SLIFF 2013: Cold Comes the Night

2013 // USA // Tze Chun // November 15, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Tivoli Theatre)

One of the most appealing aspects of the noir genre is its sheer simplicity. Only a handful of vivid, well-worn character types are usually necessary: the world-weary antihero, the dame in distress, the icy killer-for-hire, the high-strung snitch, the underworld kingpin. The appearance of a single, destabilizing factor is often all that is needed to incite such fallen souls towards a unavoidable and usually lethal collision. That factor can be almost any unexpected element, such as a freshly unearthed secret or the sudden death of a keystone character. However, for his sophomore feature, writer-director Tze Chun employs the genre's most reliable wild card, a big pile of cash.

Elsewhere, Cold Comes the Night—and what a deliciously Chandler-esque title that is—pursues some intriguing variations on noir conventions. The screenplay by Chun, Oz Perkins and Nick Simon combines the down-and-out protagonist (usually male) and the enigmatic woman-in-need into a single character. That individual is motel manager and single mother Chloe (Alice Keys), a worn-out survivor in a slushy New York town battered by economic decline. Keys recently appeared in Star Trek Into Darkness, but fortunately, Cold Comes the Night permits her a more substantial role than a sex object for a leering Starfleet captain. Chloe is a compelling and conflicted protagonist, visibly enervated by a young life that is already heavy with hardship. Keys' portrayal leans too strongly on Chloe's ferocious, almost amoral devotion to her daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker) at the expense of a more rounded characterization. Still, working-class female antiheroes are enough of a novelty that it is intriguing just to watch Chloe react to familiar crime thriller scenarios.

Mother and daughter dwell in an apartment attached to a fleabag motel known as a nexus for prostitution and drug dealing. Between changing sheets and scrubbing toilets, Chloe spends her time sparring with Social Services and warding off her infatuated ex Billy (Logan Marshall-Green), a crooked local cop. Chloe's already-tough existence turns into a nightmarish ordeal when she crosses paths with Polish criminal Topo (Bryan Cranston), a bagman on his way to deliver a bundle of shrink-wrapped U.S. cash to a Québécois crime lord. Due to a series of misfortunes and Coen-worthy fuckups, the legally blind Topo has been stranded at Chloe's motel and stuck with a dead driver, impounded vehicle, and missing package. He decides that his least-bad option is to take Chloe hostage to provide a pair of eyes for his time-sensitive errand. The woman at first consents out of pure terror for her daughter's safety, but Chloe is accustomed to scraping and clawing for any narrow advantage she can find. Eventually she talks the stone-faced, ruthless Topo into giving up a slice of his fee in return for her assistance.

Unforeseen developments and old-fashioned bad luck seem to stymie Chloe and Topo at every turn, as tends to occur in fiasco-rich crime fables of this sort. The pair eventually discovers that Billy has swiped the money and stashed it in his own home, which complicates things, given that the corrupt cop still has a throbbing (and misogynistic) obsession with Chloe. The story is ugly, savage stuff. Whatever criticisms one has of the film, Cold Comes the Night does not pull any punches. The one sacrosanct character in the tale is Sophia, who is threatened by Topo but not subjected to direct, overt violence. Depending on how one looks at it, this either indicates that Chun and his co-writers have at least a shred of humanity, or that they lack the courage to tell a truly scorched-earth story of moral depravity.

Cold Comes the Night has one glaring narrative problem, and it comes slamming to the forefront in the third act, not coincidentally when Marshall-Green's portrayal of Billy veers from "charming but volatile asshole" to "bug-eyed, rambling lunatic." Although there is a rationale within the story for the character's sudden breakdown, the switch is so jarring and Marshall-Green's performance is so over-the-top that the entire film is dragged kicking and screaming into unintentional hilarity.

Although this is an unfortunate and terribly distracting flaw, it's not one that defeats Cold Comes the Night. In most respects, the film is quite a viscerally engrossing and formally polished work. Cinematographer Noah Rosenthal and production designer Laurie Hicks capture the environs of wintery New York state in all its gray, sodden glory, and the score by Jeff Grace conveys a fitting, doleful mood with a slightly embittered edge. However, the motel setting feels like a missed opportunity: the filmmakers fail to exploit the spatial potential of the the dingy, adjoining, nearly-identical rooms as was done so effectively in the likes of Psycho and No Country for Old Men. In fact, the action that occurs at the motel rarely strays beyond Chloe's apartment.

Holding the proceedings together is the pairing of Keys and Cranston, who quickly establish the dynamic of a fearful prisoner and cruel warden, and then work for the remainder of the film to twist the relationship this way and that. Cranston is not doing anything he hasn't done before, but he does it with an unexpected restraint and cold-bloodedness in this film. (There is barely a whisper of Walter White's boiling resentment in Topo.) Most crucially, while the gangster is more textured and sympathetic than the standard Bad Guy, both the screenplay and Chun's direction make it clear that Cold Comes the Night is Chloe's tale. Ultimately, the questions that concern the viewer are whether she will survive the film's bloody events, and, if so, how battered she will be in body and spirit when she escapes into the night.

Insidious: Chapter 2

2013 // USA // James Wan // September 14, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (AMC West Olive 16)

[Note: This post contains spoilers for both Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2.]

Director James Wan’s unexpectedly distinctive and skin-crawling 2010 feature Insidious established one of the high-water marks of mainstream American horror cinema in recent years. It did so not by creating anything especially original, but by assembling a cluster of familiar genre elements and narrative beats into a nonetheless unnerving and memorable ghost story. Most essentially, Insidious is just a damn creepy film, packed to its cobweb-cloaked rafters with uncommonly effective jump-scares, unsettling (if not terribly surprising) plot reveals, and a pall of dread that descends like a clockwork death-trap.

Insidious’ potency derives most conspicuously from Wan’s facility for crafting old-fashioned scares, which also owe a significant debt to the razor-sharp editing by the director and Kirk M. Morri, as well as the production design by veteran concept artist Aaron Sims. Sims’ work in the film generally foregrounds simple but striking characters and objects over fussy, Burton-esque phantasmagorical window dressing. Singular details such as the searing crimson visage of the Lipstick-Faced Demon (Joseph Bishara) or the gasmask-like contraption donned by medium Elise (Lin Shaye) prove more indelible than the somewhat anonymous houses (one musty, one modern) where the film’s ghostly events unfold. This bent to the design ends up dovetailing quite gratifyingly with the narrative focus on personalities and birthrights rather than the genre's usual emphasis on the voodoo of place.

Insidious also accomplishes a lamentably rare feat in the annals of horror filmmaking, in that it depicts characters who generally behave as actual people might when confronted with events of escalating supernatural bugfuckery. The spectral campaign of terror waged on the Lambert family by the entities that cluster around oldest son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) might unfold according to head-scratching haunted house logic, but the Lamberts and their allies are recognizably human in their responses. Wan and scripter Leigh Whannell mostly confine the film’s comic relief to ghost hunters Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Whannell himself). This allows the rest of the cast to play their reactions straight, albeit with a dose of horror flick hamminess in the cases of Shaye as Elise and Barbara Hershey as grandmother Lorraine. The effect is dire but darkly satisfying, like a funhouse drained of its escapist sense of mirth. Unlike William Castle or Sam Raimi, Wan doesn’t betray his relish for the viewer’s screams, which isn’t a Bad Thing by any stretch. Horror cinema needs more filmmakers who can acknowledge the hackish qualities of the genre and fulfill the fundamental money-for-scares exchange without necessarily winking at the audience.

Narratively speaking, Insidious has one serious speed bump. Prompted by a plea for help from a desperate and plainly guilt-wracked Lorraine, Elise arrives during the film’s second act to explicate both the family's hidden backstory and the rather twisty supernatural mythology that Wan and Whannell have devised for their tale. It’s an arguably essential pitstop on the route to Josh’s (Patrick Wilson) climactic rescue of his son from the spirit world (sorry, “the Further”), but it seriously disrupts the rhythm of the film, notwithstanding the presence of two exceptionally frightening scenes during this stretch of the story. (Those would would be Elise’s scribbled vision of the Lipstick-Faced Demon and the subsequent nerve-wracking seance sequence). It’s a bit like the toll that the viewer has to pay in return for preceding sixty minutes of boo!-packed craziness, which is terrifying in part due to its inexplicable character. This isn’t to say that the later exposition robs the film of its power, as the conventional wisdom about Insidious seems to have unfortunately concluded. If anything, the revelation that there is an otherworldly logic to the film’s occurrences makes for a much more absorbing story, but there’s no way around the fact Lorraine and Elise’s long-winded monologues disrupt Insidious’ cinematic momentum.

Which brings us to Insidious: Chapter 2, a work that was not in any sense necessary or inevitable given the first film’s bleak, smash-cut ending. Lo and behold, however, Chapter 2 proves to be quite a pleasure, both as a compelling continuation of the Lambert family’s story and as a damn fine horror feature in its own right. The sequel’s screenplay is a solo effort from Whannell, although he shares a story credit with Wan, and it’s a solid step up from the first chapter for one conspicuous reason: the absence of that dreaded late-film break to explain what the hell is going on. Granted, Chapter 2 still has its share of exposition, but Whannell sprinkles it more evenly through the film, ensuring that the viewer’s understanding of events is being advanced even as the scenes of horror unfold. Over on the left side of this spookhouse ride, long-suffering mom Renai (Rose Byrne) and to a lesser degree Dalton are terrorized by malevolent forces from the Further. To the right, Lorraine, Tucker, Specs, and Elie’s old confidant Carl (Steve Coulter) scurry around performing supernatural detective work. It’s not quite that clear-cut in practice, as some of the film’s best scares involve the latter group, and Renai’s ethereal encounters hold some vital clues. However, it’s a helpful way to conceive of the film’s structure.

Let’s back up: the prelude to Chapter 2 takes place some 24 years before the events of the first film, and depicts events to which Lorraine and Elise previously alluded. Responding to a fearful nocturnal appeal from fellow medium Carl (Hank Harris), Elise (Lindsay Seim) arrives at the home of doctor and single mom Lorraine (Jocelin Donahue) and her supernaturally sensitive son Josh (Garrett Ryan) in order to sniff out the ghostly presence that seems to have attached itself to the child. Once Elise puts Josh into a hypnotic trance, the boy guides her to the parasitic spirit, which proves so malevolent that Elise hastily concludes that the only safeguard against it is to completely mind-wipe Josh’s prodigious skill at astral projection. The Chapter 2 prelude is appropriately creepy, although far less elegant than the simple, mysterious roaming-through-a-dark-house sequence that opens the first film. Nonetheless, it establishes the sequel’s overall approach, which builds on the events of the original Insidious with remarkable fidelity, doggedness, and eccentricity. It’s an uncommon thing to witness in the realms of horror cinema, which is fairly notorious for sequels that arbitrarily disregard franchise continuity. The exception to this principle is the Saw series that Wan and Whannell themselves initiated and was eventually devoured by its own ridiculously convoluted plot.

The now two-film Insidious franchise has so far avoided this fate, in part by relentlessly foregrounding the first rule of horror cinema: Be Scary. Fortunately, Chapter 2 is just as chilling as its predecessor, and, if anything, is much more relentless about its rhythm of ominous lulls and white-knuckle shocks. The slow burn of the first film was a part of its pleasure, but it would have made little sense to attempt to replicate it in Chapter 2. Both the characters and the returning viewer understand the rules of the Further and are keenly aware of the malicious spirits that lurk there, so a different approach is needed, one that creates another level of esoteric lore in which to wade.

Chapter 2 picks up on the same night on which the preceding feature left off. The sequel’s first present-day scene consists of a slow zoom in on an police interrogation room, as a incredulous detective (Michael Beach) questions Renai about the events that left Elise strangled to death in the Lambert family’s living room. It’s an immensely gratifying shot, perfectly in keeping with the franchise’s sensibility of horror-tropes-plus-realism. It’s also arguably Byrne’s best scene in the whole film. Her tearful, exhausted manner is far more effective at taking the viewer back to that night than the flashback that elaborates unnecessarily on what exactly happened in the thirty seconds or so after Insidious’ concluding smash-cut. Eventually the Lambert family is released from custody, and the whole clan moves in with Grandma Lorraine until the police allow them back into their house.

Naturally, eerie phenomena start happening the moment that the family is settled, with most of the stranger sights and sounds seemingly focused on Renai, although pretty much everyone has a hard time of things. Lorraine spots spectral figures lurking in the halls, Dalton’s dreams are bedeviled by taunting voices and corpse brides, and Josh starts talking to himself and generally acting super-creepy. Meanwhile Tucker and Specs begin going through Elise’s personal effects, which leads them and a suddenly resurfaced Carl along a trail of breadcrumbs, and eventually to a disturbed (and long-deceased) man named Parker (Tom Fitzpatrick).

To their credit, the characters all suspect fairly quickly what has happened: the thing that returned from the Further in Josh’s body is not Josh at all, but the veiled crone that has haunted him since his childhood. This entity didn’t receive much attention in the first film, which featured a bevy of strange spirits but ultimately centered on Dalton’s entrapment by the Lipstick-Faced Demon. To a significant extent, the entirety of Chapter 2 plays out as Whannell’s response to the inevitable question, “Hey, what was the deal with that old lady?” Using this as the launching point for an whole film might seem a bit wobbly, if not an outright instance of authorial wankery. However, Wan and his performers do a fine job of keeping the tone and mood consistent with the previous chapter, and thereby heightening the sense that this is an actual sequel and not just a riff or a tangent. That said, there’s a gratifying bit of punk anger to the whole thing, as though Chapter 2 were a middle finger to viewers who found Insidious’ unanswered questions nagging. The filmmakers essentially pick one mystery from the first chapter and follow it down the rabbit hole, ultimately unearthing more questions than answers. Whether the individual viewer will find this fascinating or maddening may ultimately be a matter of personal taste, but the filmmakers certainly can’t be accused of coasting on or retreading their prior work.

This isn’t the same as completely disregarding what has gone before, of course, and Chapter 2 revisits quite a few elements from the first film. These aren’t so much callbacks as reminders of plot points that the viewer may have forgotten. Oh, that’s right: Renai is a pianist and composer. Oh, that’s right: Dalton is not just an astral projector like his father, but really goddamn good at it.  Horror cinema has set a pretty low bar in this respect, making it strangely fulfilling to see a sequel where the filmmakers plainly re-read the earlier script before setting down to pen a new one. (What a concept!) The only truly indulgent callback is the sequence where a Further-delving Josh intrudes unseen on a scene from the original film, Back to the Future Part II-style. This unnecessarily soft-pedals a twist that any sensible viewer can puzzle out based on other clues—Josh can visit different times through the Further—and it adds nothing of value to the original scene.

Undoubtedly, touching upon a few familiar landmarks has value given that Chapter 2’s plot goes off in such a daft and knotty direction. The revelation that the veiled old woman that has tormented Josh for over two decades is actually the ghost of cross-dressing serial murderer Parker is fairly left-field, recalling The Exorcist III’s shoehorning of the Gemini Killer between the lines of the 1973 original. Just as weird is the disclosure that Chapter 2’s real villain is not Parker at all, but his unbalanced and hilariously manic mother, who forced a female identity on him as a child and ultimately goaded him into his crimes from beyond the grave. It’s hard to say whether all of this amounts to a cunning homage to Psycho, Sleepaway Camp, and Mommy Dearest, or just trans-exploitation (or both!), but it’s sure as hell isn’t typical.

The strange trajectory to its story notwithstanding, Chapter 2 ultimately sinks or swims on its merits as a device for delivering scares, and in this respect it’s arguably superior to its predecessor. Insidious has an intensely moody first half, but it does dawdle here and there on the domestic drama of the Lambert household. This isn’t a flaw per se in the original film, as characterization and scene-setting is theoretically needed before the oogie-boogie nuttiness really kicks in.  Still, when the films are laid alongside one another, it’s apparent that Chapter 2 is comparatively remorseless with its shocks, hitting its stride early and keeping up a steady stream of subtle shadowplay, spine-tingling tension, and full-bore, shrieking madness.

If nothing else, Chapter 2 allows Patrick Wilson to descend into seething, menacing Jack Torrence mode. The Parker-possessed iteration of Josh is downright unsettling, and far afield from the faintly thick-witted Josh of the first film (“Me?”) or the weepy, sideburned Ed Warren of Wan’s tedious The Conjuring from earlier this year. The seriously nasty, teakettle-chucking, door-bashing brawl between Josh and the rest of the Lamberts is one of Chapter 2’s highlights, and a example of how the franchise approaches horror conventions from a slightly more gritty, believable angle. Just as stellar is Josh’s hair-raising confrontation with Carl, who with stomach-flopping dread rolls his spirit-talking dice to divine what object the other man is holding behind his back.  The viewer (and Carl) knows exactly what letters are going to come up on that roll (K-N-I-F-E), and yet the moment is one of almost unbearable tension. It’s emblematic of all that the Insidious films get right: we know what is coming, we fear it, and we can’t look away.

[Post-Script: Overblown accusations of glaring plot-holes are already flying against Chapter 2, but here's the only one I can't really shake: Why did the forensics not reveal that Josh was the one who strangled Elise? It's an ineffective bit of misdirection, and as far as I can recall, the film never follows up on it.]

Interview with Chris Sagovac

Christopher Sagovac is an animator, painter, and Assistant Professor of Animation, Electronic and Photographic Media at Webster University. His new short film newscaster/dragon/maggots will be featured in the 2013 St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, which runs from July 14-18 at the Tivoli Theatre. The film is included in the Showcase’s Fantasy Shorts program, which begins at 9:30 p.m. on Monday, July 15. Gateway Cinephile spoke with Sagovac about his filmmaking methods, surrealism in cinema, and television reception in Hell.

Gateway Cinephile: You describe the found footage utilized in newscaster/dragon/maggots as "randomly selected" and the foundation of the work as "based in mathematics". Can you elaborate a bit more about your process for finding and selecting the short's videographic raw materials?

Chris Sagovac: I looked through a lot of public domain footage and picked out segments that I thought were visually interesting. I then compiled all of the found footage into a folder with no indication as to what they were. At random I drew three files out to serve as my foundation for rotoscoping (newscaster, dragon and maggots).  I then did some very quick editing without regard for content and I was very careful to only edit in segments timed out in triangular numbers.  I basically chopped up all three timelines and then shuffled.  I wanted to be surprised by the strange roadmap they would unravel.

GC: The "playful manipulation" of pixels is a vital part of the finished film's aesthetic, which feels unmistakably digital and yet somehow degraded. Do you see such intuitive decision-making as an essential component of the film, notwithstanding its numerical foundation?

CS: Yes, this is where more of a personal experience was brought into the work.  When I was a kid, I had an old black-and-white television set. I would stay up late and watch monster movies. The old analog sets would sometimes ghost or bleed together.  For instance I would be watching Creature from the Black Lagoon and a hockey game would be bleeding through from another channel on occasion.  I used to imagine that this is what it must be like to watch television from or in another dimension.  This was about the time when they were taking the old 1950s monster movies and adding the 3D element, so my mind was very open to looking at television in a different way.  Looking at my piece now with that idea in mind, I like to imagine that the reception is really bad in Hell but the demons are trying to watch the news anyway.

GC: It's a bit uncanny how effectively these otherwise random clips work together to create the film's unsettling atmosphere. The juxtaposition of Big Media imagery (e.g., a information-dispensing talking head) with the grotesque, organic forms brings to mind several iconic science-fiction and horror features, including Videodrome, The Hidden, and They Live. Do you see any thematic affinities between your work and that sort of more pointedly allegorical or satirical genre filmmaking?

CS: I would say that consciously I am very much influenced by Big Media and how it can be associated and manipulated by the grotesque literally or allegorically.  When bridging the imagery, I worked intuitively considering how each form would interact within the given circumstances, but on some subconscious level with all the brain sucking and head removing I think some of my real world frustrations may have come out. I am a big John Carpenter fan and in my comic book art, I'm very much at home with creating horrific imagery in general.

GC: The "television with poor reception" description is apt, but for me the visual effect of the rotoscoping brought to mind another familiar image: looking through an old optical microscope in a high school biology class. What was it about the final look of the animation that appealed to you?

CS: That is most likely directly related to the mosquito maggots floating around.  I believe that footage may have come from an old biology film. Now that I think about it (in reference to an earlier question), maybe all the sucking in this film might have to do with the fact that the maggots were mosquitos.  That would be a great tagline.  "This film sucks."  I do have a sense of humor.  I didn't fully fall in love with it until I saw it on the big screen.  I was experimenting with a number of end products including one that is literally an old black-and-white TV look.  I actually manipulated the horizontal hold smudging to give it that feel by going in frame by frame and painting the distortions in manually.  The method gave it a bit of a digital edge in its degradation that melded with the harshness of the sound.  I actually added the sound after 90% of the work had been completed.  When I put the sound to my piece (at that point) I just intuitively knew that had to be the look.

GC: Merzbow's track 1998 "Intro" plays an integral role in establishing film's tone: aggressive, overwhelming, almost alarming. At what point did a noise music / avant rock soundtrack become an essential part of your vision for the film?

CS: When creating I like to have some sort of a soundtrack going in the background because animating is such a time consuming process.  I also have a ringing in my ears that drives me nuts in a quiet room. Ironically, I received that ringing from being in aggressive, overwhelming and alarming bands in my youth.  I listened to a lot of soundscapes by Merzbow and Sunn O))) because I felt distortion-heavy, abstract compositions would put me in the right place to create this particular animation.  I had a loose idea of what the sound would be like in the end, but nothing set in stone in the beginning.  In Merzbow's work in particular the erratic distortion and lack of conventional structure inspired and helped me to break out of the process that I had set before me by melding these three very separate layers together.  After awhile, I couldn't see the soundtrack being anything other than one of his pieces, so I thought, why not track him down and work something out?

GC: Cinema St. Louis has placed newscaster/dragon/maggots into the Fantasy Shorts program in the Showcase. Does that seem a fitting categorization to you?

CS: I think this film could fit in a number of places.  It is nice to know that specific categories are broadening to more experimental work. When categorizing films, one usually thinks that if it isn't in the experimental category, it is a narrative.  You do not have to have a traditional narrative to be fantastic.  Surrealism can go hand in hand with fantasy quite easily.

GC: Do you see that shift from "surrealism as genre" to "surrealism as method" coinciding with any wider acceptance for experimental works? Animated music videos with a surrealistic bent seem to be thriving in online spaces right now.

CS: I have never really considered surrealism as a genre, but it can certainly exist within any of them. It is an artistic movement that has influenced me greatly and I feel it is an element to mix into the creative process.  I'm very against the idea of animation as a genre. Now, don't let me shoot myself in the foot here.  I like that there are animation categories and sidebars devoted to the art at almost every film festival, but animation is just a method.  I have personally witnessed a lot of frustration in the industry over the idea that animation is for children.  Try and sell that idea to Ralph Bakshi. I agree, animation thrives in the music video short format.  I think it serves as a gateway for the general public (brought in by the music) to experience the art form.  I wonder how many people were exposed to the Brothers Quay because they saw Adam Jones' numerous stop motion animated videos for his band Tool?

GC: Looking back at your filmography to date, does each project naturally bleed into the next, or have you ever initiated a new work as a palate cleanser?

CS: I like to hop around a lot to keep things fresh, but one thing that is very apparent from project to project is my attention to concept and process in my fine art work.  I do hop back and forth from fine art to commercial.  Right now I'm just working on some character animation and drawing a comic book (in the fantasy genre coincidentally) in my down time as I prepare for the next project.  So yeah, the commercial work is kind of a palate cleanser between developing concepts from my giant tome of undone things.

2013 Classic French Film Festival: The Great Love

[This introduction to Pierre Étaix's The Great Love was presented on June 27, 2013 at the Webster University Moore Auditorium as a part of the 2013 Classic French Film Festival.]

It’s a unique pleasure to stand before an audience of fellow cinephiles and introduce a film that can accurately be labeled a lost gem. Pierre Étaix’s 1969 feature, The Great Love, is such a film. Until recently, it had been missing in action for over four decades, along with most of filmmaker’s works. Due to legal snarls and poor preservation, Étaix's films had languished unseen by the vast majority of the contemporary public. Even Francophiles who were aware of his reputation and influence did not have access to his catalog. This tragedy has now been remedied. Moreover, now that his films have been resurrected for theatrical and home video appreciation, viewers are presented with an uncommon opportunity to experience a director’s work with virgin eyes. To date there are no book-length English-language biographies of Étaix or retrospectives on his filmography. His features and shorts have not been subjected to decades of exhaustive critical analysis and commentary. They are in, a word, still fresh, their newly exposed surfaces clean, sharp, and untouched by the conventional wisdom that often covers films like an oxidized crust.

This is an especially precious circumstance with respect to The Great Love, which is Étaix's first color feature, his last narrative feature, and his finest cinematic achievement. It’s easy to enthuse over the shagginess and frivolity of his first film, The Suitor, or the ambition and earnestness of his circus fable, Yoyo. The Great Love, however, feels truly special, like a hardy hybrid species that blends together the best qualities of its forebears with novel new features. As with all great films, it resists easy categorization. At times, it seems to be a pitch-black domestic comedy concerning the miseries of married life and the foolishness of infatuation. In other moments it resembles a more gently philosophical work that poses questions about identity and contentment. Turn it this way and it appears to be little more than a delivery system for a succession of charming sight gags. Rotate it that direction and one can see a experimental work that continually upends the viewer’s expectations regarding the language of cinema.

The narrative core of the film is marvelously simple. Étaix and his co-scripter, the renowned French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière , often began their collaborations with a premise that could be conveyed in a single sentence. In the case of The Great Love, the story is one of the oldest in fiction: a married man contemplates an affair with a younger woman. From this seed, the scenarists summon forth a colorful bourgeois backdrop populated by vibrantly realized comic characters. Étaix, as usual, plays an exaggerated version of himself, here presented as a hard-working married homme who can’t quite shed his rascally, discontented leanings. Unthinkingly, he once settled down with Florence (Annie Fratellini), the proverbial Nice Girl from a Good Family. And so he finds himself, ten years later, playing the role of a devoted husband, dutiful son-in-law, and spit-polish member of the nouveau riche. All of which makes him secretly (if only modestly) unhappy. Into Pierre’s comfortable yet glum existence flutters the divine Agnès (Nicole Calfan), a luminous vision of French beauty who happens to be two or three decades his junior. He is immediately smitten, and inasmuch as the film has a dramatic arc, it consists of the ensuing multi-dimensional struggle between Pierre’s dreamy romanticism, his moral conscience, and the ice-cold waters of reality.

More so than any other feature film that Étaix made, The Great Love demonstrates why he should not be regarded as merely a clown (or illustrator or writer or educator) who happened to create films. In this feature, one can observe ample evidence that he is a film artist. Rather than relying on wordplay and wisecracks, Étaix employs visuals, music, and sound effects to create his gags. Unlike most comedies since the advent of sound, The Great Love is not a film that can be quoted to one’s friends for an easy chuckle—it must be seen and heard to be appreciated. The film’s finest moments are joyously cinematic, featuring gags that are broadly theatrical in spirit but dependent on cinematography and editing for their effect. In one of the film’s standout sequences, Étaix depicts a daisy chain of malicious neighborhood gossip without revealing what precisely is being whispered. As in the Telephone Game, Pierre’s banal encounter with a passing woman evolves in each successive retelling into an ever-more-scandalous indiscretion. This elaborate joke works so wonderfully because of the way that Étaix cunningly utilizes repetitions and variations to create escalating absurdity.

This is but one example of the ways in which The Great Love exploits its medium to splendid effect. Étaix often uses cuts, composition, and camera movement to create his visual punchlines. He is fond of dropping a playful reveal into a shot reverse shot, and of pulling out from a close-up in order to recontextualize the action for humorous effect. At times, he toys with the conventions of narrative cinema to prod at the Fourth Wall. In an early scene, the narrating Pierre keeps revising a flashback when he cannot recall exactly where he sat at a particular café—to the eventual exasperation of the waiter. Other memorable aspects of the film are less about cinematic method than the pure magic of the possible. In the film’s most pointedly bizarre sequence, Pierre dreams of his bed gliding out onto a motorway in the French countryside, where he and the lovely Agnès pass other pajama-clad drivers. Étaix and his crew have never explained exactly how this rolling bedframe effect was achieved, which is emblematic of the director’s whimsical approach to cinema. Like an illusionist, he is loathe to reveal too much, lest the spell be broken.

Étaix’s sensibilities were shaped not only by the traditions of French clowning, but also by silent and classical era film comedians such as Buster Keaton, Max Linder, and Laurel and Hardy. Notwithstanding the film’s minimal dialog and reliance on visual gags, however, The Great Love never feels like a throwback or an homage to an earlier epoch of moviemaking. Like the works of Étaix's contemporary and fellow Frenchman Jacques Tati, the film seems to exist in its own category, somehow at once old-fashioned and cutting-edge. If The Great Love has a spiritual antecedent in cinema, it is found not in live action comedy features, but in animated short films. Like Walt Disney Productions’ landmark Silly Symphonies of the 1930s, Étaix's film possesses an appealing blend of well-oiled cinematic craftsmanship, precise comic intuition, and nervy artistic experimentation. And as in the animated work of Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, and Friz Freleng in subsequent decades, The Great Love has a somewhat absurd, freewheeling sense of humor that employs well-worn comedy conventions to explore film's surrealist potential. Even so, what ultimately leaves the strongest impression is the mesmerizing self-assurance of Étaix's feature. Like a truly timeless cartoon, The Great Love feels both lighthearted and completely uncompromised—the work of an artist who has gracefully channeled his own creative excitement directly into his film.

What Has Sunk May Rise: The Dunwich Horror (1970)

1970 // USA // Daniel Haller // May 8, 2013 // DVD - MGM (2005)

Based On: “The Dunwich Horror” (1929)

[Note: This post contains spoilers. Part of a series on film adaptations of the works of H. P. Lovecraft.]

The 1970 film “The Dunwich Horror” was the third H. P. Lovecraft adaptation from legendary B-movie assembly line American International Pictures—fourth if one counts their distribution of Tigon’s Curse of the Crimson Altar.  Unlike AIP’s The Haunted Palace (1963) and Die, Monster, Die! (1965), which possess a dose of timeless gothic stateliness, The Dunwich Horror feels unequivocally like a horror film that could only have been made in 1970. Its screenplay might be adapted from a story originally published in 1929, but The Dunwich Horror is riddled with post-60s anxieties. Certainly, the plot has a Manson Family flavor: the villain is an offbeat yet alluring stranger who murmurs Free Love bromides but is secretly a malevolent occultist, and he employs mind-control mojo to enthrall a naïve coed for his apocalyptic schemes. The film’s vintage is also apparent in its eccentric style, which draws from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbarella, and Rosemary’s Baby (all 1968) in shallow but unmistakable ways.

In terms of literary pedigrees, a low-budget horror feature could scarcely do better than Lovecraft’s short story, which is regarded as a central work in his Cthulhu Mythos cycle. The villains of the tale are members of the loathsome Whateley family, a degenerate clan dwelling on the outskirts of the New England village of Dunwich. One of several corrupt, faintly inhuman bloodlines to populate Lovecraft’s fiction, the Whateleys are widely known among the local populace as a tribe of warlocks and devil-worshippers. The events of “The Dunwich Horror” concern the emergence of Wilbur Whateley, spawn of the albino imbecile Lavinia and an unidentified father, later revealed to be the Outer God known as Yog-Sothoth. Wilbur’s preternatural parentage is apparent in his alarmingly rapid growth to adulthood and in his affinity for black magic, the latter encouraged by his maternal grandfather. The young Whateley’s unsavory occult research eventually brings him into conflict with Miskatonic University librarian Dr. Henry Armitage, who manages to trammel the madman’s schemes. Unfortunately, Wilbur’s subsequent demise—by the jaws of a university guard dog, no less—unleashes a hidden monstrosity at the old Whateley farm. The titular Horror of the story is a colossal, invisible abomination once bound and satiated by the family’s arcane rituals, and upon Wilbur's death it bursts forth to maraud across the New England countryside.

While narratively straightforward, “The Dunwich Horror” is a thematically intricate monster tale. Lovecraft’s story draws heavily from the works of Welsh writer Arthur Machen, and in particular from the latter author’s renowned fantasy-horror novella, The Great God Pan. That work’s conceit of an aberrant god-spawn recurs in “Dunwich,” although Lovecraft places it into the context of his own alien mythology rather than Machen’s Victorian paganism. While Lovecraft’s story touches upon several strains of physical, psychological, and existential horror, its chilling core turns on a well-worn campfire tale technique: the slow reveal of the Creature in a manner that inspires maximum terror. From the outset, it is obvious to the reader that something unspeakable is concealed at the Whateley farm, and that it will eventually appear in all its writhing, blasphemous glory. Like many Lovecraft stories, “Dunwich” is told in the third-person omniscient past tense, and the author ruthlessly exploits early hints that Something Bad has befallen Dunwich in order to create a sensation of swelling doom.

The film adaptation aims for a similar mood, although it emerges mostly from the off-kilter setting and the hokey familiarity of the monster movie beats. Little credit can go to the frankly dreadful screenplay. That script is a collaborative effort from a trio of writers, all new to feature films at the time: rookie television scripter Henry Rosenbaum, former editor Ronald Silkosky, and an untested fellow named Curtis Hanson. (Hanson would go on to an enduring and respectable career as a writer, director, and producer, hitting his zenith roughly three decades later when he helmed the back-to-back L. A. Confidential and Wonder Boys.)  As in prior AIP Lovecraft films, the screenplay is only loosely based on the original story. However, the narrative core of the feature is more or less preserved from the source material, and some scenes are translated with only scant modification. When it was released, The Dunwich Horror was arguably the most faithful Lovecraft adaptation that AIP had produced up to that point.

That said, the changes that have been applied to the story are fairly significant. The film shifts the setting from 1920s New England to contemporary northern California, turning fabled Miskatonic from a tiny Ivy League bastion into a kind of Lovecraftian community college. While the original short story spanned roughly fifteen years from Wilbur’s birth through the Horror’s climactic rampage, the film compresses the tale’s events into what is apparently a single weekend. Most conspicuously, The Dunwich Horror initially centers the story’s action on a new character, guileless history student Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee). She serves as a tissue-thin clone of Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse: a hapless, unholy Virgin Mary, whose primary purpose in the story is to be sexually terrorized by demonic forces.

The Dunwich Horror was the first Lovecraft adaptation in which a well-known horror character actor was not given top billing. In lieu of Vincent Price or Boris Karloff, the film offers quintessential girl-next-door Dee, who by 1970 was on the downslope of an acting career once characterized by All-American ingenue roles (Gidget, The Wild and the Innocent, A Summer Place). Opposite Dee is former child star Dean Stockwell, who had pulled off the tricky leap to well-regarded adult performances (Compulsion, Long Day’s Journey Into Night) before receding from acting and into the haze of 1960s counterculture. (He would, of course, eventually appear in David Lynch’s 1986 masterwork Blue Velvet and later in the beloved time-tripping television series Quantum Leap.)

In the film’s prelude, the bedridden Lavinia Whateley (Joanne Moore Jordan) writhes and wails through an agonizing childbirth, as her father (Sam Jaffe) and a pair of albino hags look on in cold-blooded anticipation. In case the “Not Quite Right” vibe of this scene wasn’t obvious, Lavinia’s sweaty brow is conspicuously marked with an esoteric symbol, which recurs throughout the film in association with the Whateleys and Yog-Sothoth. Following this unsettling opening scene, the film breaks into a splashy but unpolished animated credit sequence, in which the silhouettes of cloaked cultists and ravenous demons glower over their helpless victims.

The Dunwich Horror then fast-forwards roughly two decades, alighting at the buzzing, sun-dappled campus of the College of the Redwoods... er, Miskatonic University. There the viewer meets the tale’s principals: sweet blonde coed Nancy (Dee), her brunette and thus slightly more worldly friend Elizabeth (Donna Baccala), and their mentor, the historian Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley). The professor tasks Nancy and Elizabeth with returning the grimoire known as the Necronomicon to its display case in the university library. Skulking about is dark, handsome, and exceedingly odd Wilbur Whateley (Stockwell), who is a little too eager to sneak a peek at the vile litanies inscribed in the notorious book. Dim-bulb Nancy gladly hands over the tome because... well, apparently because Wilbur says “please." (Setting aside the singular perils of the Necronomicon, Nancy’s willingness to pass a one-of-a-kind book to a total stranger would seem to make her a distinctly awful choice as a courier of historical artifacts.)

Fortunately, Dr. Armitage appears and quickly reclaims the book, interrupting the younger man’s recitation of one of the blasphemous invocations contained therein. However, Wilbur proves disarming and conciliatory, and when the professor discovers that the younger man is the great-grandson of the Necronomicon’s author, the foursome are soon discussing the book’s history over drinks at a local tavern. Armitage is intrigued by Wilbur’s lineage and his amateur scholarship, but the professor flatly refuses the young Whateley’s repeated requests to study the text in private. Charmed by Wilbur’s slick and soft-spoken manner, Nancy agrees to drive him home to the nearby village of Dunwich. Along the way, they encounter that most durable of horror movie characters, the ominous small-town gas station attendant, who becomes spooked when he overhears Wilbur’s surname.

The Whateleys, it turns out, are persona non grata in Dunwich. Wilbur’s great-grandfather was lynched for witchcraft in the town square, and bizarre rumors concerning the clan are still whispered around the coffee pot at the local general store. Wilbur conveniently neglects to mention his family’s unsavory reputation as he ushers the cheerfully oblivious Nancy into the Whateley homestead, a vast, draughty wooden house stuffed with gaudy nineteenth-century bric-a-brac and the odd mod furnishing.

Wilbur goes straight to the sexual predator playbook: small talk is exchanged, drugged tea is brewed, the car is secretly disabled, and before long Nancy is encouraged to slip into a black nightgown and spend the evening. She agrees, though whether due to monumental stupidity or an Outer God mind meld is an open question. Confoundingly, Nancy consents to the sleepover after she catches an earful of the strange thudding and gibbering that emanates from behind a locked door on an upper floor. Nor is she dissuaded by an encounter with Wilbur’s doddering, bug-eyed grandfather, who is still alive and apparently pursuing his passion for maniacal ranting on a full-time basis.

That night, Nancy’s dreams are filled with distorted visions of writhing, naked cultists who chase her through coastal meadows while cackling merrily and coaxing her to join their carnal rites. This sequence is unnerving in a kitschy sort of way, although the revelries more closely resemble a Rainbow Gathering than a Sabbat to the Outer Gods. Nancy’s hallucinations are essentially the worst nightmare of the era's so-called “silent majority”: a California wilderness swarming with free-spirited heathens, eagerly pursuing orgiastic delights while clad in little but dreadlocks and body paint. It’s easy to titter at the reactionary silliness of Yog-Sothoth-worshipping hippies, but Haller dribbles in just enough strangeness to lend the nightmare a feral edge. Between the aboriginal look of the mad cultists, the trippy soundtrack, and the lush green surroundings, the dream sequence faintly suggests an Italian cannibal film, with all the pitch-black moral ugliness that entails.

The next day, Wilbur gently reassures Nancy, speculating that her dreams are merely a symptom of Dunwich’s invigorating atmosphere and her own sexual hang-ups. Shortly thereafter, a concerned Dr. Armitage and Elizabeth arrive to fetch Nancy back to Miskatonic. Unfortunately, the girl is now completely under the spell of Wilbur’s sensitive male schtick, and likely some Outer God voodoo as well. She resists her friends’ urgings to leave the Whateley place, insisting that she is madly in love with Wilbur and his masculine facial hair.

It’s at this point that The Dunwich Horror settles into the somewhat bland shape it maintains for the rest of its running time. Dee’s top billing aside, any pretense that Nancy is the hero of the story is discarded, and she is essentially reduced to an addled victim who must be rescued from Wilbur’s clutches. Meanwhile, Dr. Armitage digs into the unseemly history of the Whateleys in Dunwich, in the hopes that his research will uncover some critical clue about the family’s motives and the extent of their supernatural power. The professor eventually meets with local physician Dr. Cory (Lloyd Bocher), who knows a Whateley family secret or two, including the current whereabouts of Wilbur’s unfortunate mother Lavinia. In the meantime, Wilbur makes a clandestine foray back to the Miskatonic library for the Necronomicon, which he needs in order to complete his dark designs for Nancy’s poor body and soul.

There's also the matter of that locked room and its prisoner. The film’s monster storyline lurches into motion once Dr. Armitage and Elizabeth split up. The latter unwisely returns to the Whateley house on her own, where she is attacked rather spectacularly by the Horror confined in the upstairs chamber. This is probably the most riveting sequence in the film, which abandons realism in favor of harrowing sensory terror. There are dim flashes of flailing pseudopods, stomach-churning noises, bursts of radioactive color, and endless screaming from Elizabeth, whose clothes vanish for no particular reason. It’s at once brazenly exploitative and desperately “arty”, but damn if it isn’t effective. Thereafter the Horror slithers through the rural landscape devouring anything in its path, including a posse of rifle-toting Yankee rednecks and an entire farmhouse complete with cowering family.

No specific reason is given for the Horror’s sudden escape, beyond its agitation at the proximity of Elizabeth’s vulnerable flesh. This is a shame, as the link between Wilbur’s death with the liberation of the Horror was one of the more ingenious and skin-crawling aspects of Lovecraft’s original story. In the film, Wilbur and the Horror seem to be moving on parallel tracks, and while the two come together at the end of the feature, the reunion feels tossed-off and almost incidental. This is merely one aspect of the film’s broader story problems in its second half, which is burdened with at least three subplots. Dr. Armitage works to discover the truth about the Whateleys, Wilbur presses forward with his fuzzy but plainly unwholesome ritual, and the Horror slouches through the woods in search of prey. In spite of all these moving parts, the film starts to feel weirdly inert after a while. Clearly, Wilbur and the Horror must be stopped, but this is about the extent of the film’s understanding of its own stakes. Even the threat that Wilbur’s ritual dagger poses to Nancy’s quivering virginal body doesn’t hold much drama—Dee’s character is just an erotic object on a sacrificial slab after a point.

As a creature feature, The Dunwich Horror is enjoyable stuff, although it’s not particularly frightening or shocking. If one is familiar with the monster movie form, it's obvious how things will unfold from the first shot of that locked door rattling ominously on its hinges. It’s not a matter of whether the imprisoned Horror will break free and munch its way through Dunwich, but when. There’s a kind of elemental pleasure in watching this sort of scenario unfold, but The Dunwich Horror is too unfocused to thrive as a pure monster-in-the-dark tale. The Horror doesn’t appear until after the first act, and with the exception of its jarring and highly stylized assault on Elizabeth, the filmmakers don’t do anything especially imaginative with the creature. The film is fairly stingy about providing glimpses of the Horror; the adaptation seems to retain the original story’s conceit that the abomination is naturally invisible. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a Bad Thing: when the creature design is weak and the visual effects are shoddy, as they are in The Dunwich Horror, the last thing that a film needs is more well-lit, lingering shots of its signature monster.

Director Daniel Haller oversaw AIP’s Die, Monster Die! and therein achieved a gratifying blend of gothic mustiness and Atomic Age weirdness. In The Dunwich Horror, however, Haller at times seems a bit lost. His go-to replacement for costly visual effects is vague, endless panning shots of windblown grass and trees, which are overlaid with the Horror’s moist growls and wheezes. These sequences are in turn punctuated with attention-grabbing point-of-view shots as the creature looms over its screaming, stumbling victims. It’s midnight drive-in stuff, and while there is a trashy charm to such methods, Haller employs them in manner that is ham-handed and a bit tedious. (Not until The Happening would rustling grass be employed to such an underwhelming effect.)

This is not to say that the The Dunwich Horror is a dull cinematic experience. While it is undeniably a cruder, less absorbing film than Die, Monster, Die!, there is an adolescent charisma in its modestly self-aware cheesiness and its weirdly glib expression of familiar Lovecraftian elements. Most distinctively, the film conjures an unsettling atmosphere of supernatural menace from an otherwise benign Pacific coast landscape. Intentionally or not, the soft-focus northern California setting clashes so strongly with the horror of blood sacrifices and other-dimensional entities that it actually amplifies the film’s uncanny aura. Summoning dread in a grey New England fishing village or mouldering English castle is one thing; plucking it from the art colonies and bed and breakfasts of Mendocino County is a different matter. The mood is enhanced immeasuably by the surreal Les Baxter score, which is a strangely transfixing blend of cosmic tones, quasi-exotic rhythms, and silly-then-sinister orchestral bombast.

The film’s dialogue is generally appalling, although at times it shades into such mesmerizing goofiness that it becomes borderline endearing. Occasionally, the script almost seems to be poking fun at AIP’s own catalog of mutant monster flicks, but The Dunwich Horror never quite saunters over the line into full-fledged satire. The actors generally seem to be having a grand old time, which is the primary reason the film manages to be so entertaining, despite its narrative flaws. Of all the performers, Dee is the least game or memorable: she just smiles demurely and sighs her lines in a dreamy, empty-headed way, although she can hardly be blamed for the shallowness of the character. The rest of the cast keenly appreciates that they’re making a Bad Movie, and although their approaches to the fundamentally ludicrous material vary, the sheer grab-bag quality to the performances is captivating.

Stockwell is essentially off in his own film, giving a mannered and hyptnotically insolent performance. He portrays Wilbur as a perfidious and unstable fanatic, magnetically mellow one minute and cartoonishly deranged the next. Eight years before Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers unearthed the nasty, sexist side of the oh-so-reasonable Leftish 1970s male, Stockwell had already figured out what could be unnerving about a quiet, liberal guy in a corduroy jacket and New Age jewelry. Begley goes comparatively low-key, conveying his character’s pompous earnestness while retaining a relaxed air as a performer. Jaffe plays to the rafters in the fine tradition of Bela Lugosi, with spittle flying and crooked, accusatory finger trembling. Bocher, in what is probably the most flat-out amusing turn in the film, aims for a distillation of every exposition-spouting doctor from every genre picture from the previous twenty years. It’s a guilty pleasure to watch him stride around the room, sonorously explicating backstory while ostentatiously puffing on his pipe.

Little touches like Lochner’s performance are what ultimately elevate The Dunwich Horror from a fumbled adaptation into a diverting B-movie pleasure in its own right. The film’s allure is one of outré fifty-cent spectacle, and while that places it light-years away from Lovercraft’s writing, it’s hard to dismiss any work of horror that is so eager and offbeat in its approach to genre conventions.

When Blood Is Nipp’d and Ways Be Foul: “Winter Is Coming”

“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”

Game of Thrones // Season 1 // Episode 1 // Original Air Date April 17, 2011 // Written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss // Directed by Timothy Van Patten

[Note: This post contains spoilers for “Winter Is Coming” and Season 1 as a whole.  Part of a series examining Game of Thrones in depth from a character- and story-based perspective. The series is presented without reference to George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels.]

I. The Wall

a White Walker ambush

The opening sequence of Game of Thrones’ series premiere, “Winter Is Coming,” is a strange morsel of storytelling, more akin to a stand-alone horror short than a narrative prologue for the rest of the episode. In a show that will be defined to a great extent by its labyrinthine plotlines and sprawling cast of characters, the series’ initial scenes are remarkably free of such minutiae. The characters depicted are three Rangers of the Night’s Watch, although they are not identified as such at this early stage. Not one member of this trio will live past the first fifteen minutes of the series, and only one is named in the episode’s dialogue. The latter is the unfortunate Will (Bronson Webb), whose skittishness further distinguishes him from the confident, highborn Ser Waymar Royce (Rob Ostlere) and the older, shrewder Gared (Dermot Keaney).

Needless to say, these are not essential characters, and their role is little more than that of the expendable meat in a creature feature or slasher flick. The viewer is not meant to empathize deeply with the Rangers, but to watch in giddy terror as they are picked off by a powerful supernatural foe lurking in the forest. Indeed, the monstrous White Walkers seem to take a fiendish pleasure in terrorizing the Rangers before slaying them—or, in Will’s case, before mysteriously allowing him to escape and spread word of his terrifying encounter.

Still, the Rangers’ lethal run-in with the Walkers serves several vital functions in the early development of the series. As with almost every scene in Game of Thrones, the series’ writers convey an astonishing amount of information in a brief span of time. Given that Will and his compatriots don’t ultimately matter as characters, scripters and show creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss focus on establishing essential aspects of the series’ fantasy world.

The episode’s first shots depict the frozen Wall that marks the Seven Kingdoms’ northern border. Although the significance of this frontier is not yet apparent, the Rangers’ slow, silent journey through the tunnel and into the woods clearly establishes a dichotomy between the sanctuary of civilization and the snowbound threats that lies beyond. The Night Watch itself is not actually name-checked in the opening scenes, but the three Rangers are plainly men on a mission. Their black, weather-beaten clothing and armor serve as a uniform of sorts, in the same way that colorful livery would mark more conventional men-at-arms affiliated with a noble house.

The writers bestow the members of this trio with just enough characteristics for the viewer to tell them apart, and to establish that the Night’s Watch ranks are made up of men of varying talents and demeanors. These include edgy green recruits like Will, swaggering little lords like Ser Waymar, and hardened and wary veterans like Gared. The three Rangers are mirrored to a degree in the three factions that are portrayed in the opening scenes: the Night’s Watch, the savage human “wildlings” who dwell north the Wall, and the mysterious, inhuman White Walkers (which are not named until later).

The Rangers’ foray is for the purpose of tracking wildlings, but they are blindsided by another foe in the form of the Walkers and their undead minions. The peril of an unseen, secondary threat is a pivotal theme—arguably the theme—in GoT that will be developed across myriad storylines, but it is most prominently embodied in the Walkers. They do not appear onscreen for the remainder of the series’ first season, and the creatures are mostly relegated to a simmering background menace. Thus, the Walker attack on Will and his fellow Rangers offers an essential early peek at these foes, while still preserving the essential mystery of their nature and capabilities.  As will be illustrated in subsequent episodes, the Walkers are the personification of mortality and apocalypse in GoT’s lingua franca, and their appearance in the very first sequence of the first episode establishes the atmosphere of looming doom that will dominate the series.

II. Winterfell

the deserter is executed / five plus one direwolves

During the Walker ambush, the viewer need not agonize over who’s who, since all three Rangers will shortly meet a messy, headless end. In contrast, the subsequent scenes in Winterfell throw the viewer right into the Stark household, where significant characters are introduced at a furious pace. As with David Simon’s masterful urban tragedy The Wire, GoT is a sprawling, intricate show that is not in the habit of explaining itself slowly and carefully. Benioff and Weiss generally don’t spoon-feed the viewer, preferring to permit the characters, relationships, and various nooks of the fictional world to emerge naturally, and to favor economical, narrative-centered dialogue over starched exposition. This approach isn’t embraced as consistently as it is on the The Wire, and GoT’s writing does occasionally drift into silly audience-oriented declarations. (“Winter Is Coming” has a few egregious examples of such As You Know scenes, which tend to proliferate in series pilots.) All the same, it’s an ambitious strategy for an hour-long drama, particularly one burdened with fantasy’s penchant for tongue-twisting names and magical gobbledygook.

The first extended sequence set in and around Castle Winterfell is a fine illustration of GoT’s dense yet conservative writing style, and probably one of the most successful examples of it in the front half of Season 1. Most of the key members of the Stark household are introduced: Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark (Sean Bean), the ruler of Winterfell, and his wife Lady Catelyn “Cat” Stark (Michelle Fairley), their four children Robb (Richard Madden), Sansa (Sophie Turner), Arya (Maisie Williams), and Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), Ned’s bastard son Jon Snow (Kit Harington), and Ned’s attendant and ward Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen). Also glimpsed are the castle’s Master-of-Arms Ser Rodrik Cassel (Ron Donanchie), the captain of the Stark household guard and Rodrik's nephew Jorry Cassel (Jamie Sives), and the Stark daughters’ tutor Sensa Mordane (Margaret John).

This is a bewildering number of characters to present in one sequence, although initially only Ned, Cat, and Bran are identified by name. The Starks and their relationships will be more thoroughly fleshed out in later scenes, but Benioff and Weiss do an impressive job of laying out some of the essential dynamics with just a few lines of dialogue. Bran’s archery lesson alone is a neat little microcosm of the Stark household. Jon’s illegitimacy is hinted at in his first words to Bran—“Father’s watching. And your mother.”—and Cat’s antipathy towards Ned’s bastard is conveyed in a simple glare. Yet Jon’s ease with his half-brothers is also obvious. The contrast between the Stark daughters is established in Sansa’s devotion to “proper” activities for a noblewoman and in Arya’s bored, disdainful rejection of the same in favor of pursuits that Westeros culture regards as masculine. It is notable that no one but the embarrassed Bran reproaches Arya for her mischief, which points to Ned’s indulgent attitude towards his younger daughter’s unorthodox interests.

This noble family’s relationship to the earlier White Walker attack shortly becomes apparent, as Ser Rodrik summons Ned to personally fulfill the sentence for the captured Night’s Watch deserter Will. Cat disapproves of this, and of Bran’s presence at the execution, which highlights the fundamental conflict between the Lord and Lady Stark: Ned's attachment to to the old honor codes clashes with his wife’s expectations for him as a husband and father. Lord Stark's determination to fulfill his grim duty as master of Winterfell illustrates his highly cultivated sense of righteousness, but it’s Sean Bean’s marvelously anguished performance (here and throughout Season 1) that makes the character more compelling than a cookie-cutter Last Honorable Man.

Facing the executioner’s block, Will is remarkably collected about his imminent death, and is insistent that his account of the White Walkers not be regarded as a madman’s raving. (Here Will takes on the role of the memento mori, reminding the privileged first family of Winterfell that death will eventually come to them too.) None of which changes the fact of his desertion. In the end, following an invocation to King Robert Baratheon and a moment to steel his nerves, Ned takes Will’s head with a single swing of his broadsword. Robb is steadily watching his father throughout the execution, but Jon’s eyes are on Bran, providing a succinct visual summary of their characters. Robb is the loyal eldest son who is mindful of his role as the inheritor of Ned’s mantle, while Jon feels a fraternal affection for Bran, who as the second legitimate son and fourth Stark child is destined to live in Robb’s shadow.

Little is known of Westeros’ king at this juncture, but it can be deduced that the Seven Kingdoms are governed under a feudal system where landholding families ultimately pledge fealty to the monarch. It’s plain that Ned takes no joy in being “the man who swings the sword,” but that his fidelity to the king’s laws obliges him to do so—foreshadowing Stark’s later ambivalence about serving as the monarch’s Hand. (And also revealing that Ned will accept the position in the end, because he always does his duty.)

Bran is intrigued by Will’s tale, but given that the White Walkers were last sighted millennia ago, Lord Stark is not inclined to take the deserter’s story seriously. He does, however, give some credence to omens, which can be discerned in the slain stag and direwolf that the group discovers while returning to Winterfell. When Ned identifies the latter creature, a meaningful look passes between he and Ser Rodrik, suggesting that these older men understand the symbolism of the find and have no wish to give it power by naming it. Significantly, the group forgets the stag, which will later be revealed as the emblem of the King Robert’s house, pointing to additional buried signs.

There are a remarkable number of little character details worked into the Stark family’s exchange at the direwolf carcass. Jon hands one of the orphaned pups to Bran, a possibly calculated gesture on the bastard’s part. It is Jon, after all, who declares that the number of foundlings is a divine portent—one pup for each of Ned’s offspring—and he seems aware that the soft-hearted pleadings of the legitimate ten-year-old son may carry more weight that his own words. Greyjoy, vaguely disgusted, refers to the wolf as a “freak,” and seems all too eager to slay the pups. When Jon tries to intervene, Greyjoy sneeringly retorts that he answers only to Ned, although Robb cooly rebukes the attendant to “put away your blade.” The simmering tug-of-war between Stark, Snow, and Greyjoy is thus established with a few prickly remarks and narrowed eyes. Ultimately, everyone looks to Ned for a final decision, and he reluctantly decrees that the pups are to be spared, so long as raising them constitutes a character-building lesson for Bran. Because he’s “not a Stark,” Jon receives the albino runt of the litter, which Greyjoy can’t resist tweaking him about. Jon’s illegitimacy is thereby spelled out more explicitly and his rocky position relative to the Stark household is underlined.

III. King’s Landing

a brother and sister conspire

The action moves briefly to the southern city of King’s Landing, the capital of the aforementioned Seven Kingdoms. Up to this point, “Winter Is Coming” has only featured scenes set in the grey, ragged North, and the contrast between that landscape and the golden warmth of King’s Landing is striking. While the body of the recently deceased Hand of the King, Jon Arryn (John Standing), lies in state, Cersei Baratheon (Lena Headley) and Ser Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau) share their concerns. This is arguably the most ill-fitting scene in the episode, and it smells suspiciously like a post hoc addition to clarify relationships and plot points. Cersei and Jaime speak to one another in a somewhat stilted way, declaring several facts for the edification of the viewer: the pair are brother and sister, Cersei is King Robert’s queen, and Robert prefers hunting and whoring to actually ruling.

All the same, there are more subtle but nonetheless vital details that are revealed in this scene. Cersei is shown to be a plotter and a fretter, one who is foremost concerned with the advancement of her family. Jamie, meanwhile, is cavalier and provocative, yet savvy enough to discern that the Hand is a demanding position he does not want. Despite his cocksure attitude, Jamie also indirectly admits that he fears his father, which sets up the uneasy relations between parent and child long before Tywin Lannister appears later in Season 1.

The most significant particular to emerge from Cersei and Jaime’s conversation is that Jon Arryn had knowledge of a secret—a knowledge alluded to in the painted stones placed on the nobleman’s dead eyes. The question that vexes Cercei is whether Arryn passed this information to another party. As with The Wire, the flow of data is a vital element of GoT’s narrative, with various zones of knowledge and ignorance overlapping and shifting like armies on a battlefield. “Information gaps” between two or more parties are as vital to the turning of Westeros’ politics as wealth disparities and feudal obligations.  

IV. Winterfell

ill news from the south / preparations for the royal visit / the King and the Lannisters arrive

Back in Winterfell, Cat seeks out Ned in a idyllic woodland grove enclosed within the castle grounds, a sanctuary later identified as a Godswood. Their dialogue further elaborates on the lines of division between husband and wife, and by extension between more ancient and modern cultural currents in Westeros. Cat might be the Lady of Winterfell by marriage, but she still views herself as an interloper in a place sacred to the “old gods.” These unnamed sylvan deities are distinct from the entities Ned refers to as “your gods," i.e. the beings worshipped by Cat’s blood relatives. Although the grove is a place of peace and contemplation, Ned is shown sharpening his sword beneath the scarlet leaves of an ancient tree. This is both a callback to Will’s execution and a succinct visual summary of Stark’s character: nominally a devotee of the old ways, but foremost a warrior.

Cat brings news of Jon Arryn’s death, observing that the he and Ned had a close relationship akin to that of father and son. (This contrasts with Jaime’s palpable ambivalence towards his actual father in the previous scene.)  Cat also informs Ned of the upcoming arrival of King Robert and his entourage in Winterfell, prompting Lord Stark to speculate grimly that the king intends to name him as the new Hand. Ned also asks after Cat’s sister and “the Boy,” contributing to the emerging picture of Westeros’ tangled noble lineages. As in the matter of Will’s beheading, Cat points out that Ned has the freedom to choose whether or not to follow his damnable honor code, even as she makes her own preferences clear.

Later, Cat oversees the preparations for the royal visit to Winterfell with the household's scholar Maester Luwin (Donald Sumpter). She remarks that the queen’s brother, Tyrion, is a voracious reader, to which Luwin retorts that he also has an appetite for drink—the series’ first reference to the Imp’s reputation as both an intellectual and hedonist. Meanwhile, the castle’s barber cleans up Robb, Greyjoy, and Jon, who swap gossip about the queen’s legendary beauty and Jaime’s equally legendary womanizing. These two rumors are presented as unrelated for the moment, but the discussion foreshadows the episode’s final scene, as does Bran’s nimble descent of the castle walls.

The king’s grand arrival at Winterfell provides a first glimpse of the smirking heir apparent Prince Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) and his fearsome bodyguard Sandor “The Hound” Clegane (Rory McCann). (Robb warily observes Sansa and the Prince making eyes at one other, a moment that Ned fails to catch.) The massive, gregarious King Robert enters Castle Winterfell on horseback, riding openly alongside his knights rather than within the enclosed royal carriage with the queen. In addition to illustrating his aloofness towards Cersei, the king’s insistence on presenting himself firstly as a man-at-arms rather than a monarch underlines his adolescent preoccupation with his warrior identity. To his credit, Robert is at least mildly self-aware of his own faults, as evident in his sardonic chiding of Ned for having grown fat. The king also admires Bran’s muscles in a condescending way and observes “You’ll be a soldier,” in yet another bit of ironic foreshadowing.

Robert insists on visiting the castle’s crypts straight away, which prompts a weary objection from the queen that is summarily disregarded. In the privacy of the catacombs, Robert compliments Ned by observing that the Lord of Winterfell—unlike himself—did not need any lessons in strategy or politics from the late Jon Arryn. Of course, the king offers this praise in the hopes that Ned will accept the now-vacant position of Hand of the King, a role that Robert suggests is a natural fit for the man who helped him win the Iron Throne. The king also makes explicit his desire that Joffrey and Sansa be wed, a match that will further intertwine the nobility of Westeros and bind the House of Stark to the crown by blood. The relationship between Robert and Ned begins to snap into focus. The king is a generally warm and garrulous friend, but is not above getting what he wants with a mixture of flattery, sentimentalism, bluster, and intimidation.

Meanwhile, Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) is enjoying the company of the beauteous Ros (Esme Bianco) at a brothel outside Castle Winterfell. This scene is generally comedic in tone, establishing Tyrion as a quick-witted libertine with streaks of alternating vanity and insecurity. While he is unashamedly boastful about his cleverness and his... physical endowments, he admits to Ros that he despises the nickname “The Imp”. It is hinted that Tyrion may know of Cersei and Jaime’s unnaturally close realtionship, as he observes that his sister has “odd cravings.” Initially, Tyrion serves as a silver-tongued but cynical truth-teller in GoT, the proverbial jester who is permitted to say what no one else would dare. Gradually, as the extent of House Lannister’s cold-bloodedness become more apparent, the Imp serves as a humane toehold for the viewer amid a family filled with sociopaths.

In the Winterfell crypts, Robert pays his respects to the memory of Lyanna Stark, who was his betrothed and Ned’s sister. The king bemoans that Lyanna is entombed in a Northern catacomb rather than buried on a sunny hill in the South, but Ned reminds Robert that as a Stark, she belongs in the family crypt. Given that Robert and Lyssa were never actually wedded, this seems sensible, although it presents a sorrowful contrast with Ned’s earlier contention Cat is now a Northwoman by dint of their long marriage and many children. (As will be revealed over the course of Season 1, the male lords of Westeros tend to interpret the rules of patrilineal descent and inheritance in a manner that reflects their individual preferences.) Regardless of the actual circumstances of her death, it’s clear who Robert holds responsible for taking away his betrothed: House Targaryen.

V. Pentos

the dragon presents his sister to the horse lord

Both “Winter Is Coming” and Season 1 as a whole rather cunningly exploit (and occasionally subvert) the viewer’s expectations regarding traditional fantasy narratives. The series’ premiere is akin to a curtain slowly being pulled back, with the viewer invited to survey the scenery and absorb where the characters stand in relation to one another. Benioff and Weiss are putting chess pieces in place, establishing that the season’s central conflict will be between the broadly honorable House Stark and the broadly villainous House Lannister. Of course, most of the characters on GoT resist simplistic categorization into Good Guys and Bad Guys. The portrayal of Tyrion as a charismatic and generally upright man, for example, acts as a check on the broad-brush demonization of his house. However, in a general way the Stark-Lannister clash is the narrative fulcrum around which the first season revolves, and viewer sympathies are plainly meant to tilt towards Ned and his family.

The most prominent wrinkle to this clear-cut narrative is, of course, the tale of Daenerys Targaryen, exiled daughter to the deposed King Aerys II. Daenerys serves as a sort of wildcard in the conflict between Houses Stark and Lannister. Although she never sets foot in Westeros in Season 1, the events that surround her wedding, pregnancy, and eventual widowhood reverberate across the Narrow Sea. Thematically, Daenerys’ storyline often serves as an echo and counterpoint to the main action in Westeros. While her ascension from trembling virgin bride to a fire-wreathed queen of dragons has profound political ramifications for the Iron Throne, her arc is the first season is an intensely personal one. The point-of-view in the Essos segments is tightly tethered to her own fears, hopes, and uncertain self-conception, and the writing in these scenes tends to focus on her subjective experience of events.

Initially, Daenerys is a bit of a tabula rasa whose primary personality trait is cringing, wide-eyed fearfulness. Notwithstanding her elder brother Viserys’ (Harry Lloyd) leering admiration of her body, she is still emotionally immature, as illustrated by her childlike protest that she just wants to “go home”. (Despite his cruelty and loathsomeness, Viserys is correct when he responds that there is no home to which they might return.) Like a show animal in a gilded cage, Daenerys has value to her brother primarily due to the steep price she can command as a potential wife, i.e. sexual plaything and offspring generator. In a kind of reverse dowry arrangement with the imposing Dothraki Khal called Drogo (Jason Momoa), Daenerys is exchanged for a barbarian army, which Viserys hopes will aid him in reclaiming the Iron Throne for House Targaryen.

The ambitious, cold-blooded pragmatism of this arrangement---and the extent to which Daenerys’s feelings on the matter are utterly disregarded---is presented as a savage reflection of the routine exchange of betrothals for wealth and power among Westeros’ houses. Indeed, while the Dothraki culture is blood-drenched exaggeration of a nomadic society in the tradition of Robert E. Howard and John Norman, GoT often uses Daenerys’ storyline to highlight similarities between the Eastern barbarian horde and the so-called civilization of the Seven Kingdoms.

VI. Winterfell

the Starks feast the royal household / a warning arrives from the Eyrie

Such a parallel is illustrated with the cut between the action in Pentos and Winterfell, which places Daenerys and Viserys’ conversation alongside a comparable exchange between Cat and Sansa. Both scenes revolve around a matrimonial transaction, but the roles are reversed: whereas Viserys callously peddles his sister’s flesh to a warlord without her consent, Sansa is eager to be betrothed to Prince Joffrey despite her mother’s reservations. Sansa’s impatience mirrors Viserys’ and highlights the extent to which the sneering would-be-king is just as childish as Daenerys.

The feast at Winterfell in honor of the royal visitation is yet another scene that is relatively thick with significant character details. King Robert’s open cavorting with the castle’s serving girls demonstrates the magnitude of his casual contempt for Cercei, who can only grimace in silence at such a display. “The King takes what he wants,” Ned later observes in private to Cat, “That’s why he’s king.” Although GoT is, on a certain level, a mere soap opera about elites squabbling for political power, it also functions as a critique of the egotistical and foolish use of that power. The Targaryens aside, Westeros' noble houses seem to accept that Robert earned the Iron Throne through his bravery on the battlefield, but “Winter Is Coming” illustrates that even an old ally like Ned is uncertain about the king’s subsequent use of his royal privilege. Not only is Robert’s behavior selfish and sophomoric, it seems patently unwise given the hints concerning Cersei’s scheming nature.

At Cat’s command, Jon has been relegated to the castle courtyard, where he uses his blade to take out his frustration on a practice dummy. His run-in with a characteristically tipsy Tyrion provides insight into both men. The Imp offers some unsolicited advice on how Jon should cope with his second-class status, thereby revealing his own approach to life: “Never forget what you are... Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you.” One of Jon’s flaws is his tendency to veer between entitled vanity and sodden self-pity, and he demonstrates both in his incredulity that Tyrion could ever understand his circumstances. As the Imp explains, however, dwarves are not unlike bastards. GoT will often return to the similarities between the experiences of various outcasts and marginalized peoples: the dwarf, the illegitimate, the disabled, the mentally ill, the prostitute, the eunuch, the queer.

Appropriately, it’s at this juncture when Ned’s younger brother Benjen (Joseph Mawle) arrives. As the First Ranger of the Night’s Watch, he observes that the Wall’s guardians accept recruits from all walks of life, and Jon’s status as a bastard would be irrelevant among their ranks. Jon is eager to prove himself and discover his true calling—like many a young warrior in countless fantasy tales—but Benjen urges him to ruminate carefully on the decision to “take the Black” (i.e. join the Night’s Watch). Benjen’s subsequent conversation with Ned about Will’s execution and goings-on beyond the Wall provides a connection to earlier events in the episode, and solidifies the sense that an indefinite but grave threat is gathering in the far North.

Potential peril creeps into Winterfell itself with the late-night arrival of a ravenborn message from Cat’s sister, Lysa, widow of the late Jon Arryn. Cat is visibly shaken by this missive—she casts a terrified glance at Maester Luwin upon reading it and burns the message straight away. Ned, meanwhile, is reluctant to accept Lysa’s contention that House Lannister is responsible for Arryn’s death and harbors sinister intentions for the king. Lord Stark even speculates that Cat’s sister has been driven mad with grief. (The dismissal of women’s words by questioning of their sanity is a recurring element in GoT, but as will be revealed, Lysa Arryn is both crazy and right about the Lannisters.)  The message only heighten Cat’s consternation about Ned serving as the new Hand, and solidifies her resolve that he remain in Winterfell.

VII. Pentos

Daenerys’ wedding / a gift of eggs

Earlier, the Targaryens’ host Magister Illyrio (Roger Allam), observed that Khal Drogo seemed pleased when he was presented with Daenerys as a bride-offering. That assessment was apparently correct, as the Khal holds a lavish and characteristically bloody Dothraki wedding feast in her honor. Daenerys spends much of her time gaping in horror at the festivities, which include meals of roasted horse hearts, frenzied dancing that borders on public copulation, and duels that culminate in disembowelment. Daenerys’ reaction notwithstanding, the scene neatly echoes the raucous feasting in Winterfell, albeit with the addition of a brutal death or three.

Most of the wedding gifts presented to Daenerys—such as a basket of live snakes—are unpleasant at best, but two of the offerings seize her attention. The first is a set of three petrified dragon eggs, which seem to entrance Daenerys for reasons beyond their aesthetic beauty. The second is a stack of books from the Seven Kingdoms, a gift presented by Ser Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen), an exiled knight from Westeros who is still loyal to House Targaryen. Vinerys and Daenerys appear to have been unaware of Jorah’s presence in Pentos prior to the wedding, but the knight uses the occasion to present himself and pledge his fealty to their House. Throughout Season 1, Jorah serves as a kind of double-duty guide for the Targaryens. In addition to acting as a linguistic and cultural interpreter during their time among the Dothraki, Jorah provides a face for the supposedly robust faction of Targaryen loyalists across the Narrow Sea to the West.

Ser Jorah’s presence gives a momentary reprieve for Daenerys, in that he represents both a welcome link to her slain father and the promise of a glorious return to Westeros. Later, when the Khal presents his bride with a magnificent steed as a wedding gift, she is briefly touched by the gesture. Jorah, however, observes that that she cannot express her gratitude to Drogo, as there is no equivalent for “Thank You” in the Dothraki language. The Khal views his generosity as the toll for Daenerys’ virginity, which he takes on the beach at sundown without a thought for her consent. (In a particularly nasty bit of irony, the only word the Khal can speak in the Common tongue is “No”.)

VIII. Winterfell

Bran makes a discovery and takes a fall

The morning after the feast at Winterfell, King Robert and Lord Stark gather with their respective entourages for a hunt in the countryside. Ned, in spite of Cat’s objections and the warning from the Eyrie, has agreed to serve as the Hand and accompany Robert when he returns to King’s Landing. Meanwhile, Bran clambers up the walls of one of the castle’s crumbling towers, in contravention of an earlier pledge to his mother. (Both Ned and Bran, it turns out, err by not listening to Cat’s wisdom.) At the tower's precipice, Bran stumbles upon a confusing and frightening sight: Cersei and Jaime Lannister engaged in a rather torrid and vocal sex act. Quite a bit clicks into place with this revelation: the relationship between the Lannister twins is the secret that Jon Arryn knew, and—if Lysa’s letter is to be believed—the reason for his murder. Moreover, the attentive viewer can deduce that the parentage of Prince Joffrey may not be a settled matter anymore, well before Ned reaches the same conclusion in later episodes.

Even if the viewer had not know anything of the Lannister twins’ sinister ambitions, the scene is plainly presented such that Bran’s fate seems to hang in the balance for a moment. Jaime seizes the boy through the window and holds him there uncertainly, attempting to put him at ease. The queen is visibly frightened and adamant about what must be done to protect their perverse secret, but Jaime seems to be of two minds. He asks Bran how old he is and repeats it to Cersei, as though he were underlining the monstrousness of her wordless suggestion: “Ten”. In the end, however, a pleading look from his sister is all that is necessary to coerce Jaime. With an almost offhand callousness, he pushes Bran from the tower... “for love.”