The Desperate Trail. P.J. Pesce. 1995. ⚂

This movie was part of a quite interesting box set of Western movies:

Etc.

It’s probably the most obscure film on the set… and it’s a made-for-TV movie, which is why I haven’t seen it yet. But the other day, I watched Lost Boys: The Tribe, which is by the same director, so I thought “what the hey”…

And hey’s for horses, so here we are.

[ten minutes pass]

Hey! This is a lot of fun! It’s one of those “revisionist westerns”, which shouldn’t surprise me in this box set. It’s really cheaply made, but Pesce tries his best to make everything look all Peckinpah… and mostly failing, because you can’t do that on a made-for-TV movie: The aesthetics are completely different.

But the plot has taken some really fun swerves already, and the actors seem like they’re enjoying themselves, which always helps. Sam Elliott, of course, but Linda Fiorentino’s the most fun to watch so far.

[twenty minutes pass]

It’s… it’s got problems. Everything’s so dark. I mean, visually. Whenever they’re inside, the colour gamut goes from “dark brown” to “very dark brown”, making it hard to tell what’s even going on. Was Pesce trying to film this with natural lighting only or something?

Storywise, it turns out the happy-go-lucky outlaws kinda trigger-happy, which makes it less of a “yeee-haw!” and more “yeee… uhm… uhm… did she just kill five innocent bystanders and then we went to the next scene?” It seemed like they were setting up a fun, fantasy Western land with modern make-up and hair care and morals, and then it turned towards nihilism. (On the other hand, I may have misinterpreted what was happening in that saloon… so brown and dark…)

[twenty minutes pass]

This movie hit a brick wall once they went to the guy’s farm. Instead of fun pulp, we get deep character development.

Nobody wants that.

[twenty minutes pass]

I’m so bored now. Fiorentino is still fun, though.

[the end]

The movie never really recuperated from the descent into character development. There’s some good scenes here and there, and it tries so hard to make us feel the insanity of it all (the deranged lawman and the rest), but it’s just badly paced. There’s the nugget of a really special movie in here, but the pacing is so bad.

But I can totally see why they included this on this box set (besides being a “new” movie, and probably very cheap): It does enter into a dialogue with previous western classics.

Easy to Wed. Edward Buzzell. 1946. ⚂

Oh! This is a remake of Libeled Lady from 1936, which I saw the other er month.

The William Powell role played by er Van Johnson… But the Jean Harlow role is done by Lucille Ball! And there’s Esther Williams!

[fifteen minutes pass]

Oh deer. Van Johnson is no William Powell. Instead of being a fun raconteur, he’s a smarmy and somewhat creepy generic guy. Johnson has apparently done more than 70 films, and I don’t remember him in any of them.

[fifteen minutes pass]

It’s weird watching this, having seen the original just a month ago. It’s like I’m watching these scenes and I’m going “yes, that’s a more economical way of doing that scene”? Everything is like more streamlined? But it’s not Myrna Loy and William Powell, so everything is less fun?

It’s just an odd experience. I think if I hadn’t watched the original version, I’d enjoy this more, but I’m not sure. Van Johnson is a black hole of charisma: I can see what he’s trying to do, but I just wish he’d go away.

Which isn’t the response you want from a leading man in a romantic screwball comedy.

It’s like all the comedy timing is slower and less witty, even if they’re doing the same lines. I guess that’s the difference between the 30s and the 40s. The gags slowed down a lot…

[fifteen minutes pass]

I just don’t quite get why this movie was made. Libeled Lady was made ten years earlier, and was a huge success, and was a movie everybody surely had seen. So why make a version that everybody watching it would be disappointed by? I mean, it’s not even a cheap movie — the budget is substantial, so making money off of this isn’t a no-brainer? If this had been a no-budged knock-off, it’d be more understandable…

[more time passes]

This version is longer than the original for no good reason. There’s scenes here that just linger without anything of interest happening.

This is just a sad movie. Esther Williams is fun, and Lucille Ball is Lucille Ball, but the rest of them are sheer tedium.

This version seems more sadistic towards the “other wife” character than the first version.

[the end]

But the organ scene was fun.

I was going to ⚁ this movie, but the musical number upped it to ⚂.

News From Home. Chantal Akerman. 1976. ⚅

This is from Criteron’s Eclipse series of releases. I think they brand it as “hard-to-find art movies”, but it’s really their budget line of releases: It’s boxes of unrestored movies that they expect won’t sell much.

And that’s fine! I’d rather have a box unrestored Chantal Akerman movies than no Chantal Akerman movies.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, is, of course, one of the best movies ever made, but I haven’t seen any of her other movies. So I’m all excited!

Especially after having just seen eight Fast & Furious movies.

[twenty minutes pass]

I love this.

It’s basically just long uninterrupted shots of New York streets and stuff, with a voice-over reading the letters from a mother to a daughter who’s moved to New York. (We only get one side of the conversation.)

It’s so minimal, it shouldn’t work, and yet it’s absolutely fascinating and thrilling.

Of course, one part of the fascination is just being able to watch New York in 1972 in this unhurried way. It’s a city of romance… and not in the romantic way.

[forty minutes pass]

Oh, I’d so love to see a 2K restoration of this. I’m guessing it was filmed on 16mm? So there’d be so much more detail than on this indifferent DVD transfer. The New York Chamber of Commerce (or somebody) could finance it! Who wouldn’t want to watch ninety minutes of gorgeous footage of Manhattan in 1972?

OK, my enthusiasm with this film may be due to how much I love being in New York, but… I don’t think so? It’s just so… it’s… it’s just to *there*. This is what we want, this is what we get. It’s just so… present. I love all the awkward reactions from the people when they see there’s a camera there. And the colours. And how everything is different, but the same.

And the sort of narrative being slowly weaved by the letters from home.

[the end]

I you had set out to engineer a movie I would adore, it’d basically be this movie. I absolutely totally love this: It’s pure genius, I think. (Mind you, I’m really drunk as I’m watching/writing this.) It’s just so amazing… all these long, long takes of Manhattan, somehow imbuing everything with significance…

AKERMAN IS TEH FAB!