Just a quick seconding of Don Lope's Le amiche - one of my favourite Italian films of the decade and my favourite pre-trilogy Antonioni - these films are definitely worth checking out.
And I also have to agree with sevenarts' recommendation of Histoire d'eau. I'm a confirmed Godard skeptic, loving bits and pieces of many of his films, but liking very few entire ones, but this is a delightful, eccentric short, with a great, messy relationship between the compelling images and the compelling narration.
In terms of early NV shorts, I also have to admit my adoration for Resnais' sublimely elegant industrial film Le Chant du styrene. Making a formal masterpiece out of that particular content (the manufacture of plastic) requires both genius and balls!
1950s Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
Some more recent viewings.
The BFI's Free Cinema box set is a treasure trove of brilliant British shorts, most from the 50s, and I'm very glad I picked up this one. I've watched a few so far, and there are some definite greats. My favorites so far were The Singing Street and Momma Don't Allow. The former is a document of Scottish children's singing games, incredibly simple but really charming. The latter shows a night at a dancehall with a jazz band playing and teens dancing. There are the barest hints of narrative threads here and there -- a couple arguing and reconciling, a group of obviously upper-class kids showing up briefly to slum it at the working class club -- but mostly it's just a loose, sprawling celebration of music and motion. Really infectious and fun. Also worthwhile was Lindsay Anderson's sardonic poke at British middle-class "amusements," O Dreamland, and the later take-off on this idea in Nice Time. Both films subtly skewer the use of violence, cruelty, and fetishized sexuality as entertainment, without ever really seeming to step outside of a strictly documentary mode. The latter film has a particularly interesting sequence in which images of moviegoers are accompanied by excerpts of movie soundtracks, and movie posters advertising the horrors of war are brought up short by a sudden cutaway to a badly scarred veteran standing outside the theater. These films are interesting in that they combine a seemingly straight documentary approach with subtle disjunctions and subjective touches, particularly in terms of the inventive use of sound.
Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train was lots of fun, of course. Robert Walker's campy, sinister performance really carries this, as he's incredibly fun to watch even when he's at his creepiest.
Speaking of Alain Resnais and early Nouvelle Vague shorts, I watched his Guernica, which was interesting. It's a pretty intense examination of the relationship between suffering and the depiction of suffering, and in that sense it works on at least two levels of depiction. The film presents a constant interplay between the horrors of WW2, the artwork of Picasso that attempts to express such horrors, and finally Resnais' own film which represents a medium between the two as well as a representation in itself. It could've been taken a bit further and delved into a bit deeper for my tastes; this was made a good 5 years before Night and Fog, and I sometimes had the sense that Resnais perhaps hadn't mastered this type of essayistic film yet. Still, pretty interesting in its own right. For what it's worth, I didn't get much out of the other Resnais "industrial" short I've seen from the 50s, Toute le memoire du monde.
Another one worth mentioning, though not one I've watched recently, is Hilary Harris' Longhorns, available on the excellent DVD of his experimental shorts from Mystic Fire. As a formalist study of motion, it's not quite as stunning as his 60s film 9 Variations on a Dance Theme, but it's definitely a lovely and enigmatic little film. It's just composed of a series of views on a pair of bull horn-like protrusions positioned by the side of a lake, which weave and sinuously rotate around each other as if in a strange mechanical dance. Hypnotic and strangely engaging.
The BFI's Free Cinema box set is a treasure trove of brilliant British shorts, most from the 50s, and I'm very glad I picked up this one. I've watched a few so far, and there are some definite greats. My favorites so far were The Singing Street and Momma Don't Allow. The former is a document of Scottish children's singing games, incredibly simple but really charming. The latter shows a night at a dancehall with a jazz band playing and teens dancing. There are the barest hints of narrative threads here and there -- a couple arguing and reconciling, a group of obviously upper-class kids showing up briefly to slum it at the working class club -- but mostly it's just a loose, sprawling celebration of music and motion. Really infectious and fun. Also worthwhile was Lindsay Anderson's sardonic poke at British middle-class "amusements," O Dreamland, and the later take-off on this idea in Nice Time. Both films subtly skewer the use of violence, cruelty, and fetishized sexuality as entertainment, without ever really seeming to step outside of a strictly documentary mode. The latter film has a particularly interesting sequence in which images of moviegoers are accompanied by excerpts of movie soundtracks, and movie posters advertising the horrors of war are brought up short by a sudden cutaway to a badly scarred veteran standing outside the theater. These films are interesting in that they combine a seemingly straight documentary approach with subtle disjunctions and subjective touches, particularly in terms of the inventive use of sound.
Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train was lots of fun, of course. Robert Walker's campy, sinister performance really carries this, as he's incredibly fun to watch even when he's at his creepiest.
Speaking of Alain Resnais and early Nouvelle Vague shorts, I watched his Guernica, which was interesting. It's a pretty intense examination of the relationship between suffering and the depiction of suffering, and in that sense it works on at least two levels of depiction. The film presents a constant interplay between the horrors of WW2, the artwork of Picasso that attempts to express such horrors, and finally Resnais' own film which represents a medium between the two as well as a representation in itself. It could've been taken a bit further and delved into a bit deeper for my tastes; this was made a good 5 years before Night and Fog, and I sometimes had the sense that Resnais perhaps hadn't mastered this type of essayistic film yet. Still, pretty interesting in its own right. For what it's worth, I didn't get much out of the other Resnais "industrial" short I've seen from the 50s, Toute le memoire du monde.
Another one worth mentioning, though not one I've watched recently, is Hilary Harris' Longhorns, available on the excellent DVD of his experimental shorts from Mystic Fire. As a formalist study of motion, it's not quite as stunning as his 60s film 9 Variations on a Dance Theme, but it's definitely a lovely and enigmatic little film. It's just composed of a series of views on a pair of bull horn-like protrusions positioned by the side of a lake, which weave and sinuously rotate around each other as if in a strange mechanical dance. Hypnotic and strangely engaging.
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jonp72
- Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:44 am
I cannot comment on the merits of Histoire d'Eau, but I wanted to note that IMDB lists Histoire as a 1961 film.zedz wrote:And I also have to agree with sevenarts' recommendation of Histoire d'eau. I'm a confirmed Godard skeptic, loving bits and pieces of many of his films, but liking very few entire ones, but this is a delightful, eccentric short, with a great, messy relationship between the compelling images and the compelling narration.
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
I know, list rules and all, but IMDB is totally wrong -- all 5 of Godard's earliest shorts were made in the 50s, prior to Breathless, though IMDB does list a few as being in the early 60s instead for some unfathomable reason.jonp72 wrote:I cannot comment on the merits of Histoire d'Eau, but I wanted to note that IMDB lists Histoire as a 1961 film.
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HerrSchreck
- Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am
I mentioned this over on the Modern Silent Films thread, but no fan of 50's cinema should dare miss the sublime DEMENTIA by J J Parker from 1953. This is truly one of the most original films ever made-- certainly the one where cinematographer William Thompson proved that he could hang with just about anyone. It's nearly impossible to describe this movie in narrative terms, aside from some general "It's about a whore on the brink of losing her mind: she wakes up from a nightmare (illustrated onscreen in a wonderfully avant sequence) in a seedy hotel room and makes her way out into even seedier city streets haunted by pimps, winos, corrupt cops, nasty johns, and hallucinated trips into her past by way of a graveyard haunted by a beatnik-type phantom..."
George Anthiels's score is mesmerizing and the stuff of obscure legend, as is Shorty Rogers (with his Giants... they'd make an appearance a couple years later in Preminger's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM) in the closing nightclub sequence, populated with junkys, whores, a reanimated dead man displaying the stump of a severed hand, and perhaps even the devil himself. A good enough series of articles on the film at Flickhead.
There is also an absolutely fabulous writeup on the film and disc of the restored versions of both cuts of the film from Glenn Erickson at Savant, which reprints the poetically eerie rant of Ed MacMahon on the DAUGHTER dub, which Glenn is obviously a huge fan of. Some are partial to the DAUGHTER dubbed version, but I've always had a heavier love for the original, as the beauty and strangeness of this films incredibly indescribable aesthetic shines through for deeper contemplation without Ed's babble.
I'm baffled that even in cineaste circles this film isn't better-known. Certainly it was very difficult to see for well nigh half a century, and perhaps THE BLOB saved it from complete obscurity. But anybody interested in what a pair of balls, a love of film, and do-it-yourself enterprise (as well as a rich mom) can produce-- sorta like the Ed Wood Jr scenario, but with a far more talented protagonist (though just how large Parker's contribution was is debated)-- should watch this film.
You'll also see the Venice Beach exteriors seen in TOUCH OF EVIL put to far more haunting use.
George Anthiels's score is mesmerizing and the stuff of obscure legend, as is Shorty Rogers (with his Giants... they'd make an appearance a couple years later in Preminger's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM) in the closing nightclub sequence, populated with junkys, whores, a reanimated dead man displaying the stump of a severed hand, and perhaps even the devil himself. A good enough series of articles on the film at Flickhead.
There is also an absolutely fabulous writeup on the film and disc of the restored versions of both cuts of the film from Glenn Erickson at Savant, which reprints the poetically eerie rant of Ed MacMahon on the DAUGHTER dub, which Glenn is obviously a huge fan of. Some are partial to the DAUGHTER dubbed version, but I've always had a heavier love for the original, as the beauty and strangeness of this films incredibly indescribable aesthetic shines through for deeper contemplation without Ed's babble.
I'm baffled that even in cineaste circles this film isn't better-known. Certainly it was very difficult to see for well nigh half a century, and perhaps THE BLOB saved it from complete obscurity. But anybody interested in what a pair of balls, a love of film, and do-it-yourself enterprise (as well as a rich mom) can produce-- sorta like the Ed Wood Jr scenario, but with a far more talented protagonist (though just how large Parker's contribution was is debated)-- should watch this film.
You'll also see the Venice Beach exteriors seen in TOUCH OF EVIL put to far more haunting use.
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
IMDB date is the rule, so anybody who's interested will have to save this for their 60s list unless IMDB comes to its senses. I'll try to keep a running list of IMDB mistakes and check back on them closer to the closing date for the lists.sevenarts wrote:I know, list rules and all, but IMDB is totally wrong -- all 5 of Godard's earliest shorts were made in the 50s, prior to Breathless, though IMDB does list a few as being in the early 60s instead for some unfathomable reason.jonp72 wrote:I cannot comment on the merits of Histoire d'Eau, but I wanted to note that IMDB lists Histoire as a 1961 film.
I just checked back on the film I got caught out on last time around, and, sure enough, Window Water Baby Moving is a 1959 film for the world at large, but still 1962 in the IMDB parallel universe.
I guess they need to build up a lot of credit on their time machine so they can drag Tal Farlow a couple of decades back in time!
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
Kiss Me Deadly - now that's one hell of a movie. A dark as pitch film noir where the "hero" all but prostitutes his girlfriend to get info, and the violence threatens to bubble over in practically every scene. This is especially true of the first 10 minutes of set-up, surely the most intense, terrifying, and eye-catching opening of any Hollywood film from this decade. If the rest of the film doesn't quite keep up that intensity, it's probably unavoidable -- what movie ever could? Still, great stuff.
And does anybody else see this movie as a crucial origin point for Lynch's recent filmography? I know Lynch is generally thought of as the antithesis of a movie buff, with very few references to other films, but I've never come across another film that so perfectly encapsulates the look and feel of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. There were so many scenes in this that seemed to echo forward to one film or the other -- the whole opening on the highway; the scene where Hammer and his secretary kiss and clench while having a whispery, breathless conversation; the exploding cabin; the garage. It was always obvious to me that Lynch's more recent films are meant to evoke this period of Hollywood and this type of film -- now it seems even more obvious that to some extent, it was this specific film he had in mind.
And does anybody else see this movie as a crucial origin point for Lynch's recent filmography? I know Lynch is generally thought of as the antithesis of a movie buff, with very few references to other films, but I've never come across another film that so perfectly encapsulates the look and feel of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. There were so many scenes in this that seemed to echo forward to one film or the other -- the whole opening on the highway; the scene where Hammer and his secretary kiss and clench while having a whispery, breathless conversation; the exploding cabin; the garage. It was always obvious to me that Lynch's more recent films are meant to evoke this period of Hollywood and this type of film -- now it seems even more obvious that to some extent, it was this specific film he had in mind.
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colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Beyond the beginning of the Hammer films, only the sci-fi tinged films spring to mind like Body Snatchers and I Married A Monster From Outer Space. The It! films - It Came From Beneath The Sea (and the other Harryhausen films like the skeleton-fight sequence from Jason and the Argonauts, which must have caused a few nightmares in its time!), It Came From Outer Space and It! The Terror From Beyond Space.
Not exactly a horror, but there is Gerd Oswald's version of Screaming Mimi with Anita Ekberg.
The Fly. The Tingler, with its brief colour sequence with the bath of blood, which looking back feels very Diabolique-inspired.
Perhaps the most important one to discuss in addition to Diaboliques and Hunter would be Jacques Tourner's Night Of The Demon.
Maybe also the 1959 take on the Burke and Hare body snatcher story with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence, The Flesh And The Fiends (though that is classed as 1960 on imdb).
Perhaps people were too cheerful in the 50s?
Not exactly a horror, but there is Gerd Oswald's version of Screaming Mimi with Anita Ekberg.
The Fly. The Tingler, with its brief colour sequence with the bath of blood, which looking back feels very Diabolique-inspired.
Perhaps the most important one to discuss in addition to Diaboliques and Hunter would be Jacques Tourner's Night Of The Demon.
Maybe also the 1959 take on the Burke and Hare body snatcher story with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence, The Flesh And The Fiends (though that is classed as 1960 on imdb).
Perhaps people were too cheerful in the 50s?
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Scharphedin2
- Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 7:37 am
- Location: Denmark/Sweden
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
Continuing my semi-random viewing...
First up, John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, continuing my casual dip into previously unexplored Hollywood noir territory. And if Kiss Me Deadly was a great film with a few qualifications, this one was just about perfect. It maintains its mood of dread, darkness, and claustrophobic urban spaces so consistently that the final scene's lightness and open space is incredibly affecting and beautiful. Just a really moody, tense masterpiece.
La Strada is my first exposure to Fellini's neorealist period, and it was pretty good. A simple story told with a charming mix of gentle realism and subtly exaggerated stylization, pointing the way towards the carnivalesque excesses I love so much in later Fellini. My favorite moments were definitely the more "magical" ones -- the carnival in the city, the visit to the convent when Gelsomina plays her trumpet for the nuns, and of course the impromptu parade that forms when a small horn section goes marching, randomly, along the side of a road. These small moments of beauty and magic are what really make the film work for me, and provide a poignant counterpoint to the bitter tragedy of Gelsomina's involvement with Zampano.
Hitchcock's The Wrong Man just didn't work for me, mostly because of the second half of the film. The first half sets up this wonderful tension and frustration, the striving of an innocent man to free himself from a seemingly inescapable trap. But it kind of falls apart as it wears on. The detour into the wife's sudden madness reeks of Hitchcock's rather superficial fondness for psychoanalysis, as she goes by rote through the DSM list of symptoms for depression. And the courtroom scenes, after all this buildup, are surprisingly flacid and lacking in drama, mostly just repeating information we already know.
Ozu continues to impress me more and more with each film, and Early Summer is one of my favorites yet. Just a gorgeous, funny, incredibly moving film, like everything I've seen from this master. The richness of characterization and emotional subtlety is just unlike anything else in cinema. I could probably write volumes about this film so for here I'll keep it to that.
I've continued to go through the BFI's wonderful Free Cinema box set. Lindsay Anderson's Wakefield Express is a bit of an industrial documentary, but a surprisingly personal and idiosyncratic one. It's about a provincial newspaper and the process behind its weekly publication. But Anderson also makes it very much about the community itself, and the people in it. Michael Grigsby's Enginemen turns the Free Cinema's quiet, probing camera on British railwaymen, at a point when the old standard of the steam engine was set to be replaced by newer trains. It's a very poignant and lovingly photographed film, extracting emotion from both the wizened faces of the old steam train operators, and the moving gears and smoke-spewing motors of the trains themselves. Also Elizabeth Russell's Food for a Blluuusssshhhhh, which was just, um, weird. Not much in common with the other Free Cinema shorts, this just does its own strange, mildly surrealistic thing, at times reminding me of Maya Deren, at others of the Dali/Bunuel films. Pretty funny too.
Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear has an absolutely stunning hour-long build-up of suspense that's among the most heart-racing and tense sequences in film. Truly great filmmaking. Unfortunately before that is another hour of rather weak set-up, and the ending just seems like some rather cheap irony. So all in all a decidedly mixed bag.
First up, John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, continuing my casual dip into previously unexplored Hollywood noir territory. And if Kiss Me Deadly was a great film with a few qualifications, this one was just about perfect. It maintains its mood of dread, darkness, and claustrophobic urban spaces so consistently that the final scene's lightness and open space is incredibly affecting and beautiful. Just a really moody, tense masterpiece.
La Strada is my first exposure to Fellini's neorealist period, and it was pretty good. A simple story told with a charming mix of gentle realism and subtly exaggerated stylization, pointing the way towards the carnivalesque excesses I love so much in later Fellini. My favorite moments were definitely the more "magical" ones -- the carnival in the city, the visit to the convent when Gelsomina plays her trumpet for the nuns, and of course the impromptu parade that forms when a small horn section goes marching, randomly, along the side of a road. These small moments of beauty and magic are what really make the film work for me, and provide a poignant counterpoint to the bitter tragedy of Gelsomina's involvement with Zampano.
Hitchcock's The Wrong Man just didn't work for me, mostly because of the second half of the film. The first half sets up this wonderful tension and frustration, the striving of an innocent man to free himself from a seemingly inescapable trap. But it kind of falls apart as it wears on. The detour into the wife's sudden madness reeks of Hitchcock's rather superficial fondness for psychoanalysis, as she goes by rote through the DSM list of symptoms for depression. And the courtroom scenes, after all this buildup, are surprisingly flacid and lacking in drama, mostly just repeating information we already know.
Ozu continues to impress me more and more with each film, and Early Summer is one of my favorites yet. Just a gorgeous, funny, incredibly moving film, like everything I've seen from this master. The richness of characterization and emotional subtlety is just unlike anything else in cinema. I could probably write volumes about this film so for here I'll keep it to that.
I've continued to go through the BFI's wonderful Free Cinema box set. Lindsay Anderson's Wakefield Express is a bit of an industrial documentary, but a surprisingly personal and idiosyncratic one. It's about a provincial newspaper and the process behind its weekly publication. But Anderson also makes it very much about the community itself, and the people in it. Michael Grigsby's Enginemen turns the Free Cinema's quiet, probing camera on British railwaymen, at a point when the old standard of the steam engine was set to be replaced by newer trains. It's a very poignant and lovingly photographed film, extracting emotion from both the wizened faces of the old steam train operators, and the moving gears and smoke-spewing motors of the trains themselves. Also Elizabeth Russell's Food for a Blluuusssshhhhh, which was just, um, weird. Not much in common with the other Free Cinema shorts, this just does its own strange, mildly surrealistic thing, at times reminding me of Maya Deren, at others of the Dali/Bunuel films. Pretty funny too.
Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear has an absolutely stunning hour-long build-up of suspense that's among the most heart-racing and tense sequences in film. Truly great filmmaking. Unfortunately before that is another hour of rather weak set-up, and the ending just seems like some rather cheap irony. So all in all a decidedly mixed bag.
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HerrSchreck
- Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am
Speaking of the glut of horror/sci flicks: so what year is THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE? It was made in 59 but released in 62 owing to censorship problems (it couldn't even get released in the UK). The "Chickie" tease routine in the "club", along with the high school football-type 50 yard dash with the head wrapped in a blazer (with jarringly, accidentally surreal handheld cam), as well as the catfight.. sheesh. If a Frenchman made that film it'd be regarded as an avant garde fringe masterpiece of "Fantastic cinema".
So much of this stuff in addition to colin's list in
Working up to the more celebrated stuff: THIS ISLAND EARTH, FORBIDDEN PLANET, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.
Christ there's so much of this stuff, just in the "fantastic" genre alone. I could write a few more pages on this genre, and a book each on noirs, A-list melodramas, westerns, French, Japanese, etc. Italians. A fabulous decade finding the Japanese in particular crafting their own place of immortality in global cinematic terms for the first time as artisans like Ozu, Naruse, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ichikowa, Kobayashi-- to varying degrees among them of course-- began, post-RASHOMON, forging their own corresponding individual "brand" via iconic representative works which would forever and for better or for worse be stylistically identified.
Quite a ten year stretch, and quite a busy cinematic decade. Somebody say "musical"?
So much of this stuff in addition to colin's list in
You have the formal birth of Japanese sci-fi & Kaiju, fringe american sf masterpieces like INVADERS FROM MARS, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, THE MOLE PEOPLE, THE THING, the very real & sincerely cinematic delights of ROBOT MONSTER & Ed Wood Jr, plus quirks like ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, the baffling MESA OF LOST WOMEN.. we could just go on and on here forever. CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. George Pal produced gems like WAR OF THE WORLDS & WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (don't miss the new dvd on this-- PARAMOUNT doing as fine a job as usual for a pittance $).Beyond the beginning of the Hammer films, only the sci-fi tinged films spring to mind like Body Snatchers and I Married A Monster From Outer Space. The It! films - It Came From Beneath The Sea (and the other Harryhausen films like the skeleton-fight sequence from Jason and the Argonauts, which must have caused a few nightmares in its time!), It Came From Outer Space and It! The Terror From Beyond Space.
Not exactly a horror, but there is Gerd Oswald's version of Screaming Mimi with Anita Ekberg.
The Fly. The Tingler, with its brief colour sequence with the bath of blood, which looking back feels very Diabolique-inspired.
Perhaps the most important one to discuss in addition to Diaboliques and Hunter would be Jacques Tourner's Night Of The Demon.
Maybe also the 1959 take on the Burke and Hare body snatcher story with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence, The Flesh And The Fiends (though that is classed as 1960 on imdb).
Perhaps people were too cheerful in the 50s?
Working up to the more celebrated stuff: THIS ISLAND EARTH, FORBIDDEN PLANET, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.
Christ there's so much of this stuff, just in the "fantastic" genre alone. I could write a few more pages on this genre, and a book each on noirs, A-list melodramas, westerns, French, Japanese, etc. Italians. A fabulous decade finding the Japanese in particular crafting their own place of immortality in global cinematic terms for the first time as artisans like Ozu, Naruse, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ichikowa, Kobayashi-- to varying degrees among them of course-- began, post-RASHOMON, forging their own corresponding individual "brand" via iconic representative works which would forever and for better or for worse be stylistically identified.
Quite a ten year stretch, and quite a busy cinematic decade. Somebody say "musical"?
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Michael
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:09 pm
ABSOLUTELY! Someone from this forum (I can't remember who) recommended me to check it out when it was being featured as the Retro Night dish at the Florida Film Festival last year. I never forget stumbling into the night air out of the theater in a total daze. It was a dreamy stroll through the surreal world of shady people and dark buildings. People, especially the women, in the film are very interesting. Unforgettable faces and personalities. Even the buildings such as the brooding hotel sitting atop a cliff and the lonely beach cottage have personalities.Kiss Me Deadly - now that's one hell of a movie.
It's one of the most stylish, jarring and entertaining movies ever made. Also an easy contender for having the best opening and closing ever. I love this stuff. One of the top 3 of my list for sure.
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
Good call on Night of the Hunter, which coincidentally I just watched last night. Man now that's an odd and unsettling film, and totally unlike anything else I've ever seen, which is really saying something considering that it's a wildly popular 50-year-old film. But even with all its acclaim, it seems like nobody's quite managed to ape its weird vibe. Part horror story, part fairy tale, part religious allegory, it's just such an odd stew and it really shouldn't work, but it gloriously does. Mitchum's performance is creepy as hell, especially when you see him turning on the charm when he needs to. And Lillian Gish, as the light to his darkness, is simply radiant in a very difficult part that walks right along the edge of camp without falling over. That scene where the two of them are facing off singing hymns over each other in the darkness... that's not an image that'll be leaving me anytime soon. Laughton has perfectly blended elements of gritty Depression-era realism into a distorted child's-eye fantasy world to tell an absolutely gripping modern fable. The boat trip, with its shades of Huck Finn and obviously stagey scenery, signals the dazzling transition from a claustrophobic chamber horror piece into something entirely new and stranger. What a wonder.
I also recently watched Un chant d'amour, which was beautifully filmed, but I'm not sure I connected with it any further than that. Not much to say either.
I feel like Joseph Losey's Time Without Pity, his first British feature under his own name post-blacklist, should have been a lot better than it actually was. The premise is fantastic -- a bitter, self-centered alcoholic recovers from his latest drinking binge to discover that while he was binging, his son was tried for murder, and he goes to him only to find that he's scheduled to hang the next day. It should be a taut thriller, finding clues and tracing facts to free the son -- except that the real murderer is revealed in the (very well-done) first scene, and the father's investigation is nonsensical and slack. The ending is a great twist and pretty much redeems the film, but it feels like Losey didn't much know what to do between his striking opening and the powerful finale -- so rather than construct a tight mystery or really let the story unfold naturally, it's like the whole body of the film is just biding time in between two great scenes.
Also saw Bunuel's Los Olvidados, which was really wonderful. This is the first film I've seen from Bunuel's Mexican period, and it's amazing in its own right, as well as being very interesting to watch in relation to his later work. I found it particularly interesting to see the subtle ways in which he subverts the otherwise solidly neorealist aesthetic of the film with some surprising surrealist touches. Not least, of course, is the stunning dream sequence, but there are also smaller touches. Like that wonderful, shocking moment when Pedro throws an egg, and it hits the camera and slides down the lens. Even more subtly, Bunuel incorporates his usual off-kilter sensuality into this peasant milieu, as when the blind man rubs the sick woman's bare back with a pigeon, or the famous scene of the girl pouring milk down her legs. It's good to see Bunuel's foot fetish was intact even in so early a film. Heh.
Finally, Le Plaisir by Max Ophuls. Gorgeous camerawork throughout, but I would've been much happier if the first segment was just a short on its own. That's the best one by far -- that swirling, rotating ballroom sequence, followed by an elegaic denouement that provides understated commentary on aging and life and pleasure. The rest are equally beautiful to look at, but there's no set piece to match the justly famous dance scene, and they just ultimately felt fairly slight.
I also recently watched Un chant d'amour, which was beautifully filmed, but I'm not sure I connected with it any further than that. Not much to say either.
I feel like Joseph Losey's Time Without Pity, his first British feature under his own name post-blacklist, should have been a lot better than it actually was. The premise is fantastic -- a bitter, self-centered alcoholic recovers from his latest drinking binge to discover that while he was binging, his son was tried for murder, and he goes to him only to find that he's scheduled to hang the next day. It should be a taut thriller, finding clues and tracing facts to free the son -- except that the real murderer is revealed in the (very well-done) first scene, and the father's investigation is nonsensical and slack. The ending is a great twist and pretty much redeems the film, but it feels like Losey didn't much know what to do between his striking opening and the powerful finale -- so rather than construct a tight mystery or really let the story unfold naturally, it's like the whole body of the film is just biding time in between two great scenes.
Also saw Bunuel's Los Olvidados, which was really wonderful. This is the first film I've seen from Bunuel's Mexican period, and it's amazing in its own right, as well as being very interesting to watch in relation to his later work. I found it particularly interesting to see the subtle ways in which he subverts the otherwise solidly neorealist aesthetic of the film with some surprising surrealist touches. Not least, of course, is the stunning dream sequence, but there are also smaller touches. Like that wonderful, shocking moment when Pedro throws an egg, and it hits the camera and slides down the lens. Even more subtly, Bunuel incorporates his usual off-kilter sensuality into this peasant milieu, as when the blind man rubs the sick woman's bare back with a pigeon, or the famous scene of the girl pouring milk down her legs. It's good to see Bunuel's foot fetish was intact even in so early a film. Heh.
Finally, Le Plaisir by Max Ophuls. Gorgeous camerawork throughout, but I would've been much happier if the first segment was just a short on its own. That's the best one by far -- that swirling, rotating ballroom sequence, followed by an elegaic denouement that provides understated commentary on aging and life and pleasure. The rest are equally beautiful to look at, but there's no set piece to match the justly famous dance scene, and they just ultimately felt fairly slight.
Last edited by sevenarts on Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
In general, I find Antonioni's 50s output operating at a level well below that of the trilogy (or at least either end of it - I'm a little lukewarm on La notte as well), so my preference for Le amiche may need to be taken with a grain of salt. It's my favourite Antonioni of the decade (of those I've seen), but it's still touch and go whether it will end up in my top 50.Scharphedin2 wrote:Don Lope and zedz, I am curious to hear, what impresses you so about Le Amiche. I first saw a number of Antonioni's films at a retrospective at the DFI a very long time ago; Le Amiche was the only of his early films that I saw at the time, and I admit that it did not make a great impression on me in comparison with L'Aventura, La Notte and BlowUp. In fact, I remember very little of the film, aside from the print being not very good. Maybe it was just too early in my viewing experience of Antonioni's films for me to completely embrace it…?
I first approached Antonioni's 50s work in an archaeological frame of mind - looking for stylistic signposts to the trilogy - and while this is a feasible approach, it doesn't really do the films any favours. I've since found it more productive to look at this body of work as a discrete unit, as a kind of Sirkian project, with Antonioni taking on melodramatic conventions and hollowing them out to see what new kinds of meaning can find a place there. Of course, there are still traces of this approach in the trilogy, but Antonioni goes much further with it, to the point that the traditional melodramatic form becomes only vestigial.
Anyways, on those terms, I think Le amiche is the most successful example (though Cronaca may be the sharpest and clearest). I think that partly this is because I find Antonioni a much more interesting and persuasive director of women than of men. Most of the men in his films seem to be makeshift figures. For me, this works in the specific plot dynamics of L'Avventura and L'Eclisse, with their weak and superficial male protagonists, and in The Passenger when the comparative strength of the lead actors nicely balances things out, but when a film is built around the male lead - Il grido, Blow-Up - those performances tend to be inadequate, and the characters look like constructs of convenience.
This is sort of defending Le amiche in purely negative terms, but I do like it a lot. It maximises the strengths of Antonioni's early period while minimising its weaknesses, and it's the only chance we get (unless my memory is badly failing me) to see Antonioni work with a female ensemble, something to which his particular talents are well suited.
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tryavna
- Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:38 pm
- Location: North Carolina
I wonder if perhaps you went into this film expecting a more traditional thriller, which is something that Losey almost never gives you -- at least not once he left Hollywood. (Think of his immediately preceding film, The Intimate Stranger, or later ones like Secret Ceremony.) The real pleasure in these "thrillers" for me comes from the way Losey subtly deconstructs the genre and from the irrational behavior of the characters, who generally are disturbed or suffer from an affliction of some sort. In Time Without Pity, the father's "nonsensical and slack" investigation of his own son's case makes perfect sense once you consider that he's a hopeless alcoholic -- though I wonder if you have to know how non-functioning alcoholics behave in order to realize that Redgrave's performance is more or less accurate.sevenarts wrote:I feel like Joseph Losey's Time Without Pity, his first British feature under his own name post-blacklist, should have been a lot better than it actually was. The premise is fantastic -- a bitter, self-centered alcoholic recovers from his latest drinking binge to discover that while he was binging, his son was tried for murder, and he goes to him only to find that he's scheduled to hang the next day. It should be a taut thriller, finding clues and tracing facts to free the son -- except that the real murderer is revealed in the (very well-done) first scene, and the father's investigation is nonsensical and slack. The ending is a great twist and pretty much redeems the film, but it feels like Losey didn't much know what to do between his striking opening and the powerful finale -- so rather than construct a tight mystery or really let the story unfold naturally, it's like the whole body of the film is just biding time in between two great scenes.
At any rate, I wouldn't say that Time Without Pity is a masterpiece or even ranks alongside Losey best work, but there's more to this film than immediately meets the eye. I enjoy it quite a lot.
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
You could be right, and I got that Losey was going for a confused hero -- I guess I just came away from it feeling like the slack plotting was more from the film's writing than from the character's alcoholism. Like, why does the wife send him to visit her husband's secretary? I'm sure she didn't suspect the secretary of having anything to do with the investigation, so why waste his very small amount of time that way? And the whole long business with the blue-paper note that's ultimately dropped unceremoniously as a loose end -- not that it seemed like a particularly credible idea in the first place. Anyway, I much prefer the later Losey films I've seen, where his deconstruction of genre seems tied to much clearer and more focused writing and direction.tryavna wrote:I wonder if perhaps you went into this film expecting a more traditional thriller, which is something that Losey almost never gives you -- at least not once he left Hollywood. (Think of his immediately preceding film, The Intimate Stranger, or later ones like Secret Ceremony.) The real pleasure in these "thrillers" for me comes from the way Losey subtly deconstructs the genre and from the irrational behavior of the characters, who generally are disturbed or suffer from an affliction of some sort. In Time Without Pity, the father's "nonsensical and slack" investigation of his own son's case makes perfect sense once you consider that he's a hopeless alcoholic -- though I wonder if you have to know how non-functioning alcoholics behave in order to realize that Redgrave's performance is more or less accurate.
Tonight I watched Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends, a tight, atmospheric noir that manages to build up quite a bit from a pretty small plot. Preminger gets most of the twists and turns out of the way fairly quickly -- a pair of murders, a bit of a romance brewing, and an arrest -- all the more to focus in on character and the pure moody darkness of the visuals. It's a taut character study in guilt, honor, and (unusually for noir) redemption.
I also watched Hitchcock's Rear Window, which has instantly become my favorite Hitch. Really funny and daring, with a great slow-burner of a plot and some dazzling, inventive visuals as the camera wheels and hovers around the small enclosed courtyard. Just a total blast to watch from beginning to end. And I re-watched Vertigo because it's been a long time since the first time I saw it. It struck me this time that the movie practically works as a silent film -- the visuals are overpowering and iconic, and communicate everything you could possibly need to know. The camera even draws entirely silent connections between Madeleine and Carlotta by focusing on the bouquet of flowers or the spiral of their hairdos. The dialogue is all but extraneous, in sharp contrast to the quick-tongued Rear Window. It's pure visual brilliance that carries the film, but not the kind of empty Technicolor pageantry of too much Hollywood film, but real visual meaning, visual communication of the highest order.
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souvenir
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 12:20 pm
I watched Chaplin's A King in New York this week and would love to hear opinions from others who've seen it recently. I've always been under the impression that it was mostly a failure artistically, but I found it often brilliant, if frustrating. The hidden camera scene was very funny, as was Chaplin trying not to laugh after his cosmetic surgery. The spraying of HUAC was great too, though more admirable than hilarious. I think watching the Chaplin Today piece with Jim Jarmusch on the DVD made me understand and appreciate the film more, though I still found it uneven at times. It might have been better if the two stories, the commercialization of the King and his dealings with the boy, had been split into two movies while expanding the plot of each. Otherwise I was impressed with the film. Like Jarmusch mentions, that ending is devastating and especially bold for Chaplin.
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
More 50s viewing. In a Lonely Place clearly deserves every ounce of its reputation, and then some. What a dark, moody, perfectly pitched examination of rage and desire, and what perfect central performances from Bogey and Grahame. It's a great film because it's so many things at once, and it keeps the viewer entirely off-balance as to which of these elements will ultimately win out. Is it a harsh Hollywood satire? Is it a tragically doomed romance? Is it a murder mystery with a devilishly charming lead killer? The truth, ultimately, is somewhat stranger and less typical than any of those -- it's an unflinching character study of a fascinatingly complex man who may very well be capable of murder but who is nonetheless incredibly compelling.
Sam Fuller's House of Bamboo was a kind of odd inclusion in the Fox Noir series, seeing as how it's in bright, garish color, with little in the way of recognizable noir except for the crime theme and the pulpy dialogue. It wasn't all that great either, other than some bravura set pieces like the opening train robbery and the tense, stylish finale. Otherwise, the blunt dialogue didn't really work for me here, and the characters were totally bland and featureless.
Tonight I watched a pair of experimental shorts, Len Lye's Rhythm and Joseph Cornell's Gnir Rednow. The former was a sort of deconstructed industrial short, a solid minute of auto factory footage chopped up into fragmented frames that are set to percussive music and form repetitive visual "beats." The latter was a great one, a sort of remix of Stan Brakhage's film The Wonder Ring, which I haven't seen. But Cornell uses this footage of the New York el-trains to create an elegaic silent study of light, color, and superimpositions. The roots of Brakhage's budding interests are obvious here, though the pacing is much slower and more graceful than anything I associate with Brakhage -- and not having seen the original, it's hard to know who to attribute that element to. Either way, definitely a wonderful film.
Also recent was two more UK Free Cinema shorts. Robert Vas' Refuge England was a nicely done meditation on immigration and adjusting in a foreign culture. It's clearly an intensely personal film, as Vas' voiceover relates his experiences arriving in England for the first time, unable to speak the language, struggling to find his only contact in the country. It's very funny, as well, as a now-adjusted Vas clearly sees both the humor and the pathos in his former self. Lorenza Mazzetti's Together is an interesting experiment, an attempt to capture the hermetic world of two mentally disabled men who seem only able to communicate with each other. On a formal level, it's an utter success -- the film really captures the feeling that these men are living in a world truly accessible only to each other. But not much actually happens, and the ending seems a pat and unearned bit of tragedy that doesn't add much of substance to the film.
Sam Fuller's House of Bamboo was a kind of odd inclusion in the Fox Noir series, seeing as how it's in bright, garish color, with little in the way of recognizable noir except for the crime theme and the pulpy dialogue. It wasn't all that great either, other than some bravura set pieces like the opening train robbery and the tense, stylish finale. Otherwise, the blunt dialogue didn't really work for me here, and the characters were totally bland and featureless.
Tonight I watched a pair of experimental shorts, Len Lye's Rhythm and Joseph Cornell's Gnir Rednow. The former was a sort of deconstructed industrial short, a solid minute of auto factory footage chopped up into fragmented frames that are set to percussive music and form repetitive visual "beats." The latter was a great one, a sort of remix of Stan Brakhage's film The Wonder Ring, which I haven't seen. But Cornell uses this footage of the New York el-trains to create an elegaic silent study of light, color, and superimpositions. The roots of Brakhage's budding interests are obvious here, though the pacing is much slower and more graceful than anything I associate with Brakhage -- and not having seen the original, it's hard to know who to attribute that element to. Either way, definitely a wonderful film.
Also recent was two more UK Free Cinema shorts. Robert Vas' Refuge England was a nicely done meditation on immigration and adjusting in a foreign culture. It's clearly an intensely personal film, as Vas' voiceover relates his experiences arriving in England for the first time, unable to speak the language, struggling to find his only contact in the country. It's very funny, as well, as a now-adjusted Vas clearly sees both the humor and the pathos in his former self. Lorenza Mazzetti's Together is an interesting experiment, an attempt to capture the hermetic world of two mentally disabled men who seem only able to communicate with each other. On a formal level, it's an utter success -- the film really captures the feeling that these men are living in a world truly accessible only to each other. But not much actually happens, and the ending seems a pat and unearned bit of tragedy that doesn't add much of substance to the film.
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
The thing that catapults this film way out of 'bland and featureless' for me is Robert Ryan's dazzling portrayal of the gay gangster. He and Fuller bring a (homo)sexual subtext to the film that makes it electric, and makes the 'blandness' of the surrounding performances (Stack has no idea what's really going on) work brilliantly in the overall scheme of things.sevenarts wrote:Sam Fuller's House of Bamboo was a kind of odd inclusion in the Fox Noir series, seeing as how it's in bright, garish color, with little in the way of recognizable noir except for the crime theme and the pulpy dialogue. It wasn't all that great either, other than some bravura set pieces like the opening train robbery and the tense, stylish finale. Otherwise, the blunt dialogue didn't really work for me here, and the characters were totally bland and featureless.
Tonight I watched a pair of experimental shorts, Len Lye's Rhythm and Joseph Cornell's Gnir Rednow. The former was a sort of deconstructed industrial short, a solid minute of auto factory footage chopped up into fragmented frames that are set to percussive music and form repetitive visual "beats." The latter was a great one, a sort of remix of Stan Brakhage's film The Wonder Ring, which I haven't seen. But Cornell uses this footage of the New York el-trains to create an elegaic silent study of light, color, and superimpositions. The roots of Brakhage's budding interests are obvious here, though the pacing is much slower and more graceful than anything I associate with Brakhage -- and not having seen the original, it's hard to know who to attribute that element to. Either way, definitely a wonderful film.
My vague recollections of Wonder Ring is that it's rather lyrical and graceful Brakhage. It sounds like Cornell preserves and expands upon the tone of the original.
Correction: they're deaf. The film has extremely impressive sound design, but I agree with you that the last-minute intrusion of PLOT is awkward. Nevertheless, it's one of the most formally inventive of the Free Cinema films and has been grotesquely overlooked.Lorenza Mazzetti's Together is an interesting experiment, an attempt to capture the hermetic world of two mentally disabled men who seem only able to communicate with each other.
Meanwhile, I watched Rififi again, and it's better than ever. Tony's fractured, climactic drive now puts me in mind of Maldone and They Caught the Ferry, two films I hadn't seen the last time I watched this gem.
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HerrSchreck
- Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am
Nice conceptual connection. Certainly one I hadn't thought of.zedz wrote:Meanwhile, I watched Rififi again, and it's better than ever. Tony's fractured, climactic drive now puts me in mind of Maldone and They Caught the Ferry, two films I hadn't seen the last time I watched this gem.
One thing I love about Dassin which, along with the spectacular mise en scene and livid cinematography is his insistence on charismatic characters, who sparkle so much that they nearly jump off of the screen. Some films benefit from the usage of archtypes, but I love the way his films are filled with snappy moments of goofing & joking, grabbassing & inside jokes. This is one of the things that makes THE NAKED CITY so much more than just a dry procedural-- the wry comments of goodnatured ballbusting between characters as one heads out of a room, the witticisms i e as the female lead heads out of the room, Muldoon (not MALDONE) comments to a colleague: "Nice pair of legs she has on her," "She sure does," says his colleague. "Keep looking at them," sez Muldoon. Another film might have said sternly, in typical noir fashion "Keep a round the clock watch on her."
Another great example is when the old crackpotty woman comes in claiming to have the solution to the murder, fills the room with oddball nonsequitors, then exits with a "Bye now," the younger detective turns to Muldoon & imitates her, "Bye now," in drippy tones.
The film is filled with this sort of stuff, providing an early illustration that detective work is not a stylized world of cigar smoke, strippers, dark alleys filled with reflective puddles, fatalistic whispers in the dark, and shadowy excitement of stetsons & tommy guns... but a dry, morbid, repeptitive excercise of endless mistakes, false leads, more repetition, paperwork, a sterile group effort in suits and ties, endless interviews, boring research in files files files, and that the way the officers survive the doldrums, repetition and morbidity of the job is ballbusting & jokes over the most tragic & bizarre elements of human life.
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sevenarts
- Joined: Tue May 09, 2006 7:22 pm
- Contact:
Huh. I didn't get that at all. I guess I see what you're getting at, but that's a REALLY buried subtext. He was definitely the best performance though, you're right there.zedz wrote:The thing that catapults this film way out of 'bland and featureless' for me is Robert Ryan's dazzling portrayal of the gay gangster. He and Fuller bring a (homo)sexual subtext to the film that makes it electric, and makes the 'blandness' of the surrounding performances (Stack has no idea what's really going on) work brilliantly in the overall scheme of things.
Ahh that does make sense, I haven't gotten to reading the box set's booklet yet. But if that's the case, those two guys really overplay their non-comprehension of things. Why does the one guy constantly have to be reminded how to wash his face? Why do they both have to be nudged into eating like that? If they're just supposed to be deaf, that's some borderline offensive characterization, much more consistent with a mental disability. Anyway, the sound design is definitely amazing, and doubly so for the purposeful way its linked to the characters' perceptions of the world (whether they're deaf or simply, as I originally thought, non-understanding). It's a great experiment, and not one I've ever seen repeated with such rigor.Correction: they're deaf. The film has extremely impressive sound design, but I agree with you that the last-minute intrusion of PLOT is awkward. Nevertheless, it's one of the most formally inventive of the Free Cinema films and has been grotesquely overlooked.
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Don Lope de Aguirre
- Joined: Fri Apr 14, 2006 5:39 pm
- Location: London
In response to your post Scharphedin2 and zedz... Well, I think it is important to strike a balance between looking at a director's works "in context" and looking at each work in isolation. I get the impression that people approach the 50s work with a handicap precisely because they are looking for signs of greatness, of what was to come. (Chatman, if I remember correctly, is very guilty of this in his otherwise excellent book on Antonioni).
If we play a game and pretend that Antonioni died after making Il Grido how would people look at his work? Can say, Fellini (with the notable exception of 8 1\2) claim to have made a finer film than Il Grido? And yet when people talk of the film it seems to always be as the most 'Antonioniesque' of his pretrilogy films... this is a disservice, no?
Let us take, for example, [the very moving melodrama (of sorts) Le Amiche -which I must admit I haven't seen in a while... It is important to start by saying that it is a very funny film, humour being a thing Antonioni is not exactly noted for (though it is evident in several of his later films too). The humour is of a very feminine/gay nature with a jaw dropping amount of bitchiness/nastiness, granted this may not be your thing but how is this compatable with the gloomy, dour existentialist cliche image people have of the director?. As zedz, too has noted he is a very good director of women and this is a perfect example of this, off head he juggles at least 4/5 female characters and 3 males (who act as a couterfoil to the women). Additionally, the camera work/direction is flawless, as are the performances... I would like to write more (coherently) about this piece but my memory is too sketchy for this. However, I challenge any viewer to find a dull moment in this film...
If we play a game and pretend that Antonioni died after making Il Grido how would people look at his work? Can say, Fellini (with the notable exception of 8 1\2) claim to have made a finer film than Il Grido? And yet when people talk of the film it seems to always be as the most 'Antonioniesque' of his pretrilogy films... this is a disservice, no?
Let us take, for example, [the very moving melodrama (of sorts) Le Amiche -which I must admit I haven't seen in a while... It is important to start by saying that it is a very funny film, humour being a thing Antonioni is not exactly noted for (though it is evident in several of his later films too). The humour is of a very feminine/gay nature with a jaw dropping amount of bitchiness/nastiness, granted this may not be your thing but how is this compatable with the gloomy, dour existentialist cliche image people have of the director?. As zedz, too has noted he is a very good director of women and this is a perfect example of this, off head he juggles at least 4/5 female characters and 3 males (who act as a couterfoil to the women). Additionally, the camera work/direction is flawless, as are the performances... I would like to write more (coherently) about this piece but my memory is too sketchy for this. However, I challenge any viewer to find a dull moment in this film...