Ikiru
Stalker
Grand Illusion
Daybreak
A Single Man
Honorable Mention: Frankenstein, High School, Le Corbeau, Blue Vinyl
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Twelve Months
That's it, the project is over. Reflections and new parameters for a new year to follow. Top five of the month in no particular order are:
Friday, August 20, 2010
Stalag 17
IMDB #213 [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046359/]
The Gist:
Interesting to see another POW film so quickly after Grand Illusion, here a POW film that comments via voiceover that no one's made a POW film before and what an awful shame that is. I guess the guy doing the voice over doesn't watch much French film, neh? Anyway, with this film's position on the IMDB list I thought I might see another enjoyable classic like Great Escape and what I got was a film that took a while to grow on me. I think this is primarily because all the characters were caricatures and frankly unlikable. I did end up liking William Holden's character, but that took a while to take too. Anyway, once the film got into its intrigue of the informant was, its pace improved considerably and I forgave the two-dimensional characters. Maybe I'm too hard on it because I had just watched Grand Illusion and that film mopped the floor with this one. Maybe that's not fair, but so it goes.
Daybreak
Daybreak (1939)
The Gist:
Carne's film Daybreak is drenched in atmosphere, dark Parisian streets filled with fog, slow dissolves into romantic flashbacks, cigarette smoke, gunshots, snappy French dialogue. What I enjoy most, however, is that it's just a great set-up. Half of the film takes place in a room where a man has a stand-off with the police after he is found murdering another man. Then through flashbacks we slowly piece together how he has come to this point. If I had a complaint, it's that the film feels a little too conscious of its mood at times, too aware of itself. But that's a complaint I can level at a lot of my favorite films so I'll let it go.
Le Corbeau
Le Corbeau (1943)
The Gist:
Le Corbeau, or The Raven, is a fascinating film made in the midst of nazi-occupied France. It is apparently based on real events, where a "poison pen" sends hundreds of anonymous notes informing dark secrets on his fellow man, causing an uproar. In the film, the protagonist is a self-righteous doctor accused of being an abortionist, and the letters are purposed towards removing him from the town. Eventually hysteria builds to such heights that an innocent woman, who is thought to be the poison pen, is chased through the streets in a mob scene recalling Frankenstein. Likewise, the police try to ensnare the doctor in a set-up abortion as to finally be rid of him and consequently rid of the letters as well. Within the running time of the film, the morality of man is called into question, the idea that there is a clear right and wrong, good and evil. The film itself stands up well, but it's also a curious study in touching a sensitive nerve at a sensitive time. Essentially this film was denounced and banned by nearly every place of authority in France both during the occupation and following France's newly won freedom afterward. The Nazis didn't like that it spoke ill of informing, the French underground resistance movement felt like it worked against unifying the French people, the church cried "Blasphemous!" as usual, and so on. What's most curious is how the government after the occupation continued the ban on the film, almost embarrassed at the film's window into their country's darkest moment.
Blue Vinyl
Blue Vinyl (2002)
The Gist:
This was a pleasant, indie documentary about the evils of vinyl. It strikes that same cord of evil corporation responsible for cancer, cover ups, greed, so on. Basically if you've watched Erin Brockovich you can get the idea. Thankfully it approaches everything with a sense of humor, which I find is the only real way to tackle these subjects since they are so innumerous that I can't help but be depressed every time I see another documentary about how we're poisoning ourselves and headed towards a general path of self-destruction, only to have some tacked on resolution that we can really make a difference though sometimes I have a hard time thinking its anything but a losing battle. Oh well.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Week Forty-Eight
New Queue:
Daybreak (1939) - check
Le Corbeau (1943) - check
Blue Vinyl (2002) - check
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Avant-Garde Short Films
I started an Avant-Garde cinema class, so I'll be posting a collection of the shorts I haven't seen before as an entry (it's allowed in my arbitrary rules, ha). This week:
Maya Deren - Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946)
Maya Deren - Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945)
Kenneth Anger - Fireworks (1947)
Kenneth Anger - Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)
High School
High School (1968)
The Gist:
High School is an observational, fly on the wall, documentary. By that, it means that there is no voice of god VO, no questions being heard from the filmmaker, and an attempt to illuminate the intrusive presence of the filmmaking process altogether in hopes to capture a truer sense of reality. Of course, there are plenty of moments in this film where you can feel the subjects reacting in a way that is different than if they were not being filmed and the editing continues to add subjectivity to the content but so it goes, nothing's perfect. There is still a distilled truth at work in this documentary, both a sense of the times and something that feels very contemporary. I was the greatest fan of high school myself. It wasn't that I didn't have good teachers, because I had plenty of them, but the system itself is a claustrophobic and unnecessarily, inflexibly bureaucratic. This film reminded me a lot of my high school experience. I could feel an intense truth at work amidst the mild artifice.
Freedom For Us
Liberty For us (1931)
The Gist:
This is an early talkie by Rene Clair, and unlike many of its contemporary counterparts it has a decidedly minimalist approach to the use of dialogue. Clair was known to speak out against the trend of dialogue running amok in early talkie pictures, and seemed to only use straight laced dialogue when the plot necessitated it. When he could, he preferred to pantomime or to say it in song. As a movie itself, I found it strikingly similar to Modern Times and so when I looked up the film I was unsurprised to find that Chaplin in fact based Modern Times on this film. Even more interesting is the fact that he never got the rights for it and the production company who held the rights to A nous la liberte sued Chaplin. Clair was not part of the suit, and was in fact friends with Chaplin and was honored that he had taken from his film as inspiration. In any case, Clair's film has some interesting commentary on industrialization that serve as an interesting precursor to the more timely Chaplin counterpart.
9
9 (2009)
The Gist:
9 is essentially an apocalyptic vision of the future where little sack dolls brought to life by the splintered soul of their creator battle against the fiendish AI metal contraptions that extinguished all of humanity in the first place. It sounds badass in theory, and looks pretty badass in practice, but the film has no real feel for its own narrative. For one thing, the pacing is just off, distractingly fast paced, where things move so swiftly that we never manage to care about any of it. For another, the dialogue and the voice acting just feels wrong. Shane Acker based this feature on a short film of his that was nominated for an oscar, and you'll notice that the concept works better without dialogue. After all, it helps sustain the mystery of this nihilistic vision, something that adding voices to it just ruins. They should have gone Wall-E on this shit, that's all I'm saying (mind you, I think Wall-E would have been better without all the chatting from the people in the space station too).
On Another Note:
You should avoid this feature and just watch the short. You'll get more out of the concept that way. I'm including it below.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Week Forty-Seven
New Queue:
9 (2009) - check
Freedom for Us (1931) - check
Avant-Garde Shorts - check
High School (1968) - check
On Another Note:
No IMDB 250 movie this week. I'm running pretty low on them anyway, I could probably spare a week.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Ikiru
.jpg)
Ikiru (1952)
IMDB #222 [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044741/]
The Gist:
Ikiru started off as a film that had flashes of genius, but felt a little theatrical at times as well. For instance, I loved when the protagonist found out he had cancer he had this great scene staggering through his house while all these memories (in the form of flashbacks) flooded over him in an expert rhythmic editing sequence. At the same time, there were a few moments where some bit characters felt a little two-dimensional, particularly in their dialogue. And so I was prepared to enjoy a very good, but far from perfect Kurosawa film. And then the second half came and blew me away. The structure is so intriguing. In the first half of the film the protagonist searches for some way to make his life meaningful before he dies. Then the film flashforwards to his funeral, his action already fulfilled. Through the talk of the mourners, we find out more and more of how it happened, taking in their own perspectives of the man, how they learn that he did in fact know he had cancer. It's so beautifully orchestrated, and the scene near the end where he sings mournfully on the swings? It's out and out powerful.
Grand Illusion
Grand Illusion (1937)
The Gist:
Two Renoir films in a row, this one being probably Renoir's second most noted film in his oeuvre (following Rules of the Game, of course). The film plays out like a slightly more somber take on The Great Escape, where the morality of the film is less distinct. Here, we have a band of resolute French men who are bent on breaking out of their POW camp because (as it was emphasized in The Great Escape as well) that's just what you do, you help your side by making as much trouble for their side as possible. Namely, escape. Here though, we have a German figure who is seen as an outright sympathetic character, who even develops a strong friendship with one of the men in the group. I think it's from this later half of the film that the narrative strays from the enjoyable camaraderie that draws comparisons to its Steve McQueen counter part and starts to delve into darker territory. The escape forces the amiable German officer to fire his own weapon at this friend, two others from the group escape and nearly starve to death in the winter countryside of Germany, they are rescued by a German widow who begins a doomed Romance with Jean Gabin. The first half of the film was enjoyable, but the second half was absolutely poignant.
Night at the Crossroads
Night at the Crossroads (1932)
The Gist:
This is an early Renoir film, made in the beginning of the sound era, filled with odd film aesthetic choices and strange editing sequences and generally just a hot mess of a film. This makes it, at the same time, a fascinating entry for French cinema, where you can see the rules being broken in a way that would predate Hollywood Film Noir and French New Wave but without the precision of either movement. It follows a detective who solves a murder mystery, and the plot is average at best. Renoir would go on to make far more involving films, this one remains as a standout curiosity into the beginnings of his career (hard to find too).
Super High Me
Super High Me (2007)
The Gist:
Going off the formula of the Super Size Me movie, which in contrast to this film was at the time one of the most daring documentaries I had ever seen, Super High Me follows around its stand-up comedian protagonist as he goes 30 days without smoking pot and then 30 days smoking pot "every day, all day". There really is no great risk to this film, no staggering insight uncovered. All it really shows is that people can be more or less functional pot heads and I already knew that. Of course, it varies on the individual, which is a nuance that is beyond this film because it's stilted to begin with using a character who already has successfully lived a life as a functional pot head. If they really wanted to make an interesting film they would have expanded their research to more than one test subject. But whatever, the film's entertaining because essentially it's just Doug Benson the comedian riffing on pot, chatting with his famous comedian buddies, and then the movie's over. I do think his comedy was a little sharper when he was sober, but the difference is fairly minimal.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Week Forty-Six
New queue:
Super High Me (2007) - check
Night at the Crossroads (1932) - check
Grand Illusion (1937) - check
Ikiru (1952) - check
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Frankenstein
_06.jpg)
Frankenstein (1931)
The Gist:
I wonder if a gist is really necessary, since the elements of the Frankenstein movie are so pervasive that you know most of the film coming into it. I will say the German Expressionist stylistic flourishes are a welcome sight and that the film succeeds a great deal in its simplicity. It doesn't try to hone in too heavily on the themes of Shelley's book, but allows those themes to come to the surface naturally and concisely. The film only lasts an hour and ten minutes and really should have ended with the shot of the mill burning down. That was the poetic ending. The next scene where Dr. Frankenstein is being nursed back to health by his fiancée while his father rattles on in a way that I suppose was intended to be charming, that was the forced Hollywood ending that hurts my soul. Also, I don't know why Boris Karloff was so good at making "NGGH!!!" sounds and waving around his arms frenetically but he totally was. Good on you dead Russian guy whose name didn't even get into the original credits.
Stalker
Stalker (1979)
The Gist:
Stalker is the second film I've seen by Andrei Tarkovsky, and is perhaps even more ambitious and subtle than the darkly fascinating Solaris. Here we have a man, known as a "stalker," who leads the abject and meek into a place known as "the zone". The zone is an area cordoned off by the Russian military forces, a mysterious place where a supposed asteroid fell, and then there's some mystical shit about how there's a room that can grant anyone's inner most desire, things like that. It has an odd science fiction/fantasy slant, but it's like Tarkovsky exploits this instead of falls to the trappings of convention (although that would have made a great film too). Instead, what we have is an interesting premise that gives way to beautifully colorful Terrence Malik-esque cinematography of the zone (contrasting the subtle Lynchian-esque drab browns of the world outside of the zone), that gives way to the stalker preaching strange poetic verses, about the miserable men in tow pontificating on the nature of the zone and the room and the path of men. It's fucking awesome, and Jesus is it beautiful. Two hours and thirty five minutes that could almost be described as a visual poem.
The Crow
The Crow (1994)
The Gist:
It's a campy indie film that has an appeal based on terrible dialogue and overacting and the occasional gratuitous action scene. It more or less succeeds on this level, and has a morbid appeal beyond that due to:
A. It being in the city I currently live in, where I can occasionally go "Oh hey, that's Wilmington, I recognize that"
B. The story of Brandon Lee's death and the curiosity of how it affected the final cut of the film.
Honestly, beyond that it's an enjoyably forgettable experience.
A Single Man
A Single Man (2009)
The Gist:
The best way to describe A Single Man is to say that it is a beautifully shot portrait of grief. While that may seem completely complimentary, there are some short comings to that kind of description. Namely, the film occasionally gives the feeling of being too well staged, too beautifully rendered. For the most part this tendency is anchored by Colin Firth's performance, which is subtle and enigmatic. And honestly, the stylistic flourishes eventually won me over, particularly the way color is used to symbolize passion and life. By the end of the film, when Colin Firth recited his voice over monologue the film had me. The sentiments voiced in those final minutes are so honest they hurt and the movie should have really ended there. Instead, it took it one scene to far and it felt like it tried to wrap things up a little toward the end. All in all, they are kind of nitpicking points. The film is rich with moments of tension and frustration and unfiltered beauty, and is one of the better films to come out in the last year.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Week Forty-Five
New Queue:
A Single Man (2009) - check
The Crow (1994) - check
The Stalker (1979) - check
Frankenstein (1931) - check
A Single Man (2009) - check
The Crow (1994) - check
The Stalker (1979) - check
Frankenstein (1931) - check
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
