BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER (1975)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

On this blog I generally review either metaphenomenal films or isophenomenal films that are in some way relevant to metaphenomenal tropes. For that reason, I've hesitated to review my favorite film by Italian actress Claudia Cardinale, who passed away this week. Zany as it is, I'm not sure how much I have to say about the comedy-western THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING, wherein Cardinale teamed up with French legend Brigitte Bardot (as of this writing still among the living). However, four years later Cardinale teamed with another major female star, French actress Jeanne Moreau, for an Italian film originally called "Here Begins the Adventure." The English title for this comedy-road film, BLONDE IN BLACK LEATHER, may be better in that it suggests the allure of adventure that Moreau's leather-clad motorcyclist holds for homebody Cardinale. However, director/co-writer Carlo di Palma does bring in elements of irony here, given that Cardinale's character is in some ways much more dynamic, even though BLONDE is primarily one of the many knockabout comedies that the Italian film industry so often produced.     

For the first ten minutes BLONDE almost does look like a precursor to the over-fifteen-years-later drama THELMA AND LOUISE. Claudia (Cardinale) works in a laundry while her barely-seen pig of a husband sits on his ass. Later there's a line about how Claudia's husband beat her, but the English translation doesn't say this right away. Claudia encounters the leather-clad, motorcycle-riding blonde Miele (Moreau). After hearing some of Miele's stories about her adventurous life, Claudia begs Miele to take her away from her drudgery. Miele, preoccupied with making a rendezvous with her fiancee up north, initially takes Claudia a little way, leaves her flat, and then changes her mind, rescuing the laundress from a lothario.

It's soon evident to the viewer, though not to naive Claudia, that Miele is a complete bullshitter. The next half hour is pretty boring, as the two women tool around the Italian countryside. Miele carelessly loses the motorbike and whines ceaselessly about making her appointment. The ladies try to steal a car and end up almost kidnapping a kid, but that action quickly peters out. 

Still on the way to the northern city, the girls stop in Naples, where the film's best scenes take place. The heroines help an old woman get back her money from one of the local gangsters. In return she gives them a magic charm that may or may not have real power. A few scenes later, the girls end up at a casino-- one where, curiously, the gangster-owner punishes his subordinates with an electrical torture machine. The girls break the bank, which sounds like the charm at work, though technically, Claudia is shown invoking the power of the charm AFTER the ladies start winning. However, the casino's gangster-boss lures them into another game. The girls lose but accuse the gangster of cheating and try to leave with their dough.

Now, the charm is never mentioned again, but it would be the only explanation for what happens next. As gangsters surround Claudia, Miele tells her that since her husband used to beat Claudia, Claudia ought to do the same to the thugs. And so the slim Cardinale proceeds to slug her way through a dozen men as if she had become Bud Spenser, the bulky colossus from the TRINITY films. (This might have been an intentional reference since one of those films is seen airing in a theater at the film's climax.) Miele, supposedly the big adventuress, does little to contribute to the fight, but though the girls get free they lose their money and are reduced to hiking north once more. They have another adventure on a train (where the director briefly emulates a silent movie with B&W photography and undercranking). They both have Edenic dreams wherein Claudia hooks up with a devil while Miele does the same with an angel, and both beings are played by the same actor. They eventually quarrel and part, only to come together to get Miele to her goal. Only after parting again does Claudia find out just how much of a fake Miele is. Yet Miele redeems herself by kicking her own bad boyfriend to the curb, and the two hit the road again, getting more of a happy ending than Thelma and Louise.

BLONDE is too whack-a-doodle to be credited with strong sociological intent, feminist or otherwise. But I was never completely bored, given that even the slow first half-hour spotlights the stunning looks of the two costars. BLONDE certainly doesn't deserve to be listed with the many more serious movies in Cardinale's repertoire. But in contrast with her LEGEND-ary costar Bardot, I never felt that Cardinale's vivacity was best served by sober dramas. She possessed one of the screen's most infectious smiles, and so I tend to like her comedies better than her serious stuff. And as I said, BLONDE is also one of the very few times Cardinale dabbled in any kind of fantasy-story.          

MIRACLE IN TOYLAND (2000)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I confess I was made aware of this forgotten piece of kidvid-entertainment by a YouTube podcast making fun of its many shortcomings. I can't equal the video's many on-target slams of the subpar animation, so I'll focus on the story's problems.

Middle-schooler Jesse Justice apparently lives alone with his father (no clue if his mother is dead or what), and his cousin Gabrielle lives not far away in the same city. Father Daniel Justice is a colonel in the Air Force and is involved in training exercises so rigorous that he can't even take off for Christmas-- not that he shows any desire of wanting to do so, being blithely unconcerned with his boy's existence. Off goes the Colonel, leaving Jesse with Gabrielle.

At school Jesse acts out, getting rough with his schoolmates in soccer. Gabrielle guesses that he's overcompensating for his father's inattention and tries to cheer him up by taking Jesse to a big toy store, the Toyland of the title. The most interesting exchange of the mediocre flick takes place here, as Jesse disavows any interest in toys, wanting to get military training to be more like his dad. At Toyland, Jesse acts out again, and Gabrielle-- despite showing an attitude correctly called "touchy-feely" with her cuz-- leaves him behind. Jesse falls asleep in the toy store and gets locked in.

So far this isn't a bad setup for your basic "toys come to life" scenario, so in due course Jesse meets (1) a superhero named Super Duper Man, (2) a thick-eared wrestler, Bonecrusher, (3) a hip military commander, Captain Agro, (4) a peg-legged pirate, (5) an elf girl who talks like Betty Boop, and (5) a relatively mature-seeming Indian princess who sings Gospel. (Is she from something like American Girl, or what? Either way, she seems like the maternal figure missing from Jesse's life.)

 What's odd is that the story doesn't stick with helping Jesse work through his issues. After the toys make Jesse's acquaintance, Captain Agro suddenly calls up his toy soldiers to make an assault on-- someone. But out of nowhere, one of the soldiers get injured (somehow) and Agro tells Jesse to stay behind and watch over a fellow warrior. Jesse wants glory to validate himself as he thinks his father would want, so he deserts his post to go look for the enemy (which we never see) and the injured toy-- dies? Agro dresses Jesse down a little, and Jesse maybe learns a lesson-- at which point the script decides it can't handle the seriousness. So then out of nowhere, some bad pirate-toys hijack the good pirate's ship, so Jesse and his toy buddies have a very mild fight quelling this threat. Even the two girls get a little action: Boop-Elf clubs a bad pirate and Gospel Indian hits another pirate with-- a karate chop? Sure, why not. Then there's some business about getting chocolate treats for everyone. Oh, and Boop-Elf gets an upskirt shot.

Jesse somehow transitions back to the real world, finds Gabrielle and apologizes to her. But the desire for heroism has only been deferred. Jesse and his cuz learn that Colonel Justice, flying a plane alone for some reason, has been lost in the frozen mountains. Jesse appeals to the toys for help, and they enlarge themselves to life-size with some magic or other, as well as creating convenient transportation. So Jesse gets to save his dad from the frozen wastes, and Colonel Justice beholds the power of a child's imagination in the reality of the living toys-- though in truth, Jesse was originally rejecting the world of imagination for that of worldly glory. If anything, the toys more or less forced their way into Jesse's closed off existence. They're more like the manifestation of what Gabrielle knows Jesse needs with her feminine instinct. Jesse then gets a maternal hug from Gospel Indian while all the toys have a big musical finish-- I *think* after they revert to their toy-existence, but I'm not sure.

I think the real miracle is that there's even a little content worth explicating in this ramshackle script-- though even little kids would be better advised to play with actual toys, than with TOYLAND.

MIRACLE IN MILAN (1951)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

The DVD commentary for MIRACLE IN MILAN strives to convince listeners that director Vittorio di Sica didn't stray from his neo-realist ideology when he made MILAN in between two of his most fiercely naturalistic works, BICYCLE THIEVES and UMBERTO D. I agree with this point of view, though not for exactly the same reasons the commentary gives.

The protagonist of MILAN is a true "nature's nobleman," since as an infant he's found in a cabbage patch. (I didn't know the Italians had those old wives' tales about where babies come from...) He's named Toto and adopted by a virtuous old woman, Lolotta, who raises him in a humble shack during his earliest years. Lolotta passes during Toto's childhood and he spends the rest of a cheerful childhood in an orphanage within a shanty town not far from Milan. 

As an adult, Toto (Francesco Golisano) comes to know everyone in his town, impressing them with his kindness and empathy. Everyone in the shanty town is technically a squatter, since rich people in Milan own the land, but their squatting is tolerated because the land seems worthless. Ironically, when the townsfolk are indulging in a fertility ritual, that of erecting a maypole, they accidentally strike oil. The owner, Mobbi by name, then enlists the police to evict the squatters, who have absolutely nowhere to go.

Fortuitously, the spirit of Lolotta has never ceased to watch over her adopted son. She sends to Toto a magical, wish-granting dove just as the police move in. Suddenly Toto finds that he can make wishes that come true, and he communicates to his neighbors that they too can make wishes. Thus the shanty dwellers bring about miracles, like their being able to blow away tear gas with puffs of breath. Not surprisingly, Mobbi and the police retreat in confusion.

However, all the townsfolk begin to want more than the bare survival of their daily existences. They besiege Toto with requests for money, clothing, radios, all the trinkets of conspicuous consumption. Toto himself asks for nothing, but he's too kind-hearted to refuse them. In effect, the townsfolk become just as greedy as the land-owner.

It's not said outright that Heaven becomes aware of these transgressions of natural law, but two angels descend to escort Lolotta's spirit back to the afterlife, and they take the magic dove with them. There's some confusion with a real dove, but the end result is that after some time Mobbi finds out that the town has no celestial protection, so he sends the cops to roust out the unwanted residents. However, Lolotta gets free once more, and through her power and Toto's innocent faith, the townsfolk escape imprisonment and fly up to what is presumably Paradise on an array of brooms.

Though MILAN contain many whimsical scenes-- cops suddenly bursting into song, for one-- I agree with the commentary that Di Sica, adapting a fabulous novel by one Cesare Zavattini, was guided by essentially socialist principles regarding the exploitation of the workers by a moneyed class. It's not entirely clear if the shanty townsfolk lose the favor of Heaven because they start getting as greedy as landowner Mobbi, but their actions certainly aren't viewed with any approbation. There also may be a parallel here with the Biblical account of Christ complaining when his audience almost overwhelms him with their attentions.

After the dove of holy grace is withdrawn, Toto himself becomes a sort of Christ-like interceptor for his sinful neighbors. Yet the final flourish of escape proves unsatisfying. The townsfolk certainly don't have any religious realization of their own folly; none of them have characters developed enough to make that strategy possible. So, in Christian terms, why do they deserve instant translation to a land "where good morning really means good morning?" I understand that Toto's faith saves them, but it seems like they're saved not by any merit of their own, but just because they're from an underprivileged class. And this is the sort of ideological strait-jacket that makes MILAN mostly an appealing curiosity, yet keeps it from ranking among the world's best films of fantasy.

And yet, 

SANTA AND THE FAIRY SNOW QUEEN (1951)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical,psychological*

While I'm not arguing that SANTA AND THE FAIRY SNOW QUEEN is any neglected Christmas gem, it is much better than your average children's short. Directed by one Sid Davis, this short, less than half an hour, recycles music from Tchaikovsky's NUTCRACKER and SLEEEPING BEAUTY, with the result that the writer put (forgettable) lyrics to the same melody that Disney used in its 1959 SLEEPING BEAUTY for "Once Upon a Dream."

One question inspired by FAIRY: why do children play with toys, whether made in Santa's workshop or by some Eastern conglomerate? One major reason is to exercise the imagination, and this is seen with "proxy-toys," in which kids use dolls, action figures and the like as proxies to enact scenarios of real or hypothetical experience seen through the lens of game-playing. This is the only kind of toy seen in FAIRY. 

On the night before Santa's supposed to load up his sleigh for his Christmas run, he falls asleep in his workshop, surrounded by a half dozen dolls about the size of mice. Since Santa's in dreamland, a helpful female brownie named Snoop (because she snoops around to find which kids are naughty or nice) provides exposition. Santa made a previous appointment to meet with the Fairy Snow Queen to share a sugar cookie. The Queen, just as diminutive as the dolls, finds Santa asleep and decides to make a little mischief, enchanting all the dolls to come alive. The dolls don't really do much of anything-- the Musical Doll dances, the Soldier Doll marches, and the jack-in-the-box repeats everything he says three times.

Conflict raises its head when Santa wakes up. He's okay with the Queen's little joke, but he asks her to de-animate the dolls because he needs this half-dozen toys or he'll have to disappoint a half-dozen children. However, the Queen can't reverse her spell because the toys all want to remain alive. And who can blame them?

For a fellow who spends his whole year crafting toys to give them away, Santa proves remarkably practical-minded. He tells the dolls that although they may enjoy dancing and marching around, such itty-bitty creatures can't prosper in the big mean world. He also mentions an island for lost toys over a decade before the 1964 RUDOLF special conceived of its "island of misfit toys." Snoop brokers a compromise: if the toys will go back to being inanimate and letting kids play with them, the dolls will be allowed to come alive for an hour or so at midnight every night. (Yes, Sid Davis got there before TOY STORY too.) The dolls accept their fate, even though it means that the Toy Soldier and the Musical Doll won't be able to stay together, having fallen in love within a couple of minutes of being animated.

In addition, the toys will have an additional function: if their owners don't take good care of them, the dolls can nark on the bad kids and get them placed on the naughty list. I like to think that most kids would have twigged to the lecture in this slight tale. Yet as lectures go, this one at least speaks to the primary appeal of toys, as opposed to just wanting "stuff," which is a much more frequent "moral" in a lot of Christmas stories.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1931)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

The first sound version of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND was an independently-made feature whose performers are all unknown to me. According to the Wiki article on the movie, its producers were seeking to exploit a wave of "Alice-mania" that had inspired the early thirties, but this ALICE was not a success.

It is, however, a generally accurate adaptation, aside from excluding any scenes that might require expensive FX, such as Alice's size-changing exploits. Still, most of the events follow the book's chronology fairly well, and occasionally the script throws in a few new jokes. Alice, told that the Queen of Hearts intends to cut off her head, remarks that they're only cards, and she can "cut" them.

The actress playing Alice may be the film's biggest deficit, and not just because Ruth Gilbert was roughly 19 years old. Possibly because she was mainly a stage actress, Gilbert plays the role a bit too broadly. The script does have her show some of the character's moments of egotism rather than making her too nicey-nice. 

Most of the other performers wear heavy costumes, and the outfits are at least decent if not memorable. After seeing the film today, the one scene that sticks with me takes place at the Duchess's house. In the book, the Duchess only vaguely orders the cook to cut off Alice's head, prefiguring the same obsession in the Queen of Hearts. But in this film the Duchess actually comes at Alice with a cleaver, forcing the girl to flee with the Duchess's baby-- which, as in the book, simply makes a pig of itself. The line-readings are faithful but the script doesn't tap into Carroll's universe of lunacy.

As ALICE curios go, this one is tolerable.

LINDA LOVELACE, SECRET AGENT (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Before I knew the alternate title of this dopey spy comedy, my main comment was going to be that it was about the *softest* softcore film I'd ever seen, given that it displays only scattered scenes of upper-body nudity, while the simulated sex scenes are as off limits as they would be in a Doris Day film.

And then I found out that LOVELACE was originally marketed as DEEP THROAT II, making it a cash-in on the famous hardcore sex film, which also starred the titular Miss Lovelace. It's even weirder that unlike the original THROAT, this extremely tame flick was directed by another big name in both hard-and-soft sex flicks, Joe Sarno. 

There's no doubt in my mind as to how this movie came about. DEEP THROAT began to make big money, and so distributors wanted a follow-up, tout suite. So some producer gave Sarno a few thousand dollars and a week to churn something out. I won't pretend that a lot of the sexploitation movies of the sixties and seventies were produced under much better conditions. Yet in my review of a 1966 spy-sex comedy, THE GIRL FROM SIN, I remarked that it at least had a rough plot, which LOVELACE does not.

Nurse Lovelace (guess who) works in the office of sex therapist Doctor Jayson (Harry Reems, the only other graduate of the previous THROAT job). When Lovelace and Jayson aren't getting it on with each other and with the receptionist (Tina Russell, another big name in seventies hardcore), the nurse administers tender loving care to all male patients while the doctor takes all the females. The sex clinic becomes the focus of various American and Russian agents because Dilbert, one of the male patients, is employed by the American government. The Americans ask the nurse to be their "inside girl," while the Russians prowl around, not doing much of anything. Chris Jordan plays a sort-of Natasha Fatale type who threatens Nurse Lovelace with a knife and whacks Jayson in the balls.

Most sexploitation flicks have a vaudeville-like structure, with just one aimless gag after another, and LOVELACE is the same, but with a lot fewer nude scenes. In one nonsense-scene, an American spy follows the Russians to a scrap-yard, hides in an old car in order to listen to them, and then a crane tosses the car and its occupant into a crusher. The crushed car emerges with the spy's head poking out, just like in a Jerry Lewis film, but a dozen times less funny. There's also a silly pie fight at the end, and it doesn't even use any double entendres.

Sarno does work in one slightly nasty touch. Dilbert lives with his aunt (Russell in a granny-getup). Nurse Lovelace thinks Dilbert's got an Oedipal problem that inhibits his sexual activity, so her solution is to dress up like his aunt and encourage Dilbert to rape her. I guess that's why they call her "therapist."

Aside from the dubious fantasy-sequence of the agent surviving the crusher, the only metaphenomenal content is that Dilbert works on a supercomputer with the capacity to assimilate new levels of information, which makes said computer a "diabolical device," albeit a really dull one. Two other names in the cast are Jamie Gillis, another hardcore veteran, and (in a tiny role) Judy Tenuta, who went on to become a mainstream comedienne.

THE SUPER SNOOPER (1952)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

Like most people who've grown up with TV, I've watched and enjoyed thousands of cartoon shorts, many of them from the "Golden Age" of Warner Brothers. But it occurred to me to ask myself in this venue, "which if any of these seven-minute Warners shorts qualify as 'mythic' by the criteria I've laid out?"

One way of breaking the question down is to note that the vast majority of theatrical shorts were concatenations of gags, and that there were two most-used strategies for organizing the gags. The first and most popular means was to structure the gags around some frenetic activity. Examples include events like a dance, a musical performance, a chase, a fight, or a contest.

The less-used strategy was the spoof of some easily recognized genre or series of narrative tropes. The first type didn't really allow the writers to play with symbolic concepts, but the second couldn't help but duplicate some abstract ideas from the original stories in order to parody them. In the late forties and early fifties, Warners turned out a number of these: "Bugs Bunny Rides Again" (written by Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce), "The Scarlet Pumpernickel" and "Drip-Along Daffy" (both Maltese). 

Daffy Duck also had two major modes for his comedy: usually he was either the "darn fool crazy duck" who tormented others with his craziness, or he was an insecure poseur who kept trying to assume heroic roles, but who usually got clobbered because of his weakness and incompetence. In "Pumpernickel" he's a would-be swashbuckler, while in "Drip-Along" he's a wannabe tough cowboy. 

Tedd Pierce had written assorted spoofs over his long career as well, but his most mythic parody was 1952's "The Super Snooper." Like other such shorts it's full of slapstick pratfalls, but Pierce's dialogue is full of wry twists on the private detective genre (strictly of the trenchcoat breed, despite the introductory shot showing Daffy in a Sherlock Holmes outfit). Though the duck's character is named "Duck Drake," I'll call him Daffy throughout.

Detective Daffy is summoned to investigate a murder at the ritzy "Axehandle Estate" (by itself, a spoof of the trope in which low-class sleuths investigate high-class tycoons). Upon meeting a creepy butler at the door of his supposed destination, Daffy questions the servant, but then remarks to the camera that "the suspicious acting butler is never the real culprit in these pictures."

Despite this remark, for the rest of the short Daffy is sedulously bound to carry out the tropes of the detective genre. With the butler gone, he asks no one in particular, "Where's the body" (of the supposed victim). Daffy never actually sees a corpus delicti, but he does get a body, in the form of a statuesque female duck who responds that "I'm the Body"-- the only name we ever get for the rich babe, apparently the only resident of the mansion. Daffy tells the audience that she's "the inevitable amorous babe who's just crazy about us hardboiled gumshoes," and the Body is quick to conform to the trope by smothering Daffy with kisses. Still, she claims to be "innocent" of whatever crime this gumshoe has on his mind (prompting from Daffy a clever pun on another meaning of "innocent.") 

So for four gag-sequences, Daffy roleplays ways in which he thinks the Body committed the crime (even though he hasn't seen a corpse or garnered any info about the cause of death). First, he assumes (correctly) that the femme fatale has a "little pistol" in her purse, pulls it out, hands it to the Body and coaxes her into firing it, blasting him several times. As if to support her claim of "innocence," the Body evinces shock and drops the weapon.

The Body keeps trying to make love to Daffy, which in detective movies is a sign of a woman using sex to cover her guilt. But Daffy's married to his narrative. He grabs a (fully loaded) deer rifle off the walls, thrusts it into the Body's hands, and insists that she act out the way she supposedly murdered "the old goat" (loosely implying that she's a young trophy wife who killed some elderly rich dude). The Body then shoots Daffy about a dozen times, causing his body to rebound back and forth as in a shooting gallery. This time her expression is utterly impassive as she shoots, neither shocked by or enjoying the violence she performs upon the obsessed shamus.

Daffy returns to his theme, "And then what did you do?"(To her response, "Search me," he responds, atypically, "Business before pleasure, please.") He then tries a new RPG, using a pulley to haul a piano up to the ceiling, calling her an "ee-vil woman" as he does so. (She bats her eyes as if flattered.) Daffy hands the Body the cable while he demonstrates exactly how she supposedly dropped a piano on the murder victim. (I like how Daffy puts real effort into hauling the huge object up to the ceiling but given the rope, the slender femme fatale holds it in place with zero strain.) Daffy, not content with all the pain he's suffered so far, yells at the slinky siren, startling her into dropping the dead weight right atop the defective detective.

For the last gag, the Body doesn't even get directly involved, lying prone on a sofa while Daffy shows her how she arranged for the victim to be run over by a train. Daffy's constant displays of terminal stupidity do nothing to discourage this "scarlet woman's" mad love for the masochistic mallard. When he again returns to his theme, she drops the bomb that there's been no crime (though she did say she was innocent earlier) and that Daffy's at the wrong location. However, the Body then confesses-- not to a crime, but to being crazy about the "gorgeous hunk of duck." Daffy reads a "ball in chain look" in her eyes and flees. The Body pursues, with the end image making it certain that she will overtake and tame the would-be adventurer and drag him to the altar, whether by persuasion or by force. In comparison to the conclusions of many genre spoofs, which simply often just shift into some irrelevant gag (as in the aforementioned "Bugs Bunny Rides Again"), SNOOPER's ending is a perfect repudiation of the power-fantasy of the private detective. Instead of the "super snooper" defeating the power of the seductive femme fatale by ferreting out her criminality, the Body sentences this crime-happy incarnation of Daffy to the imprisonment of matrimony. That said, Daffy often suffered far worse fates than being married to a gorgeous, rich lady duck. So for once, even though Daffy loses the contest, he kind of wins too-- as long as she doesn't develop a thing for dropping pianos on his head.