Gustave Caillebotte (Musée d'Orsay)

Gustave Caillebotte, Raboteurs de parquet, en 1875, huile sur toile, H. 102,0 ; L. 147,0 cm. , Don, 1984, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski. Niveau supérieur, Salle 30. Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894).
    "This painting is one of the first representations of urban proletariat. Whereas peasants (Gleaners by Millet) or country workers (Stone Breakers by Courbet) had often been shown, city workers had seldom been painted. Unlike Courbet or Millet, Caillebotte does not incorporate any social, moralising or political message in his work. His thorough documentary study (gestures, tools, accessories) justifies his position among the most accomplished realists."
    "Caillebotte had undergone a completely academic training, studying with Bonnat. The perspective, accentuated by the high angle shot and the alignment of floorboards complies with tradition. The artist drew one by one all the parts of his painting, according to the academic method, before reporting them using the square method on the canvas. The nude torsos of the planers are those of heroes of Antiquity, it would be unimaginable for Parisian workers of those times. But far from closeting himself in academic exercises, Caillebotte exploited their rigour in order to explore the contemporary universe in a completely new way."
    "Caillebotte presented his painting at the 1875 Salon. The Jury, no doubt shocked by its crude realism, rejected it (some critics talked of "vulgar subject matter"). The young painter then decided to join the impressionists and presented his painting at the second exhibition of the group in 1876, where Degas exhibited his first Ironers. Critics were struck by this great modern tableau, Zola, in particular, although he condemned this "painting that is so accurate that it makes it bourgeois"."
    Photo and data: Musée d'Orsay. Please click on the image to enlarge it.

Gustave Caillebotte, Vue de toits (Effet de neige), en 1878, huile sur toile, H. 64,5 ; L. 81,0 cm. , Don Martial Caillebotte, 1894, © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Franck Raux. Niveau supérieur, Salle 32. Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894).
    "At the fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879, Caillebotte presented over twenty-five works. These included two roofscapes of which this is one. The large number of paintings he submitted is a measure of Caillebotte's enthusiasm. He had joined the ranks of the Impressionists in 1876, and became one of the most active members of the group, not only as a painter but also as a patron, thanks to his considerable personal fortune."
    "Unlike his scenes of boating enthusiasts and portraits, also exhibited in 1879, his roofscapes provoked little comment at the time. However, they form an important link in the series of urban paintings for which Caillebotte is so popular today. In each of these paintings, whether street scenes of Haussmann's Paris or plunging perspectives painted from his balcony, he invites us to share his unusual view over the city. Besides, his Roofscape had few direct precedents other than in photography, although it is not certain that this was a source for the painter."
    "This painting, an eminently "modern" urban landscape, wonderfully describes the atmosphere of a winter's day in Paris. The heavy sky bathes the snow-covered roofs in grey, brightened with a few notes of soft pink. By thus turning his attention to the effect of the seasons on light and landscape, Caillebotte joined his Impressionist friends Monet, Sisley and Pissarro."
    "Given to the French National Museum by the artist's brother at the same time as the famous Floor Planers, Roofscape is one of the rare paintings by Caillebotte known to the public for a long time, the main part of his oeuvre having stayed in his family for several decades."
    Photo and data: Musée d'Orsay. Please click on the photo to enlarge it.

Gustave Caillebotte, Partie de bateau, vers 1877-1878, huile sur toile, sans cadre H. 89,5 ; L. 116,7 cm avec cadre H. 122 ; L. 149 ; EP. 11,5 cm, Achat grâce au mécénat exclusif de LVMH, Grand Mécène de l’établissement, 2022, © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy. Niveau supérieur, Salle 30. Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894).
    "Partie de bateau, chef-d’œuvre de Gustave Caillebotte et « icône » de l’impressionnisme encore en main privée, avait fait l’objet d’un classement au titre de « trésor national » le 30 janvier 2020. Grâce à l’exceptionnel mécénat de LVMH, l’œuvre vient de rejoindre les collections nationales. "
    "Ce tableau est exemplaire de la volonté de Caillebotte de produire un art véritablement moderne, exprimant un regard neuf sur le monde."
    "L’artiste choisit comme sujet les nouveaux loisirs de la bourgeoisie urbaine, dont il fait partie. Un homme, dont on ne connaît pas l’identité, fait de la barque sur l’Yerres, la rivière qui coule près de la propriété de villégiature des Caillebotte au sud-est de paris. Le peintre propose un cadrage « immersif » original qui place le spectateur dans la barque et cherche à abolir la distance entre l’espace du tableau et celui du regardeur."
    "Se dégagent de la composition – centrée sur cet homme qui nous fait face mais détourne le regard – une énergie, un sentiment d’assurance, mais aussi de solitude, caractéristiques de l’œuvre de Caillebotte. La touche esquissée et la gamme de tons bleutés évoquent la peinture de plein air, qui séduit de plus en plus l’artiste à cette époque."
    "Partie de bateau fait partie des tableaux envoyés par Caillebotte à la 4e exposition du groupe impressionniste en 1879. La nouveauté du point de vue, alliée à la banalité du sujet, choque les critiques même les plus avancés, et fait dire à certains que le jeune peintre est un provocateur, que ses peintures ne sont pas du grand art mais une simple « photographie de la réalité » (Emile Zola). A cette date, Caillebotte apparaît comme l’artiste le plus radical du mouvement. "

    Photo and data: Musée d'Orsay. Please click on the photo to enlarge it.

Gustave Caillebotte, Les Soleils, jardin du Petit Gennevilliers, vers 1885, huile sur toile, sans cadre H. 130,5 ; L. 105,8 cm avec cadre H. 158,8 ; L. 133,5 ; EP. 4 cm, © Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy. Niveau supérieur, Salle 31. Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894).
    2022, accepté par l'Etat à titre de dation pour l'établissement public du musée d'Orsay et de l'Orangerie-Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (conseil artistique des Musées nationaux du 08/12/2021, commission des dations du 13/12/2021, arrêté d'affectation du 22/07/2022).
    "Par sa taille, cette vue du jardin de Caillebotte est une des plus ambitieuses peintes par l’artiste. Elle participe à la redéfinition du genre du paysage opérée par les impressionnistes."
    "Le jardin est un des thèmes de prédilection de Caillebotte, qui prend d’abord pour sujet le parc de la propriété familiale de Yerres, puis, comme ici, son jardin au Petit Gennevilliers, situé à une dizaine de kilomètres de Paris. L’artiste devient un véritable « peintre-jardinier » comme son ami Monet à Giverny et tous deux s’enthousiasment pour les « soleils », grands tournesols cultivés uniquement comme plante d’ornement à cette date."
    "Pour Caillebotte, le rôle de l’artiste – comme celui du jardinier – est tout autant de magnifier que de soumettre la nature à sa volonté. Dans cette composition très structurée, l’épanouissement de la végétation est cantonné à la partie basse du tableau et s’oppose à la solide géométrie des architectures. Le choix d’un étonnant format vertical, et l’écrasement des plans provoqué par la juxtaposition du proche et du lointain, sont peut-être inspirés par l’exemple de l’estampe japonaise et par la photographie. En coupant brutalement les fleurs et maisons sur les bords, le peintre nous fait aussi comprendre qu’il ne s’agit que d’un fragment d’une réalité qui se poursuit au-delà du cadre. Caillebotte semble souscrire à la formule d’Émile Zola ; « l’œuvre d’art est un coin de nature vu à travers un tempérament ». "
    Photo and data: Musée d'Orsay. Please click on the photo to enlarge it.

Gustave Caillebotte, Henri Cordier, en 1883, huile sur toile, H. 65,0 ; L. 81,5 cm. , Don Mme Henri Cordier, 1926, © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt. Niveau supérieur, Salle 32. Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894).
    "One of the most delightful aspects of Caillebotte's work is the series of portraits of personalities from his wealthy entourage. The identity of many of these has been lost today, but not so Henri Cordier (1849-1925), a specialist on Chinese affairs, and Professor of history, geography and the legal systems of the countries of the Far East at the School of Oriental Languages in Paris."
    "Cordier lived in China from 1869 to 1876. He edited a bibliography of works on the Chinese Empire, his Biblioteca Sinica published between 1878 and 1895, and was one of the founders, in 1882, of the Revue d'Extrême-Orient. The Great Encyclopaedia also tells us that he was awarded a third class grade in Mandarin Chinese."
    "We do not know how Caillebotte and Cordier came to meet, but they were certainly friends, although the artist never accepted commissions for portraits as he did not need to sell his paintings to live. Here, Caillebotte chooses to focus on Cordier's intellectual side. He is represented deep in concentration, surrounded by books, busy writing in an ill-defined position. The unusual composition, cropping the figure in half and combining it with decorative elements to fill the space, is very typical of Caillebotte's experimental work. In this respect he shows himself to be close to Degas."
    "The textural effects and palette of purplish reflections are found in other works painted by Caillebotte during this period."
    Photo and data: Musée d'Orsay. Please click on the photo to enlarge it.

AA: Visiting Musée d'Orsay I discover for the first time Gustave Caillebotte. Until now I have failed to register this major artist who was an interlocutor between realism and impressionism, important in several currents of art, but with a different vision beyond isms. Isms are of course terms for critics and historians, less relevant or meaningless for artists.

First I pay attention to the striking composition. There is a sense of dynamic energy in Caillebotte's frames. Bold high or low angle shots of cityscapes and interiors remind me of Fritz Lang and Kenji Mizoguchi. Perspectives can be daring. Caillebotte invites us to see in a new way.

Many of Caillebotte's paintings have remained in private collections. Last year, in 2022, Musée d'Orsay received as donations two major rural outdoors paintings, Partie de bateau and Les Soleils, jardin du Petit Gennevilliers, now prominently on display.

I read from the museum's notes that The Floor Planers is a pioneering portrait of the urban proletariat, in the same spirit as Courbet and Millet painted rural working people, which I also revisited today. The Floor Planers is a powerful tribute by the grand bourgeois artist to the nobility of the worker, four years after the Paris Commune. Cailleboutte elevates his subjects even more than his realist predecessors in making them look like Olympian heroes of the Antiquity.

Looking at the planers' gorgeous nude upper torsos I have a fleeting association to Ricardo Montalbán (an object of gay dreams who was straight) whom I saw in Mark of the Renegade on Sunday. Other paintings seem to confirm an intuition about a possible vein in Caillebotte's difference.

Caillebotte had a wide register of approaches, techniques and styles at his disposal, but there was a firm core, an inner vision, a unity in his works. His parcours remained short - he died at age 45 - but he was active during a golden age of French art, active in its currents both as an artist and as a visionary collector and patron of his fellow artists in a phase when they struggled for recognition.

There are prophetic accents in Caillebotte's works that predate later developments, such as the scuola metafisica and surrealism. In the passion for sometimes almost photorealistic painting there is a subtle touch of the uncanny.

...
I viewed seven paintings of Caillebotte (at the Niveau supérieur):
1. Vue de toits (1878) Salle 32
2. Henri Cordier (1883) Salle 32
3. Arbre en fleurs (1882) Salle 32
4. Les Soleils (vers 1885) (new acquisition 2022) Salle 31
5. Raboteurs de parquet (1875) Salle 30
6. Partie de bateau (vers 1877-1878) (new acquisition 2022: Trésor National) Salle 30
7. Voiliers à Argenteuil (1888) Salle 30

Maximilien Luce: Paris en mai 1871 (painting at Musée d'Orsay)

Maximilien Luce, Une rue de Paris en mai 1871, entre 1903 et 1905, huile sur toile, H. 151,0 ; L. 225,8 cm. , Don Frédéric Luce, fils de Maximilien Luce 1946, © Musée d'Orsay / Sophie Crépy. Maximilien Luce (1858 - 1941). Niveau supérieur, Salle 37. Please click on the image to enlarge it.
    "L'histoire sociale et politique trouve aussi sa place dans la peinture. Maximilien Luce rend compte ici de la fin sanglante de la Commune de Paris."
    "Durant la guerre de 1870, Paris assiégée connaît une terrible famine. Mais la capitulation et la proclamation de l’état allemand dans la galerie des glaces de Versailles le 18 janvier 1871 sont vécus comme une humiliation. Conscient de ces tensions, le nouveau gouvernement de Thiers essaie de reprendre les canons installés dans les quartiers populaires de Montmartre et Belleville. Cette décision déclenche le soulèvement et l’élection d’un Conseil de la commune, constitué d’artisans, d’ouvriers et de membres de la petite et moyenne bourgeoisie. La Commune dure de mars à mai 1871."
    "Réfugié à Versailles, le gouvernement de Thiers revient à Paris avec l’armée. La répression est Terrible. Du 21 au 28 mai, les derniers insurgés sont fusillés lors de la « semaine sanglante »."
    "Cette répression a toutefois l'appui des élus républicains de l'Assemblée nationale, qui pour préserver la République, encore fragile, donneront leur accord à Thiers. La plupart des écrivains, dont Zola, se montreront aussi hostiles à la Commune." Text: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

AA: The last painting in the extraordinary section of De l'impressionnisme au néo-impressionnisme is Maximilien Luce's Une rue de Paris en mai 1871, a memorial to the Paris Commune. The following space at the museum is the magnificent Café Campana hall with one of the Musée d'Orsay clocks - the one with the view on the Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, another memorial to the Commune.

Maximilien Luce, one of the great neoimpressionists, kept evolving in his approaches and styles, interested in a wide range of subjects. Like Gustave Caillebotte in Raboteurs de parquet, Luce followed Courbet and Millet in an important current of his work, devoted to the working class. Politically, he was an anarchist socialist. Luce opposed Vichy laws discriminating Jewish artists.

During the Commune, Luce was a 13 year old art school student attending a course on drawing. He participated in the repression of the Communards and was marked for life by the experience.

Mark of the Renegade

Hugo Fregonese: Mark of the Renegade (US 1951). Lobby card.

Hugo Fregonese: Mark of the Renegade (US 1951). Ricardo Montalbán and Cyd Charisse dance the flamenco.

Hugo Fregonese: Mark of the Renegade (US 1951). Ricardo Montalbán and Cyd Charisse.

Hugo Fregonese: Mark of the Renegade (US 1951) avec Cyd Charisse et Ricardo Montalbán.

Le Signe des renégats / Luopion merkki / Blixtrandre klingor
Hugo Fregonese / États-Unis / 1951 / 81 min / 35 mm / VOSTF
Avec Ricardo Montalbán, Cyd Charisse, J. Carrol Naish.
La Cinémathèque française : Rétrospective Hugo Fregonese
Salle Henri Langlois, dimanche 2 avril 2023, 17h00 18h25
This movie was not included in Bologna's 2022 Hugo Fregonese retrospective.

La Cinémathèque française : "En 1825, lors de l'avènement de la République du Mexique, Marcos Zappa est victime d'un odieux chantage au terme d'un exil forcé de plusieurs années. En échange du silence de Don Pedro García sur son passé, il doit séduire la belle Manuela de Vásquez et l'épouser pour mieux porter le discrédit sur son père."

"Vingt ans avant La Planète des singes et L'Île fantastique, qui le rendront célèbre, le sémillant Ricardo Montalbán pastiche Zorro dans ce film d'aventure exotique. Tantôt western, comédie musicale, film de pirates et de cape et d'épée, Le Signe des renégats vaut aussi pour son Technicolor flamboyant et le numéro imparable de Cyd Charisse."

AA: Thom Andersen's cinematic essay Los Angeles Plays Itself (US 2003) is a compilation of 215 films about the City of Angels, but Mark of the Renegade is not included. I cannot recall a film covering an earlier period of L.A. history than this one, set in the year 1825, ten years before Los Angeles got city status. Pueblo de los Ángeles (El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles) had been founded in 1781 as a Spanish town. The presidio, the mission and the pueblo appear in Hugo Fregonese's film, which is set in the Mexican period (1821–1846) of California.

That period is best known in popular culture from the adventures of Zorro. The mysterious character had been created by Johnston McCulley in his story The Curse of Capistrano (1919) and promptly adapted as a grand adventure movie by Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro (1920). The masked avenger leading a double life as an effete aristocrat and a dashing hero was pathbreaking in popular culture in many ways.

Mark of the Renegade is also based on a story by the prolific McCulley. The protagonist this time is a double agent called Marcos Zappa whose forehead has been branded the with letter R, for Renegade. Even the audience is not let in the secret of his existence until the finale. Mark of the Renegade is a pirate film, a swashbuckler and a romantic adventure story.

Ricardo Montalbán is well cast and gets to display his magnificent nude upper torso as the mysterious emissary.

Hugo Fregonese excels in action and adventure scenes and in the spectacular fiesta sequence. But I was thinking that George Sidney and Vincente Minnelli would have brought even more panache into this tale of make-believe and shifting identities. There is something forced at times in the merry-making.

Cyd Charisse was on the brink of the stardom she soon achieved in Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon and Brigadoon. She had been studying dance since 1934 in Los Angeles and the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and appeared in movies since 1941. Here she already brings dignity, elegance and grandeur to her performance.

The electrifying flamenco pas de deux with Montalbán is an absolute highlight of the movie. The passion and the style are compelling. Charisse and Montalbán are among the most unforgettable dancing couples in the history of Hollywood. "Just one look / That's all it took". The chemistry is unmistakable at first glance.

Mark of the Renegade belongs to the movies in which the subject of the cancelled wedding is central.

The colour of the 35 mm print is fine and there is a softness which may be inherent in the Technicolor sources.

Blowing Wild (restored by Paramount Pictures)

Hugo Fregonese: Blowing Wild (US 1953) avec Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper et Anthony Quinn.

Hugo Fregonese: Blowing Wild (US 1953) avec Anthony Quinn et Gary Cooper.

Le Souffle sauvage / Mustaa kultaa / När marken bränner.
Hugo Fregonese / États-Unis / 1953 / 90 min / DCP / VOSTF
Avec Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Anthony Quinn.
Restored by Paramount Pictures in collaboration with Olive Films at Fotokem laboratory, from a 35 mm composite fine grain (2nd generation) and a 35 mm optical track negative.
La Cinémathèque française : Rétrospective Hugo Fregonese
E-sous-titres français n.c.
Salle Henri Langlois, samedi 1 avril 2023 18h00 19h30

The expression "blowing wild" refers to the oil well blowing out of control.

Séance précédée d'un film publicitaire surprise.

La Cinémathèque française : "Au Mexique, Jeff, prospecteur pétrolier fauché, demande la protection d'une compagnie contre les pillards. Mais le patron refuse car Jeff a eu une liaison avec sa femme."

"Un thriller explosif, dont certaines scènes – le transport de dynamite par Gary Cooper et Ward Bond – ne sont pas sans évoquer Le Salaire de la peur, tourné par Clouzot au même moment à l'autre bout du monde. Fregonese distille dans son script le poison du film noir (ici incarné par Barbara Stanwyck, formidable en femme fatale), ainsi que quelques touches de western sud-américain."
...
BOLOGNA PROGRAM DATA 2022:
Ballata selvaggia
US 1953. Director: Hugo Fregonese
Scen.: Philip Yordan. F.: Sid Hickox. M.: Alan Crosland Jr. Scgf.: Alfred Ybarra, Edward Fitzgerald. Mus.: Dimitri Tiomkin. Int.: Gary Cooper (Jeff Dawson), Barbara Stanwyck (Marina Conway), Ruth Roman (Sal Donnelly), Anthony Quinn (Paco Conway), Ward Bond (Dutch Peterson), Ian MacDonald (Jackson), Richard Karlan (Henderson), Juan García (El Gavilan). Prod.: Milton Sperling per United States Pictures, Inc. DCP. D.: 90’. Bn.
From Paramount, courtesy of Park Circus. Restored in 2012 by Paramount Pictures in collaboration with Olive Films at Fotokem laboratory, from a 35 mm composite fine grain (2nd generation) and a 35 mm optical track negative
E-subtitles in Italian
Il Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna) 2022: The Drifter's Escape: Hugo Fregonese.
Cinema Jolly, Sunday 26/06/2022 - 21:30, Thursday 30/06/2022 - 11:30

(Ehsan Khoshbakht, Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2022): "Thrilling and grand, this was Hugo Fregonese’s all-star moment – when the ultimate Hollywood wanderer met another drifter, Gary Cooper, who had chosen to leave the US behind and partially settle and work in Mexico for tax reasons. Also featuring Anthony Quinn and Barbara Stanwyck, this story of a male friendship threatened by an old flame – now married to one of the men but secretly desiring the other – sees Fregonese giving familiar clichés a vigorous treatment."

"A patchwork of certain Howard Hawks themes and situations, Philip Yordan’s predictable script – set against the backdrop of oil extraction in an unnamed Latin American country – is elevated by cut-glass dialogue, helping the film stand on its own. More accurate comparisons might be drawn with the work of John Huston, to whom the film owes its sense of empathy for the drifter, in his despair. It also has an uncanny and purely coincidental resemblance to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Wages of Fear (made at the same time but released earlier) in the subplot, which involves a truckload of nitroglycerin being driven across mountainous terrain."

"Fregonese contrasts nature with manmade structures such as oil rigs, barrels and pipes. Sidney Hickox’s fine cinematography (the film was originally announced as a Technicolor production but later shot in black and white to reduce costs) fully supports this calculated invasion of natural space, through the menacing framing of oil-rig components. At the same time Fregonese makes the rigs synonymous with manhood. The sexual metaphor even extends to the rig’s name, which it shares with the leading female character, Marina."

"Blowing Wild is a hybrid film; beginning as a semi-western and becoming a semi-noir towards the end. It features some eclectic elements, such as the rather intrusive theme song sung by Frankie Laine – transposed right out of High Noon, for which Cooper won an Oscar as he was shooting with Fregonese down in Mexico. Surprisingly, Quinn also won Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Viva Zapata! during the same ceremony, leading to a certain amount of hype around Blowing. But the film’s ultimate lack of success (it was not by any means a failure, however) pushed Fregonese back into his usual business of making small, unglamorous films with a punch." (Ehsan Khoshbakht, Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2022)

AA: I missed Blowing Wild in Bologna's Hugo Fregonese tribute last year and was happy to catch up in Paris. The A budget adventure thriller was produced in Mexico on location and at the Churubusco Studios, but after an intervention of the Mexican government, a disclaimer was added after the credits that the story takes place in South America. The adventure is set in the early 1930s.

The action scenes are well handled, covering the oilmen's desperate fight with bandits who pressure them for protection money. Or else the bandits will destroy the oil wells and blow up the derricks with dynamite. Fregonese's breathtaking nitroglycerine transport sequence was shot simultaneously with and independently of The Wages of Fear. Clouzot's film is incomparably better. Barbara Stanwyck is in her element on horseback as Marina, racing against her husband Paco (Anthony Quinn) driving his car. In the most thrilling action scene Jeff Dawson (Gary Cooper) catches the nitroglycerine cylinder hurling out of the oil well "blowing wild".

The 1950s were a decade in which the oil motif was prominent in Hollywood films like Giant and Written on the Wind. The sexual element was more than a symbol. Black sperm was energizing the society. The connection was also openly cultivated in commercials like Marilyn Monroe's Royal Triton and Esso's Put a Tiger in Your Tank. Fregonese navigates skillfully in this volatile and explosive terrain.

Fregonese has an all star cast, but he does not quite know what to do with it. Barbara Stanwyck creates a pitch black femme fatale. Gary Cooper fends off voracious women in every direction. Anthony Quinn is a tough oil magnate with a heart of gold. Ruth Roman is Sal Donnelly, a stranded blackjack dealer, who becomes Jeff's shield from Marina. All are impressive, but they seem to perform on autopilot, as if Fregonese had been overwhelmed by them.

The heart of the narrative belongs to Ward Bond (as Dutch Peterson, Jeff's partner and friend) who is at his best here. He is the voice of sanity and reason amidst the oil madness.

Frankie Laine is the ballad narrator of the movie with his theme song "Blowing Wild (The Ballad of Black Gold)" in the same way as in the previous year's Gary Cooper hit film High Noon, also composed by Dimitri Tiomkin *. Besides, there is an appealing soundtrack of Mexican favourites, including corridos, Mexican narrative songs, such as "La adelita" (the ballad of Mexican revolutionary women), the timeless "La golondrina", and "Las chiapanecas" perhaps revealing the state (Chiapas) where the action takes place, although large scale oil drilling there is a much later phenomenon.

The fine restoration does justice to Sidney Hickox's cinematography both in rich and vivid passages shot on location and stark nocturnal scenes in the film noir tradition.

The announced surprise bonus extra in the beginning was a Holsten Pils beer commercial, recycled from Blowing Wild imagery.

* "The Ballad of High Noon" is sometimes held as the Western's first narrative theme song, but it had been preceded at least by "Legend of Chuck-A-Luck" in Rancho Notorious and "Wagons West" in Wagon Master.

Apache Drums (2021 restoration Universal Pictures)

Hugo Fregonese: Apache Drums (US 1951) avec Stephen McNally (Sam Leeds), Coleen Gray (Sally Barr) et Willard Parker (Joe Madden).

Quand les tambours s'arrêteront / Kuoleman rummut / Dödstrummorna.
Hugo Fregonese / États-Unis / 1951 / 75 min / DCP / VOSTF
D'après le roman Stand at Spanish Boot de Harry Brown [there seems to be no such novel].
Avec Stephen McNally, Coleen Gray, Willard Parker.
La Cinémathèque française : Rétrospective Hugo Fregonese
Ouverture de la rétrospective [announced: en présence de Jacques Lourcelles (sous réserve); Lourcelles could not attend] séance présenté par Jean-François Rauger
E-sous-titres français n.c.
La Cinémathèque française : Salle Henri Langlois, mercredi 29 mars 2023, 20h00 21h15

La Cinémathèque française : "Une petite ville est attaquée par les Mescaleros. Les villageois se réfugient dans l'église et résistent aux assauts des Indiens."

"L'un des chefs-d'œuvre de son auteur, qui porte autant la patte de Fregonese – art de la concision, précision du découpage, science du rythme – que celle de Val Lewton, producteur historique de la RKO et des séries B de Jacques Tourneur. Circonscrite dans un petit village d'Arizona, puis confinée dans son église transformée en camp retranché, l'action de ce western aux atours classiques se teinte peu à peu d'une violence baroque : la longue attaque nocturne des Apaches qui clôt le film le fait basculer dans un fantastique spectral, dont John Carpenter s'inspirera lors du tournage d'Assaut."

AA: In the Hugo Fregonese retrospective of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna in 2022 I already visited this 2021 restoration of Apache Drums but was too tired to focus.

Apache Drums starts from an Indian viewpoint: the desperation of the Mescalero Apache in the year 1880. Quoting AFI Catalog online:

" An offscreen narrator, presumably a Mescalero Apache, states as the film opens that his people can go neither north nor south: "The hunger wolf chews on our strengths. Soon the warriors will be too weak to fight. Then the white man will thrust us away from the earth, and only the empty sky will know the voices of the Mescalero." "

" This is followed by an onscreen statement: "A hungry people rose to fight. Their fury fell upon settled places where peaceful Americans carried on trade and Welsh miners dug for silver. One of these places was the town of Spanish Boot." The historical Victorio was a Chiricahua Apache leader who led his people from the hated San Carlos Reservation to their homeland, the Black Mountains. "

Although Apache Drums then switches to the white man's viewpoint (in the desert mining town Spanish Boot) for the rest of the film and although it is a brutal tale of the Indian wars, it does not belittle or demean the Apache. "Don't underestimate the Apache". There is an interlocutor, an Apache Cavalry scout, Pedro-Peter (Armando Silvestre) who explains the Mescaleros' behaviour during the final night. Sam has mortally wounded their chief Victorio, "prophet, priest and war chief all in one", and now the Indians are getting into a war trance by drinking and music.

" According to the pressbook for the film, Dr. Chris Willowbird, a "noted authority on Indian lore," supervised the recording of the authentic Apache music for the soundtrack. An orchestra of twenty Apache Indians was used for the recording, which was highlighted by an Apache religious chant sung in ceremonial preparation for going into battle. "

" The soundtrack also includes Apache drinking songs and "several warpath numbers." The Los Angeles Examiner reviewer commented that the "Indian drum work, tribal music and primitive customs are particularly well handled in this film, and the sets for once seem real." " (AFI Catalog online)

Pedro-Peter explains that after the death of Victorio, the Apaches are now set to kill and be killed in a final battle to turn into ghost warriors.

The Indians are ferocious but honorable. When an Indian's oath is questioned, Pedro-Peter answers: "Oath to an Indian means a great deal more than to a white man".

The metaphysical dimension, the presence of death, the sense of the supernatural and the ghost warrior theme link Apache Drums to Val Lewton's legendary cinéfantastique cycle for RKO. Apache Drums was the last film produced by Lewton who had started as David O. Selznick's story editor in the 1930s helping adapt Tolstoy and Dickens for the screen. Lewtonian touches here even include a cat (a kitten is helped to a bowl of milk in the opening sequence). Besides RKO Fantastique it feels also relevant to evoke Universal Horror, since Apache Drums was produced and distributed by Universal.

Hugo Fregonese brings vigorous energy to the low budget Western. His mise-en-scène is dynamic. His first shot in the desert mining town, inside looking out, framed by a door opening to the sun-drenched town square, evokes Ford.

In the beginning we witness the bordertown in transition. The gambler and the dancehall girls are evicted. The middle part takes place in the desert. Fregonese creates a sense of dread in visions of ominous hills. The last third is devoted to the siege in the church.

" The final siege sequence is one of the most remarkable passages in American cinema. ", states Dave Kehr, high praise indeed, as the siege narrative has a formidable cinematic legacy since D. W. Griffith. The siege is of course fundamental in epic narrative in general since Iliad and the Odyssey. Even in such a perspective, Apache Drums excels. 

The situation looks desperate. The threat remains mostly invisible, conveyed by the Apaches' chant. The white people are protected by high walls and exposed by elevated windows. They are also protected by a heavy gate, but finally the Apaches set it on fire. The whites respond by counterfire. They prepare to die and fight to finish. When children panic, Sam and Sally reassure them with magic tricks and a singalong of "Oranges and Lemons". To the Indian chant, they answer with the Welsh march "Men of Harlech".

Technicolor becomes a creative means of expression, culminating in the siege where fearsome Apache warpaint stands out. For Dave Kehr " their bodies painted in primary colors and bathed by matching pinspots" is "an audacious concept that looks forward to the bold stylization of Mario Bava".

In his introduction, Jean-François Rauger also asked us to pay attention to " la robe verte de Coleen Gray ". The green dress does highlight Coleen Gray's beauty.

Apache Drums is a moral tale but not a moralistic one. Betty Careless (Ruthelma Stevens) the dancehall madam is proud of her mission. Sam Leeds (Stephen McNally) is a quintessential Fregonese protagonist: a gambler and a tramp. The Puritan Reverend Griffen (Arthur Shield) is a moralist who undergoes a transformation. The turning-point is when Sam and Griffen fight marauding Apaches in the desert together.

The subtitle of Bologna's Fregonese tribute was "A Drifter's Escape". Fregonese's movies are studies of freedom and its limitations. In Sally Barr (Coleen Gray), Sam meets his match. "It's a kind of pity that I only like bad men and want to make them good", says Sally. Sam wants both Sally and his freedom but cannot have both.

Sam is a tramp and a daredevil, a man in search of himself, in a loose sense in the William S. Hart tradition of the "good bad man". In combat he is fearless, but Sally tells him that "sometimes it's easier to be brave than honest."

Although introduced as an "every man for himself" type, Sam grows into a leader of the community, first in the water search party and finally in the siege where also the question of morale (as in esprit de corps) is dramatized both in matters of a fighting spirit and questions of honesty (preparing to what seems certain death).

Apache Drums is a B movie with an A spirit. The weakness of the movie is the casting. One could imagine alternatives: Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Joel McCrea (as in The Saddle Tramp)... Apache Drums is often called Fregonese's greatest movie, but I prefer The Raid and Black Tuesday because of the casting.

A brilliant 4K restoration from 2021 by Universal Pictures in collaboration with The Film Foundation at NBC Universal StudioPost laboratory, from a 35 mm nitrate 3-strip original negative preserved by UCLA. It is difficult to sustain sharpness in three-strip Technicolor, but the result is so perfect that I wonder whether it might be even sharper than the original.

Soylent Green

Richard Fleischer: Soylent Green (US 1973).

Richard Fleischer: Soylent Green (US 1973) avec Charlton Heston.

Soleil vert / Maailma vuonna 2022 / Världen år 2022.
Richard Fleischer / États-Unis / 1973 / 97 min / 35 mm / VOSTF
D'après le roman Make Room! Make Room! de Harry Harrison.
Avec Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten.
25 indispensables de la science-fiction
Lundi 27 mar 2023 - 18h30 Salle Henri Langlois
New York, 2022. Les hommes ont épuisé les ressources naturelles. Seul le « soleil vert » parvient à nourrir une population miséreuse qui ignore tout de cet aliment. Accompagné de son fidèle ami, un policier va découvrir au péril de sa vie l'effroyable réalité de cette société inhumaine.

Générique
Réalisateur : Richard Fleischer
Assistants réalisateurs : Daniel McCauley, Gene Marum
Scénariste : Stanley R. Greenberg
Auteur de l'oeuvre originale : Harry Harrison d'après le roman "Make Room, Make Room" (1966)
Société de production : MGM - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Producteurs : Walter Seltzer, Russell Thacher
Directeur de la photographie : Richard H. Kline
Ingénieurs du son : Charles M. Wilborn, Harry W. Tetrick
Compositeur de la musique originale : Fred Myrow
Compositeurs de la musique préexistante : Edvard Grieg, Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski, Ludwig vanBeethoven
Directeur artistique : Edward C. Carfagno
Décorateur : Robert R. Benton
Costumier : Pat Barto
Maquilleur : Bud Westmore
Monteur : Samuel E. Beetley
Directeur de casting : Joe Canutt
Coordinateur des effets spéciaux : A. J. Lohman
Conseiller technique : Frank R. Bowerman
Interprètes : Charlton Heston (le détective Robert Thorn), Edward G. Robinson (Sol Roth), Leigh Taylor-Young (Shirl), Chuck Connors (Tab Fielding), Paula Kelly (Martha Philipson), Brock Peters (le lieutenant Hatcher), Joseph Cotten (William Simonson), Stephen Young (Gilbert), Roy Jenson (Donovan), Whit Bissell (le gouverneur Santini), Lincoln Kilpatrick (le prêtre), Mike Henry (Kulosik), Leonard Stone (Charles), Tim Herbert (Brady), John Dennis (Wagner), Carlos Romero (le nouveau locataire), Celia Lovsky (la bibliothécaire), Dick Van Patten (l'employé du "Home"), Forrest Wood (un subalterne du "Home"), Faith Quabius (un subalterne du "Home"), Morgan Farley (un "livre"), Belle Mitchell (un "livre"), Cyril Delevanti (un "livre"), John Barclay (un "livre"), Joyce Williams (un "mobilier"), Beverly Gill (un "mobilier"), Cheri Howell (un "mobilier"), Jennifer King (un "mobilier"), Erica Hagen (un "mobilier"), Suesi Eejima (un "mobilier"), Kathy Silva (un "mobilier"), Marion Charles (un "mobilier"), Pat Houtchens (le gardien de l'immeuble obèse), Jane Dulo (Madame Santini), Jan Bradley (la femme au foulard), Joseph Mell, Bern Hoffman, Nora Marlowe, Guy Way

AA: There is special pathos in a prophecy about a future that has already happened. Escape from New York... Blade Runner... Tonight: Soylent Green.

We see landline telephones and cathode ray television sets. But there is such solidity and gravity in the vision and the structure of Soylent Green that anachronisms turn into bonus features.

The greenhouse effect has taken place. The ecocatastrophe has reached the last frontier: the ocean. The ocean is dying, no longer able to produce plankton. Pollution and smog destroy conditions of life. Overpopulation, mass poverty, famine and homelessness are everywhere.

Investigating the murder of the executive William Simonson (Joseph Cotten), detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) gets a look into the way of life of the power elite who live in an existence separate from others.

Simonson had lost his will to live having learned the secret of his Soylent corporation, producing synthetic food wafers. That is why he had to be eliminated, and why he did not resist.
 
Reportedly Harry Harrison, the author of the novel on which Soylent Green is based, was unhappy that MGM turned his serious dystopia into an action thriller. I can understand that, and yet the themes are so powerful that even the chase action format does not harm them. Retrospectively, the thriller approach connects Soylent Green meaningfully with the great American political thrillers of the 1970s. As does the gritty realism with which the world of the future has been imagined.

Charlton Heston became a superstar incarnating mythic heroes of Antiquity (Moses, Ben-Hur, John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told). "Charlton Heston is an axiom. He constitutes a tragedy in himself" (Michel Mourlet)*. In the 1960s Heston became a science fiction superstar in the dystopia Planet of the Apes, followed by The Omega Man and Soylent Green. In Soylent Green he is an antihero, a rogue cop, a corrupt and violent police officer, yet with a mission to save the world.

Robert Thorn is a loner, but he lives together with Professor Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson), "the Book". Like in Fahrenheit 451, books are getting extinct, hardly being printed anymore, in another sign of the downfall of society. But there is still a small team of ageing book people with access to a library.

Soylent Green was the last movie of Edward G. Robinson whose film career had started in the silent era. His character is proudly Jewish with expressions such as "l'chaim". Robinson was great till the end, his is the heart of the movie. Sol Roth's extraordinary assisted death sequence is the last in which he acted, two months before his own death. Roth's "death movie" is a nature montage on a huge wall-sized screen accompanied with his favourite music (Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Tchaikovsky's Pathétique, Grieg's Peer Gynt). Thorn and Roth exchange final confessions of love, a redeeming feature in the stony and brutal Thorn.

The wonderful Leigh Taylor-Young is the female lead as the slave woman Shirl. The apartments of the power elite come equipped with live-in concubines such as Shirl. They are called "furniture". The movie (the aspect does not appear in the novel) enters the territory of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but there is no feminist viewpoint, no resistance. The women are soft and submissive. The movie even seems to share patriarchal attitudes of its dystopia in the way the scantily clad women are reduced to objects of visual pleasure. Leigh Taylor-Young would have deserved roles in the league of Offred. Instead, she was cast as a token woman. She interrupted her successful film career for seven years after Soylent Green.

Richard Fleischer was a director of many genres and idioms. He was no stranger to dystopian science fiction: his breakthrough into the big league took place in Jules Verne's 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea, produced by Walt Disney. He discussed slavery unflinchingly in the controversial and pathbreaking Mandingo. The ethos is always the one best summed up by Hegel in his master and slave dialectics: in conditions of slavery, no one is free.

Having recently seen Fleischer's early B movie gem, Armored Car Robbery, it is striking to compare its admirably compact cinematic storytelling with the more loose and relaxed epic mode of Soylent Green. Its most appealing feature is that it provides time to reflect. Although an action movie, the tempo is often tranquil, the opposite of the current ADHD fashion of action cinema. The exception is the opening rapid fire montage covering the history of the world from the 19th century to the year 2022 in fast forward accelerando.

I wrote about Armored Car Robbery that I hesitate to call it a film noir, because there is no transcendent dimension of evil, no cosmic agony and the streets are not dark with something more than night. In Soylent Green, they are.

It was a great pleasure to view the 35 mm print, slightly worn, not quite brilliant, but with juicy and vivid colours intact.

After the screening, the movie seemed to continue on the streets of Paris. Giant garbage heaps pile up, beggars and the homeless inhabit sidewalks, and massive strikes and demonstrations go on since months. An exceptionally big strike action day is announced for tomorrow. Officially it is about the pension reform, but the background is the neoliberal turn of 1971 (the period in which Soylent Green was made), the end of regulation and the start of increasing inequality, accompanied with an awareness of an imminent ecocatastrophe and a quietly growing "no future" ambience.

* "Charlton Heston is an axiom. He constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any film being enough to instil beauty. The pent-up violence expressed by the sombre phosphorescence of his eyes, his eagle’s profile, the imperious arch of his eyebrows, the hard, bitter curve of his lips, the stupendous strength of his torso - this is what he has been given, and what not even the worst of directors can debase. It is in this sense that one can say that Charlton Heston, by his very existence and regardless of the film he is in, provides a more accurate definition of the cinema than films like Hiroshima mon amour or Citizen Kane, films whose aesthetic either ignores or repudiates Charlton Heston. Through him, mise en scène can confront the most intense of conflicts and settle them with the contempt of a god imprisoned, quivering with muted rage.” Michel Mourlet: "Apologie de la violence", Cahiers du Cinéma 107, May 1960.

Mon crime / The Crime Is Mine

François Ozon: Mon crime / The Crime Is Mine (FR 2023) avec Nadia Tereszkiewicz (Madeleine Verdier) et Rebecca Marder (Pauline Mauléon), second row: André Dussollier (M. Bonnard), Isabelle Huppert (Odette Chaumette), Fabrice Luchini (le juge Gustave Rabusset), third row: Édouard Sulpice (André Bonnard), Dany Boon (Palmarède) and Félix Lefebvre (Gilbert Raton).

FR 2023. PC: Mandarin Cinéma, FOZ et Scope Pictures. Distribution: Gaumont. P: Éric Altmayer, Nicolas Altmayer.
    D+SC: François Ozon - d'après la pièce de théâtre de Georges Berr et Louis Verneuil (1934). Photographie: Manuel Dacosse - couleur - scope. Décors: Jean Rabasse. Costumes: Pascaline Chavanne. Musique: Philippe Rombi. Montage: Laure Gardette.
    Distribution (selon Wikipédia):
    Nadia Tereszkiewicz : l’actrice Madeleine Verdier
    Rebecca Marder : Pauline Mauléon, l’amie avocate et colocataire de Madeleine
    Isabelle Huppert : Odette Chaumette, actrice célèbre au temps du cinéma muet
    Dany Boon : l’architecte marseillais Palmarède
    Fabrice Luchini : le juge Gustave Rabusset
    André Dussollier : M. Bonnard, patron d'une entreprise de pneumatiques
    Félix Lefebvre : le journaliste Gilbert Raton
    Édouard Sulpice : André Bonnard, le fils de M. Bonnard et petit ami de Madeleine
    Régis Laspalès : l’inspecteur Brun
    Olivier Broche : Léon Trapu, le greffier de Rabusset
    Michel Fau : le procureur Maurice Vrai
    Daniel Prévost : M. Parvot, le Président des Assises
    Evelyne Buyle : l’actrice Simone Bernard
    Myriam Boyer : la concierge Mme Jus
    Franck de Lapersonne : Pistole, le logeur de Madeleine et Pauline
    Jean-Christophe Bouvet : le producteur de théâtre Montferrand
    Suzanne De Baecque : Céleste, la domestique
    Lucia Sanchez : Mme Alvarez
    Jean-Claude Bolle-Reddat : Émile Bouchard, admirateur de Simone Bernard
    Dominique Besnehard : le chef de rang du restaurant
    Georges Bécot : la voix du cinéma
Genre : comédie dramatique
Durée : 102 minutes
Dates de sortie : 21 janvier 2023 (Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers) ; 8 mars 2023 (sortie nationale).
Viewed at Pathé Beaugrenelle 6, Paris 15, 26 March 2023.

Synopsis: "In 1930s Paris, Madeleine, a pretty, young, penniless and talentless actress, is accused of murdering a famous producer. Helped by her best friend Pauline, a young unemployed lawyer, she is acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. A new life of fame and success begins, until the truth comes out."  (Unifrance)

AA: François Ozon belongs to the film directors who pursue maximal variety, genre-hopping from film to film. In Mon crime he is on a favourite terrain: the boulevard play. The Ozon layer is perfect.

The film is based on a play from 1934 by Charles Berr and Louis Verneuil, heavyweights of the French stage, also well-known on screen. Among other projects, they collaborated in 25 plays. This one was first filmed in Hollywood in 1937 by Wesley Ruggles for Paramount, starring Carole Lombard, Una Merkel, Fred McMurray and John Barrymore. The Finnish title was Vaalea valehtelijatar [The Blonde Liar], the French one, La folle confession. Another Hollywood adaptation is Cross My Heart (Paramount 1946, directed by John Berry and starring Betty Hutton and Ruth Donnelly).

Ozon has wisely kept his adaptation in the original period, the 1930s. The heart of the movie is the friendship of the two young and poor protagonists. From their small sixth floor apartment window the Eiffel Tower can be glimpsed.

The police finds it dubious that Madeleine and Pauline share a bed, yet there is no room for two beds in the tiny apartment. Madeleine and Pauline are best friends, not lovers, but their shared bath (in more lavish living circumstances) cannot be seen in terms of economy. There is a hint of a lingering desire in Pauline that is left unreciprocated.

Visiting the cinema, Madeleine Verdier (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) and Pauline Mauléon (Rebecca Marder) see Billy Wilder's Mauvaise graine (1934) starring Danielle Darrieux, who acted in Ozon's Huit femmes 68 years later. The most fascinating cinephilic contribution is Isabelle Huppert's character, the silent film diva Odette Chaumette. It is a delicious counterpart to Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond in Wilder's Sunset Boulevard. Even here there is a swimming pool and a manslaughter.

François Ozon movies aspire towards the condition of an exquisite pastiche. Everything is brilliant, witty and immaculate in his pâtisserie. Gravity is missing. Yet it cannot be claimed that Ozon is a shallow film-maker with nothing to say.

I am not familiar with the original play or the Hollywood adaptation, but Ozon's version is Me Too relevant in intriguing ways. The manslaughter takes place in the context of a rape attempt by a mighty theatre producer. We learn alternative versions, see untrustworthy flashbacks, and the film ends with a play within a play that may be close to the truth. The film also raises questions about the other side of the coin. Might Madeleine use sex as a currency to pursue her career, and is it her modus operandi.

It's a man's world, but women hold their own with bewildering manoeuvres. In the Hollywood adaptation of the play, the female protagonist was a pathological liar. Here, Madeleine is a talented actress, suspected of mounting excellent performances even in the courtroom.

This is my first encounter with Nadia Tereszkiewicz, a 26 year old French actress of Finnish and Polish lineage, already in her eleventh role in a feature film. Her personality is original and assured, firmly grounded yet able to convey a dazzling movie-movie fantasy. Young women benefit from beauty, but the poise of Tereszkiewicz indicates more. She won the Best Female Newcomer Award at the 2023 Césars, for Forever Young / Les Amandiers, which I now need to see. I thank Kalle Kinnunen for alerting me with his feature article on Tereszkiewicz in Helsingin Sanomat, 20 March 2023. May Tereszkiewicz live and prosper until the age of 100 like Darrieux.

Since the beginning, films have drawn from the boulevard theatre, from Max Linder, René Clair, Sacha Guitry and Jean Renoir to Alain Resnais.

For Ozon, the world is a stage, including the scene of the crime, to which he returns repeatedly, in the finale as a re-enactment. He loves theatricality, both obligatory scènes à faire and surprising coups de théâtre. He loves actors. He loves women. He loves the mysteries of appearance, performance and make-believe.

From a concoction of crime and comedy, kitsch and wit, Ozon stages a celebration to the boulevard theatre.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM FRENCH WIKIPEDIA:

Walad min al janna / Boy from Heaven / Conspiracy in Cairo

Tarik Saleh: صبي من الجنة / Walad min al janna / Boy from Heaven / Conspiracy in Cairo (SE/FR/FI/DK 2022) with Fares Fares (Ibrahim) and Tawfeek Barhom (Adam).

صبي من الجنة [meaning literally: Boy from Heaven] / Salaliitto Kairossa / Boy from Heaven (Sweden) / La Conspiration du Caire.
    SE/FR/FI/DK © 2022. P: Atmo / Memento Production / Bufo. Co-P: Film i Väst / Arte France Cinéma / Sveriges Television / Mikael Ahlström Films / Haymaker / Post Control / Final Cut For Real. P: Kristina Åberg, Fredrik Zander (Atmo). Co-P: Bufo (Misha Jaari, Mark Lwoff); Post Control (Toni Valla), Memento Production, Final Cut for Real
    D+SC: Tarik Saleh. Cin: Pierre Aïm - colour - 2,39:1 scope. AD: Roger Rosenberg. Cost: Denise Östholm. Makeup: Pia Cornelius. M: Krister Linder. S: Fredrik Jonsäter, Pontus Borg. ED: Theis Schmidt.
    C: Tawfeek Barhom (Adam), Fares Fares (Ibrahim), Sherwan Haji (Soliman), Mohammad Bakri (General Al Sakran), Makram J. Khoury (Sheik Negm), Mehdi Dehbi (Zizo).
    Language: Arabic.
    Locations: Cairo, Istanbul, Gothenburg.
    120 min
    Festival premiere: 20 May 2022 Cannes Film Festival - Prix du scénario - Prix François-Chalais.
    French release: 26 Oct 2022.
    Swedish release: 18 Nov 2022.
    Guldbaggen 2023: best screenplay.
    Finnish festival premiere: 29 March 2023 Night Visions.
    Finnish release: 6 April 2023, released by B-Plan Distribution.
    Sous-titres français: Françoise Monier & / Hiventy.
    Viewed at L'Épée de Bois 2, Cinéma Art & Essai, 100 rue Mouffetard, M° Censier - Daubenton, Paris 5, 25 Nov 2023.

Synopsis from Wikipédia: "Adam est fils d'un simple pêcheur. Il est admis à l'université al-Azhar au Caire, institution sunnite par excellence. Le jour de la rentrée, le grand imam de la mosquée Al-Azhar, plus haute autorité de l'islam sunnite en Égypte, meurt, presque devant les étudiants. Commence alors une guerre sans pitié pour lui trouver un successeur."

"Le pouvoir politique égyptien veut absolument éviter le choix d'un imam proche des Frères Musulmans et imposer un candidat qui lui convienne. Le colonel Ibrahim de la sûreté d’État se voit confier la mission d'orienter l'élection. Pour agir au sein de la prestigieuse institution, il recourt à l'aide d'étudiants qu'il appelle ses "anges". Zizo, l'étudiant avec lequel il travaille, est inquiet pour sa sécurité et souhaite interrompre sa collaboration avec Ibrahim. Il se rapproche alors d'Adam et gagne sa confiance, car il souhaite le proposer à Ibrahim pour le remplacer."

"Une nuit, Zizo est assassiné sous les yeux d'Adam. Ibrahim se voit confier l'enquête sur son décès. Il convainc Adam de collaborer avec lui en lui promettant le financement d'une opération qui doit sauver la vie de son père. Il ordonne à Adam de se rapprocher et d'espionner des étudiants proches des Frères Musulmans."

"Le Cheikh Ngem, qui est aveugle et charismatique, et est considéré comme un candidat tout à fait crédible pour le poste de grand imam, se présente à la sûreté et s'accuse du meurtre de Zizo, ce qui est évidemment très peu crédible. Il est néanmoins emprisonné. Ibrahim comprend que le Cheikh Ngem sait en fait que Zizo a été assassiné par la sûreté et qu'il compte profiter de son futur procès pour dénoncer les vrais coupables."

"Le colonel Ibrahim s'arrange pour qu'Adam devienne l'assistant du cheikh Al Durani, un candidat proche des Frères Musulmans que le pouvoir égyptien ne veut pas voir obtenir la direction de l'institution. Grâce aux informations transmises par Adam, Ibrahim découvre que le cheikh a contracté un mariage secret avec une très jeune fille avec qui il a eu un enfant, et Adam et lui se servent de cette information pour l'écarter de la compétition."

"Finalement, le candidat élu au poste de grand imam sera le cheikh Omar Beblawi, un proche du pouvoir égyptien. Le supérieur d'Ibrahim décide alors qu'Adam est désormais inutile, et demande à Ibrahim de l'arrêter pour qu'il soit accusé du meurtre de Zizo et condamné à mort. Ibrahim refuse de jouer le jeu, mais Adam est tout de même arrêté. Ibrahim va alors voir le chef de la Sureté et le convainc qu'Adam peut convaincre le cheikh Ngem de renoncer à s'accuser du meurtre de Zizo."

"Adam est finalement libéré et peut retourner dans son village."

"Adam est « témoin pendant tout le temps du film de la guerre que se livrent les pouvoirs politique et religieux, l'un et l'autre voulant imposer son homme lige à la tête de l'institution »"

"Tarik Saleh explique que son scénario a été inspiré par les conflits religieux qu'il a découverts dans le roman d'Umberto Eco, Le Nom de la rose. Le personnage d'Adam peut également être rapproché du propre grand-père de Tarik Saleh, qui était originaire d'un petit village du delta du Nil et a étudié à Al-Azhar alors que sa famille était analphabète" (Wikipédia)

AA: A political thriller of the highest order by Tarik Saleh.

I am reminded of the best American political thrillers of the 1970s, as well as the great tradition of Italian political cinema.

But Tarik Saleh's film, deeply rooted in the culture of Islam, is an original and pathbreaking contribution.

Without indulging in explicit brutality, Conspiracy in Cairo conveys chillingly the reign of terror exercised by the Egyptian security police.

Essentially, Conspiracy in Cairo is a mind game, a battle of wits. The political power elite, the religious hierarchy and the security police are the main players. The Muslim Brotherhood haunts as a shadow conspiracy, against which another ingenious conspiracy must be mounted, followed by yet another one, which puts in danger the life of the rookie student Adam (Tawfeek Barhom).

A master detective, crucial in solving the conspiracy and finding a solution, is one of the greatest spirits in the community, the blind sheik Ngem (Makram J. Khoury). "Close your eyes to see the truth".

University of Bologna (founded in 1088) is generally called the oldest in the world, but Al-Azhar University (970), the main setting of Conspiracy in Cairo, is older.

Tarik Saleh was inspired by the medievalist Umberto Eco, a professor in Bologna, whose novel The Name of the Rose was in turn influenced by the works of Leonardo Sciascia, a key source of Italian political thrillers.

With his spiritual strength and religious wisdom, young Adam transcends the devilish intrigue, but the experience leaves him psychically scarred and profoundly disillusioned.

I was thinking about my colleague and friend Matti Salo whose last book was a monograph about the political thriller. He would have been enthusiastic about Tarik Saleh's excellent film.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRESS KIT:

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Daniels: Everything Everywhere All At Once / 奇異女俠玩救宇宙 (US 2022) starring Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang.

奇異女俠玩救宇宙 (Cantonese) / 媽的多重宇宙 (Taiwan) / Everything Everywhere All At Once [Finnish title] / Everything Everywhere All At Once [Swedish title] / Everything Everywhere All At Once [French title].
    US © 2022 IAC Films / Gozie AGBO / Year of the Rat. In association with: Ley Line Entertainment. Distr: A24.
    A Film from Daniels. / Un film des Daniels.
    Produced by: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca. Producers: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert. Jonathan Wang.
    D+SC: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinart. DP: Larkin Seiple - 1,85:1 - 1,33:1 (some scenes), 2,00:1 (some scenes), 2,39:1 (some scenes) - colour - source format: CFast 2.0 ARRIRAW 2.8K, 3.4K - released as a DCP Digital Cinema Package. PD: Jason Kisvarday. Cost: Shirley Kurata. VFX: Zak Stoltz. ED: Paul Rogers. M (original score): Son Lux. M supervisors: Laruen Marie Milkus & Bruce Gilbert. Casting: Sarah Halley Finn.
    C: Michelle Yeoh (Evelyn Wang), Stephanie Hsu (Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki), Ke Huy Quan (Waymond Wang), James Hong (Gong Gong), Jamie Lee Curtis (Deirdre Beaubeirdra), Tallie Medel (Becky Sregor), Jenny Slate (Big Nose), Harry Shum, Jr. (Chad), Biff Wiff (Rick), Sunita Mani (TV Musical Queen), Aaron Lazar (TV Musical Soldier), Brian Le (Alpha Jumper - Trophy), Andy Le (Alpha Jumper - Bigger Trophy), Neravana Cabral, Chelsey Goldsmith, Craig Henningsen (Security Guards), Anthony Molinari (Police - Confetti), Dan Brown (Police - Salsa), Anthony Nanakornpanom (Police - Luchador), Cara Marie Chooljian (Alpha Jumper - Jogger), Randall Archer (Alpha Jumper - Edgelord), Efka Kvaraciejus (Alpha Jumper - SWAT).
    Characters also include: Alpha RV Officers, Kung Fu Master, Maternity Doctor, Laundromat Police and Raccacoonie Puppetereers.
    Loc: 400 National Way, Simi Valley (IRS Building) - Font's Point, Anza-Borrego State Park, CA (universe of rocks) - San Fernando Majers Coin Laundry - East 7th Street and Mateo Street, LA - Elysian Park, LA - The Los Angeles Theatre, 615 S. Broadway, LA.
    Languages: English, Mandarin, Cantonese.
    139 min
    Festival premiere: 11 March 2022 South by Southwest Film Festival.
    US premiere: 25 March 2022 (limited), 8 April 2022 (wide).
    Finnish premiere: 29 April 2022, released by Cinemanse.
    French premiere: 31 Aug 2022, released by Pathé Live.
    Academy Awards: 12 March 2023: won seven awards and is the most awarded film of all time.
    VOSTF, sous-titres français: Louis Brisset.
    Viewed at Pathé Beaugrenelle 5, Paris, 23 March 2023.

Press notes: "Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, Everything Everywhere All At Once is a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman (Michelle Yeoh) who can't seem to finish her taxes."

IMDb: "A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led."

AA: The movie is broken down into three parts: I Everything, II Everywhere and III All At Once.

I thank the Academy for the awards, due to which Everything Everywhere has been rereleased and I get to see it on the screen. The Daniels's film was originally released in Finland soon after the American premiere, but it was impossible for me to catch any of the few screenings in my hometown Lappeenranta.

My first reaction: I am overwhelmed and exhausted. But also impressed by the originality. On the surface Everything Everywhere looks like a hyperactive, ultraviolent action rampage. The Daniels do not respect the classic wisdom of alternating action with contemplation.

Everything Everywhere is a science fiction film about time travel, time reversal, time lapse, multiple reality, alternative universes, and mind fracture. It is also about ADHD, a condition apparently becoming more common and aggravated in an age of digital and virtual existences. Perhaps ADHD is a sign of the times.

The themes are great, and the ways they are dramatized are original: the generation gap (of three generations in a Chinese family in America), the culture shock (of Asians in America), gender identity (the daughter is a Lesbian), existentialism (the sense and authenticity of human existence), the new global pessimism of Generation Z (regarding the survival of humanity in an imminent ecocatastrophe) and a specific Asian pessimism (about Asian American identity).

The film moves hilariously from kitchen sink realism (in the ordinary universe dealing with a laundromat business and a tax declaration) to extraordinary universes in which characters transform into parallel identities and fight each other's superpowers.

The comic sense is unique. A cook's toque hides a raccoon. An image that brings it all together is the Everything Bagel, something in the category of a Black Hole, a threat to the universe.

The range of the imagery is incredible from cosmic visions to videogames, Indian musicals, speaking rocks on a mountain, puppets, Chinese theatre, hot dog fingers, bullet time visions, psychedelia, Jodorowsky, anime and wuxia. Particular movie references include 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ratatouille.

The visionary urge is formidable. The associations are not facile. This is not a cinema of attractions, neither of distractions. There is an underlying sense of urgency and gravity. But the excess of associations leads to a "more is less" experience. It is about being "lost in space" - lost in the space of consciousness and imagination. Endless battles in parallel universes paralyze us from doing something in our regular universe.

The Daniels provide their excellent cast unique challenges in many realities. Michelle Yeoh as the long-suffering matriarch of a multicultural family becomes a subject of visionary blitz montages of transformations.

There is lack of psychological depth and nuance at first. Repetitive and brutal fight sequences follow each other. Towards the end of the second part, the account of the mother-daughter relationship gets more moving, and the whole family romance as well.

DANIEL SCHEINERT: SIGHT & SOUND TOP TEN 2022
Michel Gondry: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (SC: Charlie Kaufman)
Hayao Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke
David Wain & Michael Showalter: Wet Hot American Summer
Chris Smith: American Movie
Juzo Itami: Tampopo
Liu Chia-liang: Drunken Master II (starring Jackie Chan)
Paul Thomas Anderson: Magnolia
Benh Zeitlin: Glory at Sea
Kirsten Lepore: Hi Stranger
Spike Lee: Malcolm X

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM THE PRESS NOTES:

The Black Whip (2023 étalonnage La Cinémathèque française)

Charles Marquis Warren: The Black Whip (US 1956). Sally Morrow (Angie Dickinson) halts the rapist by gunpoint. She is about to kill him.

Die schwarze Peitsche / Le Fouet noir / Musta ruoska / Den svarta piskan.
    US © 1956 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. PC: Regal Films, Inc. P: Robert Stabler.
    D: Charles Marquis Warren. SC+story: Orville H. Hampton. Cin: Joseph F. Biroc – b&w – RegalScope 2,35:1. Set dresser: G. W. Berntsen / G. W. Bernsten. Makeup: Jack Dusick. Hair: Pat Whiffing / Patti Whiffing. SFX: Louis DeWitt, Jack Rabin. M: Raoul Kraushaar. S: Lloyd D. Wiler. ED: Fred W. Berger. Script supervisor: Richard Chaffee.
    Avec: Hugh Marlowe (Lorn Crawford), Coleen Gray (Jeannie), Adele Mara (Ruthie Dawson), Angie Dickinson (Sally Morrow), Richard Gilden (Dewey Crawford), Paul Richards (John Murdock), John Pickard (Sheriff Persons), Dorothy Schuyler (Delilah Ware), Charles H. Gray (Chick Hainline), Sheb Wooley (Bill Lassater), Strother Martin (Thorny), Harry Landers (Fiddler), Patrick O'Moore (Governor), William Hamel (Constable), Duane Grey / Duane Thorsen (Deputy Floyd), Rush Williams (Jailer Garner), Howard Culver (Dr. Gillette), Sid Curtis (Bartender), Rick Arnold (Black Leg), Robert Garvey (Black Leg), Bill Ward (Black Leg).
    Loc: – Corriganville, Ray Corrigan Ranch, Simi Valley. – Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth. – According to Wikipedia, sets from Gunsmoke were used.
    Filming dates: early Aug--early Sep 1956.
    AFI: 6968 ft>78 min. – Wikipedia: 78 min. – IMDb & Cin. fr.: 81 min.
    US premiere: Dec 1956.
    Banned in Finland in 1957.
    ...
    La Cinémathèque française : Fenêtre sur les collections : Le RegalScope.
    Séance présentée par Noémie Jean.
    DCP from La Cinémathèque française, étalonnage en 2023, VOSTF, double sous-titres français / allemand.
    La Cinémathèque française, Salle Jean Epstein, vendredi 17 mar 2023 – 20h15

"April 1867--The war ends.. but leaves behind it derelicts, plunderers, looters and crazed killers that hound the frontier... haunting the night in violent vengeance." (Written prologue)

La Cinémathèque française: "Suspectées d'avoir aidé le chef du gang des Blacklegs à s'évader de prison, quatre entraîneuses de saloon trouvent abri dans une auberge. Les Blacklegs s'y réfugient à leur tour et sèment la terreur."

AA: ABOUT THE DOUBLE BILL:

Beyond the Western Canon. La Cinémathèque française brought us two late 1950s B Westerns, The Black Whip and Ambush at Cimarron Pass, under the banner Le RegalScope. The second golden age of Western movies was nearing its end. A Westerns were transforming into super-Westerns, post-Westerns, meta-Westerns and Euro-Westerns. In low budget westerns like the ones screened tonight, timeless strengths and traditional virtues were sufficient. The films were not necessarily dumb nor naive. Both tonight's films are set in the Western's favoured timeframe – right after the Civil War – and both bring a sense of ache and wisdom to the treatment. Everybody is gun mad after the collective trauma.

Both were produced by Regal Films but financed, copyrighted and released by Twentieth Century-Fox to satisfy B-movie needs in their double bills. Their production belongs to the context of Robert L. Lippert, a "King of the Bs", who financed, produced or masterminded 300 films in 1945–1969, including the first films directed by Samuel Fuller and early genre films by Monte Hellman. The golden age of B westerns was also coming to an end because of the phenomenal supply of television Westerns. To compete with television, the enterprising Lippert sought distinction, for example by filming in scope. The technology was CinemaScope, but because Twentieth Century-Fox wanted to protect its elite trademark, they had to be labelled RegalScope and shot in black and white.

ABOUT THE BLACK WHIP:

While the Civil War in Ambush in Cimarron Pass is a subtext, The Black Whip is an explicit Civil War western all over just like The Raid, dealing with bandits who refuse to accept that the war is over.

The Black Legs band is an offshoot of Quantrill's Raiders, like Jesse James's gang. The leader is John Murdock (Paul Richards), notorious for his black whip.

A masked woman helps the killer Chick Hainline (Charles H. Gray) to escape from prison. It is clear that the woman must be one of four saloon hostesses, but it is impossible to tell which one, and they are all banished.

When a wagon wheel is broken, the friendly Dewey Crawford (Richard Gilden in his first credited feature film role) of the nearby White Star Inn and stage relay station offers the women refuge. But his brother Lorn (Hugh Marlowe) objects and asks the women to leave because he knows that the Black Legs will follow them.

The trauma burning inside is the Lawrence Massacre in Kansas, the most notorious atrocity of Quantrill's Raiders. Jeannie (Coleen Gray) reveals that her family was murdered in it. Lorn, anguished and conflicted, finally confesses that he was the Confederate liaison with Quantrill but withdrew disillusioned from the cause after the massacre.

Charles Marquis Warren was a Hollywood veteran, having started in the early 1930s. Although devoted to motion pictures, he was persuaded by CBS to launch as director and producer Gunsmoke for television, already a sensation as a pathbreaking radio series. It was the second adult tv Western series and grew into the longest-running tv Western series. In 1959 at CBS Warren got involved as producer and director with Rawhide, the sixth longest running American tv Western series.

The distinction of Gunsmoke was evoking true West in terms of brutal realism, as distinct from kiddie stuff. In The Black Whip, the evocation of brutality is unflinching. Warren has talent in dealing with violence, both in scenes of the black whip – and sexual violence and harassment when the Black Legs are let loose on the women.

The mise-en-scène is dynamic, the staging of the action energetic. Like Ambush in Cimarron Pass, The Black Whip is not star-driven, not focused on a main protagonist. The cast grows into a memorable ensemble, each participant is meaningful. After the opening flight of the fugitives, the rest of the film is mostly set inside the White Star Inn.

Hugh Marlowe, a veteran of many classic films, often as a second lead, gets a rare leading role. His Lorn Crawford is a sum of his contradictions, a torn figure seeking redemption.

Warren's account of the saloon women is sympathetic and without hypocrisy. Jeannie (Coleen Gray, the cinema's original Elektra the Electric Woman in Nightmare Alley) stands up against the Black Legs. Sally Morrow (Angie Dickinson, here still a brunette) averts a rape attempt by any means necessary. Ruthie Dawson reveals that she was the one who set Chick Hainline free. The reason: he is her brother. She is played by the veteran Adele Mara, about to embark on a successful television career. Cast with these well-known actresses is Dorothy Schuyler as Delilah Ware, whose two credited theatrical feature films were both directed by Warren.

Strother Martin as the buckboard driver is already memorable in one of his earliest Western parts.

Paul Richards, familiar from Gunsmoke, is monstrously fearsome as the deranged, sadistic John Murdock, who enjoys slashing the kindly Dewey with his cattle whip, permanently disfiguring the youngster's features. Dewey, who may not have seen women very often, is in thrall of the female visitors and acts like a gentleman in protecting them. He casts a longing look when the buckboard leaves the inn on its way back to town. Only Jeannie stays at the inn with Lorn.

The dialogue is brisk and laconic with philosophical comments such as:

– Are you on the run?
– Everyone is.

– Loneliness is 95% fear.
Jeannie seems to read Lorn's mind and guide him from his anxiety. Their shared trauma is leading to mutual conclusions.

Shot by one of America's great cinematographers, Joseph F. Biroc, whose career started in 1918 and who shot masterpieces such as Swing Time and It's a Wonderful Life. He shot the first 3D movie Bwana Devil and was Robert Aldrich's favourite DP from World for Ransom till All the Marbles. He shot Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow and Forty Guns, but also Blazing Saddles and Airplane II: The Sequel. Biroc shared an Academy Award for The Towering Inferno. From the early 1950s till the late 1980s he was also prolific in television.

The 2023 DCP screened was unrestored, a straight digital scan from a used screening print, joins and all. Well done, conveying Biroc's cinematographic flair impressively.

SYNOPSIS BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Ambush at Cimarron Pass

Jodie Copelan: Ambush at Cimarron Pass (US 1958) with Hollywood veteran Irving Bacon as Judge Stanfield and Clint Eastwood as Keith Williams. Clint's first major role in a theatrical feature film. He is third billed.

Le Cri des Apaches / Kuolemansola / Dödspasset.
    États-Unis / © 1958 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. / PC: Regal Films, Inc. P: Herbert E. Mendelson.
    D: Jodie Copelan. SC: Richard G. Taylor & John K. Butler – story: Robert A. Reeds & Robert W. Woods. Cin: John M. Nickolaus, Jr. – b&w – RegalScope 2,35:1. PD: John B. Mansbridge. Makeup: John Chambers. Hair: Fritzy La Bar. Property master: William Sittel. M: Paul Sawtell, Bert Shefter. S: Harold Hanks, Harry M. Leonard. ED: Carl Pierson. Script supervisor: Joan Eremin.
   Avec: Scott Brady (Sgt. Matt Blake), Margia Dean (Teresa Santos), Clint Eastwood (Keith Williams), Irving Bacon (Judge Stanfield), Frank Gerstle (Capt. Sam Prescott), Ray Boyle / Dirk London (Johnny Willows), Baynes Barron (Corbin, the Gunrunner), William Vaughn (Henry, the Scout), Ken Mayer (Cpl. Schwitzer), John Damler (Pvt. Zach), Keith Richards (Pvt. Lasky), John Frederick / John Merrick (Pvt. Nathan), Raven Grey Eagle (Indian), Desmond Slattery (Cobb), Charles Soldani (Indian).
    Loc: Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth.
    Filming dates: 9 September 1957 (IMDb).
    6543 ft / 1994 m / 73 min / Cin. fr.: 67 min.
    US premiere: 11 Feb 1958.
    Finnish premiere: [8 Aug 1958 (IMDb)] 8 Dec 1961 Tuulensuu, distributor: Elokuvatuotanto Oy (Tenho / Elonet).
    ...
    La Cinémathèque française : Fenêtre sur les collections : Le RegalScope.
    Séance présentée par Felicidad Guarda.
    35 mm print from La Cinémathèque française, VOSTF, double surimpression français / arabique.
    La Cinémathèque française, Salle Jean Epstein, vendredi 17 mar 2023 – 18h30

La Cinémathèque française: " Des Yankees et des ex-Confédérés sont forcés de résister ensemble aux attaques des Indiens décidés à récupérer leur dû. Mais ils sont confrontés à la faim, la soif et la chaleur, qui compromettent leur fragile collaboration. "

[last lines] [Sgt. Blake orders the cache of repeating rifles burned to keep them from being captured by Apaches]
Pvt. Zach: We lugged those rifles for a hundred miles... a hundred miles for nothing!
Keith Williams: No, not for nothing. Sometimes you gotta lose before you finally win.

[watchword] Sgt. Matt Blake: A man's gotta take a lot of things he doesn't bargain for, Prescott. Maybe that's what makes him a man. (Quotations from the IMDb.)

AA: Beyond the Western Canon. La Cinémathèque française brought us two late 1950s B Westerns, The Black Whip and Ambush at Cimarron Pass, under the banner Le RegalScope. The second golden age of Western movies was nearing its end. A Westerns were transforming into super-Westerns, post-Westerns, meta-Westerns and Euro-Westerns. In low budget westerns like the ones screened tonight, timeless strengths and traditional virtues were sufficient. The films were not necessarily dumb nor naive. Both tonight's films are set in the Western's favoured timeframe – right after the Civil War – and both bring a sense of ache and wisdom to the treatment. Everybody is gun mad after the collective trauma.

Both were produced by Regal Films but financed, copyrighted and released by Twentieth Century-Fox to satisfy B-movie needs in their double bills. Their production belongs to the context of Robert L. Lippert, a "King of the Bs", who financed, produced or masterminded 300 films in 1945–1969, including the first films directed by Samuel Fuller and early genre films by Monte Hellman. The golden age of B westerns was also coming to an end because of the phenomenal supply of television Westerns. To compete with television, the enterprising Lippert sought distinction, for example by filming in scope. The technology was CinemaScope, but because Twentieth Century-Fox wanted to protect its elite trademark, they had to be labelled RegalScope and shot in black and white.

...

Many Westerns center on a protagonist star, but Ambush at Cimarron Pass is an ensemble piece. Two hostile teams – the remains of a Seventh Cavalry detail transporting a captured gunrunner (Union) and the last men of a Texas cattle drive (Confederates) – meet on a long voyage in the wilderness towards Fort Revelry and reluctantly join forces to survive Apache threat. To distract them and meanwhile steal their horses, the Apache release Teresa Santos. She is the sole survivor of murder, pillage and rape at her home ranch, which was burned to the ground. The goal of the Apache is to retrieve the gunrunner's shipment of repeating rifles confiscated by the cavalry. The gunrunner and a dubious judge endanger the voyage, Teresa Santos introduces a volatile sexual charge, and the unreconstructed spirit of the Confederates threatens to set the Civil War aflame all over again.

A loose cannon during the voyage is the hotheaded Texas cowboy Keith Williams, a gun happy fanatic Confederate, interpreted by Clint Eastwood in his first major role in a theatrical feature film. Eastwood has supposedly called Ambush at Cimarron Pass probably the lousiest Western ever made. It is not, but Eastwood did not make another theatrical film in five years (the next one was A Fistful of Dollars). "A man's got to know his limitations", the quote from Magnum Force, later became Eastwood's motto. In this movie, Eastwood's range is certainly limited, but he has not discovered his strength, either.

The subtext of the tale is the healing of the wounds of the Civil War. The men of the Union and the Confederates must work and fight together in order to survive the dangerous journey. The coolheaded leader of the Cavalry unit, Sgt. Matt Blake (Scott Brady), refuses to be provoked and carries no grudge against Keith whom he has to discipline in a brutal fight. After Sam Prescott (Frank Gerstle), the leader of the Texans, accepts Matt's authority, the rebels mostly stay in line. The gunrunner Corbin (Baynes Barron) and Judge Stanfield (Irving Bacon) remain traitors and troublemakers who put everybody in danger.

Irving Bacon was a Hollywood veteran actor who had started in the movies in 1923. Ambush at Cimarron Pass was one of the last on a career of 500 film performances. He is memorable as the shifty and shady judge, who may not be a judge after all.

Margia Dean, still with us at age 100, had a long career, having started as a child actor in the 1920s. In Hollywood, her longest continuity was as "Queen of Lippert" in various production setups of Robert L. Lippert, from Shep Comes Home (1948) to Moro Witch Doctor (1964) shot in the Philippines. Among others, she appeared in Sam Fuller's first films and the first Hammer horror film, The Quatermass Xperiment, co-financed by Lippert. Of royal Greek descent, the Miss San Francisco and Miss California of 1939, she is a dignified and exciting leading lady, a convincing survivor in the Wild West.

Ambush at Cimarron Pass was the only film of the editor Jodie Copelan as director. It is hard to discover a directorial viewpoint.

The Cinémathèque française print has joins and scratches but they hardly diminish B movie pleasure.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SYNOPSIS