PRINCE POPPYCOCK

Jack Cardiff, the supreme genius of Technicolor, has died in Kent, England, age 94. Cardiff said that if he hadn't become a filmmaker, he would have been a painter. With him dies another link to a film process that gave us images like this.



The people at Technicolor, wrote Michael Powell, had usually encountered filmmakers accustomed to black-and-white, people who listened while the Kalmus crew told them what Technicolor could and could not do. The Technicolor folks had a surprise in store from Cardiff, who had worked in the laboratory for years and was "able to tell Technicolor where they could get off."

"Now," said Powell, "they were dealing with painters, which was a very different thing."

For his inventions, imagination and sheer audacity, there has never been another colour cameraman like Jack Cardiff. Georges Perinal was the best camaerman I have ever worked with, both in black and white and in colour, but Jack was something apart. The skin textures in the close-ups of Colonel Blimp would have delighted Fragonard, but Jack's lighting and composition in Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes would have infuriated Delacroix, because he couldn't have done any better himself, in imagination or in chiaroscuro.
--Michael Powell, A Life in Movies

I am often asked why The Red Shoes, of all our films, became such a success in every country of the world. More than a success, it became a legend. Even today, I am constantly meeting men and women who claimed that it changed their lives...I think that the real reason why The Red Shoes was such a success, was that we had all been told for ten years to go out and die for freedom and democracy, for this and that, and now that the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art.
--Michael Powell, A Life in Movies

Boris Lermontov: 'The Ballet of The Red Shoes' is from a story by Hans Andersen. It is the story of a young girl who is devoured by an ambition to attend a dance in a pair of red shoes. She gets the shoes and goes to the Ball. For a time all goes well, and she is happy. But at the end of the evening she is tired and wants to go home. But the red shoes are not tired. The red shoes are never tired. They dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day. Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the red shoes dance on.
Julian Craster: What happens in the end?
Lermontov: Oh! In the end she dies.
--from The Red Shoes, screenplay by Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell

Melodrama! Kitsch! Ham! Entirely undistinguished choreography!
--Alastair Macaulay, New York Times Arts and Leisure section, Aug. 31, 2008

There are movie reviews that you read and disagree with, but enjoy for their spirited argument and wit. There are reviews that you disagree with and do not enjoy, but which you acknowledge are well-argued or have a certain misguided insight.

And then there are reviews that make you wonder why the critic bothered at all, so lacking is the piece in any affinity for the moviemakers, sense of history or ability to draw well-supported conclusions about the aims or accomplishments of the movie. Until today the Siren thought the 2008 Palme d'Or in such boneheadedness had been won by a certain ill-judged take on Sunrise. She was wrong. Alastair Macaulay, the dance critic for the New York Times, won it today with a "tribute" to the 60th anniversary of The Red Shoes.

He starts by observing the initial British release wasn't a huge financial success and that "nobody could guess that it would become one of the highest-earning British movies of all time." So right off the bat we realize Macaulay's research has been, let's just say light. Director Michael Powell didn't guess, he knew he had made a great movie and was extremely frustrated at the failure of the British distributors to give it a chance to build in U.K. cinemas. He found an ally in Bill Heineman of the board of United Artists, who lobbied hard to give the picture a chance in the U.S.: "If the public see this film, they'll go. Their kids will take them to see it." Heineman was right; the film was booked into a 200-seat New York theatre called the Bijou and marketed to balletomanes, which as Powell drily noted meant "half the little girls in America." It ran for two years and seven weeks.

This movie, filmed in a beautifully romantic style that was quite unlike anything seen before, and which influenced directors from Minnelli to Scorsese, to Macaulay "often looks as though it will turn into something much more conventional." It's about the "standard story of a woman's choice," you see, love or art. Standard, not classic or eternal, because isn't this life-versus-art thing something we've all worked out at this point? And the choice is "presented to the aspiring ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) at a melodramatically high pitch." This is the first occurence of the term melodrama used as a perjorative, but it will not be the last. Macaulay seems to think that the movie, with a central character based on two of history's most self-dramatizing impresarios and concerning itself with a theatrical art that conveys emotion through image, should really be toned down a bit. The best he can say for The Red Shoes is to point out a few scenes in which it "manages to transcend its own melodramatic and kitschy nature."

Other pearls follow.

"You look at the movie, and you marvel that these girls want to devote themselves to such an art." Because no one ever dreams of a consuming, lifelong devotion to a singularly beautiful and ephemeral art, especially not when it's lovingly filmed by the likes of Jack Cardiff.

"...its 'Red Shoes' ballet could never be danced onstage. (Its dissolving scene changes are sheer cinema, and the ballerina role is too nonstop for any dancer’s stamina.)" Right here we have the part that pissed off the Siren to the point that she sat down at the keyboard. Gosh no, no real dancer could magically jump into those shoes as Shearer does. Excuse me, Mr. Macaulay, but who gives a good goddamn? This is cinema, not a filmed performance. Those "dissolving scene changes" are what a cinephile calls "perfect editing" (by Reginald Mills). Show me the great movie production number that could be danced on stage. "The ballet ceased to be a naturalist conception," said Powell in his memoirs, "and became completely surreal...we were photographing images, not words...There was one contributor to our work whose collaboration was absolutely essential for the success of 'The Ballet of the Red Shoes,' and that was the audience." Preferably an audience that doesn't get all grumpy when they realize "The Girl Hunt Ballet" in The Band Wagon couldn't fit on a real Broadway stage.


"Wallbrook [sic] plays Lermontov not quite realistically; the story’s feverish melodrama comes from him, and he seems at once absurd and hypnotic." The Siren admits that even some lovers of The Red Shoes have had problems with Anton Walbrook's performance. They're wrong, however. Lermontov is generally seen as a stand-in for Sergei Diaghilev, but Powell said he was "really more like" film producer Alexander Korda, whose outsized manner the director wrote about at great length. Some personalities truly are much, much larger than life, larger even than a movie screen. Lermontov's job is to be imposing, a taskmaster who can fire up the artists under his control. In no sense is Walbrook overplaying, and here Powell agrees with the Siren, calling Walbrook "powerful" and "subtle...he goes underneath every line of dialogue, every emotion."

"The film pays fetishistic attention to all of ballet’s detailed contrivance: the elaborate makeup, the constant audience-consciousness, the endless attention to minutiae of musical timing and technical articulation." The Siren loves ballet but admits to a lack of formal knowledge. Still, correct me if I am wrong, but should a dance critic really be characterizing "musical timing and technical articulation" as "minutiae"? And again with the perjorative adjectives: "fetishistic." The movie is about a commitment to art that drives an artist to her grave, and Powell's dedication to showing the incredible preparation that must go into a single performance is part of the movie's realism.



I said realism and I meant it. The ultimate accomplishment of The Red Shoes is the way it combines the dream world of a ballet performance and the spiritual dedication to art, with the actual backbreaking work of the artist and the life sacrifices that ballet demands. Vicky's death scene is sneeringly described by Macaulay as "sheer Tosca" and "sheer Anna Karenina," as though either source is a hallmark of kitsch. Powell's memoirs, which Macaulay might greatly benefit from reading, remark on how the bloodiness of that scene struck the British critics as "bad taste." "The whole point of the scene," Powell countered, "was the conflict between romance and realism, between theatre and life." Indeed, that's the whole point of the movie.

Postscript: Yes, the Siren is back, and the jet lag is hitting her hard this time. She has been up since 5 am this morning and so reacted rather badly to having The Red Shoes, which hit her like a thunderclap when she saw it on the big screen years back, dissed by the paper of record.

I avidly read every comment on every post and ask my patient readers to forgive me for the lack of reciprocal comments on them. In Normandy I had no Internet access at all and in Paris time was short indeed. France was as wonderful as ever, however, despite the strange French habit of insisting "ça n'existe pas" when they can't find something (in this case, the Region 2 of Make Way for Tomorrow, which certainly does existe and which I bought.) I'll let Mr. Powell have the last word on France, where The Red Shoes was shot in part: "Everything that I had been missing over the bitter years came rushing back to me. I knew, as I have always known, that there is no culture like the French culture, taste like French taste, no ménage like a French ménage."

Fanny (1961) is adored by many people, as you can see by going over to its user reviews at IMDB. And the Siren was drawn in by the romantic storyline, mostly fine acting and beautiful setting. But I haven't seen the original Marcel Pagnol trilogy, and I strongly suspect that works to the remake's advantage. Let's divide this post into three parts, like the Pagnol movies I know I really, really, really need to see (so don't beat me up, okay?). First,

The Good. Marseilles is famed as one tough town, the wickedest port this side of New Orleans, but here it is photographed in unforgettable, blue-and-gold tinged beauty by cinematographer Jack Cardiff. The gorgeous score rises and falls (but mostly rises) in the background, reminding the Siren that this was an adaptation of a Broadway musical that condensed Pagnol's trilogy. Warner Brothers, still three years away from its highly successful My Fair Lady, at the time was convinced that musicals were a bad bet at the box office.

The story revolves around the Marseilles waterfront and its people. The Siren is a big fan of Charles Boyer, and he's wonderful as the bartender César. Boyer's performance, in its charm and working-class toughness, hearkened back to his star-making turn in Fritz Lang's Liliom many years earlier. Here Boyer gives César just the right touch of the philosopher to go with the roughneck bossiness.

Maurice Chevalier was often accused of giving mannered, tricksy performances in later life. The Siren would argue that it's a question of whether the tricks still charm, and fit with the character, but here the issue is moot because Chevalier jettisons the old gestures and gives a gentle version of Panisse, the elderly storekeeper who marries Fanny. The Siren wouldn't call his acting in Fanny naturalistic, but it has the ring of truth, Chevalier's reactions becoming those of Panisse and not his usual boulevardier. He manages to make the man's essentially unrequited love for Fanny touching, not creepy and Humbert-ish as it so easily could have been.



The Siren loves Leslie Caron (I said that before, didn't I?) and she is graceful and honest as Fanny. Her character's motivations could seem base in the wrong hands, but Caron plays to Fanny's desire to please and keeps our sympathy. Many women of 29, as Caron was when she made Fanny, can't play teenagers even if they still look that young--you simply don't believe in their innocence. In fact, even some teens can't play the naivete of youth. But Caron hits each life stage's notes perfectly, as a young girl still testing her allure like a chemistry set, through the fearful onset of adulthood when Fanny discovers her pregnancy, and then finally into the mature mother of the film's final third. So that leaves us with

The Minor (problem, that is), which is Horst Buchholz, playing Marius, the young man who impregnates Fanny and then goes off to sea. He was in vogue at that moment, on a great roll that would also include One, Two, Three and The Magnificent Seven in the same two-year period. Buchholz was gorgeous and the Fanny fans at IMDB seem to love him, but the Siren can't agree, not here. His jaws work back and forth whenever he must show emotion and if it's a big moment his head jerks around like a meerkat in a nature video. Quite aside from the actor's German accent, which isn't as bothersome as you might think, he snaps out his lines like marching orders. He is intense and brooding at all times, even when he is supposed to convey the joy of young love. Buchholz had an onscreen air of supreme self-involvement, which worked beautifully for his tag-along gunfighter in Magnificent Seven and the slogan-spouting Communist in the Wilder movie. Here it works in the first act, as he stalks around Fanny, unwilling to declare his love or watch her flirt with anyone else, and later, when he must act selfishly. But his crucial love scenes with Caron are less moving than they should have been.

So now we are left only with

The Major. Fanny forms an interesting way to look at the roles of cinematographer and director, how they differ and how much influence each has on the final visuals. The lighting in Fanny is perfection, the colors exquisite, sets are blended seamlessly with location photography. (Glenn Erickson astutely points out how the waterfront can always be glimpsed beyond the entry of Cesar's bar.) But the choice of what the camera is pointing at, the way the shots fit together, is dull and choppy. At best the mise-en-scène is something you can ignore to concentrate on the characters, the story and the beauty of the photography; at worst it becomes intrusive and annoying. The minimum a director should be able to do is prevent the audience from thinking "why are we looking at this?" Erickson says "Cardiff's eye is apparent in every camera angle. We get the feeling that director Logan concentrated on his actors and left the visuals to a master." Would that it were so. Other films that Cardiff worked on, such as John Huston's The African Queen and Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus, have an elegance of blocking and camera movement that Fanny does not. Given that South Pacific and Camelot both have Fanny's unimaginative framing and cumbersome lack of flow, the Siren puts on her deerstalker, takes a puff on her meerschaum and fingers Logan as the culprit.



Logan wasn't always like that--he did a good job with Picnic--but here he has no sense of how to shoot conversation in a way that doesn't beg for a proscenium arch. The Siren has many curmudgeonly problems with recent big-budget movies, and one is how stingy filmmakers have become with real close-ups for anything other than fast-cut, grotesque emphasis, say a villain or somebody who's about to get crushed by an oncoming whatever. But here comes Logan to remind the Siren that older films sometimes abused the close-up too, in this case with overuse, cutting back and forth between characters in a way more suited to the Men's Final at Wimbledon than a widescreen film. Leslie Caron was never more beautiful than here, but even the worshipful Siren began to wonder just how many shimmering, peachy-skinned, coral-lipped close-ups we were supposed to take, especially when they are intercut with medium shots of less-attractive actors shot with crystalline precision. So here's gauzy Leslie filling the screen, cut to old guy from the waist or chest up in sharp focus, with nothing that melds the two or gives a sense of one continuous vision. Nope, it's Leslie's line, time for Leslie's close-up. Or Leslie's reaction. Or what the heck, let's just look at Leslie again.

Fanny, in the end, made the Siren take a look at how much emphasis she places on direction. On that score, you have to flunk the movie. Logan guided three very good performances and one so-so one, but in other respects it's badly directed, end of story. But the Siren can't lie and say she disliked Fanny, when in fact she enjoyed it very much. The delicate theme of romance down the years, children as the thread that binds us together, the beautiful south of France, the intensely lovable characters and most of all Jack Cardiff created a movie that the Siren was powerless to resist completely, Logan or no Logan. It is out in a new widescreen DVD that supposedly looks quite good, so check it out and tell me whether you, too, had to throw your reservations off the pier.

P.S. Yes, the Siren has heard the old story that the director originally wanted the marquee to read "Joshua Logan's Fanny," and thinks that reeks of apocrypha. She'll believe it when someone comes up with a solid source, not just vague tales of the "press pointing out."

P.P.S. If you aren't pouncing on Dan Callahan's every star profile, you are missing out. Two of his best: Leslie Caron (focusing on the Siren's favorite Caron performance, in Lili) and Charles Boyer.

This week's anecdote was inspired by Glenn Kenny, whose blogging has been on a tear of late. He posted recently about a Blu-Ray edition of Black Narcissus, available in the UK. Now the Siren's attitude toward technical advances in home viewing, born of bitter experience, is that it's bad news for classic films. We all know the drill. The studios won't want to invest money in releasing niche items on the new format, much less rarities, and instead there will be a gazillion different superhero movies to choose from. (Because we were running out of those, you know.) There are far fewer titles available on DVD than were on VHS, and I see Blu-Ray making that worse. I'll believe it's an unqualified good for classic movie fans when I hear about the Blu-Ray edition of Desire.

But even the Siren has to admit that the news isn't all bad for those of us who don't want the latest Pirates of the Carribbean on high-def. Glenn has some excellent news about this new version of Black Narcissus. Click over and see what he has to say, and the very revealing screen captures he's posted. It prompted a mini-discussion of Technicolor, and Jack Cardiff, and the Siren's signed edition of Michael Powell's marvelous autobiography, A Life in Movies. And that, in turn, prompted this anecdote of the week.

It's from the section in Powell's book about filming The Thief of Baghdad. Together with cameramen like Cardiff, Georges Périnal and Christopher Challis, Powell made the most beautiful Technicolor films anyone will ever see. (And one thing the Siren likes about Powell's books is that he always gives due credit to the DP.) This, however, did not mean Powell worked free from interference by Natalie Kalmus, the "color advisor" moviemakers were saddled with if they wanted to film in Technicolor. She was universally regarded as a pain in the ass, having a meddlesome, high-handed personality coupled with dreadful taste. But producer Alexander Korda, while talented, was no picnic either, as we shall see. Powell says that although "my name is on the picture, as one of the directors...the film is really the swan song of the Korda brothers--Alex, Vincent and Zoli [Zoltan]."

I had never directed a colour film, but I found the crossover easy. "Make the colour work for you, don't start working for the colour," I said to myself.

And when Natalie Kalmus was firing off her cliches at a grumbling Vincent Korda as she stalked about the big sets on the lot, I said to myself, "We are not making coloured picture postcards for Technicolor."

Mrs. Kalmus, naturally, went by the book. She was not an artist, and the sight of one of Matisse's canvases of that period would probably have sent her to bed for a week. Alex [Korda] knew even less about painting, although he pretended he did, and Vincent had bought him a Manet to hang on one of his walls. I have been with him and Vincent and Nuisance and Frank Walker, the chief of construction, as they walked around the huge pink set of the marketplace and looked at the elaborate foreground miniatures of the city on the hill which were being put in place. Alex, on principle, was never content with anything his brothers did, and he would grumble: "Vincent! What do you think this set is supposed to be?"

"It is the palace, Alex."

"It's a piece of shit. Tear it down and rebuild it four times as big and paint it blue."

"Pink, Alex."

"Pink, then!"

For years around the Siren's former Harlem household, which she shared with two gay men she misses a great deal, a major catchphrase was "Four times as big, and paint it pink."




Here are some other pieces the Siren has been catching up on around the blogosphere:

Raymond de Felitta has switched gears to blog the filming of his new movie, City Island, right here in New York with Alan Arkin, Steven Strait and Emily Mortimer. Andy Garcia plays an everyman, a prison guard with yearnings for art--a type of art that is dear to the Siren. Already there is a lot to enjoy, such as this post about Arkin.

Bob Westal has been devoting himself to the fabulous Michael Caine, one of the Siren's favorite actors of any era. Start here and follow to the magazine. Bob's got clips, reviews and career retrospective. But Bob, where is the love for Caine in Mona Lisa?

Over at Goatdogblog Michael Phillips was blogging his European travels, but the Oscar From the Outside In project is still in full swing. Nick's Flick Picks has the one the Siren was looking forward to, Crash vs. All Quiet on the Western Front, and the Siren was delighted that there was not unmitigated hate for Crash. I still haven't seen Crash, mind you, but I love a contrarian viewpoint, even a partial one. And anything nice about Crash is contrarian. And now The Film Experience has Cimarron vs. Million Dollar Baby. Adding--the Siren's new favorite catchphrase, from Michael discussing the thematic complexities of Cimarron: "Did they mean anything except 'look at this huge budget'?"

Speaking of contrarian, here's Peter Nelhaus: "I know there are some who love El Dorado. Too often, I got the feeling that Rio Bravo was a river that should have been best visited once." The Siren feels the same way about El Dorado; definitely lesser Hawks. I have been waiting to hear Peter's opinion of Lee Server's Robert Mitchum biography, and here it is, in tandem with reviews of El Dorado and Man in the Middle.

Dennis Cozzalio, who once met John Belushi, has an open forum on Animal House going.

Kimberly Lindbergs has great news about a CD release of movie music by John Barry.

The Siren tries to read every word of Greenbriar Picture Shows for its impeccable research and intelligence. John McElwee always has something different to add to the discussion. Three posts the Siren has particularly loved recently. There is this two-parter on the wild and woolly experiments with movie theaters in the late 1920s, and how early widescreen was snuffed out in the 1930s, darn near taking the careers of Raoul Walsh and John Wayne with it. And then there is this sympathetic look at not just the tragedy, but also the work of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.

Noir of the Week tackles the best film poor doomed Barbara Payton ever made, via her biographer John O'Dowd. Talk about a star-crossed dame.

Finally, Ivan at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is the antidote to the sour sentiments expressed here a few weeks ago about Red Skelton. And Ivan just wrote up Anthony Mann's "historical noir" Reign of Terror (aka The Black Book), which the Siren has waiting for her in a stack of recorded DVDs even as we speak. She recorded it off TCM in hopes of getting a better look at John Alton's cinematography, but no dice. Ivan reports that it's the same crappy print that's everywhere else.

Which brings us right back where we started. I know I'm a curmudgeon, but I have company. Blu-Ray, schmu-ray.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, from 1951, marks the final gasp of an odd 1940s micro-vogue for romantic movies about the afterlife. Hollywood, that most doggedly carnal of places, has produced these little fantasies from the early days (Smilin' Through from 1922 and 1932, Outward Bound from 1930, 1934's Death Takes a Holiday) to our time (Martin Brest's 1998 remake of Death Takes a Holiday, Meet Joe Black, which should have been called Death Now Takes Three Hours).

The 1940s, however, were the years when the theme reached its zenith. There's A Guy Named Joe, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, A Matter of Life and Death, Cabin in the Sky, Between Two Worlds, Heaven Can Wait (the Lubitsch one), Portrait of Jennie, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ... the Siren may be forgetting a few, feel free to jog her memory. There are obvious reasons why supernatural themes might appeal during a decade when the world was first an abbatoir and later struggling for a way to cleanse. And the films range from pretty good, to highly entertaining, to at least one (admittedly English) masterpiece. The idea of love that vaults time and even death seems to have drawn good work from the decade's directors and screenwriters.

These are movies for specialized tastes, but if you happen to have those tastes, Pandora is a doozy. If you are an ardent admirer of more than one of the following, then by all means, rent it:

1. Directors With Highly Eccentric Visions. Albert Lewin had already made an unforgettable film from a delicate supernatural theme when he directed The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1945. (The final scene in that one never fails to terrify the Siren.) Pandora, however, was what he had waited for, the one he was determined to pour heart and soul into. Lewin wrote, directed and produced in an effort to craft a different kind of movie, one that would take the surrealist art he collected and fuse it with the cinema. He wanted a movie that was not merely romantic, but mythic. For that reason one wishes this were a truly great film, instead of a mesmerizing collection of the great, the singular and the ludicrous.

2. Love That Transcends Our Earthbound State. Pandora opens with a simple scene of fishermen hauling their nets and joking around in Catalan, until one of them looks down at his catch and blanches. Cut to a majestic shot from the top of a bell tower. In the foreground, the bell tolling grim news; far below on the beach, the tiny figures of people gathering, slowly then faster and faster, to see what has been hauled from the sea.We cut to the scene on the beach, where Nigel Patrick (playing a narrative device named Stephen Cameron) has stopped his car to look. The camera shows a tangle of fishnet, and two entwined hands, one male and one female.

So we know from the beginning that our main characters will love unto death. This is not a movie where suspense is important--you are watching a great love unfold, and that is supposed to suffice.

2. Plots Which Jettison All Pretense of Realism. The Siren is a skeptical mortal who believes in neither ghosts, nor psychics, nor ancient curses, nor Flying Dutchmen. Paradoxically, however, she loves a good ghostly plot. Pandora Reynolds, nightclub singer, has a bad case of anhedonia. So she runs around Spain ensnaring men, then breaking their hearts. One night she sees a tall-masted ship anchored in the bay, and she skinny-dips out to see who's on board. Lo, it is Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason), painting a picture, utterly nonchalant as Ava walks in wrapped in nothing but insouciance and a sail. That's because he already knows Ava's face--it is the one he is painting. Hendrik has been waiting for her, alone of all women, down through the lonely centuries. He is, of course, the titular Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail the seas of the world until he can find a woman who will love him enough to die for him. Pandora and Hendrik do fall in love, but will it be enough to save Hendrik?

3. The Beauty of Ava Gardner.


In case you still care after drinking in that screen shot, she doesn't give a good performance, which was typical of Gardner until relatively late in her career. In her daily life she was a Siren's siren, a woman who could take a bounder like Frank Sinatra and reduce him to warbling "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning." The part of Pandora Reynolds, for whom a man (Marius Goring from The Red Shoes, in a nice bit of cross-movie irony) kills himself only minutes after the movie starts, was practically autobiography. But just because you are something doesn't mean you can act it. Gardner was never very confident about her acting ability, and it shows. She doesn't suggest the banked-up fires of a passionate woman searching for love and meaning. Instead, Gardner seems apathetic, a risky acting choice even for a great talent. During a scene in which a man pushes his beloved racecar over a cliff for her, Ava recites her lines like she's playing Trilby instead of an all-gifted woman.

Later, when Pandora falls in love, Gardner is somewhat better, but still has an oddly girlish and tentative quality to her lines. Mason, unable to get any real chemistry going with his leading lady, retreats into conveying inner torment at every turn. This was his signature ability as an actor (see Lolita, A Star is Born, Odd Man Out, and probably Bigger Than Life if Fox would ever release the damn DVD), so Mason is quite effective, but the central love affair never soars as it should.

4. Spain's Costa Brava (in a Less Crowded and Touristy Era). Oh my, how the cast and crew must have loved filming this one. The beach, the mountains, the waters, the villas. The Siren is sure the area must be long since built up and despoiled, but seeing it here is pure pleasure.

5. Technicolor. Used by cinematographer Jack Cardiff (another Red Shoes connection) to film nos. 3 and 4 to spectacular effect. There are lots of day-for-night scenes, which can be even worse than lousy rear projection for breaking the mood of a picture. Here, the "night" shots glitter silver and blue, adding to the otherworldly aura instead of killing the viewer's belief in the story. Many compositions are as striking as a Man Ray photograph, as the shot at left demonstrates. Lewin and Cardiff use their location for everything it is worth, skimming over the water, putting you in the lap of a racecar trying to set a speed record on a beach, soaring up into the mountains behind the coast. For beauty and visual originality, Pandora can compare with any other landmark of Technicolor. If you love the process, the Siren would go so far as to say this film is indispensable.

6. Bullfighting. The Siren hates bullfighting. She always cheers for the bull. Despite this very American attitude, she was wowed by the bullfighting scenes, which are filmed with a grace and rhythm that at last gave her a glimpse of what others see in this spectacle. Mario Cabré, a bullfighter in real life, plays one here, his noisy, narcissistic love for Pandora acting as the catalyst for the final pact between her and Hendrik. Cabré can't act worth a damn, but he looks great, his character has a mother fixation that is the funniest thing in the movie, and somehow he strikes more sparks off Mason than does the lovely Ava.

7. Movies That the French Love More Than We Do.
If Pandora reminded the Siren of anything else, it was The Barefoot Contessa, another gorgeously shot movie where the characters talk incessantly and behave in self-destructive ways. (I thought so even before I realized Cardiff also was the DP on Contessa.) Mankiewicz's movie was beloved of the Cahiers crowd even as it was judged lacking by American critics. Pandora, as it happens, had the same fate. Mr. C. entered toward the end of Lewin's movie and recognized it immediately as a film he had seen in childhood on French TV's weekly screenings, complete with a lovingly detailed introduction explaining its importance as a pinnacle of "le surréalisme." The Siren thinks the French are onto something with both movies. Neither is a true masterpiece, but the Contessa and Pandora are both highly worthwhile films, as beautiful, individual and as slightly insane as their heroines.