FILM FILINGS 7-15-2023
Jordan Poss & the Dial of Destiny
Before Indy: Three Adventure Classics
Nathan Gilmore: Two Reviews
JORDAN POSS: INDIANA JONES & THE DIAL OF DESTINY
Over at his blog Jordan Poss reviews the much-anticipated and pre-judged final Indiana Jones sequel. Here to see where Poss lands on the matter.
SAM STEPHENS: BEFORE INDY
Secret of the Incas, 1954. dir. Jerry Hopper. Charlton Heston as Harry Steele. Films that inspired Indiana Jones have always intrigued me. Now I've seen more than a few of the obvious ones and some of the less obvious.
The first I want to review is Secret of the Incas, 1954. Years and years ago I heard Steven Spielberg say he based Indiana Jones on Charlton Heston's character from the 1952 Best Picture winner The Greatest Show On Earth in which Heston plays the lion-tamer, which did indeed precede The Naked Jungle and Secret of the Incas. Although certainly dressed for the part in The Greatest Show On Earth, Heston's character in Incas is a much stronger template for the Indy we meet for the first time in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The whole opening sequence of that film is heavily templated on Secret of the Incas—the temples, the locals and their protection of their history, a golden treasure, double-crossing competitors, and a final redemption for our rogue adventurer who would rather find the artifact and have it put in a museum.
The plot itself is fairly tame and humdrum. Not that I didn't enjoy the heck out of it—I did. But I just want to warn anyone coming to the film and expecting a 1950s version of truck chases and giant stones rolling. This is much more of an 'adventure noir'—it's really about Heston's Harry Steele being a selfish rogue who falls in with a beautiful Romanian refugee and drags her along on his treasure-raiding escapade (the scenes where the stone device shows the location of the real 'sunburst' are pretty cool, actually). There is a plane-stealing scene which is great, and the locations are entirely real. Unfortunately what's also real is Peruvian-American singer Yma Sumac whose indigenous-flecked warblings take up not one, not two, but three extended musical scenes. The Peruvian locals seem about as taken with her as I was, glumly staring and hoping fervently for relief. Alas, alas. It's the biggest flub for the movie.
Recommended? The movie is entertaining enough as long as you know the proceedings don't get more exciting than a bar-hotel romance, some treasure shenanigans, a plane flight, and lots of annoying singing.
NATHAN GILMORE: FRITZ LANG’S “M”
“M”, dir. Fritz Lang (1931). I have never been so immediately unnerved by a movie. It took exactly 4 minutes and 52 seconds. During these 4 minutes and 52 seconds, nothing much has elapsed onscreen. Two shots occur: a child bounces a ball and looks up at a poster warning of two missing children, and her mother asks where she is, she will be late for dinner. At 4 minutes and 52 seconds, in the child’s scene, a man’s shadow enters screen right and we know exactly who he is and what is going to happen. That is the end of the scene. Two sentences have been spoken, one question and one answer, and the plot is underway.
This is the story of a city, of the citizenry at large, but the shots are close, cramped, stiflingly intimate.
This sense is heightened for us, because the movie shows us who the murderer is right away. Hans Beckert (played by the always-creepy Peter Lorre) is only one striking face among many. Looking into a mirror in one early scene, he literally pulls faces, fingers tugging at the corners of his mouth. But there are other faces: the faces of the townspeople, smug, indignant, resigned, irritated. Much of the movie is concerned not with the killings themselves, but with the city’s reaction to them. Ordinary townspeople are terrified; the police are hapless and frustrated by their inability to catch the killer.
And the underworld? The underworld exists on a plane apart. Lang shoots this quite literally, panning downward to subterranean grottos and dank, nasty cellars. “M” is Lang’s first sound picture, and sound is still used sparingly. He has its use, but doesn’t need it. This is the man who shaped our collective conception of the entire sci-fi genre with his iconic images in “Metropolis”, and here, the photos are just as indelible, if more intimate. Long stretches pass with never a word spoken.
The silence works in tandem with this cramped and claustrophobic atmosphere, building tension until you long for a sound to break it. Often it is broken by a scream or a siren— effective, if a little obvious.
Roger Ebert observes that the griminess of the city in “M” is a reflection of Lang’s hatred of the society of his time, of the destitution of 1930’s Germany. I see that, and also the backstabbing, neighbor-reporting culture that made the mass of ordinary people oblivious, unwilling or afraid to stand up for the right in the face of Nazism.
But neither is the ultimate execution of mob justice morally satisfying. I felt nothing approaching satisfaction seeing Peter Lorre’s bug-eyed horror and the bloodless, unfeeling way his accusers dealt with him. I felt only a kind of pity.
“Who knows what it’s like to me?” Beckert screams. Who knows what really goes on in the mind of a murderer? Who can say why men commit the evil they do? Even if we do not excuse, we can empathize. And that is the problem. Pity is not the same as mercy, but it is the place where mercy starts.
The faces of the people are different now. Eyes narrow in derision, mouths gape in calling for retribution. Both Becker and the town want to kill; one is motivated by revenge and the other, by a mind so twisted that he can hardly understand himself. Who is more at fault? There are no easy answers.
The place where we try to find them, the place where mercy starts, is where we begin to empathize, even when we cannot understand.
