This woman just wants to get drunk

Every once in awhile you come across a film so different you think why can’t more filmmakers make movies like this, or take risks, or come up with totally innovative concepts that show how an art form can be stretched and re-interpreted. It’s like painting. At one time there were just pastoral landscapes and representative portraits. Then Picasso came along and overturned our pre-conceived notions of art. Well, German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger does the same with her films. Criterion Channel has released a slate of her films this month and the first I watched, Ticket of No Return (1979), is a stunner. The movie stars Tabea Blumenschein as a woman who travels to Berlin (I love the old Pan Am airline insignia). She’s all high fashion, with couture brightly colored coats, hats, dresses and heels (even in bed). But we don’t know who this woman is, and she doesn’t say a word throughout. Instead, she proceeds to where she can get her hands on the first alcoholic beverage in sight. From there it’s a non-stop, well, pub crawl, throughout the then divided city, though she remains on the western side of The Wall, which in a couple of scenes we catch glimpses of. Our woman wants to drink and drink. No alcohol is too much whether it’s beer, wine or hard liquor – alcohol is alcohol, right? It’s an insane premise and may seem absurd – well, it is absurd. But this entire plot, if you can call it that, works. Blumenschein’s stark mannerisms and at times unpredictable behavior, like where she throws a tantrum in a café, have you glued. Meanwhile, she’s repeatedly followed by three uniformly equally high fashion but strait-laced “schoolmarm” women who comment on her every move both analytically and censorially. “Women are more prone to become alcoholics than men” and after the tantrum, “Disgusting, women getting drunk in public.” A film with also some social comment (women's behavior objectified and same sex fulfillment), it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, er alcohol, but I found it absolutely exhilarating.

More recently-watched films:

Foreign Intrigue (Sheldon Reynolds 1956) starring Robert Mitchum, a film noir spy thriller set in post-war Vienna. A little stilted.

Party Girl (Nicholas Ray 1958) Great close-up of Cyd Charisse’s acting prowess as a principled woman holding her own among Chicago mobsters.

Pal Joey (George Sidney 1957) The quintessential Frank Sinatra vehicle as an unscrupulous nightclub performer squeezed between two women - Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak.

Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang 1957). A surprisingly despondent Edgar G. Robinson plays a subservient amateur artist put upon by all those in his life, and he pays the price.

The River’s Edge (Allan Dwan 1957). Tough guys Ray Milland and Anthony Quinn duke it out over, who else, a beauty played by Debra Paget in this modern-day desert western.

Film clips

Watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks 1953) and the ditzy character Lorelei Lee played by Marilyn Monroe with her absurdist lines (“I won't let myself fall in love with a man who won't trust me, no matter what I might do.”) I started wondering if this character was the source of the forevermore ubiquitous “dumb blonde” jokes. 

Watching British actor Ronald Coleman in Random Harvest  (Mervyn LeRoy 1942) about a war veteran suffering amnesia, Coleman is the quintessential sophisticated debonair male. Mustached and his hair swept back he epitomizes a certain mid-century – indeed classic – masculine persona, whether dressed in rugged field jacket or in a tuxedo – with qualities of handsomeness, charm and integrity.

Everyone laughs at the line from The Graduate (Mike Nichols 1967) where the recently graduated – and alienated - Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is given advice about career choices from his family neighbor, Mr. McGuire. “I want to say one word to you. Just one word…. Plastics.” Of course, the comment was a big put down of the modern plastics industry. But it wasn’t the first-time plastics was ridiculed by Hollywood, as many think. The execrable character Helen Jorgenson (Constance Ford) in A Summer Place (Delmer Daves 1959) has just bought a plastic Christmas tree – of course. “This should last 10 years, it’s solid plastic,” she boasts. The tree shortly after is knocked down when Helen slaps daughter Molly (Sandra Dee) for meeting her boyfriend (Troy Donahue) illicitly. The camera zooms in on the broken down forlorn looking tree. So much for durability.

If you want to see a consummate film, watch The Entertainer (Tony Richardson 1960), featuring one of Britain’s all-time greatest actors Laurence Olivier as a third-rate music hall vaudevillian who is past his prime. Richardson puts on a master class performance as Archie Rice, who is at turns charismatic, volatile, sensitive and scurrilous. You can't take your eyes off him.

I finally got to see Eating Raoul (Paul Bartel 1982), a black comedy starring Bartel and the famous underground film cult actress Mary Woronov. They play a Los Angeles couple trying to lead a decent life amidst the debauched moral decline of southern California, with cheap and exploitative sex all around them. Trying to raise money to open a restaurant, they latch onto an idea of .... murdering swingers. Bartel is almost identical looking to contemporary actor Paul Giametti, complete with bald head and beard. Woronov was a mainstay of Andy Warhol’s films including in his famous 1966 Chelsea Girls. 

And, recently in Salzburg, Austria and unbeknownst to me, I had booked into a hotel that had one of Europe’s oldest movie theatres. This was the Mozartkino (Mozart Cinema) in the Altstadthotel Kasererbräu in the city’s old town, close to the famous castle. Opened in 1905 and circular in design it’s actually one of the oldest theatres in the world (photo above). And every night it features a different currently-released film. During our single night stay in May, Downton Abbey: A New Era (Simon Curtis) was screening. “That’s great!” said my partner, a huge Downton Abbey fan. Only problem: it was dubbed in German. English films in German-speaking countries are overwhelmingly dubbed, not given sub-titles. Presumably this keeps the large film dubbing industry alive.