AFA and Cineaste Magazine offer another in their screenwriter/blacklist series, Pt 3: Post-Blacklist

If you don't yet know Cineaste Magazine, the most political of the high-end movie magazines, it's time you did. You won't find a more intelligent "read" anywhere in the industry, and it's a fun read, too, as challenging as it is interesting. The magazine is again teaming up with Anthology Film Archives to present the third in its popular series, Screenwriters and The Blacklist: Before, During and After.  We're already at the "after" section, and this latest effort features nine choice films, many of which will have been seen (and seen again) by most movie buffs with a bent for politics, art or a fascinating clunker of a movie. Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, The Chase, Fail-Safe and M*A*S*H are among the most "seen" of the films, but there are some surprises here, too.

Chief among these is an American western from 1961 of which I had barely heard: THE LAST SUNSET, directed by Robert Aldrich (a prime reason to watch) and adapted by Dalton Trumbo from a novel by Howard Rigsby. Although Trumbo is said to have felt that this was one of his worst screenplays, I'd call it one of his better ones, as he withholds his usual heavy hand with the sermons and simply serves up a nifty story and smart dialog delivered by an excellent cast that includes some of mid-20th-Century-Hollywood's top stars.

Kirk Douglas (two photos up) plays a bad guy on the run in northern Mexico, hunted by Rock Hudson (above) as a good-guy sheriff. The pair end up at the ranch of Douglas' favorite old flame, Dorothy Malone (below) sporting a hairdo seen rarely in the old west but quite often in 1950-60's Hollywood.

Now married to an alcoholic Joseph Cotton, and with a teenage daughter in tow (a surprisingly good Carol Lynley, below), Malone is clearly bored and ready for some action, while Cotton is about to make a major cattle drive north and across the river to the U.S. and, hey, he happens to need a few good men to help him do it.

The stage is set for a lot of things, a couple of which we've not really seen in a Hollywood film but would be seeing soon enough in the more "adult" decade to follow. The themes here encompass everything from attraction and desire to trust, lust, guilt and redemption, all done in a manner in which the good guys and bad get their wires occasionally crossed -- which makes the movie all the more mature and interesting.

The Last Sunset must have seemed a bit too unusual in its time -- ahead of it, actually -- but watching it now, the film takes on a burnished glow from its star power and quiet, low-key achievement. Hudson is used particularly well, while Douglas gives his usual, excellent, in-your-face performance.

The women, as was typical for the time (unless the star was Barbara Stanwyck) are mostly decorative, used for romance and provocation, but the dialog manages to be both intelligent and ripe, and the story itself is so filled with cross-purpose and change that it proves consistently interesting -- adding up to a movie ready for reassessment.

There are plenty more good films here, too, so take a gander at what AFA has to say about its series, below, with all the films and their screening times shown in bold. The Last Sunset screens tonight, Friday, March 6, at 6:45, and again Tuesday, Mar 10 at 9:15, and Saturday, Mar 14 at 2:45.

CINEASTE MAGAZINE PRESENTS: 

SCREENWRITERS AND THE BLACKLIST: 

BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER 

PART 3: POST-BLACKLIST

Screening at Anthology Film Archives, NYC, from March 6-15 

(Get tickets and direction by clicking on the link above.)

 The damage wrought by the Hollywood blacklist, especially the hardships endured by its victims, has been well documented. This series showcases the artistic contributions of prominent blacklisted screenwriters, including well-known radicals such as Walter Bernstein, Dalton Trumbo, Ben Barzman, Abraham Polonsky, and Ring Lardner, Jr. Recent scholarship by Thom Andersen, Pat McGilligan, Larry Ceplair, and Rebecca Prime emphasizes how films by blacklisted personnel were responsible for scripts (written, in many cases, by unapologetic Communists) that explored, both subtly and blatantly, the nuances of race, class, and gender. 

The third, and final, part of the series focuses on post-blacklist ‘comeback films’ written by some of Hollywood’s most notable screenwriters. Many of the films reflect the impact of the social and political upheavals of the 1960s, particularly the Civil Rights and antiwar movements, on the so-called ‘New Hollywood.’

Racism is confronted in Martin Ritt’s PARIS BLUES (written by Walter Bernstein) and Arthur Penn’s THE CHASE (a Lillian Hellman adaptation of a Horton Foote play), while the plight of Native Americans is tackled in Abraham Polonsky’s spectacular return to form, TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE. The seasoned writers tackled disparate genres with aplomb. M*A*S*H, Robert Altman’s antiwar comedy, is enlivened by Ring Lardner, Jr.’s irreverent screenplay.

The epic and the western are represented by Ben Barzman’s script for Anthony Mann’s severely underrated THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE and Dalton Trumbo’s highly idiosyncratic treatment of timeworn motifs in Robert Aldrich’s THE LAST SUNSET. SCREENWRITERS AND THE BLACKLIST is co-presented by Cineaste Magazine, which has been a major source for blacklist-related scholarship throughout its 40-plus-year history.  For more info on this special magazine, click here.

Special thanks to series' co-curators Richard Porton and Patrick McGilligan, as well as to Walter Bernstein, Rebecca Prime, Chris Chouinard (Park Circus), Paul Ginsburg (Universal), Michael Horne & Christopher Lane (Sony), Jules McLean, Joe Reid (20th Century Fox), Richard Suchenski (Center for Moving Image Arts, Bard College), Quentin Tarantino, and Todd Wiener & Steven Hill (UCLA).

The Schedule:

Robert Aldrich THE LAST SUNSET 
1961, 112 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, based on the novel by Howard Rigsby. With Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotton, Carol Lynley, and Neville Brand.
Although Dalton Trumbo considered THE LAST SUNSET his worst script, this fascinatingly overripe western is noteworthy for Robert Aldrich’s usual visual panache and a baroque plot that looks forward to the revisionist ‘last westerns’ of the late 1960s and early 70s. After completing the script for SPARTACUS, Trumbo, working again for Kirk Douglas’s Byrna Productions, received a post-blacklist screen credit. The convoluted plot involves the attempts of the upright sheriff Dan Stribling (Rock Hudson) to apprehend outlaw Brendan O’Malley (Kirk Douglas), responsible for the murder of Stribling’s brother-in-law. O’Malley has been lured to Mexico to reignite his romance with Belle Breckinridge under the ruse of working on the ranch of her alcoholic husband John (Joseph Cotten). Ultimately smitten with Belle’s daughter Melissa (Carol Lynley), O’Malley’s misplaced passion results in a particularly audacious plot twist. THE LAST SUNSET, even while straining credulity and reworking themes borrowed from Greek tragedy with mixed results, is a precursor of the sexual frankness that would permeate genre films of the late 60s.” –Richard Porton
–Fri, Mar 6 at 6:45, Tues, Mar 10 at 9:15, and Sat, Mar 14 at 2:45. 

 Irving Lerner CRY OF BATTLE
1963, 99 min, 16mm, b&w. Screenplay by Bernard Gordon, based on the novel by Benjamin Appel. With Van Heflin, Rita Moreno, and James MacArthur.
The overlong source novel for CRY OF BATTLE focused on Filipino leadership of the U.S.-backed guerrilla movement against Japanese occupation of the Philippines during WWII. Adapting it offered Gordon a rare ‘chance to write a film script that would have something to say about American attitudes toward the native people in those days,’ he wrote in his memoir ‘Hollywood Exile, or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist,’ while highlighting the contribution ‘of the Filipinos in the struggle against the Japanese.’ Irving Lerner, loosely associated with the Frontier Films documentary collective in the 1930s, shot the film realistically in and around Manila, with American leads and distinguished Filipino actors. Bosley Crowther rave-reviewed the low-budget film in the October 12, 1963, New York Times (‘acerbic and action-charged’), marking Gordon’s first on-screen credit after a decade of operating under fronts with as much prolificacy as Dalton Trumbo. CRY OF BATTLE’s other claim to fame: it was showing in the Dallas theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended on November 22, 1963. A snippet can be glimpsed in Oliver Stone’s JFK.” –Patrick McGilligan –Fri, Mar 6 at 9:15 and Tues, Mar 10 at 7:00.

Arthur Penn THE CHASE
1966, 135 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Lillian Hellman, based on the play by Horton Foote. With Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, E.G. Marshall, Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, Miriam Hopkins, Robert Duvall, and James Fox.
Based on Horton Foote’s play, Lillian Hellman’s screenplay was reworked – at the behest of producer Sam Spiegel – by both Michael Wilson and Ivan Moffat. In a 1993 interview with CINEASTE, Arthur Penn complained that he wasn’t able to oversee the film’s editing and bemoaned the fact that Spiegel cut many of star Marlon Brando’s ingenious improvisations. Yet, despite these mishaps, THE CHASE, with its unvarnished depiction of Southern violence, paved the way for pivotal films of the 1960s – especially Penn’s own BONNIE AND CLYDE. Robert Redford, in an early major role, plays Bubber Reeves, a convict on the run after a prison break. Wrongly imprisoned for murder, Bubber’s escape exacerbates tensions in the small Texas town where he’s viewed with suspicion, and where his wife Anna (Jane Fonda) is conducting an affair with the son of the region’s wealthiest man. In an intriguing reversal of the usual stereotype, Brando plays a progressive sheriff at odds with local racist vigilantes.” –Richard Porton “Violence is a subject that an artist who is intuitively and intellectually alive to the world in which he exists can scarcely avoid today; and if there is a more responsible treatment of it anywhere in the cinema, I have yet to see it.” –Robin Wood on The Chase –Sat, Mar 7 at 2:00, Fri, Mar 13 at 6:30, and Sun, Mar 15 at 8:30.

Sidney Lumet FAIL-SAFE 1964, 112 min, 35mm, b&w. Screenplay by Walter Bernstein, based on the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. With Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Fritz Weaver, Larry Hagman, William Hansen, Sorrell Booke, Dom DeLuise, and Dana Elcar. “Bernstein got to know Lumet, formerly a child actor with the Yiddish Art Theatre, when Lumet was an assistant director to Martin Ritt on CHARLIE WILD, PRIVATE EYE, a half-hour TV show Bernstein wrote under ‘fronts’ in 1950-51. Bernstein would do some of his finest work with these simpatico friends, Ritt and Lumet. A writer’s writer, Bernstein boasts one of the richest of resumés, and seems as comfortable with tense uncompromising subjects, sweeping recreations of history, and, especially in the 1970s, philandering romantic comedies. All his films are social critiques, and his lifelong attention to the military-industrial complex is followed through in DOOMSDAY GUN, his 1994 HBO film with Frank Langella as a supergun genius caught between Israel, Iraq, and the CIA, and something of a bookend to FAIL-SAFE. FAIL-SAFE is one of the tensest of his 1960s credits, a disarmament parable that is splendidly entertaining and disturbing in equal parts. ‘DR. STRANGELOVE without the humor,’ in Danny Peary’s apt phrase.” –Patrick McGilligan –Sat, Mar 7 at 5:45, Wed, Mar 11 at 9:15, and Sun, Mar 15 at 3:30. 

Michael Ritchie SEMI-TOUGH 1977, 108 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Walter Bernstein and an uncredited Ring Lardner Jr., based on the novel by Dan Jenkins. With Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Jill Clayburgh, Lotte Lenya, Carl Weathers, and Brian Dennehy. “SEMI-TOUGH is the better known of Walter Bernstein’s two neo-screwball comedies for Michael Ritchie, ‘one of those rare directors,’ as Vincent Canby wrote, ‘who is able to look at Middle America critically without being especially outraged or even surprised.’ (The other Bernstein-Ritchie collaboration, AN ALMOST PERFECT AFFAIR from 1979, a film-biz satire set in Cannes, is also worthy of revival.) A dream cast romps through this free-wheeling send-up of professional sports, celebrity, and monogamy. SEMI-TOUGH would make the perfect double bill with M*A*S*H (written by blacklistee Ring Lardner Jr.) with its anarchic football climax. ‘Things like THE MOLLY MAGUIRES and THE FRONT, which came from scratch, are very important to me and mean a lot to me,’ Walter Bernstein said in ‘Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s.’ ‘But so does SEMI-TOUGH, although it came from a book. Michael and I threw out the story and wrote one of our own. Michael and I did our own movie, just like Marty [Ritt] and I did our own movies.’” –Patrick McGilligan –Sat, Mar 7 at 8:30 and Sun, Mar 8 at 6:15.

Anthony Mann THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
1964, 188 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Ben Barzman, Basilio Franchina, and Philip Yordan. With Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd, Alec Guinness, James Mason, Christopher Plummer, Anthony Quayle, John Ireland, and Omar Sharif. The second of the two Samuel Bronston historical super-productions to be directed by Anthony Mann (after EL CID), both of which were treated with extreme condescension in their day but have been increasingly recognized as major achievements, THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE is arguably the greater of the two. A darker, more intricately structured film than EL CID, FALL somehow succeeds as both a big-budget, visually astonishing spectacle animated by a genuine interest in Roman civilization, and a sophisticated, uncompromising inquiry into the nature of power. Best known for his collaborations with fellow blacklistee Joseph Losey in exile in Europe, Ben Barzman co-wrote both FALL and EL CID. In both cases he worked with Philip Yordan, a mysterious and controversial figure in the annals of the blacklist – the most famous/notorious ‘front’ of the era, his name appeared on numerous films for which scholars continue to debate the true authorship. –Sun, Mar 8 at 2:30 and Sat, Mar 14 at 5:15. 

Abraham Polonsky TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE
1969, 98 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Abraham Polonsky, based on the novel by Harry Lawton. With Robert Blake, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross. The impact of the blacklist on the career of Abraham Polonsky was one of the great artistic tragedies of the period, just as his comeback in the late-1960s was among the most triumphant in Hollywood. Bursting on the scene with the remarkable one-two punch of BODY AND SOUL (1947) (with Robert Rossen directing Polonsky’s masterful screenplay) and FORCE OF EVIL (1948) (which Polonsky both wrote and directed), as well as working on the screenplay for I CAN GET IF FOR YOU WHOLESALE (1951), he refused to testify before HUAC in 1951 and would not be credited on a theatrical feature again until 1968. Given the immensity of his talent, the loss of these prime years is a wound that will never heal. But Polonsky would pick up right where he had left off, with a terrific script for another great filmmaker (Don Siegel’s MADIGAN, 1968), followed by one more astonishing work as writer-director: TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE. A revisionist Western that probes deeply into the phenomenon of racial and social injustice, it stars Robert Blake as Paiute Indian Willie Boy, who becomes an outlaw after killing his lover’s father in self-defense, and Robert Redford as the sheriff whose imperative to hunt Willie Boy down flies increasingly in the face of his own conscience. –Sun, Mar 8 at 9:00, Thurs, Mar 12 at 7:00, and Sat, Mar 14 at 9:00. 

Robert Altman M*A*S*H
1970, 116 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr., based on the novel by Richard Hooker. With Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, and Robert Duvall.
Ring Lardner, Jr., a member of the Hollywood 10, won an Academy Award for his adaptation of Richard Hooker’s novel. Even though Altman’s penchant for improvisation angered Lardner, who believed his script was being sullied, Patrick McGilligan argues that the veteran screenwriter’s craftsmanship provided a solid framework that made Altman’s innovations – especially his famous use of rapid fire overlapping dialogue – possible. There’s little doubt that Lardner was responsible for the film’s sardonic anti-war thrust. The film revolves around the antics of two surgeons assigned to a mobile medical unit during the Korean War: Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and ‘Trapper’ John McIntyre (Elliott Gould). M*A*S*H was embraced by the counterculture as an antiwar movie, even though the emerging women’s movement expressed dismay at the casual sexism of Altman and Lardner’s depiction of Major Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan (Sally Kellerman).” –Richard Porton “M*A*S*H is a marvelously unstable comedy, a tough, funny, and sophisticated burlesque of military attitudes that is at the same time a tale of chivalry. It’s a sick joke, but it’s also generous and romantic – an erratic episodic film, full of the pleasures of the unexpected. I think it’s the closest an American movie has come to the kind of constantly surprising mixture in SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER, though M*A*S*H moves so fast that it’s over before you have time to think of comparisons. While it’s going on, you’re busy listening to some of the best overlapping comic dialogue ever recorded.” –Pauline Kael, THE NEW YORKER –Mon, Mar 9 at 6:45, Thurs, Mar 12 at 9:15, and Sun, Mar 15 at 6:00. 

Don Siegel TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA
1970, 116 min, 35mm. Screenplay by Albert Maltz, story by Budd Boetticher. With Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine.
This inexplicably neglected western, set during the 1860s French intervention in Mexico, is every bit as exciting, perfectly crafted, and disarmingly funny as you’d expect from the dream-team meeting of Hollywood legends Don Siegel and Budd Boetticher. This despite the fact that Boetticher, who wrote the original screenplay with the intention of directing it himself, only to see it eventually re-written by blacklistee Albert Maltz (resident in Mexico, where he’d relocated during the blacklist) and directed by Siegel, despised the final product. Representing Maltz’s first screen credit under his own name since 1948, TWO MULES is more broadly comic than it might have been in Boetticher’s hands, but features Clint Eastwood and Shirley Maclaine at their very best as soldier-of-fortune Hogan and nun-turned-revolutionary Sara, as well as an Ennio Morricone score that ranks among his most inspired. Though it would be a stretch to call it a sober study of the Mexican revolution, the familiarity of both Maltz and Boetticher with Mexico and their unquestionable interest in its history unmistakably inform the film. –Mon, Mar 9 at 9:15, Wed, Mar 11 at 6:45, and Fri, Mar 13 at 9:15.

Mafia-lite: Pierfrancesco Diliberto directs, acts in & co-writes THE MAFIA KILLS ONLY IN SUMMER

TrustMovies has long insisted that if you want to see a really good movie about the Mafia, it simply has to be Italian. Italians understand and are able to show these ugly, murdering sociopaths for the walking, talking pieces of crap that they are. American movies and television -- from The Godfather and The Sopranos on down (or up, depending on your viewpoint) always manage to glamorize their subject, no matter how "real" they try to make things. Italian films -- from I cento passi to The Sicilian Girl are a whole other breed.

Now comes something a little different: It's Italian, all right, and it's a kind of Mafia comedy. But not anything of the heavy-handed-but often-hilarious Joe Pesci variety. No. THE MAFIA KILLS ONLY IN SUMMER offers a combination coming-of-age/first-love tale set in Palermo, Sicily, and wrapped around the Mafia as perceived by our little (and then larger, older) hero. The film's creator (director, lead actor and co-writer), shown at right, is a popular Italian comic and satirist known as Pierfrancesco Diliberto, aka Pif.

His movie, initially quite charming and amusing, introduces us to his younger self, as the boy Arturo -- played by a very good young actor in his first role, Alex Bisconti, below, right -- learns about everything from love and parents to school and the Mafia, in the process forming what can only be called a rather warped view of things. Given that the general populace cannot and will not admit even to the Mafia's existence, it is little wonder our confused hero goes his own odd way.

Movie fans of Italian cinema who know and love Il Divo should get a big charge out Pif's use of newsreel footage of the real Giulio Andreotti, who soon becomes the particular hero of little Arturo. There's a journalist who befriend the kid, too, offering some good advice. And then there's the love of his life, Flora, who appears as the school's new girl and has Arturo in the palm of her hand forever after. Into all this is layered various Mafia killings, as Arturo tries to come to terms with what he does and doesn't see and understand. (The movie's title comes from something his father tells him to make things "better.")

All this is reasonably interesting and fun -- until the adult Arturo arrives, in the form of Pif himself, who may be a fine and funny talk show host but plays a bumbling adult hero in a surprisingly charmless fashion. He looks and acts a bit like our own Ray Romano but turns out to be -- at this point in his career, at least -- not much of an actor. The movie soon turns into what it has been threatening to become all along: a network-TV-level, romantic sit-com. As the adult Flora, however, Cristiana Capotondi (of Kryptonite!), shown above and below, right, brings a healthy dose of warmth and beauty to the proceedings.

There is a fairly amusing section during which Arturo works as a "pianist" on a popular TV show (below), on which the host practices his "French," but at the point at which the film moves from the kids to the adult figures, it soon ceases to be very funny,  insightful, or satiric. And its final "homage" to the dead judges and other heroes who stood up to the Mafia -- and died for it -- seems almost tacky and more than a tad out of place. As Arturo teaches his own little son the lessons of how these dead figures stood up to this criminal organization, we are clearly meant to learn and appreciate these lessons, too. But it all comes off as mostly Mafia-lite.

The Mafia Kills Only in Summer opens tomorrow, March 6, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, and in the Los Angeles area on March 27 at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7. Other cities will gain the film during April, as it expands across the country.

Thrills, fun, surprise -- and beer -- in Daniel Alfredson's KIDNAPPING MR. HEINEKEN

Most kidnapping movies these days are nasty affairs, often with torture and murder tossed in for good measure, so it's a pleasure to report that today's film -- KIDNAPPING MR. HEINEKEN (yes, it's that beer guy), based on a real-life event that many Americans might not be familiar with, occurring in (and lasting most of) the month of November, 1983, in The Netherlands -- is a straight-ahead, what-happened-and-why affair that sticks mostly to the facts, while providing pretty good character studies of the participants as it rolls perkily along.

As co-written by and William Brookfield and reporter Peter R. de Vries and directed handily by Sweden's Daniel Alfredson (shown at left), the film presents us with a group of pals, somewhat down on their luck and looking to make a killing somehow or other, who, when one of its earlier get-rich-quick schemes (below) goes bad, decides to kidnap the local beer maven. The IQ level and social/ emotional smarts of this group vary, so its usual leaders -- Cor (Jim Sturgess) and Willem (Sam Worthington) -- take over to see that events go as planned.

Of course they don't -- which is part of the fun. Other parts are provided by the back stories, especially that of Willem and his family. His father, it seems, spent much of his working life in the Heineken employ and was treated with something less than care and respect when he was let go. Mr. Worthington (below) keeps his anger at a simmer throughout and is quite effective.

Mr. Sturgess (below), on the other hand, seems the more chipper of the two: smart and quick to respond, but with the occasional flciker of anger and hurt that is never fullly explained. When you read the end titles that tell us what eventually happens to each of our fellows, this will give you some interesting information upon which to chew. Meanwhile, you can sit back and enjoy the thrills and surprises -- one of the best of which is provided by, of all things, a Xerox machine.

Not a surprise: how very good is one of the stars of the film, Anthony Hopkins, in the title role. We usually expect good things from this actor, and he does not disappoint here, bringing a fierce intelligence and a certan charm to the role of the beer magnate. Despite the care he appears to show for his chauffeur, who is also kidnapped and threatened with death, you can, without too much effort, ascertain in this man the ability to cast aside anything or anyone that stands in his way.

Hopkins' role, however, is but a supporting one. We could have used more of him, for sure, but that would have taken away from the propulsion and momentum the movie gains as it goes along. The rest of the supporting cast is OK, too, though only Mark van Eeuwen stands out as the worst of these bad apples. Ryan Kwanten is given so little to do that he once again mostly fades into the woodwork as one of the crew, but David Dencik registers well as Heineken's cowed driver.

Any women's roles are mostly decoration, though the actresses do what they can, given their minimal screen time. This one is all about boys being boys, and as such, it comes through as decent fun and games. If it doesn't generate as much box-office as it might, that's probably because it opts for character, time and place over violence and gore,

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, from the newly christened distributor Alchemy, opens this Friday, March 6, in a limited release. 

BUZZARD's memorable oddities: character, movie, and filmmaker/actor, Joel Potrykus

If you caught indie filmmaker Joel Potrykus' earlier film, Ape, and saw its lead performance from actor Joshua Burge, you're one up on TrustMovies. I came to the new film, BUZZARD, as a virgin to the work of Mr. Potrykus and so was promptly blown-away by the bizarre Mr. Burge and the film in which he takes center stage. What a face this guy has! Every bit as strange and memorable as that of Julian Richings (from last week's oddity, Ejecta), Burge's is younger and a tad more handsome (in a strange way), and the actor uses his face very well, passing from loony to nasty, vulnerable to empty and finally into something quite frigh-tening. And yet this actor manages to hold us and make us somehow care.

Burge is helped considerably by the filmmaking skills -- mini-budget as they may be -- of Mr. Potrykus, shown at right. The writer/ director sticks his camera in Burge's fluid face and captures those features, large and handsome-grotesque, in their constant and amazing mobility. Burge plays Marty Jackitansky (he's White Russian, rather than Polish) a slacker/scam artist who works as a temp at some kind of bank, where his co-worker and friend (were this guy capable of actu-ally having a friend), Derek (shown at bottom and played by the filmmaker himself) have fun and do very little work. Marty's scams, minor and funny as they initially seem, grow larger and more dangerous as the movie unfolds. As does our non-hero, as well.

Yes, Marty is an anti-social asshole, but he is also a medically-challenged, problemed person, with whom we ever so gingerly begin to empathize. This empathy, which actor Burge allows us to feel despite his character's huge flaws, is what makes the movie more than mere caricature or deadpan humor. Burge, shown above and below, lets us enter the mind and soul of Marty and, hellish place that this is, also allows us to engage with him.

Along the way, we see our guy taken advantage of by an even-more-powerful scammer, and then hightail it off to Detroit, where he stays in a posh hotel and eats spaghetti and meatballs (above) and get into even more trouble. The threat of violence hangs over Buzzard from the very first scene (involving an odd glove). And though this violence does come to fruition, it is both worse and better than we might have imagined.

There's a school-boy duel between Freddy Krueger and a Star Wars laser, and some back-story hints dropped now and again. But to Potrykus' great credit, he has turned Buzzard into a fine character study of a sad but fascinatingly marginal figure -- and in the process given his star a creepily star-making role to play.

The movie -- from Oscilloscope and running 97 minutes -- debuts tomorrow, March 4, at BAM in Brooklyn, and then opens theatrically this Friday, March 6, at 13 cities across the country, and further, too, in the weeks to come. (In NYC, it plays the Film Society of Lincoln Center; in L.A., Laemmle's Noho 7.) To see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.

A Bulgarian learning experience: Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's riveting THE LESSON

There are so many lessons learned by the school-teacher heroine of THE LESSON (Urok), not to mention by us enrapt viewers, that it is difficult to know where to begin: First, maybe, this: Don't under any circumstances allow your vehicle-obsessed, no-account husband to handle the family's finances. Moving on, once it is clear that your very home is about to be auctioned off from under you by your local bank, please don't get involved with your town's skeevy, sleazy money-lender unless you're comfortable with paying back your loan via sex work. There are many of these life lessons, small and large, to be gleaned -- if you've got the balls to watch. Our protagonist, who is offered little choice in the matter, very quickly manages to put herself smack in the middle of lies, avarice, bureaucracy and corruption involving both the individual and the state.

Writers/directors Kristina Grozeva (below) and Petar Valchanov (at left, who also edited the film) begin their little game in the classroom, as we see written on the blackboard, "My wallet has been stolen." We westerners will immediately imagine that this is a class for visitors to Eastern Europe who need to know the important catch phrases that will be of use to us. But, no: Our teacher, Nade, has written the phrase to alert her class that her wallet really has been stolen -- by one of them. And she intends to get it back.

Things do not go quite as Nade plans, and it soon seems clear that this woman has a tad too much certainty about how life should roll out. (Perhaps she was raised elsewhere than Bulgaria, where the film is set.) In any case, she is soon up to her ears in stuff that she ought not to have to handle, and watching her wriggle and cajole, plead and insist is painful but somehow also bracing.

This is due in large part to the work of the fine actress -- Margita Gosheva (above and below, right) -- who plays Nade. Ms Gosheva manages to swing on a dime from confused and vulnerable to angry and determined without missing a beat, including all of those little moments that lead from one fraught state into the next.

In the course of the film, we meet everyone from Nade's insignificant other (center, right, above), though he proves awfully good with the couple's young child (at left, above); her successful and fairly wealthy father (center left, above) whom she accuses of causing her mother's untimely sickness and death; the fellow she does freelance translation for and who owes her a lot of back pay; her students and co-workers; and a few other townspeople who interact with our gal, as the vise in which she finds herself grows tighter, faster.

One of the odd and interesting things about this movie is how suspenseful it is, even as we're learning more and more about Nade and the ins and out of Bulgarian society. It is finally a toss-up as to which consumes us more. Nade's moralistic tendencies both help and hinder her, as she must lower her "standards" over and over in order to achieve her ends. By the film's finish, little remains of the "ordered world," pretense though it may have been, that greeted us at the film's beginning.

The fungibility of everything from relationships and power to forms of payment and transportation come into play here, and Nade proves surprisingly adept at rolling with the punches. Some of the strongest scenes include an apology she must make to her father's girlfriend and her coming to understand exactly what her use of the loan shark (above, right) means to the well-being of her family.

If there is a weakness to the movie, it arrives with the penultimate scene in which the filmmakers have our heroine decide to make things right -- but then neglect to show us how this happens. Oh, we know what has happened, all right, but leaving the scene out makes the ending seem far too easy and thus unearned. We allow this because we so keenly hope that Nade will succeed. But this is not quite the same thing as giving us a fully realized film.

We'll hope that the next movie from this pair, individually or together, proves even better because, clearly, the two are banging on the door to the pantheon of first-rate realist filmmakers. We shall hear from them again. Meanwhile, The Lesson -- from Film Movement, in Bulgarian with English subtitles and running 105 fast minutes -- opens this Wednesday, March 4, at Film Forum in New York City. To see further screenings around the country, click here and scroll down.  

Parade's End -- an acquired taste. (Scroll down for the companion review of Downton Abbey)

This post is written by our "Sunday Corner" 

corresponent, Lee Liberman

Parade's End (BBC/HBO), a psychological drama, and cream puffy Downton Abbey (PBS) treat the effects of world war and industrialization on tradition-bound Edwardians, especially on women. Parade's End, in 5 episodes based on novels by Ford Madox Ford, is a tougher go; it takes a few takes to dig itself into your heart, but the payoff is far more interesting -- you feel world war shaking the ground and savor a bit of well-earned joy as the parade ends. Despite excellent reviews here, the series, directed by Susanna White, slipped under the radar quickly but was widely celebrated and honored across the pond.

Tom Stoppard (prolific playwright, screen-writer) can't have had a simple time distilling Ford Madox Ford's four-novel series because the work unfolds in non-linear fashion, jumping around dizzily. Written close to the period, the novels were called by poet W.H. Auden and others 'great', but they aren't easy -- as though Ford meant his work to be as contrary as he made his characters. The first go at the mini-series is also off-putting. I didn't get into it until the re-watch; then became engrossed in the story of the protagonists and also their being metaphor for the bloom being off the rose of the aristocracy. It did help to know where the story was headed before focusing on how the words and actions of the characters contribute to the synergy of the whole.

The antiheroes of the drama are Christopher and Sylvia Tietgens, a miserably-married aristocratic couple whom anyone will recognize who has encountered a relationship in which the parties don't get each other, talk past each other, relentlessly disappoint, and make each other angry or depressed. Yes, toxic, but Christopher and Sylvia turn each other on -- he thinks she is "glorious" and his braininess and impeccable taste have spoiled her for other men. Sylvia wants to keep her husband but cannot help repelling him. Duty compels him to wear the hair shirt: 'I stand for monogamy and chastity and not talking about it,' he says. Benedict Cumberbatch (at far left) is so quietly, deeply expres-sive that Christopher's suffering is palpable -- his 'romantic feudalism', his nostalgia for a time of 'rights, duties, and supposed orderliness' (Julian Barnes, the Guardian, 8/2012) making him a dinosaur in his own time. (Press here for Barnes's rich analysis of Ford's characters.) 

Sylvia (the beautiful, formidable Rebecca Hall, above, right), acts out the narcissism of the aristocracy with the seductive charm of a sociopath. Her mother (Janet McTeer) calls her manipulative behavior 'pulling the strings of the shower bath'. Christopher, an intellectual savant, shoulders the guilt and unhappiness of an aristocracy that is becoming anachronistic. Although brilliant, he nevertheless courts failure through one self-deprecating act after another. He works at the Imperial Department of Statistics and perfectly predicts the outbreak of war. But when asked to manipulate data, he quits, deeply offended, and joins the army. Through the war years, Sylvia's sadistic antics and Christopher's own self-effacement conspire to ruin his reputation. He is banned from his club and sent down to a combat unit at the front.

Appearing early but not often in the story is young, brainy suffragette, Valentine, (Adelaide Clemens, below, right), middle-class daughter of a classics professor and journalist mother (Miranda Richardson at her most winsome). Christopher and Valentine meet for the first time on a golf course where she and a friend are demonstrating for the vote among 'fat golfing idiots' (whose own view is that suffragettes are whores and deserve to have their bare bottoms spanked). Christopher chivalrously foils arrest of the girls by heaving his clubs in the way of a police officer who is giving chase. In this and later brief chaste encounters, we see the exact opposite of mutual repulsion. Christopher and Valentine "get" each other, make each other think, and disagree amiably. Their fresh good will is hope for the future, but he is not ready to shed his old-fashioned honor.

Honoring the rules of the 'parade' of the social elite (aggressively flouted by Sylvia), Christopher does not take up with Valentine until the war has dragged on, his parents have died of disappointment, and Sylvia has exhausted him with histrionics. The last straw is her having the ancient tree at Groby Hall felled because it darkens the parlor. (Groby, the Tietgens family seat in Yorkshire, is 'older than Protestantism'.) In a decisive change in behavior, Christopher dismisses Sylvia with an unforgiving stare and throws a log from the old tree on the fire. Peace is declared, the troops are released, and in the final frames Christopher is at last happy as he finally joins his heart with Valentine.

More British acting elite add depth to the parade, among them are Rufus Sewell, a batty cleric; Rupert Everett, Christopher's older brother (above, left), who lives with his mistress and wants no part of Groby; and Anne-Marie Duff (below, left) as whiny Edith, a middle-class snob who has snared Macmaster, (Stephen Graham, below, right), a writer, to enhance her social climb among the literati.

Parade's End is streaming on HBO; it's worth the work.

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Compared to Parade's End, the PBS series DOWNTON ABBEY is the soap opera version of the cracking Edwardian facade during and after WWI. Created by Julian Fellowes, shown below, Season 5 has ended and season 6 ordered -- could be the place to stop.

Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), hapless head of the aristocratic Crawley family, broods over the inability of his land-rich, cash-poor estate to support itself. Fortunately his modern daughter Mary (Michelle Dockery) is able to walk the line between appreciating papa's decency and prodding him toward running the estate like a business. The growing assertiveness of women in the new century is punctuated by daughter Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) running off with the chauffeur, cousin Rose (Lily James) falling for a black jazz musician followed by snagging a Jewish banker-- at least avoiding an interracial scandal.

But an hour special that ran on PBS at the start of Season 5 spelled out the premier obsession of this series: 'The Manners of Downton Abbey' (for sale at PBS). The host, Alastair Bruce, historian and consultant, bobs about the film set adjusting posture, bits of dialogue, and scene to assure perfect replication of the ballet of manners that dictated daily life of the Edwardian elite upstairs and staff downstairs.

Bruce explains that the aristocracy were so traumatized by contageous disease and the violence of the French Revolution that habits of restrained physical contact and emotion even among family solidified into protocol. The Edwardians enveloped themselves in a complexity of nuanced formalities, insulating them from change. Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith, below), Butler Carson (Jim Carter), and Lord Grantham keep the flame, resisting slippage of the status quo.

There are few if any story lines in Downton that do not revolve the Edwardian code in one way or another. One stays tuned to find out what's coming next (or what Violet will say next). Soap opera is geared to the gossip gene or the ginned-up fear response as plots charge to and fro, anticipating a favorite character's horrible dilemma. All the talk, tears, wit. joy, grief at Downton Abbey are skin deep. In season 5, the only character whose painful struggle (with his sexuality) makes us care is Thomas, the devious under-butler, played by marvelous actor Rob James-Collier (below), who is owed lead roles as soon as possible. There is something behind those eyes, and you want more.

DA's success is aided by "camp and class", said one reviewer; it surely is beautiful and fans feel elevated by its British toniness (reputedly some royals tune in). Perhaps one more season is enough, though, as plots are repeating themselves and going stale. It is quite a contrast to feature-film who-done-it, Gosford Park, also scripted by Fellowes. But Gosford had director, Robert Altman, who, like great writers, make us care about the inner life and motivations of characters. Taking place during a weekend gathering at a country estate, a murder is committed by a character whose pain we begin to understand and share as the crime is solved. At Gosford Park, as in Parade's End, we are slowly drawn into the inner lives of a number of characters. Parade's End and Gosford Park can be mined over and again; repeat visits to Downton offer thin gruel.

Downtown Abbey Season 5 will be available for a short time on line at PBS. Only the first four seasons are available on DVD in the NTSC version compatible with our DVD players, but for those who own an all-region player, the UK version of Season 5 is now for sale. (It can't be long before Season 5 is available here, too.)