Directed by Sylvain Chomet, whose delightful The Triplets of Belleville was an art-house hit and multiple Academy Award nominee in 2004, … Continue reading »]]>

Alice and Tatischeff share some chips in The Illusionist.

It’s only January, and I shouldn’t be resorting to the use of superlatives this early in the year. I’m going to go out on a limb anyway: in my humble opinion, you are unlikely to see a more charming film in 2011 than The Illusionist, a new animated feature opening this Friday, January 21, at the Shattuck Cinemas.

Directed by Sylvain Chomet, whose delightful The Triplets of Belleville was an art-house hit and multiple Academy Award nominee in 2004, The Illusionist tells the story of Tatischeff, an aging French magician plying his trade in the disappearing world of vaudeville circa the early 1960s. It’s a world of decaying theatres, drafty dressing rooms, and audiences more interested in the big beat sounds of Billy Boy and the Britoons than in a man who can pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Finding work in Paris increasingly hard to come by, Tatischeff eagerly accepts a sozzled Scotsman’s invitation to entertain at his Highland local. While there, our hero meets Alice, a poor young scullery maid in whom he takes a fatherly interest and, after his pub engagement ends, the unlikely couple depart for Edinburgh, where they share lodgings in a hotel populated by other down-and-out music hall entertainers, including a suicidal clown and an alcoholic ventriloquist.

Tatischeff’s situation is little better in the big city, however, and he’s forced to take jobs well below his dignity: first as a garage mechanic, then as a ‘living mannequin’ in the window of a fancy department store, where he conjures up ladies’ lingerie and perfume. What little he earns he invests in new clothing and coiffures for Alice, who begins a relationship with a handsome young neighbor. By film’s end, she’s grown up and flown the coop and Tatischeff is once again alone, homeless, and unemployed.

The story of The Illusionist’s production is as intriguing as the film itself. In 2001, Chomet contacted the estate of French comic Jacques Tati in hopes of receiving permission to include an excerpt from the funnyman’s 1951 feature Jour de Fête in The Triplets of Belleville. Tati’s daughter Sophie was impressed with Chomet and told him of The Illusionist, an unproduced screenplay her father had penned in the late 1950s.

Tati correctly assessed that the character of Tatischeff was too serious for his comic alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, to represent: indeed, Tatischeff had more in common with Archie Rice, the lead character in John Osborne’s 1957 play The Entertainer, than he did with Hulot. Though it had lain dormant for more than forty years, Chomet loved the script, the Tati estate granted him permission to adapt it, and The Illusionist began its seven-year journey to the big screen.

Chomet lived in Edinburgh during the film’s long gestation period, and the final product is as much a love song to his adopted home as it is to the genius of Tati. Using hand-drawn flat animation (and less reliant on the Bakshi-style grotesqueries of Belleville), The Illusionist captures the essence of that chilly, hilly city. It also features the most memorable bunny to hit the big screen since Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a fish and chip shop that serves both deep-fried chocolate bars and Lobster Thermidor, and even Jacques Tati himself: when Tatischeff briefly ducks into the appropriately named Cameo Cinema, the great man’s Mon Oncle is playing on the big screen. Melancholic and droll in equal measure, this is a film that will be treasured by anyone who loves classic animation, Jacques Tati, or men in kilts.

Also opening at the Shattuck Cinemas on Friday (in this case for an exclusive one-week run), the recently restored Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today is an important and still relevant U.S. War Department documentary from 1946. A tale of justice renewed and restored, Nuremberg blends footage shot during the trial of the major German war criminals under the jurisdiction of the International Military Tribunal with Nazi film recovered, ironically, by the OSS, and provides a brief but damning summary of the crimes for which the suspects were charged. It is, in short, a bittersweet record of a time when the international rule of law was reaching its apex. Kudos to Sandra Schulberg, daughter of director Stuart Schulberg, for restoring her father’s film — which, as per its subtitle, still has lessons to teach us today.

By John Seal. | Permalink | 3 comments |
Post tags: Jacques Tati, Nuremberg, Sandra Schulberg, Shattuck Cinemas, Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist

Some images stick with you for a lifetime: here’s one that’s been haunting me since the 1970s. The alien brain from 1953’s Invaders from Mars gave me quite the scare when I was ten, and now you can experience the same frisson of fear thanks to Pacific Film Archive’s Friday night L@te program.

Helmed by William Cameron Menzies,  Invaders from Mars screens at 7:30 pm this coming Friday, May 28 in the Berkeley Art Museum’s Gallery … Continue reading »]]>

Some images stick with you for a lifetime: here’s one that’s been haunting me since the 1970s. The alien brain from 1953’s Invaders from Mars gave me quite the scare when I was ten, and now you can experience the same frisson of fear thanks to Pacific Film Archive’s Friday night L@te program.

Helmed by William Cameron Menzies,  Invaders from Mars screens at 7:30 pm this coming Friday, May 28 in the Berkeley Art Museum’s Gallery B. Despite appearances, Menzies was no ‘B’-movie hack: his art and production design were highlights of both the 1924 and 1940 versions of The Thief of Bagdad as well as 1936’s visionary H. G. Wells adaptation Things to Come, he took home the Best Art Direction Oscar at the first Academy Awards in 1929 for The Dove and Tempest, and was awarded an honorary Oscar for his work on Gone with the Wind.

Produced at the height of America’s anti-communist hysteria, the film stars 14-year old Jimmy Hunt as David, an amateur astronomer who observes a flying saucer land over the horizon one dark and stormy night. David’s father (Alameda’s own Leif Erickson) — a scientist working on super secret government projects — investigates, but when he returns home has changed: no longer the warm, caring all-American Dad, he’s now an emotionless automaton.

Naturally, Jimmy’s mother (Hillary Brooke) doesn’t think too much of this — after all, it’s not a woman’s place to question her man, and perhaps all he needs is a fresh cup of coffee. But Dad has a strange scar at the base of his neck, and he’s just not the guy he once was.

Soon most of the neighbors — as well as Mom and Police Chief Barrows (Bert Freed) — have similar scars, and David doesn’t know whom to trust. Will child psychologist Dr. Blake (Helena Carter) or professional star-watcher Kelston (Arthur Franz) believe David’s ridiculous tale of flying saucers and alien mind control?

Shot on bare, expressionistic sets reminiscent of Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and in garish Supercinecolor (with particular emphasis on ghoulish green), Invaders from Mars was a warning to youngsters regarding the lurking Red Menace. By suggesting that grown-ups and authority figures aren’t always to be trusted, however, the film (along with perhaps the most paranoia-inducing film ever made, 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers) planted seeds of doubt in impressionable pre-teen minds that would sprout into full-fledged rebellion on campuses from coast to coast a decade later.

A print of Georges Melies’ delightfully cheeky 1902 short, A Trip to the Moon, will be shown prior to the main feature. Admission for children 12 and under to the Gallery is free, so if you’re ready to expose your offspring to the concept that you might not be a wise and omnipotent God or Goddess after all, bring the whole family for a night of sci-fi fun. Just don’t be surprised when the kiddies check the back of your neck before bedtime.

John Seal writes a weekly film recommendation column at Box Office Prophets, as well as a column in The Phantom of the Movies’ Videoscope, an old-fashioned paper magazine, published quarterly.

By John Seal. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: A Trip to the Moon, Georges Melies, Invaders from Mars, Leif Erickson, Pacific Film Archive, William Cameron Menzies

Take, for example, a little industrial film entitled Tear Gas in Law Enforcement. Recently aired late one night on television’s best channel — Turner Classic Movies — this 25-minute film was (according to its prologue) ‘designed to supplement planned classroom and field training in the use of Tear Gas’.

Produced in 1962 on behalf of the Lake Erie Chemical Corporation of Wickliffe, Ohio, the film begins with … Continue reading »]]>

Tear Gas in Law Enforcement

Sometimes you’ll find locally grown produce in the most unexpected and unusual places.

Take, for example, a little industrial film entitled Tear Gas in Law Enforcement. Recently aired late one night on television’s best channel — Turner Classic Movies — this 25-minute film was (according to its prologue) ‘designed to supplement planned classroom and field training in the use of Tear Gas’.

Produced in 1962 on behalf of the Lake Erie Chemical Corporation of Wickliffe, Ohio, the film begins with scenes of angry demonstrators waggling protest signs and ominous looking clubs. Looking like they came straight from the set of a Depression-era William Wellman film (many of them are wearing fedoras), we’re not told what their beef is, but they sure are angry about something.

After a brief classroom demonstration wherein we learn that Lake Erie also produces something called ‘sickening gas’, the film cuts to a burly gentleman in a plaid shirt, standing in what appears to be a desert proving ground of some sort. Our friend is here to demonstrate how tear gas can be safely and effectively used to quell rioters, criminals, or the criminally insane.

To this point, Tear Gas in Law Enforcement could have been shot anywhere in the interior west. But the focus tightens in the next scene: a dramatic re-enactment of police officers besieging a group of young thugs holed up in an abandoned warehouse. As Officer Friendly calls in his report to headquarters, we notice the name of his department painted on the door of his patrol car: Concord Police. Interesting. Yes, I suppose the film could have been shot during a hot Contra Costa summer—but there are plenty of other Concords around the nation. It’s pretty obvious this isn’t the one in New Hampshire, but perhaps there’s one in New Mexico, too?

Concord police car

As the film continues, however, the puzzle pieces fall into place. An angry demonstration is once again underway outside a factory. Not only are the demonstrators extremely loud and angry, they’re also surprisingly multi-racial. In fact the crowd is basically half African-American, half white. The camera pans away from them for a brief street shot. Good gosh, that really looks like the East Bay hills in the background!

East Bay hills as seen from West Berkeley, 1962

Panning back to the furious mob, we see this: Western Steel – Division United States Steel – Berkeley Plant. Wow! It’s 1962, we have a multi-racial crowd demonstrating in Berkeley, and here come the gas-masked fuzz to break it up! It’s like a dress rehearsal for the end of the decade, only with well-groomed demonstrators.

Berkeley P.D. don their gas masks

Protest outside Berkeley steel plant

Produced by the Golden State Film Corporation of Berkeley, California, Tear Gas in Law Enforcement is an amazing piece of cinema ephemera. And it IS ephemeral: not only will you find no reference to it on the internet, it doesn’t even earn a listing on TCM’s website. If there’s a reader out there who can tell me more about either the film or the company that made it, or even the precise location of the Western Steel plant, please get in touch! Likewise if you can identify the mob’s angry ringleader…

Who is this man?

This is the third post in an occasional series by John Seal on movies made in Berkeley. Read the first, on Hall Bartlett’s “Changes”, here; and the second, on “Harold and Maude”, here. John Seal writes a weekly film recommendation column at Box Office Prophets, as well as a column in The Phantom of the Movie’s Videoscope, an old-fashioned paper magazine, published quarterly.

By John Seal. | Permalink | 3 comments |
Post tags: Golden State Film Corporation, Lake Erie Chemical Corporation, Tear Gas in Law Enforcement, Western Steel

On rare occasions, the North Korean government has granted European filmmakers permission to film inside The Hermit Kingdom, and the results are almost always fascinating. In Austria’s Hana, dul, sed, a new documentary screening at Pacific Film Archive this coming Thursday at 7:00 pm as part of the ongoing San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, four members of the North Korean women’s national soccer team get the up close and personal treatment—but their country’s pariah status … Continue reading »]]>

On rare occasions, the North Korean government has granted European filmmakers permission to film inside The Hermit Kingdom, and the results are almost always fascinating. In Austria’s Hana, dul, sed, a new documentary screening at Pacific Film Archive this coming Thursday at 7:00 pm as part of the ongoing San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, four members of the North Korean women’s national soccer team get the up close and personal treatment—but their country’s pariah status informs and colors almost every frame of the film.

The team members are clearly among the elite of North Korean society, and seem devoted to the memory of Dear Leader Kim il-Sung and to the current leadership of Great General Kim Jong-il. In sharp contrast, however, with much of what we read about life in the Democratic People’s Republic, these women are well nourished, smartly dressed, and live in comfortable apartments. One of the athletes admits that they received extra rations during the ‘arduous march’ of the mid-1990s, a period of famine in which millions died.

As the film progresses, however, it’s hard not to wonder whether we’re seeing things as they are, or seeing things as the North Korean government wishes us to think they are. Perhaps our conceptions of life in North Korea are wildly inaccurate — or perhaps we’re being manipulated to believe that the lives of the nation’s urban upper crust are somehow more typical, more representative, than the lives of its rural poor. Perhaps the state really does provide free childcare for all, but why are the boulevards of Pyongyang so broad, yet the traffic so minimal? In short, how much of what we see was orchestrated for director Brigitte Weich’s cameras?

Hana, dul, sed cannot, of course, answer these questions: Weich’s intent was simply to make a film about soccer players, albeit soccer players who represent a country we are told is our enemy. At this it succeeds admirably, whilst also (and perhaps unintentionally) raising broader questions concerning the nature of (filmed) reality.

If one were to watch this film with no preconceptions of North Korean life, one could conclude that this was a country with a high standard of living and superior governance — and yet this is no crude propaganda piece. The players speak openly, if guardedly, of their experiences on and off the pitch. Maybe they’ve fully absorbed the lessons of juche ideology and don’t need a script, or were coached to pull the wool over the eyes of a gullible Western filmmaker. Or perhaps they really are better off than we want to believe, and it is we who are fooling ourselves with our own delusions of grandeur.

Then again, perhaps this is only a film about some of the best female soccer players on the planet. I strongly recommend you check out Hana, dul, sed for yourself, and draw your own conclusions.

John Seal writes a weekly film recommendation column at Box Office Prophets, as well as a column in The Phantom of the Movie’s Videoscope, an old-fashioned paper magazine, published quarterly.

By John Seal. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Hana dul sed, Kim Jong-il, Kim-il Sung, North Korea, PFA, women's soccer

And, as in years past, East Bay residents will be able to enjoy many … Continue reading »]]>

Deann Borshay in 1966

The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival gets under way this Thursday, March 11, with a gala opening at the Castro Theatre. Though the focus of this year’s festival is on Filipino cinema, it also features an impressive selection of films from other Asian countries, while the Asian diaspora is well represented by productions from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

And, as in years past, East Bay residents will be able to enjoy many Festival highlights in the comfort of our very own Pacific Film Archive.

For those who enjoy documentaries, Berkeley resident Deann Borshay Liem’s deeply personal In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee comes highly recommended. Adopted by the Borshay family when she was eight-years old, Liem was a Korean orphan who switched places with another child before moving to her new home in California in 1966. The Borshays had been in correspondence with a girl named Cha Jung Hee, but when Cha was returned to her birth father the Sun Duck Orphanage simply replaced her with another child who was given instructions not to tell her new family of the subterfuge.

Re-named Deann, the youngster quickly adapted to American culture but always knew she wasn’t who she was supposed to be. Many years later, Liem decided it was time to come to terms with her past and returned to Korea in search of the real Cha Jung Hee. The film depicts her dogged efforts — including reviewing orphanage records and plowing through all 80-plus Cha Jung Hees in the Korean phone directory — to find the girl whose place she took forty years ago.

Though this is very much a tale of personal experience, the film also casts light on a dirty little secret: the annual export of thousands of Korean children to the west. Though this practice has slowed some in recent years, it remains a going concern, and children born out of wedlock continue to be sent to orphanages just like the one Deann Borshay Liem lived in during the 1960s. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee screens at PFA at 3:30pm on Saturday March 13.

If you prefer rockumentaries to documentaries, the Elmwood Rialto is currently screening Until the Light Takes Us, an eye-opening and ear-deafening examination of Norwegian black metal. This doomy sub-genre of hard rock is renowned for adherents who devote themselves to the worship of tremolo picking, misanthropy, and Satan, but in reality enjoy knitting, puppy dogs, long walks on the beach, and burning down churches. Or so they say. Made by two San Franciscans who moved to Norway with the express purpose of traveling into black metal’s heart of darkness, Until the Light Takes Us probably won’t be at the Elmwood for very long, so don’t delay — see it today. And bring earplugs.

John Seal writes a weekly film recommendation column at Box Office Prophets, as well as a column in The Phantom of the Movie’s Videoscope.

By John Seal. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Deann Borshay Liem, Elmwood, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Until the Light Takes Us

Troell is best known for his pastoral tales of Swedish immigrant life in late nineteenth century Minnesota, The Emigrants and The New Land, which … Continue reading »]]>

Maria Heiskanen in Everlasting Moments

If you’re in the mood for an old-fashioned drama bereft of flashy gimmicks and nausea-inducing shaky-cam, you may want to plan on spending the evening of Thursday March 4 at Pacific Film Archive. The Archive will be screening director Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments, a Scandinavian co-production with primary funding supplied by Copenhagen’s Final Cut Productions.

Troell is best known for his pastoral tales of Swedish immigrant life in late nineteenth century Minnesota, The Emigrants and The New Land, which packed rep houses and earned Academy Award nominations in the early ‘70s.

Everlasting Moments is set in turn-of-the-century Malmo, Sweden, and explores the effect a new camera has on the life of everywoman Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen, the nice girl in Aki Kaurismaki’s Lights in the Dusk). Won in a lottery, the camera provides Maria with temporary escape from her busy life as mother of seven and spouse of dipsomaniac (and, on occasion, abusive, dockworker Siggy (Mikael Persbrandt) — and also allows her to establish a (strictly platonic) relationship with photographic mentor Sebastian (Jesper Christensen).

Bathed by cinematographer Mischa Gavrjusjov in autumnal hues of red and brown, this is a simple, heartfelt character study, beautifully made and entirely free of artifice. And for those in attendance, there’s a super-duper extra-added bonus: director Troell will be on-hand for a pre-screening chat with Linda Rugg, associate professor of Scandinavian studies at UC Berkeley. That promises to be quite a memorable moment in itself.

PFA’s new auteur series, Joseph Losey: Pictures of Provocation, starts on Friday March 5 at 8:40 pm with a very rare screening of Losey’s 1951 remake of Fritz Lang’s M. This film has aired infrequently at best on television (and has been completely MIA for at least the last ten years) and was not well received on its initial release, as it offered a none too subtle commentary on the HUAC/McCarthy lynch-mob mentality that would ultimately compel Losey to decamp for Europe a year later. M makes an encore appearance on Saturday March 6 at 6:30pm, when it shares a double-bill with Losey’s brilliant, angry, and very strange film noir, The Big Night, which follows at 8:45 pm.

With Oscar night looming on Sunday March 7, interesting new releases are few and far between this week. The one exception is at the Shattuck Cinemas, where the Red Riding trilogy is currently playing. Set between 1974 and 1983, the films recreate the terrifying years when Peter Sutcliffe, the lorry driver known as The Yorkshire Ripper, committed thirteen gruesome murders. (Yorkshire, by the way, is divided into three sub-divisions known as ridings — hence the title of the trilogy). If you have six hours to spare and a taste for gritty British neo-realism, look no further.

By John Seal. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Everlasting Moments, Jan Troell, Joseph Losey, PFA, Red Riding, Shattuck Cinemas