CS Film Club II

FYI, whenever next round is:

Yeah man, I'll hop in now and pair with you.


Pale Flower (1964)
Revanche (2008)
Good Time (2017)
The Talk of the Town (1942)
Burning (2018)
Logan Lucky (2017)

Six days left.

Watched mine last week and listened to a critical podcast ep from a feminist perspective, just need to formulate a review out of my notes app

Lolita (1962)



What makes a good adaptation? Is devotion the source material paramount, or translating to the core essence of the book to film, or veering off-course into something of its own?


Stephen King’s famous criticism of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel The Shining is that the viewer does not see Jack Torrance as a flawed man twisted by his surroundings which elevate his worse instincts, but as a man who is clearly already deranged from the first time we meet him. Stephen King is of course correct in this assessment, but Kubrick’s Shining’s brilliance far supersedes any such criticism. I’m not sure I can say the same for his Lolita.


Novelist Vladimir Nabokov is credited with writing the screenplay, though little of what he wrote in the screenplay made it to the film. So too does Kubrick rearrange elements of the novel, both for narrative ease and censorship avoidance. Ten years after the film was released, Kubrick would note that he “probably wouldn’t have made the film” had he realized how difficult the censorship problems would be. Jamie Loftus—who released a podcast last year surrounding Nabokov’s Lolita and its adaptations—argues that Kubrick’s adaptation is a failure not because of the censorship issues but because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the text.


Delores Haze, 12 years old in the book, is aged up to early teens in the movie but cast with Sue Lyon who looks about 17 in the role. Humbert Humbert is an unreliable first-person narrator in the book, but here the narration comes and goes, with a view of him early in the film as dashing and not quite predatory. While I appreciate that Kubrick rearranging Humbert’s confrontation of Quilty to the beginning of the movie lends a film-noir tone that bookends the film, the tone is comic immediately after this scene until two thirds of the way through the movie, robbing the action of some of its gravity.


The early comic tone is where the movie perhaps mirrors the satire and wordplay of the novel the most. Shelley Winters is excellent in the sex-starved widow role she is given; the dialogue between her and James Mason’s Humbert is loaded with double entendres. Peter Sellers’ Quilty is amusing here at the town dance as the object of the room’s attention, though I am in firm disagreement with Loftus’s dismissal of Sellers character as purely comic overall.


The tonal swing from comic back to any level of melodrama is sudden—even up until Humbert rapes Delores, a porter is fumbling with setting up a cot in Humbert and Delores’ room, followed by Kubrick giving us Nabokov’s venetian blinds shadow imagery over Lolita’s sleeping body. While Sellers’ monologue at the hotel before Humbert retires to the room certainly veers from comic to sinister in its expert meandering, the rape that immediate follows the next morning after the cot plays as a seduction by Delores.


From after the rape, the film focuses on Humbert’s attempts to maintain control over Lolita, getting less and less comic as the movie wears on. By the point Delores flees from a hospital, Mason is convincing as a man spiraling into desperation. Delores’ moments of anger at her being shuttled to-and-fro and kept secret by Mason feel righteous when they occur but are undercut by Kubrick’s expansion of Quilty’s puppet strings over the plot.


I am uncomfortable with the material here, and I’m not sure if Kubrick really is. He is crafting a good story, but perhaps the right one. I think he misses the mark at points. I initially had given it an 8/10, but I think Loftus makes some good points.


7/10.

I'll have to check that podcast out. I read the novel for the 1st time this year (and also rewatched the film) and while the adaptation is certainly different, I didn't feel it a fundamental misunderstanding.

Sorry you didn't seem to like the movie much, despite the solid rating. It grew on me a lot this year.

I do think the film frames Humbert as predatory, albeit in darkly comic and ironic ways. I also think it's significant that the opening struggle with Quilty has Humbert emptying his pistol into a portrait of a young girl, symbolically announcing the film as a story of how Humbert (and Quilty, really) "destroys" Delores.

Finished my movie a couple of minutes ago.  Review coming soon.

Kwaidan
"The Woman of the Snow"

Completely ignoring that the last image we saw was a man being strangled to death by a wig, we now switch to a lumberjack who finds himself in the middle of a snowstorm and almost has his life taken by the snow spirit Yuki-onna. Yuki-onna takes pity on him and spares his life on the condition that he tells no one of his encounter with her for the rest of his life, or she will return and kill him. As time passes the lumberjack meets a woman and falls in love, and as the years pass he notices she bears a striking resemblance to Yuki-onna.

One thing that sprung to my mind more than once during The Woman of the Snow happened to be memories of those Russian fantasies that Mystery Science Theater, like Jack Frost or The Sword and the Dragon. It's not quite as flamboyant as those productions, but there is a bit of a hyperreality at play to display a folktale. That's probably the big link between the two tales so far is that they both feel like stories that one would tell their kids before bedtime or around the campfire for entertainment.

The background is a standout feature, as the segment forgoes realism for an abstract hand-painted look, almost like a canvas background you'd see in a small-scale local play. The lighting also takes its cues from the stage, as it switches color to set mood or even the setting's temperature (the film actually feels cold with those solid blues) while one of the climactic scenes features our protagonist all alone as a spotlight narrows down to him as the lighting for the rest of the set grows dark.

But most importantly, this segment has boobs. That makes it the superior segment of the two thusfar.

Up next of Hoichi the Earless. Sure to be the feel good story of the century!

Pale Flower

Muraki is a middle aged gangster fresh off a three year prison term for murder.  His first stop is a gambling hall where his fellow criminals congregate.  While there he sees Saeko, a young woman who is more of a thrill-seeker than a gambler.  He's captivated and drawn to her despite the fact that he has a desperate girlfriend who wants nothing more than to spend her life with Muraki.  He uses his contacts to get Saeko into higher and higher stakes games while she pushes her own limits as a way to feel alive.  Muraki is also tempted by his mob superiors back into the criminal life, something that gives Muraki his own sense of thrill and purpose.

What Pale Flower does is really hone in on the vices and compulsions that ultimately bring down the central characters.  Being a crime noir you know folks aren't walking away scott free at the end of this but one of the central themes of the film is honing in on what drives Muraki.  That drive leads him to Saeko and together they hurdle toward their own fates and while that's something that is typical in this style of crime/noir it's done in a way that's more focused to each individual rather than being something bigger in scale or more dramatic.  That said, while it's certainly a different style of noir film it did make me feel a little detached from the characters as we watch them circle the drain.  There's really no ultimate end goal or objective for our characters to move toward, it's really just a matter of discovering where their bottom is.  Still, it's an enjoyable and fast paced film that offers a new approach to a solid formula. 

B+ so says Doomsday