Born to Kill (1947)

Lawrence Tierney stars in a sumptuous melodrama directed by Robert Wise

Like many other reviewers, I got to know this man's man, tough-as-nails character who was a star of B productions and Film Noirs for a little while during the 40s thanks to Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Now, having watched two of Lawrence Tierney's most significant outputs side by side, his breakthrough role in Dillinger (1945) and this sumptuous yet gritty melodrama nicely executed by Robert Wise, I can get an idea of how good he was... at being bad. The actor's bad-boyishness was simple and even wooden, altogether an incorrect and imposing gesture of virility basics. His limitations, both human and professional, were what Born to Kill exactly needed.

Not nearly as cheap-looking as Dillinger, directed by Tierney's regular Max Nosseck, this RKO production was an early showcase of Wise's potential as a director, far prior to his most famous and widely awarded musicals. It exhibits a lighting and art direction work that appropriately set the mood, and a satisfactory way of unfolding the psychological drives up to a point. There is some annoying stuff, for instance that of Elisha Cook playing a character poorly written for the standards of this fairly intelligent pulp entertainment; however, Wise more than makes up for it with his handling of the other actors (Claire Trevor foremost) and his luscious black and white visuals.

Dustin, Dustin or: How I learned to immediately love this movie

Alfredo, Alfredo (1972) should be considered a legitimate classic nowadays; surprisingly enough, it isn't even remembered. This is beyond sad, because the film is not only a vastly underrated Hoffman/Pietro Germi title or comedy, it's just a senselessly obviated film.

In it, the story of a man who meets and marries the woman of his dreams is made into a fable of universal resonances. Far from superficial comedy, the amusement comes from a view on life full of irony and wit. Not one of the plainly farcical events lacks truthfulness, nor the boldly portrayed characters become a caricature of themselves. This unknown marvel happens to register some of the best pace I have appreciated in a movie and that's due to it being a worldly fluidity rather than a cinematic one.

Needless to say, Hoffman's Italian-dubbed turn belongs with his (very) finest work.

"Goya" (1985)

Unforgettable Laura Morante as Cayetana Duquesa de Alba

The life and times of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes served as the base material for this memorable 6-episode miniseries. Appropriately produced by TVE and filmed on historical locations, it is an spectacle of interest not just for art lovers or Goya connoisseurs but for anyone into well-crafted drama. A painter who began himself a revolution of proportions, Goya was a witness of the Napoleonic wars and of a nation in arms resisting the aggression with undismayed heart and soul. He was that ancient paradox of the artist: An extremely sensitive individual who was also a bullfighting aficionado. He was a womanizer in his own aesthetic and impassioned way; he was friends with kings and poets, and a victim of social and political prejudices. He was an exhaustively troubled man: Deaf, neurotic, literally mad. Goya was no saint and his richly contrasted self is what makes him one hell of a subject for a movie or a television project. This one succeeds in honestly portraying him and making a valuable statement on the origins of his essential oeuvre.

Calle Mayor

Betsy Blair was so uniquely and tragically real in this 1956 film --AKA The Lovemaker--, which was as much about the beauty of truth as Death of a Cyclist (1955) --another Bardem masterpiece-- was about the beauty of fate. 10/10

A disappointment: Buñuel's dull take on Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë's immortal novel is known to have had a especially strong following amidst the Surrealists, for whom the idea of a romantic subject was rather The Fall of the House of Usher than Romeo and Juliet. So, when former fellow comrade Luis Buñuel was in his Mexican period, they could finally -- but by all means just virtually -- put their hands on a Peter Ibbetson-kind of material and make it their own film. And it happened to be no other than Wuthering Heights, the ultimate amour fou drama.

Nonetheless, this movie may be the director's worst. It certainly is a heightened soap opera melodrama of sorts, as detached as can be, the more pretentious and vacuous adaptation of Wuthering Heights I'm able to conceive. Animals are harmed and the actors are bad, two situations that, regrettably (the first one in particular), are not strange at all to this master of cinema; but anything of the novel's fated passion hinted at in the Spanish title remains within these pedestrian limits. Furthermore, the storyline betrays in a literal way the spirit of Brontë's fiction, the faithful translation of which the foreword wants us to believe. The genius of Emily Brontë as a writer relied on the wild inventiveness of her imagination as well as on her tortuous Gothic form. By having changed some facts and traits in the characters that only at first sight might pass as unimportant, the very nature of the original work has suffered a transformation*. Hence, Heathcliff could still be Heathcliff under the different name of Alejandro, but the case is he's not himself anymore. To Buñuel's relief, not even Laurence Olivier conveys the antihero's authentic self in the fine and most celebrated screen version directed by William Wyler in 1939.

* A Wuthering Heights film produced in 1970 with Timothy Dalton in the lead features a similar plot-travesty issue, yet it refers itself during the credits as Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. However, this is otherwise a nicely crafted, worthy version, and Buñuel's manages to underline the flaw to its own detriment.

Il mio viaggio in Italia

A tribute to Italian cinema by a true cinephile: infectious, inspiring, humble and humbling. 10/10

Directors: Luis Buñuel

The love-hate relationship I have with the genius from Calanda actually compels me to make a somewhat annotated post!

Film I love: La hija del engaño (1951): This Mexican entry was my first Buñuel ever --even if I may have watched Gran Casino before. It got me in a trance (and hooked on Buñuel forever, for better and worse); one feverish, delirious melodrama, with a edge-of-your-seat, very page-turning kind of pace to it. I precisely remember it as a hell of a melodrama/serial-type, and it's one of those revered movies I won't revisit for fear of not getting at all what they gave me the first and only perfect time they opened my eyes.

Film I like: Belle de jour (1967)

Film I almost hate: Simón del desierto (1965): Silvia Pinal is a very tempting devil, but kicking a poor little lamb out of the frame like a soccer player is absolutely not my idea of art, no matter how much good-looking the actress' legs are! Something Buñuel never understood and will always be the main thing which, for me, essentially detracts from the otherwise excellent quality of his craft.

Cría cuervos...

Carlos Saura is not a director I respect, and still that glass of milk almost looked like it was the very same used by Hitchcock in Suspicion, and even the inevitable nods to Buñuel were watchable this time (my 2nd viewing of the film). It's the 3 children, though, who made this tale about childhood worthy --Ana Torrent in particular, needless to say. 7/10

The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz

This 1955 Buñuel is somehow strangely one of his most personal works, a film that communicates the ease of bourgeois leisure in spite of its low-budget production. Besides the blatantly black humor and the rotund female-legs fetishism, there is a sense of irony that ultimately gives the Wildesque plot an ambivalent gravitas. Archibaldo de la Cruz' murderous desires --so highly and impersonally effective-- must have delighted Hitchcock as Tristana's amputated leg would do 15 years later. 8/10