Harvey, Zero for Conduct, and a few more movies

Before continuing through the H's, I briefly broke out of alphabetical order to re-watch Ben and Mickey vs the Dead and Q: The Winged Serpent (both still excellent), but mostly to see...

Zero for Conduct (1933; France)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

We're in a French boarding school, where the headmaster is a bearded dwarf, the cook serves beans for dinner every night, and the teachers are all dullards. The kids are repeatedly threatened with "Zero for conduct! Detention on Sunday!" and the same few boys are in detention every Sunday.

There's one teacher who's not a tyrant, and teaches standing on his head. He also does a dang fine Charles Chaplin impression, which seems appropriate, as entire scenes of Zero for Conduct are staged like a silent movie. Even the talkative scenes don't play by what's become the rules of cinema, which is grand.

#323  [archive]
AUG. 19, 2024

The film always feels rough and real, even the surreal bits, and the camerawork sometimes appears amateur, jiggly or oddly framed. The cinematographer was Boris Kaufman (Splendor in the Grass, 12 Angry Men, etc) so the unprofessional look was intentional, and it gives Zero a very "You are there" feel.

It's a school-based comedy through the first half, bright but not brilliant, but it ignites midway through as you realize something more is going on, and evolves into delightful subversion.

The kids are plotting their revenge on the school, and the movie is on their side. By the grand climax, which I shan't describe in detail, it's a joyous embrace of rebellion and the mockery of respected elders.

These kids are spontaneous and as full of shenanigans as real kids, so Zero for Conduct was almost immediately banned for its "praise of indiscipline." It remained unviewable in writer-director Jean Vigo's native France until after World War II.

Maybe the censorship continues: IMDB says this was once 47 minutes long, but the version I watched was only 41 minutes.

My own school days thoroughly warped me, and watching this, the memories came flooding back. Come nightfall, I dreamt of the school I attended from 4th-6th grade, where at least several teachers and the vice principal seemed to despise the children. I hated every day there, but returning in my dream was great —ten years old on the outside, but with all my life's experience inside, I was saying "Hell no" to the teachers like I never could've when I was a kid.

Like the kids in Zero for Conduct.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Harry Bertoia's Sculpture (1965)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

Harry Bertoia was an artist, and this is a filmed exhibit his work. The camera zooms in really, really close, giving a far better-than-museum look at the three-dimensional art — rough-hewn monoliths on a lawn, a mountain of matchsticks, tiny blops hanging from long, thin pipes. At 23 minutes this mini-documentary is about the right length, and with a great shot of Bertoia lighting his pipe.

The accompanying music is by Bertoia, too, but it's an ooky, softly screeching mistake. I'm recommending the film, but go ahead and mute the sound; after a brief introduction at the start, there are no words on the soundtrack, and anyway, the introduction is haughty and pretentious.

Verdict: YES. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

The Harryhausen Chronicles (1998)
Streaming free at YouTube,
     with French subtitles, sorry

If you dig the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy movies — The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Jason and the Argonauts, the various adventures of Sinbad, etc — you might know the name Ray Harryhausen. He was the master of stop-motion animation, and this is an interesting and respectful look at his life's work.

As a child he was inspired by seeing King Kong, which starred Willis O'Brien's marvelous stop-motion work. And what goes around comes around: As a young man, Harryhausen was mentored by O'Brien, and later in the film we hear from the next generation of special effects artists — Dennis Muren (Jurassic Park) and Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) — telling how they were first inspired by seeing the films of Ray Harryhausen.

We're shown clips from Harryhausen's movies, of course, but also clips from movies he worked on that were never finished. The man himself explains the tedious work of stop-motion — making miniature model monsters and then moving them by hand for one frame of film at a time.

When he was barely an adult, Harryhausen joined a local science fiction fan club, where a geeky sci-fi fanatic named Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles) was another member, so of course they struck up a friendship. "We made a pact together," says Bradbury. "We said, we're going to grow old but never grow up. We're going to stay 18, 19 years old, and we're going to love dinosaurs forever." They stayed best buddies for life, and when Harryhausen won his Lifetime Achievement Oscar, it was Bradbury who handed it to him.

Somehow, I was never a big fan of Harryhausen's Sinbad movies, and I've never even seen Jason and the Argonauts, which everyone agrees was his finest work — but I've always been a fan of Harryhausen. You're a fan too, if you've ever seen a giant octopus give the Golden Gate Bridge a fatal hug, or a flying saucer kneecap the Washington Monument, or skeletons in extended sword fights.

Leonard Nimoy narrates, and I've read that he was a big Harryhausen fan, but he sounds a little bored.

Verdict: YES. 

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Harsh Times (2005)  
Streaming free at Tubi

Harsh Times is about two cocky young men who talk loud, swagger big, laugh at everything (though nothing's funny), threaten violence, and follow through.

One of them is Christian Bale, so this film must be Art with a capital A, but despite Bale's inflated reputation as an actor, there's simply no believing he's a ruffian from South Central L.A.

Bale and his buddy (Freddy Rodríguez) are two characters I wouldn't voluntarily spend half a minute with, but I listened to their obnoxious banter for about twenty minutes, seeking some reason to give a damn about what's on screen. Alas, the movie outlasted my patience, and I pronounce it to be garbage.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Harvey (1950)
Streaming free at Internet Archive

James Stewart stars as an extremely polite man who drinks too much, and whose best friend is an invisible man-sized rabbit named Harvey.

Does everyone know this film? Everyone should.

Almost anything more said about the story would be too much, except that it's funny, occasionally wise, sharp as a stick, and adds up to a delightful fairy tale for grown-ups.

Stewart is great, of course. For whatever one fat schmuck's opinion is worth, this is the role that defined his career.

"I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I'm happy to state that I finally won out over it."

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Harvey Pekar's Teo Macero (2015)
Streaming free at YouTube

In his American Splendor comic, Harvey Pekar wrote a loving tribute to jazzman Teo Macero.

In this short, Pekar says he's drunk but does a fine job reading that comic book, while sprawled across his bed. The filmmakers alternate between showing Harvey horizontal, and showing drawings from the comic.

The film is only about seven minutes and feels like it was made on the fly, but so's jazz.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Hatari! (1961)
Streaming free at Kanopy,
     with your library card

From producer-director Howard Hawks comes this ode to macho men, with John Wayne and Hardy Krueger riding in Jeeps, harassing and trying to capture wild African animals.

There's barely a story here — something about a female photographer intruding on the gang of white guys while they're lassoing giraffes. Being female, she adopts an elephant calf orphaned after some other white guy kills its mother, but first she has to win an argument with Wayne, who wants the baby elephant shot.

It's supposed to be dramatic when a random white guy gets gored by a rhino, but I was rooting for the rhino, so the goring was the climax of the movie.

Hatari!'s lighthearted moments feel wrong and artificial, and the action and animal sequences were filmed in Tanzania, but I'm not convinced that the stars were there; many of their action moments are poorly green-screened.

For smoochies there's Elsa Martinelli, for nostalgia there's Bruce Cabot from King Kong, and for some reason there's Red Buttons. The score by Henry Mancini includes his "Baby Elephant Walk."

Verdict: NO. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

• The Poltergeist house — sans "ghostly antics" — hits the market for $1.18-million 

• The triumphs and tropes of John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood 

• 10 of the best Ray Bradbury stories everyone should read

8/19/2024   

• • • Coming attractions • • •     

Hate (1995)
The Hate U Give (2018)
The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Haunted Casino (2007)
The Haunting (1963)

... plus schlock, shorts, and surprises

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Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter 'I'.
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Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

 

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