Ladyhawke (1985)

Ladyhawke is a 1985 fantasy film and it really is a bit of an oddity. I think it’s a wonderful movie but I can see why it flopped at the box office. It’s totally out of step with other movies of that genre of that era. It’s also to some extent out of step with the mainstream filmmaking approaches of the 80s.

It was produced and directed by Richard Donner.

The setting is northern Italy. The time period is not specified precisely but references to the exploits of the hero’s grandfather during the Crusades might suggest the 13th or 14th centuries.

A young thief, Phillipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick), escapes from an escape-proof dungeon.

Local authority is vested in the Bishop of Aquila (played by John Wood) and the bishop wants Phillipe recaptured. He sees the young thief’s escape as a challenge to his prestige and authority. The bishop is something of a tyrant and seems to rule mostly by fear.

Phillipe encounters Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer). Navarre is a rather brooding figure, obviously a man in the grip of some obsession, but in his own way he seems to be a decent man who can even be almost kindly at times. Navarre has a hawk, an impressive bird of which he is inordinately proud. There is clearly a bond between the man and the hawk.

But at nightfall Navarre disappears completely and a beautiful lady appears. She is Isabeau of Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer). She has an animal companion as well, a wolf. There is clearly a bond between the woman and the wolf.

In fact Navarre and Isabeau are the victims of an awful curse. They were lovers, until they aroused the ire of the bishop who called on the powers of darkness to afflict with a cruel and ingenious curse. During the day Isabeau is transformed into the hawk. At night Navarre is transformed into the wolf. They can never be together in human form. They are in fact doomed to be forever together and forever apart.

A nice touch is that in their animal forms they have no knowledge of their human natures. All the wolf knows is that for some reason he must protect this woman. All the hawk knows is that somehow she belongs to this man. They can never communicate. They can only communicate very indirectly, through Phillipe.

Another very nice touch is that Phillipe is a likeable pleasant resourceful young man but he is a chronic liar. That turns out to be useful. Whenever Isabeau asks if Navarre has spoken of her Phillipe assures her that Navarre speaks constantly of the strength of his love for her. That isn’t true. Navarre is a man of few words who could never articulate his feelings in this way. Phillipe tells Isabeau lies, but they are true lies. They are the things that are in Navarre’s heart. When Navarre asks if Isabeau has spoken of him Phillipe tells him the same sorts of true lies. There are things Isabeau cannot bring herself to say but Phillipe has survived as long as he has by being extremely astute. He knows how Isabeau feels about Navarre.

When the hawk is wounded crazy old monk Imperius (Leo McKern) enters the picture. He knows something very very important, but he doesn’t know how to make Navarre and Isabeau believe it.

By the mid-80s the established formula for adventure or fantasy movies was non-stop action, spectacle, some humour and a dash of romance. When the sword-and-sorcery genre emerged the formula remained the same but with a slightly tongue-in-cheek edge.

Ladyhawke ignores this formula completely. The focus is entirely on the love story. There’s some action and some excitement but it’s handled in a low-key way and there are no spectacular action set-pieces. This is a movie that relies on mood rather than spectacle. It’s a beautiful movie but it’s beautiful in a subtle slightly dreamy way.

This is a movie that seems to be aiming for the tone of 19th century medievalism - the romantic harkening back to the days of chivalry of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and of Pre-Raphaelite painting. I think it does this very successfully.

The casting is perfect. Rutger Hauer was a guy who could wear medieval garb and make you think that he’d been dressing that way all his life. He plays Navarre as a brooding but very sympathetic figure. Nothing matters to him except for the woman he loves. It’s an obsession, but a noble obsession. Hauer does not give a conventional action hero performance. He’s much more subtle than that. We feel Navarre’s pain, but the pain is not on the surface. It’s deep within Navarre’s soul. He simply cannot live with Isabeau.

Michelle Pfeiffer is just right. The first time we see her we are struck by her fragile ethereal beauty. And we know that this is a high-born lady. There’s nothing arrogant about Isabeau, just the placid assurance of a woman who has known since childhood what it means to be a lady. Isabeau is definitely not a kickass action heroine or a feisty girl heroine. She has courage, but it is a woman’s courage.

When Phillipe meets her he knows that he is going to devote himself to the service of this lady without any hope of reward. To serve such a lady is an honour. What’s extraordinary is that Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer make this devotion totally convincing. Somehow all three leads are able to make us believe that this world of fairy-tale romance and chivalry is real.

The Bishop of Aquila is not a conventional adventure movie larger-than-life villain. He is a man in the grip of an obession. It has lewd him to do great evil, but the obsession started as love.

Ladyhawke never really had a chance at the box office. It’s a very uncommercial movie. It goes its own way. It’s a beautiful fairy-tale romance and I adored it. Very highly recommended.

Isadora Duncan, The Biggest Dancer in the World (1966)

Isadora (sometimes known under the title Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World) is a 1966 BBC TV-movie based on the life of the famous but tragic pioneer of modern dance, Isadora Duncan.

The TV-movie was directed by Ken Russell. You might be wondering if you’ll see traces of Russell’s later style in this early work. In fact you’ll see more than traces. This is a full-blown Ken Russell movie.

Russell co-wrote the script with Sewell Stokes, who knew Isadora in the latter part of her life.

While Isadora was funded by the BBC and was screened on the BBC in 1966 it was always intended for theatrical release as well, and it did indeed get a theatrical release. It was something of a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival. The success of Isadora made it certain that Russell would soon make the jump to directing feature films, which in fact he did in the following year.

The considerable amount of nudity certainly indicates that a theatrical release was the intention.

Isadora was made on a minuscule budget (we’re talking about the BBC here) but it was shot in 35mm and while it’s in black-and-white it feels like a feature film rather than a TV production. Russell was pulling out all the stops with the visual and it has all his trademarks.

Isadora Duncan was briefly a sensation in the world of dance. She was an apostle of dance as free expression. Her dislike of any kind of discipline carried over into her personal life.

Her star faded quickly and her wild lifestyle took its toll. She blundered from disaster to disaster.

She enjoyed a brief vogue in the 1960s, being seen as a kind of godmother to the counter-culture.

Russell resists the temptation to idealise or romanticise her. He doesn’t exactly demonise her but he makes no attempt to downplay her extraordinary self-destructiveness and egotism and spectacularly bad judgment. This was a woman set for fame, stardom and riches and it all fell apart and the disasters were all of her own doing. He also does not downplay her vulgarity or her stupidity.

Isadora did have a touch of genius, but a very limited genius. In the opening years of the 20th century her approach to dance seemed exciting and revolutionary - pure expression, unconstrained by rules or discipline. Just dance what you feel. Like all such artistic approaches it was something of a dead end. The vogue for Isadora waned, her wild lifestyle began to catch up with her, her extravagance left her dependent on wealthy lovers who eventually tired of her whims and her dramas.

After the First World War she went to Russia, feeling sure that the Bolsheviks would recognise her as a fellow revolutionary. They did not. She was soon penniless. Isadora’s politics did not go much beyond thinking that being a revolutionary was exciting and glamorous.

An affair with a drunken lecherous thieving Russian poet ruined her even further.

Tragically she ended up being remembered mostly for the bizarre circumstances of her death.

Russell tells her story as an absurdist tragi-comedy. Isadora remains oblivious to the inevitable consequences of her self-destructiveness and self-absorption.

Isadora’s rejection of rules and discipline made her, briefly, a star in the world of dance. It also doomed her to disaster in life. She was ruled by her passions and her emotions and they led her astray every time.

Vivian Pickles (a dancer herself) is superb in the title role.

Russell was not going to let a micro-budget limit his already soaring ambitions. By necessity he had to use some stock footage. He makes extraordinary use of footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia.

This does not look like a TV movie. It looks like a Ken Russell feature film.

Russell’s productions for the BBC in the 60s cannot be dismissed as mere tentative experimentations. He was already Ken Russell. He had already chosen his artistic path.

Russell was fascinated by genius but had no interest in worshipful approaches. He liked to get under the skin of the artistic geniuses about whom he made movies and he wasn’t afraid of what he might find under the surface. He also made two notable films about artistic failures - this one and Savage Messiah (1972). They’d make a fine double feature.

Isadora is a major Ken Russell film and a great one. Very highly recommended.

Red Line 7000 (1965)

Red Line 7000 is late Howard Hawks film. Made in 1965, it was his third-last movie. It’s probably his least admired movie.

Hawks wrote the original story and he produced and directed. Red Line 7000 deals with motor racing, but not with the glamorous world of Le Man or Formula 1. This is the slightly more disreputable world of NASCAR racing. This is certainly a deliberate choice by Hawks. He’s not interested in the glamour. He’s interested in what makes these men tick.

Hawks was fascinated by the idea of exploring the psychology of men who dice with death. He was particularly fascinated by men who dice with death even though they don’t have to. Not soldiers in wartime or cops driven by a sense of duty, but civilians who deliberately make this choice. They’re not doing it for a cause. They’re not doing it for the excitement. It’s more of an existential thing. They’re flirting with death, taunting death, spitting in the eyes of death. And all the time knowing that death will have the last laugh. Maybe they’re half in love with death.

Hawks was also fascinated by the women who love these men.

So the basic setup is there for a classic Howard Hawks movie. But that doesn’t seem to be what he had in mind. It seems like he was trying to make a movie aimed at a young audience. In fact it’s almost as if he tried to make a drive-in movie. There are some very definite exploitation movie elements. You have never seen so many car crashes. Every time the action moves to the racetrack you can be sure there will be crashes. Multiple crashes. Cars in flames. Cars going end over end.

This is the sort of thing a drive-in audience would love. But this was a major-studio picture distributed by Paramount and there was no way that Paramount would have had a clue how to market it.

It needed a Roger Corman to market it. It’s a movie that should have been made by AIP. Red Line 7000 was in fact shot on a very low budget. Mainstream critics were always going to hate it, and they did. Mainstream audiences would have been perplexed. Where are the big stars?

Which brings us to the cast. Hawks went for an entire cast of unknowns. The only big name is James Caan, but in 1965 he was not yet a star. Hawks presumably wanted to avoid having the movie loaded down with stars, which would have created the expectation that this was going to be a star vehicle for one or two big names. It isn’t. There’s no central character. There are eight or so important characters but the focus shifts constantly between them.

There are three drivers. Mike Marsh (James Caan) is the ice-cold professional who cares about nothing other than racing. Dan McCall (Skip Ward) had tried to break into Formula but now he’s back to NASCAR racing. Ned Arp (John Robert Crawford) is the hotshot punk, a nobody determined to be a somebody.

The first of the women is Julie (Laura Devon), the sister of the manager of the racing team. She falls for Ned Arp. The second is French girl Gabrielle (Marianna Hill). She had been Dan’s girlfriend but they’ve split up and now she has set her sights on Mike Marsh. The third is Holly (Gail Hire), who keeps falling in love with racing car drivers who keep dying on her. Now, to her horror, she has fallen in love with yet another race car driver (Dan).

The focus shifts constantly between each of the three couples and between the romantic dramas and the dramas on the racetrack.

Hawks sent his second unit director Bruce Kessler out to film actual race footage so all the racing scenes are real. And they’re spectacular.

The acting is a very mixed bag.

This movie ran into huge censorship problems over the relationship between Julie and Ned, something that now seems bizarre and inexplicable. Major cuts were made.

Quentin Tarantino is a huge fan of this movie which doesn’t surprise me. I dislike Tarantino’s own movies but as a critic he’s perceptive and stimulating. He has, rightly, championed a lot of movies from the 60s and 70s that critics at that time were incapable of understanding.

Red Line 7000 is not quite what either Howard Hawks fans or mainstream audiences and critics expected but has its own oddball charm. I’m going to give it a highly recommended rating.

I’ve reviewed other Hawks movie dealing with similar themes. The Crowd Roars (1932) and Ceiling Zero (1936) are both underrated and very much worth seeing.

Night Moves (1975)

Night Moves is a 1975 private eye thriller. Whether it qualifies as a neo-noir remains to be seen but that label has been affixed to it at times.

Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is a down-at-heel private eye. He’s not at the bottom of his profession but he’s a long way from the top. He gets by. He has a cute wife. He’s not what you would call a loser.

Or maybe it would be truer to say that he’s not a loser yet, but the potential is there.

He’s been hired by a faded middle-aged former starlet to find her missing teenaged daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith). Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) was never more than a minor starlet. It’s clear that she was one of those Hollywood actresses who gave her best performances on the casting couch. She married a producer. More husbands followed.

Harry has troubles of his own. One of the disadvantages of being a private eye is that you notice things that you’d be better off not noticing and and you make connections you’d be better off not making. For example if your wife is having an affair you’re going to know about it. And Harry’s wife is definitely having an affair.

Harry is not at all happy about this. Harry is a guy who seems a bit on edge at the best of times. A bit inclined to fly off the handle.

Harry thinks he has a lead on the missing girl. She might be with her stepfather Tom Iverson (John Crawford) in Florida. He flies down to Florida. Tom has left the rat race. He does some charter boat and charter plane stuff. He’s really a glorified beach bum. He lives with his ex-hooker girlfriend Paula.

Delly is indeed there. She does not want to return to her mother whom she hates.

Delly looks like Miss Junior Femme Fatale 1975. She’s a nice girl but she’s wild and she’s far from innocent.

Then comes a plot twist right out of left field. Delly is doing some skin diving and finds a wrecked plane. With a body in it. Of course that has nothing to do with the case. It was obviously an accidental plane crash and there are plenty of light plane crashes.

The case is now solved. Harry can return to California. Maybe he can patch up his marriage. Perhaps he should give up the private eye business. He’s 40 and maybe his life needs to change direction. He needs to think. Then he receives a cryptic communication from Delly. And a piece of information about her. And yet another piece of information that suggests some interesting connections. Harry may be thinking of giving the game away but he still thinks like a private eye. Give him a puzzle and he’ll try to solve it. Especially if it involves someone of whom he is fond. Not a lover, just someone for whom he developed an odd affection. This case is not over after all.

I don’t think this is a neo-noir at all. It has some dark moments but a neo-noir requires more than that. It requires specific ingredients. Those ingredients are lacking here. Harry does not fit the mould of a noir protagonist.

There are four women all of whom could be dangerous but not one of them is a classic femme fatale. The first is disqualified because she’s so obvious that even the dumbest schmuck could see through her. The second is just selfish and shallow. The third has some femme fatale tendencies but Harry does not get seriously involved with her which disqualifies her as a femme fatale. The fourth has very definite femme fatale potential but Harry doesn’t get involved with her in any way, either emotionally or sexually. This movie is not structured like a neo-noir. It does not have a plot driven by lust. In fact the plot isn’t driven by anything in particular. There’s no obsessiveness. It’s just a PI who gets stubborn when faced by a puzzling case. The kind of plot you’d expect in a very average crime thriller.

It also lacks a neo-noir feel. The feel is more like a two-part episode of one of the popular TV PI series of the day such as Mannix or Harry O. Night Moves has no particular visual style. I don’t even see it as an homage to the great PI movies of the 40s. Night Moves is very very 70s, but not in a really interesting way.

All of the female characters are underwritten and Harry’s relationships with them are entirely undeveloped.

I have to be honest and state that I’ve seen three Arthur Penn movies and I’ve disliked all of them. I’m also not the biggest Gene Hackman fan. He’s appropriately cast here and he’s competent but no more. The best performance here comes from Melanie Griffith in her film debut. It’s a tricky role. She has to make Delly bratty, but not too bratty. She does a fine job. She actually understands subtlety.

Night Moves is nothing special, just a reasonably entertaining very straightforward PI thriller. A harmless time-killer. Worth a look but I wouldn’t make a huge effort to seek it out.

Camille (1936)

The 1936 Camille was the second Hollywood adaptation of the 1848 novel The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux Camélias) by Alexandre Dumas fils.

The movie is set in Paris in the 1840s. It is of course the story of a love affair between celebrated Parisian courtesan Marguerite Gautier and a young man, Armand Duval (Robert Taylor), whose problem is that he is not rich enough to afford her and not rich enough to defy his family by marrying her. He would like to marry her because he fears that her wild lifestyle is having a disastrous effect on her very precarious health.

There is going to be trouble with Armand’s family. His father (played by Lionel Barrymore) doesn’t mind if Armand wants to consort with courtesans but he wants him to be discreet and he certainly isn’t going to agree to a marriage. Had Armand belonged to an aristocratic family there would have been no problem. The aristocracy could treat conventional morality with contempt. But Armand’s bourgeois father is obsessed with respectability and dreads scandal.

A lot of the great actresses of the pre-code era had their careers blighted by the introduction of the Production Code in 1934. They just couldn’t flourish in the new squeaky-clean Code era. Jean Harlow being an obvious example. This was the case to some extent with Greta Garbo. She had some major hits after 1934 but some of the magic was gone.

Camille presented a challenge for MGM in 1936. The Dumas novel was based on the real-life story of one of the most famous prostitutes of the 19th century, Marie Duplessis. The heroine of the novel, like Marie Duplessis, is a courtesan but no matter how expensive she might be a courtesan is after all a prostitute. And if it’s not made clear that the heroine is a prostitute the story makes no sense at all.

The problem was that the Production Code had outlawed bad girls. Even if they suffered horrific punishment at the end it was incredibly difficult to make a movie about a bad girl.

That started to change in the early 40s as the Production Code was (in practice if not in theory) loosened a little, which made film noir possible. But in 1936 movies had to tread very very carefully indeed. And this is not just the story of a prostitute - it’s a very sympathetic story of a prostitute.

This movie solves the problem quite skilfully. It makes it very obvious that the heroine, Marguerite Gautier (Garbo), is a courtesan without ever coming right out and saying it. It relies on hints and on little exchanges that might be interpreted in an innocent way but are in fact clear indications of the way in which she makes her living. She is obviously being kept by the rich Baron de Varville (Henry Daniell). We even see an exchange of money. At one point the Baron gives her a very large sum of money, to spend on whatever takes her fancy. It is impossible to imagine a respectable woman accepting such a large cash gift. The only plausible explanation is that he is paying her for her services.

Marguerite exists in the demi-monde, the half-world of very expensive whores. She mixes with very rich men of the highest social class but her friends are clearly not the least bit respectable.

Armand is not a child. He is not at all concerned about Marguerite’s profession. All he knows is that he loves her.

Garbo is in fine form as a woman constantly veering between exaggerated gaiety and despair, between sincerity and frivolity, a woman who is reluctant to admit that she has fallen in love. Perhaps she is attracted by the prospect of emotional security but she is equally attracted by the frenetic pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure allows her to stop worrying about her health. Perhaps she would like to be respectable, but she doesn’t have a great deal of fondness for respectable people. It’s a complex role which Garbo carries off with ease.

Robert Taylor in the 1930s was generally dismissed as a mere pretty boy. As his matinee idol looks became more weather-beaten in the late 1940s his acting ability really began to blossom. He’s quite solid in Camille but he’s obviously still a bit tentative.

I have never liked Lionel Barrymore as an actor and I’m afraid I don’t like him here. Of course the character he’s playing is a loathsome self-righteous prig and that was something that Barrymore could do.

Henry Daniell as the Baron de Varville is superb. He gives the characters some depth. The Baron is selfish and arrogant and cynical but is able to regard himself, and life in general, with a certain amusement. He’s a rogue but we can’t help liking him for his lack of moralism and hypocrisy.

Marguerite and Armand are fated to misunderstand each. Marguerite does tell lies. That’s part of her profession. A whore is used to telling men what they want to hear. But when Marguerite does tell the truth Armand doesn’t believe her. They don’t really understand how much they love each other, and there is always the money problem. Armand does not have enough money to flout the social conventions. It’s an insanely romantic tale. Highly recommended.

I also highly recommend the visually stunning 1921 silent version, as well as the novel.

King of the Rocket Men (1949), The Rocketer (1991)

King of the Rocket Men is a 1949 Republic serial that mixes crime and science fiction. 

There are those who consider it to be the last great Republic serial.

The hero battles a crime lord, with the aid of a rocket suit. It's a lot of fun.

My full review can be found at Cult Movie Reviews.

And for an equally enjoyable later rocket man movie, The Rocketeer (1991) is highly recommended.

Sierra (1950)

Sierra is an early (1950) Audie Murphy western. I’ve become a rather obsessive Audie Murphy fan. I’ve now seen seven of his westerns. They’re all enjoyable and a couple of them, in my opinion, rank among the very best westerns of the classic western era.

Sierra begins with a cute but headstrong girl, Riley Martin (Wanda Hendrix), causing a major headache for Ring Hassard (Audie Murphy) and his dad Jeff (Dean Jagger). They live in a shack way up in the mountains. No-one knows they’re there. That’s how they want to keep things. They have a good reason. They need to avoid the law. Years earlier Jeff Hazzard was accused of murder. He always proclaimed his innocence but he couldn’t prove it.

Now Riley Martin knows about them. She could talk. She promises she won’t. They trust her. They have to. They can’t kill her. They’re outsiders but they’re nice guys.

There’s another problem. Riley also, quite inadvertently, brought about an accident in which Jeff was so seriously injured that his life in danger. That means they’ll need to get a doctor up there. Then everyone will know that they’ve been living in the mountains and the sheriff will send a posse.

In the midst of all these dramas Ring shoots Riley. He had to. It was for her own good. She’d been bitten by a rattlesnake. You can learn fascinating things by watching movies. Apparently you can eliminate rattlesnake venom by shooting the person in the infected area. It’s something worth remembering.

Of course this attracts more attention.

Jeff and Ring have an obsession. It’s an enormous herd of wild horses. No-one believes the herd exists but they’ve seen it. They aim to round up that herd one day. Then they’ll have the money to buy the ranch they always wanted.

So Ring (with help from some other semi-outlaws) is trying to round up the mustang herd whilst keeping a step ahead of the posse. And he’s made a couple of other very dangerous enemies as well, and they’re also gunning for him. He has a lot on his plate.

Of course Riley has fallen for Ring. A girl always feel closer to a guy after he’s shot her. And he has the glamour of being a sexy outsider rebel with a sensitive side. How could she resist him? Ring thinks Riley is pretty special as well.

It’s a fairly routine but serviceable western plot and a bit on the contrived side. You can see the crucial plot twist coming up a mile away.


The biggest problem is Burl Ives. He plays Jeff Hazzard’s wise old buddy Lonesome. Lonesome is a sort of comic relief character and he’s already irritating enough and he starts to sing. And he just keeps on singing. I guess this is supposed to add a folksy warm-hearted touch but I just wanted someone to fill Lonesome full of lead.

On the plus side it’s a Universal International 1950s western in Technicolor and they always looked nice. This one has cinematography by Russell Metty so it looks very nice indeed.

And it has Audie Murphy. This was the kind of role he handled with erase - a quiet self-effacing nice guy but you can tell that underneath the mild exterior there’s real grit and a stubborn obsessiveness. Added to which Murphy had charm and charisma.

Wanda Hendrix makes a fairly likeable Feisty Heroine. Riley has had a fancy big city education but she was born on the frontier and was one of those girls who learned to ride before she learned to walk.

Look out for Tony Curtis in a bit part.

Sierra is nothing special but it’s enjoyable and it’s recommended. It's included in the second of Kino Lorber's Audie Murphy Blu-Ray boxed sets.

Over the course of the 1950s Audie Murphy’s westerns just got better and better and towards the close of the decade he made the excellent Hell Bent for Leather (1960) and the absolutely magnificent No Name on the Bullet (1959).