Reviews

AFTER THE WEDDING (Efter Brylluppet), Denmark, 2006. Viewed at 2006 Rome film festival.

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Susanne Bier's Danish drama, "After The Wedding" (Efter Brylluppet) is another milestone in the filmography of one of Europes top female directors and also one of Europes best actors, both Danes. Jacob (Mads Mikkelsen) an ex-pat Dane works in India taking care of homeless orphans. He has a particularly close relationship with a boy Pramod (age 8). His Indian overseer receives an offer from Copenhagen for big money to assist the project. This will require the mysterious ex-pat to return to Kbh after a long absence of many years to negotiate the transaction. He goes, very reluctantly, but not before solemnly promising the boy that he will be back for his birthday, only eight day away.

In Copenhagen he meets the millionaire Jorgen (Rolf Lassgaard) who invites him to his daughter's wedding party. It turns out that Jorgen's current wife, Helene, (Sidse Babett- Knudsen) is an ex-flame of Jacob's. At the wedding party the young bride announces to the jolting discomfort of all that Jorgen is not her real, genetic father. It now turns out that she is actually the offspring of Jacob and Helen's affair many years before. This is most disturbing to Jacob who did not know of the existence of this now full-grown daughter, Anna (Stine Fischer Christensen), who has been raised by Jorgen as his own -- not to mention the daughter herself, who feels betrayed by everybody. This leads to severe complications, confrontations and soul searching by all involved. Jorgen, nevertheless, offers Jacob the sky -- and a fund in perpetuity in his name and that of Anna, his new found daughter. One condition: Jacob must remain in Denmark and not go back to India.

Jacob is highly suspicious of the Millionaire's motives for all this unexplained and seemingly paradoxical generosity. The kicker is that Jorgen is dying but has revealed this to no one until now. What should Jacob do? -- accept the offer which would save all his young Indian charges from a life of depravation on the streets, or turn the offer down and go back to Bombay where he promised Pramod to be back in time for his birthday. Jorgen dies after a heart-wrenching last scene with the guilt feelings beset wife. Sob-sob. Funeral.

Jacob back in India offers to take Pramod back to Denmark where he would lead a life of luxury. The kid refuses. He wants to stay with the people he knows best. Sob-sob. This is a very high-style sob-story that is also very depressing but, indisputably, an "auteur film" all the way. Susan Bier is one of the foremost female director's at work in Europe today and makes glossy, high concept, slick psychological studies with excellent actors. I know this was a very good film but I was in so much pain watching it that I couldn't wait for it to be over. Alex in the press room, Rome. Tomorrow, the arrival of El Grande from Tribeca, Roberto De Niro -- (Are you tawkin na ME! )

LA ARAB FILM FESTIVAL 2012

QUARANTINA, A work of art from a traumatized country, Iraq Photo:ASAAD ABDUL MAJEED, The Hit-man Upstairs

An Iraqi film, Qarantina, shot in Baghdad was by far the most powerful film shown at this years LA Arab Film Festival. Considering the war torn conditions still going on in Iraq even after the withdrawal of American forces, it is a wonder that somebody has actually been able to conceive and shoot a dramatic feature film there -- in the city of Baghdad no less. The production company was German (Basis Berlin) but the filming, the actors and everything else are Iraqi. The director Oday Rasheed (39) is a mature filmmaker who was working on short films even under the Sadam Regime and is now trying to establish something resembling a film industry in post occupation Iraq. QARANTINA (Quarantine) is his second feature and was easily the most profound film of the representative selection shown.

On the surface this is a brooding film about a traumatized family living in a dilapidated house somewhere in Baghdad that has somehow survived the destruction all around. Salih the father seems to have no feelings for anyone and is despised by all. Meriam his attractive daughter has suffered some kind of trauma and hasn't spoken for three days. His young second wife Kerima, can't stand him and is making it with the younger man who lives upstairs --and happens to be a hit-man --a professional killer (Asaad Abdul Majeed). He is never named, but it seems that his boss, Ahmed, pays the rent for the whole abode. Meriam has a preteen younger brother, Muhanad, who loves to study but has to shine shoes on the street to bring in some cash. An air of trauma hangs over all. Every once in a while we get out onto the main streets and see life in the city through the cannon barrel view of a patrolling American tank.

An aunt is called in to try to snap Meriam out of her trance.The aunt's verdict -- Meriam is pregnant by Satan, the devil himself, but her efforts at exorcism are of no avail.

The killer has a cowering sidekick who takes him out in a car to do a job. He enters shop. we hear a shot, and it's all over. Business as usual. Next he carries out a one shot drive by shooting on the street. These are political targets, but he didn't follow the rules -- wasn't supposed to do it in such a sloppy manner. He goes to visit old cronies and we find out that he was once a university student. His former colleagues shun him. One old friend, now a university teacher himself, would like to leave the country and accept a position in Canada but he has to take care of his elderly wheelchair bound mother. Killer solves the dilemma for him by snuffing the lady with a pillow. But now he's stepping beyond the guidelines of his calling and Ahmed, his supervisor, comes around to tell him that he cannot just commit murders randomly but has to follow the rules. "We are an organization and we have a proper way of doing things" --"What's the difference", says killer, "Dead is dead". Ahmed gives him a patronly pat on the shoulder and departs, telling him that he is mentally ill. As a result of this visitation Killer will himself be taken for a one way ride and snuffed by the very sidekick he treated with such callous arrogance earlier. After a ferocious family argument it is fairly clear (without being explicitly stated) that the Satan in Meriam's belly came from incestuous Daddy Salih -- the entire family rebels and walk out on him with Auntie leading the way. Where will they go? - -what will they do now ?-- anybody's guess. One is tempted to say that this is all an allegory of the overall situation in Iraq today -- senseless cold blooded murders -- breakdown of family values -- anarchy -- hopelessness -- chaos --but life goes on under the gun. The "quarantine" in question is more spiritual than physical, but it doesn't seem like director Rasheed is primarily interested in symbolism. He is going for something else -- for lack of a better word --ART! --and dramatic truth. The camera work is by the director's younger brother Osama Rasheed -- which make this sort of a family affair. What you see is what you get. There is no background music which only adds to the feeling of stark reality.

We don't really know why the killer kills but we do find out that he was once a university student who for some reason dropped out to become a hired gun. None of the people in the film have a back story to speak of and yet we begin to care about them and hope that at least some will escape the misery around them. Why life in Baghdad is such hell does not need to be explained. The roving gun barrel view of the city is enough to remind us of the hellish recent history. So we just get caught up in this microcosm - This story of a few people trapped in a closed space -- an emotional Quarantine --and a network of personal relationships that need to be redefined. Because they are intolerable!

Rasheed has come up with a very profound film that doesn't seem to be about anything and yet it is about everything -- and maybe that is as good a definition of art as Uany. After watching his city get torn apart by the American-led foreign occupation, and currently living through the insurgency violence that is still going on, Oday Rasheed is one of only a few Iraqi filmmakers working in Baghdad today. Hats off and here's hoping we will see more of his work in the near future.

Biting documentary viewed at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a volatile but highly advantageous environment for young Russian businessmen eager to build the fledgling market economy by any means necessary. Striking extraordinary deals with the government to acquire newly privatized industries, a small group of men became phenomenally rich almost overnight. The most successful of these oligarchs was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who quickly became the wealthiest man in Russia.

"VLAST" (director/producer Cathryn Collins) means "power" in Russian and this review of the persecution, high profile trial, and eventual imprisonment of a Jewish oligarch- entrepreneur, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, makes the case that the new Russia, under the powerful grip of Vladimir Putin, former ace agent of the dreaded KGB, is now worse off than it was under Communism. Following the regime change in the early nineties Khodorowsky, along with many others, became an overnight billionaire when he took over the petroleum giant Promos. When he got a little too big for his boots and started making noises about true political reform, even suggesting that he might run for office — he and his followers were either hounded into exile or put into prison. Interviews with his defense lawyer, now living in the US, are particularly telling about the new Russian abuse of power at the highest levels, and the entire tenor of the film is set at the very beginning by an elderly Russian lady in a protesting crowd who exclaims "Vote for Putin? –Are you kidding! –We knew what would happen if the KGB ever got back in power…" Director Cathryn Collins had no filmmaking experience before this, but did have a long term interest in the Soviet Union, and the result is a remarkably professional, informative, and rather terrifying piece of documentary filmmaking.

SECRETS OF THE TRIBE" compiled and directed by Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha, viewed at the Los Angeles Film Festival, LAFF, 2010

A very thought-provoking documentary focusing on the interference of academic anthropologists in the life of an extremely primitive tribe in the Amazon jungle, the Yanomami, in ways that has threatened the very survival of these people. It is also about the squabbles, scandals, and venomous back-biting among these so-called social scientists, arguing over the authenticity of their "findings", with some soul-searching thrown in regarding the irreparable damage that has been inflicted on the people they are theoretically investigating in the name of "the advancement of science". One French anthropologist, a gay disciple of the famous French anthropological theoretician, Levi Strauss, spent 25 years among the Yanomami, apparently teaching the young boys of the tribe the fine points of European pedophilia. An American scholar went down to the Amazon and came back with a Yanomami wife with whom he has fathered three children who can't count past two — the highest number in the Yanomami language. However he was black-balled from the academic community and couldn't find a teaching job. (You ain't supposed to marry these people –you're just supposed to write papers about them…) — Made me shudder since I was once an "anthro" major myself! should be Required viewing for students of genocide.

Viewed at Los Angeles Preview, Dec. 2013: "The Square" (Al Meidan). a new documentary thriller straight from the barricades in Cairo, has received the Best Documentary of the year award and has turned out to be one of the hottest film events of the tail end of calendar year 2013. PHOTO: Ahmad Hassan, young protester rides atop a triumphant crowd in Tehrir Square

"The Square" (Tehrir Square in Cairo, scene of all the major Egyptian protest demonstrations of the past two years) a two hour long documentary on the Nightmarish 'Arab Spring' in Egypt, is an astounding personal summary of the events in Egypt from the fall of the Mubarak dictatorship in early 2011 to the rise and fall of the Moslem Brotherhood under "legally elected" Islamist president Morsi just a few months ago.

Intrepid female director, Jehane Noujaim, an American Egyptian filmmaker went to Cairo in January 2011 to witness the historical events taking place in her home town with no such ambitious film project yet in mind ..

The reality on the ground in front of her eyes in the very neighborhood where she grew up — with cataclysmic political changes already underway — prompted her to set up a team to record these unfolding events in proper professional style. She and her team stayed with the ongoing insurrection for two years, through thick and thin, focusing on the personalities of three central impromptu revolutionaries, while placing themselves directly in the line of fire.

What emerges is a you-are-there documentary that is more cinema vérité than classical documentary — like news flashes from the front lines with a Hollywood thriller plot line to boot.

Basically she followed three regular Tehrir protesters around, both on the street during life- threatening situations, and off the street in private interviews reflecting on the events in progress. One, Ahmed Hassan simply speaks straight from the shoulder with no pretensions whatsoever. Ahmed is an average guy who is convinced that the time for the common people to regain their dignity after decades of humiliation and oppression under Mubarak has finally come. He just happens to have the disarming charm and charisma of a Leonardo Di Caprio.

Khalid Abdallah is a professional British actor of Egyptian background with a Cambridge degree. In 2006 he played the leader of the Arab hijackers in Paul Greengrass's 9/11 drama "Flight 93″. In Jehane's Square he plays himself — an ordinary Egyptian with a conscience crying out for democracy. Khalid takes a more intellectual view than the others but is every bit as committed and willing to put his body on the line. His father back in England is also a longtime advocate of democracy for Egypt. We see Khalid talking to his father via SKYPE in UK to keep him abreast of happenings on the front line in the Square.

The battle lines swing back and forth. After Mubarak is toppled an interim military junta takes over. Finally the Junta agrees to hold "free elections"' however, as Hassan points out with surprising political savvy, the democratic minded opposition in The Square has no cohesive structure, so the choice becomes one between the fundamentalist minded Moslem Brotherhood, or a continuation of Mubarak style Military rule — in other words not much of a choice at all for the democracy minded activists who represent the bulk of the Egyptian populace.

The Botherhood — the "Akhwan" — win by a slim majority and Morsi takes over — as a "legally elected" president. At first even Washington supports him, but it soon becomes clear that Morsi wants to install an Islamic Dictatorship. Watching Morsi attempting to assume dictatoriaĺ powers on television Ahmed Hassan remarks wryly, "He's digging his own grave" — and then leads another charge into The Square. This time Hassan is hit by live ammo and hospitalized, but he recovers quickly and the Moslem Brotherhood regime is also toppled. But what is the new alternative?

The third central figure is Magdy, a personal friend of secular Ahmed but a committed Moslem Brotherhood believer. As events progress we witness his final disappointment and disillusion with the brotherhood in spite of his deep religious feelings. His own son is now an active demonstrator against Brotherhood oppression. At the end of the film, completed just two months ago, the military is back in the drivers seat and the nation is in limbo. In a final sequence the three main figures agree that the opposition is too unstructured and that what is needed is a new constitution — and a new consciousness — but this will take time to work out.

As the year 2014 opens the situation in Egypt is still up in the air with the military cracking down severely, much as was the case under Mubarak. The question now is what is worse?– the military or the Islamists — and will democracy in some form still have a chance?

On very limited release in November 2013 this amazing film was seen by almost nobody because NETFLIX who own the rights, allotted Zero publicity budget. However, The power of Jehane Noujaim's film is such that, if it gets an Oscar in March on top of the Best Documentary distinction already earned it may become an international cause celèbre and may then reach enough people to make a real difference on the ground — not only in Egypt but elsewhere as well. In any case this is a film absolutely not to miss simply as a cinematic adventure that is sure to become a landmark if and when the final chapter of the Arab Spring is ever written.

A Briivele der Namen (A Little Letter to Mama) Yiddish, 1938

ABDM is one of the great classics of the pre-war Yiddish cinema and one of the great all time films on the subject of immigration to America. It was the culmination of Joseph Green's amazing four film cycle of Yiddish films made between 1937 and 1939, on the brink of WW II. The saga of a Jewish family opens in 1912 in Lubin, a small shtetl in the Ukraine and terminates in New York in the twenties after the war, where Mama ("Dobrish" Berditchever) finally tracks down her long lost son (the excellent tenor, Edmund Zayenda), the entire family's having been dispersed by the war. I All actors were top stars and character actors of both the Warsaw and New York Yiddish stage, and turn in uniformly superb performances.

The end of the war in 1918 brings the tragic news that Dobrish's eldest son was killed at the front. With her older son dead, her married daughter having run off to live in Odessa, her husband an unsuccessful runaway to America peddling on the streets and, worst of all, her little son "Arele" who had such a nice voice as a boy, also having disappeared without a trace — Dobrish is now a still proud but pathetic figure left behind without a ticket abandoned in Warsaw, and the promised letter from young son Arele has never come.

Enter Mr. Shein, the savior from America. This aristocratic figure of a man is the representative of HIAS (the Jewish Aid to Refugees organization) sent to Poland to assist in getting people out and over to America.. The minute he spots Dobrish milling around in a large hall with other prospective refugees he asks a colleague, — Who is that woman? — clearly, this is the 'coup-de-foudre' — love at first sight.

He secures her passage on the boat to America as his personal protégée. In New York the search commences in the immigrant community. Dobrish learns that her feckless husband, Dovid has passed away — but, what about her long lost little son, Ariel, who must now be a grown up man? Of Arele Berditchever no trace. "But we'll find him", Shein assures her.

Now the climax. At a benefit concert featuring star tenor "Irving Bird" (Could this "Bird" be a shortened version of an original name "Berd-itchever? — Youbetcha!) Even the most undiscerning viewer would not fail to realize that this handsome, young man is the long-lost Arele. However, when he takes the stage and brushes past Dobrish in the waiting room, she doesn't recognize him, nor does he even notice her!

As Bird launches into his final song of the night all recognize it as a song written by poor Dovid years ago back in the Ukraine. The song ends to thunderous applause, and Bird is besieged by fans. In the hubbub he again walks right past his mother without recognizing her in the crowd. Out on the street Dobrish is still in a trance as we see Bird getting into a waiting limousine. She steps off the curb and - bang is run down by this very car pulling away! Cut to the hospital. Dobrish comes out of a coma, and Bird-Arele is at her bedside. Is it too late? Mr. Shein on the other side of the bed says to her, "Do you know who this is?" — Dobrish, with her last remaining strength; "Ikh veiss –zog mir nit ~ "I know — don't tell me." As she throw her arm around Bird's leaning shoulder we hear the last word of the film, "Arele!" Is this her last word or will she survive in the brave new world with her long lost son? —The question is wisely left open …

This synopsis of the film may sound a bit like a shmaltzy melodrama but this picture is far more than the sum of its parts, This is in, every way, a polished work up to the best standards of late thirties international filmmaking. The editing is perfect, the camera-work, the incidental music, the performances — everything is first rate. But, above all this is a film about the processes and psychology of immigration — not just Jewish immigration — one which would have much to say to any other immigrant group regardless of ethnicity.

Max Bozyk is an entity unto himself, as Shimen the tailor — a star character actor if ever there was one. Tenor Edmund Zayenda, on a sheerly musical basis, was a quality singer as good or better than any of the crooners who populated Hollywood films of the late thirties — and a very handsome presence as well.

Finally, not enough can be said of Lucy Gherman's towering portrayal of "Dobrish", the heroine of the piece who, with incredible dignity in the face of every kind of adversity and tragedy, toughs it out and shows exactly what it means to be a "survivor" and a compassionate mother as well. Comparisons may be odious, but I would rate her Dobrish right up there with Helen Mirren's recent Queen Elizabeth II, and I don't think i'm is going too far out on a limb by saying that.

"A Brivele der Mamen" (A little letter to Mama ) is one of the two or three outstanding works of the Yiddish cinema and a timeless classic in its own right, regardless of language.

Alex Deleon, Seattle, March 10, 2007

KROGOVI (Сircles): Serbian, 2013 Director Srdan Golubović A Serbian film with Slovenian, Croatian and German production inputs.

After a fast start in Trebinje, Montenegro, 1993, introducing the principal characters of the drama, the time moves forward twelve years to Halle, Germany, and then to Belgrade, Serbia, and the pace slows down considerably with lots of real time sequences and lingering shots on pensive faces as the movie lapses into a study of the consequences of an act of collective brutality -- simply put, an outrageous war crime, during the brutal Jugoslavian civil war, a dozen years later. On various people who have tried to put it behind them. At the opening, Marko, a Serbian soldier off duty intervenes in the brutal beating of an innocent Moslem civilian being savaged by some of his soldier mates as the townspeople look on passively.This humane act will have very complex and puzzling repercussions which will not be resolved until the very end when we finally see what happened to Marko as a result of his attempt to save an innocent person from a pointless murder by his mates. This very tense drama that was roundly applauded by the Hungarian (Miskolc) audience and followed by a lengthy Q and A session with the director on stage after the screening. The civil war that tore Jugoslavia apart at the beginning of the nineties is now 20 years behind us but in the region itself the repercussions are still much like an open wound

Circles, aka Krugovi, is based on the true story of a Serbian soldier who was killed defending a Muslim civilian from other soldiers while he was off-duty. Most of the story takes place a decade after the end of Serbian-Bosnian conflict but the effects of the war keep reaching out like ripples on a pond when a heavy stone is thrown in. Expanding concentric circles of guilt that keep disturbing the otherwise smooth surface of the water -- the 'krugovi' of the title -- that affect among others a Serbian family that has started a new life in neutral Germany, but the past comes back to haunt them. A surgeon who was only a medical student at the beginning is faced with the dilemma of whether to operate and save the life of a new patient, or not to operate and let him die when he recognizes the patient as the killer of his best friend back in Trebinje years before. But the former killer taunts him by reminding him that he was of the bystanders who did nothing to prevent the killing on that fatal day. All of this is cunningly directed like an intertwined nest of mystery stories embedded in each other until the surprise revelation at the end. While the story is specifically Yugoslavian the morality involved is universal and the filming is so masterful that this movie will hold the attention of audiences anywhere. Can't wait to see more work by Srdan Golubović.

SUGAR, American, 2008, directed by Ryan Fleck/Anna Boden, USA; Viewed at CINEFEST, Miskolc, 2013.

Dominican baseball star Miguel "Sugar" Santos is recruited to play in the U.S. minor- leagues but there's a lot more to this than baseball.

This film treats Immigration, race relations, and, yes, baseball ~ after a fashion, with an xlnt non-professional black cast. These are Notes to an American friend on the most exotic film of the week seen with a surprisingly lengthy Q&A with the director that went on until near Midnight.

The title is "SUGAR", the name of the hero, and this American indie qualifies as 'exotic' here on three grounds; (1) the subject is American baseball -- more exotic in Hungary than soccer or rugby is in the States, (2) not only baseball, but Minor League, Bush league baseball, and (3) the whole business seen through the eyes of black Spanish speaking players from the Dominican Republic!

You'll probably never get to see it because it was released in 2008 as an HBO/American Film Showcase production and has not had any public circulation to speak of, but i'm just telling you about it because it was so off-the-wall weird -- especially turning up in a place called "Meesh-colts" in the Hungarian outback!

The whole first half hour takes place in the Dominican Republic, which shares half of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (Columbus landed there) with Haiti, the poorest country in the world -- and the language spoken was a dialect of Spanish so thick I had to read the Hungarian subtitles to follow it.

The main guy Miguel "Sugar" Santos is a young talented pitcher who is spotted by an American baseball scout and picked up by one of the low level Kansas City farm teams. From there it segues to a small baseball town in Iowa where Sugar is assigned to a very proper church going Grace-before-dinner religious white family who are baseball fans -- to live with them and learn English. They have a squeaky clean blonde daughter who will start making him forget his true black love back home, and it goes on from there to something very different from the success stories we are conditioned to expect from sports minded films of this kind.

No time for details here but I can tell you that it ends up in Porto Rican New York with numerous unexpected twists and turns. Basically a Spanish language film inhabited mostly by black non-actors, which gives it a kind of semi-documentary authenticity you would never get with somebody like Denzil Washington in the lead.

A real one-of-a-kinder that raised many questions from an intelligent Hungarian gathering - - far more than I thought it would. But no bull -- a black baseball flick in the backwoods of Hungary is almost an event in itself. I wouldn't say that I loved this film but it was certainly worth sitting through and sticking around afterward merely for its uniqueness if nothing else. A great baseball film it was not, but as a problematic Caribbean immigration film it works on multiple levels. And as a Black film all it needed would be a couple of songs by Lena Horne to make it an instant classic.

Sita Sings The Blues" RIVER TO RIVER, FLORENCE 2010 – PARTING SHOTS A BLUESY RAMAYANA CLOSES FEST by Iskandar Sinha

Sita Sings the Blues To start with last things first, this highly varied Florence Indian film week came to a rousing close on December 11, 2010, with a brilliant feature length animation entitled "Sita Sings The Blues". SITA is the heroine of the Indian national epic known as the Ramayana, a tale close to the heart of every Indian person. In the story she follows her husband Prince Rama into exile in a forest where she is kidnapped by the evil king Ravana of (Sri) Lanka. While remaining faithful to her husband, Sita is subjected to a variety of temptations... Director Nina Paley is an American animator who was inspired by a reading of the Ramayana in 2002. In this hilarious semi-modern adaptation of the classic Indian epic Sita looks like a Sanskritic Betty Boop, and does indeed sing the blues at various stages of this rip-roaring 82 minute piece of work. In the film filmmaker Nina finds herself in a similar situation when her husband who is in India on business decides to break up their marriage via e-mail. Shadow puppets narrate both the ancient Indian tragedy and the modern Western comedy which are intertwined, all with musical numbers choreographed to 1920 Jazz standards. The visuals are a juicy blend of Walt Disney and classic Indian imagery and the result is a totally enjoyable flick that I hope will be seen widely for the sheer joy it radiates. PS: All the songs are by twenties American blues singer Annette Hanshaw,

HARLAN, in the Shadow of Jew Suess, 2008 Viewed at the Los Angeles Jewush film festival Written and directed by Felix Moeller, German with English subtitles. Summary: A Hardball study of Nazi era guilt passed down through three generations of a single family.

Though almost forgotten today, Veit Harlan was one of Nazi Germany's most notorious filmmakers. His most notorious film was the blatantly anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Suess (1940).. viewed at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, First off It needs to be made clear that this documentary is not to be confused with the German dramatic feature, "Jud Suess – a Film without a conscience", which was premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year to which, however, it can easily be seen as a companion piece. "Jud Suess" (A film without a conscience) was basically a fictionalized docu-drama focusing on Ferdinand Marian, the actor who (perhaps unwittingly) played the Jud Suess title role in the original Nazi propaganda film, and director Veit Harlan is a secondary character. Both Veit and Marian are, of course, played by contemporary German actors. The present documentary zeroes in on the director himself, Veit Harlan, with various swatches of archival footage of him and his associates included, but is primarily about the legacy of guilt feelings passed on to his progeny right up to the present. Some illustrative scenes from the 1940 rabidly anti-Semitic "Jud Suess" are shown, but most of the film centers of interviews with the direct descendants, children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces, of the notorious director who was indicted for war crimes immediately after the war, but was twice acquitted by "friendly" (i.e., Nazi sympathetic) judges. Harlan continued to make films after the war and never apologized for his key role fostering the intense racist policies of Goebbels and the Nazis, but various excuses have been made for him, such as that he was not really an anti-Semite but rather an opportunist who made the films offered him under the Nazi regime "as best he could".

One son however, violently disagrees and became such a hater of his father's Nazi collaboration that he has devoted his entire life to exposing it over and over in every way possible. Another son has no such qualms and claims that nobody has a right to ask him how he felt or feels about his father — a hard one to argue with. A grand daughter raised in France and speaking in French admits she has always been somewhat ashamed to be identified with him. A nephew living in Capri, Italy, where Veit died and was buried, takes the guarded view that his uncle was basically an artist who merely "got carried away a little". A daughter, Maria Koerber is an actress who took her mother's last name to avoid the indignity of carrying the Harlan name and makes no bones about her disgust with Harlan's activities.

Most peculiar of all is the testimony of Christiane Kubrick, (birth name Christianne Susanne Harlan, born 1932) who is a niece of Harlan's and the widow of the late American movie director Stanley Kubrick! She also takes the shaky position that Veit was more of an artist than a Nazi per-se, and claims that Stanley always wanted to make a film about her uncle working in Nazi Germany, but never quite got around to it. Too bad — that would have been something to see! All in all, Felix Moeller's film is less about Harlan than about his immediate descendants and the burden of guilt they bear (or do not bear) up to the present day half a century after the director's death. Mr. Moeller spent a lot of time tracking these people down and getting them to talk to the camera about their feelings, being the progeny of a man who, whether he was a card-carrying member of the party or not, unquestionably made a major contribution to the extermination of the Jews. What comes out is an amazing spectrum of commentary: defensive, offensive, tentatively neutral, anger, excuses, leave-us-the-hell- alone, silence, befuddlement, sorrow, who cares anyway — just about every kind of response one can imagine under the circumstances.

Director Felix Moeller has a certified filmmaking pedigree, being the son of outstanding German director Margarethe von Trotte and has made a number of other bio-documentaries, but this one is very special in that it amounts to a depth probe into the collective psychology of an extended German family with a rich Nazi pedigree which, in passing, can easily be seen as the reflection of the mixed feelings regarding the legacy of the Third Reich that still float about in the collective unconscious of Germans today. Kudos, Herr Moeller. Too bad your film was not seen by more people (Jewish and Non- Jewish) here. Alex Deleon, Miracle Mile, L.A. May, 2010

MIELE (Honey), Italian, 2013, Directed by Valerian Golino: Starring Jasmine Trinca (Miele) and Carlo Cecchi (Grimaldi) Viewed at Jameson CINEFEST, Miskolc, Hungary, October 2013:

The Italian film Miele had another unusual subject this week, Euthanasia, and a fascinating lead actress, I have never seen before but would like to see much more of after this. Jasmine Trinca is exceptionally beautiful, has a perfect face, globular eyes and slim body, and you simply cannot keep yours eyes off of her -- even dressed as she is in this film unglamorously in jeans, and with boyishly close cropped hair. Miele is basically the story (third time this week) of a relationship between a young woman and a much older man; Irene, 31, and Grimaldi (Carlo Cecchi) 74. Irene, nick named "Miele" (honey) has an unusual job which requires her to take trips to Mexico to procure dog killer, Latuna, ostensibly a substance "to put down dogs", but actually a poison to put terminally ill patients out of their misery. The subject is Euthanasia, and the complicated psychology of people who want to end it all. Irene is an illegal suicide assistant and gives the applicants every chance to change their minds, but in the end it is Mr. Grimaldi, a 70 year old man in perfect health but simply tired of living, who will make her change her own mind about the grisly way she has chosen to make a living -- administering illegal drugs and poisons to people who want to die. A bit thin in story line but the hypnotically beautiful lead actress turns it into a compelling sit through ; Jasmine Trinca, 31, was the actress playing Irene. The pic was directed by well known Italian actress Valeria Golino, her first turn behind the cameras, a modt promising debut to say the least.

Trinca, a leading light in Italian films since 2000, received the Italian Golden Globe "Nastro d'argento" best actress award this year for her work in "Miele" and the film itself was screened at Cannes in "Un certain regard" where it won a commendation by the Ecumenical jury, a body whose function is to show support for Good Christian values. One can easily see why since suicide is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church.

Ten stars -- Jasmine Trinca will give you a reason to live another day

image1.jpeg ALL ABOUT EVE, 1950 An ingenue insinuates herself into the company of an established but aging stage actress and her circle of theater friends -- and DOES she ever!!' BerlinbFilmbFestivsl, 2010 Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Writer: Mankiewicz,written for the screen by the director himself. Stars: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, with an early bit part by Marilyn Monroe.

Baxter, Davis, Monroe and Sanders ... There are great actresses, there are very great actresses, and then there is Bette Davis. Davis had such a strong personality that when she played a role like Queen Elizabeth she didn't convince you that she had turned into queen Elizabeth, but that queen Elizabeth had turned into Bette Davis. In All About Eve she is simply in a class by herself and the picture itself is one of the great landmarks of the Hollywood cinema along with the likes of Casablanca and Sunset Boulevard, Eve has, in fact, much in common with the latter in which a long over the hill movie star tries vainly to make a comeback. Amazingly both of these masterpieces came out in the same year, 1950, marking it as one of the milestone years of American film history. Over the years as a non-critical film buff I had caught Eve several times on late night TV and always enjoyed it but, seeing it again in a pristine new print on the big screen at the Berlin film festival in a sidebar section devoted to the most beautiful women of the silver screen, I was totally Wowed ! ~ and left breathless at the end realizing I had just witnessed an all-time masterpiece which I had more or less taken for granted before.

Well, Okay, Bette is staggering ~ but everything else is equally tip-top: The crystal clear black and white photography, the edgy outlining of every single character in the supporting cast, supreme arch bitch Anne Baxter, ultra suave super cynical George Sanders as poison pen critic Addison Dewitt, with a glowing young Marilyn Monroe on his arm, Celeste Holm, celestial as the perfect wise-cracking protective best friend, and all others in perfect tune in a perfect symphony of backstage maneuvering and interlocking personal dramas --spiced at every turn with gold-plated tailor-made dialog topped off, of course, by Bette's unforgettable party line "Fasten your seat belts -- it looks like it's gonna be a bumpy night"" What is really amazing about the dialog of this film is that it was all written out beforehand by director Mankiewicz but is so perfectly suited to every character (including a zingy one- liner by Marilyn) that it feels like they were making it up as they went along with the story. So natural it is supernatural! If this is not the most perfect film ever made in Hollywood it is certainly one of the top three. If you ever get a chance to see it with an audience on a big screen be sure to fasten your seat belt and prepare to be knocked for a loop. Alex, at Zeughaus Cinema, Unter den Linden, Berlin

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Grand BUDAPEST Hotel, Berlin, Friday February 7, 2014. The big opening film of the 64th Berlin Film Festival was the world premiere of the much ballyhooed "GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL" which has nothing to do with Budapest or Hungary but is set in a mythical European country that could be Hungary, (with some Polish Signs) and is populated with a prestige all star cast: Ralph Fiennes as a hotel concierge in a thirties full buttons outfit like Johnny the bellhop who used to sail through the Philip Morris hotel lobby shouting "call for Phil-lipp Maw-aw-rey", Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, and a staggering lineup of other names Adrien Brody (The Pianist), Jeff Goldblum (The Fly), Ed Norton, Harvey Keitel, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham (remember him from Amadeus, 1984?) — plus French stars Mathieu Amalric and Léa Seydoux — wow! How'd he get 'em all to sign up? Directed by Wes Anderson who can be counted on for absurd comical romps and is a favored son of this festival with previous entries such as "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (the biggest bore of 2004) and "The Royal Tennenbaums" starring an obviously disgruntled Gene Hackman

GBH was far more fun than I expected it to be judging from certain mixed opinions that have come my way. I would play it as a double feature with Kubrick's "The Shining" for the contrastive use of an old Grand Hotel settings and for opposite cinematic purposes --- Fear and Fun! And then throw in the old Greta Garbo Grand Hotel itself... Director Wes Anderson who is no newcomer to the Berlinale, has marshaled every visual technique in the book to come up with a piece of Visual Vaudeville that is really lots of fun if not exactly too coherent -- but then why should an all-star Variety Show-- which is exactly what Budapest Hoteĺ is -- be anything but flippy and fun?

Part of the fun is trying to identify extremely well known actors in makeup and disguises so extravagant that it makes them well nigh unrecognizable: Harvey Keitel with a shaved head and naked torso covered with funny little tattoos, Jeff Goldbloom dressed up in a wig and high collar tweeds totally away from his usual image -- only the voice gives him away - -Polanski's Pianist Oscar laureate Adrien Brody so disguised that even his prominent proboscis goes unnoticed -- on and on to the point where the viewer keeps asking him- her-who-self; "Hey - wait a second -- wasn't that .... ?? -- altogether an hilarious off- season Halloween party and an easy sit through if not quite the most coherent motion picture of all time.

On stage introducing the pic tall comedian Bill Murray in a long black coat topped off with some kind of boxy black hat, and a regular presence in Wes Anderson pictures, told the Friedrich Palast audience categorically, in patented Murrayesque manner, "This is the best picture Wes has ever made. Don't even bother looking at the other competition Pictures -- This one is it!"

Wes Anderson's "Grand Budapest Hotel" is indeed one of the 23 entries competing for the prestigious Berlin Golden Bear award at the end of the fully packed ten days coming up. Whether Mr. Murray's broad statement turns out to be a fulfilled prophecy is an open question -- but nobody can deny that everybody had lots of fun tonight, and the Sixty- Fourth Berlin Film Festival is off and running ~~ Fasten your seat belts and enjoooooy! -- or else!

PS: The grand opener, Wes Anderson's "Grand Budapest Hotel" was awarded the so called "Grand Jury Prize" which seems to be some kind of special recognition (booby prize?) for a film that should have won the Golden Bear Best Film award but was too good for its own good at this politically inclined festival which prefers to recognize obscure films from the Twilight Zones of the inscrutable East whenever possible.

The adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous hotel from the fictional Republic of Zubrowka between the first and second World Wars, and Zero Moustafa, the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend.

Ps: Żubrowka is the name of a popular brand if Polish Vodk

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Viewed at Seattle Film Noir Festival, July 2008. Lang's "Scarlett Street" with Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson is a masterful thinking man's psychodrama but its inclusion in noir is open to question —

"SCARLET STREET" (Universal, 103 minutes) starring, Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea is very much a companion piece to Lang's other 'darkie', "Woman in the Window", 1944, which also starred Robinson and Bennett (with Duryea in a smaller role, as well). It looks noir, it sounds noir, and it even feels a little noir, but except for that indelible Dan Duryea (whose slam-bang pimp is its main claim to noirness) it's just not "noir" enough. An excellent psychological study of a middle aged man (Robinson) stuck in a terrible marriage, who falls head over heels for a beautiful hooker with disastrous results, that yes — a fascinating melodrama, and all that, yes, but noir it ain't and, for the following reasons —

First of all, Joan Bennet is much too classy to play a noir anti-heroine, while Edward G. is on the border — a certain darkness in his soul, true, but basically ac classy top-drawer dramatic actor a bit too theatrical here to qualify for noir. (The ending where he goes bats and hears voices is strictly from German Expressionism, far too arty for "noir"). Secondly, the screenplay is much too brainy for a noir, (the obvious parallel for art History buffs, between Robinson, the unschooled weekend painter, and French post-impressionist "primitive" painter, Henri Rousseau), and some of Bennett's dialogue, reflecting on Edward G's weekend art work had me thinking, "Hm — this gal must have gone to Vassar before she became a hard-boiled hooker".

Bennett is indeed lovely to look at, but she's far from the ideal noir blonde-bombshell (she was, in fact, often compared to Hedy Lamar in the forties as the ultimate Brunette Beauty of the time) and, although she was a very competent actress, casting her as a hard-as- nails whore under the pimpship of Dan Duryea was definitely pushing the envelope to attract the more respectable "A" movie audience. Given the glossy Langian context she does pull it off, but you can see her acting a mile away. Duryea on the other hand doesn't act – he's just there, in the totally decadent pimpish flesh! And, compared to the just about unknown Beverly Michaels in "Wicked Woman .. well, we'll get to that in a minute. Overall, "Scarlett Street" is a thinking man's psychodrama, and another outstanding Fritz Lang opus, but its inclusion in noir is open to question

White Palms, (Fehér Tenyér) Hungary, 2006. Viewed in Budapest at the annual Magyar Film Week, (Magyar Film Szemle) February, 2006.

Having suffered as a boy under a brutal Communist-era coach, champion Hungarian gymnast Miklos moves to Canada years later in search of a new start - only to find himself unwittingly perpetuating the very same cycle of abuse among his own pupils.

"White Palms" helmed by Szabolc HAJDU is possibly the only feature film ever made whose central subject is the specialized athletic domain of Gymnastics. It follows the life of a talented young gymnast in the city of Debrecen who rebels against his sadistic coach in Communist Hungary, runs off to a Russian circus where he suffers a very bad injury, emigrates to Canada where he himself becomes a leading gymnastics coach, then, years later, returns to Debrecen for one last shot as a performer in international competition, whereupon, having proved his mettle once and for all against his arch Canadian rival– goes back and joins a famous Canadian circus! — (Le Cirque du Soleil).

The gymnastics scenes, which take up a goodly portion of the total screen time, are especially realistic as both the director and his brother Zoltan Miklos Hajdu, who plays the hero, Dongo, at maturity, are highly trained gymnasts! Nothing like making a picture about an occupation you know something about… The title refers to the chalk gymnasts dust their palms with when approaching the high bar to get a better grip. The gyrations on the bars are breathtaking but what really gives this film its unusual punch is the parallel study of the art and mentality of the career gymnast woven into a strong critique of the Communust system that paralyzed Hungary for four decades. Fascinating film, one of a kind. The festival closer "Taxidermia" a study in the gymnastics of regurgitation made enough people in Hungary puke this year to convince the critics that it was the "Best Film of the Year" – different shucks for different folks. All things considered, however, 2006 was not a bad year at all for the steadily reviving Hungarian cinema and White Palms is one if the best of the new breed.

https://www.movieposter.com/poster/MPW-74557/Wicked_Woman.html

WICKED WOMAN, 1953

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Viewed at Seattle Film Noir Festival, July 2008. Lang's "Scarlett Street" with Joan Bennett and Edward G, which preceded this on the final day, is a thinking man's psychodrama but its inclusion in noir is open to question — which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the hell out of it — however, to me it was only a warm-up for the main shot of the entire Seattle NOIR festival, "Wicked Woman", (United Artists, 1953, 77 supercharged minutes) which closed the whole week out in a blaze of a-moral blackness, with slim, towering, platinum-blonde bomb shell, Beverly Michaels (aptly described in the notes as "a stick of female Dynamite"), simply chewing up the scenery and everyone else in sight — male or female! This supreme noir actress makes Joan Bennett look like a girl scout by comparison. The minute she steps off that Greyhound in the opening scene we know we're in for trouble. When she checks into a ratty rooming house with strictly low-life denizens it already starts, fighting over the use of the bathroom, and especially with the runty bald creep across the hall, the inimitable fidgety, pudgy, balding slime-ball, Percy Helton. When she quickly saunters into a job as a barmaid it doesn't take her five minutes to vamp on the handsome bar owner (Richard Egan) and snare him in her web before the bleary eyes of his alcoholic wife. (Shades of "Postman always Rings Twice" in reverse). Soon she's got him talked into selling the place (and she'll have to pretend to be the wife and forge her signature to pull this off), ditching the wife and running off with her to Mexico.

"RUNT RUNT RUNT!!!

When Percy next door overhears her plotting and tries to blackmail her into having sex with him, she, towering over him by half a torso, disdainfully calls him a "runt", to which he indignantly retorts, "Don't you dare call me runt" — whereupon she literally explodes with the words; "RUNT, RUNT, RUNT !!!" — possibly the most egregious put-down ever seen on a silver screen. And the way she wipes her hand off on her nightgown after it has been greedily pawed by Percy is sheer noir genius. However, she does spend the night with him to shut him up … talk about unscrupulous! Although nobody actually gets killed in this film, it feels as though everybody is getting killed all the time, and the tension in the lawyer's office signing the bill of sale for the bar is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Though posing as Egan's wife she isn't wearing a ring and we can see that, but the lawyer and buyer are so bowled over by her looks they fail to notice — Excellent direction here by Russell Rouse who also penned the bare bones perfect screenplay with one of Occam's razors.

The reason I call this "pure" noir is that it pulls absolutely no punches, has the perfect no-name cast, the perfectly compact scenario, the absolute absence of anything resembling any kind of morality, and performances so perfect it looks like the actors just walked in off the street and started making the story up as they went along. As for Beverly Michaels … this is the Scarlett O'Hara of Noir. After seeing "Framed", in which Janis Carter so heartlessly drags Glen Ford down the drain, I nominated her for the all-time Best Actress Oscar of Noir Award. Now, after "Wicked Woman" I must respectfully ask Janis to move over to make some room for Beverly — as the best beyond-acting actress and the Wickedest Woman of All-Noir-time. Let's make that a "Lifetime Award" for Michaels as she is rumored to be still around, hiding out somewhere in Arizona. When she got back onto that Greyhound at the end of "Wicked Woman" with just enough cash to get halfway to nowhere on a one-way ticket, you just knew she would start vamping all over again the minute she got there. She actually starts right on the bus revealing a long well-turned leg to a scruffy salivating male passenger across the aisle …

Too bad they didn't make any sequels; "Wicked Woman" II, "Wicked Woman III", or "Wicked Woman Rides Again" — What a waste of wickedness! — and Percy Helton gets the all-time Slimeball Award. Even though he oozes oil from every pore and rubs his hands together like a house-fly perched on a sugar cube, he does so with such practiced aplomb that you can't help loving him for trying every ploy in the book just to get into Beverly's hot pants once. Richard Egan was the letter-perfect noir leading man because, while handsome enough and virile enough to be an "A' movie lead, he was much too wooden and transparent an actor to make the "A' list — in films of this kind, however, with no high-art pretensions — made to order. "Wicked Woman" (along with DOA, 1950) is the letter-perfect film noir down to the last 't' -- the kind where the addition or subtraction of a single frame would lessen the impact. Numerous thumbs up! (Incidentally, WW is so obscure it even listed in MALTIN)

MY personal awards: FILM: Best Noir ever. ACTRESS: Michaels, Best cheap tramp vamp ever, SUPPORTING Actor: Percy Helton, sleaziest cheap slime-ball of all time.