White nights cast dark shadows ... and light

As part of my effort to clear my DVR during the COVID-19 pandemic, I watched Luchino Visconti’s “Le Notti Bianche” (“White Nights”) last night. My DVR has quite a few films I’ve seen only once or twice and want to revisit, and this was one of them. Visconti is one of my favorite Italian directors (“The Leopard,” “Rocco and His Brothers”). I don’t recall when I originally saw “Le Notti Bianche,” but I recorded it to rewatch in 2017! Better late than never.

Perhaps I was waiting because it is a sad love story, something best to avoid when one is single. But I didn’t remember quite how sad it is. Marcello Mastroianni stars as a lonely, blue collar guy who through modern eyes happens to look like the most dashing man ever as he walks along the canals of his small Italian town each night.

His name is Mario, and despite looking like Marcello Mastroianni, he is a sad-sack. He can’t even get a stray dog to befriend him at the beginning of the film. The same goes for a crying woman he encounters on one of his nightly sojourns. Her name is Natalia. Played by Maria Schell, she tries to shake him off, but he insists on trying to help her because he has somehow fallen in love with her at first sight. Her tears remain a mystery on that first night, as do her attempts to evade him. But eventually she reveals to him that besides the obvious — a thwarted love affair — her love has kept her waiting for a year for him to return to her.

Mario understandably finds Natalia’s vigil absurd and tells her so. How could she wait around for this man who has surely abandoned her, surely did not truly love her? And he is determined to woo her until she realizes she should transfer her affections to him. Yet his advances seem almost as foolish as her commitment to her long absent lover.

Although darkness abounds throughout the film, there is revelling, including some rather awkward dancing to classic rock ‘n roll tunes, and romance as well as solid comedy in the scenes at Mario’s boarding house with his loud, pushy and loquacious landlady.

All through the movie I thought about how there could be no happy ending. His happiness to win her heart would come at the price of her giving up her dream of her lost love, or her happiness to be reunited with her lost love would mean his despair at losing her. And yet somehow I was surprised to learn that the plot is based on a Dostoyevsky short story. Of course it is.

Still, I am glad I revisited the movie just as Mario is glad to have experienced his love for Natalia — however brief, it was a worthy experience. We must take our moments of happiness when they are offered, whether in a small Italian town in the 1950s or a major U.S. city during a pandemic in 2020.

31 days of horror for Halloween

I decided to participate in the #31daysofhorror and #31daysofHalloween posts on Twitter this year. I love horror movies, but daily posts have not been my forte since joining social media. We’ll see …

#31daysofHalloween #31DaysOfHorror DAY 5: “I’m 12, but I’ve been 12 for a long time.” – Eli (Lina Leandersson) in “Let the Right One In” pic.twitter.com/NX3BABMIpp

— TheIncredibleMontage (@IncredMontage) October 5, 2020

#31daysofHalloween #31DaysOfHorror DAY 4: “Something doesn’t feel safe here.” – Will (Logan Marshall-Green) in “The Invitation” https://t.co/Jxwk2uwXkg pic.twitter.com/Yz0yRIt20j

— TheIncredibleMontage (@IncredMontage) October 4, 2020

#31daysofHalloween #31DaysOfHorror DAY 3: “I feel a little weird just dropping you out here in the middle of … wherever we are.” – Megan (Greta Gerwig) in “The House of the Devil” https://t.co/JhMHXuEZAV pic.twitter.com/MjzkcyslbF

— TheIncredibleMontage (@IncredMontage) October 3, 2020

#31daysofHalloween #31DaysOfHorror DAY TWO: “They know we’re in here now.” – Ben (Duane Jones) in “Night of the Living Dead” pic.twitter.com/NtGJEimbFX

— TheIncredibleMontage (@IncredMontage) October 2, 2020

#31daysofHalloween DAY ONE: “She might have fooled me, but she didn’t fool my mother.” – Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in “Psycho” pic.twitter.com/ukvIyvkIpI

— TheIncredibleMontage (@IncredMontage) October 1, 2020

Two hit men walk into a bar ... in Bruges

MOVIE OF THE WEEK: "In Bruges"

Martin McDonagh has been getting more exposure than usual since his film “Two Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” has been burning up the awards season with major wins at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards. And now “Two Billboards” is nominated for a best picture Oscar. The native Londoner has already won an Oscar for his 2006 short film “Six Shooter,” and he was nominated for writing the original screenplay for the film I’m recommending this week – “In Bruges.”

“In Bruges,” both a black comedy and a crime thriller, didn’t get the attention it warranted when released in 2008. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are Irish hit men for London gangster Ralph Fiennes. Gleeson, a seasoned pro, is a kind of mentor to the recently hired Farrell. After Farrell botches his first job in a poignantly tragic way, Fiennes sends him and Gleeson to the quaint, medieval town of Bruges, Belgium, to lay low. Although Gleeson slowly warms to the place, neither hit man is happy about being in Bruges, and the fact that they are stuck in Bruges becomes an ongoing joke throughout the movie.

They spend their time waiting for Fiennes to call and tell them to come home, sightseeing and mixing with the locals. Farrell is also brooding over his mistake back in London, but he finds some joy – and more than a little trouble – in the company of a young woman played by Clémence Poésy.

“In Bruges” has an offbeat and endearing story carried by the strong character work by Gleeson, Farrell and Fiennes. Farrell is volatile but also charming and touchingly grief-stricken. Gleeson is a wiser, calming influence trying to keep the boy from going off the deep end. And Fiennes is hysterical as the hot-headed, tyrannical mob boss determined to enforce his own twisted brand of justice. Their shenanigans in Bruges lead to one of the most memorable endings of any movie of the 2000s.

“In Bruges” is a fun, irreverent film with humor, action, a little romance and real pathos. If you saw “Three Billboards” and want more of writer-director Martin McDonagh, “In Bruges” is an excellent place to start. If you’ve never even heard of McDonagh and just want a highly entertaining movie to enjoy, “In Bruges” is still the way to go.

What happened to the heat?

I was not aware of the 1971 film “The Beguiled” until the release of Sofia Coppola’s 2017 remake of the Gothic thriller. The original was the third film featuring Clint Eastwood as star and Don Siegel as director. Their most popular collaboration is “Dirty Harry,” released the same year as “The Beguiled.”

“The Beguiled” was an unusual project for a director and actor best known for their action movies. In fact, Siegel believed the movie’s failure at the box office was due to Universal Pictures’ marketing it as another Eastwood actioner. But their work on “The Beguiled” showed there was much more to their storytelling talent than showing the hard edges of testosterone-laden crime and punishment. They don’t abandon crime and punishment in “The Beguiled,” but women are running the action as the movie examines lust, loneliness and Southern sensibilities.

I also find it interesting to see how men perceive female behavior and motivations; the material is based on a novel by Thomas Cullinan. Yet we get to see those perceptions through the lens of screenplays written or co-written by women in both the 1971 and the 2017 adaptation. The 1971 film was written by Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp, both using pseudonyms, and the 2017 version was written by Sofia Coppola.

Jo Ann Harris and Clint Eastwood in "The Beguiled" (1971)

The story is simple enough. The women of a Confederate boarding school decide to harbor an attractive, wounded Union soldier near the end of the Civil War. Their isolation makes him especially predatory and makes them especially susceptible to his charms. It becomes a cat-and-mouse situation – but do the women represent cats or mice?

It’s an interesting story, and both films are well-made, but I’m afraid my biggest concern is the utter absence of heat in the Coppola version. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the story is the sexual tension and potential for release between the wounded soldier and the women at the school. Although I don’t think of Clint Eastwood as a sex symbol, but I do find him sexy in some of his early films, and this is one of them. His potential paramours in “The Beguiled” include Geraldine Page as the stern and stifled headmistress; Elizabeth Hartman as a chaste teacher; Jo Ann Harris as the minx; and Mae Mercer as a wise servant. All four actresses are excellent, and Eastwood generates considerable heat with all of them.

So I was expecting major fireworks in the 2017 remake, especially since Colin Farrell, essentially sex incarnate as far as I’m concerned, plays the lustful soldier. There’s a scene in the 2002 thriller “Minority Report” where Farrell quickly steps in front of Kathryn Morris to stop her from walking away from him, and the sex appeal he exuded in that completely nonsexual moment literally made me gasp.

Both movies feature sex scenes, but Coppola chose to leave a lot more to the imagination as far as the multiple seductions the soldier attempted – seductions that were far more important to the story than any consummation. There appeared to be a chemistry problem in her version as well. There was no chemistry between Farrell and Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning, and only minimal chemistry between Farrell and Kirsten Dunst.

Coppola won the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and her film is a lovely, austere, ethereal meditation on how vulnerable creatures are not necessarily harmless and the true nature of femmes fatale. She also keeps the war at bay, focusing strictly on the women and school girls and the soldier. But her film lacks the earthiness and realism that makes the original 1971 version so erotic in its crimes, understandably culminating in the extreme passions that insist on punishment in the end.