[07] What we had for dinner

[07] Don’t Look Now

Choice Cuts goes Goth, with a little bit of Poe, a little bit of du Maurier, and a hearty helping of Venetian cuisine.

Don’t Look Now

(UK/Italy/1973)

Directed by Nicolas Roeg 

With Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie

Presented by Alberto Zambenedetti

An Anglo-American couple travels in Venice, while the city is shaken by a mysterious series of murders. Possibly Nicolas Roeg’s finest directorial achievement, Don’t Look Now is not only a spine-chilling tale of the uncanny with paranormal overtones, but also a visual tour-de-force that both confounds and awes the spectator with its daring compositions, cuts, and color schemes.

Preceded by:

The Tell-Tale Heart

(USA/1941)

Directed by Jules Dassin

This first film of Jules Dassin (Rififi) is an expressionistic take on the Edgar Allan Poe classic short story. The camera moves dynamically around a small space deftly putting the audience in the quaking boots of the terrified young man.

***

Menu:
Hearts on toast
Baccalà mantecato con polenta (creamed salt cod)
Sarde in saor (marinated sardines)
Bigoli in salsa (wheat spaghetti with anchovy sauce)
Radicchio al forno
Fritole (Carnevale doughnuts)

[06] What we had for dinner

[06] Abouna

(Chad/2002)

Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

When they awake one morning to find their father gone, two young brothers wander the cinemas, soccer fields, and countrysides of their native Chad while trying to rebuild their ruptured family life. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s playful – yet remarkably unsentimental – portrayal of childhood camaraderie, familial perseverance, and teen romance is a gem of recent African cinema from Chad’s most prominent filmmaker.

Guest curated by David J. Reilly

Preceded by:

B 400

(Chad/1997)

Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

3 min.

A prank strands a girl outside her apartment building…can she get back in?

***

Menu:
Millet fritters
Seafood gumbo
Rice and peas
Date cake with roasted banana ice cream

[05] What we had for dinner

[05] Build my gallows high, baby

Out of the Past (1947)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

With Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas

The story goes that Robert Mitchum once told Roger Ebert he didn’t think he’d ever actually seen Out of the Past. Too bad for him. (Although, he did have an image to uphold, and publically opining on his own work certainly wouldn’t have jived with that tough-guy persona.) If this claim is true, he never got to see how one of the most convoluted plots since the Bible and before Babel, got turned into one of the definitive film noirs. According to critic Jeff Schwager, who read every known version of Out of the Past’s screenplay for a 1990 Film Comment article, uncredited scribe Frank Fenton is responsible for the the alchemy that turned Daniel Mainwaring’s novel into the endlessly quotable mile-a-minute dialogue that makes you forget about the expository curlicues and narrative cul-de-sacs into which the plot veers.

Jacques Tourneur takes Fenton’s crackerjack words, puts them in Mitchum’s mouth, never without dangling cigarette, and directs the hell outta him. He guides the stoic star to deliver voice-overs – very rarely modulating his register, yet ever so subtly shifting his intentions mid-sentence – and some of the most biting zingers to darken the door of a movie theater. For instance, after Mitchum and Kirk Douglas had one of their famous vitriol-filled dimpled-chin-offs, the traffic-and-men-that-should-know-better-stopping Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) confesses to a skeptical Mitchum that she was sorry that her then-ex-lover Douglas didn’t die. Mitchum responds cooly, “Give him time.”

To the film’s benefit, Tourneur does more than focus on the dialogue. He fills the frame with lush black-and-white artistry (and, unfortunately, sometimes with oppressively wall-to-wall musical cues). The camera elegantly moves away from two characters exchanging a kiss, e.g., to a sweeping tropical storm outside, signifying the sensuousness of their affair as much as implying the threat of their pursuers.

It’s unfortunate that film noir has become a relic of Hollywood filmmaking, as it is one of the richest genres, providing audiences not only with bile-filled dialogue and bullet-riddled bodies, but with some of the more nuanced characters and relationships and expressive cinematography in any genre. It is fortunate, however, that Out of the Past remains in high regard as one of its beacons. Much like Mitchum’s hard-edged private eye, Jeff Bailey, it stubbornly refuses to fade into the past.

Kathie Moffat: Oh, Jeff, I don’t want to die!

Jeff Bailey: Neither do I, baby, but if I have to, I’m gonna die last.

[05] Out of the Past

(USA/1947)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

A MAN trying to run away from his past… A WOMAN trying to escape her future!

Small-town gas station attendent (Robert Mitchum) may be done with his
past but his past isn’t done with him, when his former hard-boiled
life as a private-eye catches up with him. Film noir at its finest.

* * *
Menu: Summertime, and the Living Is Tasty

the hard-boiled (deviled eggs)
the corny (chowder)
the diner pie (chicken pot)
the color of ___ (green bean salad)
the unexpected (pavlova)

[04] What we had for dinner

[04] cin cin

Withnail & I (1987)

Directed by Bruce Robinson

With Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths

The following platitude gets made often. Too often, in fact. But I believe it accurately applies in this case. There is nothing quite like Withnail & I.

The film plays out in such a meandering manner that you are never really sure where it is headed (the characters rarely are, either). But by the end you see that it is perfectly bookended and follows a fairly linear path. In a way, it is the quintessential British buddy flick, replete with a weekend in the countryside, rain, pints of lager, ambiguously gay thespians who will never get to play the Dane, beef, more rain and Londoners concealing that they are from London. Plenty of films have attempted to recapture the sense of camaraderie that Withnail and Marwood have. The film’s presenter, Jeff Brown, noted the similarity to My Own Private Idaho, which is possibly the best likeness ever achieved. But the omnipresent rambling dialogue between Paul McGann and the inimitable Richard E. Grant is impossible to recreate.

A pall (and a whole lotta soggy cloud cover) hangs over all the drunken proceedings of Withnail & I. Much more so than I remember from previous viewings, which may only speak to my being sadder and wiser than before. (But then again, maybe not.) The consensus of this screening’s audience seemed to be that Robinson does indeed romanticize the filth that Withnail, Marwood, and those of their generation lived in. That being said, it seems to be one of the most salient arguments against the sustainability of such a lifestyle.

The film plays out like an elegy for a lost time. It is set in 1969. No longer the 60s. Not yet the 70s. Late in the film, Danny, ‘the headhunter’, one of the most 60s-centric characters ever created, raises a glass to ‘the greatest decade that ever was.’ Withnail & I offers a solemn goodbye to an era of debauchery, revelry, and irresponsibility. It is now also possible to watch the movie as an elegy for the 80s, the decade of the film’s creation, an era that was stuck somewhere in between disco and grunge. An era now just as bygone as the 60s.

[04] Withnail & I

(UK / 1987)
Directed by Bruce Robinson
Guest curator: Jeff Brown

Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical 1987 tale of two out-of-work actors who decide to escape the gloom of urban London for a getaway at Withnail’s Uncle Monty’s cottage in the rural countryside has emerged as one of the most lauded (and loved) English films of the past 25 years. Richard E. Grant’s dynamic portrayal of the iconic Withnail – an eccentric, borderline-alcoholic cynic, who uses a razor-sharp wit (and a steady ingestion of substances) to combat the doldrums of the world – stands steadily against straight-man Marwood (Paul McGann – the “I” of the title), largely based on writer/director Robinson. Add Richard Griffiths as the amorous Uncle Monty (who takes a particular liking to Marwood), and you have an idiosyncratically hilarious (and very English!) exploration of friendship, work, leisure, dreams, and rain.

Menu: A Proper Sunday Dinner

Bone marrow with parsley
Roast joint of beef
Yorkshire pudding
A couple of salads
Sticky toffee pudding