“…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” – George Eliot

God Malick gives us all agony and no ecstacy in his pedagogic telling of a World War II conscientious objector whose family was persecuted because he refused to “Heil, Hitler” or pass out personal items to Nazi soldiers asking for him to share in the war effort. Malick barrages us with his haywire montages, his restless camera and impressionistic cuts; he also repeats his messages endlessly because he doubts we are more than children and that we will not understand.

If I didn’t know any better I’d say Malick made the film to comment that we live in a very stupid world trapped by xenophobia and banded together in groupthink, but I’d like to suppose it’s more likely Malick made it because he wants us to know about a true life virtuous Austrian man who denounced Hitler when everybody else in his village was afraid to defy conformity (see above quotation that is used at the end titles). The over-cutting, which turns dialogue exchanges into montage form that’s bad trademark Malick, keeps us though on the outside of the characters.

Malick has a great gift and has in the past demonstrated that he has the wisdom of an altruistic God. But he now berates us and punishes us with an excessive just-under three hour running time. A Hidden Life is hell to sit through, but there are a toss of two dozen moments that I’m at least glad I absorbed. Now that Malick has wrapped up this project he’s in his off time I’d guess immersed in painting classes, or takes afternoon walks while penning poetry, or sips English tea while stirring in intellectual conversations with his closest confidants. But on the basis of this film, I cannot help but worry though that Malick is a misanthrope who is turning into the God Complex of Tommy Lee Jones in “Ad Astra.” His personal connectiveness with his audience is becoming unreachable.

With August Diehl as Franz Jägerstätter, Valerie Pachner as his wife Franziska, and Bruno Ganz in his final role as a judge.

174 Minutes. Rated R.

Film Cousins: “The Sound of Music” (1965); “The Garden of Finzi-Continsis” (Italy, 1970); “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” (2005, Germany); “Defiance” (2009).

“Double Indemnity” (1944), move over. Is Linda Fiorentino the meanest and dirtiest femme fatale there ever was, she of <em>The Last Seduction</em>? Bridget Gregory is married to a louse (Bill Pullman), and one day takes his drug money. He wants the money back, and maybe his wife back. Maybe not. Fiorentino is shameless with the number of deceptions and back-stabbings she is willing to pull on men. Fear her.

The movie is also about a young professional named Mike (Peter Berg) who engages in a one night stand with Bridget, but makes the mistake of wanting romance with her. By making desperate pleas to want to know her better, Bridget takes advantage by sucking him into her web. Well, sexually, she’s better described as a black cougar.

Bridget takes a job at an insurance company that Mike also works at, but she’s merely doing it as a means to switch identities. Mike keeps coming onto her, hoping, dreaming, that Bridget can be emotionally available. Her qualifiers to have him meet her criteria, is debased. He’s so oozing with desire that he sinks to her level. Bridget’s everyday objectives, though, are to shake the tail of private investigators that her husband has hired, to create illusions of murder and pay-out scams, and to lure fresh blood that wipe out her traces.

The theatrical film “Rounders” is what director John Dahl was famous for, but his cache extends to this film and “Red Rock West” as his artistic highs. But <em>The Last Seduction</em> remains a treasured gem because of Fiorentino, taking on this bitch role with non-conformist grit.

It is a sexy movie. The scenario in almost all cases would draw up complaints of sexual harassment. But clearly she wants this scenario and so does he, even though he displays shame about his proclivities. She wants it more, actually. So much, she desires to expand and heighten the scenario past the current limits. Mostly what we’re looking at is light S&M, but she has never been so turned on by anything.

Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal, wonderful to be quite honest), is stemming from a dysfunctional family, and has had emotional problems. She is what you call a “cutter,” abusing herself with sharp objects and digging into her the backs of her legs or arms. The pain for her is cathartic. Side issues, she has been a shy person with an inability to connect freely with other people. So moving into S&M is really the booster she needs to overcome her problems.

Working for lawyer Mr. Grey (James Spader, working through anger problems) as a typist is Lee’s first job. In an unspoken way, Lee making typo mistakes begins to result in escalating punishments. Inevitably, Lee begins to deliberately make mistakes so the punishments can build. The breakthrough begins with real spankings.

Mr. Grey must have realized that Lee would never report to the authorities about the spanking abuse. Mr. Grey must have realized there was a chance to ruin his own career. But there is excitement, right or wrong, about taking the chance to lose everything. Well, he doesn’t face repercussions. In fact, right away he sees that Lee enjoys and loves the spankings. And she wants more and beyond.

Lee has always been a wallflower but now she is participating in activity that’s dangerous and unknown, wild and taboo. She is shedding away her modesty and properness.

The exciting aspect of Steven Shainberg’s film is how we really begin to burrow inside Lee’s mind and see why S&M is a turn on for her. The interesting flaw of Lee’s character is that she believes that she still has to give into the decency of dating a needy loser like Peter (Jeremy Davies). Peter even proposes to Lee, and she feels obliged.

Until Lee realizes the kink and games with her boss is what she perpetually desires; she starts showing to work figuring out ways how to appear and act sexier. This flusters Mr. Grey because he figures it wrong to completely cave into his own desires because he thinks it will distract him professionally to the point where he’d never have a balance. Mr. Grey is also reluctant because it becomes clear that Lee wants him to open up and reveal more what’s going inside his own brain. He has been far too enigmatic. Or esoteric. Though, that’s part of the turn on. Her not knowing what stirs him.

Of course, the happy ending of <em>Secretary</em> is that they come to a mutual agreement, one has won over the other following an endurance test. I find the conclusion of the movie to be sexy as well.

Alan Rudolph learned on the set of such Robert Altman movies as “The Long Goodbye” and “Nashville” and so when something comes along like <em>Choose Me</em>, a romantic triangle that’s touched by character observation that is filmed in long takes and jazzy rhythms, you know that Rudolph is touched by higher inspiration. But how does this own Altman-esque movie hold up? Lesley Ann Warren as a bar owner, Genevieve Bujold as a love doctor on the radio yearning for more experience herself, Rae Dawn Chong as a married woman looking to be temptress, Keith Carradine as the disreputable and libidinous man in-between. The whole thing is about lonely hearts and melancholy and taking chances with strangers in bed and having dreamy conversations while half-inebriated. I respect it. But there’s a labored neurotic quality about it that strains. And I cannot find myself attaching to its mixture of melodrama and artifice, either.

Before the boys are shipped off for war they spend multiple nights at a New York comedy and music canteen; corny stand-up acts alternate with big band and swing. In 1943, <em>Stage Door Canteen</em> must have ushered lots of patriotic hoo-ahs. Looking at an old film like this, the boys are awfully bashful for soldiers about to die for country and the women suckers for taking every one of their invitations. Just gosh polite, both sides—men and women, that is. The average dude in the 21^st century is much rougher and vain compared to past men in uniform. By the way, not much story. Just a glob of little encounters that are corny and dated. A curious artifact, but it doesn’t exactly run away with my heart. Frank Borzage directed. Katharine Hepburn, Paul Muni, Harpo Marx show up for cameos.

On Paris assignment, gentleman Gary Cooper calls himself a general manager of the Detroit automotive company Bronson 8 and finally has the balls to ask for a vacation so he can see Spain; once on the road he eats dust from Marlene Dietrich, ball buster and jewel thief. It’s both hate and love at first meet cute.

I am learning a little bit about director Frank Borzage as I go, but I can say it seems he was more forward-thinking than his contemporaries—he loves shooting on location, and that makes <em>Desire</em> fresh. Even on soundstages, he demonstrates ability for illustrious and shimmering black & white. The darn thing looks better than many 1930’s films.

This is a romance adventure out on the road (if you agree that love is an adventure), that pretty much becomes satisfied with never getting to Spain but falls in love with itself on the French countryside. Cooper and Dietrich are playing refined human beings, yet both are falsies in a way—but they compromise within themselves. Borzage finds a way to suggest a touch of raciness (Ernst Lubitsch served as producer), that’s cool, but the movie has no idea how to wrap up itself in the last twenty minutes. Funny, in 1936, self-sabotaging and confessing movie characters was probably a new thing; today’s times, I’m up to my ears with all these kinds of clichés. Nevertheless, <em>Desire</em> is a nice little doozy.

Young German couple are going to have a baby. As financially strapped as they are, they always dress presentable and carry on with pride. Hans (Douglass Montgomery) lands a fine job but loses it because the boss doesn’t like married men who are committed to home life. Lammchen (Margaret Sullavan) is always the patient wife who adapts to her husband’s follies and easy to change. <em>Little Man, What Now?</em> is certainly a social issues drama to reflect its time of 1934, intended for audiences at the time to “recognize” themselves on screen. Director Frank Borzage, ahead of his peers at the time, comes up with lots of striking images—even when the film is obviously shot on a studio lot. The people in it, while struggling and razzing of each other, still are more polite and articulately verbal than real people a hundred years later. Ever notice that?

At some point I feel like I had seen every movie from the silent era that needed to be seen, thereafter, I laid off of them. This one was a transitional sound film, using music and sound effects, while using inter-titles for (redundant) dialogue. It took me about ten minutes, but I started to realize that Frank Borzage was using camera set-ups and cuts that were beyond the ordinary, well, they were more modern. Thus, I felt like I was making a just discovery.

<em>Street Angel</em> is the story of a down on her luck waif named Angela (Janet Gaynor). She is wanted by the police for sexual solicitation, but she successfully relocates while leaving behind her mother. She joins a travelling circus and meets a number of kind men who are smitten by her gaiety and vulnerability; one man named Gino (Charles Farrell) uses her as a subject and turns her into a great painting – that piece of art work will be brought up over and over again, as to kindle with real financial value.

That first quarter of the film shows remarkable cinematic language, and has some naturalistic beauty that is reminiscent of “Sunrise” (1927). But the second half begins to drag, and while the film showed impressionable location shooting at the start it seems relegated to the same sets of Old English walls and floors over and over again, while Borzage lets his actors ACT… and ACT, over and over again, with that kind of distressed emoting. The arc of the film is that Angela’s past comes back to haunt her, and she loses the respect of the painter who had such faith in her. It’s damn good for 1928, but I wonder how the treatment of the film would have gone down had Borzage made this further into the talkies era and with better sense of locations. We never really see the damn circus, for instance. 

Yawn. The difficulty of intellectual young men entering the field of science and medicine, pondering about purpose. They mustn’t get met by non-virtuous distractions. Dorothy Lamour is the exotic Chinese girl that our hero John Howard mustn’t fall in love with, but does against better judgment. <em>Disputed Passage</em>, by Frank Borzage, takes an unexpected detour as the protagonist takes on pursuits into China, and we find ourselves on uncivilized terrain in the Far East. That’s something. So is watching him become White Savior to a bunch of poor villagers (at least played by Chinese actors).

Very few Hollywood directors were daring enough to make a statement against the Nazi party as WWII was breaking out at the time. But Frank Borzage tried with <em>The Mortal Storm</em>, a film that has several strong and unsettling images even when it doesn’t have a forceful narrative engine. Set in 1933 at the foot of the Alps in Southern Germany, a long flourishing intellectual family has some disagreements about the conformist leanings of the new National Socialist Party after Adolph Hitler has been ascended as new Chancellor of Germany. The family head (Frank Morgan) is a highly lauded professor at the university until he becomes unpopular by students who decry he does not adhere to the new nation’s policies or concede with indoctrinations about the new racial purity; soon students in Nazi regalia are burning books (especially condemning the science books of Albert Einstein) and calling for classroom boycotts.

Another strong scene: an old man refuses to be a blind follower, moreover, he refuses to do a Nazi salute or join to sing propaganda songs at a bar, which leads to a mob taking him outside to beat him up. Jimmy Stewart, as the family friend who has had enough(!) is spurred to flee the country with the professor’s daughter by crossing the border into Austria (which is visually impressive). As you can guess there is some violence in the air in this Borzage picture, but for sake of filtering it for mass audience consumption, I get the semi-conscious feeling that the Nazi uprising – dramatically – was treated like some major inconvenience to all the freethinkers in substitute of there being a true streak of terror. Still, you got to give the film props for at least having the courage to say something at the brink of 1940.

It is a rather common trope: Romantic war films where a soldier meets a nurse prior to battle campaign, fall in love, get separated in war, hide secrets upon reunion, separation by war once again, and a final blow to happiness. <em>A Farewell to Arms</em>, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway (I’m reminded that Hemingway was a poet of the hardened soul, not a romanticist), is certainly all that. But the way this 1932 film goes about it, with a rather lavish and at times expressionistic way with itself—especially those Frank Borzage montages of marching soldiers towards doom and hellish embers burning overhead—brings this movie a weathered soul that is void in similar others. This is among the best I’ve ever seen of masculine Gary Cooper, and Helen Hayes gets some fanciful dialogue to work with him.