop showdown between Costner and Billy Drago.

The 1987 film translated the original television series into a gripping large screen drama: this 2012 production is a pale imitation of that classic which handles pastiche with much less aplomb than its predecessor.

Killing Them Softly (US 2012)

Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy as the rather gormless petty criminals in Killing Them Softly. Image © The Weinstein Company

I watched this with Nick in a nearly empty specialised cinema. It’s an intelligent and very well-made film but it doesn’t work for me and in some ways it seems indicative of the problems with contemporary American cinema. Box office has actually been OK in the UK during the opening week – I think that it has probably drawn bigger audiences in multiplexes (but there have also been walkouts according to IMDB so the second week drop-off will be interesting). On the other hand, the three big foreign language films this week had much higher screen averages. The film doesn’t open in North America until November 30th.

The source material is a George V. Higgins story. Higgins was a highly-admired crime novelist who was also a journalist, a high-ranking lawyer and an academic. The only other Higgins novel that was adapted for Hollywood was The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) with Robert Mitchum. 1970s Hollywood remains the benchmark for intelligent, grown-up popular cinema and Eddie Coyle is a lost gem, now hard to find on DVD. You can easily see what attracted Brad Pitt and Andrew Dominik to Higgins’ 1974 story Cogan’s Trade. Pitt plays Cogan, an efficient assassin brought in by ‘the mob’ to restore ‘order’ to the illegal poker schools which have protection. Cogan is professional, but everyone else in this scenario is either too stupid, too inexperienced or too fucked-up to function properly. This isn’t therefore an action film or a mystery. The film’s ending is inevitable from the opening scenes onward. Instead, this is a character study set in the sleazy world of crime that Higgins knew well from his experience as an attorney in Boston.

Dominik as screenwriter has chosen to shift the location from 1970s Boston to post-Katrina New Orleans and to make the timing very specific in the weeks around the presidential election of 2008. I confess that I didn’t twig that it was meant to be New Orleans. I didn’t notice any local references and now I think back there are no African-American characters or indications of Cajun culture – nothing in fact to suggest the crime world as envisaged by a writer like James Lee Burke and his New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux. I’d just assumed that the film was set in some run-down Northern industrial city. Dominik presumably wants to suggest a kind of mythical setting, so the characters drive ancient models of cars. (I know nothing about US car models, but it was surprising to see the character played by Ray Liotta using a key to lock his car.) The music, by far the most pleasurable aspect of the film for me, is suitably ancient going back to at least the 1950s and probably the 1940s. A great Johnny Cash track is perhaps the most modern recording and Ketty Lester’s classic ‘Love Letters’ from 1962 the most evocative for me. Is Dominik trying to rival Scorsese’s use of popular music?

Given these touches, the heavy emphasis on speeches by Obama and George W. Bush on the financial crisis seems out of place. On several occasions, TV and radio broadcasts are presented high in the mix – in situations where they wouldn’t normally dominate – such as on a TV set in a bar or  in an airport arrivals hall. Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps they do in the US, but even so, the use of these speeches seems clumsy and a final speech by Cogan/Pitt sums up the central message of the film in the closing scene. Many crime fiction fans are attracted to the genre because it expresses a political discourse beneath the action and the procedural elements, but usually it’s achieved in a more subtle way.

There’s something odd about a standard-length feature (97 minutes) that feels much longer – my attention drifted in some of the long conversations, especially the two between the Pitt character and another assassin/enforcer played by James Gandolfini as a washed-up alcoholic addicted to hookers. On the other hand, the slow pace allowed me to compare the performance styles of Brad Pitt and Scoot McNairy. In a scene at a bar, Pitt plays as film star, exuding confidence as a dominant character while McNairy ‘acts’ a role as the dumb criminal whimpering and almost crying. I like McNairy – though it took me a while to recognise him from his roles in Monsters and In Search of a Midnight Kiss. In this kind of film, I think the star should be in the downbeat role. The Pitt character Cogan is too much the dominant character.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle was directed by Peter Yates at a time when European directors were taking on American subjects (e.g. Karel Reisz (The Gambler, Who’ll Stop the Rain?), Jacques Deray (Outside Man), Ivan Passer (Cutter’s Way) etc. Perhaps the Antipodean Dominik would have been better off looking towards these guys rather than wandering into Tarantino territory? But the main production company behind this appears to be Brad Pitt’s Plan B. The weight of the Weinstein Company as distributor is also there, so rather than a straight studio movie this is one of those star-driven ‘super-indie’ films that gets sent to Cannes and then hits the multiplexes flexing its star power. It occurs to me that it also resembles Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive with Ryan Gosling – another well-made film that uncertainly bridged the mainstream/specialised cinema divide. Both films contain sequences that are much too violent for me, but Refn’s works better overall. None of my reservations about Killing Them Softly can detract from Andrew Dominik’s talent – I need to go back and look at The Assassination of Jesse James a second time.

Prometheus (UK/US 2012)

Noomi Rapace as archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw in ‘Prometheus’

Prometheus is a good example of ‘Global Hollywood’ and its release in 2012 points to several aspects of how Hollywood is coping with the evolving global film ecology. The film is a prequel of sorts to the Alien franchise which began in 1979 with three further instalments (and two more related to the Predator franchise) over the next thirty years.

The production cost an estimated $130-140 million to produce and a great deal to market ($60 million if the 50% of production cost rule applies). Only a Hollywood studio could afford that kind of money. It was produced by three companies, two American and one British for the studio major 20th Century Fox. Producer-director Ridley Scott is British, the scriptwriters are American. The principal technical credits are for Europeans who are all US residents (Polish cinematographer, Italian film editor, German music composer). There are thirteen speaking parts in the film and these are played by five English, two Scottish, one South-African, one Irish-German, one Australian, one Swedish-Spanish and two American actors. Having said that, all the principals are known to American film and television audiences. As if to add to the confusion, the art director Arthur Max is an American who has worked mostly in the UK. The film was shot mainly on Pinewood sets in the UK and on location in Iceland, Scotland and Spain. The extensive visual effects work was carried out in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.

Trying to assign ‘nationality’ to a film like Prometheus is clearly pointless. IMDB currently describes it as a ‘US’ production. That must be wrong. If anything it is a British production using international talent and facilities, all of which are paid for with American money (though of course that money probably comes ultimately from a variety of sources).

Prometheus is a ‘tentpole’ release by 20th Century Fox, a News Corporation company. Its release strategy follows that of Avengers Assemble (or whatever it is called internationally!) in releasing to the ‘International’ market a week before the ‘domestic’ North American release. I haven’t yet seen a convincing argument as to why this development has taken place. We know that ‘international’ is now twice the size of ‘domestic’ but that doesn’t explain why it necessarily comes first. In the UK, Prometheus opened on 1,019 screens with 73% of box office coming from 3D presentations (UK multiplexes are now almost completely converted to digital projection). Given that the opening date coincided with the Jubilee celebrations this was perhaps an odd decision. On the other hand, it was also a school holiday (it’s a ’15′ release) and the weather in the UK has been terrible – which is always good for the box office. I expect a healthy total for the full week following a weekend screen average of $10,000 (though the inflated cost of 3D presentations disguises the admissions numbers). The film opens in the US today.

But what about the film as a narrative? It deals with a mission at the end of the 21st century to find an alien civilisation which may have visited the Earth 3,000 years ago – as seen on cave paintings. (This idea is loosely drawn from The Chariot of the Gods, the 1968 book by Erich von Däniken.) The ship’s crew find the remains of an alien base, which at first appears derelict, but then . . . etc.

I confess that I’m not a Ridley Scott fan. His films are brilliantly ‘visualised’ and always contain exciting sequences – but most of the time they are also confused and messy in their storytelling. On a few occasions Scott has had a decent script and a strong cast and the film is a standout – I give you Thelma and Louise and Alien. (I still can’t forgive the scriptwriters for what they did to Phil K. Dick’s work in Blade Runner.) Unfortunately, I have to agree with what I think is the majority verdict on this, his latest film. Prometheus looks great, the cast is terrific and the script is pretty ropey. (I watched a 2D version.)

Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender are terrific, Idris Elba and Charlize Theron have less to do but certainly have a presence and with supporting cast as strong as Kate Dickie, Sean Harris, Timothy Spall and Benedict Wong there shouldn’t really be a problem (the casting and the theme of the film are very reminiscent of Danny Boyle’s underrated Sunshine).

There will no doubt be a sequel (i.e. at least one more prequel to Alien) but I hope that more work goes on the script. I’ll just mention one irritating script element. At the beginning of the film a credit tells us that the ‘Prometheus’ has a crew of 17 – yet only 10 of the crew have lines of dialogue. In a confined space like the ship, doesn’t it seem lazy to have nearly half the crew as simple, mute spear carriers?

I think in the end that this ‘global film’ isn’t in fact ‘global’ enough. It will be interesting to see how it fares at the box office outside Europe and North America. An English-speaking audience will hear its ‘Britishness’ in the dialogue but that will be lost in dubbing. In the first week, Prometheus was released in 15 territories and entered the international chart at No 3. It failed to beat Men In Black 3 (in 90 territories) and Snow White and the Huntsman (in 45 territories). The comparison with Snow White is significant. That film was in its second week in some territories but its screen average was still higher than that of Prometheus. The grittier, more ‘realist’ end of science fiction is not such a global attraction as comedy and romance/fantasy.

Many territories will see the film as simply ‘American’. On the other hand, there is not a specifically American ideological feel about the story – though it does have a ‘creationist’ discourse which I assume will resonate more in the US than it does over here. It’s worth remembering that the original Alien was written by Dan O’Bannon (co-creator of one of my favourite science fiction films Dark Star (1974)) during the counter-culture years in Southern California – indeed, Wikipedia suggests that the Alien script was developed from Dark Star. I don’t know if that influenced the sense of corporate exploitation of space with its truculent crew but the Alien films seem quite different in ideological terms to the Star Trek franchise (which has always felt like an odd combination of progressive, liberal ideas married to an American military ethos).

It’s going to be interesting to see how feminist film studies approaches this ‘re-boot’ of the Alien franchise. And I’m particularly looking forward to the analysis of Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw v. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, triangulated with Noomi as Lisbeth Salander. I suspect that Ms Rapace is here to stay. She looks and sounds different – and she is an outstanding acting talent.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (US 2011)

The first meeting between Lisbeth and Mikael (I'm intrigued by this still which shows cigarette smoke – but no obvious source of a burning cigarette). The extent of smoking in the film is one of its controversial features as a mainstream Hollywood film.

I’m already on record as arguing that this was a pointless production, so I wasn’t an impartial observer on my cinema visit to see this film. However, I felt I had to see it and having done so I must slightly revise my original condemnation. In preparation for watching the Scott Rudin/Steve Zaillian/David Fincher film, I first looked at the DVD of the Swedish film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel directed by Niels Arden Oplev and written by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg. When I first saw that film in the cinema, I don’t think I really appreciated it because I was still wrapped up in the novel trilogy (see comments on this posting). I then, on the same day, watched the Fincher film and consequently went back to the novel. There is so much plot in the novel that I couldn’t keep all of it in my head and I realised that I’d forgotten a lot of what I first read in 2008/9.

My first surprise was that I really enjoyed watching the Swedish version again. I was very angry at the rather dismissive tone of many critics towards Oplev in both the promotion of the Fincher version and the reviews of that film. Oplev is treated as if he were almost an amateur. In fact, the Swedish film is a highly competent piece of filmmaking and works very well. I also found myself quite emotionally involved with Mikael Nykvist and Noomi Rapace as the principals. The Oplev film runs to 152 mins. The Fincher film is only 5 mins longer but it includes quite a lot more plot as well as an extended title sequence. I was surprised to discover that the Zaillian script for Fincher is actually more ‘faithful’ to the book – although it can’t, of course, include everything in the very densely plotted 500+ pages. One odd point is that despite what I read in some interviews about Zallian/Fincher not wanting to watch the Oplev film, they seem to have taken certain scenes from the first film rather than from the book. (One example is the scene in which Lisbeth Salander’s computer is trashed on the Stockholm rapid transit system.) We seem to be in the same territory here as with the Coen Brothers’ True Grit remake. The big Hollywood production attempts to distance itself from the original film by claiming fidelity only to the book. All this posturing seems quite silly to me.

The Zaillian/Fincher film is highly competent. It looks good and moves along at a fair lick over 157 minutes. I wasn’t impressed by the music or the stylised credit sequence that everyone seems to be raving about – but that’s probably just a matter of taste. (The squirming black oiled objects in the title sequence made me think about Nazi paraphernalia – not sure if this was the intention.) The music in the Oplev film is not memorable – but it isn’t obtrusive either. Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara perform their roles as Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander very well. But that’s what they are – performances. I didn’t feel for the characters as I did with Nykvist and Rapace. I was quite taken with Robin Wright though – she was much closer to my idea of Erika Berger. In the end the Fincher film kept my attention but I didn’t really feel engaged. It was just another Hollywood crime thriller. Despite the Swedish locations it didn’t feel like a Swedish story. I’m aware that this is dangerous territory for a critic and I’m sure that there are Swedish audiences who prefer the Hollywood film with its stars (see audience figures below). Mikael Nykvist is something of a Swedish everyman appearing in many films – he doesn’t look or act like an action star. This means that Swedish audiences might be bored with him, but he is ‘fresh’ to overseas audiences. Daniel Craig has to ‘act’ as if he isn’t a big star and I think the shtick with his spectacles, stubble and bewildered look sometimes teeters on the edge of the ridiculous.

The major issue for me is that this Hollywood film doesn’t seem to know what to include/what to leave out of the story. Symptomatic of this quandary is the way in which some actors use an accented English ‘suggesting’ Swedish and others don’t and how certain documents appear in Swedish and others in English. Nobody uses Mikael’s nickname ‘Micke’. But perhaps the best example is the depictions of the Nazi past in the Vanger family. Where the book and the Swedish film refer to the ‘Winter War’ (between the USSR and Finland/Germany in 1939/40), since this wouldn’t mean anything to the multiplex audience in North America, it’s left out of the Hollywood version. In one interview Fincher states quite clearly:

“The mystery of this movie wasn’t that interesting to me.  You know, Nazis, serial killers, and the evil that people do in their basements with power tools wasn’t the thing that . . . the thing that was first and foremost was this. I hadn’t seen this partnership before. I hadn’t seen these two people working before to do anything. So I liked the thriller and I liked the vessel of that, but I was really more interested in the people front and center.

. . . I had read a lot of stuff in The New York Times and in different magazines about the Steig Larsson story. But I think that the actual sort of political leanings of the material are probably not the reasons why the book was optioned or the reason why everybody waiting for a plane at La Guardia are reading this book. It has less to do with everyone’s fear of the ultra-right in Scandinavia. So no I didn’t . . . like I said, my interest was that it had a ballistic envelope and it had aerodynamics to it. Obviously, 60 million people thought it was a ripping yarn. I thought that part was a ripping yarn. But the thing that interested me most was these two people. (From the interview here.)

I’ll return to Fincher’s interest in the couple a little later but here’s another example of missing the point – the Millennium offices in Fincher’s film are opulent and styled to the nth degree. In the book and the Swedish film they more accurately reflect the parlous financial state of the magazine. I wonder why the Hollywood production spent so much money on beautiful photography on location in Sweden which doesn’t seem to capture the feel of Sweden as presented by Larsson and Oplev? And when it isn’t beautiful, the photography and editing tend towards the tricksy. The Swedish film leaves out large chunks of the novel’s plot and possibly distorts the narrative but it still feels ‘right’ as a representation – perhaps because the small details are authentic. The Swedish adaptation also exists as a two-part mini-series for Swedish TV running at 180 mins (in 2 x 90 mins parts). I’m not sure what is in the extra 38 mins, but the cinema film seems coherent to me.

Now that I’m re-reading (skimming really) through the first Larsson book again, I’m beginning to recognise the overall structure of the trilogy much more clearly and the way in which everything points towards ‘The Men Who Hate Women’ – the literal translation of the Swedish title of the first part of the trilogy. Zaillian’s script includes more plot than Oplev’s film but doesn’t seem to know what to make of it – and Fincher clearly isn’t interested in the politics. Overall, I think that I prefer the Swedish version but having seen the Danish TV series, The Killing, I think that the best format for the Larsson adaptations would have been as weekly serials on television in 1 hour episodes. Then we could have seen everything, including the magazine business issues which are largely ignored in both adaptations, but especially in the Swedish film.

Will Sony/MGM make films of the other two books? The Fincher film has taken $140 million worldwide so far with major markets like France still to open. It did very well in Sweden and Norway and in the UK. However the budget was $90 million (Box Office Mojo) so it is still some way from even covering costs (only around 30%-40% gets back to the producers). Fincher says he wants to make the other two films back to back in Sweden but there must be some doubts about whether Sony will stump up the cash. Book 2 is action-orientated and would veer even more towards a Hollywood thriller with more focus on Lisbeth but Book 3 is essentially a courtroom drama/legal investigation. If Fincher can transform it into a mainstream $90 million movie, he’s even cleverer than his reputation suggests. But since he’s not interested in the politics perhaps he will just focus on Mikael and Lisbeth. Hmm!

Education possibilities

Remakes are irresistible as study texts because they allow us to ‘compare and contrast’ and to demonstrate that there are specific choices that casting directors, production designers, directors, cinematographers etc. all make. The two adaptations discussed here would be very interesting to compare, though the sheer length of the films would probably put off many classroom teachers. However, if students could be persuaded to watch the films in their own time, several interesting explorations are possible. One would be to question what is ‘political’ about the films. Larsson himself was clearly a political animal but do either of the films really carry through his exposure of the decay of Swedish society? Possibly only the novels themselves do this. My guess is that most students could be more interested in the creation of Lisbeth Salander as a certain kind of young female character – who finds herself in a world dominated by evil men who need to be ‘brought down’. In turn this poses the question, how does Lisbeth relate to Mikael as a potential partner in her principal objective – and in an intimate relationship? (OK, the project is mainly his, though Lisbeth has two very personal projects to bring down the men who have oppressed her.) This relationship is what Fincher has identified as his main interest.

I’ve seen reviews that claim Fincher shows us much more of the Mikael – Lisbeth relationship developing than in the Swedish film. I don’t accept this. There is more overt sexual activity in Fincher’s film (and even more in the book) but less about the joint investigation of the Vanger family in which we see the two edging towards each other. My focus, however, would be on the sequence towards the end of the film when Lisbeth has to decide to whether to save the villain or let him die and how Mikael accepts or questions her decision. Again, I think that the Swedish version offers the better presentation of this narrative development. I would also consider the difference between the two films in the use of flashbacks. The Swedish version uses flashbacks to show us various aspects of the story but especially how/why Lisbeth has been placed with a guardian because of what she did to her father. Fincher leaves this out (I think – I’m already getting confused as to what I’ve seen!). I think work on these scenes could prove highly productive for film and media students.

Also useful for students is this posting on Nick Lacey’s website (with all the comments).

Roman Holiday (US 1953)

Ann (Audrey Hepburn) and Joe (Gregory Peck) in Roman Holiday

Last year I enjoyed watching some of  Audrey Hepburn’s early films collected in a DVD box-set. The only drawback was that Roman Holiday was not included. Now I’ve finally managed to see it I realise that it is an important production in relation to the concept of global film – as well as an extremely entertaining film.

Audrey Hepburn’s first Hollywood film (for which she won an Academy Award) was directed by the legendary William Wyler shooting wholly in Rome. The story by Dalton Trumbo (working incognito as he was blacklisted at the time by HUAC as one of the Hollywood Ten) is very simple. Princess Ann (Hepburn) is a young royal from an unnamed European country visiting Rome on a European tour. Bored by her engagements and desperate to experience the nightlife of Rome she ‘escapes’ from her Embassy but only after she has been given a strong sedative. Falling asleep on a city pavement she is rescued by an American journalist (Gregory Peck) who takes her to his apartment. When he realises who she is, the journalist plots to make some money from an exclusive interview but the Princess is unaware of his plans and simply wants to have fun in Rome. They have a day of adventures – but what will be the outcome? Around the time that the film was released in the US in September 1953, Princess Margaret (younger sister of the recently crowned Elizabeth II in the UK) was in the news when her affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend became the focus for public discussion. How much Trumbo drew on this ‘real’ story, I don’t know, but it probably helped sell the film.

Global Hollywood

The major studios began to produce films in the UK very early and Paramount had a studio in London in the early 1920s. In the 1930s various small studios in the UK made ‘quota quickies’ on behalf of the Hollywood majors. There were also working relationships between the Hollywood majors and mainland European producers in the same period but it wasn’t until the Americans arrived in Rome in 1953 and founded ‘Hollywood on the Tiber‘ that the modern concept of ‘Global Hollywood’ began to take shape. When William Wyler set up the production of Roman Holiday he was able to use the resources of Cinecitta – then one of the best studios in Europe – and also to shoot in local palaces and on the streets of Rome. In some of the extras on the DVD a Paramount executive claims this was the first film to be shot on location in Rome in this way and even the film writer/scholar Molly Haskell (who should know better) claims that the shoot pre-dates and predicts the Nouvelle Vague. Of course it does, the films of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica amongst others had been made in this way since 1944 and indeed Ingrid Bergman had left Hollywood and begged for a part in a Rossellini film after seeing Roma, citta aperta (1945) in a screening in America. The main difference between Wyler’s film and neo-realist classics such as Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D is that Wyler had two big stars and a fully functioning studio machine behind him.

Hepburn and Peck together – looking like a couple really having fun.

In some ways, Trumbo’s script suggests neo-realism in its simplicity and lack of contrivance. But perhaps the major similarity is in the beautiful cinematography. Wyler hired two veteran European cinematographers. Franz Planer had thirty years experience and had worked for Max Ophuls in Europe and Hollywood. Henri Alekan had shot Beauty and the Beastfor Jean Cocteau in 1946 and had also worked in Britain. Between them they created fantastic deep focus compositions as Ann scampers through the backstreets after leaving the Embassy – nighttime cinematography with deep black shadows in film noir style followed by sunlit scenes of joyful abandon in the second half of the film. It really is a visual treat throughout.

Gregory Peck is excellent in the film but Audrey steals the show. This was her first Hollywood film, but she had already appeared on Broadway and in British films, including Thorold Dickinson’s Secret People. The Anglo-Dutch Hepburn had an aristocratic background in Holland and she had been a dancer and a photographic model in the UK before becoming known for her films. This background meant that Princess Ann was the perfect role for her but it is her sheer personality and winning smile that drives the film along. Wyler was a great filmmaker but I can’t remember any of his other films being so much fun. Roman Holiday hasn’t dated in any way and it’s not difficult to understand why Audrey Hepburn is still as popular as she ever was (perhaps more so). But what makes the film work most of all is that it seems to follow the neo-realist idea that the story emerges from the characters and locations and is not imposed on them as in so many subsequent American films.