Odd Couple | Bo Ming Chan Dao Duo Ming Qiang (1979)

DIRECTOR: Lau Kar-Wing
PRODUCER: Karl Maka
CAST: Sammo Hung, Lau Kar-Wing, Mars, Dean Shek, Leung Kar Yan
COUNTRY: Hong Kong
GENRE: Martial arts, comedy
MISCELLANY: 97m; Cantonese, with subtitles

Which is mightier, the spear or the sword? Two aging masters, of the sword and of the spear, attempt to answer that question, meeting yearly to duel — and possibly to enjoy each other's company, although they would never admit it. Their matches always end in a draw, so they adopt students, passing the rivalry to another generation.

Fans of kung fu comedy won't be disappointed by "Odd Couple," which is packed with the right ingredients.

• Creative gags spoofing the kung fu genre. In one scene, Fatty Ah Yo defeats a sword with magnets. In another, he dispatches of a couple of bad characters who were trained in the Peking Opera, the clash punctuated by crashing cymbals and gongs.

• Flamboyant villains. How about the lecherous Mr. Rocking, who flags his archetype by holding a fan and lounging on a palanquin, and when he deigns to walk, stalks women to his own theme music — a cheesy, synthesized beat?

• Characters with outrageous hairstyles and funny nicknames. Potato, the obligatory servant with exaggerated buck teeth, has one of my favorite haircuts, a mullet crossed with a mohawk gone awry.

• Gross-out humor. One gag has Potato, who is tailing Stubborn Wing, pretending to piss every time his target turns around. Another makes for the sickest egg scene since "Cool Hand Luke."

• Asshole masters. The King of the Sword is the kind of guy who saves your life then burns down your house, laughing his ass off as you try to put the fire out.

• Misleading subtitles. As Stubborn Wing's house burns, the King of the Sword says something to the effect of "What a sweat house you have now!", making me wonder, was there a bad pun in the original Cantonese?

"Odd Couple" was directed by Lau Kar-Wing, who also stars as the King of the Spear and as Stubborn Wing, the King of the Sword's pupil. Co-starring is Sammo Hung, who played two roles as well, the King of the Sword and Fatty Ah Yo, the King of the Spear's disciple.

The movie is preceded by a short lesson in the 18 weapons of kung fu, which focuses on the advantages of the sabre vs. the spear.

The film's ever-inventive fight scenes and breathless, entertaining pace betray the influence of Hung, the legendary choreographer, director, actor and producer whose films display contradictory impulses, celebrating and subverting Confucianism. Rooted in Chinese traditions but grounded in the Hong Kong streets, his cinema refuses to take itself seriously but demands to be taken seriously, on the merits of its martial arts mastery alone. The slightly rotund Hung cuts an unlikely figure for an action film star but uses it to his advantage, milking his physique for laughs while wowing us with his agility.
— Becky

Jennifer Jones dies at age 90
• Los Angeles Times obituary. • New York Times obituary. • Washington Post obituary.

My 5 favorite Jennifer Jones films:

• Portrait of Jennie. One of Bunuel's favorite movies.

• Beat the Devil. Huston's "Maltese Falcon" spoof.

• Terminal Station. De Sica's cut of "Indiscretions of an American Wife."

• Cluny Brown. Last film Lubitsch completed.

• Gone to Earth. Powell and Pressburger's cut of "The Wild Heart."

— Becky

The Iron-Fisted Monk |
San De Huo Shang Yu Chong Mi Liu (1977)

DIRECTOR: Sammo Hung
WRITER: Sammo Hung, Chen Sing, James Tien
CAST: Sammo Hung, Huang Feng, Yu Ting
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Lee Yao-Ting
COUNTRY: Hong Kong
GENRE: Martial arts
MISCELLANY: 92m; Cantonese, with subtitles

Husker favors dog meat, liquor and prostitutes, plays pranks on his Shaolin classmates, picks fights with his master, and flavors his technique with slapstick. When he tires of the monks declaring him unready to take revenge on the Manchu gangsters who killed his uncle, he walks out of the temple.

Husker's irreverence is sacrilegious in kung fu cinema, where the master is always right and patience and humility are revered.

As expected, Husker's rebellion draws reprisals from his teachers, but in a twist, their punishment hardly matters. The student's impatience proves warranted: The Manchus are terrorizing the village, and the imperative to stop them makes the stonewalling protocol of the monks seem petty. After all, there comes a time in every martial arts movie when reflection gives way to action, when the restraint carefully cultivated in the kung fu disciple is put to the test. Otherwise, what would be the point of the film? "Iron-Fisted Monk" challenges the presumption that restraint before violence is virtuous. Several times in the film, it's fatal.

Yet the tenet of kung fu cinema that the wise disciple exhausts all other options before resorting to violence cannot be totally discarded, even here. It is a principle that ensures the villains in these films will be most vile. That's certainly true of the corrupt Manchus of "The Iron-Fisted Monk." The film strikes an uneasy balance between brutality and comedy. A graphic gang rape scene, for example, manages to pity the victim while taking juvenile swipes at the predators. The pure evil expressed by the Manchus darkens the comedy yet preserves the comic character of the film by drawing a bold line between viewer and villain, allowing us to savor the payback.

"Iron-Fisted Monk" is the directing debut of renowned choreographer Sammo Hung, who also played Husker and had a hand in writing the script and creating the menagerie of moves. Mixed in with the tiger, eagle, snake, crane and mantis forms is plenty of horseplay, all sped up in the furious showdown, which includes a sequence that must have inspired the "Kill Bill" ball-and-chain match.

The rich color film survives in fairly clean shape; stubborn specks only lend period authenticity. The subtitles seem to correspond with the action, mostly. The occasional mangled joke and slang are to be expected, perhaps even desired as a reminder of all the work that went into bringing this piece of Hong Kong cinema history to your home.
— Becky

The Devil Strikes at Night |
Nachts, Wenn Der Teufel Kam (1957)

DIRECTOR: Robert Siodmak
WRITER: Werner Jorg Luuddecke
CAST: Claus Holm, Annemarie Duringer, Mario Adorf
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Georg Krause
COUNTRY: Germany
GENRE: Drama
MISCELLANY: 105m; bw; German, with subtitles

The homicide bureau of the Berlin Police Department under normal circumstances would not be considered a "cozy corner," but it's the waning days of World War II with thousands dying on the front lines every day, and inspector Axel Kersten hopes a post investigating civilian killings will allow him to fly under the Nazis' radar until the war "blows over."

Not even 10 minutes on the job, however, any hopes of retreat are shot down when a Gestapo officer bursts in, demanding leniency for an SS member charged with murder. Upon noticing Kersten, the Nazi instructs him to remain seated. "I didn't intend to get up," Kersten responds. We see it is unlikely Kersten will avoid Nazis, or keep a low profile.

When Kersten is insolent to Nazis, we admire him, but let's be candid: He is Hitler's begrudging accomplice — as a decorated veteran who was wounded fighting Russians on the eastern front, and as a cynical, war-weary civilian who stifles dissent for practical reasons. Even though he barely conceals his distaste for Nazi policies, he is complicit.

If murder investigations do not provide the relative peace and quiet Kersten seeks after fighting a war he opposes ideologically, he at least swears to mind his own business, settling into a routine, scaring up the rare pleasures to be had amid the air raids, and courting a file clerk.

The illusion of peace is shattered when he suspects a man is about to be executed for a murder committed by a serial killer. Violating his "philosophy" of minding his own business, he digs deeper, learning the killer is a physically imposing but mentally retarded man named Bruno, whose senseless destruction mirrors his government's.

Based on an actual serial killer, Bruno's portrait is chilling — especially in a bloodless but brutal scene with an unsuspecting Jewish woman who appeals to him for help. Yet the real horror story is the Nazis' handling of the case.

When director Robert Siodmak fled the Nazis, he brought to Hollywood the Expressionistic filmmaking style of his homeland in noirs such as "Phantom Lady," "Criss-Cross," "The Spiral Staircase" and "The Killers." After World War II, he returned to Europe, undoubtedly transformed by his experiences in America. Perhaps this can account for the peculiar mood of "The Devil Strikes at Night," a story that manages to express both optimism and disillusionment.
— Becky

Science is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painleve
I often say Jacques Cousteau when I mean to say Jean Cocteau. Making matters more confusing is the missing link between them — French marine biologist Jean Painleve — whose underwater cinema predates Cousteau's by decades and, whose body of work, like Cocteau's, is dedicated to exploring life on "the other side." Except that Cocteau entered mysterious realms in his films through mirrors, telephones and radios; Painleve, through the sea and micro-photography.

Painleve pioneered, not only wildlife films, but popular wildlife films. A good example is his entertaining movie about crustaceans, photographed in studio-bright black-and-white, one of 23 included in the recently released, three-disc Criterion set "Science is Fiction." We watch the intrigues of sea creatures who disguise themselves in algae and sponges, as the narrator enthusiastically mixes fact with poetic observation — comparing the crustaceans to ballerinas, "Japanese warriors" and "praying buddhas."

Anthropomorphism dominates, but Painleve also focuses on traits that set his subjects apart. Among sea horses, for example, it is the female who produces the eggs and the male who gives birth. Painleve spent sleepless nights behind the camera, even installing an electrical shock mechanism on his hat should he nod off while waiting for one pregnant papa to pop. The footage of baby sea horses bursting out of the convulsing male's pouch was worth the wait: "The Sea Horse" (1933) was Painleve's most popular movie; he even spun off a jewelry line.

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“The sea horse was for me a splendid way of promoting the kindness and virtue of the father while at the same time underlining the necessity of the mother. In other words, I wanted to re-establish the balance between male and female.”— Jean Painleve

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The care Painleve took in choosing music for his films also was ahead of its time. He had Darius Milhaud score "The Sea Horse"; Painleve wrote his own music for "Sea Urchins" (1954), a symphony of banging pots and pans in tribute, he said, to Edgar Varese but with a mambo bar thrown in "so as not to be taken too seriously"; and "The Vampire" (1945) is set to a couple of Duke Ellington songs.





"The Vampire" is classic Painleve in the way it fixes on an odd attribute of an exotic animal — the vampire bat's affinity for the blood of other animals — and draws out a comparison to humans. “When I was finishing the film," Painleve said, "I noticed how the vampire bat extends its wing before going to sleep. I thought it looked like the Nazi heil-Hitler salute.” Painleve also taps fictional cinema here, coupling footage of the vampire bat with scenes from "Nosferatu."

It was that penchant for playful presentation, and fetishism of the bizarre, that sent some of Painleve's fellow scientists storming out of his screenings, denying the validity of his work. But Painleve, like his subjects, was a strange breed. He was a scientist crossed with an artist.
— Becky