Oscar's Cinema Journal 2005

Mon Dec 26th

The Keys to the House (Ita/Fra/Ger, 2004) dvd

Lord of the Flies (UK, 1963) dvd

Peter Brook's adaptation of the William Golding novel, released on Criterion dvd as part of their Great Adaptations set. The premise: somewhere in the near future, the next world war erupts. A plane carrying a group of British school boys being evacuated crashes on a deserted island in the South Pacific (inexplicably). Thirty boys survive, no adults. The boys elect a leader, a thoughtful one named Ralph, attempt to set rules and become organized. Jack, the "alpha male" leader of the school choir, resents Ralph and rebels against the rules. A boy's suggestion that he saw a "snake thing" or a "beastie" takes a life of its own. Soon boys are talking about "ghosts" and "monsters from the sea". Boys like "Piggy" who doesn't believe there is a beast and the intuitive Simon, who states "maybe it's only us", are in the minority. The potential threat allows Jack to create dissension, as he is a "hunter", considered more capable of protecting them from the perceived enemy. The boys' behavior becomes increasingly violent and savage.

Peter Brook had a lot to contend with: an inexperienced crew, a cast of non-actors, producer-imposed duration limited to 90 minutes, no lights, no ability to see the rushes, bad weather, a shooting schedule limited to two summer months, inability to use synched-sound because the roar of the waves drowned the kids' voices, a fable full of symbolism and subtext that presents unique challenges, etc. and he still delivered a good movie. No, it's not a classic, or a "great adaptation". It's an effective film that works as drama and conveys the basic message of Golding's book. But there are flaws in the script (mostly ellisions and omissions required by the short running time), poor mise-en-scene of certain passages, and the acting in some scenes is unconvincing. A second adaptation of the novel released in 1990 is markedly inferior.

Tue Dec 27th

Kings and Queen (France, 2004) dvd

Wed Dec 28th

Thieves' Highway (USA, 1949) Criterion dvd

A collaboration between two great men: Jules Dassin and A.I, Bezzerides.
Dassin worked for a decade in Hollywood, where he made three excellent movies: the prison-escape Brute Force, the policier The Naked City, and Thieves Highway. Then he directed Night and the City, a great film noir set in London. In 1952 he was blacklisted by the HUAC and moved to Paris. There he made the heist movie Rififi and He Who Must Die.
Bezzerides is a novelist and screenwriter. Credits include They Drive by Night, On Dangerous Ground and the great noir Kiss Me Deadly.
Thieves' Highway is based on Bezzerides' novel "Thieves' Market". It's a mixture of proletarian drama and noir thriller about corruption in the fruit market business in California. The emphasis is on realism by using colloquial speech and on-location shooting. It's a gritty tale about Greek-American trucker Nick (Richard Conte) who returns from the war to find his father with his legs amputated. He learns one Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb) from San Francisco refused to pay his Dad for a truckload of tomatoes and caused him to have a highway accident. A prostitute (Valeria Cortese) associated with Figlia falls in love with Nick and helps him get justice. Very exciting and rewarding film. Perhaps my favorite directed by Dassin, and that's saying a lot.

Thursday Dec 29th

Breakfast on Pluto (Ireland/UK, 2005) at Regal SoBe

The Devil and Daniel Webster (USA, 1941) Criterion dvd

German-born William Dieterle directed many "prestige" pictures in Hollywood including several biopics for Warners that won Oscars (The Life of Emile Zola, Juarez, The Story of Louis Pasteur). These bland, sluggish films have aged poorly. Two films directed by Dieterle are worthy of recommendation: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (if only for Charles Laughton chewing up the scenery) and this slice of cornball Americana. The Devil and Daniel Webster was released in a shorter version, retitled All That Money Can Buy in order not to offend Bible-belters. The folks at Criterion have restored it to its original length and kept the title of the source short story by Stephen Benet. It's the tale of a poor New Hampshire farmer with a saintly wife and God-fearing mother who sells his soul to the devil (John Huston) in exchange for seven years of good luck. Farmer Jabez Stone becomes the richest man in the State and turns into a greedy and ruthless man. When the devil comes to collect, Jabez repents and summons respected politico Daniel Webster to defend him and try to save his soul. This RKO production benefits greatly from having among its crew several who worked in Citizen Kane including the art director, editor and composer Bernard Herrmann, who won an Oscar for the score.

Fri Dec 30th

Young Torless (Germany, 1966) Criterion dvd

Young Torless is the first masterpiece of the New German Cinema and the debut of writer/director Volker Schlondorff. Before the debuts of Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and R.W. Fassbinder, Young Torless had won the Critics Prize at Cannes for Schlondorff. He was only 25 years old, with experience as an assistant to Alain Resnais and Louis Malle while he lived in France. Young Torless is based on the book "The Confusions of Young Torless" by Robert Musil, based on his experiences attending an Austro-Hungarian boarding school in the first decade of the 20th century. Schlondorff made it into a film for two reasons: he was familiar with the milieu, having attended a Jesuit boarding school in France for three years (with future filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier). Secondly and most importantly: the novel serves as a metaphor for the rise of Nazism in Germany and for the abuse and systematic extermination of Jews. It was imperative for Schlondorff to examine the dark recent German history, although it was discouraged by the German leadership focused on moving forward and presenting the world with a new image of the country.

Thomas Torless is sent by his parents to a bourgeois boarding school in the country. The intellectual boy becomes enmeshed in the mounting abuse and humilliation of the meek Basini at the hands of two boys, the cunning and sadist Reiting and his brute follower Beinberg. Torless attempts to distance himself from the abuse of Basini as it escalates, but finds that he's become an accomplice by the mere fact of being a passive observer to the cruelty. The episode results in a Torless' deeper and more complex understanding of the nature of good and evil. There is a coming-of-age aspect of Young Torless regarding his first forays into sexual behavior and his appreciation of women. Although handled with equal aplomb and sensitivity, this aspect is secondary to the devastating drama at the school's dormitory.

The casting of the film is most interesting. The only actor with any experience is Mathieu Carriere, who plays Torless. All the other boys are played by non-actors Schlondorff met at rock clubs, schools, and places where kids congregate. The last role to be cast was that of Basini, whose ethnicity is never made explicit in the film. Two boys, not identified by Schlondorff in an interview included on the dvd, told him of a classmate from their school in Vienna they thought would be ideal for the role. Upon meeting him, the director learned that the boy, Marian Seidowsky, was the son of Polish Jews. Schlondorf had no intention of casting a Jewish boy in that role. But Seidowsky was very smart, and a film buff quite familiar with Lang's M, a film that influenced Schlondorff's script and mise-en-scene. Seidowsky's screen test left no doubt he was ideal for the victim role.

Young Torless is a masterpiece. I have not seen any movie that dramatizes with such clear-eyed complexity the complicity of those who passively and detachedly witness the victimization of others. Schlondorff has been making superb movies for four decades now. His latest, The Ninth Day, is a must-see.

Sat Dec 31st

The Girl From Monday (USA, 2005) dvd

2005 BY THE NUMBERS

TOTAL MOVIES: 582 or 11.2/Week
TOTAL FEATURES: 503 or 9.7/wk
TOTAL SHORTS: 79

THEATRICAL SCREENINGS: 170 or 3.3/wk
FEATURES: 166 or 3.2/wk
SHORTS: 4

HOME VIDEO: 350 or 6.7/wk
FEATURES: 275 or 5.3/wk
SHORTS: 75

CABLE TV: 62 Features

What are you, some kind of movie nut?

*You're a certified film buff yourself! I want to thank you Chris for reading this journal and posting your thoughts, as well as the following members: pmw, Johann, cinemabon, JustaFied, arsaib4, wpqx, hengcs, bix171, and trevor826. Gracias de corazon a todos.
(sorry if I missed anyone).

*What's unique about my film watching in '05 was the shorts, which I had not previously payed enough attention. Standouts include:
THE HOUSE IS BLACK (Farrokhzad)
A PROPOS DE NICE (Vigo)
LE CHANT DU STYRENE (Resnais)
MISTS OF AUTUMN (Kirsanof)
L'ETOILE DE MER (Man Ray)
LA TEMPESTAIRE (Epstein)
LA GLACE A TROIS FACES (Epstein)
DOTTIE GETS SPANKED (Todd Haynes)

* There were tons of good new releases in 2005, being listed and discussed elsewhere. But thanks mostly to a rich crop of dvd releases, I watched these magnificent older movies for the first time in 2005 (I may have seen a couple decades ago and forgot):

USA
THE SEVENTH VICTIM (Robson)
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (Welles)
IN A LONELY PLACE (Ray)
WANDA (Loden)
FALLEN ANGEL (Preminger)
JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (Trumbo)
40 GUNS (Fuller)
A WOMAN OF PARIS (Chaplin)
SHERLOCK JR. (Keaton)
IT'S ALL TRUE (Welles)
HOLIDAY (Cukor)
THE LUSTY MEN (Ray)
THE LADIES' MAN (Lewis)
THE KILLERS (Siodmark)
LOVE STREAMS (Casavettes)
COLOR OF A BRISK AND LEAPING DAY (Munch)

France
MOI, UN NOIR (Rouch)
MOUCHETTE (Bresson)
MELO (Resnais)
WEEKEND (Godard)
JOUR DE FETE-Color version (Tati)
CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER (Rouch)
JAGUAR (Rouch)
LE DOULOS (Melville)
THE GANG OF FOUR (Rivette)

Japan
THE LADY OF MUSASHINO (Mizoguchi)
TOKYO TWILIGHT (Ozu)
EARLY SUMMER (Ozu)
AN INN IN TOKYO (Ozu)
FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (Matsumoto)
FIGHTING ELEGY (Suzuki)
STORY OF A PROSTITUTE (Suzuki)
MANJI (Masumura)

Italy
L'ECLISSE (Antonioni)
EUROPA '51 (Rossellini)
THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS (Rossellini)
I FIDANZATI (Olmi)

Germany
NOT RECONCILED (Straub/Huillet)
TARTUFF (Murnau)
MARTHA (Fassbinder)
YOUNG TORLESS (Schlondorff)

UK
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (Powell/Pressburger)
BRIEF ENCOUNTER (Lean)
PUNISHMENT PARK (Watkins)

Soviet Union: ZVENIGORA (Dovzhenko) and OUTSKIRTS (Barnet)
Hungary: THE RED AND THE WHITE (Jancso) and ADOPTION (Meszaros)
Senegal: BLACK GIRL (Sembene)
Mexico: LA PERLA (Fernandez)
Denmark: MEDEA (von Trier)
Spain: WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (Ibanez)
Czech Rep: VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (Jires)
Finland: DRIFTING CLOUDS (Kaurismaki)

I thought I'd been cramming it with around 400 films a year over the last couple of years but I can't imagine how you could watch so many and put so much of your time and effort into this site, incredible!

Cheers Trev.

Thanks. I'm sure you'd agree it's exceedingly rewarding. Cinema is the present-day equivalent of sitting around listening to a storyteller. Moreover, if you love art, cinema encompasses all the other arts (the experience of watching a movie like Sokurov's Mother and Son, for instance, gives me a very similar kind of pleasure as visiting an art museum). The variety of experience one can have is amazing. It can be both a communal experience and a family event. I try to involve my family into my movie-watching as much as possible in large part because of the learning potential involved. Some of the best discussions I've had with my kids have been stoked by films. Just last night, we watched the doc Death in Gaza, which is basically about what is like to be a 12 year old Palestinian boy in Israeli-occupied Gaza. It would have been difficult to have such a rich discussion with my 12 y.o. without the movie. All this film-watching and the sharing of it with others at home and at filmwurld is time very well spent. I know I'm preaching to the converted, but I felt a need to spell it out.

Well, your accomplishment is prodigious, but a bit overwhelming since I've 'only' watched around 200 films this year -- and even that may be more than usual for me -- though I'm not sure how many I watched when I rented a lot of videos in the 'Eighties; I didn't keep lists). I have a little trouble keeping track of all of my current viewings -- remembering all of them completely, I mean. The majority, about 140, I saw in theaters and were new, but due to joining Netflix recently and buying dvds more online and bringing them back from Italy last year and France this year, the number of those I watch is creeping up again (home viewing used to be in the majority fifteen years ago). Of course as you well know the advantage of the videos and dvds is that you can review the 'past' and do so more selectively.

A more limited question: How good a movie year in the US do you think 2005 was compared to other recent years, and why? Were this year's top movies better/less good than/equal to last year's? Even if you haven't made your final list up of course, do you have a general feeling?

Quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Knipp
How good a movie year in the US do you think 2005 was compared to other recent years, and why? Even if you haven't made your final list up of course, do you have a general feeling?

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My general feeling is that 2005 was equally good when compared to recent years. Typically I have an equal number of English-language films and foreign language ones I want to list. I think the reason why right now my foreigns are significantly less is that there are several well-received foreigns I haven't seen (some of these will open here or come out on dvd within a month): Hidden, Tony Takitani, Machuca, A Tout de Suite, Innocence, The Best of Youth, The World, The Weeping Meadow, The Intruder and others.
If I may digress a bit...
Recent trends that became more prominent and evident in 2005:
*More films being distributed, but often distribution limited to huge markets (sometimes only NYC). Or extended distribution:one or two prints traveling around the country over the course of months to a year.
*More quality films, especially foreigns and independents, going straight to dvd. Do you remember when "straight to video" meant the movie was terrible or at least mediocre?
*More and smaller film festivals, especially "niche" fests dedicated to a specific kind of film (i.e. shorts) or films from a specific country or region (often organized by consulates or orgs like Alliance Francaise). More traveling film festivals, which are quite cost-effective.
*I don't know if it's a trend but several of my favorite docs of 2005 where shown first on television. Standouts: No Direction Home, Death in Gaza, Undeniable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, etc.

Thank you, you should know if anybody on this site does. I have the feeling this was a good year, except that maybe there were fewer big mainstream American movies that were really outstanding than last year, which had The Aviator, Kill Bill, Million Dollar Baby, and Collateral, all of which I really liked.

Maybe it's unfortunate that I don't watch television and relates slightly to my seeing far fewer good docs than in the past few years, when Michael Moore seemed to spur a flowering of the genre. I still tend to think that straight-to-video (certainly once a pejorative term) is a ripoff as I did with Cavani's Ripley's Game a couple years ago, because it should have had theatrical showings here, it got screwed. It was shown in England and France, and it is the best Highsmith and the best Ripley (Malkovitch). But I'm catching on since I bought the dvds of No Direction Home. Then last year my Best Documentaries list was Born into Brothels, Bukowski: Born into This, Control Room, The Corporation, Fahrenheit 9/11, Outfoxed, In the Realms of the Unreal, Riding Giants, Tarnation, and Touching the Void. That's a pretty killer list. And 2003 had Fog of War, The Corporation, The Same River Twice, Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound, Lost in La Mancha, Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, Être et avoir/To Be and To Have and My Architect. That's pretty killer too considering that the last two are among the best documentaries I've ever seen, but some think that of Fog of War and it's pretty fine. Anyway is it possible 2005 wasn't as good a documentary year, or is it just me?

This year all I could say were really great ones were Grizzly Man (but it's one of my all-time fovorite docs), Nossiter's Mondovino (also a favorite of mine, but its idiosyncracy, plus the avenging gods of wine agrabusiness, seem to have pretty much killed it and it's barely a blip on the screen), and The Boys of Baraka. I saw some other ones but not so many and they were too partisan or not as convincing maybe.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Anyway is it possible 2005 wasn't as good a documentary year, or is it just me?This year all I could say were really great ones were Grizzly Man (but it's one of my all-time fovorite docs), Nossiter's Mondovino, and The Boys of Baraka. I saw some other ones but not so many and they were too partisan or not as convincing maybe.

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My fave doc was SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL. I also liked GRIZZLY MAN and NO DIRECTION HOME. You mentioned BOYS OF BARAKA and MONDOVINO. I mentioned DEATH IN GAZA and UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS (Ken Burns). Besides those, we should consider the ones below, all 2005 releases:
THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL
MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S LEGACY IN JAPAN
GUNNER PLACE
THE UNTOLD STORY OF EMMET LOUIS TILL
CINEVARDAPHOTO (Agnes Varda)
ROCK SCHOOL
WE JAM ECONO:THE STORY OF THE MINUTEMEN
ENRON:THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM
THE PROTOCOLS OF ZION
THE WHITE DIAMOND (Herzog)
CHAIN (Jem Cohen)
WILLIAM EGGLESTON IN THE REAL WORLD
And probably others I've forgotten to list. I loved the Chilean doc Salvador Allende but it doesn't count because it's undistributed.

I saw some of those, but not others. But you didn't answer my question -- which is okay!

Quote:

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Anyway is it possible 2005 wasn't as good a documentary year, or is it just me?

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I meant compared to 2004, where I found more really gooid ones.

*THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL
MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S LEGACY IN JAPAN
*GUNNER PLACE
THE UNTOLD STORY OF EMMET LOUIS TILL
CINEVARDAPHOTO (Agnes Varda)
ROCK SCHOOL
WE JAM ECONO:THE STORY OF THE MINUTEMEN
*ENRON:THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM
THE PROTOCOLS OF ZION
THE WHITE DIAMOND (Herzog)
CHAIN (Jem Cohen)
*WILLIAM EGGLESTON IN THE REAL WORLD

*Seen

I found Williman Eggleston very interesting to me personally, loved watching him shoot photos, but not that great as a documentary. another one about the same to me was Be Here to Love Me: a Film About Townes Van Zandt. Interesting (not quite as much, because I'm more interested in photogrpahy than songwriting--except that the Bob Dylan movie is important and terrific as you'd expect, coming from a brilliant filmmaker lke Scorsese).