Ready to Wear/Prêt-à-Porter (1994) - The Paris fashion week through the Altman lens

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Danish supermodel Helene Christensen sells the film with her beauty but goes uncredited on this poster for Robert Altman's Ready to Wear

Fashion week in Paris: Kitty is a TV personality there to cover the stories: A hated fashion boss suffocates in a sandwich, - but the press screams that it must be murder. Meanwhile the shows take place, the magazine editors schmooze over an Irish photographer, and two foreigners share a room in an over-booked hotel.

 

Ready to Wear is written by Barbara Shulgasser and co-writer/producer/director, Missourian master filmmaker Robert Altman (The Delinquents (1957)), whose 29th feature it was. The North-American title is a literal translation of the French fashion term that was the title in most of the rest of the world.

Though widely discarded critically, this scathing Altman look at the fashion world is an urbane, bubbly, light dish filled with great clothes and beautiful people. There's fun with cinema icons Sophia Loren (Arabesque (1966)) and Marcello Mastroianni (8½ (1963)) among loads of other stuff in this star-stuffed film that features plenty of slaps and appropriately shallow cheek kisses to the fashion industry.

 

Related posts:

Robert Altman: The Company (2003) - Campbell, Turner and Altman's fine ballet picture  

Gosford Park (2001) - Smith triumphs in Altman & Fellowes' exquisite whodunit 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 18 mil. $

Box office: 46.8 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 2.6 times its cost)

[Ready to Wear premiered 23 December (New York) and runs 133 minutes. Altman had the idea for the film after attending a Sonia Rykiel fashion show in Paris in 1984 with his wife, commenting: "I couldn't believe what I saw. It was such a circus. It was just too theatrical not to want to film". Shooting took place from March - May 1994 in the US, Paris, France and in Moscow, Russia. The film opened #14 to a 2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked the following weekend at #13, grossing 11.3 mil. $ (24.1 % of the total gross). It was nominated for 2 Golden Globes and won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 2.5/4 star review, translating to a notch under this one. Altman returned with Kansas City (1996). Mastroianni returned in One Hundred and One Nights/Les Cent et Une Nuits de Simon Cinéma (1995); Loren in Grumpier Old Men (1995). Ready to Wear is rotten at 24 % with a 4.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Ready to Wear?

Dogville (2003) - Von Trier's implacable, truly unique drama

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+ Best Big Flop Movie of the Year + Best Danish Movie of the Year + Best Ensemble of the Year: Nicole Kidman, Ben Gazzara, James Caan, Lauren Bacall, Harriet Andersson, Chloë Sevigny, Patricia Clarkson, Paul Bettany, Stellen Skarsgård, Zeljko Ivanek + Best Epic of the Year + Best Experimental Movie of the Year

Nicole Kidman as Grace and the residents of Lars Von Trier's Dogville on its poster

QUICK REVIEW:

A lady in distress, on the run from mobsters, appears in the small Colorado mountain town of Dogville in America in the 1930s, where the town's aspiring writer Tom gets the townspeople to show mercy and take in the stranger.

Dogville is the 8th feature from Danish master filmmaker Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves (1996)), who both wrote and directed it. Half of the awe-inspiring work that is Dogville is Trier's disturbing script, (which Quentin Tarantino has said would have won the Pulitzer Prize, if it had been written for the stage instead of the screen), and the film's unique stage concept; the film takes place in a small town which is not physically created but merely marked by chalk lines on a dark stage. The other half is the combined force of an ensemble that could be among the decade's best:
Ben Gazzara (Anatomy of a Murder (1959)), Nicole Kidman (The Hours (2002)), James Caan (Misery (1990)), Lauren Bacall (The Big Sleep (1946)), Harriet Andersson (Cries & Whispers/Viskningar och Rop (1972)), Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don't Cry (1999)), Patricia Clarkson (Six Feet Under (2002-05)), Paul Bettany (The Tourist (2010)), Stellan Skarsgård (Breaking the Waves) and Zeljko Ivanek (Oz (1997-03)) are all simply grand.
The ending is strong and hard to come to terms with, which is not meant as a criticism.
The only reservation I do have regarding Dogville is that it has too much narration. For a film as long as this, it simply becomes too dense.

 Related reviews:

Lars Von Trier:  Nymphomaniac (2013) short version, vol. 1 & vol. 2, or, Lars Von Trier's Suck It Melancholia (2011) - Von Trier's heightened reality doomsday reflections 
Antichrist (2009) - Von Trier's cabin-in-the-woods psycho-horror 
The Boss of It All/Direktøren for det Hele (2006) - Von Trier's hilarious absurd comedy 
Dear Wendy (2005) - Vinterberg and Von Trier's unpopular, gun-themed megaflop (writer)  

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Dancer in the Dark (2000) or, Selma the Immigrant  

Lars Von Trier's Dogville as seen from above

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 10 mil. $
Box office: 16.6 mil. $
= Big flop
[Dogville premiered May 19 (Cannes) and runs 178 minutes. It is the first of a proposed America: Land of Opportunities trilogy, which also includes Manderlay (2005) and Washington, which hasn't been made. The film was shot digitally on a stage in Trollhättan, Sweden and was a co-production between no less than 9 European countries. Trier has since revealed that he wrote the script for Dogville in a 12 day drug binge, although the truthfulness of that statement shouldn't be taken for granted. More or less outrageous stories about the film's production abounds, and some can be read here. Dogville competed in Cannes but lost to Gus Van Sant's masterpiece Elephant. Dogville had a limited run in North America, where it opened #41 with 88k $ and grossed 1.5 mil. $ (9 % of the total gross). Its biggest markets were Italy with 3.2 mil. $ (19.3 %), France with 2.1 mil. $ (12.7 %) and Germany with 2 mil. $ (12 %). In Trier's native Denmark, the film made a fine 1.2 mil. $ (7.2 %). Mostly American critics were offended by the fact that the film is obviously made by a filmmaker who is critical of the US, but others have hailed it as a great film. It is included on several top 10 lists of the year, and several critics and filmmakers also believe it to be among the best films ever made. It was nominated for 4 European Film Awards, winning Best Cinematography for Anthony Dod Mantle. It won Best Danish Film at the Bodil Awards (Danish critics awards), and Best Costume Design and Screenplay at the Robert Awards (Danish Oscar). Dogville is fresh at 70 % with a 6.9 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Dogville?

Howl's Moving Castle/ハウルの動く城 (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro) (2004) - Miyazaki's hugely successful, highly strange fantasy

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This poster for Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle teases adventure and visually fantastic vistas of epic and wondrous scope

A girl working diligently in a hat shop gets transformed into an old woman by the Witch of the West and goes on an adventure in the search for a reversal of the curse, which brings her to a moving castle and many more fantastic things and characters.

Howl's Moving Castle is an adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' (Year of the Griffin (2000)) same-titled 1986 novel by Japanese master filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke (1997)), who has adapted and directed the film.
Miyazaki has stated that the film was profoundly impacted by the Iraq War (!), which is not something that is in any way noticeable. The film has many funny and lovely scenes and exchanges, and the character animation is delightful. Technically the animation is also incredible, full of wonders of detail, colors and movement. - The castle itself is amazing.

The story is fascinating to watch, but perhaps becomes too aloof in its unconventional strangeness at some point, at least for an audience member such as myself. Howl's Moving Castle is nevertheless a wondrous journey and a film that it is worth watching several times for its artistry and warm and strange originality.

Related posts:

Hayao Miyazaki: Top 10: Best fantasy movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

Spirited Away/千と千尋の神隠し (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) (2001) - Miyazaki's highly Japanese, enormously weird story of a girl

Watch the American trailer for the film here

Cost: 24 mil. $
Box office: 235 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Moving Castle was not supposed to be directed by Miyazaki, who had gone into early retirement at the time, but as the hired director jumped ship, he decided to step up. Upon release, it became a commercial and critical triumph as one of the highest grossing Japanese films ever made: The film made a stunning 190 mil. $ (81 % of the total gross) in its native Japan. In North America, Disney released the film in select cinemas with a star-studded American voice cast, and it grossed 4.7 mil. $ (2 %) there and got Oscar-nominated as Best Animation but lost to the great Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The film made many top 10 lists of its year, and stands at #141 on IMDb's Top 250. Roger Ebert called it one of Miyazaki's "weakest films" and gave it 2½ stars.]

What do you think of Howl's Moving Castle?

The Big Sleep (1946) - The sexiest noir carousel you will ever ride

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The beautiful, alluring original poster for Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep

Philip Marlowe, a Los Angeles-based private detective, gets hired by an old general to get to the bottom of an extortion affair, but the case proves complicated, and the general's two daughters do not exactly make the sailing smoother...

 
The Big Sleep is written by Leigh Brackett (Rio Lobo (1970)), William Faulkner (The Road to Glory (1936)) and Jules Furthman (Nightmare Alley (1947)), adapting the same-titled 1939 novel by Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister (1949)), and produced and directed directed by Indianan master filmmaker Howard Hawks (The Road to Glory (1926)), whose 28th feature it was.

It is a fantastic film noir, and for me a tad better than The Maltese Falcon (1941), the other classic noir which is always mentioned as one of the greatest ever. This is because The Big Sleep is more uncompromising in that it doesn't seem to alter its characters to suit any plot ends at all.
The film is dirty and full of murders and twists, - despite submitting to the rigid Hays Code censorship regime of the period, the sinful truths are palpable. The snappy, sexy dialogue is worth staying totally silent for for the entire playtime; the screenplay is very deftly constructed.
The film is infamously puzzling, with no real denouement, and one of the funny trivia about The Big Sleep relates to the original author, Chandler's equal confusion and ignorance as to any resolution to his story: About a wire query sent to him by the screenwriters about one of the intricate plot's ends, Chandler later confided to a friend: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either"

The central allure of the film, is, of course, its stars: Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)) and Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not (1944)) were growing flaming hot by the 1946 release of The Big Sleep, (a somewhat different version was released for troops only in 1945), both as a couple on- and off-screen. Perhaps the best movie star couple ever, they both exuded charisma, attraction and sex en masse, and sparks fly right and left when they take the screen in The Big Sleep together.
Cat-eyed Bacall, enormously feminine and somehow assertive and masculine at the same time, plays one of the deadliest femme fatales ever put on the silver screen in The Big Sleep, possibly the best film noir ever made. It is a film that simply reeks of SEX without having a single sex scene in it. A rare, electrifying film experience not to be missed.
The film noir genre label, by the way, was coined by French critics in love with the dark, American detective crime pictures of the 1940s and 50s, just as they were about to kick off their French New Wave with several films that were inspired by the anarchism, sex appeal and freshness of films like The Big Sleep. The 'film black' (a direct translation of film noir) are fatalistic, crime-focused, adult in themes and attraction and often have to do with double-crossing, murder and other evil deeds for personal gain.

 

Related posts:

Howard Hawks: El Dorado (1966) - Hawks, Duke and Mitchum's great western

Hatari! (1962) - Hawks, Wayne and Co. chase natural sensations in Africa 

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - Great musical numbers define cultural cornerstone

Top 10: The best adaptations reviewed by Film Excess to date
Top 10: The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Bringing Up Baby (1938) - A screwy gathering

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 1.6 mil. $
Box office: 4.8 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3 times its cost)

[The Big Sleep premiered 22 August (Atlantic City, New Jersey) and runs 114 minutes. Shooting took place from October 1944 - January 1945 on the Warner backlot in California. The shoot was protracted due to Bogart's drinking and marital problems that were eventually resolved in a divorce and his marrying co-star Bacall instead. The film was withheld from release, while the studio instead released their war-themed pictures around the end of WWII. A 2-minute longer 1945 version of the film was screened for servicemen. Re-shoots took place in January 1946, and 20 minutes from the original film were replaced. The film grossed 3.4 mil. $ (70.8 % of the total gross) in North America. Bogart and Bacall, who had already co-starred in Hawks' To Have and Have Not (1944) shared the screen in 2 more films: Delmer Daves' Dark Passage (1947) and John Huston's Key Largo (1948). Hawks returned with Red River (1948). Bogart returned with a voice performance in Never Say Goodbye (1946) and physically in Dead Reckoning (1946); Bacall in Dark Passage (1947). The Big Sleep is certified fresh at 96 % with an 8.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Big Sleep?