Emmanuelle (1974)

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Autumn Sonata (1978)

          Although Autumn Sonata borders on self-parody because writer-director Ingmar Bergman indulges his pain-freak sensibilities to an excessive degree, the innate humanism and sophistication of his style—combined with two extraordinary performances—give the picture resonance. A tough drama about the ways parents and children hurt each other when they’re unable to connect, the film is particularly noteworthy as the only project on which cinema’s two most famous Bergmans collaborated: Swedish-born Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman returned to her native land (and her native tongue) to give one of the most affecting performances of her career.

          Swedish-cinema icon Liv Ullman plays Eva, a middle-aged woman living in a remote part of Sweden with her husband, meek pastor Viktor (Halvar Björk). Eva excitedly prepares for a rare visit by her mother, Charlotte (Bergman), a world-famous concert pianist. Immediately upon Charlotte’s arrival, however, myriad complications in the mother/daughter dynamic become evident. For instance, Charlotte is supremely chilly and withholding. Accordingly, while Eva was growing up, Charlotte was an absentee parent who expected her domestic existence life to be sunny and undemanding; by shunning family-oriented stress, Charlotte made real emotional connection with her daughter impossible. As a result, Eva became bitter, insecure, and needy. Thus, upon reuniting with her mother, Eva can’t stop herself from dumping loads of resentment onto Charlotte given the slightest opportunity. Furthermore, Eva surprises Charlotte by revealing that Charlotte’s other daughter, Eva’s sister Helena (Lena Nyman), is living in Eva’s house. Helena is severely disabled, and Charlotte finds time spent in Helena’s company excruciating—Helena radiates emotional thirst that Charlotte cannot quench.

          Filmed in extremely close quarters (the story rarely leaves Viktor’s humble house), Autumn Sonata is suffocatingly bleak. Writer-director Bergman almost never leavens the intense psychodrama with brightness or humor, so viewers are smothered by the dysfunction and pain of two complex women caught in an abusive cycle. At one point, the picture gets so heavy that Eva muses, via voice-over, how much she wishes she could simplify her existence by committing suicide. It is a testament to both leading actors that neither Charlotte nor Eva comes across as caricatured or contrived; these people seem agonizingly real.

          Adding to the grim quality of the experience is Ingmar Bergman’s choice to treat the piece more like a novel or play than pure cinema; actors speak in long, unbroken monologues and, on many occasions, speak directly to the camera or in theatrical soliloquies. Were it not for the amber-tinged beauty of Sven Nykvist’s cinematography and the consummate skill of the leading performances, the film’s arty flourishes would be fatal flaws. But with writer-director Bergman’s masterful hand pulling the strings, Autumn Sonata feels less like indulgence and more like an experiment—it’s as if the filmmaker deliberately discarded arbitrary storytelling conventions and used whatever tools he could in order to push as deeply into the anguished souls of his characters as possible.

Autumn Sonata: GROOVY

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

          One of Spanish director Luis Buñuel’s most acclaimed works and an Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is not the easiest movie to penetrate—the story’s satire operates at such a sophisticated level that it’s easy to mistake some stretches of the narrative for straightforward psychodrama. Plus, as was Buñuel’s wont, the story loops around itself several times via tricky dream sequences and fake-outs that obscure what’s “really” happening. Yet for patient viewers willing to participate in Buñuel’s postmodern games, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie delivers a droll appraisal of the way feelings of entitlement blind the semi-rich to the absurdity of their own circumstances.

          The principal running gag of the movie involves a group of upper-middle-class friends attempting to get together for a dinner date. Throughout the story, outrageous events scuttle the plans—a restaurant holds a wake, complete with a corpse, during the dinner hour; a group of soldiers appears at a country house expecting entertainment and food; gun-toting gangsters invade a dinner party; and so on. The joke, of course, is that the protagonists are so preoccupied with creature comforts that they never lose their appetites—it’s as if the working-class people who interrupt the protagonists simply don’t exist. Meanwhile, Buñuel and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière reveal the sordid activities of the main characters. A foreign ambassador (Fernando Rey) moonlights as a cocaine smuggler; a horny couple (Jean-Pierre Cassel and Stéphane Audran) sneaks away from guests to screw in the woods; an underserviced housewife (Delphine Seyrig) has an affair with a family friend; et cetera.

          Even though The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie runs a brisk 102 minutes, Buñuel and Carrière cram a lot of narrative content into the movie—beyond the items already mentioned, there’s also a subplot about a sexy would-be terrorist and two strange sequences of people describing their dreams, which are depicted via surrealistic vignettes.

          Whether all of this material coalesces into a unified statement is a subjective matter, because the ambiguous final images could imply a heavy-handed theme of awful people stuck on a road to nowhere—or the images could imply something else. (Providing concrete answers was never Buñuel’s thing.) Appraising The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by standard criteria is pointless, seeing as how the film does not aspire to realism, but it’s sufficient to say that Buñuel stocks the film with attractive women, debonair men, and elegant locations—these slick surfaces amplify the director’s ideas about a class preoccupied with materialism. One more thing: Because other viewers may have the same experience, I should add that that the discreet charm of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisieescaped me on first viewing, but the more I thought about the movie, the more its aesthetic scheme—and its virtues—came into focus.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: GROOVY

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

          One of the artiest exploitation movies of the ’70s, the Belgian vampire thriller Daughters of Darkness features such extraordinarily beautiful cinematography—and, to be frank, such extraordinarily beautiful women—that it’s tempting to seek some deeper significance, as if the movie is more than just a tastefully executed shocker. Alas, director/co-writer Harry Kümel’s cult-favorite movie doesn’t reward close scrutiny, and in fact the picture’s biggest flaw is a ponderousness suggesting Kümel himself thought he was making a Grand Statement. Shot with English-language dialogue despite its European origins, the picture originally ran a plodding 100 minutes, though a widely available expurgated cut is only 87 minutes long. Which version suits which viewer is a matter of taste, because those who get hooked on the picture may want to savor every possible frame.

          When the story begins, an attractive newlywed couple arrives at a seaside resort, which is empty because the year’s tourist season has ended, and they learn that several murders has taken place nearby. Worse, the victims were drained of blood. Then, when a beautiful countess arrives at the hotel with her female companion/servant at her side, the couple falls under the countess’ charismatic spell. It turns out the countess is a centuries-old vampire with nefarious designs on the couple. So begins a strange odyssey filled with betrayal, death, and sex. There’s nothing new about the eroticized-horror formula, so what makes Daughters of Darkness unique is its intoxicating style. Kümel treats every shot like a photographic art project, filling the screen with arresting compositions and subtle textures; thus, when he strings his beguiling images together with meditative editing and mournful music, he creates a bewitching atmosphere.

          Contributing to this effect are actresses Delphine Seyrig, as the countess, and Andrea Rau, as her servant. Seyrig is a stunning blonde with aristocratic bearing who, at first, seems as if she’ll be an ice queen—so when she reveals fragility, insecurity, and need, a quietly textured performance emerges. Rau is a sensuous brunette, the natural visual counterpart to Seyrig, and though her presence is less nuanced that Seyrig’s, Rau affects a plaintive quality. (As the newlyweds, John Karlen is enjoyably sleazy and Danielle Ouimet, the cast’s weak link, is merely lovely.) In the movie’s grandest contrivance, the countess is revealed to be Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous 16th-century Hungarian aristocrat who bathed in the blood of virgins because she felt doing so would preserve her beauty; like Kümel’s rarified pictorial style, this allusion to history gives Daughters of Darkness a sophisticated sheen lesser films of its ilk lack, but not actual depth.

Daughters of Darkness: GROOVY

In the Realm of the Senses (1976)

          At the time of its release, Japanese director Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses was probably the most sexually explicit film ever made for mainstream audiences—although it’s a serious drama filled with provocative psychological and sociopolitical concepts, Oshma’s movie features enough close-ups of genitalia and penetration for a porno flick. In fact, it’s impossible to discuss the film without addressing the question of whether Oshima’s hardcore scenes overwhelm his intellectual aspirations.

          Based on events that took place in 1936 Japan, In the Realm of the Senses tells the story of real-life former prostitute Sada Abe. While working as a maid in restaurant, Abe became the mistress of the restaurant’s owner, a married man named Kichizo Ishida. They enjoyed sexual encounters at hotels and other locations, their rough play escalating to include erotic asphyxiation. Abe took one of these strangling adventures too far and killed her lover, then severed his genitals and kept them for souvenirs.

          Writer-director Oshima tells this lurid saga in a linear fashion, using the real names of the people involved, and his camera lingers on every graphic detail, right up to the bloody climax—one of the most notorious moments in all of ’70s cinema. It’s important to note that from beginning to end, there’s no mistaking In the Realm of the Senses for anything but serious-minded artwork. Oshima uses colors, rhythms, and textures to evoke a contemplative mood, so even during the most brazen sex scenes, the focus is on observing behavior rather than generating erotic heat. Leading actors Eiko Matsuda (as Abe) and Tatsuya Fuji (as Ishida) give committed, persuasive performances, bringing the same level of naturalism to scenes inside and outside the bedroom.

          Oshima creates a magical cocoon around the protagonists, all silk kimonos and sliding paper walls, so the characters seem insulated not only from prying eyes (except when they’re indulging in exhibitionism), but also from the crass mechanization of the modern world. The sociopolitical implications of the story are less obvious; Oshima introduces such concepts as gender inequality, ostracism, and subservience to create a framework in which dominance transfers back and forth between two lovers as their intimacy alters their societal roles. All of this is complicated by the implication that Abe is mentally unbalanced.

          Yet even with the film’s laudable subtext, the surface of In the Realm of the Senses is suffused with images that call Oshima’s directorial taste into question. Was it really necessary, for instance, to include a close-up of Matsuda fellating Fuji until ejaculate gurgles out of her mouth? Was there no alternative to the scene of Fuji inserting an egg into Matsuda’s vagina and then forcing her to expunge the thing like she’s a hen? Obviously, sex is intrinsic to this tale, but Oshima plays the shock-value card so many times the movie ends up becoming monotonous. Plus, there’s a deeper question of whether this story was worth telling in the first place. Still, In the Realm of the Sensesoffers those with the fortitude to solider through the entire movie ample fodder for analysis (and argument).

In the Realm of the Senses: FREAKY

The Night Porter (1974)

          Disturbing and provocative, the Italian film The Night Porter belongs to a small subgenre of movies exploring the sexual depravity of Third Reich officers. Yet instead of taking the obvious route by simplistically portraying black-hearted Nazis exploiting innocent victims, co-writer/director Lilina Cavini presents a more complicated vision in which predator and prey become symbiotic; accordingly, The Night Porter can be taken literally or as a cruel metaphor representing the human tendency to embrace humiliating entanglements that generate electrifying sensations.
          The story takes place in 1957 Vienna, where Max (Dirk Bogarde) works the night desk at a posh hotel. One evening, he spots a beautiful woman in the hotel’s lobby, and recognizes her immediately as Lucia (Charlotte Rampling). Over the course of several flashbacks, Cavini reveals the nature of the couple’s relationship during World War II. Max was part of a group of SS officers who transformed prisoners into sexual playthings, and while Max grew infatuated with Lucia (he refers to her as “my little girl”), she succumbed to his aristocratic handsomeness despite his sadism. Now, years after the war, Lucia is married to an American orchestra conductor, and Max is associated with a cabal of former Nazis who purge war records in order to shield themselves from war-crimes prosecution. Initially, Max worries that Lucia will expose him, but when he confronts her, their old psychosexual attraction rekindles—so Max hides Lucia from his fellow Nazis, creating a private world of pain and pleasure.

          The first movie that veteran Italian filmmaker Cavini made in English, The Night Porter is challenging and perverse, with the film’s glossy surfaces and classical-arts milieu (ballet recitals, orchestral performances) communicating the thorny concept of sophisticated savagery. For instance, Max is a fastidious gentleman with immaculate grooming and manners, but he also derives erotic glee from hurting Lucia. Similarly, Lucia is something other than a mere victim; she finds satisfaction in subjugation. Throughout the film, Cavini toys with traditional associations. In the picture’s most famous scene, Rampling serenades a group of Nazis while wearing an officer’s cap, black leather opera gloves, and men’s trousers tethered to her rail-thin body with suspenders; Rampling’s casual toplessness and Cavini’s brazen mixture of contradictory signifiers elevates the scene into a study of abnormal desire.

          Despite consistently graceful camerawork and editing, The Night Porteroccasionally succumbs to excess—the pacing is precious and slow—and some viewers will find the central relationship impossible to accept. Plus, Bogarde and Rampling are so icy that we mostly observe their dynamic from the outside, rather than getting drawn into their passions. Yet while The Night Porter probably alienates as many viewers as it intrigues, it’s inarguably a bold film bursting with artistry, ideas, and integrity.

 

The Night Porter: GROOVY

The Outside Man (1972)

          Although technically a French film (original title: Un homme est mort), the contemplative thriller The Outside Man was shot in America with most of the dialogue spoken in English, and several Hollywood stars appear in the cast, so it plays like a U.S. film with Gallic flair. The picture begins with French hit man Lucien Bellon (Jean-Louis Trintignant) arriving in L.A. to kill a mobster. Bellon performs his task efficiently, but then things get strange when it becomes apparent that an American assassin, Lenny (Roy Scheider), has been hired to whack Bellon. Instead of fleeing back to his homeland, Bellon lingers in California—realizing he’s been used as a pawn in a larger game, Bellon is determined to take out his enemies lest he remain a perpetual target.

          Since the French gave us the word ennui, and since that anguished state was the dominant flavor in so many ’70s movies about people searching for meaning in a turbulent world, it’s fitting that a French filmmaker came to America to make a crime picture as cynical as anything from William Friedkin or Walter Hill or Sam Peckinpah. Veteran director Jacques Deray shoots The Outside Man in a minimalistic style, positioning Bellon as a cold-blooded cipher who functions perfectly in an amoral universe so long as his criminal counterparts behave predictably—thus, when his lawless world is jostled, he’s as adrift as everyone else in the topsy-turvy ’70s, desperately grasping for the terra firma of a lost reality that will never return.

          If all of this sounds a bit lofty for a hit-man thriller, rest assured that Deray’s thematic implications live mostly in the film’s subtext, since The Outside Mancomprises brisk, exciting scenes of Bellon avoiding danger and forming peculiar allegiances. The Gallic gunman’s main crony is a gangland moll named Nancy Robson (Ann-Margret), who provides information and shelter, although Deray accentuates Nancy’s initial reluctance to get pulled into Bellon’s crisis. The movie also features a witty subplot involving a single mother (Georgia Engel) whom Bellon abducts—on top of never demonstrating the hysterics one might expect from someone in her situation, she eventually becomes titillated by the proximity to death, a sly commentary on how starved for excitement “average Americans” can become.

          Deray guides his actors toward restrained work that speaks to his theme of people deadened by life’s repetitive rhythms, so the diverse cast feels unified. Trintignant is lethal in a gentlemanly sort of way, Ann-Margret is amiably jaded (and sizzling, thanks to her cleavage-baring dresses), Scheider is elegantly savage, and Engel is subtly funny. (Other featured players include Angie Dickinson, as the murdered gangster’s wife, and a very young Jackie Earle Haley, as the son of Engel’s character.) The Outside Man is saturated with dense ’70s texture, from the brooding funk/jazz score by Michel Legrand to the extensive location photography that captures early-’70s L.A. in all of its sun-baked seediness. This is crime cinema at its most nihilistic, but there’s also a surprising current of human connection running through the story. (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

The Outside Man: RIGHT ON

La cage aux folles (1978)

          A clever, kind-hearted comedy whose social significance might be lost on new viewers encountering the movie today, La cage aux folles was among the first widely seen movies to treat gay characters as normal people. In fact, straights who disapprove of homosexuality are portrayed as behind-the-times dinosaurs. Seeing as how the movie was released in 1978, this worldview might have represented wishful thinking on the part of the filmmakers—or, if nothing else, the insular perspective of progressive Europeans—but it’s hard to argue with the uplifting energy of a humanistic picture about people who find happiness by staying true to themselves.

          Based on Jean Poiret’s play and adapted for the screen by a team including Gallic comedy specialist Francis Veber, the French-Italian movie is set in St. Tropez. Renato (Ugo Tognazzi) runs a gay burlesque club called La Cage Aux Folles, whose star attraction is Renato’s longtime companion, Albin (Michel Serrault). Although Renato is a debonair impresario who only presents his homosexuality through flashy clothing and the occasional effeminate gesture, Albin is a full-on screaming queen. Not only does Albin perform in drag, but Albin is also a hysterical diva prone to temperamental meltdowns. Nonetheless, Renato and Albin are deeply in love, and they’ve done a wonderful job raising Renato’s son, Laurent (Rémi Laurent), whom Renato fathered with a female friend. When Laurent becomes engaged to the daughter of a conservative politician, the politician insists upon meeting his future son-in-law’s parents, so Renato agrees to “play it straight” for the duration of a dinner.

          This being a sly farce, things don’t go according to plan, but even as gender-bending high jinks ensue, the movie never loses touch with its gentle message of tolerance and understanding. Serrault and Tognazzi are wonderful in every scene, balancing each other perfectly; Serrault’s girlish squeals play off Tognazzi’s slow-burn reactions. Playing the politician and his wife, Michel Galabru and Carmen Scarpitta paint with softer colors, though Galabru does a great job of keeping a one-note character from seeming monotonous. Adding an enjoyable dash of lunacy is Benny Luke as Jacob, Renato’s swishy butler—his scandalous maid’s costume is among the movie’s funniest sight gags. Like many ’70s comedies, La cage aux folles moves at a leisurely place while describing a slight story arc, but the finale is so emotionally satisfying that the gradual buildup feels appropriate.

          La cage aux folles has enjoyed a long life in various media around the world. Two sequels followed, La cage aux folles II(1980) and La cage aux folles 3: ‘Elles’ se marient (1985); an American musical adaptation of Poiret’s original play, crafted by Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman, opened on Broadway in 1983; a big-budget American remake of the 1978 film, titled The Birdcage, was released in 1996; and the Fierstein-Herman musical was successfully revived in 2004, and then again in 2010, with a world tour following in 2011.

La cage aux folles: GROOVY

The Story of Adele H. (1975)

          Offering a harrowing but sensitive look at an obscure historical figure, the acclaimed French film The Story of Adele H. is significant as the movie that brought actress Isabelle Adjani her first international notoriety. Although the picture is very much an auteurist statement by director/co-writer François Truffaut—the most consistently accessible filmmaker to emerge from the celebrated French New Wave movement of the ’60s—his gifts were known to world audiences by the time this film was released. Therefore, the discovery of the picture is Adjani’s fearless acting.

          Portraying a young woman who throws away social position and wealth in Europe in order to chase a caddish soldier across the Atlantic, Adjani incarnates disturbing qualities of delusion, mania, obsession, and self-destruction. During the course of the movie, we literally watch a soul depart a body as Adjani’s character succumbs to madness. The performance is all the more noteworthy given Adjani’s arresting beauty—since the easier path of appearing in decorative roles was surely available to her, it’s impressive the actress chose challenging work. And because The Story of Adele H. set a template for many later Adjani roles, it’s fascinating to see how good she already was at portraying instability in this, her first major screen role.

          The story begins in Halifax, Nova Scotia, circa 1863. A refined but skittish French beauty (Adjani) arrives on a boat from Europe, and then takes up occupancy at a boarding house. She gives each person she meets a different explanation of her identity, eventually settling into the alias of Miss Lewly. In fact, Adele is the daughter of Victor Hugo, the great French literary and political figure. We soon learn that Adele is in love with Lieutenant Pinson (Bruce Robins0n), a British military officer stationed in Halifax. They were involved briefly in Europe, an interlude Adele mistook for the beginning of a lifelong romance.

          A callous gambler who moves from one lover to the next without a backward glance, Pinson doesn’t return Adele’s continued affection, so he’s startled to find she crossed an ocean to be with him. Adele’s fixation on Pinson grows stronger each time he spurns her, so even as Adele builds a network of supportive friends in Halifax—and even as Victor Hugo writes heartbreaking letters begging for her return home—Adele disappears into her fantasy of predestined love. She spends hours in her dark room writing a “book” that is actually just the ramblings of a troubled mind, and she humiliates herself by claiming that she’s married to and pregnant by Pinson.

          Truffaut tells the story largely in blackout sketches—appropriately, like chapters in a gloomy novel—and he steadily tracks Adele’s transformation to a skeletal wastrel wandering the streets in rags. Some of Truffaut’s storytelling devices feel forced, like the trope of Adele reading her own writing out loud as she works, but in general Truffaut approaches the material unobtrusively, often letting the bottomless mysteries of Adjani’s face fill the screen for long, wordless moments. Furthermore, one could argue that the lack of development in supporting characters is a way of helping viewers see the world through Adele’s myopic vision.

          Ultimately, The Story of Adele H. is a cold-blooded exercise, more clinical study than emotional journey, but for those willing to embrace the piece on its own terms—literary, meticulous, psychological—it’s a potent inquiry into the fragility of the human heart.

The Story of Adele H.: RIGHT ON

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

          No discussion of this notorious Italian movie can begin without a warning: The subject matter of Salò is so disturbing, and the onscreen content so gruesome, that merely hearing descriptions of the film is enough to turn some people’s stomachs. So, if you get squeamish when the subjects of child abuse and sexual deviance are raised, please read no further. Make no mistake, Salò is a movie that one doesn’t watch so much as endure. Yet while some pictures exploring the outer boundaries of what can be captured on film are plainly exploitative, Salò is far more complicated. This is an artful meditation on anarchism, depravity, fascism, nihilism, and other unnerving tendencies of the human animal.

          In fact, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s movie is such a serious-minded endeavor that it’s almost impossible to say when and where he crosses the line between clinically observing abuse and salaciously relishing abuse—yet since Pasolini could have expressed his provocative thematic ideas without including some of the ghastly images that fill Salò, it’s inarguable the filmmaker got lost in the ugly maze he created.

          Based on an unfinished novel by the Marquis de Sade written circa 1785, Pasolini’s storyline takes place in 1944 Italy. Four wealthy fascists establish a secret fortress in the Republic of Salò, a short-lived nation established by Nazi Germany within Italy during the height of World War II. The fascists kidnap 18 teenaged boys and girls for use as sexual playthings during a 120-day festival of inhumane debauchery.

          Aided by a support staff of willing adults, the fascists stage a bizarre daily ritual. While congregating in a large room to listen to filthy anecdotes that are told by middle-aged prostitutes, the fascists indulge their perverse whims on the teenagers. These whims include beatings and rape in endless variations, and at one point the youths are put on leashes and forced to walk on all fours up and down stone staircases. Another favorite pastime is feeding the children human excrement. The fascists grow more depraved with each passing day, gaining arousal from the despair of their victims and competing with each other to see who can travel further down the abyss of amorality.

          Viewed from the most forgiving perspective, Salò is a merciless commentary on the subjugation of citizenry by any group with absolute power, and many intelligent critics consider Salò an important achievement in 20th-century cinema because of its boldness and political insights. Viewed more harshly, the movie seems sensationalistic.

          For instance, Pasolini’s clinical visual style evokes a Kubrickian coldness even though Pasolini lacks Kubrick’s photographic sophistication. At times, this approach renders stomach-churning results, as in the finale—once sex games give way to bloodsport, Pasolini observes various torture scenes through the remove of long lenses tricked up to resemble the view through binoculars, putting the audience in the position of the fascists who watch the torture with voyeuristic fervor. At other times, however, Pasolini’s unflinching eye creates a sense of unseemly luridness, as when the filmmaker lingers needlessly on close-ups of genitals.

          Furthermore, the film’s over-the-top dialogue exists on a plane far beyond realism; the fascists speak with academic formality, saying things like, “In all the world no voluptuousness flatters the senses more than social privilege.” It’s tempting to call this aspect of the movie pretentious, but it’s just as likely Pasolini considered his characters metaphors, thereby aesthetically justifying their unwieldy speech patterns. In any event, Salò is unique—virtually no other movie contains this many repulsive images. Salò offers no escape or salvation, instead immersing viewers in a cinematic dungeon of psychological punishment and sexual savagery.

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom: FREAKY

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

          Nearly a decade after their astonishing first collaboration, 1972’s historical allegory Aguirre, the Wrath of God, German director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski reteamed for this audacious remake of a silent-cinema classic: F.W. Murnau’s 1922 frightfest Nosferatu. In addition to being one of the titanic works of early German film, the Murnau picture is infamous because the filmmaker didn’t get permission to adapt his story from Bram Stoker’s classic novel, Dracula. To disguise the source material, Murnau ditched Stoker’s character names and replaced the suave bloodsucker of the book with a ghoulish spectre whose pale skin, pointed ears, and talon-like fingers added up to a horrific vision.

          Herzog’s remake retains the look of the 1922 vampire, but by adding dialogue and a script filled with weirdly humanistic nuances, he transforms the monster of the original film into a pathetic creature. As played by Kinski with a beguiling mixture of pathos and villainy, Count Dracula (Herzog reverted to Stoker’s character names) is a desperately lonely being doomed to outlive everyone he knows and fated to survive on the blood of the very people whose company he craves.

          In this context, an existential love triangle develops between Dracula, the German real-estate agent who travels to Dracula’s castle, and the agent’s beautiful wife. Dracula subsists on the agent’s blood, and then he falls for the wife, who in turn risks sacrificing herself to the vampire’s bite as a way of releasing her husband from supernatural servitude. Herzog captures this bizarre dynamic in an appropriately odd style, employing lyrical montages of the European countryside and long dialogue scenes to convey a sense of otherworldly ennui.

          Yet Herzog’s most extravagant flourishes are the scenes depicting the terrible pestilence that arrives with Dracula when the ghoul relocates from his native Transylvania to Germany. According to the lore surrounding this movie, Herzog let thousands of rats loose into the town where he was shooting because he wanted “real” shots of vampire-loosed vermin stalking the streets; in addition to irking animal-safety experts, Herzog was reportedly chased from the town.

          Whatever the circumstances, there’s no question that Herzog captured something truly singular with his cameras: Nosferatusomehow manages to be one of the coldest vampire films ever made and also one of the most emotional. Kinski’s eccentric performance dominates, but New German Cinema stalwart Bruno Ganz provides a stalwart presence as the real-estate agent, and fearless French leading lady Isabelle Adjani (playing the wife) nearly qualifies as a special effect. In addition to providing offbeat soulfulness, she’s so beguiling that it’s easy to understand why she drives Dracula batty.

          Take note that Nosferatuis widely available in two versions, which were shot simultaneously. The incrementally superior German-language version is called Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht, and the English-language version is a decent alternative for the subtitle-averse.

Nosferatu the Vampyre: RIGHT ON

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

          Fearless filmmaker Werner Herzog and madman actor Klaus Kinski began one of world cinema’s most unique collaborations with the German film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, a hypnotic masterpiece that explores titanic themes of ambition, fate, lust, and the savagery of nature through Herzog’s singular prism. Although both men have allowed myths about their on-set friction to fester—Kinski went to his grave cursing Herzog’s name, and Herzog named a documentary about the actor My Best Fiend—the work they created is just as interesting as the apocryphal story about Herzog holding Kinski at gunpoint until the performer completed filming an Aguirre scene.

          Based on an obscure historical episode, Aguirre takes place in 16th-century South America, when a gang of conquistadors broke off from Pizarro’s legendary expedition to search for El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. Although an ineffectual nobleman is nominally in charge of the gang, the real power is psychotic soldier Don Lope de Aguirre (Kinski), who ascends to supremacy through attrition and treachery.
          Woefully unprepared for a long journey deep into the unforgiving rainforest, the conquistadors wear heavy battle armor and drive their native bearers to such extremes that several bearers flee into the wilderness every night, eventually leaving the Spaniards to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, Aguirre’s dreams of glory become more and more insane, until he imagines himself a living god destined to form an incestuous dynasty with his beautiful young daughter, Flores (Cecilia Rivera), as his bride. The story delivers Aguirre to a poetic fate, which Herzog presents in one of the most haunting final images of modern cinema.
          Although it’s imperfect from a technical perspective, Aguirre, the Wrath of God has undeniable power thanks to the relentless commitment of the director and the leading man. Herzog drove his crew nearly as hard as Aguirre pushed his people, and the auteur’s maniacal drive to film the visions he saw in his head produced startling results. Among the unforgettable moments in the film are the spellbinding opening shot, which features a seemingly mile-long train of men and women navigating a treacherous mountain path, and the heartbreaking scene in which a raft filled with explorers gets trapped against a rock wall by brutal whitewater rapids.
          Herzog’s storytelling is idiosyncratic and unpredictable, so he regularly stops the forward momentum of the narrative to linger on beguiling natural wonderments or peculiar human faces. Adding to the movie’s strangeness, Herzog recruited the German synth-rock band Popul Vuh to record the score. Their overwhelming washes of choral sounds and electronic patterns give the film an elemental quality.

          While the bulk of the supporting cast delivers utilitarian work, Kinski more than compensates with a raging performance that’s genuinely frightening. His deep-set eyes and high cheekbones giving him a cadaverous mien, Kinski looks like a supernatural creature set loose on a sinful earth, destroying everything in his path. He becomes a living metaphor of hubris, and thus a perfect vehicle for Herzog’s nihilistic statement about the destruction wrought by man’s pointless war against nature. Herzog and Kinski returned to this thematic well many more times in their respective careers, but they never matched the raw incandescence of their first conflagration.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God: OUTTA SIGHT