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October 16, 2006

Robert Aldrich, Where Art Thou?

The first film I selected for my Halloween semi-marathon was Robert Aldrich's second and somewhat lesser known spooky old maid film, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. It was also going to be the subject of my entry for Dennis' Robert Aldrich Blog-A-thon.

Unfortunately, a dead car battery in Austin kept me from returning home today in time to refresh those old nightmares the film gave me when my mom showed it to me when I was an impressionable eleven years old. I've already got it in my computer and I'll be watching it later today (after an all-too-brief nap and an early screening of Pan's Labyrinth), and hopefully elaborating slightly on this post. Aldrich is one of those classic directors who, like Sam Fuller, I essentially don't know at all - is it even proper to categorize him alongside Fuller, or am I fumbling for generalizations here? Regardless, I'll be back within twenty four short little hours.

* * *

I just finished watching Charlotte; it lacks the lurid, cringe-inducing mania that makes Whatever Happened To Baby Jane so memorable, but it's a pretty delightful thriller in its own right (imagine something a bit in the vein of Clouzot's Les Diaboliques, with a touch of Tennsee Williams). Back when I was ten or eleven, of course, it was anything but enjoyable; that image of Joseph Cotten's face, just below the surface of the rippling water, with those dead eyes halfway open, kept me up for nights, even after the adrenaline shot of that scene with Bruce Dern's head in the box had worn off. Half the pleasure of watching the film this evening was refreshing all sorts of suppressed memories of things that probably would have come closer to psychologically scarring me if I hadn't so regularly sought them out.

That head scene still works, by the way. The rest of the film, in terms of shock value, is a bit more creaky, but I think Aldrich was more interested maintaining a consistent sense of mood in which to let his actors vamp it up - Bette Davis is Bette Davis, of course, but Joseph Cotten turns in a pretty sly turn and Agnes Moorehead pretty much steals the entire movie.

I wish I could abandon my usual crutch of nostalgia and speak more decisively about the director, but without the context of Aldrich's other work, I can only talk about this film on its own terms. And for that matter, I can't do much better than this deconstruction of the first fifteen minutes, which are indeed the best-directed sequence in the film. The rest of it, for all its beautiful use of noirish light and shadow, serves more as a showboat for the cast; but this almost entirely visual opening sequence is where Aldrich gets to be front and center. And what an opening! He sinks his hooks immediately with a series of Bressonian static shots, establishing the antebellum mansion in which the film will take place. These shots are the opening notes of what will become within a few minutes a full blown cinematic waltz, playfully layering measure after measure of dread until it all crescendos in blast of macabre gore and a pretty spectacular reveal:

I could have turned it off right then and been satisfied. I didn't, of course, but I did put it on pause long enough to move Kiss Me Deadly to the top of that cinematic remedy that is my Netflix queue.

Posted by David Lowery at October 16, 2006 04:27 AM

Comments

Posted by: frank at October 16, 2006 05:40 PM

Posted by: Ghostboy at October 16, 2006 05:42 PM

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Posted by: Maya at October 20, 2006 06:47 PM