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Can't you watch it on tape? Do you have a good video rental shop in Miami like Scarecrow Video in Seattle or Le Vidéo in San Francisco or Movie Image or Real Video in Berkeley or Video Américain in Baltimore, etc. etc., that has a supply of unusual or not normally available tapes, Oscar?Quote:
[Celine and Julie....] is a daring, inspired, one-of-a-kind experience. It's been a few years seen I saw it. I miss it very much and I'm getting tired of waiting for a dvd release.
Yes, Lion Video has a vhs copy. The possibility that the British Film Institute will release it on dvd has increased now that they are re-releasing a new print theatrically. If they don't, I'll buy a new vhs (about $21) because I'll want to revisit Celine and Julie Go Boating periodically.
Tue. July 5th
Dinner at Eight (USA, 1933) on dvd
This dvd is included in Warners Comedy Classics box and rates #85 in the American Film Institute's list of "funniest movies". As far as I'm concerned, Cukor's Dinner at Eight is a drama with a sense of humor, not a comedy. It's definitely not as funny as Cukor's The Philadelphia Story or Adam's Rib and not as brilliant as his Sylvia Scarlett, all featuring Katherine Hepburn. Dinner at Eight is an adaptation of a stage hit (Cukor's specialty) by George Kaufman and Edna Ferber, which deals more frankly with alcoholism, suicide, and adultery than movies made after Hollywood adopted the Code. Long stretches of the film are exclusively dramatic, particularly those involving John Barrymore's alcoholic, washed-up, has-been, delusional Renaud and his brother Lionel's sick and bankrupt Oliver Jordan. Lifestyles of the formerly rich and famous sums up the content. Providing the laughs, and plenty of charisma, Marie Dressler as a worldly and witty grand dame and the sexy and fierce Jean Harlow as a trophy wife from "Jeisey". Dinner at Eight towers above the movie it was supposed to emulate, the badly dated Oscar-winner Grand Hotel, but it's neither a comedy nor a classic.
Harlow: The Blonde Bombshell (USA, 2004)
Documentary narrated by Sharon Stone, a biography of Jean Harlow (1911-1937), who was consistently successful before an early death from kidney disease. Against the odds, Harlow was able to adapt smoothly after the Code of Conduct adopted by Hollywood closed the door on the open sexuality of her roles in pictures like Red-Headed Woman and Dinner at Eight. What's invaluable about this doc are the clips from many shorts in which Harlow first displayed her talents.
Faust (Germany, 1926) on dvd
The only one of F. W. Murnau's films available on video that I had never seen was restored in the 90s. It developed an instant following (for instance, it's rated #3 best Horror film ever by IMdb voters). Murnau and his collaborators utilize every theatrical and photographic device to conjure up a stage where the divine and the evil collide and battle for Faust's soul. The compositions and framing are inspired by the European paintings Murnau studied as an art history major. The text and narrative focus solely on the first of Goethe's Faust books but this is decidedly Murnau's Faust, after all this German folk legend predates the novel. Emil Jannings is unrecognizable here in the role of Mephisto; the silent legend calls forth a whole new set of expressions and gestures not found in his performances in The Last Laugh and The Blue Angel. Faust gathers strength and power as it moves towards its tragic and devastating conclusion.
John Barrymore's alcoholic, washed-up, has-been, delusional Renaud
Perhaps he knew whereof he spoke?
Surprised you trash Grand Hotel with its classic Garbo lines, but then, I'm no expert on film history like you. I always like to quote the refrain of Grand Hotel. "People come, people go. Nothing ever happens." I think this is really a classic and a time capsule. But then, what do I know?
Have you ever read Christopher Marlowe's Faust? Do. It conjures up with words more than any film images ever could.
*The many similarities between John Barrymore and Renaud, the actor character he plays in Dinner at Eight, are not coincidental. Even the character's nickname is the same as Barrymore's: The Great Profile.
*Grand Hotel may be a time capsule. Dave Kehr refers to it as the prototypical MGM film because everything is bland so that the stars shine brighter. For me, Dinner at Eight is clearly superior.
*I saved the address of the website where I can read the entire "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus", but I'm such a film whore I don't know when I'll make the time to do so.
Wed. July 6th
Filmakers of Our Time: Jean Vigo (France, 1965) PAL dvd
Feature documentary directed by Jacques Rozier, a biography of director Jean Vigo (1905-1934), featuring interviews with childhood friends and practically all his major collaborators. Vigo's early death from TB represents the biggest loss in the history of the medium. He made three shorts and the feature L'Atalante, all highly regarded. The son of political activists was indelibly marked by his anarchist father's death in prison (when Jean was twelve) and the discrepancy between the total freedom his parents gave him and the strict, provincial boarding school where he was educated. He is described by friends and associates as: spontaneous, extremely sensitive to the suffering of others yet sometimes cruel, humorous, workaholic, wildly creative and, above all, a freedom-lover.
The Voyages of L'Atalante: Versions, Rushes and Cuts (France, 2001)
Short documentary, narrated and directed by Bernard Eisenschitz, a case study in the ways studios, distributors and exhibitors alter the work of filmmakers. Prior to release, Gaumont Studio execs changed the film's title to that of a popular song, changed Maurice Jaubert's score, and made arbitrary cuts. L'Atalante was released again in 1940 with its original score and crude attempts to restore scenes that had been cut. This is when L'Atalante was recognized as a classic. A restoration released in 1990 incorporated unused takes of scenes that had been lost but, since no print of the original cut had been found, there was no blueprint (so to speak). An original print was finally found, restored using modern technology and finally released to the public in 2001.
Bunny Lake is Missing (UK, 1965) on dvd
Cristi and I watched it at a small screening room somewhere in Europe circa 1990. Probably Belgium, but we're not sure. We loved Otto Preminger's mystery thriller. Back home we learned it had never been released on video. Better unavailable than having its 2.35 to 1 frame formatted for TV, I thought. The wait was long but worth it, as the dvd looks stunning albeit sans extras. Bunny Lake is a 4 year old girl, at least according to her American mom (Carol Lynley) who has just moved to London with her protective brother (Keir Dullea). As far as we know, she may exist only in Mom's imagination because we never see Bunny when mom allegedly leaves her in the "first day" room of a Hampstead school. A myriad of explanations for Bunny's missing remain possible in the brilliant adaptation of Evelyn Piper's novel. Except for Laurence Olivier's superintendent, every character remains suspect for the first 80 minutes. And there's some very odd characters here, including a salacious landlord/poet who flaunts his S&M predilections during his interrogation (played by playwright Noel Coward) and a self-exiled schoolmistress doing research on child's nightmares. The last 25 minutes are almost unbearably suspenseful.
Bunny Lake is Missing is closely related thematically to the Fox noirs that cemented Preminger's reputation. Films like Laura, Whirpool and Angel Face. Visually, too, it is an extension of the early films, with the stress on night scenes, interiors, and an amazingly mobile camera that relentlessly follows the actors in long, uninterrupted takes. A tour de force and Otto Preminger's last great film.
In all honesty I have never seen Dinner at Eight. Since Grand Hotel has left a strong impression on me I think there must be something to it. That it's a brilliant script I would not argue. I love those lines though.
You're missing something in not reading Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. And it's really, really short. You can read it in an hour. It has some of the most powerful lines in any play in English. Shakespeare was not the only literary genius of his time.
Bunny Lake sounds good. It seems like the concept of how a mystery should work has currently (since then) grown rather weak.
My guess is you'd also like Dinner but, if I could recommend only one "oldie" I've seen recently, it'd be a toss-up between Murnau's Faust and To Be or Not To Be.
Thu. July 7th
Holiday (USA, 1938) on TCM
Holiday and The Philadelphia Story are both Grant/Hepburn comedies directed by George Cukor and written by Phillip Barry. Dave Kehr is right to call Holiday "more tender and less cluttered" than the more widely-seen Philadelphia. Less conventional plot-wise, I'd add, as Holiday qualifies for inclusion into the sub-genre "non-conformist" comedy. Watching it for the first time today was a revelation.
The Big Red One-The Reconstruction (USA, 2004) on dvd
The 1980 version was a "mutilated-by-studio" version running almost an hour shorter than this approximation of writer/director Samuel Fuller's cut. Overseen by Richard Schickel, the reconstruction of The Big Red One makes primary use of Fuller's 1980 novelization of the movie as a blueprint, along with consultation with filmmakers who collaborated with Fuller (RIP). It incorporates a great deal of footage that has been archived for two decades. The result is one of the best movies of 2004, one that lamentably did not have a commercial run here. South Florida's population surpasses 5 million (half of which live in Miami) so I imagine many buffs nationwide never heard of it because it never came near them. It was apparently handled as a relic not as a new and remarkable war epic. It's a bit hard to comprehend given that I think BRO is a more "commercial" war pic than the equally excellent but widely released The Thin Red Line.
THIS IS FICTIONAL LIFE BASED ON FACTUAL DEATH
Samuel Fuller based his script for The Big Red One on his own experience in the 1st Infantry during WWI, over three years long at several key "theatres of war". Like Fuller's title card implies, it's a fictionalized account and includes some characters who are composites. The focus of the film is on an old sergeant, played with mastery and restraint by Lee Marvin, and the four young soldiers who manage, barely, to live to tell about it. One of them, who provides some narration, is undoubtedly Fuller's stand-in. These five provide the glue holding together a variety of compelling episodes set in North Africa, Sicily, France, Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The tone and content is comprised of combinations of the multiplicity of emotions and sensations, often contradictory and paradoxical, experienced by participants in war. The viewer gets a rather comprehensive idea of how WWII was fought in Europe and how it likely affected those who fought (and, to a degree, those that didn't). Fuller had more in mind than a mere compilation of entertaining, dramatized sequences that form a vivid history lesson. Fuller had over 3 decades to ponder what he experienced and the result is a meditation on the difference between "murder" and "kill", or an essay on when, if ever, it is appropriate to cause someone's death. Another theme is the notion that war invariably causes insanity, at least temporarily. These and other threads that run through the film are never pushed up front, but neither can they be denied. The remarkable skill Samuel Fuller has to create striking images has been evident since the early 50s, and The Big Red One provides ample evidence. Overall, this one's quite special.
Friday July 8th
The House is Black (Iran, 1962) dvd
"There's no shortage of ugliness in the world.
If man closes his eyes to it, there'd be even more.
But man is a problem solver.
On this screen will appear an image of ugliness, a vision of pain no caring human being should ignore.
To wipe out this ugliness and to relieve the victims is the motive of this film and the hope of its makers."
A 22-min b&w film written, edited and directed by poetess Farough Farrokhzad with a poet's sense of rhythm and great sensitivity towards its subjects. The House is Black was shot entirely at a leper colony in Northern Iran. Persons with leprosy receive medical treatment and phisiotherapy, prepare meals, play, make music and crafts, dance, take care of their children, groom themselves and attend school while, in the soundtrack, Ms. Farrokhzad reads the poems she wrote inspired by her visit to the colony. A masterpiece.
Images From the Ghajar Dynasty (Iran, 1993) and
The School That Was Blown Away (Iran, 1996) on dvd
Color shorts written, edited and directed by Moshen Makhmalbaf (The Ciclist, Kandahar). Images is a documentary on paintings, photos and cinematographic images created during the late 19th and early 20th century accompanied by classical Persian music.
The School is a fiction feature about a man who visits a tent school where children from nomadic tribes and remote areas are taught by itinerant teachers. The man walks into the tent and begins to ask questions of the teacher and pupils. A bit later, the teacher asks the man whether he was sent by the Ministry of Education to monitor. Turns out the man is a former teacher feeling nostalgic about the hard but rewarding time he spent running a similar school.
Death Watch (France/UK/Germany, 1979) on PAL dvd
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier. An English-language movie based on a futuristic novel by David Compton that presages the popularity of reality TV. Somewhere in the future, in an unspecified English-speaking city, Roddy (Harvey Keitel) undergoes an experimental procedure to insert a miniature camera inside his eye. He is given pills that make it unnecessary for him to sleep and a small lantern because the camera needs to be almost constantly exposed to light. This "future" looks just like Glasgow, Scotland in 1979 but medicine has advanced to the degree that it's extremely rare for young people to die from natural causes. That's what makes Katherine (Romy Schneider) such an interesting subject for the new reality show "Death Watch", produced by Vincent (Harry Dean Stanton) and planned to be shot by this new type of cameraman that is Roddy. Katherine initially refuses, then signs, collects half a million and attempts to hide from the world. She fails because she meets Roddy, who befriends her and, unbeknown to her, is automatically sending footage of her to the network. We learn that both Katherine and Roddy, who start developing feelings for each other, are still emotionally attached to their former spouses. We also become aware that Katherine's doctor is associated with the network and cannot be trusted.
A compelling premise that touches on contemporary issues regarding privacy, voyeurism, and the significance of our eminent death as it impinges on daily life. An excellent cast which includes Max Von Sydow in a cameo performance as Katherine's ex-husband. But there are apparent problems in terms of the pacing and the clarity of the storytelling that may have to do with the script, Tavernier's direction of a film in English, or both. It seems important, for instance, to understand what lead to the break-ups of Roddy and Katherine's marriages but this remains ambiguous and unclear. Sometimes the film does not quite convey to my satisfaction what motivates the characters' behaviors. But overall, the movie is worth-seeing and thought-provoking.
Saturday July 9th
Hellboy (USA, 2004)
I couldn't tell Hellboy from Astroboy so mine is a novice's opinion_for what it's worth, Hellboy is as good as any movie derived from comics. I may actually prefer it to others that made much more noise and money. Part of the reason may be the way Mike Mignola's books incorporate historical characters into a fantastic plot or the casting of Ron Perlman, but I give most of the credit to the Mexican Williams: writer/director Guillermo del Toro and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro. They are perfectly suited to adapting "Hellboy", after having collaborated in Cronos, Blade II and the excellent political drama/horror hybrid The Devil's Backbone. A bit overlong and confusing, Hellboy is still highly recommended to every fan of the genre.
Way Down East (USA, 1920)
Anna is a poor, honest girl tricked into a fake marriage by a callous playboy. When she gets pregnant, he reveals the truth and deserts her. The baby is born but becomes sick and dies. Ostracized by the community, she takes to the road and finally finds refuge as a serving girl at the home of Puritan farmers. Their son falls in love with her, but Anna's fear of her past being discovered keeps her from admitting she loves him back. "A Simple Story about Simple People" says the subtitle. Indeed, also a Victorian melodrama already outdated in 1920. But it's D.W. Griffith at the helm, and Lillian Gish instantly dispelling any evidence of stereotype in the character (as written) with a dynamic, moving performance. The climax of the film is awesome as the distraught Anna runs into a blizzard and collapses on the frozen river. The ice breaks and rushes towards the falls. An expertly edited sequence. I don't like Way Down East as much as the great Griffiths that came immediately before (Broken Blossoms) and after (Orphans of the Storm), but Way Down East is a good film and Gish was never better.
Sunday July 10th
The River (France/India/USA, 1951) on dvd
Daddy Long-Legs (USA, 1919) on TCM
Years before she co-founded United Artists, Mary Pickford was "America's Sweetheart". This first adaptation of Jean Webster's story is a good place to find out why. In the first half, Pickford's Judy is a mischievous, pre-teen orphan who stages a "prune strike", gets drunk on cider, and steals a doll from a rich, spoiled girl and gives it to a sick toddler. In the second half, a grown Judy gets to go to college thanks to a secret benefactor she calls Daddy Long-Legs. Mary Pickford's transformation from raucous tomboy to feminine, composed woman is a joy to behold. Talent-wise, Pickford was Chaplin's cousin. Comedy with pathos.
Monday July 11th
Rumer Godden: An Indian Affair (UK, 1995) dvd
One-hour documentary directed by Sharon Maguire, a biography of the novelist, who was born in England and raised in India, where her novels are set. The documentary accompanies Ms. Godden on a trip to India at the age of 87 to revisit the places of her youth. It incorporates old photos and footage, clips from two film adaptations of her novels (The River and Black Narcissus), and an interview with the author.
Notre Musique (France, 2004) dvd
Jean Luc Godard's latest film is a political/cultural essay divided, like "The Divine Comedy", into Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. "Hell" is a 10-min montage of war images, both fictional and documentary, depicting conflicts from a variety of places and eras. Clips of films such as Alexandr Nevsky and Zulu are part of what's in essence a silent film with piano acompaniment. "Purgatory" takes place in Sarajevo, where a fictional conference called European Literary Encounters is to take place. It incorporates both fictional and real characters. Among the latter, Godard, there to give a lecture on "The Text and The Image".
Notre Musique needs to be approached as an essay, as a presentation of theses. The narrative fiction elements are primarily a conduit to ideas, and the film is full of them. The single earth-shaking event experienced by a fictional character, which I won't reveal, happens off screen. We learn about it through a phone call to Godard, after the conference has concluded. Ideally, Notre Musique would be watched with an audience willing to discuss it afterwards. Many characters, including Israelies, Palestinians and American Indians, present a variety of interesting comments on the history of human conflict, the relationshipp between art and politics, human nature, etc. It would be impossible to do justice to them on a short review. Perhaps of greater curiosity to filmbuffs are Godard's pronouncements. If he ever supported violent revolution, as alluded in many of his films, he seems to have modified his views considerably. It's implied at one point that Mao was ignorant and grossly out of touch. Godard states early on: "Humane people don't start revolutions. They start libraries". Another character completes the sentence: "And cementeries". A great deal of importance is giving to Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo saying: "Killing a man to defend an idea is not defending an idea, it is killing a man", filmed inside the shell of a bombed cathedral and translated into other languages by an Egyptian-born French Jew. Godard's lecture centers on the idea that "Truth has two faces: shot and counter-shot. For instance, in 1948, Israelites walked on water to reach the Holy Land while Palestinians walked on water only to drown". The idea that we, or any group, comes to be defined primarily by the nature and characteristic of its foe or enemy, is given ample time, voiced with particular authority by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Godard shows a picture of bombed buildings, looking like Europe after either world war and asks attendees to place it. "Virginia 1865", he corrects. The soundtrack of our world has been playing repeatedly for centuries. This is Our Music, he proposes.
Paradise brings back to life a character who dies at the end of purgatory. Paradise looks like a lush riverside forest where people laugh, play and read. Access to it is guarded by seemingly friendly uniformed men with guns. An ironic provocation from a man-of-ideas who's built a career around them.
Nice description. You make one really want to see it, you make it sound really worth seeing, but then I remember that I did see it and that I said it wasn't on my annual best list because it "failed to engage," http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/show...?threadid=1194
but somewhere else I believe I said I might need to see it again to see what I thought. I don't think that's going to happen, because the later Godard has so consistently "failed to engage," but he sure was fascinating in his earlier days. You do this movie (I know it's not a "movie," though; it's a "film") more than justice. But I know you have a principle that I don't personally emphasis as much, which is "Cinema is a lot more than storytelling." -- Personal Disclosure, OSCAR JUBIS. I'm afraid that very often it is a lot less.
Originally posted by Chris Knipp
the later Godard has so consistently "failed to engage," but he sure was fascinating in his earlier days.
I'm passionately engaged by Godard's images and ideas. His stories are thin and their telling is oblique (at least for the past 30 years), so it's easy to understand how someone looking for narrative would not be "engaged" by his films. Curious as to the last Godard you loved, if any.
Tuesday July 12th
La Naissance de l'amour (France, 1993) PAL dvd
Guest commentary by Kent Jones. Review culled from excerpts of his essay on Phillipe Garrel that appeared on the May/June 1997 issue of Film Comment.
"It doesn't get much more "typically French" than Phillipe Garrel. He conceives a filmic moment in terms of time-stopping portraiture. Garrel honors the individual by refusing to embellish or soften life's verities in any way. His philosophy is that the only thing worth talking about is a man, a woman, and a child, and every other structure is either superfluous or destructive. He films what he refers as "the life of the artist", meaning anyone who attempts to function outside of the beehive existence of the careerist state. Garrel's a cinema of threadbare overcoats, naked lightbulbs, and peeling paint, of silent meals and small groupings. His camera is still most of the time, not only out of necessity, but also because only a still and poised camera can offer a just and non-intrusive rendering of intimate human experience.
Not even his American soulmate John Cassavetes registers so low on the Spectacle Scale. No other filmmaker has ever been better at filming the act of thought_his is a cinema of ruminating men. In La Naissance de l'amour, writer Jean-Pierre Leaud visits his girlfriend in Rome. She's leaving him for another guy because he's too self-absorbed. He asks if he can just sleep next to her one last time and she complies. She strips down to something out of Victoria's Secret. "What's that?" he asks. "It excites him" she answers. "It excites him", Leaud repeats over and over as Raoul Coutard's richly contrasted black-and-white camera stays fixed on this earthy woman and her embarrasment at being caught by an old lover objectifying herself for a new one, yet still knowing her own mind. The moment has a range of life experience that few films can touch."
Leaud's buddy is a theatre actor played by Lou Castel, the other male character in Naissance, who serves as counterpoint to Leaud. Castel's actor doesn't seem to know whether he's still married because he loves his wife or because the 14 year old and the newborn baby need a dad around the house. His flirtations and couplings with other women are highly tentative and tinged with a wobbly romanticism. There are many moments involving Castel as pregnant with meaning and as patiently observed as the one described by Kent Jones, some as simple as holding hands under the dinning table. Somehow Garrel strings together a series of life moments in the lives of two middle-aged men and makes them feel like a story.
Love Streams (USA, 1984) PAL dvd
The last film both written and directed by John Cassavetes is one of his best. Simple story: Gena Rowlands plays a wife whose husband wants to divorce her and whose daughter doesn't want to live with her. The dependent, warm and fragile woman can't quite cope. Her brother, played by Cassavetes, is a succesful writer of lurid romance novels who's incapable of intimacy. A lifestyle of alcohol and fast women. A film by Cassavetes is all about unmediated experience, unadulterated truth, complete honesty at the expense of your sense of emotional comfort. When his characters appear pathetic or make fools of themselves, or do crazy things, they are not ridiculed or belittled for laughs, or analyzed or explained away. It's all raw material for the viewer to react to and digest. Love Streams is a thoroughly engaging, emotionally powerful, achingly humane film by one of the greats.
Sympathy for the Devil, 1968.Quote:
Curious as to the last Godard you loved, if any.
I think the "typically French" spelling is Philippe. I'm afraid this sentence rubbed me the wrong way. I didn't read further; but I wondered if he was related to the sexy Louis Garrel who's in The Dreamers and Ma Mère, and he is: he's his dad.Quote:
"It doesn't get much more "typically French" than Phillipe Garrel.
Have you heard anything about Machuca, directed by Andrés Wood, set in Chile in the early Seventies? It's here next week.
*It is P-h-i-l-i-p-p-e Garrel, my bad.
*Jones is using the term "typically French" to contrast "the strongest current in French Cinema" with American cinema's "grounding itself in action and what it takes to set it in motion".
*I made 3 guesses in my mind: 1)Tout va Bien, 2)Alphaville, 3) Love? Not quite.
Godard punched out the producer of One on One after a festival screening for including the complete song over the ending titles. Remember how when slogans are being written on walls we never see the complete sentence/message? Godard disowned the film, which was released as Sympathy....
*Machuca looks promising. It's slowly being released around the country. It hasn't played in Chicago or here yet, but it will. I'd say go see it.