Corto Maltese: Captain, castaway, pirate

I’ve been on a graphic novel and comic book kick for a while. I’ve also been on a Cormac McCarthy kick. But since I’m not in the mood to plunge deep into the darkness of human depravity right now, I’ve decided to get back in the blogging habit with a series of reviews of the graphic novels and comics I’ve read recently.

I have to start with Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salt Sea.

What a fantastic book. The cover art sucked me in with its promise of a South Seas, damsel-in-distress, vagabond, pirate/anti-hero kind of tale. Add in cannibalistic but mostly helpful Polynesians, and that’s exactly what it delivered.

Corto is the invention of Hugo Pratt, an Italian writer and illustrator who wrote the books between 1970 and 1984 while living in France. I’ve so far been able to find Salt Sea and Corto Maltese: The Early Years, in English.

Corto, a sea captain, is the son of a British sailor from Cornwall and a gypsy Andalusian witch and prostitute known as “La Nina de Gibraltar.” Maybe because of his dubious pedigree and the fact he seems to earn his living carrying out sketchy deeds on leaky ships in the South Seas, he is loyal to no flag and seems to base his allegiances on individuals, trusting everyone until they give him a reason not to.

Perhaps his only loyalty is to underdogs – even Corto’s enemies, when they are down, seem to elicit his sympathy and often his help, which he usually comes to regret.

His escapades take place in the early 1900s. In Salt Sea, the story begins when a villainous rival of Corto’s named Rasputin picks up two shipwrecked Dutch cousins, whom he believes might be worth a large ransom.

Soon they encounter Corto, tied to a piece of driftwood and floating in the open ocean, and the adventure begins as he comes on board and tries to decide whose side he is on – another South Seas disrepute, much like himself, or the wealthy castaways, one of whom is a beautiful girl.

Complicating the story is the addition of the Monk, a powerful pirate who controls the region, playing nearby navy ships from the Netherlands, Germany, Japan and America off each other whenever it suits his purposes.

Pratt has a way of capturing the alien experience the two cousins have, and putting the reader in their place, far from home, surrounded by gruff captains and seamen, violent pirates, ruthless or clueless military officers and local natives.

And it’s the natives that he uses most effectively to convey a sense of unease – their tattooed faces and strange, stilted way of talking revealing little about where their loyalties lie.

The artwork is also compelling. Remember, these were drawn between 30 and 40 years ago, so there’s none of the intricate detail and sophisticated artwork and printing techniques we see in today’s comics.

Instead, there’s a simplicity to it that forces the reader to fill in some of the gaps on his own. Pratt’s attention to facial expressions is especially well done. There’s a perfect mix of excitement and fear as Pandora, the girl, says, “I’m curious to see this famous ‘Monk’” – referring to the murderous and mysterious pirate she is about to meet.

It’s a compelling adventure story, especially for anyone who has been to that part of the world, or who grew up fascinated by Herman Melville or Jack London’s South Sea tales of adventure, like I did.

I couldn’t put it down but also forced myself to read it slowly in order to stretch it out – it was that good. I recommend this book.

"Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno" (Serge Bromberg, 2009)

"Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno" is a film about an unfinished film. And in a way, the project helps serve to complete the original film, which has sat collecting dust for decades.

The first incarnation of “Inferno” was written, produced and directed by legendary French filmmaker Henri Georges Clouzot. It was a dark, experimental project that intended to tell the story of a husband (Serge Reggiani) who becomes obsessively jealous and suspicious that his young, beautiful wife (Romy Schneifer) is having an affair.

Newlyweds, they take over a small lakeside hotel in the country, just net to a massive train trestle that spans the nearby river.

As his paranoia grows, his jealousy becomes linked to the trains that cross the bridge. The rumble from the steel structure, the whistle, the smoke, all seem to trigger his fits of jealous rage.

These moments of insanity are rendered using what was at the time, cutting edge lighting, sound and special effects techniques that Clouzot and his crew essentially invented for the film.

It’s fantastic. His paranoia is illustrated perfectly when certain phrases or bits of conversation -- real or imagined – begin to repeat themselves mercilessly in his head, the tempo speeding up and slowing down like a wind sprint.

In other moments, the camera stays on Romy for long, mesmerizing shots, where she seems to dance for the camera using little more than facial expressions. Tricks of lighting make her face appear as if it is almost changing shape in these moments.



In another long, eerie scene she is pouring sparkling water from a bottle into a glass. As it overflows she laughs and continues to pour. The scene is strange but riveting, even though nothing really happens.

That’s sort of the story of this film about a film. Despite having American backing, in the form of an unlimited budget and timeline from Columbia Pictures, high-ranking French cinema stars and the best crews available, nothing really happened.

Clouzot seemed to get lost in the details, spending endless time, energy and money on mere moments of the film, or on meticulous storyboards and technical specs for every single frame.

In the end he lost track of the story and vision that should have tied the narrative and special effects together. In the end he drove away one of his stars, frustrated the crew and drove himself to a heart attack.

The new film – I hesitate to call it a documentary because so much of it comprises the original footage – pieces together a lot of the mistakes and tracks the lack of direction and communication that seemed to plague the project, mostly through interviews with many involved with the film.

It also explores Clouzot’s brilliance through interviews with those he worked closely with and by showing exhaustively the original footage, test shots, experiments and even out-takes from the five abandoned canisters of film Clouzot left behind.

Bromberg says the inspiration for the film was borne when he was trapped in an elevator with Clouzot’s widow for several hours, by chance, and he was able to question her about the intriguing unfinished project, a sort of “Titanic” of its time.

I hope she considers the new film to be tribute to her husband’s legacy and not a criticism of it. Yes, at times the film seems critical of Clouzot’s almost maniacal directing style, which is almost a mirror image of the film’s obsessed character. But the real service is that Bromberg came as close as anyone could to finishing the film.

He even has actors script read the scenes that were never shot, helping to fill out the missing pieces – a technique that works amazingly well in this film.

This film may not appeal to a wide audience, and it’s definitely targeted at true cinephiles. But as someone who doesn’t know much about French cinema but still likes a good yarn and appreciates innovative film-making, I was pretty riveted and was glad I got to see it – if only for the crazy-weird scenes and fantastic special effects that look like they could have been shot yesterday.