(5/21/01)
I am sure that I didn't get what this film is all about. A peasant woman, considered crazy by her neighbors, meets a shepherd on a hillside. She is convinced that he is St. Joseph and wants him to take her to heaven with him. It's an interesting beginning for a film, but it is bizarre because the woman does this lengthy monologue, talking on and on while the shepherd just sits looking at her and not saying a word. Why? What does that mean? The woman is played by Anna Magnani and the situation certainly gives her an excuse to perform, but that doesn't really explain it.
The next thing we know the woman is pregnant and convinced that the child she is carrying is Jesus Christ. This is interesting in that Saint Joseph really wasn't the father of Jesus who was immaculately conceived. Does that mean something?
Anyway, the woman is scorned by her neighbors and leaves the village and wanders around--and wanders and wanders. There is just a lot of footage of her wandering. Finally, in a cave she has her child and the picture ends.
Magnani is interesting to watch and the whole film has the raw, earthy quality that we associate with neo-realism. The only thing I can find to say by way of interpretation is that the film is about the need we all have--which can become desperate--to feel important.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
A Difficult Life (Una vita difficile). 1961. Directed by Dino Risi.
(5/21/01)
This film, too, was shown without subtitles. I had no idea what it was all about, but it looked like a pretty interesting film. A lot went on in it. Alberto Sordi had a presence about him and it was a pleasure to see Lea Masari again. (I only know her from L'Avventura.)
One scene made an impression on me. Masari is Sordi's wife or ex-wife and she seems to have rejected him. She is out with some people and he follows her into an outdoor nightclub and makes a fool of himself. They leave and he follows them into the street. It is dawn and I think he attacks the car and it drives off leaving him alone on that deserted street with just the bouncer of the club looking at him. Something like that. I may have the details wrong, but it was an interesting scene.
At the end Sordi pushes a man who seems like a boss or a rich client into a swimming pool, thereby rejecting him and his money. That reminded me of Clark Gable pouring the water over Sydney Greenstreet's head in The Hucksters.
This film, too, was shown without subtitles. I had no idea what it was all about, but it looked like a pretty interesting film. A lot went on in it. Alberto Sordi had a presence about him and it was a pleasure to see Lea Masari again. (I only know her from L'Avventura.)
One scene made an impression on me. Masari is Sordi's wife or ex-wife and she seems to have rejected him. She is out with some people and he follows her into an outdoor nightclub and makes a fool of himself. They leave and he follows them into the street. It is dawn and I think he attacks the car and it drives off leaving him alone on that deserted street with just the bouncer of the club looking at him. Something like that. I may have the details wrong, but it was an interesting scene.
At the end Sordi pushes a man who seems like a boss or a rich client into a swimming pool, thereby rejecting him and his money. That reminded me of Clark Gable pouring the water over Sydney Greenstreet's head in The Hucksters.
Four Steps in the Clouds (Quatro passi tra le nuvole). 1942. Directed by Alessandro Blasetti.
(5/21/01)
I was truly disappointed that this film was shown without subtitles. I had seen it in 1978 and, having enjoyed it, was looking forward to seeing it again.
It has an engaging, homely quality about it. A married salesman is persuaded by a young woman he meets on his travels to accompany her to her family's home and pretend to be her husband, as she is an unwed mother. Her father in particular seems to be a difficult man. The family searches the man's luggage and finds pictures of his wife and children which (I guess) suggest that he is a bigamist. He tells them the truth and it appears that this stranger who comes out of nowhere straightens out this dysfunctional family before returning to his humdrum existence.
I continue to like the character of the grandfather especially--the old man who plays checkers by himself, moving from one side of the table to the other. If I remember right he gets the salesman to use his samples of candies as the checkers and quickly eats a couple of themwhile the other man isn't looking.
I was truly disappointed that this film was shown without subtitles. I had seen it in 1978 and, having enjoyed it, was looking forward to seeing it again.
It has an engaging, homely quality about it. A married salesman is persuaded by a young woman he meets on his travels to accompany her to her family's home and pretend to be her husband, as she is an unwed mother. Her father in particular seems to be a difficult man. The family searches the man's luggage and finds pictures of his wife and children which (I guess) suggest that he is a bigamist. He tells them the truth and it appears that this stranger who comes out of nowhere straightens out this dysfunctional family before returning to his humdrum existence.
I continue to like the character of the grandfather especially--the old man who plays checkers by himself, moving from one side of the table to the other. If I remember right he gets the salesman to use his samples of candies as the checkers and quickly eats a couple of themwhile the other man isn't looking.
The Adventures of Robin Hood. 1938. Directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley.
(5/21/01)
After all these years and all these viewings, Warners' Robin Hood remains one of my favorites. There is a freshness and a richness about it which I love. I don't know of a more beautiful film in color. It was as if Technicolor found its perfect subject in this film. The pagentry and spectacle of medieval England are just dazzling to behold. It conjuires up a whole world which probably never existed--but should have. It is a first-class job all the way.
And Technicolor was especially suited to this production because so much of Robin Hood takes place outdoors. The color brought Sherwood Forest vibrantly to life--as well as the archery contest and the near-hanging. The scene where Marian starts to warm up to Robin somehow seems more memorable for being set outdoors. And the cinematographers made excellent use of the locations to create striking images. One favorite of mine is when Robin escapes from the castle and we have the long shot of him riding down the hill on horseback.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold outdid himself with the music. Considered by some to be his greatest film score, it is undoubtedly his most colorful. It brings the film to life. And then there is all that wonderful dialogue, delightful still after repeated viewings.
And then there are the performances. This film has a gallery of vividly-drawn characters who really seem to belong in an old story that we enjoy listening to again and again. In some cases it seems as if the actors had found a perfect context for their screen personas. Was there ever a better use for Eugene Pallette's gruffness than as Friar Tuck? Well, I supposed he was used as well in It Happened One Night--but he still gives me the sense of having been destined by his maker to play Tuck. And wonderful Una O'Connor--I don't think that her talents ever found a better outlet. Her romance with Much--the miller's son who never had a sweetheart--is so endearing and adds so much.
I guess that the characters remind me of Chaucer's pilgrims--not least of all because of the medieval English setting. Also just right is Ian Hunter as Richard the Lion-Hearted. The moment when he reveals his identity to Robin and his men gives me goosebumps. If Hunter ever had a better moment on the screen I have yet to hear of it.
And then there is Claude Rains as Prince John. He is irresistable. I really think that this is my favorite Claude Rains performance, probably because he seems to be enjoying himself so thoroughly. And he has so much fun with the dialogue which, after all, was written to be enjoyed. And he makes it clear that, after all, he's not really hurting people and causing suffering; he's just there to be the obstacle that the hero needs to oppose. His performance reassures us that it's all in good fun.
And then we come to Errol Flynn. He never looked better. He's perhaps a little more poised than in Captain Blood and that green suit he wears is most becoming. He cuts a fine figure in Technicolor. He plays here not a hero but a legend. Olivia de Havilland is likewise enhanced by Technicolor. The two of them retain the chemistry that they had in that earlier film and go through the paces of an antagonism (here only on the woman's part) which is dissolved into love and admiration. It's an old story, but one the world never tires of.
I shouldn't fail to mention another of my favorite images in this film: the moments in the duel between Robin and Sir Guy of Gisborne when we see the shadows of the duellists against a gigantic column. That's the sort of bravura, larger-than-life touch with which this film abounds.
After all these years and all these viewings, Warners' Robin Hood remains one of my favorites. There is a freshness and a richness about it which I love. I don't know of a more beautiful film in color. It was as if Technicolor found its perfect subject in this film. The pagentry and spectacle of medieval England are just dazzling to behold. It conjuires up a whole world which probably never existed--but should have. It is a first-class job all the way.
And Technicolor was especially suited to this production because so much of Robin Hood takes place outdoors. The color brought Sherwood Forest vibrantly to life--as well as the archery contest and the near-hanging. The scene where Marian starts to warm up to Robin somehow seems more memorable for being set outdoors. And the cinematographers made excellent use of the locations to create striking images. One favorite of mine is when Robin escapes from the castle and we have the long shot of him riding down the hill on horseback.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold outdid himself with the music. Considered by some to be his greatest film score, it is undoubtedly his most colorful. It brings the film to life. And then there is all that wonderful dialogue, delightful still after repeated viewings.
And then there are the performances. This film has a gallery of vividly-drawn characters who really seem to belong in an old story that we enjoy listening to again and again. In some cases it seems as if the actors had found a perfect context for their screen personas. Was there ever a better use for Eugene Pallette's gruffness than as Friar Tuck? Well, I supposed he was used as well in It Happened One Night--but he still gives me the sense of having been destined by his maker to play Tuck. And wonderful Una O'Connor--I don't think that her talents ever found a better outlet. Her romance with Much--the miller's son who never had a sweetheart--is so endearing and adds so much.
I guess that the characters remind me of Chaucer's pilgrims--not least of all because of the medieval English setting. Also just right is Ian Hunter as Richard the Lion-Hearted. The moment when he reveals his identity to Robin and his men gives me goosebumps. If Hunter ever had a better moment on the screen I have yet to hear of it.
And then there is Claude Rains as Prince John. He is irresistable. I really think that this is my favorite Claude Rains performance, probably because he seems to be enjoying himself so thoroughly. And he has so much fun with the dialogue which, after all, was written to be enjoyed. And he makes it clear that, after all, he's not really hurting people and causing suffering; he's just there to be the obstacle that the hero needs to oppose. His performance reassures us that it's all in good fun.
And then we come to Errol Flynn. He never looked better. He's perhaps a little more poised than in Captain Blood and that green suit he wears is most becoming. He cuts a fine figure in Technicolor. He plays here not a hero but a legend. Olivia de Havilland is likewise enhanced by Technicolor. The two of them retain the chemistry that they had in that earlier film and go through the paces of an antagonism (here only on the woman's part) which is dissolved into love and admiration. It's an old story, but one the world never tires of.
I shouldn't fail to mention another of my favorite images in this film: the moments in the duel between Robin and Sir Guy of Gisborne when we see the shadows of the duellists against a gigantic column. That's the sort of bravura, larger-than-life touch with which this film abounds.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Sunrise. 1927. Directed by F. W. Murnau.
(5/14/01-5/21/01)
Sunrise is well-established as a classic. However, having seen it a number of times now I think I have to be honest and admit that I really don't like it that much. It's just not a favorite of mine. I wonder if I will ever learn to appreciate and love it, to really see what it is that other people admire about it.
I didn't like the way the film shifted gears. The first part is a stark piece about a man who is persuaded to kill his loyal wife so that he can be with another woman. At the last moment he discovers that he can't do it. This part of the film is executed withgrim seriousness. Then he has to win back his wife's trust. But then, with everything for the moment resolved, the film turns into a series of silly comic vignettes in the city. Husband and wife go to a photographer to have their picture taken and knock over a statue of the winged victory or Venus De Milo and think they've broken it. There is an episode at a carnival with a drunken pig after which (or maybe before which) they do the peasant dance. I suppose that it can be said that life is like this, but in the film it just doesn't work. For me. And when the storm comes at the end and we think that the wife has indeed drowned I just couldn't get interested. Maybe I was too tired.
Another problem was that I didn't find Janet Gaynor appealing or even interesting. She did nothing for me--to put it bluntly. On the other hand, I was quite impressed with the performance which Murnau got out of George O'Brien. He walks around like a zombie in the first part of the film when he is under the spell of the temptress from the city. (He pulls it off and it isn't laughable.) And then he is awkward and poignant as he tries to win his wife back. And he is touchingly ill-at-ease in the big city. Not bad for someone who is known primarily as a b-Western star.
The film does have its own special texture, its own special flavor. One thing I did like was the montage that illustrates night life in the city that the villainess describes to the man. This was very reminiscent of the European avant-garde of the twenties. And I vaguely rememberthat there was a sohisticated use of titles. I think that when the villainess suggests to the man that he kill jis wife the words seem to melt on the screen--or grow and become more emphatic--something like that.
The first part of the film is very different from the average American film--of the 20s or otherwise. Instead of having scenes that are acted out it unfolds in a series of what you might call living photographs. Or tableaus. Shots in which the participants are posed, but really don't do anything as people do in real life. It was very stylized.
I was tired when I saw it, but I have seen it on other occasions and Sunrise just isn't one of my favorites. As much as I admire its photography and set designs and so forth I really don't enter into it emotionally.
Sunrise is well-established as a classic. However, having seen it a number of times now I think I have to be honest and admit that I really don't like it that much. It's just not a favorite of mine. I wonder if I will ever learn to appreciate and love it, to really see what it is that other people admire about it.
I didn't like the way the film shifted gears. The first part is a stark piece about a man who is persuaded to kill his loyal wife so that he can be with another woman. At the last moment he discovers that he can't do it. This part of the film is executed withgrim seriousness. Then he has to win back his wife's trust. But then, with everything for the moment resolved, the film turns into a series of silly comic vignettes in the city. Husband and wife go to a photographer to have their picture taken and knock over a statue of the winged victory or Venus De Milo and think they've broken it. There is an episode at a carnival with a drunken pig after which (or maybe before which) they do the peasant dance. I suppose that it can be said that life is like this, but in the film it just doesn't work. For me. And when the storm comes at the end and we think that the wife has indeed drowned I just couldn't get interested. Maybe I was too tired.
Another problem was that I didn't find Janet Gaynor appealing or even interesting. She did nothing for me--to put it bluntly. On the other hand, I was quite impressed with the performance which Murnau got out of George O'Brien. He walks around like a zombie in the first part of the film when he is under the spell of the temptress from the city. (He pulls it off and it isn't laughable.) And then he is awkward and poignant as he tries to win his wife back. And he is touchingly ill-at-ease in the big city. Not bad for someone who is known primarily as a b-Western star.
The film does have its own special texture, its own special flavor. One thing I did like was the montage that illustrates night life in the city that the villainess describes to the man. This was very reminiscent of the European avant-garde of the twenties. And I vaguely rememberthat there was a sohisticated use of titles. I think that when the villainess suggests to the man that he kill jis wife the words seem to melt on the screen--or grow and become more emphatic--something like that.
The first part of the film is very different from the average American film--of the 20s or otherwise. Instead of having scenes that are acted out it unfolds in a series of what you might call living photographs. Or tableaus. Shots in which the participants are posed, but really don't do anything as people do in real life. It was very stylized.
I was tired when I saw it, but I have seen it on other occasions and Sunrise just isn't one of my favorites. As much as I admire its photography and set designs and so forth I really don't enter into it emotionally.
Between Two Worlds. 1944. Directed by Edward L. Blatt.
(5/14/01)
I have a feeling that this film might have seemed somewhat pretentious in 1944. On the other hand, it was made at a time when death was very much in the air and thus probably seemed timely. It has a sophisticated, a very modern look about it and seems quite appropriate for a score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold as a "modern" composer rather than a sound-illustrator for historical pagents.
While it has a seriousness about it, I don't think it can be taken seriously as a depiction of what happens after the breath leaves the body. It is affirmative in that the suicides (or the suicidal man, really) come to see the value of life and wish to return. And it is even more affirmative in that the powers that be allow him to, as they even allow John Garfield the chance (if I read it correctly) to change on the other side. The idea that you can still strive and learn and improve on the other side is a radical view--but a reassuring one. (I don't get why he can have another chance, but not the rich man nor the unfaithful wife. Ah, well. . .)
One of the real pleasures of Between Two Worlds is watching performers with such diverse acting styles--or maybe just diverse personalities. They are woven together like different melodies or different timbres into a kind of dramatic symphony. John Garfield (perhaps he overacts; I think he acts like a stage performer), Paul Henreid, George Tobias, Sydney Greenstreet, Sara Allgood and Edmund Gwenn--it is wonderful watching these people interact. I think I was most moved by George Tobias who thinks he is on his way home to see his new baby, though Sara Allgood is touching as is the minister who has decided to finally go out and see the world. Sydney Greenstreet strides into the film right when things need to be livened up--and liven them up he does. And Edmund Gwenn--a suicide who is condemned to sort of play ferryman forever and ever is--on second thought--probably just as poignant as George Tobias. His great moment is when he pleads with Sydney Greenstreet not to condemn the young woman to the same fate as he has known. Greenstreet doesn't answer him except to say, "good man" and walk down the stairs. But he does grant the kindly man's request.
Paul Henreid seems to overdo it a little bit as the suicide. That's how it seems, but I think the problem is that we don't have a chance to get to know him before he gets to the end of his rope. That's not his fault; it's just the way the film was laid out.
This is not a profound film; it may even be a cliched one. But it's very enjoyable.
And I did love George Tobias's good luck charm--a little doll he calls the Hohokus.
I have a feeling that this film might have seemed somewhat pretentious in 1944. On the other hand, it was made at a time when death was very much in the air and thus probably seemed timely. It has a sophisticated, a very modern look about it and seems quite appropriate for a score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold as a "modern" composer rather than a sound-illustrator for historical pagents.
While it has a seriousness about it, I don't think it can be taken seriously as a depiction of what happens after the breath leaves the body. It is affirmative in that the suicides (or the suicidal man, really) come to see the value of life and wish to return. And it is even more affirmative in that the powers that be allow him to, as they even allow John Garfield the chance (if I read it correctly) to change on the other side. The idea that you can still strive and learn and improve on the other side is a radical view--but a reassuring one. (I don't get why he can have another chance, but not the rich man nor the unfaithful wife. Ah, well. . .)
One of the real pleasures of Between Two Worlds is watching performers with such diverse acting styles--or maybe just diverse personalities. They are woven together like different melodies or different timbres into a kind of dramatic symphony. John Garfield (perhaps he overacts; I think he acts like a stage performer), Paul Henreid, George Tobias, Sydney Greenstreet, Sara Allgood and Edmund Gwenn--it is wonderful watching these people interact. I think I was most moved by George Tobias who thinks he is on his way home to see his new baby, though Sara Allgood is touching as is the minister who has decided to finally go out and see the world. Sydney Greenstreet strides into the film right when things need to be livened up--and liven them up he does. And Edmund Gwenn--a suicide who is condemned to sort of play ferryman forever and ever is--on second thought--probably just as poignant as George Tobias. His great moment is when he pleads with Sydney Greenstreet not to condemn the young woman to the same fate as he has known. Greenstreet doesn't answer him except to say, "good man" and walk down the stairs. But he does grant the kindly man's request.
Paul Henreid seems to overdo it a little bit as the suicide. That's how it seems, but I think the problem is that we don't have a chance to get to know him before he gets to the end of his rope. That's not his fault; it's just the way the film was laid out.
This is not a profound film; it may even be a cliched one. But it's very enjoyable.
And I did love George Tobias's good luck charm--a little doll he calls the Hohokus.
The Sea Hawk. 1940. Directed by Michael Curtiz.
(5/8/01)
The Sea Hawk looks more visually polished than Captain Blood but it is not as good a film. The main problem with it is that it's all politics. The film is about a struggle between England and Spain and we are told that England is the good side and Spain the bad. It doesn't have the level of human interest of Captain Blood which is a moving story about one man.
Errol Flynn struck me as somewhat stiff in this film as compared with Captain Blood. I had a sense of him as a professional instead of a heroic young man. (For some reason the word "professional" suggests detachment to me, a lack of passionate engagement.) He was less attractive, less earnest, less passionate, less gallant. It was like he was already starting to lose interest.
Brenda Marshall did not have the sparkle of Olivia de Havilland in her films with Flynn. There was no real excitement in their scenes together, even though she was initially resistant to him. And Claude Rains was wasted in an uninteresting role.
There is not much atmosphere or sense of place. At least, not any that you would take home with you. I did like Korngold's exotic music for the tropical locale, but that was about it. It is really a straightforward action picture.
It doesn't have the comic accents of Captain Blood. The monkey running around the palace with the nightcap on his head just seemed silly. I did enjoy Flora Robson's Queen Elizabeth after watching Bette Davis's flamboyant portrayal the week before.
This film is highly regarded--at least it was by the authors of The Films of Errol Flynn--but I was disappointed in it. But perhaps it only suffers by contrast with Captain Blood. Seen by itself it might have been an enjoyable experience.
The Sea Hawk looks more visually polished than Captain Blood but it is not as good a film. The main problem with it is that it's all politics. The film is about a struggle between England and Spain and we are told that England is the good side and Spain the bad. It doesn't have the level of human interest of Captain Blood which is a moving story about one man.
Errol Flynn struck me as somewhat stiff in this film as compared with Captain Blood. I had a sense of him as a professional instead of a heroic young man. (For some reason the word "professional" suggests detachment to me, a lack of passionate engagement.) He was less attractive, less earnest, less passionate, less gallant. It was like he was already starting to lose interest.
Brenda Marshall did not have the sparkle of Olivia de Havilland in her films with Flynn. There was no real excitement in their scenes together, even though she was initially resistant to him. And Claude Rains was wasted in an uninteresting role.
There is not much atmosphere or sense of place. At least, not any that you would take home with you. I did like Korngold's exotic music for the tropical locale, but that was about it. It is really a straightforward action picture.
It doesn't have the comic accents of Captain Blood. The monkey running around the palace with the nightcap on his head just seemed silly. I did enjoy Flora Robson's Queen Elizabeth after watching Bette Davis's flamboyant portrayal the week before.
This film is highly regarded--at least it was by the authors of The Films of Errol Flynn--but I was disappointed in it. But perhaps it only suffers by contrast with Captain Blood. Seen by itself it might have been an enjoyable experience.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Captain Blood. 1935. Directed by Michael Curtiz.
(5/8/01)
Errol Flynn was simply irresistable, to use a hackneyed phrase, in his first major film. He had presence and personality and a relaxed naturalness before the camera. I was quite surprised, seeing Captain Blood a week after Anthony Adverse as to how much better a film it was. Bothwere elaborate costume films produced in 1935 by the same studio, but Captain Blood is a lot more fresh and alive and entertaining. It is consistently interesting. I suppose that can be ascribed to the fact that it was made by a first-class director.
Olivia de Havilland is far more alive and interesting here than in Anthony Adverse. Yes, there was that chemistry between her and Flynn. There is a wonderful tension set up between them which is based on the motif that each is in turn "owned" by the other. Then there is Basil Rathbone with that delicious French accent. The duel between him and Flynn is a highlight, climaxed in that shot of him dead on the shore against those chords of Korngold's music.
The humor is well done, providing expert comic relief, perfectly placed accents. The two inept doctors, the gouty governor and blustering Lionel Atwill--none of them seem forced or strained or out-of-place.
There is a beautiful visual atmosphere about this film. Ithas a very old-fashioned "look" about it, almost as if it were an artifact of its time. And there is a sense of place, of the Caribbean (and especially Jamaica) as an exotic locale. This is very much a film about a place. I love that wonderful beach where Flynn and Rathbone have their duel.
While writing about the visual atmosphere, I want to mention a couple of shots with large shadows on the wall. I think these could be described as "chiaroscuro," but I'm not sure. I'm thinking of one in particular that was in the first part of the film. I think it is when Flynn is dragged off to prison.
This film has a good story, a human story. It is about a man who is wronged, a noble man who is viewed by the world as a criminal and who in fact does turn criminal. It is about his vindication and his return to a position of respectability. It may be an old story, but one that has a lot of meaning for us, and it is here given a first-class treatment.
And that scene, towards the end, when Lord Willoughby--played with so much dignity by Henry Stephenson--tells Errol Flynn that King James has been dethroned and that King William has pardoned him and his men brought tears to my eyes. The long struggle, the time of being outcasts is finally over.
Errol Flynn was simply irresistable, to use a hackneyed phrase, in his first major film. He had presence and personality and a relaxed naturalness before the camera. I was quite surprised, seeing Captain Blood a week after Anthony Adverse as to how much better a film it was. Bothwere elaborate costume films produced in 1935 by the same studio, but Captain Blood is a lot more fresh and alive and entertaining. It is consistently interesting. I suppose that can be ascribed to the fact that it was made by a first-class director.
Olivia de Havilland is far more alive and interesting here than in Anthony Adverse. Yes, there was that chemistry between her and Flynn. There is a wonderful tension set up between them which is based on the motif that each is in turn "owned" by the other. Then there is Basil Rathbone with that delicious French accent. The duel between him and Flynn is a highlight, climaxed in that shot of him dead on the shore against those chords of Korngold's music.
The humor is well done, providing expert comic relief, perfectly placed accents. The two inept doctors, the gouty governor and blustering Lionel Atwill--none of them seem forced or strained or out-of-place.
There is a beautiful visual atmosphere about this film. Ithas a very old-fashioned "look" about it, almost as if it were an artifact of its time. And there is a sense of place, of the Caribbean (and especially Jamaica) as an exotic locale. This is very much a film about a place. I love that wonderful beach where Flynn and Rathbone have their duel.
While writing about the visual atmosphere, I want to mention a couple of shots with large shadows on the wall. I think these could be described as "chiaroscuro," but I'm not sure. I'm thinking of one in particular that was in the first part of the film. I think it is when Flynn is dragged off to prison.
This film has a good story, a human story. It is about a man who is wronged, a noble man who is viewed by the world as a criminal and who in fact does turn criminal. It is about his vindication and his return to a position of respectability. It may be an old story, but one that has a lot of meaning for us, and it is here given a first-class treatment.
And that scene, towards the end, when Lord Willoughby--played with so much dignity by Henry Stephenson--tells Errol Flynn that King James has been dethroned and that King William has pardoned him and his men brought tears to my eyes. The long struggle, the time of being outcasts is finally over.
True Heart Susie. 1919. Directed by D. W. Griffith.
(5/8/01)
True Heart Susie is a very modest film from Griffith. It is not a big spectacle and it doesn't have any wrenching dramatic scenes. It is a simple story of a boy and a girl in a small-town or country milieu. It has a quaint, old-fashioned look about it.
Lillian Gish plays a girl who secretly finances the education of the boy she loves. She expects him to marry her, but he marries someone else instead.
The treatment of Susie is psychologically insightful. It is a study of a woman who sees what she wants to see. When the hero makes a comment about how men don't marry women who wear a lot of makeup and fancy clothes, Susie misinterprets it. She develops a whole fantasy in her mind that she and this guy are engaged, writing in her diary about when they will be married. Griffith doesn't develop this theme and Susie's devotion does in the end win out. And this tendency she has to fantasy, or a warped view of the situation, is only a discordant note mixed in with genuinely fine qualities. And that is actually true-to-life.
Lillian Gish has a primness which I personally find off-putting. It is contrasted with Carol Dempster who brings the film to life as the woman who marries Robert Harron for security only to then be (probably) unfaithful to him. I do resent Griffith's equation of the desire to party and have a good time with "badness."
This film has the charming, tender flavor of an old-fashioned Valentine one might find preserved between the pages of a very old book.
True Heart Susie is a very modest film from Griffith. It is not a big spectacle and it doesn't have any wrenching dramatic scenes. It is a simple story of a boy and a girl in a small-town or country milieu. It has a quaint, old-fashioned look about it.
Lillian Gish plays a girl who secretly finances the education of the boy she loves. She expects him to marry her, but he marries someone else instead.
The treatment of Susie is psychologically insightful. It is a study of a woman who sees what she wants to see. When the hero makes a comment about how men don't marry women who wear a lot of makeup and fancy clothes, Susie misinterprets it. She develops a whole fantasy in her mind that she and this guy are engaged, writing in her diary about when they will be married. Griffith doesn't develop this theme and Susie's devotion does in the end win out. And this tendency she has to fantasy, or a warped view of the situation, is only a discordant note mixed in with genuinely fine qualities. And that is actually true-to-life.
Lillian Gish has a primness which I personally find off-putting. It is contrasted with Carol Dempster who brings the film to life as the woman who marries Robert Harron for security only to then be (probably) unfaithful to him. I do resent Griffith's equation of the desire to party and have a good time with "badness."
This film has the charming, tender flavor of an old-fashioned Valentine one might find preserved between the pages of a very old book.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. 1939. Directed by Michael Curtiz.
(5/8/01)
[I have fallen very far behind on my film notes. Those that follow will be necessarily sketchy.] [through 5/27/01]
I don't think that this film works. And it isn't because of Errol Flynn's acting. He has a role that is difficult to pull off. At the end Essex explains to Queen Elisabeth that he loves her but that he has a desire for power that he can't control and which is stronger than his love for her. So even if she pardoned him he knows he would try and seize power from her. So it is better for both of them that he should die.
So what we have to believe is that this man who is so ambitious for power that he can't control himself has such self-awareness that he can analyze and discuss the situation so objectively. Something about it doesn't work, doesn't come off. If this man were really that driven I would expect him to use all his wiles to get the queen to pardon him so that he could try once more to become ruler.
I really think that this film is just too cerebral. By that I mean that the characters tell us about their feelings, but we don't experience them along with those characters, those feelings don't become real to us. Essex is a hero, the darling of England. He can have any woman he wants, but loves only this dowdy old woman. We are told that he loves her, but we aren't shown that love in a way that makes it believable. And that's not because of the acting, it is in the writing.
There is that one scene when Elizabeth and Essex let their hair down and enjoy each other's company after his confrontation with Sir Walter Raleigh. Both become human figures in that scene, but it isn't enough.
I liked Errol Flynn better than Bette Davis during much of the film. He seems so natural before the camera while she seems to be working so damn hard. (And the saying goes that the highest art lies in the concealment of that art.) I think that Davis was shown to a great disadvantage by being made to look so unattractive--especially with that wig--in color. It was garish. This was probably her first color film and I suspect that her portrayal of Elizabeth might have worked better in black-and-white. I will say that her portrayal gained in power towards the end.
The film was disappointing, too, in that most of it was set inside the castle. It was cold and chilly and there was a claustrophobic atmosphere. The exterior scenes appeared to be grafted on to the drama, not really integrated. The costumes were beautiful, though, as was the beautiful cushion on Elizabeth's throne.
I did appreciate Elizabeth's loneliness and the film did bring across the difficulty of being a female sovereign. Elizabeth constantly has to assert herself as an authority figure. She is constantly on the defensive and suspicious, always tending to view herself as challenged. I enjoyed Alan Hale very much, as I always do. His scenes with Errol Flynn are some of the liveliest in the film, if not the liveliest.
[I have fallen very far behind on my film notes. Those that follow will be necessarily sketchy.] [through 5/27/01]
I don't think that this film works. And it isn't because of Errol Flynn's acting. He has a role that is difficult to pull off. At the end Essex explains to Queen Elisabeth that he loves her but that he has a desire for power that he can't control and which is stronger than his love for her. So even if she pardoned him he knows he would try and seize power from her. So it is better for both of them that he should die.
So what we have to believe is that this man who is so ambitious for power that he can't control himself has such self-awareness that he can analyze and discuss the situation so objectively. Something about it doesn't work, doesn't come off. If this man were really that driven I would expect him to use all his wiles to get the queen to pardon him so that he could try once more to become ruler.
I really think that this film is just too cerebral. By that I mean that the characters tell us about their feelings, but we don't experience them along with those characters, those feelings don't become real to us. Essex is a hero, the darling of England. He can have any woman he wants, but loves only this dowdy old woman. We are told that he loves her, but we aren't shown that love in a way that makes it believable. And that's not because of the acting, it is in the writing.
There is that one scene when Elizabeth and Essex let their hair down and enjoy each other's company after his confrontation with Sir Walter Raleigh. Both become human figures in that scene, but it isn't enough.
I liked Errol Flynn better than Bette Davis during much of the film. He seems so natural before the camera while she seems to be working so damn hard. (And the saying goes that the highest art lies in the concealment of that art.) I think that Davis was shown to a great disadvantage by being made to look so unattractive--especially with that wig--in color. It was garish. This was probably her first color film and I suspect that her portrayal of Elizabeth might have worked better in black-and-white. I will say that her portrayal gained in power towards the end.
The film was disappointing, too, in that most of it was set inside the castle. It was cold and chilly and there was a claustrophobic atmosphere. The exterior scenes appeared to be grafted on to the drama, not really integrated. The costumes were beautiful, though, as was the beautiful cushion on Elizabeth's throne.
I did appreciate Elizabeth's loneliness and the film did bring across the difficulty of being a female sovereign. Elizabeth constantly has to assert herself as an authority figure. She is constantly on the defensive and suspicious, always tending to view herself as challenged. I enjoyed Alan Hale very much, as I always do. His scenes with Errol Flynn are some of the liveliest in the film, if not the liveliest.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Anthony Adverse. 1936. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy.
(4/?/01-4/11/01)
Anthony Adverse is a piece of good old-fashioned moviemaking. It has a baroque sweep to it across time and space. It is a beautiful production to look at and admire and it is enjoyable to sit there in the company of old friends like Claude Rains, Olivia de Havilland, Fredric March, Edmund Gwenn and Gale Sondergaard. I think perhaps that this film is notable as a vehicle on which to hang the production values and performances rather than as a film in itself.
It's an old-fashioned story, something from a nineteenth-century novel. A nobleman's young wife has an illegitimate child and dies. The nobleman leaves the child at a convent and tells the world that the baby died. The child is raised as an apprentice by his grandfather who makes him his heir, except that the second in line for the inheritance, a scheming mistress, attempts to keep him from claiming it. The hero is separated from his beloved on their wedding day and returns to search for her. By the time he finds her she becomes the mistress of a powerful man--Napoleon, no less--and the hero leaves for the new world with his newly-discovered son. In between these events he goes to Africa and gets involved with slave-trading.
That's a hell of a lot for one movie. And, to be honest, it didn't make that deep of an impression, although it is an enjoyable film to sit through. I think it faltered towards the end when Claude Rains attempts to kill March on the road and when Olivia de Havilland becomes Napoleon's mistress. And the ending is a letdown. Anthony Adverse goes through all these ordeals and trials and doesn't even get the girl at the end. The ending does have some truth in it, I suppose, but somehow it just didn't seem to fit the film.
The scenes in Africa seemed a bit much as well, but I could see thatit was Anthony's coming to knowledge of evil, especially of the capacity for evil within himself or shadow side, and he comes back into civilization a more mature person. Perhaps it is even the myth of the "fall of man." So that part seemed appropriate after all to this larger-than-life canvas.
Olivia de Havilland didn't impress me as the aspiring opera singer, especially as her singing was so obviously--perhaps I should say blatantly--dubbed. Fredric March was earnest as Anthony, but didn't really grab my attention. Claude Rains was appropriately nasty as the villain, yet I could understand him as an aging man married to a beautiful young woman who doesn't love him. Gale Sondergaard was nasty and villainous, though I couldn't quite understand kindly Edmund Gwenn succumbing to her wiles. As for Edmund Gwenn, he had the most touching scene in the whole film when he is told that her daughter is dead, although he isn't all that interesting later on.
Anthony Adverse is a piece of good old-fashioned moviemaking. It has a baroque sweep to it across time and space. It is a beautiful production to look at and admire and it is enjoyable to sit there in the company of old friends like Claude Rains, Olivia de Havilland, Fredric March, Edmund Gwenn and Gale Sondergaard. I think perhaps that this film is notable as a vehicle on which to hang the production values and performances rather than as a film in itself.
It's an old-fashioned story, something from a nineteenth-century novel. A nobleman's young wife has an illegitimate child and dies. The nobleman leaves the child at a convent and tells the world that the baby died. The child is raised as an apprentice by his grandfather who makes him his heir, except that the second in line for the inheritance, a scheming mistress, attempts to keep him from claiming it. The hero is separated from his beloved on their wedding day and returns to search for her. By the time he finds her she becomes the mistress of a powerful man--Napoleon, no less--and the hero leaves for the new world with his newly-discovered son. In between these events he goes to Africa and gets involved with slave-trading.
That's a hell of a lot for one movie. And, to be honest, it didn't make that deep of an impression, although it is an enjoyable film to sit through. I think it faltered towards the end when Claude Rains attempts to kill March on the road and when Olivia de Havilland becomes Napoleon's mistress. And the ending is a letdown. Anthony Adverse goes through all these ordeals and trials and doesn't even get the girl at the end. The ending does have some truth in it, I suppose, but somehow it just didn't seem to fit the film.
The scenes in Africa seemed a bit much as well, but I could see thatit was Anthony's coming to knowledge of evil, especially of the capacity for evil within himself or shadow side, and he comes back into civilization a more mature person. Perhaps it is even the myth of the "fall of man." So that part seemed appropriate after all to this larger-than-life canvas.
Olivia de Havilland didn't impress me as the aspiring opera singer, especially as her singing was so obviously--perhaps I should say blatantly--dubbed. Fredric March was earnest as Anthony, but didn't really grab my attention. Claude Rains was appropriately nasty as the villain, yet I could understand him as an aging man married to a beautiful young woman who doesn't love him. Gale Sondergaard was nasty and villainous, though I couldn't quite understand kindly Edmund Gwenn succumbing to her wiles. As for Edmund Gwenn, he had the most touching scene in the whole film when he is told that her daughter is dead, although he isn't all that interesting later on.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Pollock. 2001. Directed by Ed Harris.
(4/9/01-4/11/01)
I wasn't that crazy about Pollock. I had planned to say that I probably enjoyed it as much as I did because I was so interested in the subject matter. Perhaps the truth is that I already have an image of Pollock and the story of Pollock in my mind and I didn't like the film because it didn't conform to what already existed in the back of my mind.
Portraying Pollock has the same problem inherent in portraying Nixon, though to a lesser degree. Pollock wasn't a continuous television presence, but he is familiar both from photographs and from his words. And, like Richard Nixon, I think that Pollock had more presence and interest than the actor who portrayed him.
Harris plays Jackson Pollock as a sort of freak. I just don't buy it that he was that dysfunctional. Maybe it's true, but I don't accept it. When Lee Krasner first comes to visit Pollock at his studio he can barely say a word to her. She takes him to her family's house for dinner and he acts really . . . well, strange when he hears jazz records. It doesn't ring true, although I suppose I can believe Pollock urinating in the fireplace in Peggy Guggenheim's apartment during a reception. But I wish that scene had been better prepared for.
On the other hand, I think that Mr. Harris did a remarkable job of changing into an older Pollock--the one with flab and a beard. That was a remarkable feat for an actor.
The movie doesn't give any clue as to what caused Pollock to be so dysfunctional. Perhaps there wasn't room in a two-hour movie to explore this in depth, but it was what I wanted to know. And maybe I missed the point. Maybe the film wanted to explore what it was like for a dysfunctional person to have a great talent and what it was like for a woman to see this and accept the role of his caretaker.
Lee Krasner comes across as a much more interesting character than Pollock. She just seems much more alive. When she first walks into his apartment it is clear that she will be the dominant figure in the relationship, leading him around by the nose almost. Of course, Pollock is violent and willful, but Krasner still seems to me to be the dominant one in the relationship.
I liked Marcia Gay Harden as Lee Krasner very much, particularly her Brooklyn accent. Amy Madigan was quite memorable as Peggy Guggenheim. I also liked the young woman who played Pollock's love interest in the final scenes. She was sexy and had a presence. I guess it was the ladies who walked away with the picture.
However, it was Pollock's art and the making of it that really interested me. I found the film enjoyable from that aspect because I am familiar with Pollock's work and MoMA's 1998 Pollock exhibition is still reasonably fresh in my mind. It was exciting to see works that I know sitting around Pollock's studio when Lee Krasner first comes to visit. It was fascinating watching Pollock actually painting Male and Female and the enormous Mural that he did for Peggy Guggenheim's apartment. That was real movie magic.
However, I didn't quite buy it that Pollock got the idea for the drip paintings when paint dripped off a brush he was holding onto the floor or onto a canvas. That didn't ring true, especially since I know that he experimented with the drip technique a couple of years earlier. And from the quotes of Pollock that I know--even though some of them were actually used in the film--I can't really accept that he was as inarticulate as they made him out to be.
I liked very much seeing Pollock draw on Male and Female with a tube of paint. I never guessed that was how he did that "writing" on some of his work. I may try that myself--so I learned something about making art from this film. One other moment that had an impact on me was when Pollock and Krasner were discussing abstraction with reference to one of Pollock's canvases. Krasner insists that abstraction has to be based on nature and Pollock says, succinctly, "I am nature." That says a lot about the nature of his art.
There is a lot that the film doesn't cover. It doesn't mention the doctor who treated Pollock so successfully and whose sudden death had a lot to do with his decline. I suppose that it just wasn't possible to include everything, but I thought that was an important part of the story. And we were shown that Pollock was acting pretty strangely on the last day of his life. But why?
I was impressed with how well-researched this film was. Pollock plays a Billie Holliday record which I know was in Pollock's jazz collection. So that impressed me.
There were a couple of bits of flashy film technique. In one shot taken outside the camera seems to move forward while zooming back, making the perspective change. And during the final drive in the car the soundtrack goes dead, presumably as Pollock is tuning out the voices around him. Both of those moments were interesting to watch, nothing more.
I wasn't that crazy about Pollock. I had planned to say that I probably enjoyed it as much as I did because I was so interested in the subject matter. Perhaps the truth is that I already have an image of Pollock and the story of Pollock in my mind and I didn't like the film because it didn't conform to what already existed in the back of my mind.
Portraying Pollock has the same problem inherent in portraying Nixon, though to a lesser degree. Pollock wasn't a continuous television presence, but he is familiar both from photographs and from his words. And, like Richard Nixon, I think that Pollock had more presence and interest than the actor who portrayed him.
Harris plays Jackson Pollock as a sort of freak. I just don't buy it that he was that dysfunctional. Maybe it's true, but I don't accept it. When Lee Krasner first comes to visit Pollock at his studio he can barely say a word to her. She takes him to her family's house for dinner and he acts really . . . well, strange when he hears jazz records. It doesn't ring true, although I suppose I can believe Pollock urinating in the fireplace in Peggy Guggenheim's apartment during a reception. But I wish that scene had been better prepared for.
On the other hand, I think that Mr. Harris did a remarkable job of changing into an older Pollock--the one with flab and a beard. That was a remarkable feat for an actor.
The movie doesn't give any clue as to what caused Pollock to be so dysfunctional. Perhaps there wasn't room in a two-hour movie to explore this in depth, but it was what I wanted to know. And maybe I missed the point. Maybe the film wanted to explore what it was like for a dysfunctional person to have a great talent and what it was like for a woman to see this and accept the role of his caretaker.
Lee Krasner comes across as a much more interesting character than Pollock. She just seems much more alive. When she first walks into his apartment it is clear that she will be the dominant figure in the relationship, leading him around by the nose almost. Of course, Pollock is violent and willful, but Krasner still seems to me to be the dominant one in the relationship.
I liked Marcia Gay Harden as Lee Krasner very much, particularly her Brooklyn accent. Amy Madigan was quite memorable as Peggy Guggenheim. I also liked the young woman who played Pollock's love interest in the final scenes. She was sexy and had a presence. I guess it was the ladies who walked away with the picture.
However, it was Pollock's art and the making of it that really interested me. I found the film enjoyable from that aspect because I am familiar with Pollock's work and MoMA's 1998 Pollock exhibition is still reasonably fresh in my mind. It was exciting to see works that I know sitting around Pollock's studio when Lee Krasner first comes to visit. It was fascinating watching Pollock actually painting Male and Female and the enormous Mural that he did for Peggy Guggenheim's apartment. That was real movie magic.
However, I didn't quite buy it that Pollock got the idea for the drip paintings when paint dripped off a brush he was holding onto the floor or onto a canvas. That didn't ring true, especially since I know that he experimented with the drip technique a couple of years earlier. And from the quotes of Pollock that I know--even though some of them were actually used in the film--I can't really accept that he was as inarticulate as they made him out to be.
I liked very much seeing Pollock draw on Male and Female with a tube of paint. I never guessed that was how he did that "writing" on some of his work. I may try that myself--so I learned something about making art from this film. One other moment that had an impact on me was when Pollock and Krasner were discussing abstraction with reference to one of Pollock's canvases. Krasner insists that abstraction has to be based on nature and Pollock says, succinctly, "I am nature." That says a lot about the nature of his art.
There is a lot that the film doesn't cover. It doesn't mention the doctor who treated Pollock so successfully and whose sudden death had a lot to do with his decline. I suppose that it just wasn't possible to include everything, but I thought that was an important part of the story. And we were shown that Pollock was acting pretty strangely on the last day of his life. But why?
I was impressed with how well-researched this film was. Pollock plays a Billie Holliday record which I know was in Pollock's jazz collection. So that impressed me.
There were a couple of bits of flashy film technique. In one shot taken outside the camera seems to move forward while zooming back, making the perspective change. And during the final drive in the car the soundtrack goes dead, presumably as Pollock is tuning out the voices around him. Both of those moments were interesting to watch, nothing more.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Man of Marble (Czlowiek z Marmuru). 1977. Directed by Andrzej Wajda.
(4/8/01)
Man of Marble contains two stories. One is the rise of a bricklayer turned labor leader in communist Poland. The other is of a young student filmmaker who wants to make a film of his life and tell a story that the powers that be don't want told. The structure reminds me of Citizen Kane.
I've forgotten a lot of this film since I saw it on March 17. I do remember that the labor leader was a kind of wide-eyed innocent who didn't comprehend the corrupt nature of the system he was involved in.
There is a fascinating scene in which the bricklayer and his friend go to see a bureaucrat. The friend goes into the bureaucrat's office and never comes out. The bureaucrat and his secretary try to tell him that he came in alone, but he doesn't buy it. All this may seem ridiculous, but I think the point is that in a communist country an aware person would simply have understood what had happened and stopped asking questions. The hero of Man of Marble doesn't. He keeps on asking questions, even after being warned to stay out of it, and is eventually sent to prison himself.
His story is paralleled by that of the young filmmaker who pokes her nose into a closed case. She is told a couple of times to stop, but she doesn't and in the end she will not be given film or the the use of a camera to complete her project. In her case, I thought to myself, "Well, what did she expect?" She wouldn't listen, but on the other hand she was young and enthusiastic.
Krystyna Janda did very well with a juicy part. She is a tough cookie, a determined young woman who will let nothing stand in her way. She invades people's privacy, attempts to tape them without permission, distracts a museum curator so that her cameraman can take pictures in a storage room which is off limits. Yet, she seems so vulnerable in the scene withher father after she learns that she won't be permitted to complete her film. But she doesn't let the setback get her down and goes off to Gdansk to seek out and talk to her subject. (Why does she do this as an after-thought and one suggested by her father at that?)
Man of Marble was not allowed to be completed as Wajda originally intended and I think that the ending we have is inconclusive. She goes to Gdansk and meets the son of the man she is seeking. He tells her that his father is dead. But then she comes back either the next day or later that same day, meets the son and walks along happily with him. What is that telling us? It could be that the father is not dead after all, that she is going to interview the son, or possibly that she intends to strike up a friendship or romance with the son. The latter interpretation could be a way of signifying that she has decided to choose the present over the past. Anyway, I was left hanging at the end.
This film was quite enjoyable to watch. It kept me interested and I would very much like to see it again. The only films of Wajda I had previously seen were the famous ones from the 1950s--Ashes and Diamonds and Kanal. It was a pleasure to see what a fine film he made twenty years later.
Man of Marble contains two stories. One is the rise of a bricklayer turned labor leader in communist Poland. The other is of a young student filmmaker who wants to make a film of his life and tell a story that the powers that be don't want told. The structure reminds me of Citizen Kane.
I've forgotten a lot of this film since I saw it on March 17. I do remember that the labor leader was a kind of wide-eyed innocent who didn't comprehend the corrupt nature of the system he was involved in.
There is a fascinating scene in which the bricklayer and his friend go to see a bureaucrat. The friend goes into the bureaucrat's office and never comes out. The bureaucrat and his secretary try to tell him that he came in alone, but he doesn't buy it. All this may seem ridiculous, but I think the point is that in a communist country an aware person would simply have understood what had happened and stopped asking questions. The hero of Man of Marble doesn't. He keeps on asking questions, even after being warned to stay out of it, and is eventually sent to prison himself.
His story is paralleled by that of the young filmmaker who pokes her nose into a closed case. She is told a couple of times to stop, but she doesn't and in the end she will not be given film or the the use of a camera to complete her project. In her case, I thought to myself, "Well, what did she expect?" She wouldn't listen, but on the other hand she was young and enthusiastic.
Krystyna Janda did very well with a juicy part. She is a tough cookie, a determined young woman who will let nothing stand in her way. She invades people's privacy, attempts to tape them without permission, distracts a museum curator so that her cameraman can take pictures in a storage room which is off limits. Yet, she seems so vulnerable in the scene withher father after she learns that she won't be permitted to complete her film. But she doesn't let the setback get her down and goes off to Gdansk to seek out and talk to her subject. (Why does she do this as an after-thought and one suggested by her father at that?)
Man of Marble was not allowed to be completed as Wajda originally intended and I think that the ending we have is inconclusive. She goes to Gdansk and meets the son of the man she is seeking. He tells her that his father is dead. But then she comes back either the next day or later that same day, meets the son and walks along happily with him. What is that telling us? It could be that the father is not dead after all, that she is going to interview the son, or possibly that she intends to strike up a friendship or romance with the son. The latter interpretation could be a way of signifying that she has decided to choose the present over the past. Anyway, I was left hanging at the end.
This film was quite enjoyable to watch. It kept me interested and I would very much like to see it again. The only films of Wajda I had previously seen were the famous ones from the 1950s--Ashes and Diamonds and Kanal. It was a pleasure to see what a fine film he made twenty years later.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
The Round-Up (Szegenylegenyek). 1966. Directed by Miklos Jancso.
(3/28/01-4/8/01)
The Round-Up is a very impressive-looking film. It is in black-and-white with beautiful camera work. The film looks choreographed, like a spectacle or pageants. The shots are composed with a lot of thought. Frequently, there is something going on in both the foreground and background.
The action takes place around a military compound or prison which is set in the middle of nowhere on a barren plain. It is like it is removed from an environment, of something that would give it a context. I saw this done once before in a Jancso film and I liked it very much. It seems to lend a quality of myth or legend to the events.
The story is about a man who was a resistance fighter and is accused of killing as part of his resistance activities. He is told that he will be released if he can find someone else in the compound or camp who has killed more people than him. The film mostly concerns his attempts to find someone to take his place. In the end he does, but is then himself killed by the other inmates.
The thing that made the biggest impression on me was that the soldiers or guards were not portrayed as sadistic brutes. They were cool and businesslike. They had a job to do.
One notable and recurrent image was of the prisoners filing by with hoods on their heads. Perhaps I noticed this because I have seen a still of this image reproduced several times. At least I think I have seen it more than once.
There is a scene in which a young woman is forced to run nude between two rows of soldiers who whip her. She dies from this whipping. Is this an exploitive moment--throwing something sexy, albeit perversely sexy, into an otherwise stark film? I don't know, really, but the nudity emphasized her vulnerability and the cruelty of the act.
The film becomes almost surreal towards the end. I think there was a scene of a martial band playing while agroup of prisoners is standing around waiting to be executed. (My memory of this picture has already faded.) All in the middle of the deserted plain.
The ending is cruel and downrigt nasty. Some of the prisoners are led to believe that they will be allowed to join the army that has imprisoned them. One is asked about his experience and he says he has been in the cavalry. He is invited to pick some men to join him and then is allowed to show off his riding skills.
They are told that their leader Kossuth has been granted a full pardon by the emperor. They are jubilant and sing a song of nationalism or solidarity. But then they are informed that while Kossuth was pardoned, his followers will be punished. At that, I believe, they are herded off to execution and the film ends. It reminded me of a similar event in The Outlaw Josey Wales.
I think that that ending lost some of its impact for me because the last scenes of the film were so strange that I was wondering what was going on. Putting these guys on horses and whatever seemed fishy and gave me a strong sense that all was not what it appeared to be. So maybe, even if unconsciously, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The Round-Up is a very impressive-looking film. It is in black-and-white with beautiful camera work. The film looks choreographed, like a spectacle or pageants. The shots are composed with a lot of thought. Frequently, there is something going on in both the foreground and background.
The action takes place around a military compound or prison which is set in the middle of nowhere on a barren plain. It is like it is removed from an environment, of something that would give it a context. I saw this done once before in a Jancso film and I liked it very much. It seems to lend a quality of myth or legend to the events.
The story is about a man who was a resistance fighter and is accused of killing as part of his resistance activities. He is told that he will be released if he can find someone else in the compound or camp who has killed more people than him. The film mostly concerns his attempts to find someone to take his place. In the end he does, but is then himself killed by the other inmates.
The thing that made the biggest impression on me was that the soldiers or guards were not portrayed as sadistic brutes. They were cool and businesslike. They had a job to do.
One notable and recurrent image was of the prisoners filing by with hoods on their heads. Perhaps I noticed this because I have seen a still of this image reproduced several times. At least I think I have seen it more than once.
There is a scene in which a young woman is forced to run nude between two rows of soldiers who whip her. She dies from this whipping. Is this an exploitive moment--throwing something sexy, albeit perversely sexy, into an otherwise stark film? I don't know, really, but the nudity emphasized her vulnerability and the cruelty of the act.
The film becomes almost surreal towards the end. I think there was a scene of a martial band playing while agroup of prisoners is standing around waiting to be executed. (My memory of this picture has already faded.) All in the middle of the deserted plain.
The ending is cruel and downrigt nasty. Some of the prisoners are led to believe that they will be allowed to join the army that has imprisoned them. One is asked about his experience and he says he has been in the cavalry. He is invited to pick some men to join him and then is allowed to show off his riding skills.
They are told that their leader Kossuth has been granted a full pardon by the emperor. They are jubilant and sing a song of nationalism or solidarity. But then they are informed that while Kossuth was pardoned, his followers will be punished. At that, I believe, they are herded off to execution and the film ends. It reminded me of a similar event in The Outlaw Josey Wales.
I think that that ending lost some of its impact for me because the last scenes of the film were so strange that I was wondering what was going on. Putting these guys on horses and whatever seemed fishy and gave me a strong sense that all was not what it appeared to be. So maybe, even if unconsciously, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song. 1971. Directed by Melvin Van Peebles.
(3/17/01)
A lot of this film is just shots of a man running and being chased. It just went on and on and got tiresome. It seemed like the film ran out of imagination.
The "hero" of the film is Sweetback. He is a performer in a sort of private sex-show who kills a couple of cops who are mercilessly beating another black man. He is pursued, but never caught. By his wits he escapes across the border into Mexico and the film promises that he will return, seeking revenge.
Sweetback isn't that interesting. He doesn't say very much and doesn't project much personality. He was definitely interesting as a black man who is not subservient to whites, a new figure on the screen at the time, and as an image of the black man as sexually potent. He is desirable to women--both black and white--and not through any seductive quality. His magnetism comes through sheer phallic power.
I liked the black-black sex scenes. I thought they were hot. Near the beginning of the film a woman summons a young boy into her room and asks him to service her. He does so and she screams and moans a lot. When he leaves her, after the credits, it is not a young boy but a grown man. It is kind of interesting and challenging, watching a male service a beautiful black female for her pleasure and at her request. There is another scene where Sweetback goes to a woman he knows and asks her to remove his handcuffs. She wants him to fuck her first.
Then there is a black-white sex scene which doesn't interest me as much. Sweetback gets involved with these bikers in a scene which goes on and on and on and is full of superimposition. What is the purpose of those superimpositions? I think he is given shelter and pays for it with sexual service.
Sweetback is unequivocally negative about whites who are either mean or stupid or both. One horrible scene occurs when the police attack a friend of Sweetback's who tells them over and over in a terrified voice: "I don't know where Sweetback is." They either shoot one of his ears or beat it with a gun and threaten to do it to the other one. In another scene officers beat up a black man they find in bed with a white girl, mistakenly believing that it's Sweetback. When they realize their mistake one says, "So what?"
It comes across as a very nasty, bitterfilm. Being white, I found it a scary film to watch. It certainly gave a voive to the anger of blacks against whites. But except for being one of the first films to really show that anger and having maybe the first portrayal of a threatening black male this film just wasn't that interesting.
A lot of this film is just shots of a man running and being chased. It just went on and on and got tiresome. It seemed like the film ran out of imagination.
The "hero" of the film is Sweetback. He is a performer in a sort of private sex-show who kills a couple of cops who are mercilessly beating another black man. He is pursued, but never caught. By his wits he escapes across the border into Mexico and the film promises that he will return, seeking revenge.
Sweetback isn't that interesting. He doesn't say very much and doesn't project much personality. He was definitely interesting as a black man who is not subservient to whites, a new figure on the screen at the time, and as an image of the black man as sexually potent. He is desirable to women--both black and white--and not through any seductive quality. His magnetism comes through sheer phallic power.
I liked the black-black sex scenes. I thought they were hot. Near the beginning of the film a woman summons a young boy into her room and asks him to service her. He does so and she screams and moans a lot. When he leaves her, after the credits, it is not a young boy but a grown man. It is kind of interesting and challenging, watching a male service a beautiful black female for her pleasure and at her request. There is another scene where Sweetback goes to a woman he knows and asks her to remove his handcuffs. She wants him to fuck her first.
Then there is a black-white sex scene which doesn't interest me as much. Sweetback gets involved with these bikers in a scene which goes on and on and on and is full of superimposition. What is the purpose of those superimpositions? I think he is given shelter and pays for it with sexual service.
Sweetback is unequivocally negative about whites who are either mean or stupid or both. One horrible scene occurs when the police attack a friend of Sweetback's who tells them over and over in a terrified voice: "I don't know where Sweetback is." They either shoot one of his ears or beat it with a gun and threaten to do it to the other one. In another scene officers beat up a black man they find in bed with a white girl, mistakenly believing that it's Sweetback. When they realize their mistake one says, "So what?"
It comes across as a very nasty, bitterfilm. Being white, I found it a scary film to watch. It certainly gave a voive to the anger of blacks against whites. But except for being one of the first films to really show that anger and having maybe the first portrayal of a threatening black male this film just wasn't that interesting.
Friday, September 24, 2010
The Last Wave. 1977. Directed by Peter Weir.
(3/17/01)
This was a very frustrating film for me to sit through. I really couldn't get an idea of what it was all about. It is about a lawyer who gets involved with defending a group of aborigines who are accused of killing a young man. He becomes drawn into their world and discovers something about his own identity and powers. At the end he is led into a secret chamber and reads a story on the walls which ends with an apocalypse. He finds his way back into the outside world and the film stops abruptly as he is confronted with a gigantic wave which is about to confront him.
So what is this all about? It beats me, really. The film seems like a low-budget horror film burdened by symbolism. The film begins with an odd occurrence of rain when there are no clouds. Water imagery abounds--there is black rain, a bathtub overflows, there is something about a car that I don't remember and then, of course, the last wave. So?
This actually threw me because as the film begins with rain and hail I assumed that that is where the story begins. But I was wrong. When we see the young man running with the sacred objects he has either seen or stolen I wasn't paying close attention because I didn't realize that this was the actual beginning of the narrative. And it took me a little while to catch up.
I didn't find this film so believable on a literal level. What the hell is a high-class corporate lawyer doing defending these aborigines on a murder charge? Even if he were doing it as an act of public service this kind of case is not his specialty, not his field. So that doesn't make sense. And I have a problem with the idea of a lawyer defending people who don't want to be defended. The aborigines do not want their story told in court and are prepared to take the consequences. And I feel that that should and would be respected by any sensible lawyer. So all that just didn't make sense to me. Perhaps I wouldn't have cared if I had understood the symbolism enough so that the literal narrative wasn't particularly important to me. (That's just a guess.)
I wasn't impressed with the performances--or perhaps it was just that the characters didn't interest me. I think that Richard Chamberlain is a name that I've heard, but I didn't find him interesting as the lawyer. Olivia Hammett as his wife just grated on me.
I don't know anything about Australian aborigines. They are not part of my life or background. Perhaps that is why their portrayal in this film didn't have much resonance for me. I can well believe that to an Australian audience these people and their culture were a little bit mysterious, a little bit exotic.
This film is about a man's discovery of himself, of who--and what--he really is. The protagonist is not just an ordinary man. He is something called a "Mubculan"--that's as near as I can spell it. He has something to do with these aborigines, a bond which he experiences first through dreams, then through his encounters with a wise old man known as Charlie. For me, the most memorable scene in the film is the one when he comes to see Charlie who questions him and asks him: "Who are you? Who are you?" over and over, more and more softly. It is a haunting moment.
Other than that I have no idea what this film is all about. I would find it interesting to read an explanation of it, but that is really more on account of its reputation than for any fascination I felt with the film itself.
This was a very frustrating film for me to sit through. I really couldn't get an idea of what it was all about. It is about a lawyer who gets involved with defending a group of aborigines who are accused of killing a young man. He becomes drawn into their world and discovers something about his own identity and powers. At the end he is led into a secret chamber and reads a story on the walls which ends with an apocalypse. He finds his way back into the outside world and the film stops abruptly as he is confronted with a gigantic wave which is about to confront him.
So what is this all about? It beats me, really. The film seems like a low-budget horror film burdened by symbolism. The film begins with an odd occurrence of rain when there are no clouds. Water imagery abounds--there is black rain, a bathtub overflows, there is something about a car that I don't remember and then, of course, the last wave. So?
This actually threw me because as the film begins with rain and hail I assumed that that is where the story begins. But I was wrong. When we see the young man running with the sacred objects he has either seen or stolen I wasn't paying close attention because I didn't realize that this was the actual beginning of the narrative. And it took me a little while to catch up.
I didn't find this film so believable on a literal level. What the hell is a high-class corporate lawyer doing defending these aborigines on a murder charge? Even if he were doing it as an act of public service this kind of case is not his specialty, not his field. So that doesn't make sense. And I have a problem with the idea of a lawyer defending people who don't want to be defended. The aborigines do not want their story told in court and are prepared to take the consequences. And I feel that that should and would be respected by any sensible lawyer. So all that just didn't make sense to me. Perhaps I wouldn't have cared if I had understood the symbolism enough so that the literal narrative wasn't particularly important to me. (That's just a guess.)
I wasn't impressed with the performances--or perhaps it was just that the characters didn't interest me. I think that Richard Chamberlain is a name that I've heard, but I didn't find him interesting as the lawyer. Olivia Hammett as his wife just grated on me.
I don't know anything about Australian aborigines. They are not part of my life or background. Perhaps that is why their portrayal in this film didn't have much resonance for me. I can well believe that to an Australian audience these people and their culture were a little bit mysterious, a little bit exotic.
This film is about a man's discovery of himself, of who--and what--he really is. The protagonist is not just an ordinary man. He is something called a "Mubculan"--that's as near as I can spell it. He has something to do with these aborigines, a bond which he experiences first through dreams, then through his encounters with a wise old man known as Charlie. For me, the most memorable scene in the film is the one when he comes to see Charlie who questions him and asks him: "Who are you? Who are you?" over and over, more and more softly. It is a haunting moment.
Other than that I have no idea what this film is all about. I would find it interesting to read an explanation of it, but that is really more on account of its reputation than for any fascination I felt with the film itself.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Dark. 1973-74. Directed by Paul Winkler.
(3/13/01-3/16/01)
I really liked this one. Paul Winkler's film is about Australian aborigines. He contrasts footage of a contemporary aborigine political demonstration with images of the past. The contemporary footage was all shot in broad daylight; the images of the past are surrounded by black or set against a black background. So the present is full of light while the past is surrounded by darkness.
All of the imagery is permeated by motion. The footage of the political demonstration is packed with fast pans and what looks like quick zooming in and out. But the zooms are so much faster than a camera could do that I suspect they were made differently than zooming with the camera--probably through re-photography. The imagery of the past likewise has a charging, pulsating quality and the images are shown multiple times at once, a la Andy Warhol. This driving motion seems to accelerate as the film proceeds.
The program note identifies the "images of the past" as "primitive cave drawings, the sacred Ayers Rock and, most particularly, the head of an old aborigine warrior." I was aware of the cave drawings only at the beginning; otherwise the only image I could discern was the head of the warrior. I didn't recognize the Ayers Rock at all. Some of the imagery looked completely abstract as in the manner of a lot of Brakhage's work of the 1970s. It was footage of something, but what that something was was undiscernable.
A lot of this film reminded me of Ed Emshwiller's Relativity, although I barely remember that film. I think it would be very interesting to see the two of them together.
The film had what appeared to be an electronic soundtrack. It had a modern industrial quality to it. It really seemed to work in this film. It was like it emphasized the modern aspect of the film--that even though it reaches back in time as far as its subject is concerned it is still rooted in a modern perspective or views that subject through a modern prism.
I think that this film is more enjoyable for its style than for its subject matter. In fact, I think that the motion and manipulation of the imagery tend to move one's awareness away from what is happening. I mean this with regard to the contemporary footage. I became aware of this in a scene where policemen (or military personnel) were beating up one of the demonstrators. I suddenly realized that up until this point I had only been vaguely aware of what had been going on. Yes, I knew it was a demonstration, but I was more interested in the pulsating rhythms of what seemed like camera movement but really wasn't.
I really liked this one. Paul Winkler's film is about Australian aborigines. He contrasts footage of a contemporary aborigine political demonstration with images of the past. The contemporary footage was all shot in broad daylight; the images of the past are surrounded by black or set against a black background. So the present is full of light while the past is surrounded by darkness.
All of the imagery is permeated by motion. The footage of the political demonstration is packed with fast pans and what looks like quick zooming in and out. But the zooms are so much faster than a camera could do that I suspect they were made differently than zooming with the camera--probably through re-photography. The imagery of the past likewise has a charging, pulsating quality and the images are shown multiple times at once, a la Andy Warhol. This driving motion seems to accelerate as the film proceeds.
The program note identifies the "images of the past" as "primitive cave drawings, the sacred Ayers Rock and, most particularly, the head of an old aborigine warrior." I was aware of the cave drawings only at the beginning; otherwise the only image I could discern was the head of the warrior. I didn't recognize the Ayers Rock at all. Some of the imagery looked completely abstract as in the manner of a lot of Brakhage's work of the 1970s. It was footage of something, but what that something was was undiscernable.
A lot of this film reminded me of Ed Emshwiller's Relativity, although I barely remember that film. I think it would be very interesting to see the two of them together.
The film had what appeared to be an electronic soundtrack. It had a modern industrial quality to it. It really seemed to work in this film. It was like it emphasized the modern aspect of the film--that even though it reaches back in time as far as its subject is concerned it is still rooted in a modern perspective or views that subject through a modern prism.
I think that this film is more enjoyable for its style than for its subject matter. In fact, I think that the motion and manipulation of the imagery tend to move one's awareness away from what is happening. I mean this with regard to the contemporary footage. I became aware of this in a scene where policemen (or military personnel) were beating up one of the demonstrators. I suddenly realized that up until this point I had only been vaguely aware of what had been going on. Yes, I knew it was a demonstration, but I was more interested in the pulsating rhythms of what seemed like camera movement but really wasn't.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Landscape. 2000. Directed by Martin Sulik.
(3/13/01)
This film didn't make much of an impression on me. It is mostly a series of anecdotes reflecting on Slovakia's troubled history. I will say, though, that the picture gained in power towards the end.
I didn't like Martin Sulik's sense of humor. Towards the beginning there is a scene where a child is dying from choking. The father makes a mad dash to find a doctor. (This is shown in speeded-up motion.) On the way, he stops to order a coffin. A man wears his jacket backwards as he rides his bicycle. He is hit by a car. The police find him and note that he is still breathing, but think that his head has been twisted. They twist it back. He isn't breathing any more. Other people in the audience laughed heartily at scenes like this; I didn't.
The film has a feel of folklore about it--of stories that have been told and repeated. It has a feel to it that reminded me of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, although I can't quite identify what brings that comparison to mind.
Some of the best scenes occur towards the end, as I said. There is a poignant, haunting sequence where a woman returns for a visit after being away for thirty years and meets a woman she had known when she was much younger. The woman brings her home and they spend the night together as old friends. The woman who has been away admires the other woman's hair. She shows her how she cuts it every ten years and keeps it in a drawer. As the other woman sleeps she cuts her hair and gives it to her the next day as a gift.
The next day the two women go to a tree where the woman who moved believed she had carved her initials many years before. The two women search and climb the tree, but there is no trace of the initials. They leave, deciding that the bark of the tree has overgrown the initials, but a narrator informs us that the tree on which the woman had carved her initials had been chopped down. It wasn't the same tree.
At the end of the film a boy's father disappears. He searches for him and finds him dead in the snow. (I believe he died around railroad tracks.) This sequence was beautifully photographed amidst stark, snowy landscapes.
For me, the most haunting scene of all is the one in which the verger goes through a cemetery on his way home and comes across a man whom he had known many years before. The man is a Jew who had been taken away during the holocaust. I forget what this man tells the verger. He is searching to find out what happened to his wife or something like that. A moment or so later the verger turns to look at him and he has disappeared, suggesting that he was a spirit rather than a living person. That scene really worked.
There was an interesting use of color. Some scenes were very highly saturated. In particular, some scenes were very yellow or golden brown.
This film didn't make much of an impression on me. It is mostly a series of anecdotes reflecting on Slovakia's troubled history. I will say, though, that the picture gained in power towards the end.
I didn't like Martin Sulik's sense of humor. Towards the beginning there is a scene where a child is dying from choking. The father makes a mad dash to find a doctor. (This is shown in speeded-up motion.) On the way, he stops to order a coffin. A man wears his jacket backwards as he rides his bicycle. He is hit by a car. The police find him and note that he is still breathing, but think that his head has been twisted. They twist it back. He isn't breathing any more. Other people in the audience laughed heartily at scenes like this; I didn't.
The film has a feel of folklore about it--of stories that have been told and repeated. It has a feel to it that reminded me of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, although I can't quite identify what brings that comparison to mind.
Some of the best scenes occur towards the end, as I said. There is a poignant, haunting sequence where a woman returns for a visit after being away for thirty years and meets a woman she had known when she was much younger. The woman brings her home and they spend the night together as old friends. The woman who has been away admires the other woman's hair. She shows her how she cuts it every ten years and keeps it in a drawer. As the other woman sleeps she cuts her hair and gives it to her the next day as a gift.
The next day the two women go to a tree where the woman who moved believed she had carved her initials many years before. The two women search and climb the tree, but there is no trace of the initials. They leave, deciding that the bark of the tree has overgrown the initials, but a narrator informs us that the tree on which the woman had carved her initials had been chopped down. It wasn't the same tree.
At the end of the film a boy's father disappears. He searches for him and finds him dead in the snow. (I believe he died around railroad tracks.) This sequence was beautifully photographed amidst stark, snowy landscapes.
For me, the most haunting scene of all is the one in which the verger goes through a cemetery on his way home and comes across a man whom he had known many years before. The man is a Jew who had been taken away during the holocaust. I forget what this man tells the verger. He is searching to find out what happened to his wife or something like that. A moment or so later the verger turns to look at him and he has disappeared, suggesting that he was a spirit rather than a living person. That scene really worked.
There was an interesting use of color. Some scenes were very highly saturated. In particular, some scenes were very yellow or golden brown.
The Earth Sings (Zem Spieva). 1933, reconstructed 1983. Directed and photographed by Karel Plicka.
(3/4/01)
This was a truly beautiful film to watch. It is about the people of Slovakia, their work, their games, their relationship to the land. It brims with stunning images of nature and it is a pleasure to sit through. However, there didn't seem to be a narrative or anything to hook and hold the viewer's attention, so I don't remember many specific details of it. The experience of watching this film is for me akin to listening to a fine piece of classical music--very enjoyable, but I don't remember specific details.
The film has, in fact, been likened to a symphony and is backed by a sumptuous score. The music reminded me of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. There was a lot of charal singing which suited the feel of the picture very well.
It is a very positive, very affirmative film. It shows a simple way of life and the people seem very satisfied with it. There are children and young people and some very old people. They wear beautiful costumes and a lot of the film seems like a pageant. What they have seems to be a very healthy way of life, yet I couldn't help but think that, for all their hard work, they seem basically like children.
The film had intertitles in Slovak which I couldn't read. (I didn't realize until later that a translation had been provided.) If I had been able to understand them I probably would have been able to follow the film better and remember more of it. One thing that bothered me a bit about the restoration was that the music was rerecorded. This caused an incongruity between the grainy old images and the fresh, crisp soundtrack. In other words, the picture showed signs of age, but the soundtrack didn't. This bothered me a bit, but after a while I accepted it.
While watching this film I had the sensation that I was seeing a beautiful example of film as art.
This was a truly beautiful film to watch. It is about the people of Slovakia, their work, their games, their relationship to the land. It brims with stunning images of nature and it is a pleasure to sit through. However, there didn't seem to be a narrative or anything to hook and hold the viewer's attention, so I don't remember many specific details of it. The experience of watching this film is for me akin to listening to a fine piece of classical music--very enjoyable, but I don't remember specific details.
The film has, in fact, been likened to a symphony and is backed by a sumptuous score. The music reminded me of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. There was a lot of charal singing which suited the feel of the picture very well.
It is a very positive, very affirmative film. It shows a simple way of life and the people seem very satisfied with it. There are children and young people and some very old people. They wear beautiful costumes and a lot of the film seems like a pageant. What they have seems to be a very healthy way of life, yet I couldn't help but think that, for all their hard work, they seem basically like children.
The film had intertitles in Slovak which I couldn't read. (I didn't realize until later that a translation had been provided.) If I had been able to understand them I probably would have been able to follow the film better and remember more of it. One thing that bothered me a bit about the restoration was that the music was rerecorded. This caused an incongruity between the grainy old images and the fresh, crisp soundtrack. In other words, the picture showed signs of age, but the soundtrack didn't. This bothered me a bit, but after a while I accepted it.
While watching this film I had the sensation that I was seeing a beautiful example of film as art.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Red Squad. 1972. By the Pacific Street Collective.
(2/22/01)
This is a feisty little cinema-verite picture. The basic idea is that the police (and possibly other "authorities") were covertly photographing and following and collecting information on people. So the filmmakers turned the tables on them and filmed and taped them. And the authorities didn't like it. And the film exposes them and their tactics. And it feels so good.
There are some great moments of encounters with cops. We see police questioning a young man sitting in his car or standing by it about his friends who are at that moment filming them. There are interviews with the parents of one of the filmmakers who have been questioned or interrogated by members of the "red squad." This was an obvious attempt at intimidation and it is wonderful seeing this middle-class couple backing up and supporting their son against the establishment in what look like "radical" activities.
This film explains the tactics used by the police. Taking photos of people at rallies or demonstrations, for example, is a way of intimidating people into not coming. Another is addressing people--who have presumably never seen them before--by their first names, implying that they are being watched and observed.
One thing that works very well in this film is the singling out of one person and making the audience very aware of him. The person they used was Detective John Finegan who becomes a name and a face that we remember. In effect he becomes the main character of the film. I would like to know something of what happened to him in the years after 1972.
So what is most enjoyable about this film is that the hunters become the hunted. I also liked the shots of a young Ed Koch expostulating about how abhorrent and unacceptable is the collecting of information on citizens.
The film flounders after a while. After we get beyond the scenes of the police being filmed without their cooperation the film becomes a lot less interesting. The last part is an interview with ablack man who infiltrated radical groups on behalf of the government. I found my attention waning. Interestingly enough, that interview is subtitled. Earlier in the film we hear a tape which was made surreptitiously of an encounter with police officers. That recording was barely audible. I wonder why it wasn't subtitled.
This is a feisty little cinema-verite picture. The basic idea is that the police (and possibly other "authorities") were covertly photographing and following and collecting information on people. So the filmmakers turned the tables on them and filmed and taped them. And the authorities didn't like it. And the film exposes them and their tactics. And it feels so good.
There are some great moments of encounters with cops. We see police questioning a young man sitting in his car or standing by it about his friends who are at that moment filming them. There are interviews with the parents of one of the filmmakers who have been questioned or interrogated by members of the "red squad." This was an obvious attempt at intimidation and it is wonderful seeing this middle-class couple backing up and supporting their son against the establishment in what look like "radical" activities.
This film explains the tactics used by the police. Taking photos of people at rallies or demonstrations, for example, is a way of intimidating people into not coming. Another is addressing people--who have presumably never seen them before--by their first names, implying that they are being watched and observed.
One thing that works very well in this film is the singling out of one person and making the audience very aware of him. The person they used was Detective John Finegan who becomes a name and a face that we remember. In effect he becomes the main character of the film. I would like to know something of what happened to him in the years after 1972.
So what is most enjoyable about this film is that the hunters become the hunted. I also liked the shots of a young Ed Koch expostulating about how abhorrent and unacceptable is the collecting of information on citizens.
The film flounders after a while. After we get beyond the scenes of the police being filmed without their cooperation the film becomes a lot less interesting. The last part is an interview with ablack man who infiltrated radical groups on behalf of the government. I found my attention waning. Interestingly enough, that interview is subtitled. Earlier in the film we hear a tape which was made surreptitiously of an encounter with police officers. That recording was barely audible. I wonder why it wasn't subtitled.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Underground. 1976. Directed by Emile de Antonio.
(2/20/01-2/22/01)
This film is a documentary about the Weather Underground, a terrorist group which was responsible for twenty-four bombings. It combines interviews and archival footage.
I was at a disadvantage seeing this film because I am not familiar with the Weather Underground or its activities. The film appears to presuppose a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the viewer which I did not have. I really was not clear as to what these people had done and why. They seemed to be a sort of American version of the Baader-Meinhof gang and while I was sympathetic to their views that something was very wrong with American society and that the federal government was at the root of the problem, I didn't feel--or think--that I wanted to embrace the kind of society that they wanted to impose on us or that I liked their idea that disruptive violence was the way to go.
We see and hear about the bombing of a building around New York's Washington Square, but I didn't understand what that was all about. Why did they do that--for what purpose? Did they warn people in advance so that they could get out? I need to know a lot more details about this action before I can feel anything about it.
Then there was the bombing of the Capitol in Washington. In this case, they did call in a warning so that people could get out. And I suppose that I am a little bit more sympathetic about bombing a government building than private property. But I still wonder what it was that the Weather Underground hoped to accomplish by this action.
It is kind of poignant, hearing members of this group speak of the U.S. government as an obstacle that they seemed sure they could eliminate. It is 25 years later and the government is still going strong.
I really liked the use of archival footage. The first part of the film really held my interest where you hear spoken comments of members of the group and see the footage depicting what they are talking about. That really worked for me. One interesting piece of footage depicted Fidel Castro. I was surprised at how feminine his voice sounded.
I suppose I liked the archival footage because of the different color textures. That was interesting to me just on a visual level.
In the first part of the film we hear comments by the Weather Underground members. These are probably from interviews, but we don't hear the questions being put to them. Later on, Emile de Antonio becomes part of the film, asking and probing. He asks them questions about their feelings, their backgrounds. That part of the film is interesting--though I suppose it would be more so if I knew something about the group and its activities. It puts a human face on the group. But then there is a section in which they discuss their feelings about being filmed and having cameras pointed at them. This part is kind of corny, yet it too is something of its time. De Antonio is admittedly on their side; thefilm does not attempt to take an objective stance. It is there to let these people present their point of view.
They come across not particularly as arrogant--though some oftheir views might seem so--but as down-to-earth and professional. Indeed, one of them describes them as "professional revolutionaries." They give me the impression of having "thought it through." But they certainly don't know everything.
They attack capitalism (and the government as a tool of capitalism) and say that wealth was not created by people like the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, but by the workers and that the capitalists stole it from the people. Yeah, that sounds good, but the capitalist entrepreneurs did the mental work and did the integrations that in large measure created the wealth and made these people's livelihoods possible. It does seem grossly unfair to have the millionaires living so well and the low-level workers living in poverty, but it isn't a simple case of stealing the wealth from the people.
The film ends with a defense of communism. I was surprised by the articulate defense of communism as an idea or philosophy that emphasized our connectedness as human beings. The speaker says that he believes that it is our connection to the others around us that makes us truly human--something like that. I had never heard communism described quite that way. And even though I don't agree with what he was saying, he put it in such a way that I respected his views and felt that perhaps they were worth more consideration. But then he went and said that they were completely against individualism and I woke up in a flash.
This film is an interesting document of its time. The fact that it was clandestinely filmed in a "safe house" didn't have much of an impact on me. I found it interesting for a while, but I wasn't able to sustain that interest all the way through. I was fidgeting.
This film is a documentary about the Weather Underground, a terrorist group which was responsible for twenty-four bombings. It combines interviews and archival footage.
I was at a disadvantage seeing this film because I am not familiar with the Weather Underground or its activities. The film appears to presuppose a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the viewer which I did not have. I really was not clear as to what these people had done and why. They seemed to be a sort of American version of the Baader-Meinhof gang and while I was sympathetic to their views that something was very wrong with American society and that the federal government was at the root of the problem, I didn't feel--or think--that I wanted to embrace the kind of society that they wanted to impose on us or that I liked their idea that disruptive violence was the way to go.
We see and hear about the bombing of a building around New York's Washington Square, but I didn't understand what that was all about. Why did they do that--for what purpose? Did they warn people in advance so that they could get out? I need to know a lot more details about this action before I can feel anything about it.
Then there was the bombing of the Capitol in Washington. In this case, they did call in a warning so that people could get out. And I suppose that I am a little bit more sympathetic about bombing a government building than private property. But I still wonder what it was that the Weather Underground hoped to accomplish by this action.
It is kind of poignant, hearing members of this group speak of the U.S. government as an obstacle that they seemed sure they could eliminate. It is 25 years later and the government is still going strong.
I really liked the use of archival footage. The first part of the film really held my interest where you hear spoken comments of members of the group and see the footage depicting what they are talking about. That really worked for me. One interesting piece of footage depicted Fidel Castro. I was surprised at how feminine his voice sounded.
I suppose I liked the archival footage because of the different color textures. That was interesting to me just on a visual level.
In the first part of the film we hear comments by the Weather Underground members. These are probably from interviews, but we don't hear the questions being put to them. Later on, Emile de Antonio becomes part of the film, asking and probing. He asks them questions about their feelings, their backgrounds. That part of the film is interesting--though I suppose it would be more so if I knew something about the group and its activities. It puts a human face on the group. But then there is a section in which they discuss their feelings about being filmed and having cameras pointed at them. This part is kind of corny, yet it too is something of its time. De Antonio is admittedly on their side; thefilm does not attempt to take an objective stance. It is there to let these people present their point of view.
They come across not particularly as arrogant--though some oftheir views might seem so--but as down-to-earth and professional. Indeed, one of them describes them as "professional revolutionaries." They give me the impression of having "thought it through." But they certainly don't know everything.
They attack capitalism (and the government as a tool of capitalism) and say that wealth was not created by people like the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, but by the workers and that the capitalists stole it from the people. Yeah, that sounds good, but the capitalist entrepreneurs did the mental work and did the integrations that in large measure created the wealth and made these people's livelihoods possible. It does seem grossly unfair to have the millionaires living so well and the low-level workers living in poverty, but it isn't a simple case of stealing the wealth from the people.
The film ends with a defense of communism. I was surprised by the articulate defense of communism as an idea or philosophy that emphasized our connectedness as human beings. The speaker says that he believes that it is our connection to the others around us that makes us truly human--something like that. I had never heard communism described quite that way. And even though I don't agree with what he was saying, he put it in such a way that I respected his views and felt that perhaps they were worth more consideration. But then he went and said that they were completely against individualism and I woke up in a flash.
This film is an interesting document of its time. The fact that it was clandestinely filmed in a "safe house" didn't have much of an impact on me. I found it interesting for a while, but I wasn't able to sustain that interest all the way through. I was fidgeting.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
M*A*S*H. 1970. Directed by Robert Altman.
(2/16/01-2/20/01)
I wasn't particularly excited about seeing M*A*S*H and I didn't much connect with it. I'm generally not interested in anything to do with the military.
The film is episodic in nature; it has a loose structure. (It is certainly not as loose as Bunuel's The Phantom of Liberty.) The problem here is that not all the episodes work equally well and when they don't they don't have the overall structure of the film to fall back on. I'm thinking in particular of that long, tedious football game at the end that sort of comes out of nowhere. Now, I don't like or understand football so it might have seemed worse to me than it did to someone else.
The set pieces can seem forced, such as the parody of the Last Supper with the guy who wants to commit suicide and who lays down in a coffin and also Hawkeye's and Trapper John's trip to Japan where they have been asked to come and perform an operation, but where they seem to take delight in antagonizing just about everybody and thumbing their noses at rules and procedures.
Robert Altman was considered such an innovative director back in the 1970s. His work had an unpredictable quality to it. He took chances--and they didn't always come off. M*A*S*H was his first big picture and that quality of freshness probably moved the original audiences.
The scene that made the biggest impression on me was when Major Burns and Major O'Houlihan are having a sexual interlude and somebody slips in a microphone and broadcasts their doings to the whole base, showing them up as hypocrites and earning Major O'Houlihan the nickname "Hot Lips." Major Burns is constantly making a show of religion and O'Houlihan is a strictly "by-the-book" officer, oblivious to the realities of the situation.
Sally Kellerman's Major O'Houlihan is a memorable character and her rigidness makes her an appropriate butt of jokes. In another scene, guys are arguing about something about her (I forget what) and they have to see her naked to settle the dispute. They arrange to have the building collapse around her while she is taking a shower. A whole group of people (I forget whether they are exclusively male) come and take seats outside the building like an audience. O'Houlihan, in hysterics, goes to Colonel Bates and threatens to resign her commission. "OK. Resign," he says indifferently. Interestingly enough, Colonel Bates is in bed with a woman at the time.
It is easy enough to laugh at O'Houlihan, but she does stand for some kind of order and without order there would be chaos. The need to impose some rules is necessary, as much on a military base (M*A*S*H) as in a girl's boarding school (Madchen in Uniform). Yet, order is equated with "authority" and "authority figures" and it is these people who have created the combat situation that people like Hawkeye and Trapper John have to cope with.
There is a lot of sex going on at the military base, mostly among people who are married. I think that this is pointing out the disruptions in family life caused by the war. So I can certainly understand the tendency to not respect the authority figures.
The operating room scenes are just grusome enough to bring home the pressures that the medical personnel live with. There are a few sickening moments, but the film doesn't dwell on them. And there is that awful, poignant scene where a doctor asks a young assistant for a hypodermic needle. He has trouble finding it and returns (I think) with the wrong kind. The doctor tells him that he was too late and tells him, "You killed him." The youth turns away with a look of real agony on his face. The doctor was horribly insensitive; maybe it was understandable given the circumstances. It is the most poignant moment in the film.
So a lot of the acting up is understandable, but that doesn't really excuse it all. When Hawkeye and Trapper John are summoned to perform an operation in Japan they seem to have a great time disrupting all procedures just for the fun of it. And I didn't find it fun to see them come in, take over and refuse to tell anyone who they were or why they were there. Other people had jobs to do there and those jobs, too, were important. They redeemed themselves a little by forcing the powers that be to allow them to perform necessary surgery on a pregnant woman, an act of humanity. This raises hackles with the people in charge, probably because they had been so inconsiderate up to that point.
It was great seeing Roger Bowen as Colonel Bates. He reminded me so much of Captain Binghamton on the McHale's Navy TV show.
M*A*S*H has a very interesting soundtrack, another quality we associate with Robert Altman. There are scenes with multiple people talking at once. The base broadcasts a Japanese radio station over the loudspeaker and we hear things like "My Blue Heaven" sung in Japanese. That loudspeaker also broadcasts information about the movies to be shown on the base and at the end it announces a showing of the movie M*A*S*H and continues with the credits of the movie istead of written end-credits. I really liked that touch.
I wasn't particularly excited about seeing M*A*S*H and I didn't much connect with it. I'm generally not interested in anything to do with the military.
The film is episodic in nature; it has a loose structure. (It is certainly not as loose as Bunuel's The Phantom of Liberty.) The problem here is that not all the episodes work equally well and when they don't they don't have the overall structure of the film to fall back on. I'm thinking in particular of that long, tedious football game at the end that sort of comes out of nowhere. Now, I don't like or understand football so it might have seemed worse to me than it did to someone else.
The set pieces can seem forced, such as the parody of the Last Supper with the guy who wants to commit suicide and who lays down in a coffin and also Hawkeye's and Trapper John's trip to Japan where they have been asked to come and perform an operation, but where they seem to take delight in antagonizing just about everybody and thumbing their noses at rules and procedures.
Robert Altman was considered such an innovative director back in the 1970s. His work had an unpredictable quality to it. He took chances--and they didn't always come off. M*A*S*H was his first big picture and that quality of freshness probably moved the original audiences.
The scene that made the biggest impression on me was when Major Burns and Major O'Houlihan are having a sexual interlude and somebody slips in a microphone and broadcasts their doings to the whole base, showing them up as hypocrites and earning Major O'Houlihan the nickname "Hot Lips." Major Burns is constantly making a show of religion and O'Houlihan is a strictly "by-the-book" officer, oblivious to the realities of the situation.
Sally Kellerman's Major O'Houlihan is a memorable character and her rigidness makes her an appropriate butt of jokes. In another scene, guys are arguing about something about her (I forget what) and they have to see her naked to settle the dispute. They arrange to have the building collapse around her while she is taking a shower. A whole group of people (I forget whether they are exclusively male) come and take seats outside the building like an audience. O'Houlihan, in hysterics, goes to Colonel Bates and threatens to resign her commission. "OK. Resign," he says indifferently. Interestingly enough, Colonel Bates is in bed with a woman at the time.
It is easy enough to laugh at O'Houlihan, but she does stand for some kind of order and without order there would be chaos. The need to impose some rules is necessary, as much on a military base (M*A*S*H) as in a girl's boarding school (Madchen in Uniform). Yet, order is equated with "authority" and "authority figures" and it is these people who have created the combat situation that people like Hawkeye and Trapper John have to cope with.
There is a lot of sex going on at the military base, mostly among people who are married. I think that this is pointing out the disruptions in family life caused by the war. So I can certainly understand the tendency to not respect the authority figures.
The operating room scenes are just grusome enough to bring home the pressures that the medical personnel live with. There are a few sickening moments, but the film doesn't dwell on them. And there is that awful, poignant scene where a doctor asks a young assistant for a hypodermic needle. He has trouble finding it and returns (I think) with the wrong kind. The doctor tells him that he was too late and tells him, "You killed him." The youth turns away with a look of real agony on his face. The doctor was horribly insensitive; maybe it was understandable given the circumstances. It is the most poignant moment in the film.
So a lot of the acting up is understandable, but that doesn't really excuse it all. When Hawkeye and Trapper John are summoned to perform an operation in Japan they seem to have a great time disrupting all procedures just for the fun of it. And I didn't find it fun to see them come in, take over and refuse to tell anyone who they were or why they were there. Other people had jobs to do there and those jobs, too, were important. They redeemed themselves a little by forcing the powers that be to allow them to perform necessary surgery on a pregnant woman, an act of humanity. This raises hackles with the people in charge, probably because they had been so inconsiderate up to that point.
It was great seeing Roger Bowen as Colonel Bates. He reminded me so much of Captain Binghamton on the McHale's Navy TV show.
M*A*S*H has a very interesting soundtrack, another quality we associate with Robert Altman. There are scenes with multiple people talking at once. The base broadcasts a Japanese radio station over the loudspeaker and we hear things like "My Blue Heaven" sung in Japanese. That loudspeaker also broadcasts information about the movies to be shown on the base and at the end it announces a showing of the movie M*A*S*H and continues with the credits of the movie istead of written end-credits. I really liked that touch.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
23rd Psalm Branch (Parts I and II). 1966-67 (shot in 8mm); re-edited in 1979 (shown in 16mm). By Stan Brakhage.
(2/8/01)
It is quite an experience to sit through this 8mm film blown up to 16mm. It is like watching something secret and hidden brought up to the light. It doesn't suffer; it looks pretty good in the larger format. A lot of it seems very dark and I wondered if that was due to being blown up, but there are other shots which look fine so I doubt that the enlargement was the reason.
This film has a very dense structure--or a very dense texture. It is not accessible. This is the third time that I have seen it (twice in 16mm; once in 8mm) and from seeing it and reading about it in R. Bruce Elder's book on Brakhage I am just beginning to really see some of it and to understand what it means. For example, I caught one image of a scene of war in a work of art--maybe a piece of erotic pottery--and understood that Brakhage is talking about the artist bearing some responsibility for war by celebrating it in art. (I didn't see the Lichtenstein painting of a gun which was supposed to be pointed at Brakhage's head.)
I recognized the poet Louis Zukofsky--but only because I had been told that he was there. In a sense this film has a home movie quality to it in that there are things you have to know to fully appreciate and experience it which are not identified to what you could call outsiders. Like a home movie it can only be really experienced by insiders.
The film is about war--specifically, how images of the Vietnam war made their way into Brakhage's world. So the film begins with very swift pans around his Colorado environment and then the film gives us images of war culled from old films. The image of Adolph Hitler was especially noticeable. This old footage--and the first thing you think of is newsreel footage--just seems to go on forever. I do understand that it is Brakhage's personal anguish when he writes, "Take back Beethoven's ninth, then, he said." Personally, I think it is too much to expect from art to lift mankind to a state where war no longer happens.
The second part of the film is about Europe, mainly Vienna. I have never been able to understand what this has to do with the first part. I just can't make the connection. Filmmaker Peter Kubelka is to be seen in this part, but, like Louis Zukofsky, I only know that because I read it. It is another home-movie element.
The images of Kubelka and Zukofsky don't mean very much to me, probably because I never knew them personally. If they had actually been part of my life in a personal sense--instead of knowing them through their work--their images in this film might have meant more to me.
The film ends with a Coda in which children play with sparklers. This couold refer to the roots of aggression in childhood, but I don't see the sparklers as aggressive or warlike. I think the children are attracted to them simply because of their visual appeal.
Brakhage's 23rd Psalm Branch is a very personal film that had a lot of meaning for Brakhage and seems to have a lot for those who are able to really see it and connect with it. I have not been able to accomplish this feat, but I feel that I have seen a little more than I did last time. Is it worth the effort that this requires? I can't say, but the film's reputation motivates me to continue the attempt.
It is quite an experience to sit through this 8mm film blown up to 16mm. It is like watching something secret and hidden brought up to the light. It doesn't suffer; it looks pretty good in the larger format. A lot of it seems very dark and I wondered if that was due to being blown up, but there are other shots which look fine so I doubt that the enlargement was the reason.
This film has a very dense structure--or a very dense texture. It is not accessible. This is the third time that I have seen it (twice in 16mm; once in 8mm) and from seeing it and reading about it in R. Bruce Elder's book on Brakhage I am just beginning to really see some of it and to understand what it means. For example, I caught one image of a scene of war in a work of art--maybe a piece of erotic pottery--and understood that Brakhage is talking about the artist bearing some responsibility for war by celebrating it in art. (I didn't see the Lichtenstein painting of a gun which was supposed to be pointed at Brakhage's head.)
I recognized the poet Louis Zukofsky--but only because I had been told that he was there. In a sense this film has a home movie quality to it in that there are things you have to know to fully appreciate and experience it which are not identified to what you could call outsiders. Like a home movie it can only be really experienced by insiders.
The film is about war--specifically, how images of the Vietnam war made their way into Brakhage's world. So the film begins with very swift pans around his Colorado environment and then the film gives us images of war culled from old films. The image of Adolph Hitler was especially noticeable. This old footage--and the first thing you think of is newsreel footage--just seems to go on forever. I do understand that it is Brakhage's personal anguish when he writes, "Take back Beethoven's ninth, then, he said." Personally, I think it is too much to expect from art to lift mankind to a state where war no longer happens.
The second part of the film is about Europe, mainly Vienna. I have never been able to understand what this has to do with the first part. I just can't make the connection. Filmmaker Peter Kubelka is to be seen in this part, but, like Louis Zukofsky, I only know that because I read it. It is another home-movie element.
The images of Kubelka and Zukofsky don't mean very much to me, probably because I never knew them personally. If they had actually been part of my life in a personal sense--instead of knowing them through their work--their images in this film might have meant more to me.
The film ends with a Coda in which children play with sparklers. This couold refer to the roots of aggression in childhood, but I don't see the sparklers as aggressive or warlike. I think the children are attracted to them simply because of their visual appeal.
Brakhage's 23rd Psalm Branch is a very personal film that had a lot of meaning for Brakhage and seems to have a lot for those who are able to really see it and connect with it. I have not been able to accomplish this feat, but I feel that I have seen a little more than I did last time. Is it worth the effort that this requires? I can't say, but the film's reputation motivates me to continue the attempt.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Man Who Laughs. 1928. Directed by Paul Leni.
(2/8/01)
The Man Who Laughs was Paul Leni's second film for Universal and was a much more elaborate film tha The Cat and the Canary which it followed. It is curious that it is not as well known--at least as far as I am aware.
Based on a text by Victor Hugo it is a story of cruelty. A young boy is mutilated by having his face carved with a perpetual grin. This was done as a revenge against his father who defied King James I of England. Later, Queen Anne restores him to his father's rank, but orders him to marry the woman who had inherited the estate which would have been his as a cruel joke.
The child is given to gypsies who leave him at the dock as they sail away, having been exiled. This scene of the abandonment of a mutilated little boy is horrible.
The film has some interesting parallels and contrasts. The scene at the beginning where the little boy is left on the dock is paralleled and in a sense completed at the end when he manages to escape from the queen's soldiers (or whoever they are) and join his family who have been exiled from England.
The life of Southwark Fair is contrasted with the stilted court of Queen Anne. And Gwynplaine, the Man Who Laughs, is contrasted with the evil jester who likewise wears a fictitious smile.
Then there is the contrast between good-girl Mary Philbin and bad-girl Olga Baclanova. What I find interesting is that during the first half of the film Philbin seems rather lifeless and Baclanova is full of vitality, but after Gwynplaine is captured Philbin becomes much more interesting. Her eyes in particular are so haunting and we really come to feel for her. At least I did.
The first shot of Baclanova's character is really interesting--and erotic. Through a keyhole we see her legs stepping into a bath. Later we actually see her butt. That was pretty unusual for a 1928 movie. She exudes a perverse sexuality in her scenes with Conrad Veidt (Gwynplaine)--aroused by him because of his deformity. She really comes on strong and is fascinating to watch.
I was surprised by the characterization of Queen Anne as such a heartless woman. I had never thought of Queen Anne as a bitch. (Wawsn't she called "Good Queen Anne"?) I don't think that is how she is viewed in the popular imagination, so seeing her like that was quite jarring.
The whole pace of the film seems tochange at the end and it turns into an action picture. I was surprised by this because I had expected the situation between Gwynplaine and Queen Anne to be resolved, possibly by him making an impassioned plea for his freedom. But the escape where Gwynplaine is reunited with his beloved is very enjoyable. I especially liked the dog jumping out of the boat and swimming back to the dock to menace one of the pursuing soldiers.
I do want to mention that Conrad Veidt was so touching as Gwynplaine. His sad eyes were so touching, showing such hurt above that omnipresent grin. (A lot of the time he covered his mouth, making himself look like a bandit.)
Alas, the situation between Gwynplaine and the blind girl isn't worked out. At first he resists returning her love because he is deformed. Then, after they are separated, that all seems to be forgotten and we don't hear anymore about it. The issue is never resolved.
The Man Who Laughs was Paul Leni's second film for Universal and was a much more elaborate film tha The Cat and the Canary which it followed. It is curious that it is not as well known--at least as far as I am aware.
Based on a text by Victor Hugo it is a story of cruelty. A young boy is mutilated by having his face carved with a perpetual grin. This was done as a revenge against his father who defied King James I of England. Later, Queen Anne restores him to his father's rank, but orders him to marry the woman who had inherited the estate which would have been his as a cruel joke.
The child is given to gypsies who leave him at the dock as they sail away, having been exiled. This scene of the abandonment of a mutilated little boy is horrible.
The film has some interesting parallels and contrasts. The scene at the beginning where the little boy is left on the dock is paralleled and in a sense completed at the end when he manages to escape from the queen's soldiers (or whoever they are) and join his family who have been exiled from England.
The life of Southwark Fair is contrasted with the stilted court of Queen Anne. And Gwynplaine, the Man Who Laughs, is contrasted with the evil jester who likewise wears a fictitious smile.
Then there is the contrast between good-girl Mary Philbin and bad-girl Olga Baclanova. What I find interesting is that during the first half of the film Philbin seems rather lifeless and Baclanova is full of vitality, but after Gwynplaine is captured Philbin becomes much more interesting. Her eyes in particular are so haunting and we really come to feel for her. At least I did.
The first shot of Baclanova's character is really interesting--and erotic. Through a keyhole we see her legs stepping into a bath. Later we actually see her butt. That was pretty unusual for a 1928 movie. She exudes a perverse sexuality in her scenes with Conrad Veidt (Gwynplaine)--aroused by him because of his deformity. She really comes on strong and is fascinating to watch.
I was surprised by the characterization of Queen Anne as such a heartless woman. I had never thought of Queen Anne as a bitch. (Wawsn't she called "Good Queen Anne"?) I don't think that is how she is viewed in the popular imagination, so seeing her like that was quite jarring.
The whole pace of the film seems tochange at the end and it turns into an action picture. I was surprised by this because I had expected the situation between Gwynplaine and Queen Anne to be resolved, possibly by him making an impassioned plea for his freedom. But the escape where Gwynplaine is reunited with his beloved is very enjoyable. I especially liked the dog jumping out of the boat and swimming back to the dock to menace one of the pursuing soldiers.
I do want to mention that Conrad Veidt was so touching as Gwynplaine. His sad eyes were so touching, showing such hurt above that omnipresent grin. (A lot of the time he covered his mouth, making himself look like a bandit.)
Alas, the situation between Gwynplaine and the blind girl isn't worked out. At first he resists returning her love because he is deformed. Then, after they are separated, that all seems to be forgotten and we don't hear anymore about it. The issue is never resolved.
Get Carter. 1971. Directed by Mike Hodges.
(2/5/01)
I saw this film almost a month ago (January 15) and just hadn't gotten around to writing about it. It's a mean, tough movie about a man involved in the underworld who believes his brother has been murdered and comes to find the killers.
What he discovers is that his niece--the brother's daughter--had been involved in the making of a porn film. The brother had discovered this, made trouble and been murdered in consequence. Carter learns the truth, kills those involved (or has some of them kill each other, according to the program note) and is himself killed at the end.
Get Carter is certainly dated. That's not necessarily a bad thing--it has the flavor of its time. There is a scene at a disco which locates the film in time. There is the kind of explicit love scenes (or sex scenes) that were so prevalent in those days. And then there is that fascination with pornography which was also an aspect of the time. When we first see Jack Carter he is with a group of his colleagues watching sexually explicit slides--of all things. Carter makes an erotic phone call to a girl friend played by Britt Ekland and there is some raunchy humor including (to the best of my recollection) men deprived of their clothes being seen by a parade of schoolgirls.
Michael Caine is fascinating to watch as Carter. He is impeccably dressed, well-mannered, soft-spoken--and then suddenly there is this raw brutality. He reminds me of James Bond, especially in his Roger Moore incarnation, although Moore seems more upper-class than Michael Caine, especially when we see him in the industrial milieu he comes from.
It's a very unpleasant revenge film and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I especially remembered the ending in which Carter lets the man who (I think) did the actual killing of his brother run from him until he is exhausted and can't run any more. Then he forces him to drink a whole bottle of whiskey and smashes his head with a blunt instrument. At the beginning of the film the act of avenging the brother seems just, but Carter doesn't seem just in that scene. It is like his anger or hatred has taken him over and turned him into something inhuman. What he did to that man didn't seem right--or didn't feel right--and I was glad when he was shot down right afterwards.
The film was also interesting as a picture of a rough industrial area. The print was hard to hear and I missed a lot of the dialogue and consequently had a hard time following it.
I saw this film almost a month ago (January 15) and just hadn't gotten around to writing about it. It's a mean, tough movie about a man involved in the underworld who believes his brother has been murdered and comes to find the killers.
What he discovers is that his niece--the brother's daughter--had been involved in the making of a porn film. The brother had discovered this, made trouble and been murdered in consequence. Carter learns the truth, kills those involved (or has some of them kill each other, according to the program note) and is himself killed at the end.
Get Carter is certainly dated. That's not necessarily a bad thing--it has the flavor of its time. There is a scene at a disco which locates the film in time. There is the kind of explicit love scenes (or sex scenes) that were so prevalent in those days. And then there is that fascination with pornography which was also an aspect of the time. When we first see Jack Carter he is with a group of his colleagues watching sexually explicit slides--of all things. Carter makes an erotic phone call to a girl friend played by Britt Ekland and there is some raunchy humor including (to the best of my recollection) men deprived of their clothes being seen by a parade of schoolgirls.
Michael Caine is fascinating to watch as Carter. He is impeccably dressed, well-mannered, soft-spoken--and then suddenly there is this raw brutality. He reminds me of James Bond, especially in his Roger Moore incarnation, although Moore seems more upper-class than Michael Caine, especially when we see him in the industrial milieu he comes from.
It's a very unpleasant revenge film and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I especially remembered the ending in which Carter lets the man who (I think) did the actual killing of his brother run from him until he is exhausted and can't run any more. Then he forces him to drink a whole bottle of whiskey and smashes his head with a blunt instrument. At the beginning of the film the act of avenging the brother seems just, but Carter doesn't seem just in that scene. It is like his anger or hatred has taken him over and turned him into something inhuman. What he did to that man didn't seem right--or didn't feel right--and I was glad when he was shot down right afterwards.
The film was also interesting as a picture of a rough industrial area. The print was hard to hear and I missed a lot of the dialogue and consequently had a hard time following it.
Crossroads. 1976. By Bruce Conner.
(1/30/01)
Crossroads is comprised of footage of the first underwater atomic bomb test. The explosion is shown sequentially from different viewpoints. Evidently we are left with a shot in which the cloud disperses to the end that there is only a haze and in the foreground there is a silhouette of a ship at the left of the frame.
It is interesting how the mood of this film changes. It is quite startling to see the explosion coming up out of the water for the first time. As time goes on I became more aware of the beauty--yes, the beauty!--of the atomic cloud as it majestically disperses, as it rolls out over the area. The cloud looks like a strange exotic plant--or tree.
I wonder about all of those ships in the area. Were they safe during the test? I suppose they were there deliberately. In one shot we see an airplane flying into the cloud. I wonder what the consequences were. Did the pilot feel effects years later?
The soundtrack changes duringthe film. During the first part we hear a roar which seems to have something to do with the explosion. It reinforces the sense of the explosion. But then the soundtrack changes and we hear this bland, innocuous music. Why? What is the point? Is the film pointing up how we have come to accept the horror of the presence of the atomic bomb in our lives?
I think that the atomic bomb was something which changed human history. It was like a milestone and that is the event that this film is about. But as I write this I wonder if that "it was a milestone" interpretation of the bomb might be an oversimplification. Perhaps man's ability to destroy was something that grew by degrees and the atom bomb was more of an emblem than a genuine milestone.
Crossroads is comprised of footage of the first underwater atomic bomb test. The explosion is shown sequentially from different viewpoints. Evidently we are left with a shot in which the cloud disperses to the end that there is only a haze and in the foreground there is a silhouette of a ship at the left of the frame.
It is interesting how the mood of this film changes. It is quite startling to see the explosion coming up out of the water for the first time. As time goes on I became more aware of the beauty--yes, the beauty!--of the atomic cloud as it majestically disperses, as it rolls out over the area. The cloud looks like a strange exotic plant--or tree.
I wonder about all of those ships in the area. Were they safe during the test? I suppose they were there deliberately. In one shot we see an airplane flying into the cloud. I wonder what the consequences were. Did the pilot feel effects years later?
The soundtrack changes duringthe film. During the first part we hear a roar which seems to have something to do with the explosion. It reinforces the sense of the explosion. But then the soundtrack changes and we hear this bland, innocuous music. Why? What is the point? Is the film pointing up how we have come to accept the horror of the presence of the atomic bomb in our lives?
I think that the atomic bomb was something which changed human history. It was like a milestone and that is the event that this film is about. But as I write this I wonder if that "it was a milestone" interpretation of the bomb might be an oversimplification. Perhaps man's ability to destroy was something that grew by degrees and the atom bomb was more of an emblem than a genuine milestone.
Black Rainbow. 1988. Directed by Mike Hodges.
(1/29/01)
This film is strikingly similar to Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which I haven't seen in many years. It is about a phony spiritualist who starts to genuinely see disturbing events in the future.
I love watching Rosanna Arquette. I saw her some years ago in a film called Open All Night and in both cases I really responded to her. I waould definitely like to see more of her films from around this time. She has a presence and a sex appeal that really grab me. And of course it is a pleasure to watch a fine actor like Jason Robards.
I didn't really care for the film as a whole. Arquette sees into the future of a criminal conspiracy and this endangers her. But the conspiracy is not explained well; I was confused about what was going on.
The whole last part of the film is very confusing. Martha goes unconscious or into a trance and appears as an apparition. A killer sent to eliminate her sees the apparition, shoots at it and kills her father instead. Ten years later the reporter who had been involved with her tracks her down, but she won't talk to him and when pictures he takes of her are developed there is no image of her. So we are left to ponder what it all means.
I think that one point of all this is that by faking being a medium Martha inadvertently draws these events to her. It's sort of like the stories of people who have played with Ouija boards and have contacted something. It was like she invited the visions which came to her.
The great moment, the one moment I remember from the film, comes when Martha is doing her spiritualist act and is describing a supposedly dead person to his wife. She has the name right, but the woman protests, "But my husband's alive" and Marth asuddenly exclaims, "No, he's not." When she makes other prophecies it doesn't have the same impact. But when she is descibing another dead person and realizes she is talking about her own father, that is also riveting.
I liked a lot of the exterior photography of the South. Railroads figure prominently in this film as a means of transportation and the pictures of trains are kind of haunting.
This film is strikingly similar to Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which I haven't seen in many years. It is about a phony spiritualist who starts to genuinely see disturbing events in the future.
I love watching Rosanna Arquette. I saw her some years ago in a film called Open All Night and in both cases I really responded to her. I waould definitely like to see more of her films from around this time. She has a presence and a sex appeal that really grab me. And of course it is a pleasure to watch a fine actor like Jason Robards.
I didn't really care for the film as a whole. Arquette sees into the future of a criminal conspiracy and this endangers her. But the conspiracy is not explained well; I was confused about what was going on.
The whole last part of the film is very confusing. Martha goes unconscious or into a trance and appears as an apparition. A killer sent to eliminate her sees the apparition, shoots at it and kills her father instead. Ten years later the reporter who had been involved with her tracks her down, but she won't talk to him and when pictures he takes of her are developed there is no image of her. So we are left to ponder what it all means.
I think that one point of all this is that by faking being a medium Martha inadvertently draws these events to her. It's sort of like the stories of people who have played with Ouija boards and have contacted something. It was like she invited the visions which came to her.
The great moment, the one moment I remember from the film, comes when Martha is doing her spiritualist act and is describing a supposedly dead person to his wife. She has the name right, but the woman protests, "But my husband's alive" and Marth asuddenly exclaims, "No, he's not." When she makes other prophecies it doesn't have the same impact. But when she is descibing another dead person and realizes she is talking about her own father, that is also riveting.
I liked a lot of the exterior photography of the South. Railroads figure prominently in this film as a means of transportation and the pictures of trains are kind of haunting.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Lulu on the Bridge. 1998. Directed by Paul Auster.
(1/27/01-1/29/01)
The film seemed pointless in that it all turned out to be the fantasy or delirium of a dying man. That was a big letdown because a lot of the questions in the film never get answered--don't have to be answered. What is the strange object that glows in the dark? Who are the people who are so anxious to retrieve it and what do they plan to do with it? Why does the heroine leap from the bridge--what does she think that will gain for her?
The fact that it is a dying man's fantasy works as far as his relationship to the young woman is concerned and gives it a special poignancy. I don't know whether I like Harvey Keitel's performance; it sometimes seems mannered and at other moments seems genuine and intense. I liked Mira Sorvino very much. I really liked the first scene that they do together--where Keitel comes to Sorvino's apartment to question her about the mysterious object. He is so intense and she doesn't know if he is a maniac she has allowed into her home--or what. We--the audience--know what this is all about, but she doesn't. That scene had quite an impact.
Keitel is kidnapped and held prisoner where he is questioned by a man who is there to find the object, but becomes a sort of psychiatrist to Keitel, reviewing his life with him, knowing everything--or almost everything--about him. This part of the film is like something thought up by Kafka.
Sorvino gets the starring role in a remake of Pabst's Pandora's Box. One would expect that the film she is involved in making would have some relation to the events of the film we are watching, but I don't see any relationship. There is one great moment, though, when at a dinner Sorvino discusses her interpretation of Lulu with Vanessa Redgrave, who is going to direct it. She disagrees with Redgrave's thoughts and when Redgrave cites a comment by Frank Wedekind, author of the original play, Sorvino tells her matter-of-factly that he was wrong. This from a young actress with practically no credentials who has just landed her first major part. She is just so ingenuous.
Lulu on the Bridge is a bizarre film with some really interesting moments, but I found it unsatisfying in the long run.
The film seemed pointless in that it all turned out to be the fantasy or delirium of a dying man. That was a big letdown because a lot of the questions in the film never get answered--don't have to be answered. What is the strange object that glows in the dark? Who are the people who are so anxious to retrieve it and what do they plan to do with it? Why does the heroine leap from the bridge--what does she think that will gain for her?
The fact that it is a dying man's fantasy works as far as his relationship to the young woman is concerned and gives it a special poignancy. I don't know whether I like Harvey Keitel's performance; it sometimes seems mannered and at other moments seems genuine and intense. I liked Mira Sorvino very much. I really liked the first scene that they do together--where Keitel comes to Sorvino's apartment to question her about the mysterious object. He is so intense and she doesn't know if he is a maniac she has allowed into her home--or what. We--the audience--know what this is all about, but she doesn't. That scene had quite an impact.
Keitel is kidnapped and held prisoner where he is questioned by a man who is there to find the object, but becomes a sort of psychiatrist to Keitel, reviewing his life with him, knowing everything--or almost everything--about him. This part of the film is like something thought up by Kafka.
Sorvino gets the starring role in a remake of Pabst's Pandora's Box. One would expect that the film she is involved in making would have some relation to the events of the film we are watching, but I don't see any relationship. There is one great moment, though, when at a dinner Sorvino discusses her interpretation of Lulu with Vanessa Redgrave, who is going to direct it. She disagrees with Redgrave's thoughts and when Redgrave cites a comment by Frank Wedekind, author of the original play, Sorvino tells her matter-of-factly that he was wrong. This from a young actress with practically no credentials who has just landed her first major part. She is just so ingenuous.
Lulu on the Bridge is a bizarre film with some really interesting moments, but I found it unsatisfying in the long run.
Quixote. 1964-65. Revised 1968, 1970. By Bruce Baillie.
(1/27/01)
This was shown in an atrocious preservation print. A lot of the color looked completely faded to brown, but then I remembered that a lot of the film was in black-and-white. At the beginning of the film a bearded old man speaks. I could not hear the words.
This film is a sort of portrait of America, seen from the fringes. We see migrant workers, Indians, outcasts. It is supposed to have a narrative, but I could not discern it. The early part of the film has a lot of movement, what seems like shots taken from moving vehicles. So there was a sense of moving across the land.
There is a lot of fine photography. The images seem to flow into each other and have a rightness or a correctness that one would identify with a successful abstract painting. There are a lot of superimpositions and I especially remember superimpositions where one shot is static (or relatively so) and the other shot has a lot of movement, such as aggressive panning.
Bruce Baillie does have a knack for capturing a gritty, industrial landscape. I remember shots of construction sites, scenes like that.
The soundtrack has a lot of modern music--maybe electronic music. It is spare, or minimal. There are also sections of blues on the soundtrack.
There are many shots of animals. I remember one of horses in the snow.
I remember scenes of a high school basketball game. One youngster was wearing glasses.
I enjoyed individual images of this film and the way it was put together, the look and rhythm of it--or, if you will, the flavor. But I really didn't get what it was all about. It is definitely a film I would like to get to know better.
This was shown in an atrocious preservation print. A lot of the color looked completely faded to brown, but then I remembered that a lot of the film was in black-and-white. At the beginning of the film a bearded old man speaks. I could not hear the words.
This film is a sort of portrait of America, seen from the fringes. We see migrant workers, Indians, outcasts. It is supposed to have a narrative, but I could not discern it. The early part of the film has a lot of movement, what seems like shots taken from moving vehicles. So there was a sense of moving across the land.
There is a lot of fine photography. The images seem to flow into each other and have a rightness or a correctness that one would identify with a successful abstract painting. There are a lot of superimpositions and I especially remember superimpositions where one shot is static (or relatively so) and the other shot has a lot of movement, such as aggressive panning.
Bruce Baillie does have a knack for capturing a gritty, industrial landscape. I remember shots of construction sites, scenes like that.
The soundtrack has a lot of modern music--maybe electronic music. It is spare, or minimal. There are also sections of blues on the soundtrack.
There are many shots of animals. I remember one of horses in the snow.
I remember scenes of a high school basketball game. One youngster was wearing glasses.
I enjoyed individual images of this film and the way it was put together, the look and rhythm of it--or, if you will, the flavor. But I really didn't get what it was all about. It is definitely a film I would like to get to know better.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Tess. 1979. Directed by Roman Polanski.
(1/15/01)
It's been a while since I've seen Tess, so I won't have a lot to say about it. I found it very impressive and very moving when I did see it. I really liked the photography, especially that of exterior scenes. The opening shot, over the credits, is something to see. As I remember it the camera first shows us a deserted landscape, then pans until it shows us a road, then we see a group of young ladies and then the camera moves in on them. All in one take.
Nastassia Kinski made a big impact on moviegoers in the early 1980s. I think that Tess is the movie she will be remembered for. She had a riveting presence and in a couple of scenes reminded me of Ingrid Bergman.
One theme of the film is that of true aristocracy versus nouveau riche pretenders. Tess discovers that she is of an old, aristocratic family and her seducer, or pseudo-rapist, is from a family which has bought her name. What I liked about the way this film is worked out is that this theme doesn't really hit you until the end after Tess has married this guy who presumably was so filled with guilt over his role in her troubles and was so anxious to "do the right thing." When we see them as man and wife he treats her as a possession and seems to enjoy being condescending to her. It struck me that he wanted to bring her down because she had the true dignity and bearing of an aristocrat that his family's money could never buy.
Tess falls for a guy called Angel, who is also not what he appears to be at first. Angel seems noble, poetic, a dreamer. He plays a sort of flute while sitting in a tree (or something like that). But when Tess reveals to him the painful story of how she had an illegitimate child he reveals that he is really a very immature guy. He turns cold on her and goes off to South America, presumably to think things over. He doesn't answer Tess's letters. Yet, all the girls are infatuated by him, bowled over by his attractive persona.
He does return, of course, but Tess's aristocratic pride demands that she sends him away. (Later, she comes to him--after having killed her husband, which to me raised some serious questions about her sanity.)
I find it interesting that in dealing with both men Tess does things that look foolish or wrong, but which turn out to be right. She can't bring herself to tell Angel the truth about her past--and her fears turn out to be completely justified. When the other man wants to help her when she is poor she rebuffs him--and once again we are surprised that her reluctance was the right way to go.
The scenes dealing with Tess's baby were confusing to me; I didn't quite get what was happening. And that haunting finale in a place resembling Stonehenge--what was that all about? It obviously had some kind of significance which was not made clear. There are a couple of other references to paganism in the film, but that theme didn't seem to be sufficiently developed.
For a good part of the film I was thinking that it seemed like a remake of Griffith's Way Down East. But it isn't, even though there are striking similarities. I wish that Angel had gone and beaten the crap out of Tess's "seducer" instead of running off to South America and not even bothering to write.
It's been a while since I've seen Tess, so I won't have a lot to say about it. I found it very impressive and very moving when I did see it. I really liked the photography, especially that of exterior scenes. The opening shot, over the credits, is something to see. As I remember it the camera first shows us a deserted landscape, then pans until it shows us a road, then we see a group of young ladies and then the camera moves in on them. All in one take.
Nastassia Kinski made a big impact on moviegoers in the early 1980s. I think that Tess is the movie she will be remembered for. She had a riveting presence and in a couple of scenes reminded me of Ingrid Bergman.
One theme of the film is that of true aristocracy versus nouveau riche pretenders. Tess discovers that she is of an old, aristocratic family and her seducer, or pseudo-rapist, is from a family which has bought her name. What I liked about the way this film is worked out is that this theme doesn't really hit you until the end after Tess has married this guy who presumably was so filled with guilt over his role in her troubles and was so anxious to "do the right thing." When we see them as man and wife he treats her as a possession and seems to enjoy being condescending to her. It struck me that he wanted to bring her down because she had the true dignity and bearing of an aristocrat that his family's money could never buy.
Tess falls for a guy called Angel, who is also not what he appears to be at first. Angel seems noble, poetic, a dreamer. He plays a sort of flute while sitting in a tree (or something like that). But when Tess reveals to him the painful story of how she had an illegitimate child he reveals that he is really a very immature guy. He turns cold on her and goes off to South America, presumably to think things over. He doesn't answer Tess's letters. Yet, all the girls are infatuated by him, bowled over by his attractive persona.
He does return, of course, but Tess's aristocratic pride demands that she sends him away. (Later, she comes to him--after having killed her husband, which to me raised some serious questions about her sanity.)
I find it interesting that in dealing with both men Tess does things that look foolish or wrong, but which turn out to be right. She can't bring herself to tell Angel the truth about her past--and her fears turn out to be completely justified. When the other man wants to help her when she is poor she rebuffs him--and once again we are surprised that her reluctance was the right way to go.
The scenes dealing with Tess's baby were confusing to me; I didn't quite get what was happening. And that haunting finale in a place resembling Stonehenge--what was that all about? It obviously had some kind of significance which was not made clear. There are a couple of other references to paganism in the film, but that theme didn't seem to be sufficiently developed.
For a good part of the film I was thinking that it seemed like a remake of Griffith's Way Down East. But it isn't, even though there are striking similarities. I wish that Angel had gone and beaten the crap out of Tess's "seducer" instead of running off to South America and not even bothering to write.
Borom Sarret. 1963. Directed by Ousmane Sembene.
(1/14/01)
At the beginning of Borom Sarret a man makes a prayer, asking God to protect him from the law, or law-makers, or the police. It is interesting that the law is viewed not as something that protects, but as something to be feared. And this is certainly reinforced by the rest of the film--the police officer who confiscate the Borom Sarret's cart and lets his customer skip without paying does not administer justice. Back in his section of the town, he says he feels safer there because there are no police around.
There is a priest or singer of some sort who tells the borom sarret about the glories of his ancestors. That certainly doesn't do him any good. If anything, it makes him feel more acutely how far he and his people have fallen.
When this sarret, this cart-driver walks through the streets, thinking about losing his cart, it just doesn't feel that sad. His words are certainly dejected enough, but they don't hit me emotionally. I don't know if that was the way it was intended.
At the end of the film his wife assures him that they will eat that night and leaves. How is she going to provide for them? The thing that comes to my mind is prostitution, but I don't know for sure if that is the way the ending was meant to be understood.
At the beginning of Borom Sarret a man makes a prayer, asking God to protect him from the law, or law-makers, or the police. It is interesting that the law is viewed not as something that protects, but as something to be feared. And this is certainly reinforced by the rest of the film--the police officer who confiscate the Borom Sarret's cart and lets his customer skip without paying does not administer justice. Back in his section of the town, he says he feels safer there because there are no police around.
There is a priest or singer of some sort who tells the borom sarret about the glories of his ancestors. That certainly doesn't do him any good. If anything, it makes him feel more acutely how far he and his people have fallen.
When this sarret, this cart-driver walks through the streets, thinking about losing his cart, it just doesn't feel that sad. His words are certainly dejected enough, but they don't hit me emotionally. I don't know if that was the way it was intended.
At the end of the film his wife assures him that they will eat that night and leaves. How is she going to provide for them? The thing that comes to my mind is prostitution, but I don't know for sure if that is the way the ending was meant to be understood.
Black Girl (La Noire de...). 1966. Directed by Ousmane Sembene.
(1/14/01)
On a second viewing, a couple of things in this film became clearer. Diouana can understand directions in French, but she can only speak a few words, such as, "Oui, monsieur." Thus she has no effective means to express herself.
What is not clear is why the woman who employs her becomes so unpleasant. In Dakar she had given Diouana her old dresses, so why does she suddenly start snapping at her when they are all in France? The lack of communication doesn't explain it.
It is so poignant to see Diouana's excitement about getting the job when you know what it will lead to. She is so happy, running around telling everyone that she knows.
Diouana says internally that her mother didn't write the letter she received. So it seems that neither one of them can write. I noticed this time that the mother's letter is (at least partly) a request for Diouana to send her some money. She complains about how poor she is. That adds an extra bit of punch to the scene towards the end when she refuses to accept Diouana's wages.
The people who visit Diouana's employers for lunch discuss the situation in Africa. I don't have the background to really appreciate this conversation.
There is one moment that struck me this time around. Diouana gaily skips around on the top of a monument. The man she is with becomes angry and tells her to come down. I didn't grasp the significance of it, but I appreciated how alive and vital Diouana seemed.
On a second viewing, a couple of things in this film became clearer. Diouana can understand directions in French, but she can only speak a few words, such as, "Oui, monsieur." Thus she has no effective means to express herself.
What is not clear is why the woman who employs her becomes so unpleasant. In Dakar she had given Diouana her old dresses, so why does she suddenly start snapping at her when they are all in France? The lack of communication doesn't explain it.
It is so poignant to see Diouana's excitement about getting the job when you know what it will lead to. She is so happy, running around telling everyone that she knows.
Diouana says internally that her mother didn't write the letter she received. So it seems that neither one of them can write. I noticed this time that the mother's letter is (at least partly) a request for Diouana to send her some money. She complains about how poor she is. That adds an extra bit of punch to the scene towards the end when she refuses to accept Diouana's wages.
The people who visit Diouana's employers for lunch discuss the situation in Africa. I don't have the background to really appreciate this conversation.
There is one moment that struck me this time around. Diouana gaily skips around on the top of a monument. The man she is with becomes angry and tells her to come down. I didn't grasp the significance of it, but I appreciated how alive and vital Diouana seemed.
The Phantom of Liberty (La Fantome de la liberte). 1974. Directed by Luis Bunuel.
(1/12/01)
This is another "Monty Python"-type film. I didn't like it. It had some interesting ideas and a few good moments, but overall I didn't find it funny and I didn't find it clever.
It is a series of sketches which are loosely connected--very loosely. A character comes into the middle of one episode and then we follow him on his way without the episode he wandered into concluding. It really seemed like Bunuel didn't care enough or didn't know how to wrap things up so he just went off in a different direction.
As I said, a lot of it didn't seem very clever to me. A middle-aged man offers two little girls some photos or postcards in a suggestive way. They bring them home and show them to their parents who are shocked. When we finally get to see them they are pictures of famous monuments.
We don't get to see these pictures for a while, so it is perfectly obvious that they are not the "dirty pictures" that Bunuel is trying to convince us they are. It is just so damn obvious that it is no surprise at all.
A professor is giving a lecture about laws and morals and customs. These change from culture to culture. Some people would like to radically change the morals that we live by, he says, but this could be very disturbing if carried out. To illustrate his point he describes a scene in which well-dressed people come together to comunally move their bowels asa a social occasion, while they eat in private. A man asks a servant the wayto the dining room where he takes his solitary dinner. A woman knocks on the door (or tries to open it) and he tells her that it is occupied.
This whole fantasy just seemed plain stupid to me. No one seeks a change in moral standards or in customs unless they see benefit in doing so--at least to someone. The professor did not give any reason whyy this reversal of the customs of eating and shitting would be desirable to anybody. It just seemed like a tiresome attempt to shock.
We know that Bunuel hated organized religion, but when he makes fun of it in this picture it just seems juvenile. Hungry soldiers in a church decide to eat the sacred host for food. Some monks come into a woman's room at an inn to pray for her father; they end up playing poker, betting with rosaries and scapulas. The same priests get invited for a drink in the room of a man who wants to perform an s&m routine with a leather-clad dominatrix. The priests run from the room, practically screaming.
I suppose that scenes such as these have a liberating effect on some people, but I'm just not there any more. They don't shock me and I don't find them clever or amusing.
A lot went on at that inn. A young man (I would say he is around 19 or 20) brings his elderly aunt there for an assignation. She doesn't want to go through with it. He pleads with him to let him see her naked. Then he turns violent, wanting to have sex with her. This scene brings up the taboo subject of the sexuality of the elderly which is seen elsewhere in Bunuel's films. I found that scene truly distasteful--which is what I am sure Bunuel wanted. OK, so Bunuel "got me." So what? There is something he can make me uncomfortable about.
There is also a sequence about a serial killer (or mass murderer--he's a sniper who shoots people at random from windows high up in a building) who becomes a celebrity, with people asking him for his autograph, after the trial. That part of the film left me unmoved, maybe because it's a subject which has been done in other films, maybe because it's so sadly true.
There are a few other surreal images that I remember. Strange things happen to a man with insomnia, such as animals coming into his bedroom. A man reminisces about his sister and we see her playing the piano nude. But again, my reaction is, "So what?" Maybe I'm just not attuned to surrealism. I just don't see any point in a lot of this.
One part of the film that I did like was when a little girl is reported missing from school, possibly kidnapped, and she's right there all the time. When she tries to tell them that she is there they tell her not to interrupt. In a way everyone knows that she's there because, for example, the police take down her description by looking her over. I think this had an impact because I have had the experience in my own head of not making such obvious connections.
I liked the ending, too. The police or the military go to fire on demonstrators who are shouting, "Down with liberty." They go for a confrontation at the zoo. You never see the demonstrators; you only hear the confrontation while looking at the heads of animals. That scene really did have an impact.
But as a whole I found The Phantom of Liberty kind of pointless and annoying to watch. It didn't seem to add up to very much.
I did enjoy seeing Adolfo Geli and Michael Lonsdale, two performers whom I only know from Bond movies.
This is another "Monty Python"-type film. I didn't like it. It had some interesting ideas and a few good moments, but overall I didn't find it funny and I didn't find it clever.
It is a series of sketches which are loosely connected--very loosely. A character comes into the middle of one episode and then we follow him on his way without the episode he wandered into concluding. It really seemed like Bunuel didn't care enough or didn't know how to wrap things up so he just went off in a different direction.
As I said, a lot of it didn't seem very clever to me. A middle-aged man offers two little girls some photos or postcards in a suggestive way. They bring them home and show them to their parents who are shocked. When we finally get to see them they are pictures of famous monuments.
We don't get to see these pictures for a while, so it is perfectly obvious that they are not the "dirty pictures" that Bunuel is trying to convince us they are. It is just so damn obvious that it is no surprise at all.
A professor is giving a lecture about laws and morals and customs. These change from culture to culture. Some people would like to radically change the morals that we live by, he says, but this could be very disturbing if carried out. To illustrate his point he describes a scene in which well-dressed people come together to comunally move their bowels asa a social occasion, while they eat in private. A man asks a servant the wayto the dining room where he takes his solitary dinner. A woman knocks on the door (or tries to open it) and he tells her that it is occupied.
This whole fantasy just seemed plain stupid to me. No one seeks a change in moral standards or in customs unless they see benefit in doing so--at least to someone. The professor did not give any reason whyy this reversal of the customs of eating and shitting would be desirable to anybody. It just seemed like a tiresome attempt to shock.
We know that Bunuel hated organized religion, but when he makes fun of it in this picture it just seems juvenile. Hungry soldiers in a church decide to eat the sacred host for food. Some monks come into a woman's room at an inn to pray for her father; they end up playing poker, betting with rosaries and scapulas. The same priests get invited for a drink in the room of a man who wants to perform an s&m routine with a leather-clad dominatrix. The priests run from the room, practically screaming.
I suppose that scenes such as these have a liberating effect on some people, but I'm just not there any more. They don't shock me and I don't find them clever or amusing.
A lot went on at that inn. A young man (I would say he is around 19 or 20) brings his elderly aunt there for an assignation. She doesn't want to go through with it. He pleads with him to let him see her naked. Then he turns violent, wanting to have sex with her. This scene brings up the taboo subject of the sexuality of the elderly which is seen elsewhere in Bunuel's films. I found that scene truly distasteful--which is what I am sure Bunuel wanted. OK, so Bunuel "got me." So what? There is something he can make me uncomfortable about.
There is also a sequence about a serial killer (or mass murderer--he's a sniper who shoots people at random from windows high up in a building) who becomes a celebrity, with people asking him for his autograph, after the trial. That part of the film left me unmoved, maybe because it's a subject which has been done in other films, maybe because it's so sadly true.
There are a few other surreal images that I remember. Strange things happen to a man with insomnia, such as animals coming into his bedroom. A man reminisces about his sister and we see her playing the piano nude. But again, my reaction is, "So what?" Maybe I'm just not attuned to surrealism. I just don't see any point in a lot of this.
One part of the film that I did like was when a little girl is reported missing from school, possibly kidnapped, and she's right there all the time. When she tries to tell them that she is there they tell her not to interrupt. In a way everyone knows that she's there because, for example, the police take down her description by looking her over. I think this had an impact because I have had the experience in my own head of not making such obvious connections.
I liked the ending, too. The police or the military go to fire on demonstrators who are shouting, "Down with liberty." They go for a confrontation at the zoo. You never see the demonstrators; you only hear the confrontation while looking at the heads of animals. That scene really did have an impact.
But as a whole I found The Phantom of Liberty kind of pointless and annoying to watch. It didn't seem to add up to very much.
I did enjoy seeing Adolfo Geli and Michael Lonsdale, two performers whom I only know from Bond movies.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Do the Right Thing. 1989. Directed by Spike Lee.
(1/2/01-1/3/01)
Do the Right Thing is a rich, high-energy tapestry of life in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. It is loosely constructed, but it unfolds in a series of sharp, interesting scenes and a gallery of characters who hold our interst. And it has some sexy scenes thrown in for good measure. The music gives it a hip, up-to-date feel.
It all takes place on one very, very hot summer's day. Sal and his sons run a pizzeria which has been at the same location for 25 years. One of Sal's sons wants to get out of Bed-Stuy, but Sal says he is theer to stay. He is part of the neighborhood and most of the people like him. There are people in the neighborhood who have grown up eating Sal's pizza and he is proud of that.
Sal--obviously an Italian--has a gallery of pictures of famous Italian-Americans. One black teenager becomes very offended that there are no pictures of "brothers." This kid is looking for trouble and spends most of the time trying to organize a boycott that no one wants to join. Eventually he joins forces with another troublemaker and they storm into the pizzeria and start a fight. It turns into a riot or a near-riot with the police restraining the other one who dies in the struggle. Then the angry blacks erupt and totally destroy the pizzeria.
The film ends with quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X about the use of violence as a means to achieve racial justice. King is against it and Malcolm X sees it as both justified and intelligent. Spike Lee apparently leaves this as an open question, something for the audience to ponder.
That is all well and good, but my feeling at the end was that the events of the film did not warrant the quotations and the importance that they seem to imply. This wasn't a film about any great struggle for justice. It was about two kids who were looking for trouble and one of them got killed. That is what can happen when you go looking for trouble. It doesn't have anything to do, really, with racial justice and it is unfortunate that blacks want to make it so.
However, I later read this in the program notes: "[I]n his [Spike Lee's] film, the riot is provoked by the murder of a black teenager by police" (emphasis added). That certainly wasn't the way that I saw it, but maybe that's how it was meant. If so, I don't think it was very successfully conveyed.
The word "murder" implies that the police deliberately intended to kill the young man. Why would they do that? For what reason? It looked to me like they were simply trying to restrain him as best they could and it was hard because he was big and energetic. They may have overestimated what amount of restraint was required, but that is a far cry from murder and to me it certainly falls under the heading of what can happen when you go looking for trouble.
There is so much else in this picture. Director Spike Lee himself plays Mookie, a black guy who works for Sal as a delivery boy. This is the first job that he has kept for over a month. He doesn't get along well with his employer. He gets involved with the relationship between Sal's two sons, basically trying to get one to stand up to the other. He drops in at his girlfriend's place for some quick sex when he should be working. He is chastized by his sister for not living up to his reponsibilities. (He has a son.)
At the end of the film it is Mookie who picks up a garbage can and hurls it through the window of the pizzeria, starting the riot. And the next day--unbelievably, as far as I was concerned--he comes back to ask Sal for his pay. He dismisses the damage by saying that the insurance company will pay for it. I couldn't believe it that Sal actually pays him--in fact, he overpays him, crumpling up the bills and throwing them at Mookie. Mookie throws the extra money back at Sal and they each sort of dare the other to take it. Mookie does, finally, reach down and scoop up the crumpled bills.
Sal is fond of Mookie's sister, Jade. She comes by and Sal is very nice to her. This makes Mookie very angry and he tells Jade to stay away and then tells Sal to leave his sister alone. There really isn't any reason to think that Sal has dishonorable intentions towards Jade.
All this is interesting in light of the fact that Mookie's girlfriend (and mother of his son) is not black. She is Hispanic. Mookie stays away from her as much as possible, except when he wants sex. He prefers to live with his sister.
The black women in this film come across as strong, dominant, maybe even authority figures (quite unlike the world of Bunuel's El). Jade talks to her brother in an authoritarian tone about his responsibilities and when "Da Mayor" rescues a child from being hit by a vehicle and tells his mother not to be too rough on him she tells him in a sharp, commanding tone that she won't let anyone tell her how to raise her child--even his father.
Da Mayor is a likable old man who comes across as a kind of wastrel or bum. He is fond of an older woman called "Mother Sister" who rebuffs his gentlemanly courtship. A tough young black male criticizes him for not having fought harder to feed his children. But Da Mayor has his positive qualities. He rescues the child from being hit and during the riot when Mother Sister sort of goes to pieces he puts his arms around her firmly and takes her home. He has gotten through her resistance.
Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are wonderful to watch as Day Mayor and Mother Sister.
The kid that was killed by the police was called Radio Raheem. There is a scene where he shows someone gold knuckles (maybe brass, but I don't think so) with the words "love" and "hate" on them--similar to Robert Mitchum's use of the same words in Night of the Hunter. He tells the story of love and hate and how they struggle to dominate a person. This suggests a high level of spiritual awareness, but then he goes into Sal's pizzeria with a booming radio which he refuses to turn off. This shows zero respect for anyone else's experience and he just seems to be looking for a way to start trouble. He has a confrontation with Sal and his face is shown through a distorting lens, making it truly menacing. (This is repeated later.)
There is a wonderful montage of people of different ethnic backgrounds spewing forth racial epithets. The targets are not just blacks but Italians, Hispanics, Orientals. This is a hard-hitting vignette of rampant racism. In fact, the neighborhood we observe is full of different strains and the summer heat is--now that I think of it--a metaphor for the simmering tensions.
There is one very sexy scene where Mookie talks his girlfriend into having sex with him. He gets her to stand on the bed and undress. All we see is her legs on the bed and the panties drop over them. ("What do you have me standing on the bed for?" she asks.)
There is also a very nice scene where the young people in the neighborhood open up a fire hydrant and have fun getting each other wet. I liked some of the clothes the girls wore.
This film is full of interesting moments, interesting situations and things to think about. It is a rich film from beginning to end, but I don't think the ending was totally successful in that I can't see Raheem's death as a "murder" or the destruction of the pizzeria as being in the name of "racial justice."
Incidentally, I like the credits where two women alternately dance to Public Enemy's "Fight the Powers."
Do the Right Thing is a rich, high-energy tapestry of life in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. It is loosely constructed, but it unfolds in a series of sharp, interesting scenes and a gallery of characters who hold our interst. And it has some sexy scenes thrown in for good measure. The music gives it a hip, up-to-date feel.
It all takes place on one very, very hot summer's day. Sal and his sons run a pizzeria which has been at the same location for 25 years. One of Sal's sons wants to get out of Bed-Stuy, but Sal says he is theer to stay. He is part of the neighborhood and most of the people like him. There are people in the neighborhood who have grown up eating Sal's pizza and he is proud of that.
Sal--obviously an Italian--has a gallery of pictures of famous Italian-Americans. One black teenager becomes very offended that there are no pictures of "brothers." This kid is looking for trouble and spends most of the time trying to organize a boycott that no one wants to join. Eventually he joins forces with another troublemaker and they storm into the pizzeria and start a fight. It turns into a riot or a near-riot with the police restraining the other one who dies in the struggle. Then the angry blacks erupt and totally destroy the pizzeria.
The film ends with quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X about the use of violence as a means to achieve racial justice. King is against it and Malcolm X sees it as both justified and intelligent. Spike Lee apparently leaves this as an open question, something for the audience to ponder.
That is all well and good, but my feeling at the end was that the events of the film did not warrant the quotations and the importance that they seem to imply. This wasn't a film about any great struggle for justice. It was about two kids who were looking for trouble and one of them got killed. That is what can happen when you go looking for trouble. It doesn't have anything to do, really, with racial justice and it is unfortunate that blacks want to make it so.
However, I later read this in the program notes: "[I]n his [Spike Lee's] film, the riot is provoked by the murder of a black teenager by police" (emphasis added). That certainly wasn't the way that I saw it, but maybe that's how it was meant. If so, I don't think it was very successfully conveyed.
The word "murder" implies that the police deliberately intended to kill the young man. Why would they do that? For what reason? It looked to me like they were simply trying to restrain him as best they could and it was hard because he was big and energetic. They may have overestimated what amount of restraint was required, but that is a far cry from murder and to me it certainly falls under the heading of what can happen when you go looking for trouble.
There is so much else in this picture. Director Spike Lee himself plays Mookie, a black guy who works for Sal as a delivery boy. This is the first job that he has kept for over a month. He doesn't get along well with his employer. He gets involved with the relationship between Sal's two sons, basically trying to get one to stand up to the other. He drops in at his girlfriend's place for some quick sex when he should be working. He is chastized by his sister for not living up to his reponsibilities. (He has a son.)
At the end of the film it is Mookie who picks up a garbage can and hurls it through the window of the pizzeria, starting the riot. And the next day--unbelievably, as far as I was concerned--he comes back to ask Sal for his pay. He dismisses the damage by saying that the insurance company will pay for it. I couldn't believe it that Sal actually pays him--in fact, he overpays him, crumpling up the bills and throwing them at Mookie. Mookie throws the extra money back at Sal and they each sort of dare the other to take it. Mookie does, finally, reach down and scoop up the crumpled bills.
Sal is fond of Mookie's sister, Jade. She comes by and Sal is very nice to her. This makes Mookie very angry and he tells Jade to stay away and then tells Sal to leave his sister alone. There really isn't any reason to think that Sal has dishonorable intentions towards Jade.
All this is interesting in light of the fact that Mookie's girlfriend (and mother of his son) is not black. She is Hispanic. Mookie stays away from her as much as possible, except when he wants sex. He prefers to live with his sister.
The black women in this film come across as strong, dominant, maybe even authority figures (quite unlike the world of Bunuel's El). Jade talks to her brother in an authoritarian tone about his responsibilities and when "Da Mayor" rescues a child from being hit by a vehicle and tells his mother not to be too rough on him she tells him in a sharp, commanding tone that she won't let anyone tell her how to raise her child--even his father.
Da Mayor is a likable old man who comes across as a kind of wastrel or bum. He is fond of an older woman called "Mother Sister" who rebuffs his gentlemanly courtship. A tough young black male criticizes him for not having fought harder to feed his children. But Da Mayor has his positive qualities. He rescues the child from being hit and during the riot when Mother Sister sort of goes to pieces he puts his arms around her firmly and takes her home. He has gotten through her resistance.
Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are wonderful to watch as Day Mayor and Mother Sister.
The kid that was killed by the police was called Radio Raheem. There is a scene where he shows someone gold knuckles (maybe brass, but I don't think so) with the words "love" and "hate" on them--similar to Robert Mitchum's use of the same words in Night of the Hunter. He tells the story of love and hate and how they struggle to dominate a person. This suggests a high level of spiritual awareness, but then he goes into Sal's pizzeria with a booming radio which he refuses to turn off. This shows zero respect for anyone else's experience and he just seems to be looking for a way to start trouble. He has a confrontation with Sal and his face is shown through a distorting lens, making it truly menacing. (This is repeated later.)
There is a wonderful montage of people of different ethnic backgrounds spewing forth racial epithets. The targets are not just blacks but Italians, Hispanics, Orientals. This is a hard-hitting vignette of rampant racism. In fact, the neighborhood we observe is full of different strains and the summer heat is--now that I think of it--a metaphor for the simmering tensions.
There is one very sexy scene where Mookie talks his girlfriend into having sex with him. He gets her to stand on the bed and undress. All we see is her legs on the bed and the panties drop over them. ("What do you have me standing on the bed for?" she asks.)
There is also a very nice scene where the young people in the neighborhood open up a fire hydrant and have fun getting each other wet. I liked some of the clothes the girls wore.
This film is full of interesting moments, interesting situations and things to think about. It is a rich film from beginning to end, but I don't think the ending was totally successful in that I can't see Raheem's death as a "murder" or the destruction of the pizzeria as being in the name of "racial justice."
Incidentally, I like the credits where two women alternately dance to Public Enemy's "Fight the Powers."
El. 1952. Directed by Luis Bunuel.
(1/1/01)
El is a Bunuel delight. It is consistently entertaining. Arturo de Cordova has a field day as the jealous husband. Delia Garces seems rather colorless as the wife, but she is really playing straight man to Cordova.
It begins with a scene that really made me uncomfortable. It is in church and a priest is going through the ritual of washing (and I think even kissing) the feet of young boys. It is an image of perverted sexuality satisfied by religious ritual.
The eyes of a man, Francisco, stray from this spectacle to look at a row of women's feet. And in this row of women he finds one that he likes and that he pursues. Her name is Gloria and she is engaged to a friend of his, but he prevails and they marry.
Once they are married he becomes insanely jealous, with an emphasis on the words insane. He imagines ridiculous things about his wife and makes her life a living hell. What happens is both comic and horrifying.
Because Francisco is a well-respected man he is unvaryingly upheld as being in the right. When he insists that the man in the next room in the hotel has been chasing Gloria and picks a fight with him it is the other man who is asked to leave. Gloria goes to talk first to her mother and then to the priest. In both cases Francisco has beaten her to them, his account of the problem has been accepted and Gloria finds herself viewed as being in the wrong. She is not being a good wife.
The fact that he is a man gives him a big advantage. This is prefigured earlier in the film when the valet harrasses the maid and it is the maid who is dismissed. This is a patriarchal culture and men have the status.
Things come to a head in church. Where else? Francisco (I think) follows Gloria or a woman he mistakes for her into church. (I forget exactlywhat happens.) He imagines that every one is laughing at him. This scene is a tour de force. The film cuts back and forth from what Francisco imagines--everyone laughing and pointing fingers and making horn gestures at him--to reality. It is accenuated by freeze-frames. Finally, in his madness, he attacks the priest on the altar. Even Francisco can't get away with that.
At the end Francisco is living quietly in a monastery. Gloria has gone back to her former fiance, Raul. In the last shot Francisco walks a zigzag path. It is like the Catholic Church has claimed him. His real life has been taken away from him.
The Church is blamed, I believe, for francisco's problems. He has never had sex before his somewhat late marriage, probably in an attempt to live up to the morals he has been taught. His sexuality has been repressed and it can no longer function normally. Thus, the only place for him is a monastery.
I want to mention two other interesting moments. Francisco shoots Gloria with a gun and she falls. In the next scene we learn that the gun was filled with blanks and he was only trying to scare her. The other one is when he takes her to a bell tower in a church or mission and appears to try to throw her off. When she runs from him he tells her that he was only kidding.
El is a Bunuel delight. It is consistently entertaining. Arturo de Cordova has a field day as the jealous husband. Delia Garces seems rather colorless as the wife, but she is really playing straight man to Cordova.
It begins with a scene that really made me uncomfortable. It is in church and a priest is going through the ritual of washing (and I think even kissing) the feet of young boys. It is an image of perverted sexuality satisfied by religious ritual.
The eyes of a man, Francisco, stray from this spectacle to look at a row of women's feet. And in this row of women he finds one that he likes and that he pursues. Her name is Gloria and she is engaged to a friend of his, but he prevails and they marry.
Once they are married he becomes insanely jealous, with an emphasis on the words insane. He imagines ridiculous things about his wife and makes her life a living hell. What happens is both comic and horrifying.
Because Francisco is a well-respected man he is unvaryingly upheld as being in the right. When he insists that the man in the next room in the hotel has been chasing Gloria and picks a fight with him it is the other man who is asked to leave. Gloria goes to talk first to her mother and then to the priest. In both cases Francisco has beaten her to them, his account of the problem has been accepted and Gloria finds herself viewed as being in the wrong. She is not being a good wife.
The fact that he is a man gives him a big advantage. This is prefigured earlier in the film when the valet harrasses the maid and it is the maid who is dismissed. This is a patriarchal culture and men have the status.
Things come to a head in church. Where else? Francisco (I think) follows Gloria or a woman he mistakes for her into church. (I forget exactlywhat happens.) He imagines that every one is laughing at him. This scene is a tour de force. The film cuts back and forth from what Francisco imagines--everyone laughing and pointing fingers and making horn gestures at him--to reality. It is accenuated by freeze-frames. Finally, in his madness, he attacks the priest on the altar. Even Francisco can't get away with that.
At the end Francisco is living quietly in a monastery. Gloria has gone back to her former fiance, Raul. In the last shot Francisco walks a zigzag path. It is like the Catholic Church has claimed him. His real life has been taken away from him.
The Church is blamed, I believe, for francisco's problems. He has never had sex before his somewhat late marriage, probably in an attempt to live up to the morals he has been taught. His sexuality has been repressed and it can no longer function normally. Thus, the only place for him is a monastery.
I want to mention two other interesting moments. Francisco shoots Gloria with a gun and she falls. In the next scene we learn that the gun was filled with blanks and he was only trying to scare her. The other one is when he takes her to a bell tower in a church or mission and appears to try to throw her off. When she runs from him he tells her that he was only kidding.
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