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Mon Oncle d'Amerique
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Recently returned from the Sundance Film Festival, I'm still shaking the Utah snow out of my boots. I'm grateful for a couple of DVD reissues to help me unwind after 10 days of sleep deprivation.
Alain Resnais' 1980 comic drama, Mon Oncle d'Amérique, takes you back to a time when French-language films were anticipated by American art-house audiences. Now, some 42 years after the French New Wave, Mon Oncle d'Amérique returns as a reminder of the continuing significance of French cinema.
Closer to home, Brian De Palma's 1987 gangster blockbuster, The Untouchables, receives a slick DVD transfer, worthy of its visual audacity. If the Sundance ideal is an artistic collaboration between the worlds of independent and commercial film, then The Untouchables proves such a marriage is not so farfetched.
Mon Oncle d'Amérique
Unrated
1980, New Yorker
Three lives -- Jean (Roger Pierre), René (Gerard Depardieu) and Janine (Nicole Garcia), from different generations and different backgrounds -- unite together through mutual feelings of disappointment and frustration with their lives. On the surface, they have little in common. But deep inside their psyches, these three adults-in-crisis are kindred spirits. Each of them speaks of an uncle in America who's always there to help. Yet, despite these American uncles, their lives remain in crisis.
Veteran director Alain Resnais' triumph with Mon Oncle d'Amérique lies in the playful way he unfolds these somber stories. Black-and-white sequences from past films are dreamlike flashbacks. What begins as an absorbing study of human behavior and heartache quickly evolves into a character-driven tale that's both spontaneous and free-spirited.
Recent reissues of Resnais' 1961 film Last Year At Marienbad, a seductive mystery set in the Marienbad chateau, and 1959's Hiroshima Mon Amour, about a French actress' troubled love affair with a Japanese architect, reconfirm the themes of memory, time and death that are so prevalent in Resnais' films.
There is much to be said about the composition of Mon Oncle d'Amérique. Still, it's important to remember that Resnais offers compelling storytelling equal to his film's aesthetic brilliance.
Long considered one of the most important films of the 1980s, Mon Oncle d'Amérique remains as thoughtful and relevant as ever. It's what one expects from a film that's truly timeless. (Grade: A)
The Untouchables
Rated R
1987, Paramount
In light of recent films like the stark Mission to Mars and the populist Mission: Impossible, it's difficult to imagine Brian De Palma as the bad boy of American cinema. Video helps confirm his controversial status. There is the prom scene in Carrie, Dressed to Kill's elevator murder and the chainsaw massacre in Scarface.
Through a genre movie no different from countless Hollywood blockbusters, De Palma brings Prohibition-era Chicago to life with all the visual pomp one expects from blockbuster moviemaking. The Untouchables is old-fashioned in its storytelling. The thrill, still to this day, lies in watching De Palma wield his sordid style on a spectacular scale.
Treasury Agent Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) brings gangster Al Capone (Robert De Niro) to justice with the help of a honest Irish cop (Sean Connery) willing to tutor Ness in the ways of gangland Chicago.
The spare storytelling and iconic characters belong to screenwriter David Mamet. But it's De Palma's filmmaking that ultimately boosts this gangster story, especially with a grandiose shoot out between Ness and Capone's men in a cavernous train station.
The Untouchables proves that personal artistry and commercial moviemaking can unite on a project. The challenge is to think of a recent blockbuster that's equally successful. (Grade: A)
Contact Steve ramos: sramos@citybeat.com
