Sleeper (1973)

Rating 3/4

Comedy, like science fiction, is ripe for social commentary and Woody Allen’s Sleeper, being both, is as brilliant as any.
Combining the physical antics of Buster Keaton and the wit of Bob Hope, Woody Allen had somehow achieved the impossible. He crafted alongside the comedy a highly intelligent vision of the future where the human race will have morally and intellectually degenerated into puerile sheep without ever challenging or being challenged. It’s as relevant and insightful as other great science fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) wakes up 200 years into the future after being involuntarily put in cryosleep after a routine surgery goes wrong. The doctors who wake him are able to cure him of his ailment, but what they can’t fix is a world where everyone is mentally infantile and sexually impotent. I am of course referring to the world of 2173. I can understand, I suppose, if someone became confused and thought I was referring to the present. I don’t think a man like Woody Allen could disagree.

Miles ends up on the run for his life after unwillingly getting involved with Marxist revolutionaries who want to use him to take down the government.

I’ve mentioned this film is a comedy while none of this sounds remotely funny. And yet, it is. With a highly well-thought out premise, Sleeper is a hilarious movie. The science-fiction background provides Allen with a comparative view of futurist mankind with how we are now. What being a comedy adds to it is a sharp take on absurdity and deservedly insults moral and intellectual laziness. The same sort of laziness threatening us now in 2024 just as much it did in 1973.

Miles meets Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton) who is politically apathetic and lives an affluent life of ease. She writes bad poetry and thinks butterflies turn into caterpillars. She gets high with her friends by passing around and rubbing a ritual orb. She has a cheap understanding of sex and prefers to have pleasure artificially induced. Using a special chamber called an Orgasmatron people can now, not only skip the foreplay, but all physical activity involved altogether.

Throughout this insanity he disguises himself as a butler robot only to have his head nearly removed by a technician. He and Luna go on a quest to destroy the dictator’s severed nose to stop him from being cloned. Doctors tells him fudge bars and cigarettes are healthy now. And my favorite of all, he slips on a giant peel from a banana the size of a canoe. This same banana is owned and aggressively protected by a farmer who walks a six-foot high chicken on a leesh. Just in case the situation was not bizarre enough.

Miles is questioned in one scene about the meaning of a few fragments from his time in history. These include photos of famous political figures and selections from TV news broadcasts. The ironic and factually inaccurate answers he gives are some of the funniest and best-written lines in the movie. He also tells Luna this surreal story about how he asked his mother where babies come from. His mother misheard him and thought he said rabies so she tells him from dog bites. He says, “The next week, a woman on my block gave birth to triplets… I thought she’d been bitten by a great dane.”

Sleeper is also the sort of comedy that is rife with slapstick humor most of which is deliberately shot like old silent shorts from Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. The camera is sped up to feign fast movement, the music – composed by Woody Allen himself – is jazzy, and the physical antics are cartoonishly out of this world.

Sleeper is funny from beginning to end and doesn’t become imbalanced with the social commentary. Both perfectly support the other and the rawer slapstick bits fit the the film’s overall tone. This might be the only sci-fi movie with classic bits like a pie in the face and slipping on a banana peel that doesn’t lose its preoccupation with social commentary in an Orwellian setting.

Sleeper is right up there with THX 1138, Logan’s Run, or Silent Running as a work of cerebral sci-fi. Simply because it swaps drama for comedy doesn’t make it any lesser and believing so would be a mistake.

Breathless (1960)

Rating 3.5/4

“After all I am an asshole,” says Michel introducing himself. He speaks with resignation and without apology. The world has reached its verdict about him and he doesn’t disagree. And why shouldn’t he? Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a thoroughly selfish and unlikable individual and cannot see himself being anything else. He steals cars, objectifies women, robs people in public restrooms, and mistreats everyone.
Michel idolizes Humphrey Bogart and plays it cool: wearing sunglasses indoors and rarely goes without a cigarette in his mouth. In Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Belmondo became an instant icon of the French New Wave bringing classic Hollywood cool to young French audiences of the 60s.
He is in love with Patricia (Jean Seberg) an American girl who is rebelling against the expectations of society in her own way. She is smart and independent, but doesn’t seem to like it much. She confides in a friend that she is uncomfortable with her freedom and we see her become unhealthily drawn to Michel’s rude and narcissistic exterior. He tells her he knows he loves her because he wants to sleep with her. She knows this is nonsense, but lets it slide because she wants to sleep with him too. She quotes Faulkner at him, “between grief and nothing I will take grief.” Michel rejects this calling grief a compromise and says he wants all or nothing. In the end we see which of the two he receives.
In a lengthy bedroom scene Patricia’s every attempt to culture and civilize him is rebuffed by his apathy and he constantly interrupts any serious conversation by asking her to take her clothes off. Eventually she says to him, “We look each other in the eyes and I don’t know why.” Michel provides her excitement and not much else.

In the film’s opening Michel steals a car and goes for a ride. He monologues, occasionally looking at the camera toward the audience; and here we get our first clear look at his character. He expresses a number of harsh opinions about anything that is not remotely on his wavelength, refuses to pick up a pair of female hitchers because he thinks they are not attractive enough, and plays with a gun he finds in the glovebox as if it was a toy.
He is stopped by a policeman but gets away when the officer is killed. We don’t see Michel commit the crime. In a series of jump cuts a gunshot is heard, the policeman collapses, and Michel is then seen running away on foot. In Paris he drags Patricia into the mess as he tries desperately seeking men who owe him money so he can fund passage to Italy for himself and her. He steals a few more cars, beats up man in a restroom for the cash in his pocket, and cheats a taxi driver out of his fare. Patricia protects him by lying to investigators who are looking for him.

I am uncertain that Michel is guilty of the crime he is being accused of. The movie spends plenty of time after the murder showing us that even if he hadn’t he is certainly capable of it. After all, he is an asshole as he said himself. Every heinous and reprehensible act he commits is depicted clearly accept for the murder. For society and even Michel himself it doesn’t really matter. Society made its judgments. He is just as aware of his shortcomings as anyone. He just doesn’t care. It’s all the same when the world already hates him whether he did it or not. What he does after the murder won’t be any different no matter what his guilt. In the end his only feelings are of exhaustion and disgust.

Breathless takes a unique approach to its cinematography using custom film in a handheld camera that presents a distinctly documentarian look. The camera is never still for a moment, subtly moving even during still shots like in many of Scorsese’s films.
The scenes of dialogue are subjected to frequent jump cuts, sometimes between every line. Time lapses happen between the characters’ statements even when the next line directly follows the previous one. This was a last minute editorial decision made in post-production and it has been widely debated by viewers for decades. My own interpretation is that the time in which these conversations take place are being deliberately made unimportant by Godard. Different times, same conversation. Michel has given the same pillow talk and used the same lines to seduce women on multiple occasions. He is after all, an asshole.

Breathless – released in France as À bout de souffle – has become immensely popular among young theater goers since its release in 1960. There is a reason for this. It’s rough, raw, and hideously brazen in its honesty. The universe doesn’t blare trumpets declaring objectively that one person or the next is bad or good. People can only see their behavior whatever it may be and make their own judgments. Michel and Patricia are loathsome to many. Either for being unidentifiable or hitting too close to home. Michel is cool, but also a jerk with deep-seated insecurities and completely devoid of empathy or remorse. Patricia is infuriating. She’s beautiful. She’s clever. And every choice she makes is terrible and costs her more and more of her dignity and self-respect. She’s neither a feminist icon nor a stand-in for misogynistic ideals. She is wholly herself for better or worse.

I don’t like anyone in this movie. I don’t like what happens in this movie. Listening to Michel’s putdowns and enduring his selfish attitude is difficult at times. But people like him do exist. And Godard masterfully gives us a realistic and uncomfortable look at them without awkward moralizing or offensive apathy. I didn’t have fun watching the film. I wasn’t supposed to. And that’s what makes it a masterpiece.

Arrowsmith (1931)

Rating 2/4

Art is at its best when it isn’t rushed. Otherwise what could be great becomes merely mediocre. And that is precisely what happened to John Ford’s 1931 picture, Arrowsmith. It’s a sad what-could-have-been with fine acting and excellent cinematography mired by a fast pace that comes at the expense of the story.

Based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, Arrowsmith tells the story of an ambitious country doctor (Ronald Colman) who struggles to balance his career fighting infectious diseases with his marriage to his longsuffering wife, Leora (Helen Hayes). She’s spunky, enthusiastic, and charms him with her wit. He’s noble, eager, and humble in his dealings with European professionals who seek his talents fighting plague in the tropics.

We first meet Martin Arrowsmith studying up on Gray’s Anatomy being told that the best doctors need only that book, the Bible, and Shakespeare to be well-rounded in their craft. It’s silly advice and Arrowsmith never takes it in the movie and the character who says it to him never reappears again. He later (and by later I mean in the very next scene) introduces himself to eminent bacteriologist, Dr. Gottlieb (A. E. Anson) who tells him he won’t take him on as a research apprentice until he finishes school. Years later (once again in the very next scene) he is finished with school and ready to serve. He meets Leora, a young nurse scrubbing hospital floors as a punishment for smoking on the job. He asks her out on a date and at the restaurant he proposes to her. If this seems a bit hasty, don’t worry, in a few moments the dialogue reveals they have been already dating for a couple of years.
And here is where I started seeing the problem that persists throughout the whole picture. The film constantly jumps ahead in time with only hasty dialogue explaining the passage of time. When it is not simply confusing it is robbing the story of any dramatic tension.
His life with Leora is always saccharine and happy and every moment of strife or conflict; any obstacle and hurdle they encounter is immediately rectified and resolved by the very next scene. Sometimes even in the very same scene.

Martin declines Gottlieb’s offer to work under him as a researcher in New York because the salary is not enough to support him and his wife. He goes into the country to work as a practical physician: pulling children’s teeth, treating sore throats, and even developing a serum to cure sick cattle. I never saw him charge payment and whenever the subject is brought up he nobly says “don’t worry about it.” I really don’t know why he declined Gottlieb’s offer then.
After his wife miscarries and becomes unhappy in the country he takes his family to New York after all, where his talents as a bacteriologist lands him in the tropics to test out a serum for bubonic plague on the population. What follows is a poorly written third act that tries to tackle research ethics in a way that I found offensive. He is instructed to test the serum on a selection of the population and withhold it from the other half to test its effectiveness. This is profoundly illogical. All of these people are ill and withholding the serum would prove nothing. The ethical question of experimenting in this fashion is brought up and then dropped with a whimper. What we get instead is a diabolical white savior plot that tells us that those who were outraged by the experiment were just being unreasonable. When the “big bad city folk” who opposed the experiment show up at his camp to receive the serum themselves they are portrayed as sycophantic hypocrites who got scared and came running to our hero. This is some of the most reprehensible moralizing I have seen in a movie. Tacked on to this is an implied affair Martin has with a woman named Joyce (a sadly wasted performance by Myrna Loy) that comes out of seemingly nowhere and is easy to miss and misinterpret. We get a scene with Martin in beautifully shot low-key lighting smoking a cigarette outside her room. She changes into a nightgown before the scene cuts to black. Another leering glance from her and a brief parting scene at the end is all that is further developed from this.

I mentioned the lighting above because that is where Arrowsmith’s strengths lie. Low-key lighting, sihouettes, and shadow terrifically capture the characters’ moods in moments of doubt. Ray June’s cinematography here was nominated for an Academy Award and it is merited.
Another strong point is the acting. Helen Hayes is terrific in here. Portraying exuberance, wit, love, grief, and humor; I could see the woman Martin fell in love with. She did not win or even get nominated for her acting in this movie, but I cannot complain since she still won that year for her role in The Sin of Madelon Claudet anyway.

I would have appreciated Arrowsmith more had it not been for the pacing and plot. The third act is morally questionable and quick and convenient resolutions to every conflict take away any investment I could have had in the story.

I read somewhere that producer Samuel Goldwyn allowed director John Ford – best known for his work with John Wayne – to helm Arrowsmith on the condition that he not do any drinking during production. Apparently Ford deliberately rushed through making the film so he could get back to it. I hate to say this, but maybe Goldwyn should have let him have a cheat day.

THX 1138 (1971)

Rating 2.5/4

Director George Lucas’s directorial debut, THX 1138, is in the fine tradition of science fiction movies of ideas such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Logan’s Run.

Its world is a dystopic underground society, policed by robots and inhabited by a subjugated populace too drugged up by state-mandated medications to even realize they aren’t free or even should be. Their reality is a pale and lifeless one, both mentally and physically. The titular hero, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall), like the rest of the film’s characters; has every facet of his life regulated by an all-watching Big Brother-esque state that forces him to take medications which suppress emotions and molds him into whatever type of working drone the government wants him to be at any time.

THX lives with an assigned roommate named LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) who rebels against her government by swapping his pills with hers causing him to develop forbidden emotions and forbidden sexual desire. This relationship and the overwhelming emotions he experiences without the drugs causes a workplace accident that lands him in prison for “drug evasion.”
He shares this prison, an all white space stretching eternally, with another dissident named SEN 5241 (Donald Pleasance) whom he had reported earlier for illegally changing shift patterns in order to get a preferential roommate. This society is efficient, if also harsh.
What follows is a daring escape in which THX and SEN evade the authorities in order to find the world’s surface where men and women can live free.

In an impressive directorial debut we get amazing visuals and special effects showing a community rendered colorless and sterile by consumerism and unquestioning loyalty to one’s government. It is a beautiful looking picture and what is even more powerful than its art direction is its editing – largely helmed by director George Lucas himself. Lucas, before he became a filmmaking icon, was a master of using editing to pace a movie limited by its budget.
A lot of THX 1138 is shot from the perspective of computer monitors and surveillance equipment and much of the dialogue and action is presented in closeups that intensify the characters’ desperation and sense of panic – especially when THX begins withdrawing from the drugs.

The movie also brilliantly portrays the impersonal attitude of authority over a populace that has been quantified and dehumanized. Religion has been supplanted by a faux-benign computer system that plays simultaneously the role of a confessional priest and an advertising man. It preaches, “Consume. Be happy,” while failing to adequately respond to the personal issues and problems of its worshippers.
In one of the film’s most affective scenes THX is subjected in prison to a number of torturous tests which is commented on by unseen tormenters who sound like bored lab techs experimenting on mice or IT professionals playing with software. His reactions of pain and stress are just data.

The movie’s weakest point, unfortunately, is its characters who provide necessarily muted performances which serve to show the affects of the state and its drugs on what is essentially a human ant farm. However, by the same token this prevents any one of them from eliciting much care or concern from the viewer. The characters are governed by only the most base emotions of fear and anxiety which carries into all three acts of the plot.

THX 1138 is a visual marvel and it is one of most intelligent examples of dystopic science fiction in cinema. What it is not, however, is a compelling human drama.