Review: The Scarlet Empress (1934 Film)

[Warning, general, but not specific, spoilers ahead. This is history, though. Not very accurate history, but history.]

Sofia Frederica (Marlene Dietrich), an aristocratic ingénue, is manipulated into marrying the Grand Duke of Russia (Sam Jaffe), a madman beholden to his dictatorial mother, Empress Elizabeth (Louise Dresser). In Sofia the Empress sees only a vessel to serve Russian civilisation and culture. She forces Sofia to throw away her past life, and take on Russian ways. She changes Sofia’s name to the Russian ‘Catherine’, converts her to the Russian Orthodox Church, and commands her to bear a Russian son. But from her ruin she will become Catherine the Great.

From its first scenes the film luxuriates in the macabre and themes of lost innocence. As a child Sofia (Maria Riva) is read Russia’s bloody history as a bedtime tale. Cut to a rapid montage of governmental carnage. Smash cut to a now adult Sofia on a garden swing, kicking into the camera. 

Review: Farewell, My Queen (2012 Film)

Three days before the ancien regime’s fall, Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) acts as the personal reader of Marie-Antoinette (Diane Kruger). Although a servant, her life at Versailles is comfortable, and offers her intimacy with her beloved Queen. In the following days she witnesses Versailles’ foundations devoured by the Revolution.

This is a story of the French Revolution, but it does not focus on violence. It foreshadows death and destruction, of course. The aristocrats know the populace want their heads, and they fear the Third Estate may well get their desire. But this death and destruction lays in the future, beyond the three day scope of this film. At most, violence erupts off-screen. 

Review: Space Adventure Cobra (1982 Film)

Cobra, the universe’s most wanted outlaw, runs his motorcycle into a cat-suited bounty hunter. She, naturally, has her aim set on him, but not for his bounty. A gold-skinned crime-lord kidnapped her sister. With Cobra’s help she will save her sister from Crystal Boy’s megalomaniacal clutches.

Not a deep plot. And, despite many obstacles poofing into existence from A to B, not a complex one neither. The plot is an excuse. It seems an illustrator, still reeling from a prolific creative burst, sat before a wall plastered with drawings of characters, settings, moments and explosions, and only then wondered, ‘How can I string these together.’ In this, SAC resembles something from French Sci-Fi comics. The artist wishes to flex his visual muscles, and then concocts a narrative as vehicle. So while the narrative is little more than a well-done 80s, tongue-in-cheek, action-fest, I would be in error to judge purely on that. From the Bond-style opening credits to a space cruiser’s screen-filling flight, the film, with no apology, puts style over substance. 

Review: Kahil Gibran's The Prophet (Film)

Almitra (Quvenzhané Wallis), a mischievous thief, mute since the death of her father, follows her mother (Salma Hayek) to work one day. Her mother acts as housekeeper to the poet and eponymous prophet Mustapha (Liam Neeson), who after seven years house arrest has his sentence commuted to exile. As Almitra, her mother and Mustafa make their way to the docks, with guards ensuring their journey, Mustafa passes on aphorisms to those he meets on the way.

Review: An African Millionaire, by Grant Allen

Sir Charles Vandrift, ruthless South African diamond mogul, meets his match in Colonel Clay. Masquerading as a Mexican Seer, Clay, with little more than a few parlour conjurings, makes away with five thousand pounds of Vandrift’s fortune. And Clay’s not finished, he’ll swindle Vandrift to his last pound. After all, how can Vandrift fight a master of disguise, a hawk who can be anyone and anywhere?  

The series in a line: Gentleman swindler cons a millionaire over and over again. Sounds repetitive, doesn’t it, twelve stories performing the same dance. But Allen avoids stagnation by differentiating the stories just enough. Of course the stories have a formula, but they never descend to the formulaic. In each story Allen introduces one or two new characters – It doesn’t take a mystery aficionado to spot the criminal. But the unmask never hogs the climax. Allen doesn’t tease and hint at where, oh where, is that damned Colonel Clay. He focusses on the con, rather, on how that magnificent bastard Clay will swindle that petty bastard Vandrift.

Review: Olivia by Olivia, by Dorothy Strachey

‘[H]ave you ever been in love?’ …

‘Yes,’ she answered somberly, ‘yes.’

‘And what’s it like?’

‘Too horrible to speak of … And too delicious.’

(pg. 65)

Olivia, sixteen, and ready to have the half-sleep of childhood burned from her. Her bildungsroman, inspired by Strachey’s own life, blooms in Mlle Julie and Mlle Cara’s school. But her education extends beyond academia, as she cannot help, nor tries to help, that she loves her schoolmistress, Mlle Julie. A love perhaps returned.   

Review: Cochlea & Eustachia, by Hans Rickheit

By convention a review starts with a description of the plot’s setup. I hope you will forgive me if this sounds like the perverted dreams of a feverish addict. Cochlea and Eustachia, two identical girls of uncertain species, wearing only negligees and domino masks, explore the home (?) of a disturbed scientist (?) whose head is a sooty cotton bud. The girls explore the condemned manor, where bloodless viscera vines the walls. They witness another identical girl steal a book from a hairless borrower living in an owl statue. I won’t go on – not for fear of spoiling the story, just that I doubt I could describe it.