What classics did you see last week, Mar 21 to Mar 27?

Coup De Torchon (Clean Slate) / Bertrand Tavernier (1981). This is an engrossing, funny, shocking and suspenseful adaptation of a hard-boiled thriller by Jim Thompson (1906-1977). It has been reset from small-town America in the early 1950s to French West Africa (today’s Senegal) in 1938, just before the start of WWII – and the time and location switch works. It is not as wild as it first seems. The “brink of war” undercurrent gives the story an additional layer of texture. Lucien Cordier (Philippe Noiret) is a mild mannered police officer in a small village. His hardest job is avoiding any of the duties of policing. The pimps in charge of the local whorehouse routinely mock and humiliate him in public, a local drunk beats his wife in the street while Noiret pretends not to hear, his wife and the man she says is her brother carry on an open affair and his superiors show a complete lack of respect for him. Even though he remains cheerful and meek on the surface, as the story unfolds, his limitless despair and rage is gradually revealed as he finally takes action against his tormenters. The film also benefits from two fine female actors. Isabelle Huppert is the abused woman (and Cordier’s lover - he shows up after the abuse to comfort her). Stéphane Audran (the title role in “Babette’s Feast”) is Cordier’s wife.






Lat Sau San Taam (Hard Boiled) / John Woo (1992). John Woo created a new kind of action movie for the Hong Kong film industry. Departing from the kung-fu/swordplay action to gun violence, he introduced what came to be known as gun-fu. All of the Woo films, beginning with “A Better Tomorrow” (1986), starred Chow Yun-fat. “Hard Boiled” was the last of the bunch before Woo decamped for Hollywood. Chow plays police inspector “Tequila” Yuen who is on the trail of illegal gun traders. The action begins early with a lengthy shoot-out in a crowed lunch-time restaurant with a considerable number of staff and customers being killed as cops and crooks exchange hundreds of rounds. But that is nothing compared to the extended finale where the criminal gang takes over a hospital. The collateral damage is tremendous as doctors, nurses, cops, and patients are gunned down by the dozens, maybe the hundreds. It is pretty distasteful. Also co-starring Tony Chiu-Wai Leung and Anthony Wong. Gun-fu came to the United States almost immediately. Any film featuring lots of shooting and high body count is showing the influence of John Woo. The John Wick Trio and Bresson's "Anna" are full-blown gun-fu movies in the Woo style.






Coneheads / Steve Barron (1993). One of the few (only two? The other being “Wayne’s World”?) feature films derived from a Saturday Night Live sketch to be a success (instead of a dreary failure). When Beldar and Prymaat Conehead (Dan Aykryod and Jane Curtain) from the plant Remulac crash into liquid hydrogen upon arriving on Earth, they lose everything so are unable to fulfil their mission to subjugate the humans. They decide to blend in and wait for rescue. This they can do by saying “We are from France” whenever anyone questions their cone-shaped heads or mechanical voices or their strange use of the English language (they call eating meals “consumption of mass quantities” or, telling people posing for a photo to “Say ‘lactate extract of hoofed mammal’”). The laughs come thick and fast – although a brief return to Remulac ward the end is not very productive, comically speaking. Needless to say, Aykroyd and Curtain are hilarious as is Michael McKean and David Spade as a couple of over-enthusiastic immigration officers and Chris Farley as the Earth boyfriend that the Conehead’s Earth-raised daughter is in love with.






CSA: The Confederate States Of America / Todd Willmott (2004). Willmott has produced a fake documentary in the Ken Burns style. The announcer at the beginning assures us that we will be seeing it uncut. We also see commercials and promos for upcoming programs. The premise is that during the American Civil War, the South got recognition and support from Britain and France. The introduction of troops from those countries against the United States at the Battle of Gettysburg set the Union forces to rout. The Confederate army moved on to Washington and the resulting rampage laid waste to the big cities of the North. Now, a British Television production company has produced this documentary of the history of the Confederate States Of America – and the history of slavery - from their victory in Northern War Of Aggression (as it came to be known) until the 21st century. Willmott’s well thought out alternate history gives us plenty of room for discussion and is often extremely funny. This may be the movie to show us how far race relations have (and haven’t) progressed in the last century and a half.





Julius Caesar / Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2017). Video of a live performance from Ashland, Oregon.