Bandwidth (René Jodoin)
Produced for the Royal Canadian Air Force, members of which are clearly smarter than me, this is a confusing “explanation” of waveforms and their respect bandwidths (I think?) that is nonetheless fun to watch in a confused stupor due to the crisp midcentury modern art style and the dulcet narration. Basically one big
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La corde raide (Jean-Charles Dudrumet)
V e r y thin noir with Annie Giardot cucking husband François Périer and him being such an asshole about it that it becomes impossible to care what happens to either of them. This movie stretches material that would barely sustain an episode of
Alfred Hitchcock Presents into feature length by throwing in a lot of b-roll and extra footage to pad it to 82 minutes. Filled with lots of “pretty” shots that mean nothing and don’t serve the narrative (and this film is too shallow to evaluate on any other level). Every twist in this is fully predictable save the last one, and that’s because it’s of the “Oh, fuck this movie”-variety.
Meurtre en 45 tours (Etienne Périer)
Powerful songwriter Jean Servais is obsessed with the idea that his chanteuse wife Danielle Darrieux is cheating on him with her piano player, probably because she is. He soon gets into a fatal car accident, yet somehow the two lovers find themselves haunted by a series of threatening records from the husband… This movie has more than a few plot similarities with
La corde raide, but it’s far, far dumber. Take the scene where a character converses with the husband’s voice on the record in such a way that their interaction could not possibly occur with anything even sort of resembling plausibility (“Walk over to the bookshelf. Look up. Stop. Pick up the book. No, not that book…” etc, ie basically a serious version of the “Audition” sketch from
Mr Show). Périer obviously loves American noirs, but thankfully few of those thought as little of their audience as this movie does.
När mörkret faller (Arne Mattsson)
A philandering grocer is offed with an axe right before Christmas Eve in a Swedish murder mystery that on paper sounds like it belongs at the same 1960 Proto-Slasher table as
Psycho or
Peeping Tom, but this is really much more of a piece with Agatha Christie mysteries than anything resembling slashers or giallos (there’s a strangulation later). I’m sure Arrow will disagree when they invariably release this claptrap because it’s marketable as what it isn’t, though! This movie is quite long and despite the red herrings (one of whom is literally red), it’s pretty obvious from the structure of the narrative who done it, even if the film loooooves ominous closeups of lots of characters reacting in a way that in retrospect indicates nothing whatsoever when all is revealed.
North to Alaska (Henry Hathaway)
Endless Western comedy with sickly-looking prospector John Wayne romancing Capucine’s ostracized prostitute (yes, Wayne is really doing this storyline again) plus defending his claim with buddies Stewart Granger (completely miscast) and Fabian (truuuuuly annoying) against villain Ernie Kovacs. A film this wispy can’t withstand any real bad guys, so I get what it is doing with Kovacs’ genial scammer, but he’s especially ineffectual as the bad guy because I like him way more than any of the “heroes” offered. Also, and this can never be said enough, fistfights are not funny. They are not funny. Fistfights = Not funny. What's not funny? Fistfights. Isfightsfay aren'tay unnyfay. How long does this film run before the first of what will be, and I’m not exaggerating, at least a hundred shots of a character getting punched in their face? If you said four minutes, you are correct!