Film: Shanghai Express - 1932

I'm almost ashamed to admit this is the first Marlene Dietrich film I've seen. Why did I wait so long? She's absolutely G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S. She easily dominates every frame with her disruptive beauty and laconic elegance.

Oh yeah.. and the film ain't bad either. Actually, Shanghai Express is really very good. The story is interesting, the romantic dilemmas intelligent, dialog witty, Von Sternberg's directing flawless, and cinematography that should serve as a textbook for mastery of light and darkness.


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Film: The Fountainhead - 1949

Playing a little catch-up today. This was viewed on 8/16.

An adaptation of the novel, the screenplay itself was written by Ayn Rand. A novel, incidentally, that had a great influence on me several years ago.

Can a sprawling, 700+ page experience be faithfully condensed into 2 hours? No.

Predictably, this one falls victim to the "I-read-it-first" syndrome. The actors are nothing like the characters pictured while reading, large swathes of non-trivial plot points are left on the cutting room floor, precious details are glossed over, insightful monologues become stagy, overacted embarrassments. It's like a hasty puppet-play of the novel with none of its depth and richness.

The film has 2 hours to effectively convey Rand's theory of objectivist individualism to the masses, and in my opinion fails due to heavy-handed pedagogical spoon-feedings and cold, cardboard cut-out characterization.

Oh, and Gary Cooper as Howard Roark? What on earth were they thinking.

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Film: Hausu - 1977

Few films deserve a genuine "wtf" - this is one of them. In a good way.

Japanese Pee-wee's playhouse on visual overload set to a horror theme starring nubile schoolgirls. Or something closely resembling that.

Mind boggling, completely random, and wonderfully unique... to quote the crazed watermelon vendor- "they don't make em like they used to."

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Film: The Cremator - 1968

Considered a Czech New Wave masterpiece, "Spalovac mrtvol" (The Cremator) flows from one scene to the next as smoothly as Mr. Kopfrkingl's effortless downward spiral into the role of mass "liberator of souls."

Words simply won't do the stylish and extremely artful filming/editing much justice. Incredible transitions, symbolic framing, fish-eye perspectives, strange angles- all pulled off in such a beautifully subtle manner, coloring the action and the ever-present monotone drone of Kopfrkingl's speech.

I've read some consider this one a dark comedy, I failed to find any humor in it. A tale of how a man's morality can easily be shaped to serve a new agenda, no matter how essentially immoral that agenda might be. When self-justification to the point of insanity gets rid of the dissonance, even murder transmutes into "the relief of suffering." A chilling insight that there is essentially no real basis for the tales one tells oneself- reasoning from arbitrary axioms permits anything.

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The sadness continues... Michelangelo Antonioni dies

So soon after losing one titan of art cinema, another passes. Michelangelo Antonioni dies at 94. I can't find any worthy news articles at the moment that do his tremendous work sufficient credit, so I'll link to THIS.

Antonioni, along with Bergman and Tarkovsky were my earliest experiences with serious cinema. His films convey a deep sense of sadness and loneliness that often shook me to the core. Characters tend to drift insubstantially from one liaison to the next, drawfed by an increasingly dehumanizing environment. Real, empathetic communication seems stunted if not impossible within these interpersonal voids. Those that are hyper-sensitive to this existential reality, such as Monica Vitti's character in "Red Desert" are discounted as mad in an essentially anhedonic world of masks.

I just had to grab a Nietzsche book and look up one of his many poignant quotes on this subject as it seems fitting in this context:
"We, too, associate with "people"; we, too, modestly don the dress in which (as which) others know us, respect us, look for us--and then we appear in company, meaning among people who are disguised without wanting to admit it. We, too, do what all prudent masks do, and in response to every curiosity that does not concern our "dress" we politely place a chair against the door."

Most articles on his death are focusing on Blow-Up as his most influential film, and with good reason as it's probably the most commercially successful and well-known. Although it's been several years since I've seen it, I have to admit it didn't impact me in the way his meandering character-driven films do.

My very favorite Antonioni films are the 4 he made consecutively between 1960-1964:
The Red Desert - 1964
L' Eclisse - 1962
La Notte - 1961
l' Avventura - 1960

I also really enjoyed the Passenger, but for very different reasons, and have been trying to track down Zabriskie Point for several years.

Ingmar Bergman died today :(

A sad day for serious film lovers everywhere. Ingmar Bergman dead at 89.

Bergman was in many ways a launching point for my love affair with art cinema, his film "The Seventh Seal" opening a vast world for a bored suburban teen almost 10 years ago. I'm sure the story rings true for many, many people.

One scene in particular always stands out in my mind. The knight meets the traveling caravan of performers and sits down in a meadow with them to share their berries and cream. A distinct hush of peace fills the scene- smiles, a laughing baby, and a faint breeze rustling the grass. A moment of pure worldly bliss that momentarily lifts the knight's existential angst (and my own).

Of the many I've seen and enjoyed, my personal very favorites:
Autumn Sonata - 1978
The Serpent's Egg - 1977 (can I really be the only Bergman fan that genuinely likes this one?)
Scenes from a Marriage -1973
Cries and Whispers - 1972 (favorite of favorites)
Hour of the Wolf - 1968
Persona - 1966
The Seventh Seal - 1957

...so many greats in his oeuvre, the above are my personal picks. Some films I feel bad about excluding, like "Wild Strawberries" for instance, but they didn't resonate as much as the above on first viewing. To be perfectly honest, I think Bergman is at his best when he addresses deep existential, spiritual, and psychological issues-- so I have to admit I've neglected his early comedies.

Film: The Shout - 1978

Hypnotically paced mind bender that reminds me quite a bit of some of Peter Weir's work, specifically The Last Wave which appeared a year before this one.

The Shout leaves a lot to interpretation and will probably reward repeat viewings.

"I've always found it hard to believe that the soul is imprisoned in the body until death liberates it. Don't you think that in periods of spiritual starvation that the soul may take refuge in a tree, a stone?"

On another note, John Hurt's character is an electronic musician, some of the coolest scenes are the creation of his soundscapes. His studio is full of EMS equipment like Putneys, Vocoders and I think I spotted a Roland Space Echo. Great stuff.

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Film: Venus in Furs - Jess Franco - 1969

The film's title is actually the only thing is shares with the great novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. This is by no stretch of the imagination an adaptation of the book.

A little over an hours worth of beautiful women and cinematography, a hallucinatory ghost story and great down-tempo lounge and jazz music. Quite enjoyable.. as fleeting as it was...

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Film: Seconds - 1966 - Frankenheimer

The similarities with the film below are striking. Both deal with escaping the routine "cloud" of everyday life, as Edmond put it, but by different means. Instead of lashing out against the superego, here we have a sci-fi scenario of faking death and assuming a new physical appearance. An entirely fresh start as an escape from a meaningless, stale existence. Hemingway once said something along the lines of.. no matter where you are, you can never escape yourself... this film got the point.

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Film: Contes immoraux - 1974 - Walerian Borowczyk

This was actually viewed on 7/7 - I've got to start being more timely with my posts.

What can I say about this film? Visually beautiful, sublimely perverse, quite sexy. The cinematography is amazing- words truly fail me on how artfully this was composed and shot. Art in the guise of exploitation. An instant favorite.

The film is split into 4 separate tales, the shot on the left taken from tale 3. Note- the woman on the right is Paloma Picasso. Yes, the Picasso's daughter.

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Film: A Taste of Honey - 1961

This was actually viewed on 7/5 - but after another mind-numbing day I was too depressed to post.

A British realist drama of the "kitchen sink" school. Supposedly one of the classics of this style, it failed to impress for the most part. A few scenes, such as the one captured on the left were beautiful in their portrayal of inner turmoil matching the exterior decay of industrial Manchester. Noteworthy for it's wonderfully grim and despondent setting- likely influenced the gritty urban portrayals in the 70s.
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Film: Around the World in 80 Days - 1956

One of the films I grew up with, such a joy to see it again after all these years. Just as clever and entertaining as I remember it.

Thanks Dad for making this the first VHS film you ever bought, roughly 20 years ago...

Film: The Servant - 1963

Jazz and decadence in early 60s London. Conventions and formality slowly decay, a pampered life is manipulated into destruction. Who is really the servant?

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