KEITH UHLICH
Dead Man
film classics
Army of Shadows (1969) Jean-Pierre Melville, France/Italy Writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville, known primarily for chic gangster films like Bob le Flambeur and Le Samouraï, applies his signature icy gaze to this shattering tale of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France circa WWII. From its provocative opening shot—a restaging of SS forces marching triumphantly along the Champs-Élysées—the film generates a placidly paranoiac atmosphere that seeps into your subconscious. The imposing Lino Ventura plays the head of one of the resistance networks, his every day defined by skulking and scheming in the ostensible name of righteousness. One of his contacts is played by French icon Simone Signoret, who proves to be the story’s tragic heart. Murder is a frequent occurrence, and morality is malleable. Such is life during wartime. It’s to Melville’s credit that he avoids lionization of any character, even those who most of us might deem to be on the right side of history. (Streaming on MUBI.) 20
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Dead Man (1995) Jim Jarmusch, United States/Germany/Japan Jim Jarmusch’s greatest film is as unconventional as they come, ostensibly a Western, though one shot through with ribald humor, profound melancholy, and that indefinable something that only this quintessentially downtown New York filmmaker can conjure. Johnny Depp plays meek accountant William Blake (named, of course, after the prophetic poet), who unwittingly kills a man and goes on the (leisurely) run with a sardonic Native American called Nobody (Gary Farmer). Death is always near, not only in the form of two enduringly at-odds bounty hunters (Lance Henriksen and Michael Wincott), but from the bullet lodged in Blake’s chest, which is slowly killing him. Every element of the film contributes to its inimitably feverish quality, from Robby Müller’s exquisite black-and-white cinematography to a grittily electric guitar score entirely improvised in-studio by Neil Young. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.)
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Grey Gardens (1975) Ellen Hovde, Albert Maysles and David Maysles, United States This creepiest and campiest of documentaries, co-helmed by direct-cinema pioneers Albert and David Maysles, follows former high-society socialite Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Little Edie as they while away the days in their decaying East Hampton mansion. These cousins of Jacqueline Onassis are basically living out an obliviously satirical version of the Kennedy family Camelot lifestyle, gleefully playing to the camera even as their surroundings and mental states visibly rot. Grey Gardens is a classic of can’t-avert-your-eyes cinema with its own ethical queasiness, given that the Maysles often encourage the Beale women to act their worst. (The resident raccoons in the attic also respond in destructive kind.) Yet there is something undeniably outsiderish about the C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E
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