Christmas
cinema is a tradition in our household, each year's repetitive
cinematic celebration consisting of the usual genre classics (and you
probably know exactly which films these are). Once every few years,
however, I become compelled to delve into the decidedly non-classic
Christmas cinema (who decided this I can't rightly recall, but
nevertheless I feel safe in saying the film I'm about to talk about
rarely make people's traditional must-watch list), some are set
specifically over Christmas while some of these films merely allude
to the fact that they take place around the yuletide time of year.
One of my absolute favourite of the former camp is one of the top
masters of cinema's last film, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.
Clearly set in the days right before Christmas, the movie opens
up with married couple (Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, who were
married in real life during the filming of this movie) getting ready
to go to a lavish Christmas party. As insecurities insidiously winds
their way through the couple's sexual consciousness, Tom Cruise
seemingly falls into a gritty, and at times very intense,
sexual odyssey, without every actually engaging in any sexual acts
for the entire film – after initially sleeping with his own wife
(Kidman) after the first scene of the movie; the night of the
Christmas party. As Cruise's odyssey ramps up in intensity, things go
from intriguing to anxious to vaguely violent and very possibly
dangerous, as a secret sex society that cruise accidentally stumbled
upon appears that they may do anything to keep their raging orgies
firmly in the realm of the clandestine. Kubrick's catalyst for making
this film, conceived with a friend years before it was actually made,
was to create a “mainstream porno”, as he stated in his own words
at one point, decades ago. In doing this, however, Kubrick
intentionally utilized the cinematic construct of a classic thriller
– with all the requisite scene of a noir-style thriller falling in
exactly all of the right places, which gives Eyes Wide Shut that
edge of imminent danger, when really nothing of the sort is actually
happening on-screen during Cruise's odyssey. So it then comes
back around that the anxiety of the entire film must hearken back to
the sexual anxiety of our leading couple, and their marriage.
What's
really interesting is that Eyes Wide Shut plays out like an
entirely different genre film than the genre it's supposed to be
representing – in other words, it's an erotic movie (or a
“mainstream porno”), and an epic one at that, masquerading as a
thriller. (Incidentally, film critic Roger Ebert wrote an amazing
piece on this in 1999 when the film was first released). The next two
non-Christmas Christmas films have exactly this stylish masquerade in
place, covering their own inherent genres under the guise of other
genres. Following Eyes Wide Shut is another genre epic,
Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. This film alludes to
Christmas only when one of the characters, one of the eight trapped
in an out-of-the-way haberdashery, quietly plays an out-of-tune
Silent Night on the haberdashery's long-forgotten piano.
Tarantino's movie, which is really just a blown-up version of the
film that put him on the map 25 years ago (Reservoir Dogs), is
turned into a romp disguised as John Carpenter's The Thing
complete with the same star of that film – Kurt Russell – and
music from the great Ennio Morricone; and it even features a few
blatant touches of the Italian giallo genre (which Morricone
was extremely active in for decades). The Hateful Eight
successfully utilizes Tarantino's obsessions with Italian genre
films (giallo, spaghetti western), to muddy the fact that his
epic is ultimately a remake of one of his own films, and through this
patchwork of genre celebration he manages to create a very engaging
and impressive film in and of itself, if you can make it through the
three-hour running time. As Eyes Wide Shut is also nearly
three hours long, I wouldn't recommend programming these films
back-to-back for your crazy Christmas double-feature, unless you feel
like sitting yourself in for a long winter's night.
And
if you find yourself up for more following these epics, then there's
one more in store. Jess Franco's Eugenie De Sade. Firstly,
this is an important film in the Jess Franco cannon, as it stars his
once-muse, Soledad Miranda, along with other beauties from his
early-seventies repertoire. Taking place in Berlin in the middle of
winter, Eugenie De Sade at no time states that it takes place
during the Christmas season, but the lush photography creates a
dreamy and alluring winter wonderland for the story to take place in.
And much like Stanley Kubrick's mainstream-porno-opus (yes, I'm
just about to make this comparison between filmmakers), Jess
Franco hides his softcore and alluring thriller behind the masque of
the more perverse Marquis De Sade, lending the Marquis' name to his offering. And while this might be one of his less-famous films, there should be no contention that
Eugenie De Sade is not as interesting, or as amazing, as Jess Franco's more famous offerings – quite the contrary, in fact. Soledad Miranda
provides her uncanny beauty in her dependent (and defiant) stoic-muse
persona to the best affect in this films, the absolute best out of
her six with Franco (in my opinion, despite the beauty of Vampiros
Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy)... This in itself could
be considered a fantastical Christmas gift to Soledad Miranda fans.
Eugenie De Sade is in actuality more of an Italian-style surrealist-thriller, and with everything Franco thrown into the sink here, including go-go-dancers, fashion photography, jazz, stand-up comedians, and of course all sorts of sex, one would be fair in dubbing this Jess Franco's masterpiece. Franco's sex & death in Berlin quite possibly could have been more the film Stanley Kubrick had in mind for Eyes Wide Shut. Nevertheless,
both films end up presenting themselves to cinematic audiences – along with
The Hateful Eight, as well – as films other than they
actually are. Mind-blowingly, this all works to the advantage of all
three of these utterly fascinating snowbound and Christmas-set films. So following this, all I can say is go down the Christmas
rabbit hole and discover (or re-discover) these films and engage
yourself in a very merry, off-kilter, bizarre, cinematic Christmas!!
-V.
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