> The Celluloid Canister

Long before “Disturbia” there was “Peeping Tom.” The obscure British thriller was released in 1960, where after it disgusted audiences and was thrown out of theaters. The film subsequently ruined the career of its director, Michael Powell. Thus it requires some examination.

“Peeping Tom” tells the story of film director Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) who murders young women, using his camera as an instrument of death. He films their terror as they die to relive later in the privacy of his darkroom.

“Don’t wipe it away Nat. Let me have my vicious little circle,” says Don Birnam to a bartender named Nat, referring to the ring a glass leaves on a bar. Don (Ray Milland) plays an unsuccessful writer and tormented alcoholic in Billy Wilder’s 1946 bleak drama “The Lost Weekend.”

The film begins with Don and his brother Wick (Phillip Terry) packing for a long weekend in the country, to help Don break his addiction to alcohol (he has been sober for 10 days, or so he says). Somehow, Don convinces Wick to take his girlfriend Helen St. James (Jane Wyman) to a concert.

I must preface this column with a statement: I did not expect to like Steve Buscemi’s film “Interview” (2007). The DVD looks really commercial, and the bio sounds kind of bland: a writer interviews a star, and their perceptions are subsequently challenged, etc. But I was intrigued enough to watch it. And it surprised me, in a good way.

The film, a remake of a 2003 Dutch film, tells the story of a Newsworld journalist named Pierre Peders (Steve Buscemi). Peders, used to covering the political environment in Washington, D.C., is taken out of his comfort zone when he is assigned to interview starlet Katya (Sienna Miller).

People who say that old movies are archaic and are out of touch with modern ideas have never seen such subversive classics as “The Man with the Golden Arm” and “The Children’s Hour” (the subject of this column). Filmmakers have always worked against oppressive motion picture standards with challenging films. This film, based on the play by Lillian Hellman, addresses the still-taboo topic of homosexuality.

William Wyler’s “The Children’s Hour” (1961) opens with an ordinary enough scene. Parents watch a children’s recital at an all-girls school, the Wright-Dobie School, a converted country house. We are slowly introduced to the main players: headmistresses Martha (Shirley MacLaine) and Karen (Audrey Hepburn); Dr. Joe Cardin (James Gardner), whose heart is set on marrying Karen; and a scheming troublemaker named Mary.

Tim Burton is one of America’s contemporary auteurs—he creates fantastical and imaginative films. But Burton’s visions are not entirely original. Like most artists, he has been influenced by art of the past, consciously or otherwise.

But this column is not about Tim Burton. It is about a 1919 silent film called “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” The reason I brought Burton up is because “Caligari” is a German Expressionist film, an artistic movement that has heavily influenced Burton, as evident in “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Sweeney Todd,” just to name a few.

An eccentric millionaire collects the world’s greatest detectives in his old mansion in the middle of nowhere, all with the sole purpose of presenting them with the unsolvable murder.

Sound familiar? Sure it does. This storyline has appeared in print and film dozens of times, most notably in Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.”

Considered one of the first “kitchen sink” or “angry young man” dramas to emerge out of the British social realism film movement in the 1950s and ‘60s, “Look Back in Anger” is a volatile and often vulnerable look at real domestic problems plaguing real people. There is nothing sugar-coated about the 1958 adaptation of John Osborne’s play.

Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton), the film’s antagonist, is a university graduate with a penchant for jazz and a hatred for the bourgeois, stuck working at a sweets stall in the local market. He lives with his wife Alison (Mary Ure), and their friend Cliff (Gary Raymond). The Porters have a less-than-ideal relationship; it is full of passion, the kind that pulls you under covers even while it makes you want to pull out your hair.

The film opens on a banal sidewalk. People and cars, diminished by the high perspective of the camera, pass by insignificantly. There is nothing particularly extraordinary about the scene, that is, until the film reveals through its only true cut, a sinister scene unveiling high above the city.

The aggressive and arrogant Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and his quiet, mouse-like roommate Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) have just strangled their college friend David Kently in the middle of their living room. They neatly tuck him into a large chest, and start making preparations for the dinner party they are hosting later in the day, their guests to include David’s father, his fiancée Janet (Joan Chandler), and their former professor Rupert Cadell (James Stewart).

Those who say that Woody Allen hasn’t made a good movie since “Hannah and Her Sisters” haven’t seen his often overlooked “Husbands and Wives” (1992). The film tells us that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship, and even adults can act childish when it comes to love.

The hand-held camera style in the film’s opening shot, which goes on forever without a single edit, is disorienting and nauseating. We learn that Sally and Jack (Judy Davis and Sydney Pollack) have just decided to get a divorce, an announcement that upsets Gabe and Judy Roth (Woody Allen and Mia Farrow).

Agatha Christie’s novels have been prime material for film and TV adaptations and interpretations. Her novel “And Then There Were None” has been remade a dozen or so times, her famous sleuth Hercule Poirot is the star of his own British TV series entitled Poirot.

Her other famous character, Miss Marple, was the inspiration for the Angela Lansbury show “Murder, She Wrote.” But no adaptation is quite as successful or compelling as Sidney Lumet’s 1974 film “Murder on the Orient Express.”

It’s the end of semester, and that means the end of the UWM Post. Until next fall, that is. This semester, my column has spanned nearly the entire century (1919-2007), and included comedies and dramas, and both celebrated and less-known directors.

I hope that I have introduced you to films that will become some of your favorites too. Now, it is time to take a break. But no worries, I’ll leave you with plenty of tips for discovering more overlooked flicks.