tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42127929511385857062024-03-12T17:13:56.728-07:00another cinema blogtony d'ambra's other film blogUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-19650997274899691492015-03-28T22:41:00.001-07:002015-03-28T22:42:42.791-07:00Leviathan (Russia 2014)<br />
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While the dismal tone of Andrey Zvyagintsev's <strong>Leviathan</strong> is certainly right, the film has flaws: a contrived melodramatic scenario, and the black & white goodies vs baddies narrative lacks subtlety.<br />
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Two narrative tricks of expecting thugs rather than the wife to enter the hotel room of the lawyer, and the conceit of the scene at the "pic-nic" where we expect the son to have fallen down the ravine, are too obvious, and the portrayal of the Russian Church as some darkly sinister overlord is a tad propaganda-like. The protagonists are hardly saints and bring about a lot of their own grief.<br />
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These flaws aside it is powerful cinema, and the acting is fine. The whale symbolism is subtle if overt, but better still is the rapacious maw of the wrecking machine seen from inside the house.<br />
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While the allegory - as Zvyagintsev has said in an interview - has universal relevance, his anger is directed squarely at Russia. We only need look at our "democracies" and the leviathan bureaucracies that govern and mostly frustrate our lives, to appreciate the parallels.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-46562487842845689802014-09-16T23:01:00.000-07:002014-11-10T16:17:04.786-08:00L’Atalante (France 1934): The romance of cinema<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Jean Vigo when he made one of cinema’s poetic masterpieces was consumptive and likely had a keen awareness of the slender hold he had on life. L’Atalante was to be his last film and his enduring cinematic legacy. A simple romantic story told with a shimmering love for those that history ignores, for unaffected lives which have a glory beyond greatness, bound up in the simple verities. The early tentative days of a just-married couple have a romance and visual poetry tinged with the melancholy of the river’s flow, itself a metaphor for the ineluctable passing of time, and the ebbs and flows of life. A tale told without artifice and with a boundless optimism. A timeless story of young love, the tribulations of matrimony, the joys of friendship, the rewards of loyalty, and the delight from the comic mishaps that life thankfully can bring; along with the conflict, the suffering, and the heartache.<br />
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L’Atalante opens in a riverside village with the marriage of barge captain Jean and Juliette his bride, by following the wedding procession from the church to the river. These disjointed scenes have a droll rhythm that immediately have you engaged. The barge’s first mate, a gruff crotchety older man ‘Le père Jules’, and a callow cabin boy get an advance on the wedding march, but not before Jules hurriedly backtracks to the church font to quickly make the sign of the cross. The bridal couple troop in total seriousness, and in silence, followed languidly by a far more relaxed wedding party. The mother of the bride is comforted by the father, while the rest straggle and find plenty to gossip about. A man at the tail end of the procession gives his partner a more than gentle giddy-up by patting her on the behind. We learn from the gossip that there will be no honeymoon. Juliette is to start married life on the barge in the cramped quarters below deck with Jean and his crew – and Jules’ harem of shipboard cats.<br />
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Jules and the cabin boy have raced ahead so that they can welcome the new “lady-boss” on board with a bunch of flowers. As they frantically prepare aboard for her impending arrival, we are regaled with a delightful slapstick around the flowers, the bucketful of water to keep them fresh, the river, and a kitten clinging to the shoulders of Jules’ coat as he lumbers about on deck.<br />
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After getting the bride safely on board, L’Atalante steams towards Paris with its cargo and crew. Along with the ripples of the barge’s flow we see the young newlyweds running hot and cold; Juliette setting up house and disturbing the bachelor habits of the males, while dreaming of Paris and being fascinated with the strange collection of Jules’ souvenirs from a lifetime of seafaring; and, to Juliette’s consternation, the cats invading the bridal bed!<br />
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It is not long before Jean has an outbreak of jealousy, when Juliette discovers the weird and wonderful train wreck that is Jules’ cabin. In a scene that is infused with a playful eroticism, Jules’ naked and tattooed upper torso jostles dangerously with Juliette’s playful fascination as they squeeze past one another over, under, and around the assorted bric-a-brac. Jules’ pinups of nude women a winking counterpoint to these less than innocent antics. Jean on coming upon the scene in his anger goes to smashing whatever of the detritus comes to hand.<br />
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When they reach the environs of Paris, Jules, in a sulk after the run-in with Jean, storms off in search of ‘doctoring’ by a lady of the night. With Jules AWOL, Jean must stay with the barge, so the couple are not able to explore Paris until evening, when Jules returns. With Jules back on board, Jean and Juliette visit a cabaret near the wharf. There, an itinerant magician on a bicycle flirts brazenly with Juliette. Jean’s jealousy is reignited and he peevishly decides to leave Paris that night. Juliette has other ideas and sneaks onto a tram headed for the centre of Paris.<br />
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A rift and extended separation follows, after Juliette is left stranded in Paris when Jean in another fit of peevishness he will regret, has the barge leave Paris without her. But true love eventually prevails with the two lovers reunited at the end in an emotional reunion and embrace. The reunion comes after Jules locates Juliette and returns her to the barge in an outrageous search and rescue operation.<br />
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The story is reverently portrayed through elegiac scenes of the working barge in mist, under clouds, in the early morning, and at night. Below deck the camaraderie and tensions arising from confinement are filmed in close-up and from overhead. There is a true intimacy as all four inhabitants – with all the ups and downs of barge life – settle down to a modus-vivendi sealed with affection and regard, but as with all lively souls, not without an inclination to melodramatic outbursts of jealousy and fickleness. A spice that none of them could live without, and which makes our journey as voyeurs so much richer and compelling. We fall in love with these souls. They draw out our own longings and regrets, and we invest these lives with a veracity so bright that we don’t want the journey to end.<br />
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It is Vigo’s film, but his ownership is mortgaged to the stellar cast, the richness of Boris Kaufman’s cinematography, and the playful melodies of Maurice Jaubert’s cheeky score, resting as it does on the zestful wheezing of the piano accordian, that distinctly egalitarian instrument so loved by the French.<br />
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Vigo filmed during winter, so on location shooting was hostage to the weather, and on days of heavy fog some scenes were shot on a studio replica of the barge. The seamless photography and the editing never betray the artifice. The location scenes have a cinema-verité, almost documentary, quality, which in deep focus records the barge’s journey to Paris. A particular sequence when Jean and his crew manoeuvre the boat through a lock, is stunningly beautiful.<br />
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In this naturalistic tableau the charms of the principal players engage your emotions so completely that when there is a conflict or separation, you are more than anxious for a reconciliation, so they can continue the romance of their lives together.<br />
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Michel Simon as Jules is a joy with his comic antics having not only charm but a deep humanity. Jean is played by Jean Dasté, the lead from Vigo’s earlier Zero de conduit, who perfectly portrays the conflicted young lover often stumbling while learning to balance the love for his new bride, his work, and the affection and regard of his crew. Dita Parlo as Juliette captures your heart. Charming, cute as a button, and totally unaffected, she is the girl next door in all her innocence, decency, starry-eyed giggles, and petulant obstinacy. Vigo selected the inexperienced Louis Lefebvre to play the cabin boy for the very beguiling awkwardness that the young novice portrays. Gille Margaritis as the surreal magician during his scenes literally demolishes the scenery – even boldly ad-libbing satirical lyrics to a popular romantic song of the period about barge life.<br />
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The romance of Vigo’s L’Atalante in all its votive and lyrical charm takes you to a place you never want to leave. A romance of love and of life, a cinematic refuge from the dark absurdity of existence.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-63570801799208973272014-08-29T00:49:00.001-07:002014-08-29T00:50:58.066-07:00Orson Welles' Too Much Johnson (1938)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuTh7arU2l0Ur00uZe9EfUAZOOn1o8rELJJLmzFa8AC4skNwuqq9Q8haNRpO9C6MDQgWHPskHwGzRmZTvNEwQqH5nC0oSXHhhM6YRdUkkOfjsum_CBirFs2Oz40pH7FS8ObPbPJVQcxhBN/s1600/toomuchjohnson-1938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuTh7arU2l0Ur00uZe9EfUAZOOn1o8rELJJLmzFa8AC4skNwuqq9Q8haNRpO9C6MDQgWHPskHwGzRmZTvNEwQqH5nC0oSXHhhM6YRdUkkOfjsum_CBirFs2Oz40pH7FS8ObPbPJVQcxhBN/s1600/toomuchjohnson-1938.jpg" height="298" title="Too Much Johnson - Orson Welles - 1938" width="400" /></a><br />
Orson Welles' first foray into cinema was a silent romantic farce envisaged as a multi-media backdrop to a theatrical revival of the 19th-century William Gillette play <strong>Too Much Johnson</strong> by Welles' Mercury Theatre Company. The project was never realised. <br />
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A work print of the scenes filmed by Welles on location in New York restored from reels found in Italy has been released by the National Film Preservation Foundation.<br />
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The restored film is a bit too much of everything, yet there is a wry humour and the naïve exuberance of the neophyte discovering what he can do with a camera and a surrealist approach to editing. Scene cuts and unedited repetitions are dada-like, especially chaotic chase scenes where a woman's lover is pursuing a rival on the streets and over the rooftops of Manhattan. Sequences in the Meatpacking District of New York featuring fruit boxes and hats are truly inspired. Joseph Cotton as the pursued paramour is a comic delight, and his rooftop antics really impress. Two "broads" the subject of amorous fancy are gorgeous and cheeky. An early bedroom scene between lovers is a lot of fun and has a rare post-Code sauciness . The final reel set in "Cuba" - fake palms stuck in the sand of a riverbed - is repetitious and lacks focus, though I imagine if Welles had finished the editing, it would have been a lot tighter. The added piano score by Michael D. Mortilla is brilliant. <br />
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The film can be viewed or downloaded on the <a href="http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/mercury-theatre-project" target="_blank">National Film Preservation Foundation</a> web site.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-69249073843494620602014-06-23T04:18:00.002-07:002014-11-10T16:24:04.572-08:00Now Voyager (1942): The art of melodrama<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em>“THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,<br /> Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.”</em><br />
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-Walt Whitman, The Untold Want, Leaves of Grass (1900)<br />
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Novelist Olive Higgins Prouty chose the title for her popular novel ‘Now, Voyager’ from two lines of poetry by Walt Whitman. These words in the book and in the film are offered to a repressed spinster, Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis), the youngest daughter of a wealthy Boston matriarch (Gladys Cooper), by her psychiatrist Dr Jaquith (Claude Rains) as the key to freedom, to her making her own way in the world. Away from the oppressive hold her tyrannical mother has over her.<br />
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Now, Voyager while absolutely a ‘woman’s picture’, significantly and importantly transcends melodrama. Yes, ugly duckling Charlotte finds love and purpose in two romantic hours of movie magic from Hollywood’s golden years. There is more than romance though. There is romantic love and passion, but also compassion. A compassion that sublimates romantic love to a familial love that from nurture finds fulfilment and a kind of freedom.<br />
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After spending time in a sanatorium Charlotte does embark on a voyage. A long cruise to South America where she meets Jerry a gentle older man (Paul Henreid) who not only loves her, but in their falling into love, gives her the agency to overcome her inhibitions. He reaches for the person she wants to be. She responds a flower blossoming in the warmth of his regard. But he is married with children and the affair must end, and they reconcile to life without each other.<br />
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Charlotte’s renaissance is almost complete. She is to be tested again when she returns to her cloistered home in Boston. Charlotte discovers she is not afraid – she will and does defy her mother’s tyranny. She builds a new life and settles on the prospect of marriage with a man she may grow to love. The mother’s sudden death after arguing with Charlotte, when Charlotte breaks off with her suitor after a chance encounter with Jerry, throws her into a panic of guilt. She seeks refuge by returning to the sanatorium. There she meets a troubled young girl, and sees herself as she used to be. That the child is the daughter of Jerry is a convenient but eminently forgivable irony that comes with the genre territory. Charlotte finds meaning again when she befriends the child and makes it her mission to help her. This innocent will bind the lovers, yet also constrain them. Their happiness will come from the care of ‘their’ child, and their union must take second place. They don’t have the moon, but they have the stars.<br />
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But Now, Voyager is so much more. Above all else, we have the sublime Bette Davis as Charlotte, whose transfiguration has you captivated. It is all there, the vulnerability, the frustration, and the anger against the selfish and domineering mother who has held her emotionally captive and mentally shackled. Then the journey of self-discovery and emancipation. The psychological underpinnings are rudimentary and overplayed, but are not any less compelling for that. It is the sincerity of the portrayal that counts. There are no histrionics but felt emotion. You enter into Charlotte’s life. Through voice-over and flashback you are less a voyeur than a sympathetic friend.<br />
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There is the subtlety of Prouty’s story, the brilliance of the script and the literate dialog from the pen of Casey Robinson; the strength of the supporting cast; the elegance of the direction and of the editing; and there is the lush romantic grandeur of Max Steiner’s score. But it is Davis that commands your attention, your complicity, your admiration, and your love.<br />
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Paul Henreid as Jerry and Claude Rains as the psychiatrist Dr Jaquith deepen the sincerity. These two decent men who though they have different roles to play in Charlotte’s life, are motivated by compassion, the same desire to release Charlotte from her isolation, from her loneliness, and from her self-doubt. That same compassion Charlotte in turn bestows to her troubled lover, who laments to her the unfairness to her of him not being free. She tells him that she fell in love with her eyes wide open, and makes no judgment nor demands. The same compassion she will show to Jerry’s daughter. This final solicitude has a true pathos, and I am not ashamed to admit that it always brings tears to my eyes.<br />
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For catharsis is the dramatic essence of Now, Voyager. Our emotional involvement is not limited to a suspension of disbelief, but involves us binding to the life we are privileged to share. While the lives portrayed have no existence beyond the celluloid passing through the projector, our own lives will be enriched by the memory. As Jerry tells Charlotte, after she tells him when they first have to part that she hates goodbyes, there is always the memory.<br />
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Director Irving Rapper in his first major directorial assignment has the camera fluid and mobile, framing scenes and shots with a seamless élan, with the protagonists always front and centre. He uses close-ups sparingly and only for dramatic effect, including cinematic flourishes that give visual cues to emotions and motivation. He uses recurrent motifs to convey changes of mood and intimacy, and particularly character development. When Charlotte first appears we see only her legs below the knee as she hesitantly walks down the stairs of her mother’s mansion in the sensible stridently unfeminine shoes her mother insists she wear. We do not see her fully until the next scene in another room as a dowdy woman past the first blush of youth. Later a similar shot has Charlotte stepping down the gangplank of her cruise liner to join an excursion ashore. This time she is wearing stylish shoes, and the camera does not stop there. It moves up and reveals a new women – elegant and a little mysterious. Charlotte is still hesitant in her new incarnation though, and while she wears a chic hat, a soft wide brim hides her timid eyes. Later at the end of the cruise when she disembarks in New York she is even more elegant, vibrant and assured, walking down to the wharf accompanied by gentlemen admirers, and in a stiff-brimmed hat revealing sparkling confident eyes.<br />
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Of course there are the famous cigarette scenes between the lovers, which are consciously phallic, and suggest there has been a consummation of their love. In an earlier scene in a mountain hut after a mishap on an onshore excursion has them spend a night alone. As they lay together the camera pans away from the lovers to a bright log fire, which by morning in the next scene is reduced to glowing embers. In the movie’s final scene, when Charlotte takes the cigarette lit by Jerry holding it in his lips with his own, the metaphor is re-imagined as a sublimation of their sexual union. An incomplete reconciling, and perhaps a cutting loose. The late British critic Andrew Britton in an essay on the film writes of the “erasure of the phallus”, and goes as far as to say that Charlotte does not need Jerry, or any man, any more. Charlotte has achieved fulfilment outside the bourgeois expectation that a woman may find it only in the love of a man consummated by marriage and domesticity. While plausible, this radical interpretation is perhaps to a degree imposed. While Charlotte can and will find a kind of fulfilment outside marriage, this does not necessarily mean she prefers to be alone.<br />
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I have only scratched the surface of this gem of a film. There is an intelligence and richness that deserves greater recognition. It is a romance and more. It is also a feminist polemic that only an actress of Bette Davis’ stature could innately comprehend and express. We all want and need love, but as Charlotte says to Jerry, in the taking we also give.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-18936222324352199632013-12-15T14:33:00.002-08:002013-12-15T14:33:58.137-08:00La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty Italy 2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A wit I can't recall lamented in blunt irony that the rich are always with us. Fifty years after Fellini invited us to vicariously savour la dolce vita, another film-maker offers another glimpse into the demimonde, in a richly baroque, loving embrace of a Rome where ancient artefacts host the bunga-bunga vapidity of the latest incarnation of Roman excess. Luscious young women gyrate to pulsating dance music and bored rich people luxuriate in their ennui and self-absorption. Our guide is Jep Gambardella, a journalist on the cusp of old age. He once wrote a novel, something of which we are reminded rather too often, and loved a girl in his lost youth. Surprise, surprise, he finds his life wanting. A spiritual emptiness not so much a problem but a conceit. Much like his designer clothes and acid wit. For him, a funeral is a performance.<br />
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Jep, more with languor than urgency, between cigarettes and while staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, ponders the big questions in a small way. Is director Paolo Sorrenti playing a rather elaborate joke on the glitterati of film who like moths to the flame frenetically flutter in their ecstatic worship of this film? Is it all "blah, blah" as Jep muses in one of his rare lucid moments. Perhaps. Or maybe he actually is serious that we should care about Jep our guide.<br />
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Like the limping man with the mysterious suitcase, Jep has all the keys to the beauty of Rome. Yet he has never found its soul. Why? Not for want of trying. He most likely has looked in all the wrong places. Where are the right places? Sorrentini doesn't show us. Indeed does he even know? His Rome is a place beyond normal lives. Every frame is immaculately composed, but with all spontaneity excluded. A dead beauty where the mess of real lives is kept at an ethereal distance, lest it contaminate those perfect compositions. <br />
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Thankfully Sorrentini stumbles at the end. Enter a desiccated 104 year old toothless nun - a gratuitously banal caricature of Mother Teresa - and an ambitious cardinal. Her aphorisms are empty, and the cardinal, the bishop most likely to be the next Pope, who would rather talk about food than matters spiritual, has "no answers". He leaves the scene behind the gliding curtain of his glimmering limousine after insincerely blessing our lost hero. In these pitfalls Sorrentini exposes the inadequacy of his own answers. Jep will now write another novel about "the great beauty" beneath the "blah, blah". Just who is supposed to care?<br />
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There is a certain irony in seeing this film over 6 months after it's release. There is now a new Bishop Of Rome. He does not drive around in a shiny limousine and he doesn't live in a gilded palace. He picks up the phone and talks to people who have written to him with their problems. People in that world beyond the magnificent terraces of the rich.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-51478699023184098652013-11-30T23:38:00.001-08:002014-11-10T16:26:10.540-08:00High Noon (1952) <br />
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Growing up in an inner-city suburb of Sydney in the 50s and before my Dad bought us a b&w television, every Saturday he would take my younger brother and me to the local cinema for the matinee, which most days featured a Western. So by the age of 7 or 8 I had pretty well absorbed all the conventions of the genre and my hero was the cowboy. Around that time after a spell in hospital my parents gave me a special gift. A cow hide cowboy outfit. The full kit. Hat, chaps, vest, tin spurs, and double-holster six-guns. I was over the moon. And the coolest thing was that riveted on to the jacket was a tin star. That meant I was the good guy.<br />
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A tin star. With it went power but even more an obligation. Adherence to a creed that required courage and perhaps sacrifice for a greater good. Those worthy of that tin star were decent and courageous men. The selfish concerns of family, comfort and material well-being trumped by allegiance to a higher more demanding code.<br />
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In High Noon, set in a small frontier town, Marshall Will Kane, needs to get up a posse of deputies fast. A convicted killer, Frank Miller, is heading into town on the noon train, and he will in all likelihood, in cahoots with three hombres waiting at the station, be gunning for Kane, the man who arrested him five years before, only to be saved from the gallows, imprisoned for five years, and then pardoned by abolitionists up North. Kane is bitter at this leniency yet allows that “sometimes prison changes a man”. But can he rely on this unlikely possibility?<br />
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This classic scenario is played out in real time over 85 minutes in a taut progression of scenes that are marked by cuts to ticking clocks pointing to the impending confrontation. Kane has to face the threat alone. Those who he would rely on, either from cowardice, ambition or selfishness, desert him. There are even those who welcome the bad guys because they are good for business: the saloon keeper, a barber cum coffin-maker, the hotel clerk, and an ambitious but callow deputy who turns in his badge.<br />
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Kane is not young, and maybe a little tired. When the news of Miller’s impending arrival hits town, an aging still handsome Gary Cooper, always an actor with a quiet gentleness, has just married a young Quaker woman played by Grace Kelly. They are leaving town to start a new life. A new Marshall will arrive the next day.<br />
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Kane hesitates feeling he must delay his departure to face the threat. Kane’s new wife abhors violence and wants him to remove his Marshall’s badge and leave town as planned. Kane reluctantly agrees but not long out of town – to her consternation – he turns back. He won’t run. He puts his badge back on, while she heads for the train ticket office. Later though, back in town to wait for the noon train at the local hotel, she confront her fears and, after meeting a Mexican business woman from Kane’s past (Katy Jurado), finally accepts the imperative of standing by her man.<br />
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In Kane’s fruitless search for deputies he is revealed as a taciturn man, polite, self-effacing, with his doubts, and fearful, even wavering, but in the end ready to face fate and his obligation as best he can. Director Fred Zinnermann and his team have respected Carl Foreman’s no-nonsense script by not intruding and letting the wonderful Cooper by his signature decency tell the story. An elemental story told simply and with economy. Those who make long speeches are cowards or pleading self-interest. Kane is a man of few words. His responses are direct and honest. The film-makers give their protagonist distance and approach their task with the same economy of plain-speaking and simple evocation. Tight clean shots, cut editing, and the melancholy and plaintiff theme song gently interspersed with the silent moments where the visuals do the talking. This is why that magnificent soaring crane shot when noon strikes is so powerful.<br />
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The crisp monochrome photography of cinematographer Floyd Crosby against a flat sky fosters a confining atmosphere that only really breaks loose when we hear the whistle of the noon train as it approaches town. The consummate editing by Elmo Williams sustains the tension even while we see Kane go about his almost laconic search for support. Particularly effective are frequent repetitions of the same static shot of the empty rails at the edge of town. The threat posed by the men already assembled is deftly evoked by menacing tight close-ups of their faces. We actually feel anxiety and frustration as precious minutes tick by. Another reviewer has called Dimitri Tiomkin’s score as ‘fretful’, a canny description of Tiomkin’s pitch perfect contribution.<br />
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His friends tell Kane to leave town. This is no longer his fight. He can’t and he won’t. The old Marshall whose hands are crippled by arthritis can’t help him and joins the chorus. He speaks from bitter experience: in the end it’s “all for nothing”. Is that why the tin star is finally thrown down into the dirt? You must come to your own view about that. An ambivalent action bitter with disillusion, and for Kane final. (The original story by John W. Cunningham which Foreman adapted for the screenplay was titled The Tin Star.)<br />
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A lot has been said and written about High Noon. Contemporary American audiences were ill at ease with the final repudiation. (The same audiences were equally unhappy with the vinegar served by Billy Wilder the year before with Ace in The Hole.) The history of the great Westerns has been ever thus. The form’s conventions periodically used to present new arguments, reflect a changed zeitgeist, or as a commentary on contemporary events. High Noon does all this and more without breaking the conventions and at a level of reality that forestalls the pretensions of those who would critique the aesthetics, while ignoring the strength of the allegory and the respect for genre imperatives. Still there were contemporaries in Hollywood whose hubris saw the film as a betrayal of the genre. No betrayal though. More a maturation that chafed against the yoke of machismo and facile patriotism.<br />
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High Noon is that rare combination: a great Western and a great movie.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-74398789947894365872013-07-14T18:51:00.003-07:002013-07-15T16:53:07.132-07:00The Hunt (Denmark 2012) aka"Jagten": Fate is a hunter<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgdgAA1Kml2xMrGQI5ri4vx5qYZbcr1Tm2MTgm0kVlqrmnRdk1BegrDQuCa6_EuD4lVoSJ3LJ7hp33rd1ZktneiQueqFcfCqT40B97gDXgGWCW8RoYj2Sxxd6MMEY0sPJc95f5G1kLdeac/s1600/thehunt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgdgAA1Kml2xMrGQI5ri4vx5qYZbcr1Tm2MTgm0kVlqrmnRdk1BegrDQuCa6_EuD4lVoSJ3LJ7hp33rd1ZktneiQueqFcfCqT40B97gDXgGWCW8RoYj2Sxxd6MMEY0sPJc95f5G1kLdeac/s1600/thehunt.jpg" /></a></div>
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg and not to be confused with the William Dafoe vehicle <strong>The Hunter</strong> of the same year.<br />
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A middle-aged man working in a pre-school in rural Denmark is wrongly accused of child sexual abuse.<br />
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<strong>The Hunt</strong> is definitely a well-made film with strong performances, but the screenplay is psychologically suspect. <br />
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Certain behaviour of a pre-schooler doesn't ring true, depicting a child at a very young age with a mindset that pushes her into lies, and the accused despite having a clear affinity with kids handles a delicate event with blundering insensitivity, oddly contrary to the sensitivity he displays with the child in
the film's opening scenes. A scene involving the girl's teenaged older brother, which is supposed to provide fodder for an innocent fabrication is so shocking and
unreal as to be contrived, and out of character for the brother, who later is shown to have a finer sensibility.
The brutal reaction of friends and community is predictable.<br />
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Cinematically, there is little to distinguish the effort, apart from
idyllic rural tableaux as a counterpoint to the trauma being played out. But
again, nothing new.<br />
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Vinterberg I think to a certain extent sets up a straw man that makes it easier for our blood to boil more ferociously in response to the treatment meted out to the accused by his friends and the local tight-knit community. Consider that if the innocence of the accused had been revealed only at the end (or not at all), and the audience was placed in the same shoes as friends and community. Perhaps our emotional response would be more problematic and, dare I say, more genuine?<br />
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There is something deeper going on, but most won't see it,
basically a noir motif - shit happens yes - but there is a
sense that fate here is not just capricious but avenging. The
killing of a stag by the accused in a hunting trip is essentially - like all hunting for recreation
- a vile act against nature and the soul, a grave sin. That just
like the stag, fate can single the hunter out - fairly or unfairly. His dead dog killed in response to the charges is shown in the same
deathly repose as the stag, with its tongue hanging out of it snout.<br />
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Gripping but flawed.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-6878528155208933772013-07-02T00:07:00.000-07:002014-11-10T16:30:44.478-08:00Blind Venus (1941) “Vénus aveugle”: Vive la Romance! Vive la France! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8BQQZ3MdN_zfa218WJzUhfOgiNLb_t5QQhc3-2vf0AVnozYEEwLxr0IYAjdtTa4J5txHwPBD7G69QtFeOFNjN6aclcfuQGuiaFqW9b53jlQUm4C0GURx_w7sTSTHxukhU2JONEZJwyfu0/s403/blindvenus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8BQQZ3MdN_zfa218WJzUhfOgiNLb_t5QQhc3-2vf0AVnozYEEwLxr0IYAjdtTa4J5txHwPBD7G69QtFeOFNjN6aclcfuQGuiaFqW9b53jlQUm4C0GURx_w7sTSTHxukhU2JONEZJwyfu0/s400/blindvenus.jpg" height="297" width="400" /></a></div>
The very rare Abel Gance film<strong> Blind Venus</strong> (1941) “Venus aveugle” (original title) is a truly magnificent movie. <br />
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A masterpiece. A master film-maker fashions from a melodrama a picture of epic emotional sweep with a heroine to die for, played with true pathos by the luminous Viviane Romance. Set in a French port town, the moods of the sea in calm and in storm are harnessed through sublime montage and expressionist abstraction to enthral your senses and seduce your sensibilities.<br />
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Clarisse a vivacious young woman is diagnosed with an inoperable eye disorder which will destroy her sight in a year or two. Her <em>amour fou</em> with a seaman demands that she break with him and hide her coming affliction. The stage is set for a passionate and almost unbounded melodrama. Yet the film soars beyond the melodrama to a sublime <em>comédie humaine. </em>Made during the German occupation the film is also an allegory. Through human decency and solidarity the unachievable comes within reach.<br />
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There are no miracles, but there is redemption and acceptance. The heroine's unaffected voice of reconciliation reflects the visual poetry that has borne her through wild seas to a safe harbour:<br />
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<em>I'm no more in the night.</em><br />
<em>I'm in the snow.</em><br />
<em>I see enough to make out<br />the white shadows of people,</em><br />
<em>and the smoke of things...</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-1604786686650823932013-06-18T18:24:00.000-07:002014-11-10T16:34:17.572-08:00Recently Seen...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEjhd_GrjtQYbp2vz7wFQ4Hsa3V7J9K_g7WmwEuF7CacGh2-1sKgc2RI1p6BJ14pQ8lgQuxGe989YaEb8FFci6Yal-vb0-_gLDi35Vb7FtcUu3LWOOOQjnXtczlhN2Wtyf07IlTcwEZIHO/s1600/moonrise-kingdom-04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEjhd_GrjtQYbp2vz7wFQ4Hsa3V7J9K_g7WmwEuF7CacGh2-1sKgc2RI1p6BJ14pQ8lgQuxGe989YaEb8FFci6Yal-vb0-_gLDi35Vb7FtcUu3LWOOOQjnXtczlhN2Wtyf07IlTcwEZIHO/s400/moonrise-kingdom-04.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></div>
Quick capsules for some Hollywood movies I recently watched: Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Moonrise Kingdom, and an old charmer, Simone Simon’s first Hollywood feature, Girls’ Dormitory (1936).<br />
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I can’t understand the hype surrounding <strong>Argo</strong>. A middling thriller where the politics is superficial and the triumphant Americanism predictable. More mumbling for dialog and the picture is half-over by the time you figure out who’s who. Fancy camera work, and taught editing make for a gripping climax, but nothing more. No real intelligence and the bathos of the superhero figurines coda is risible.<br />
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Stripping <strong>Zero Dark Thirty</strong> of its wider dimensions I found it overlong and disjointed. Politically it is propaganda and seems to have no sense of how fine is the line separating terrorism from the barbarism of torture, which is taken as a given and never held up to scrutiny. I found I had a lot of sympathy with the views expressed here <a href="http://arena.org.au/enlightened-barbarism-on-zero-dark-thirty-and-the-torture-debate/" target="_blank">Enlightened Barbarism: On Zero Dark Thirty and the Torture Debate</a>. Technically, the attack on the compound is impressive, but again the slaughter of unarmed people woken from their sleep does not seem to interest Bigelow.<br />
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<strong>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</strong> and <strong>Silver Linings Playbook</strong> are both forgettable, the same old rehash of familiar themes, and far from any semblance of reality. Any poor bastard with a mental illness or a shy teenager would be plunged even further into despair when returning to the reality of their own lives after seeing this pap.<br />
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<strong>Moonrise Kingdom</strong> was surprisingly charming, and its nostalgic quirkiness embraces your heart. Great cameos. The girl Suzzy is a brilliant deadpan, nicely capturing the 60s vibe perfectly. Brilliant idea to have Francoise Hardy as her favorite singer. Great camera work and melding of Benjamin's Britten’s music.<br />
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<strong>Girl’s Dormitory</strong> (1936) has the old Hollywood magic. So elegantly made, and Simone Simon is lovely and utterly beguiling as a schoolgirl in a finishing school in the Austrian alps on the cusp of womanhood, and with a crush on her teacher, Herbert Marshall, who fits his role like a glove. Director Cumming & DP Gerstad do a great job, and deliver a brave ending for the period with on an screen kiss – but after graduation.
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-52630904860759365712013-06-18T18:04:00.000-07:002013-06-18T18:04:02.188-07:00The Politician's Husband (UK TV Mini-series 2013)
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiHDhBfZe_83TNxFxe6p3aRXbnI6knE0cJm4MSCjdnX4GYLRv-kQ8V5jn0hUw9G-ADQ6m9QhxH-1gMz5Z3MG9RxDIgVYdUwsal5Y7tk6zqwQS5a6dXWeLdjb9cSbic_ufJ9Coy-kmpQGU/s1600/TEN6_1720679a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgiHDhBfZe_83TNxFxe6p3aRXbnI6knE0cJm4MSCjdnX4GYLRv-kQ8V5jn0hUw9G-ADQ6m9QhxH-1gMz5Z3MG9RxDIgVYdUwsal5Y7tk6zqwQS5a6dXWeLdjb9cSbic_ufJ9Coy-kmpQGU/s400/TEN6_1720679a.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<strong>The Politician’s Husband</strong> is an interesting study of the rivalry
between a political couple, which confirms all our worst fears on the mendacity and
moral depravity of politicians, where even family and friends are no strangers
to treachery.</div>
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Great acting but pedestrian plotting and direction just hold it
together over four episodes. A strength is the brutal portrayal of the politics of
marriage and how vengeful misogyny can be found in ‘normal’ relationships,
where sex can be just as much a weapon of vengeance as an expression of
intimacy. </div>
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Recommended.</div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-34573878740064684442013-06-18T17:59:00.002-07:002013-06-18T17:59:58.903-07:00Broadchurch (UK TV Mini-Series 2103 ): Exceptional<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvCJ7VgyCtTmVjp97iAO46G-tEpmuRisyK7mw3Hv3r2Hq-60ByJsOwbahkIyncyN8un12NBI9yBosA6Y14CIWEaGqkDsElF6s4Xoe8kTUoQl33O1MCulGsgaAW3EgOJEjgaw-jrB0ZjwT/s1600/STE28BROADCHURCH_340144k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvCJ7VgyCtTmVjp97iAO46G-tEpmuRisyK7mw3Hv3r2Hq-60ByJsOwbahkIyncyN8un12NBI9yBosA6Y14CIWEaGqkDsElF6s4Xoe8kTUoQl33O1MCulGsgaAW3EgOJEjgaw-jrB0ZjwT/s400/STE28BROADCHURCH_340144k.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<strong>Broadchurch</strong> which had a massive following in the UK over 8
weeks earlier this year, is about the investigation of the murder of a young
boy in a small prosperous seaside town in Dorset. The performances from a
stellar cast are top notch, and the high production values demonstrate the real
strength of British TV, and the willingness to delve into life as it is lived by
most of us, using actors who actually look and behave like real people. <br />
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At
first I was reluctant to go to such a dark place, and then was compelled to
continue watching as it drew me into a maelstrom of emotions driven by the need
not only to find the killer but to comprehend the how and why of it all. The
writing, the cinematography, and the direction are exceptional. The landscape
is intimately involved and rendered in rich tones of aching beauty. A must-see.</div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-50918517404904325522013-06-18T17:53:00.003-07:002014-11-10T16:36:28.772-08:00To The Wonder (2012): Indulgent<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbuPeWawQWHlt-wbN28vC1Ra5zmDa8k8fzMuftOYRISatB-iYmtmcwILh-vx13uFvUJciuVJew6tJy_NozHbQw9iTUjTKSqWE4fEmtcUUuUTu22UPmfrz7BFM65SLUGbmYD5HCUF9Y7jvj/s1600/t6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbuPeWawQWHlt-wbN28vC1Ra5zmDa8k8fzMuftOYRISatB-iYmtmcwILh-vx13uFvUJciuVJew6tJy_NozHbQw9iTUjTKSqWE4fEmtcUUuUTu22UPmfrz7BFM65SLUGbmYD5HCUF9Y7jvj/s400/t6.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
Terrence Malick’s latest film <strong>To The Wonder</strong> is disappointing.
Flimsy and pretentious, with the masterful cinematography
and elegant mis-en-scene largely wasted on the mannered antics of a clutch of
shallow bourgeois mouthing banal verse over too many scenes of egotistical
ardour, and of impossibly beautiful women if not endlessly dancing around like
10 year olds, moping about empty backyards, or running nymph-like through
fields of wheat.<br />
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Indulgent film-making that mistakes talking about love
over pretty pictures for profundity. The priest is the only interesting
character, and we see too little of him. Are we supposed to care about the
Affleck character because he is some kind of environmentalist? Most of the time
he looks like the Incredible Hulk fitted-out by Ralph Lauren.</div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-24962927666770573972013-03-23T01:51:00.000-07:002013-03-23T18:05:42.145-07:00The Master (2012)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJTD_LyVkDj5qbA4wD75dF783Ot6CBlxNnqT6IUCbvkfs9-n21h8riLkpt4Ic8vAZcbDyDPfo04AXGfo0__nVKQcWNH5t7K4ELWaMwS2zP0hAbvktnaVeXu6YNqjx2Gc_pfCnuFyCfX2GV/s640/blogger-image-1787677637.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJTD_LyVkDj5qbA4wD75dF783Ot6CBlxNnqT6IUCbvkfs9-n21h8riLkpt4Ic8vAZcbDyDPfo04AXGfo0__nVKQcWNH5t7K4ELWaMwS2zP0hAbvktnaVeXu6YNqjx2Gc_pfCnuFyCfX2GV/s320/blogger-image-1787677637.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The Master is an ultimately empty film. Great period setting and cinematography, with strong performances, but the scenario is indulgent and meandering. All those long takes and mobile camera movements are elegant but have surface only. I get that Freddy Quell is a mumbler, autistic perhaps, but being able to follow only snatches of what he is saying, makes you painfully aware that you are watching a movie. Like observing someone else's dream and on the cusp of totally boring. The last hour goes literally nowhere. Deeply flawed. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-90721555741686512052013-02-27T20:04:00.003-08:002014-11-10T16:37:49.592-08:00Tod Browning's Freaks (1932): A humanist masterpiece<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjXLGp-2wu6-M-wvXyBaOX7Iic_W8oKvseTx46JSV0FyZAaRZ-CYn5dO6QHOjXlsBzcnkd1Z_MmKiMDiHMF5EO3DgjFimPf3RgSXyPvKTkmg_ZAZnEjUpIXrAs6JXf_Gbcmybi6DW7TDF/s1600/freaks_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjXLGp-2wu6-M-wvXyBaOX7Iic_W8oKvseTx46JSV0FyZAaRZ-CYn5dO6QHOjXlsBzcnkd1Z_MmKiMDiHMF5EO3DgjFimPf3RgSXyPvKTkmg_ZAZnEjUpIXrAs6JXf_Gbcmybi6DW7TDF/s320/freaks_sm.jpg" height="225" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Tod Browning's <strong>Freaks</strong> is a humanist masterpiece that leaves you thinking and in awe its compassion and craft. <br />
<br />
Browning has you first appalled with a confronting directness that borders on exploitation, yet all the while he builds compassion and a criminal solidarity through empathy. He makes you complicit in terrible acts of revenge - not withstanding the tacked-on studio-imposed closed romantic ending, which perversely reinforces the darkness of the deeds by rewarding vengeance. Indeed the expressionist climax is as dark as any noir from ten years down the track.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-52004873427591981482013-02-27T19:57:00.001-08:002014-11-10T16:42:17.617-08:00Notes on Yasujirô Ozu's I Was Born But (1932)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGYT8LixHMJR3qsXQ50aadZVX9TF2bp1Hkpw2K7h5aa8P9cJVTw3OLjtC5_C5pRkbzpSTgMsHcnEjSIkvzzUY4pEyq3S6CqrnAbzUKa5NLdsqu8_UMjYOhFEkdw7peY18pZzXNlBsWrsC6/s1600/iwasbornbut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGYT8LixHMJR3qsXQ50aadZVX9TF2bp1Hkpw2K7h5aa8P9cJVTw3OLjtC5_C5pRkbzpSTgMsHcnEjSIkvzzUY4pEyq3S6CqrnAbzUKa5NLdsqu8_UMjYOhFEkdw7peY18pZzXNlBsWrsC6/s320/iwasbornbut.jpg" height="175" width="320" /></a></div>
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Contrary to most critics' view that the ending
of Yasujirô Ozu's <strong>I Was Born But</strong> is downbeat, I find it delicately up-beat. The two precocious brothers not so much lose their innocence but rather gain in maturity and compassion. They are too young to see that their father’s silliness is a much lesser crime than the philandering of the boss, which while it is played for laughs, is there for the adults to see.</div>
<br />
The kid brother played by 8yo Tomio Aoki has to be one of the greatest childhood performances ever. Those mean poses, the cheekiness, the raspberries, and the mimicking of the older brother are glorious. A fantastic example of the uplifting joy of cinema both in its wistful nostalgia and human pathos. Great performances, a wry script, and a beguiling rhythm have you hooked.<br />
<br />
The Ozu static shots and interludes with a low camera (and the flagrant disregard of Hollywood's rule) are there, but the editing and ensemble scenes also have a cheeky eloquence, like the camera panning before the character providing the perspective is shown, tracking shots with the camera like a little kid trying to keep up with the antics of the older kids, and the same tracking camera stopped by an obstacle such as a lamp-post . The shots of trams crossing the frame insinuate the elemental pathos we are witnessing.</<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-66399571834622539662012-12-02T22:41:00.000-08:002014-11-10T16:48:14.750-08:00A Night at the Opera (1935): “and one duck egg”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<i></i><br />
<i>“For the first time in the Brothers’ cinematic careers, they had pulled in a large portion of female fans. The price for this widening appeal could not be fully calculated at the time. Only much later did the cost become apparent. In A Night at the Opera Harpo remained as silent as a stone, Chico kept his accent and his pianistic style, and Groucho still walked the walk and talked the talk. Some of their bits were among the funniest ever written and performed on screen. Yet a close examination shows that the old fire was banked. Instead of making sport of romance, they now facilitated it. Instead of whacking away at the powerful institutions of government or the military or education, they battled the toothless enemy of grand opera. At [Irving] Thalberg’s insistence the crew of maniacs had become hilarious but harmless uncles, like the later Laurel and Hardy. They were not outrageous anymore, they were only frivolous; they were not surreal, they were only foolish; they were not daring, they were only impolite. Not that the Brothers minded. They were the first comedy team to become a box office attraction in the sound era. MGM proudly announced proudly announced plans to put them in another glossy vehicle, complete with ten-week road tryout. Thalberg had been proven correct on all counts, the Marxes were flush, and the receipts kept pouring in.”</i><br />
- Stefan Kanfer, Groucho (2000)<br />
<blockquote>
<h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: blue;">- Are you sure you have everything, Otis? </span><br /><span style="color: blue;">– Well, I haven’t had any complaints yet.</span></span></h3>
</blockquote>
The Marx Bros. had not been a hit with women when Irving Thalberg took them on for Sam Goldwyn’s MGM. Thalberg gave them a plausible narrative, a big budget, and the best writers for <b>A Night at the Opera,</b> their first MGM movie. A slick production with great gags and set pieces delivered one of the studio’s biggest hits and a gross of $5 million – big money in 1936. The scenarios had been honed on the road across America, with the famous stateroom scene and other key scenes played to live audiences before production began. The soppy romance delivered the dames and the boys’ antics the rest of an appreciative crowd, with only one major critic giving the film the thumbs down.<br />
<blockquote>
<h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: blue;">- That woman? Do you know why I sat with her? Because she reminded me of you. </span><br /><span style="color: blue;">– Really? </span><br /><span style="color: blue;">– Of course, that’s why I’m sitting here with you. Because you remind me of you. Your eyes, your throat, your lips! Everything about you reminds me of you. Except you. How do you account for that? <<em>If she figures that one out, she’s good.></em></span></span></h3>
</blockquote>
<b>A Night at the Opera</b> is a very funny movie and includes many memorable scenes and lines, and with a sincere ring of pathos. The chaotic stateroom imbroglio, the opera finale with Groucho spruiking for dough from the balcony and Harpo literally ripping up the scenery, the wonderful sanity clause stand-up between Chico and Groucho, the achingly funny moving hotel beds routine, the sparks that fly between Groucho and Margaret Dumont, and the wonderfully irreverent takedowns of the great character actor Sig Ruman as Gottlieb, the pompous opera impresario. Fittingly the ‘last’ musical interlude, on deck with the Italian migrants heading for the New World, has a real dignity and pathos that gives the melodrama a harder edge.<br />
<blockquote>
<h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="color: blue;">- Hey you. I told you to slow that nag down. On account of you I almost heard the opera.</span></span></h3>
</blockquote>
Is Kanfer right though? Were the Marx Bros. tamed by Thalberg? I think he makes a strong case, though which side you come down on is a matter of perspective. A Night at the Opera is a great, very great Hollywood comedy, and on those terms there is more to celebrate than lament. If however we compare the movie to their earlier pictures, the Marx Bros. are no longer subversive, they are no longer protagonists but facilitators in a narrative that, if we are truly honest, is as hackneyed as they come – a totally predictable romantic triangle that maintains its claim to seriousness despite the best antics of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo to expose its banality. The Marx Bros. were no longer radical, and A Night at the Opera marked the beginning of a lamentable decline. The team had been co-opted by the establishment, and it had been so easy.<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: blue;">- Never in my life have I received such treatment. They threw an apple at me. </span><br />
<span style="color: blue;">- Well, watermelons are out of season.</span></blockquote>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-19468225889139299182012-10-24T21:13:00.001-07:002014-11-10T16:49:51.535-08:00Horse Feathers (1932): “You can’t put the wall over my ice”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo. Three clowns and a straight man. Anarchists all. Whatever it is, they’re against it.<br />
<br />
Gonzo intellectual and all-round eccentric Slavoj Zizek from Slovenia has posted a short video on YouTube. For those who know what the appellation means – I can’t make head nor tail of it – Zizek is a Lacanian-Marxist philosopher. Quick, get me a four-year-old child. Zizek posits that Freud’s construction of the human psyche applies perfectly to the three erstwhile lunatics Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. The video is titled ‘How the Marx Brothers Embody Freud’s Id, Ego & Super-Ego’. I am not quite sure what to make of it, but let’s explore how the elephant got into Groucho’s pyjamas.<br />
<br />
Zizek says Groucho, “with his nervous hyper-activity”, is superego.<br />
<br />
<i>I don’t know what they have to say<br />It makes no difference anyway<br />Whatever it is, I’m against it…<br />And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,<br />I’m against it!</i><br />
<br />
Chico “the rational guy, egotistic, calculating all the time”, is ego.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Professor Wagstaff</b>: In case I never see you again, which would add ten years to my life, what would you fellas want to play football. <br /><br /><b>Baravelli</b>: Well, first we want a football.<br /><br /><b>Professor Wagstaff</b>: Well, I don’t know if we’ve got a football, but if I can find one, would you be interested? I don’t want a hasty answer, just sleep on it.<br /><br /><b>Baravelli</b>: I no think I can sleep on a football.</i><br />
<br />
And, “the weirdest of them all, Harpo, the mute guy, he doesn’t talk”, is id. “Freud said that drives are silent… The id in all its radical ambiguity… childishly innocent, just striving for pleasure… But, at the same time, possessed by some kind of primordial evil, aggressive all the time. And this unique combination of utter corruption and innocence is what the id is about.”<br />
<br />
In <b>Horse Feathers</b>, in the speak-easy while Chico is in the back-room filling a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of Rye from the same container of hooch, Harpo passes a poker-game and when he overhears one of the players say “Cut the cards”, he pulls an axe from his raincoat and happily obliges. Later, Harpo stokes a raging fireplace with a spade filled from a pile of books. Indeed, the movie’s original ending which was cut (and replaced by the bigamous marriage scene with the three villains scrambling to be the first to hump their new bride) had the college burning to the ground after another fire lit by Harpo, while the musketeers play cards.<br />
<br />
Some see a social critique of sorts in Horse Feathers, and you can pretty well read what you like into the narrative about college football, which is essentially only a pretext for a string of gags and absurdities melding irreverent and raunchy vaudeville with subversive attacks on authority.<br />
<br />
The movie was a box-office smash in 1932, and both the in-crowd and the intelligentsia wasted no time in claiming the Marx Bros as their own. Stefan Kanfer laid out the critical response in his authoritative biography of Groucho (2000) quoting from articles in Le Monde, London’s New Statesman, and Time magazine, which had the boys on the cover of the August 13, 1932 issue, and referring to Groucho’s “unsquelchable effontry.” The left-leaning New Statement gave the reportage a surrealist twist: “They [the Marx Bros.] introduced the psychological disturbance that is caused by seeing something that is mad and aimless… something which, if not utterly disconnected, depends for its connections on the workings of the unconscious.”<br />
<br />
Put simply, <b>Horse Feathers</b> is damned hilarious. Ask a four-year-old child.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-27308073732181746172012-09-10T01:54:00.000-07:002012-09-16T02:55:12.924-07:00Monsieur Lazhar (Canada 2011): “She hugged you after you cried”<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq8DzsSNqs82kHGpq2TAGXNuATkMnmbZmZhzxeHa3j-3qtVXbFKn8E9VEG1H394GmAAzOB053AMfEQgHp3VXPofOV2bwk9nXoJ7kzcotbXwIpEqDOFDDEFbbujJJ0QCKWWv5ywhgsO1Etj/s1600/Monsieur-Lazhar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq8DzsSNqs82kHGpq2TAGXNuATkMnmbZmZhzxeHa3j-3qtVXbFKn8E9VEG1H394GmAAzOB053AMfEQgHp3VXPofOV2bwk9nXoJ7kzcotbXwIpEqDOFDDEFbbujJJ0QCKWWv5ywhgsO1Etj/s400/Monsieur-Lazhar.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-US">“Don't try to find a
meaning to Martine's death.<br />
There isn't one.<br />
A classroom is a home for...<br />
It's a place<br />
of friendship, of work,<br />
and courtesy.<br />
Yes, courtesy.<br />
A place full of life.<br />
Where you devote your life.<br />
A place where you give of your life.<br />
Not infect a whole school<br />
with your despair.”</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 240.85pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">- Monsieur Lazhar</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 240.85pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A teacher
hangs herself in the classroom before school. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A tragedy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Was she driven to it? Do her sixth graders know why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is one of them to blame?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Are physical
demonstrations of care not welcome in the classroom?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So many rules and so little room for simple
humanity. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A new
teacher, a somber decent man from Algeria, Bachir, as wise and scarred as his
years replaces the lost Martine. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
wall of the classroom have been repainted, her desk emptied, and a psychologist
employed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still a specter lingers. Who
has the greater pain, the children or the new teacher?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He must guide the children from the dark
forest of loss, and suppress his own angst.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Death and injustice, from two worlds apart.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">He reads
his own composition for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i>
correction:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The Tree and the Chrysalis by Bachir Lazhar</span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 75.55pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">After an unjust death,
<br />
there's nothing to say.<br />
Nothing at all.<br />
As will become plain below.<br />
From the branch of an olive tree,<br />
there hung a tiny chrysalis<br />
the color of emerald.<br />
Tomorrow it would be a butterfly, <br />
freed from it's cocoon.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">> Its. I-t-s.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The tree was happy<br />
to see his chrysalis grown, <br />
but secretly, he wanted to keep her<br />
a few mor years.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">> More, m-o-r-e.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">"So long as she remembers me."</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">He'd shielded her from gusts,<br />
saved her from ants.<br />
But tomorrow she would leave<br />
to affront alone predators and poor whether.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">> Weather, w-e-a.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">That night, <br />
a fire ravaged the forest, <br />
and the chrysalis<br />
never became a butterfly.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">At dawn, the ashes cold, <br />
the tree still stood, <br />
but his heart was charred, <br />
scarred by the flames, <br />
scarred at grief.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Scarred by grief.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">When a bird alights on the tree, <br />
the tree tells it about<br />
the chrysalis that never woke up.<br />
He pictures her, wings spread, <br />
flitting across<br />
a clear blue sky, <br />
drunk on nectar and freedom, <br />
the discreet witness<br />
to our love stories.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A story of
love and grief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The love that binds and
the grief that keeps us apart.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-41409046364933001542012-09-06T22:09:00.001-07:002013-02-27T20:10:50.012-08:00 Big Deal on Madonna Street (Italy 1958)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK-2_y6MkyVTb2jTkWLiDAqfD62M4q6h6uq5GizGqsQN9xI7UhywV1HjGXrjhrA80QjsY50KdkZ5Sc3QSBXVv8P3mEd3T0KVki6JS4UDO_LRJYkV9CPE82_3V9q0-GBWUM6P7-pPhHDfw-/s1600/i_soliti_ignoti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK-2_y6MkyVTb2jTkWLiDAqfD62M4q6h6uq5GizGqsQN9xI7UhywV1HjGXrjhrA80QjsY50KdkZ5Sc3QSBXVv8P3mEd3T0KVki6JS4UDO_LRJYkV9CPE82_3V9q0-GBWUM6P7-pPhHDfw-/s400/i_soliti_ignoti.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<i>“Rubare è un mestiere impegnativo, ci vuole gente seria, mica come voi… Voi al massimo potete andare a lavorare.”</i> <i>[Robbery is a serious craft, you need to know what you are doing, not like you guys… the best you can hope for is honest work.]</i> <br /><br />A wacky gang of incompetent penny-ante Roman felons hatches a heist with hilarious consequences. This is all that really needs to be said about this classic cinematic caper from the masters of <i>la comedia all’italiana</i>, the writing team of Furio Scarpelli & Agenore Incrocci, and director Mario Monicelli, but of course dear reader you have come here expecting more. At least four-to-five hundred words, choice turns of phrase, a display of filmic erudition, and a certain – even if counterfeit – humility. Oh well, if I must.<br /><br />As well as a neo-realist patina in the scenes filmed on the streets of Rome courtesy of DP Gianni Di Venanzo, there is a dark expressionism in the night scenes that gives a dark edge to the comedy in Big Deal on Madonna Street. More on the flip-side later. Piero Umiliani contributes a boppy jazz score, which adds a lot to the fun.<br /><br />There are also extensive connections with De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves from a decade before which go beyond the thematic. For those who are familiar with De Sica’s film there is a discomfiting irony in a scene at the start of Big Deal on Madonna Street where a stolen pram is sold to a fence – the petty larcenist saying he is reduced to pinching prams as almost all cars and bicycles are now fitted with alarms – and later with the gang stealing a movie camera to case the scene of the heist from the very same flea market where De Sica’s Antonio desperately searches for his bicycle. Then there is the engaging comedia in Bicycle Thieves from Antonio’s young son Bruno, who in his innocence is the aching counterpoint to the father’s despair. The comic relief afforded by his presence is to be cherished. His first scene when he is cleaning the bicycle for Papa’s first day on the job is full of pathos and humour – Bruno telling Antonio that the pawnbroker didn’t look after the bike as there is now a scratch on the pedal and that he would have complained. This is by way of saying that in Monicelli’s film as in De Sica’s, the unique flavour of the Italian language is integral, and with a number of the character’s speaking different dialects, the individual characterisations have a spice all their own. Sadly so much of this expressiveness is lost in translating the dialog for the sub-titles. The line I quote at the top of this essay is redolent of an idiom and humour that can never be fully translated.<br /><br />Humour. The essence of true comedy is the unexpected. Whether from razor sharp wit, innuendo, risible delusions, or slapstick, laughter is truly unleashed when we are caught by surprise, when unassailable absurdity is topped by the even more ludicrous; and we are again reduced to tears of joy, aching sides, and uncontrollable fits of coughing. Your soul skips and oxytocin fills your blood-stream. All is well with you, and the world. But just in case you get too carried away Monicello has a poor sod – <i>un povere disgraziato</i> – chased into the path of a tram and killed. Cut to the crematorium and Toto in dark glasses: ”Better later than sooner.”<br /><br />If the essence of true comedy is the unexpected, the key to great comedy is love. An empathy with the absurdity of existence, of its ultimate futility, and a sad fondness for the pathos of life. The attitude that yes we are miserable but heck we can die laughing. This madness takes hold of De Sica’s Antonio when he blows whatever money he has left on lunch in a restaurant. The original Italian title for Big Deal on Madonna Street, <i>I soliti ignoti</i> aka “The Usual Unknown Suspects”, has a savour of this pathos (while its aptness is revealed in a newspaper headline shown on the screen just before the end title).<br /><br />I wonder what was going through Mario Monicelli’s mind as he prepared to end his life by jumping out of a hospital window in 2010 at the age of 95. Perhaps he was thinking thoughts like those he admitted to in an interview he gave three years earlier: <i>“Death doesn’t frighten me, it bothers me. It bothers me for example that someone can be there tomorrow but me I am no longer there. What bothers me is no longer being alive, not being dead.” </i><br /><br />This idea of ’absence’ as loss is behind the greatest moment in I soliti ignoti, which is not found in the rollicking absurdity and high jinks that lead up to the disaster, nor in the towering stupidity and incompetence of the heist proper, but on the early morning after when the perps straggle out onto the deserted streets of Rome, say their goodbyes, and go their separate ways. A palpable regret suffuses the screen and your own heart aches for your loss as well as theirs. <i>Arrivederci. Till we meet again.</i><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-85116058624857754772012-09-06T22:00:00.000-07:002018-12-02T16:18:46.658-08:00Zéro de Conduite: "Like a scattered student""<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxnFy3Y6xzbvB1IAEiPRVDHKAF4QDWe9EefddGTm8379LTZZQ_oU5tX5X4rah4YEKEMlUHxMkis4KExQxzg531m_d3NHzy2FW-7ZDIFR5uc5pM-m0a-1UZPC1IAdK4hrUN11THXdSQiwT6/s1600/zero_de_conduite_1933.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxnFy3Y6xzbvB1IAEiPRVDHKAF4QDWe9EefddGTm8379LTZZQ_oU5tX5X4rah4YEKEMlUHxMkis4KExQxzg531m_d3NHzy2FW-7ZDIFR5uc5pM-m0a-1UZPC1IAdK4hrUN11THXdSQiwT6/s400/zero_de_conduite_1933.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I would rather smell the way boys smell–<br />Oh those schoolboys the way their legs flap under the desks in study hall<br />That odour rising roses and ammonia<br />And way their dicks droop like lilacs<br />Or the way they smell that forbidden acrid smell</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> - Patti Smith, ‘Piss Factory’, 1974</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<br />
<i>Me? Looking like a scattered student<br />I follow exuberant girls through the green chestnuts:<br />They know I’m there, and turn towards me<br />Laughing, eyes brimming with indiscretion.<br />I don’t say a word: I just stare at the flesh<br /><br />Of their white necks framed by tresses:<br />I follow the curve of their shoulders down<br />Their divine backs, hidden by bodices and flimsy finery.<br /><br />Soon I’m ogling their boots and socks …<br />Burning with fever, yearning for flesh.<br />They think I’m silly. They whisper to each other …<br />-And I feel kisses blossom on my lips …</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">- Arthur Rimbaud, ‘TO MUSIC: Railway square, Charleville’, 1870</span></blockquote>
<br />
I hated high school. Stupid regimentation and oppressive teachers. Corporal punishment from self-righteous frauds. Six cuts of the cane across the hand you didn’t write with. Basher would sneak up behind you in class and hit you hard on the head with the attendance book. Heinrich the crypto-fascist enforcer of discipline loved to shout and humiliate. “Attention! At ease!” We sotto voce: “Fuck you, Jack”. Prefects in blazers for black shirts.<br />
<br />
No girls – just the odd female teacher – if she happened to be young fetishised to distraction. That fetid smell of grey flannel and ammonia.<br />
<br />
The deputy-principal and principal, both Mr Brown’s and both balding old bastards – “Bing” and “Bong”. Bong never soiled his hands, while Bing had a cupboard full of canes: short ones, long ones, thin ones, thick ones. He climaxed each time he hit you – red-faced and on the edge of apoplexy – pausing on each stroke to catch his breath and force up your outstretched hand to inflict the maximum pain. Your hand throbbed for hours. I wish I had had the gumption to climb onto the roof of that hell-hole and pelt those jailers with whatever came to hand.<br />
<br />
The French film-maker Jean Vigo (1905-34) hated his boarding school and dreamed a wild dream of schoolboy revolution. The son of a Catalan anarchist, and consumptive, he made only four films in his short life. While his last film, L’Atalante (1934), is his masterpiece, his first and third films À propos de Nice (About Nice 1930) and Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct 1933) are exhilarating forays into an artist’s discovery of cinema as personal expression, anarchic joyous experiments in which we enter the world of a magic lantern. A mosaic surprise of the potential of cinema to not only observe the concrete in new ways but to express our humanity, to wonder, to rebel, to satirise, and to laugh.<br />
<br />
Zéro de conduite: young devils at school a 45 minute fiction talkie about boys at an elementary boarding school rebelling against the mindless discipline, is not only anarchic, but inspired comic lunacy from a fountainhead of deep love for childhood, and the joy of life lived with spontaneity and without pretence.<br />
<br />
A new teacher points the way: he is indulgent and playful. He is awed by everything. In the playground he suddenly starts impersonating Chaplin’s tramp, then grabs a ball from the boys and runs. On an excursion into the town he leads the boys a merry chase after a young woman he fancies, and you see she is having as much fun as the audience.<br />
<br />
In their dormitory a gang of agitators instigates a surreal pillow-fight and mock crucifixion – slowed down on the screen against the musical score played backwards. Total chaos. A lecherous teacher outed and the revolution begins: “You’re full of shit!” (Vigo’s father who died in prison in suspicious circumstances had changed his name to Miguel Almereyda - Alyamerda being an anagram of ”y’a la merde”, literal translation “there’s the shit”.)<br />
<br />
The rebels take to the roof on a civic occasion and pelt the literally stuffed shirts from the Board of Governors on the dais below with rubbish. The stern midget principal – played by a young boy affecting a manly voice and demeanor - with a beard nearly as long as he is short scurries away for shelter.<br />
<br />
Surrealism as fun shot at all angles and in frenetic montage, with a liberating asynchronous score of unbridled vitality. Mad strategams, irreverent language, and kids sick of eating beans throwing them at each other. Zero for conduct!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-56808963862888926962012-08-23T01:36:00.000-07:002013-01-02T21:36:55.133-08:00The Dentist (1932)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmy24TpTfFEQdtSX1UjAkg_BU-dmgXWBh5LQ8q-R69ygTtqtQLb97duPTFp5O6x63zsWgmi9MD71n8g_AYZAhwie9BMkAzLDADo3zHFndRvntP-PgzP-QFpQjrjJpds3rLraYI5i0KK_Q/s1600/thedentist_19321.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzmy24TpTfFEQdtSX1UjAkg_BU-dmgXWBh5LQ8q-R69ygTtqtQLb97duPTFp5O6x63zsWgmi9MD71n8g_AYZAhwie9BMkAzLDADo3zHFndRvntP-PgzP-QFpQjrjJpds3rLraYI5i0KK_Q/s400/thedentist_19321.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The pre-coder The Dentist is about as close as Hollywood ever got to Dada. W. C. Fields wrote and starred in this late Mack Sennett talkie about a dentist who would rather be creating havoc on the golf-course than torturing his hapless patients. Running at just over 20 minutes you get good value with a lot more than a laugh a minute.<br />
<br />
No ifs and buts, Fields was a misanthrope and a misogynist. Cruel, base, and egotistical, he lays brutal sway over all and sundry, family or stranger, friend or foe.<br />
<br />
Liker most dentists of the period, his surgery is part of his home. We find him at breakfast being served by his adult daughter. No wife in sight. We get standard gags about his lost glasses being on his head and the morning paper hidden under his arse. Fields’ side-winder voice delivery hooking you every time.<br />
<br />
Wandering into the kitchen to show his daughter an article in the newspaper, Fields gets her attention by patting her back-side while she is bending over looking into the ice-box, and discovers she is in love with the ice-man – she thinks the pats are from the beau. He doesn’t approve and a running gag will be his attempts to lock her away. More strange and disquieting of course are the forbidden yet overt sexual undertones. TV censors seem to have missed this when they cut a later less unsettling albeit more obvious sexual sequence involving an unorthodox extraction procedure that is more about penetration.<br />
<br />
Fields wants to get in a round of golf before his first appointment. On the golf-course he of course is hopeless, makes crazy interpretations of the rules, and in a fit of piqué throws his caddy after his golf-bag into a lake, after having knocked out another golfer from a shot hit with deliberate negligence, and then complaining when the victim’s knocked-out dentures get in the way of a put!<br />
<br />
Back in the surgery, we witness a cavalcade of patient abuse and withering one-liners. A dizzy wailing broad with a toothache displays her legs and ample behind – more than once – as she bends over to show Fields where a dog bit her on the leg. The dentist’s drill – sounding more like pneumatic road equipment – is deployed with careless abandon. Teeth are spat out and ducks released from a capacious beard – the owner’s mouth found only after the use of a stethoscope. An extraction from a female patient with rather long legs becomes an extended ‘dry-hump’ as the pliers do their difficult work, with one of her high heels ending up stuck in one of Fields’ trouser pockets.<br />
<br />
Penetration, pain, sadomasochism, biting, stomping, sex, contempt, incompetence, demolition, more sex, and farcical characterisations. Bunuel and Dali eat your hearts out!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-29634673440069548612012-08-10T19:06:00.000-07:002014-11-10T16:53:43.432-08:00The Miracle of Morgans Creek (1944)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxFpqLbyT5mKVcaIx7TKE_L8tB8YTndQgJrhFva6yciMoFG_fs2pw_YM_Zpw9oVMyR0N2GRkJAZMfdorAObo0bjOIKuaQfTF_eAEaSoEslYZ9T5vS3w5kVVYmC26pq15PdC1QQOa4_QRn/s1600/miracle-of-morgans-creek_1944.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKxFpqLbyT5mKVcaIx7TKE_L8tB8YTndQgJrhFva6yciMoFG_fs2pw_YM_Zpw9oVMyR0N2GRkJAZMfdorAObo0bjOIKuaQfTF_eAEaSoEslYZ9T5vS3w5kVVYmC26pq15PdC1QQOa4_QRn/s400/miracle-of-morgans-creek_1944.jpg" height="290" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Small town 40s America. Picket fences, porches, and quiet tree-lined streets. Places with names like Bedford Falls and Morgans Creek. Wise mothers, irascible strict fathers with hearts of gold, dizzy older sisters on the cusp of womanhood, spunky older-than-their-years younger sisters, and nerdy suitors. Movie-houses and jalopies. Record-stores and dances at the country-club. Thoroughly integrated foreigners (but no black faces).<br />
<br />
Myth or reality? A dream or the place where we would have wanted to grow-up? Fantasy or fact? Either way, Preston Sturges stood ready to lampoon. Most say savagely, I say gently. We all say brilliantly.<br />
<br />
Fast-paced, witty, over-the-top, irreverent, and a barrel of laughs. What else do you want from a comedy? Audiences in 1944 must have been more than satisfied: The Miracle of Morgans Creek was the biggest grossing movie of the year.<br />
<br />
The scenario for 1944 was a humdinger. Trudy Kockenlocker – love that name! – connives to get her nerdy suitor Norval – yes! - to fool her Dad so that she can attend a dance party for local servicemen leaving for the war - without him and borrow his car! – while he sits out a triple-feature at the movies. She gets drunk on spiked lemonade, hits her head on a ceiling lamp during some wild dancing, and turns up at 8am outside the theatre. She remembers little of what went on until the early hours – except getting married to a GI whose name sounded like Ratzkiwatzki? Later she learns she is pregnant. Breen from the Hays Office, who by all accounts was sympathetic, let it through, though changes were needed to get a suitable rating; such as Trudy being married before consummation, and that it all happened after a bump on the head.<br />
<br />
The story is nicely framed as a flashback, with a canny segue featuring the State Governor and ‘The Boss’, two characters reprised from Sturges’ 1940 film about political corruption,<b> The Great McGinty </b>(which earned Sturges his only Oscar for the screenplay). The action kicks off from the first frame as two old guys frantically enter the local newspaper office yelling to hold the presses. They scramble for a phone and ring the State Governor with a BIG story – we don’t find out what the fuss is about until the end. The titles appear with the old fellas yelling and gesticulating madly regardless. “I started the whole thing…”<br />
<br />
We are soon introduced to the Kockenlocker ménage. A happy wacky household you would love as your neighbours. Trudy, her grumpy old widower Dad who is the town cop, and 14yo sister Emmy. Trudy works in a record-store and is still a ‘minor’ – under 21 in those days. Officer Kockenlocker is played by Sturges regular William Demarest; the role is his metier, melding perfect timing with pratfalls and exquisite lines like “Tell your sister the house ain’t paid for, will you?” to Emmy, when the house starts a-trembling as upstairs in her excitement Trudy kicks up a storm getting ready for the fateful dance. Emmy retorts: “She knows that, Papa. You tell her every day.” Diana Lynn is perfectly cast as Emmy. Precocious and cute as a button, she shines and shines. Betty Hutton is great as Trudy, imparting a fresh dizzy innocence to the shenanigans. Her tipsy inebriation when she turns up late at the movie theatre after that night of hanky-panky is a comic delight, and Eddie Bracken as the put-upon Norval is the perfect foil.<br />
<br />
Norval’s car is the worse-for-wear after Trudy’s night on the tiles:<br />
<br />
<i>- You’ve been drinking</i><br />
<i>- Who’s been drinking? I never had a drink in my life! How dare you insinuate I’ve been drinking?</i><br />
<i>- You certainly don’t get what you’ve got on lemonade.</i><br />
<i>- I certainly did.</i><br />
<i>- All right.</i><br />
<i>- What have you been using on my car, a pickaxe?</i><br />
<i>- Is this your car? I was wondering where I found this old jalopy.</i><br />
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Norval, the prototypical nerd is an orphan who boards with a local lawyer and his wife. He has been sweet on Trudy since they were little kids and works in a bank to <i>“get rich and to buy her things someday”</i>. With the pregnancy a reality to be dealt with, wily Emmy hatches a scheme to wangle Norval into what he wants anyway: marrying Trudy and making the coming confinement legit. Suffice to say nothing goes to plan.<br />
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Sturges started the picture with only a handful of pages from the uncompleted script, writing at night for the next day’s shooting, and did not have the ending until the eleventh hour. The result is a truly engaging story with razor wit, deft characterisations, and frantically funny sight gags, with just enough slapstick to hold off any resistance from the viewer. He satirizes everything and everyone, from opportunistic politicians to marriage, motherhood, and romance. Even the army and the war don’t escape. A newspaper headline screams “Hitler Demands a Recount” after the ‘miracle’ is revealed, and a new caring policy for MPs uses ‘psycholology’ (sic) to handle wayward men in uniform.<br />
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Sturges may pillory his characters but deep down he has a soft affection for them. Decency is rewarded and only hypocrisy and cant punished. There is a wonderful scene at the end at the local fire station where the town worthies are discussing Norval’s fate – he is in the local jail – don’t ask! It turns into a melee after Kockenlocker snr tries unsuccessfully to take a swipe at the local bank president, who is responsible for Norval’s arrest. This sequence, like other crowded scenes in the film, is shot in medium close-up, giving it all an hysterical urgency. Emmy disturbs proceedings by telling her Dad a certain event is imminent! All rush for the staircase down to the garage, but Kockenlocker snr takes the fast way down the firemen’s pole. Inexplicably he stalls once he hits the ground – what is he waiting for? Waiting for the bank president – so he can bop him!<br />
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The framing scenes are beautifully handled with the situation in the Governor’s office becoming ever more chaotic as the news unfolds and lackeys begin to fill the room – again tightly framed by the camera. The lightning-fast repartee of the Governor and his chief aide are brilliantly delivered in long takes. Brian Donlevy as Governor McGinty and Akim Tamiroff as “The Boss” are an awesome comic team:<br />
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<i>- You mean he’s [Norval] still in jail, you dumb blockhead?</i><br />
<i>- Yes.</i><br />
<i>- Well, get him out.</i><br />
<i>- But how can I, Mr. Governor, with all those charges against him?</i><br />
<i>- By dropping those charges, you dumb cluck. You wealhead!</i><br />
<i>- Now, get me that banker on the phone.</i><br />
<i>- His charter is cancelled!</i><br />
<i>- And the justice of the peace!</i><br />
<i>- His license is revoked and his motel is condemned</i><i>…</i><br />
<i>- There’s only one thing more, Mr. Governor, the marriage.</i><br />
<i>- What’s the matter with her marriage?</i><br />
<i>- She’s married to Norval Jones. She always has been.</i><br />
<i>- The guy married them, didn’t he?</i><br />
<i>- The boy signed his right name, didn’t he?</i><br />
<i>- But he gave his name as Ratzkiwatzki.</i><br />
<i>- He was trying to say Jones. He stuttered.</i><br />
<i>- What are you looking for, needles in a haystack?</i><br />
<i>- Then how about the first Ratzkiwatzki?</i><br />
<i>- He’s annulled.</i><br />
<i>- Who annulled him?</i><br />
<i>- The judge, who do you suppose?</i><br />
<i>- Retroactive. Get Judge Mendoza on the phone.</i><br />
<i>- I’m getting it.</i><br />
<i>- He’s out of the picture.</i><br />
<i>- He was never in it.</i><br />
<i>- Get me those guys on the phone.</i><br />
<i>- Who do they think they are, anyway? Hello, Mendoza.</i><br />
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All’s well that ends well…<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-23360388466362190092012-07-10T00:42:00.003-07:002014-11-10T16:55:17.760-08:00Ozu: The pathos of things<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKVJFXgBSty8xEEHU1Zc1Az4WrB4EunhFEOcG1-9CQga-rinElBE4_bZ3AXRCW3ZlwjnSioBU5OVM9VLBL3kaaCPCipExk6nQgVaxfM64qp1-ar0hqFAO3QMU3i_r_wjO1fOPDgAliM5vo/s1600/tokyostory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKVJFXgBSty8xEEHU1Zc1Az4WrB4EunhFEOcG1-9CQga-rinElBE4_bZ3AXRCW3ZlwjnSioBU5OVM9VLBL3kaaCPCipExk6nQgVaxfM64qp1-ar0hqFAO3QMU3i_r_wjO1fOPDgAliM5vo/s400/tokyostory.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ozu's Tokyo Story</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I made an interesting cinematic connection when reading a piece in the UK Guardian yesterday. The article, an edited extract by Oliver Burkemen from his book 'The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking', was titled 'Failure can be Inspiring: be positive, stay focused on success, we tell ourselves'. But the true path to contentment may lie in learning to be a 'loser'.
Burkeman adopts the Stoic view of life: the ideal state of mind is tranquility – “not the excitable cheer of success”. In introducing his thesis Burkeman relates that there is a Japanese expression, <em>mono no aware</em>, that roughly translates as ‘the pathos of things’ and captures, in Burkeman’s words, a “kind of bitter-sweet melancholy at life’s impermanence – that additional beauty imparted to cherry blossoms, say, or human features, as a result of their inevitably fleeting time on Earth”.
Yasujiro Uzo immediately came to mind, and that expression seems the essence of his cinema. Uzo’s pathos also imbues the prosaic with this bitter-sweetness: clothing drying on the line in a back-yard, idle smoke-stacks against a clear sky, or the simple joys of a bus-ride.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-85787948743357753732012-05-12T18:35:00.000-07:002014-11-10T16:56:06.973-08:00Woman of the Lake (Onna no mizûmi - Japan 1966)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yoshishige Yoshida’s <b>Woman of the Lake</b> starring Yoshida’s ravishing wife and muse Mariko Okada is concerned with an ‘errant’ married women who has an affair. When nude photos of her taken by her lover are stolen she is forced to confront her bondage to men. The film is a radical critique of the subjugation of women as possessions and sexual objects. As is typical for Yoshida, his narrative though linear is fractured and sometimes obscure. There is a resolution of sorts but the ending is not final – the closing scene fades to black as a train enters a railway tunnel.<br />
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Yoshido has made a great film. He only gives glimpses of the photos and is more concerned with what they mean and as the catalyst to the scenario. Once they are stolen they become motifs representative not of their subject, but of a woman’s rights, and the battle she must engage in to recover her body from those that would oppress her. But it is more complex than this, as Yoshido does not use words but images to relay inner states, and as in life, not all is as it appears, nor is everything explained. The final 30 minutes are redolent of all sorts of things that are quite shattering. Near the end the husband is waiting for the unfaithful wife to have it out with her – and he falls asleep! The shots of Okada moving through the carriages to the end of a moving train are immensely powerful and elevate the act of walking to poetry.<br />
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The picture is amazingly modern: an expressionist tour-de-force with the b&w photography employed in wide-screen staging and dynamic use of deep focus to exquisite effect. It looks so contemporary – Okada sports oversized sunglasses currently back in vogue; and European – with Okada wearing flowing dresses and her luxuriant dark hair offest by elegant scarves. To my mind Yoshido challenges Antonioni as the central motif of 60s cinema. Amazingly very little has been written about the film.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4212792951138585706.post-4736444026083093262012-03-27T18:43:00.000-07:002014-11-10T16:57:35.884-08:00Mad Men - Season 5 (2012)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As a <b>Mad Men</b> die-hard from its inception, I must admit I am tired of its glacial pace and shallow denizens, but having invested in the first four seasons, I am committed to seeing out Season 5, after the 2-year hiatus.<br />
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The opening double-episode of the new series was same old same old. Shallow, vain WASPS who have learnt nothing over 6 years. Don has hit 40 and is as clueless as he was when he stole a dead man's identity. There was some unusual humor, but I wouldn't describe it as hilarious. The same old clichés. Hick clients who all look and sound the same, and over-sexed middle-aged white men screwing younger women - anyone for a ruck – wink wink? Why have a token black and a token gay? Save money and have a gay black guy at a boring party with some mildly arousing sleaze. Heck, who doesn't like a surprise party? As to the treatment of race, it has an icky Seinfeld-feel. Almost as loathsome as Larry David's foul-mouthed hanger-on in Curb. But the period detail remains awesome. Some decent characters are needed fast. <br />
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My best TV show of the current crop has to be Homeland - intelligent and gripping television, where things actually happen and deep questions are posed.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com