Tcm

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for these, Johann. I like what you say about Man with a Movie Camera, couldn't find your previous FilmLeaf comments on it.



Your current mention of it prompted me to watch it. I had not seen it for a long time. The wife's editing certainly is key. It's fascinating how the cameraman appears in somewhat dangerous positions, like a stunt camera, all very influential. A Google search brings: "pushed the boundaries of cinematic visual language and opened up the world of filmmaking." That's drawn from a 2018 online article by Zita Whalley. I had an inkling of the "constructivist" origins of Vertov's style she mentions (I thought of Italian Futurism)-

The film emerged out of the Constructivist art movement of the early 20th century. This school of thought believed art should reflect the modern, industrialized world and should serve the greater, collective good. As a movement that embraced the future, Constructivism welcomed technology and pushed design and artistic boundaries.

I'm more of a Surprematist myself, being a huge fan of Malevich! The constructivists (like the futurists) celebrated industry and the mechanical, the suprematists celebrated the pure aesthetic, hence Malevich's white-on-white paintings and his sublime rectangles.

Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy is my idea of hell.
Saw Brando's Julius Caesar with my father, who taught Shakespeare and I think he loved it. Brando made Shakespeare wonderfully contemporary. How did it hold up?
Don't think I knew about the Joseph Losey 'M.'
You are providing a lot of interesting references.
In some ways the early part of Man with a Movie Camera fixed images anticipates much later American street photography.

I appreciate Losey's collaborations with Harold Pinter. I became a huge fan of THE SERVANT, which I first saw when it was new in Cairo, a sparsely populated cinema, with subtitles in French and Arabic, and I am sure I was the only person who appreciated the dry humor. It's a haunting, definitive film. To a lesser extent I like ACCIDENT. I recently saw MR. KLEIN for the first time and it's an interesting film, another surprising Alain Delon role. We initially saw him only as the world's most beautiful male actor, as he is in PURPLE NOON. And he was, and that's a very, very cool movie. https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1446362...&ref_=nm_ov_vi
Later I saw LE SAMOURAI, by the great Jean-Pierre Melville. But I digress...