Special Report - FINAL CUT: LADIES & GENTLEMAN (2012)

There are some ideas for movies that everybody has but are never realized - one that's been kicking around my head for years is to make a movie entirely from clips of other movies, building a rudimentary plot from tiny excerpts strung together.  While I conceived it as a psychological thriller, I'm overwhelmingly happy to say that a movie has emerged that is exactly that but is a love story rather than a thriller.  The film is called Final Cut: Ladies & Gentlemen, and it is a "film for educational purposes" (as well as a "recycled film") created by Hungarian director György Pálfi and a team of four editors who created a basic, but moving, love story out of clips from some 450 movies (mostly American and Hungarian).  The idea of making a short film by this method is mind-blowing enough, but Pálfi and company managed to make an 85 minute feature with a comprehensible plot.  After three years of work and several versions, the latest version is receiving a limited theatrical release in the U.S., and I was lucky enough to see it at SIFF Cinema Uptown in Seattle tonight with an overjoyed crowd.

The story is as old as time itself - boy meets girl.  After the opening credits form an image of a man and a woman kissing out of names of famous filmmakers and actors (as well as the ampersand in the subtitle), we follow a series of clips as a man wakes up in the morning, goes out to work and bumps into a woman, and sparks fly immediately.  Along the way they will see conflict, separation, despair and a miraculous renewal, and not a second goes by without some kind of tangible joy exuding from the screen.  The clips range from half a second to 10 or more, and the sources cover practically every famous movie you can think of off the top of your head from The Great Train Robbery to Avatar.  I recognized quite a few movies but a lot of them I didn't, such as all of the Hungarian ones and a lot of Far Eastern movies.  The trick isn't so much that you recognize the source film, but how seamlessly the clips flow together, such as somebody walking through a room shifting perfectly to somebody walking in the same direction towards a phone, or a woman in a 50's kitchen about to touch a pot of something shifting to a clip from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves showing the resolution of that action.  It's because of this meticulous action matching that we are able to follow the plot, and the plot is simple enough that the film doesn't disintegrate into a bad music video.  

While much of the sequencing is empirical and smooth, some of the superimpositions are surprisingly funny.  For example, at one point the woman is at a hospital being shown her baby as an embryo inside of her, and the movie cuts to a shot of the Star Child from 2001.  A set of shots meant to be the same character can suddenly switch to a strikingly different person, and Yoda is used a few times like this to hilarious effect.  The audience, as well as me, was delighted every time a shot of The Addams Family was used, and it's a reminder of just how funny that movie was.  The director restricted himself to using no more than two movies per director, and you can tell what his favorite directors are by the frequent use of clips from Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow and Beetlejuice; a LOT of clips from Sleepy Hollow), Terry Gilliam (Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and most strikingly David Lynch, for whom he breaks the rule (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Dr.).  I hated every second of Wild at Heart, so much so that I had to shut it off after 15 minutes, so his inclusion of multiple clips from it is the only thing I found irritating about the movie (at least they were vaguely interesting).  He also includes some lesser-known but interesting movies, like Luc Besson's Subway (featuring Highlander's Christopher Lambert with white hair) and Tarsem Singh's The Cell (an underrated favorite of mine), and a handful of animated films (including Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and Paprika*).  While some predictable filmmakers get featured, like Tarantino, he is able to not overuse them, such as Spielberg and Hitchcock, and one movie in particular, Bram Stoker's Dracula, got used quite a bit, which made me quite happy.


The audience had a blast at my screening, with a lot of laughs as certain famous movies showed their faces (the biggest one arguably with the inclusion of a shot from Species).  They also laughed a lot at an extended sex scene around the 1/3 mark, which includes a few highly explicit shots (like some cunnilingus and an erect, gold-painted penis).  These shots prompted the theater to put up a warning sign on the front door, saying the movie was an "unrated, European film" (a descriptor I find really funny as well as apt, considering how much more laid-back Europe is about sexual content in movies).  There's also some violent content in a fight scene in the first half of the movie, but nothing too graphic.  Teenagers would get a kick out of the movie, and in a better world (or Europe) they'd be able to see it just as easily as adults.  And honestly, everybody should see it.  

I can't remember the last time I had a more astonishing and entertaining theatrical experience as Final Cut, and considering the multitude of possible copyright issues the film could encourage you may never be able to see it again (without some trickery, anyways).  If you live in the Seattle area you can see it at the SIFF Cinema Uptown (down the road from Seattle Center), but hurry, as they're only showing it nine times and two of those have already passed.  Do yourselves a favor: check out the showtimes here and get your butt downtown to see the thing - you may never get another chance and it's more than worth the price of the ticket.  It also comes with Precious Images, a 1986 short film that won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short that year and was made for the 50th anniversary of the Directors Guild of America.  It too is cobbled together from hundreds of movie clips, but has no plot and is much shorter.  It's somewhat cheesier than Final Cut but it's pretty fun and a poignant homage to great film.  Whatever you're doing tomorrow, forget it - go to the 5:00 or 7:00 showings of Final Cut and have the time of your life.  It's the film experience of a lifetime, and you shouldn't let it pass you by.  The clip below doesn't even begin to sum up how great it is.

~PNK

*I'm a huge fan of anime director Satoshi Kon, the mad genius behind Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paranoia Agent, but I'm really not a fan of Paprika, which unfortunately appears to be his most popular movie right now (and his untimely death at 47 means that it'll probably stay that way).  The movie is everything that anime's detractors dislike about the industry, and all of his other work does a great job of avoiding those qualities.  Unfortunately, those qualities are more profitable than the stuff I like from his other projects, and that's probably why the movie made it to Hungary in the first place.  Do see those other movies, by the way - really, really awesome stuff.

A Roaring Short-Order - LIONPOWER FROM MGM (1967)

You come up to a ramshackle treehouse with a rope ladder.  As you ascend the ladder, you notice a sign on the door:  "FANZ OF THE 60S ONLEE - ALL OTHERS R POOPOO HEADS!!!".  If you're not game for a blast of late-60's nostalgia, turn back now.  For those of you still left, come on in - the Cinerama is warm tonight.

Lionpower from MGM is an unusual entry for this blog - it's a 27-minute promotional reel of MGM's 1967-68 season, only shown to distributors and exhibitors.  I saw it as a filler short on TCM the other night and it blew me away, and I watched it again tonight with and equally wide grin fixed on my face.  I've always had a soft spot for late-60's movies ever since I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, and this is one of the best payloads of late-60's Hollywood hooey I've ever seen.  The studio system was falling into a state of crisis, as the introduction of the ratings system, the growing counterculture, and the phasing out of short subjects were all radical changes to how movies were made and marketed.  One of the treats with these kinds of promotional reels is how well its content has dated, and this particular selection of films is heavily conflicted, at once readying for the future and clinging desperately to old models - and man is it a hoot.

The lineup is split into five seasons: the usual four of Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer, and a fifth "season" of roadshow movies, meaning they got a limited big-city release before a wide release and required reservations (a practice phased out in the 70's).  It's narrated with glorious cheesiness by Karl Weber (Search for Tomorrow, Perry Mason) and initially set to music from the 1950 movie The Magnificent Yankee, fixing MGM's grasp of promotion squarely in the past.  He boasts the most "creative filmmakers" and the "biggest stars", and doesn't lie in either claim - not only are directors like John Frankenheimer and Stanley Kubrick in the roster, nearly every movie has a huge, blockbuster star at the helm, some of them baffling in their combinations (two in particular I won't dare spoil, but be forewarned that David Niven and Raquel Welch are embarrassing themselves).  This short also makes for a fine drinking game, wherein the viewer takes a shot for every movie they've actually seen - the majority of them have fallen into obscurity, with a few popping up in the recent wave of big-studio on-demand DVD-R releasing catalogs (and a couple of those may show up on this blog in good time).  

The transitions from film to film are hysterical, such as the transition from Fall's Point Blank (a stylish thriller starring Lee Marvin) to Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Your Teeth are in My Neck: "From murder...to madness...and biting comedy at its best!"  A George Hamilton heist flick, Jack of Diamonds (never released to video, more common than you'd think in this lineup) has the narrator stating, "Excitement is another breed of cat - a cat burglar who dares danger at every height!"  Another fall movie, Our Mother's House, is another never-on-video movie that I've been seeking for ages, and if you know where I can find it I'd give you 12 million Mickey Mouse monies for the privilege.  Fall tops off with the bloated-looking Sophia Loren/Omar Sharif historical romance More than a Miracle, and then Winter "surges ahead on Lionpower!".  Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton headline - "People...politics....passion...in heat...in Haiti...in Graham Greene's The Comedians!"  David MacCallum fires guns in the go-go-riffic Sol Madrid (which I've got to see, but is not on video, much to the dismay (or is it relief?) of fellow stars Rip Torn and Telly Savalas).  Dark of the Sun is the serious-sounding filling to an unbelievable dud sandwich of The Biggest Bundle of Them All (whose VHS is available for the low, low price of $84.99 on Amazon) and The Extraordinary Seaman (mercifully never released to video), both of whose segments must be seen to be believed.  Also MIA for the home market is another go-go inflected thriller, A Man Called Dagger, and the Charles Bronson co-starring-western Guns for San Sebastian has a VHS for the comparatively modest price of $47.96 when compared to the aforementioned Bundle.  

"Lionpower springs into Spring", and I'll bet that most of you forgot that Hermans' Hermits even had a movie, much less that it had the portentious title Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter.  If your eyes recover, the mysterious force of The Power, another George Hamilton flick but seemingly much better than Jack of Diamonds, will knock them right out (or turn them upside down, or whatever happened to that one guy strapped in the g-force chair...).  Once Lionpower "roars into summer" the viewer is subjected to an Elvis movie, Speedway, here paired with the comparatively poor singing voice of Nancy Sinatra in a year when these movies should have been dead for a long time.  Surprisingly, the Richard Burton-helmed Where Eagles Dare doesn't even have footage ready, and the spot is illustrated through delightfully cheesy "animation".

However, it's not nearly as cheesy as Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, with Doris Day heading up an embarrassed cast trapped in a chintzy living room and stock sex komedy krap.  Ice Station Zebra is another big hit in the lineup, but beforehand we get a glimpse of the Sunset Boulevard-esque psychological drama The Legend of Lylah Clare.  Now come the two Roadshow pictures, both well-known now: Far from the Madding Crowd, which gets the longest segment of them all, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, which the narrator doesn't elaborate upon in terms of plot or stars.  Instead, all we see is one of Douglas Trumbull's slit-screen effects and some stars while Karl Weber talks about "all the stars of the solar system".

The most curious portion is a parade of cartoon teasers for movies yet to be produced, done in the same minimalist 60's style of the Where Eagles Dare bit, as nothing had been shot yet.  Some of them are remembered fondly, such as The Shoes of the Fisherman, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and The Phantom Tollbooth (not released until 1970 and done in a completely different art style from the one in the bit).

Some others are less well-known, such as The Fixer from the novel by Bernard Malamud, Tai-Pan (not released until 1986), James Michener's Caravans, released ten years later by a different studio, and The Appointment, an apparently terrible Sidney Lumet movie that features the funniest piece of animation:

The most unusual are a trio of movie that were never made, two of them: Cornelius Ryan's WWII history The Last Battle, James Eastwood's totally forgotten mystery The Chinese Visitor, and The Tower of Babel, a Middle East-set political thriller to be directed by Peter Glenville (whose last film turned out to be The Comedians).  Announcements rise and fall all the time, but it's odd to see promotion for movies that never came to be, and it's impossible to tell if those would have been any good.

Whatever your tastes, the short is a ton of fun, and most of the films will be new on you unless you're a near-masochistic freak for 60's pop culture.  If you've got TCM they may play it again as an interstitial, but I have no idea how often they do it.  It's the exact kind of thing that'll never get a video release, so don't hesitate if you get the chance to see it in high quality.  For those of you who don't care about clarity of picture, here's a generous YouTube upload, which is where I got all those screencaps.  I guarantee you'll laugh, cry, or puke no matter which movie you're rooting for.

~PNK

A quick three chairs for PERFECT FRIDAY (1970)

I love a good heist movie, and there's no better era for them than the late 60's and early 70's, when Mod stylings and twist endings abounded.  This one has slipped through the cracks, so much so that I only found out about it in researching the great Theatre of Blood, required viewing for fans of black comedy, Shakespeare and Vincent Price.  Specifically, I was looking into Anthony Greville-Bell, a man with a fabulously British name who co-wrote this as well as the oddly excellent thriller The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie (which I'll get to in good time).  I can't speak to how much he actually contributed to this screenplay or the others but in my mind a man with a name that clever should have contributed to the quirkiness and smart dialogue of these movies.  And while Perfect Friday is the most conventional of the three movies it's a great little caper for an empty afternoon.

Mr. Graham (Stanley Baker) is the deputy manager at a London bank, stiffly professional and secretly fed up.  Enter Lady Dorset (Ursula Andress), whose light accent and Andressness swiftly sucks Graham into an affair that births a crazy idea: use the inside connection to rob the bank.  The sadly foppish Lord Dorset (a young David Warner) gets involved as the third party, and as the plan is formed it seems each of the men want to make off with the money and Lady without the other's being any the wiser.  Of course, the snazzy heist sequence.  Of course, a race to the airport.  Of course, a twist ending that assures a moral-minded censor office that even though they get away with it, they don't REALLY get away with it.

Though the plot has an assembly line feel, I have the advantage of ignoring that if the Knack is present.  Perfect Friday floats above a stock plot through simple panache and tight technique, meeting the action's inherent fun with surprisingly sharp photography, off-kilter editing tricks, knowing restraint and an infectious, enthusiastic soundtrack.  The performances are all effortless and perfectly played off each other, and the pacing never falters, especially in the heist sequence itself, proving once again that real tension can be made through a lack of music rather than a girth.  An early Spring setting meets the performances and the bank's minimalist 70's futurism for a crisp, satisfying mood, a fine counterpoint to the outlandish feel of older capers like Ocean's 11 and Who's Minding the Mint?  Everything points to a nifty, fittingly British confidence, leaning over and whispering sweet nothings into your ear.

Never available on video in the U.S., Perfect Friday may need a bit of digging to find, but I'm sure torrenting and iOffer have you covered.  The boot I viewed was sourced from a widescreen BBC broadcast and looked great, so if you can get that one go for it.  I wasn't able to find it on YouTube but I did find a trailer for a recent PAL DVD/Blu-Ray release, so if you've got a region-free DVD player you've got yourself a winner.  It probably won't become your favorite caper but it still put a grin on my face, like an unexpected free latte or finding five bucks in a gutter.  Do as you will and remember to make a smooth getaway.

~PNK