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Scenes from a Marriage
I'm not sure if this film deserves its reputation in relation to other Bergman films, but even with this minor reservation it proves, in the longer television version, to be one of the best things he did out of those I've seen bringing to the fore a lot of the best things about Bergman as a filmmaker. Obviously it is primarily a show for Josephson and Ullmann who just push themselves as far they'll go. In fact I'm tempted to call it his best performance showcasing the sensitive beauty and the viscous pettiness that he usually leans on only one of. It's a very complete performance full of too many human shades. The nice thing though is how great all of the performances are turning to some Dreyer wall paper type of developing the world around the leads. Criterion's notes comparing the film to Cassevetes is not something I'd think of independently, but makes perfect sense in retrospect. The differences though I find the more illuminating part of that comparison as I found Bergman's methodology more effective over a long period of time then Cassevetes sometimes exhausting style. The performances are much more insular with an impressionistic restraining of the full arrays of emotions so that a short second outburst explains what is probably a long reality of that emotion. This acting style helps greatly as well to prevent the film from fully feeling like it takes place in real time though many of the scenes essentially do. It's quite a brilliant touch probably helped by my watching Rope just before starting the series. Bergman also plays with the naturalism in nice ways if much more typical of him with character discussions often feeling like monologues to the audience on this or that idea. It also leaves many shots feeling like something out of Ozu which is not a comparison I would have expected coming into this. Really though all of Nykivst shot have an amazing beauty. Particularly in the fourth episode which instantly was my favorite he seems to decide to make a masterpiece out of every frame. There's one shot in particular with an overwhelming effect despite being simple. It's just a close up of Ullmann lying on a bed with Josephson lying behind her. The simplest thing in the world and it might as well be a Rembrandt. There's also a close-up of Ullmann early on which dares to burn a hole in the frame bringing down the whole enterprise. He seems to have so much fun discovering new shadows to light upon her face.

Inside Llewyn Davis
There's a lot of little things here and there throughout to fall in love with like Goodman's delicious cuntiness or the way Adam Driver sings though that in itself a great film does not make. Neither does the soundtrack which is better than the film though it would be equally asinine to hold that against the Coens. Instead what really hit me as the special quality here is the Sophocles inspired circle of fate which builds the momentum. There's a sense not just of self destruction, but that it is inevitable to go out to sea to die which may be why Tomlin died by bridge rather then some other none water means. The film is constantly giving Davis avenues from which to survive (having him impregnate a real life person is perhaps the most bizarre example of this and where the use of Mannix in their next film came from) but with absolute determination he has to die. This also seems to be where they differ from Sophocles as they actively prevent Davis from dying though that seems to push the story structure into existentialism where Davis is stuck in a never ending loop of life and can't figure out how to die. Very Barton Finkish and kosher l'pesach.

Maldone
Given that the films in the eclipse set could be best described as Renoir with a twist of lime this came as a true shocker. Instead it really seems like the missing link between Dovzhenko and Vigo with some amazing editing and a quirky sense of genre mashing which breathes character. I'm not terribly sure if I'd rank this with the best of the French silents, but at the very least it deserves credit for standing out in a crowd. Ignoring the question of Masterpiece vs. masterpiece the one element which is undoubtedly great is Charles Dullin as the fallen from grace cowboy lead. The biggest role I'd seen him in previously is as the best Thenardier in Bernard's Les Miserables. About a half hour in there's a short which simply shouldn't work. It is static even in character and goes on for many seconds. All that takes places in it is Dullin taking off his shoes. The next shot is a pair of title cards which hit home for maximum emotion contrasting the death of his past with that of a relative. The two title cards expose a literary genius, but my main point is that Dullin removing his shoes shouldn't have any emotional worth considering how mundane an action it is thus it should make these titles cheap. Instead through his performance he empowers them through illustration. There's a certain level of pathetic to him here where even before the card says so we have a man so dead that the mundane is something of a burden reminding him of that past. For a few seconds this cowboy-fallen aristocrat Macbethian melodrama becomes a ghost story told from the ghost's point of view. Perhaps I do like it a little more than I originally thought.

The Vanishing
I found essentially nothing to like here with frankly incompetent storytelling and direction paired off with a dull duo for leads. There's a five minute stretch after the vanishing where the film looks like it will be a tense, paranoia driven thriller and begins to be genuinely terrifying, but Sluzier decides to shoot himself in the foot with a stiff flashback to the killer who loses all enigma replacing it with comically inept villainy which theoretically could have some nice Hammet style upturning of expectations, but Sluzier is too in love with Blondey to let him fall from his lame 'sociopath' pedestal. I really don't get why this film is ever cited over nearly all of its precedents and subsequent films. If it is just because of the wacky C getting people all hot and bothered why not shoot with Insomnia which is much more competently told with more compelling leads? Hell even compared to that silly film Secret Window which it has too much in common with The Vanishing just doesn't stand for me.

Sir Arne's Treasure
Before I begin this has anyone seen Molander's remake? He's a pretty interesting director and a remake sounds like it could be pretty good. Anyway this is my first rewatch since seeing it way back when and the only thing that really kept in my imagination was the shots of the cold plains and the feeling of how devastating they were. I was afraid as a result that the film wouldn't be as effective as my memory held. Fortunately if anything it is even better than I remember. Right away with the introduction of the three protagonists Stiller paints this jovial horror whose tone is comparable to the most intense moments of The Treasure of Sierra Madre. There's something so comedic and aloof about their introduction that the viciousness of the subsequent escape and the cold way Stiller approaches it leaves a tension that being straightforwardly dramatic would not allow. It's also interesting that this is the one interior scene done in blue tinting leading to why I personally adore tinting when it is done well. That prison was their home, their soul anthropomorphized, and it is no different then the tundra which is later portrayed as a place where only death thrives.

The thing which I find beautiful about these earliest of films before the soviets showed the world the full power of montage is how they tend to place tone first and expose it so well through simple mis-en-scene (though obviously a number of the shots here are not simple in the slightest). So much of the story's forward momentum and the engagement Stiller breeds in the audience comes from peculiar faces moving about in peculiar ways almost like a Flemish painting (which is where I find that Stiller in the two films I've seen differs strongest from Sjostrom who seems more frantic in a theatrical manner from how he stages the actors). The movie also features one of the most intense fire scenes I've encountered in a movie. It looks utterly real and I'd be shocked if no one got injured making it they look so close to what must be real flames.

That's not to say the story isn't also very compelling. It's honestly amazing how much story and storytelling tactics had already evolved from Birth of a Nation just over five years earlier. Molander's script gives rise to all of these intense images which do flow naturally from the story despite their artifice. The noirish themes in the script by contrast are spoken very naturally in the film. A lot of that is shown off by the mis-en-scene, but even when it is bluntly told in story like the lady's vision the ideas of human greed are expressed with multiple underlying details. While never directly said there's this sense in the few scenes at Sir Arne's that the treasure took much pains to get, is essentially useless, and hurt Arne and his wife's general sense of well being.

Very incidentally also the film really makes Sweden seem like the worst place on earth to live from the black protestant dress to the harsh treatment of Toarin's wife to Elselill essentially telling her to get over it. Even by the standards of Swedish dramas this film seems unusually harsh in no small part because of the nonchalance with which that cruelty is accepted as. It makes me wonder how much of the attitude of the film is dictated by Stiller's outsider status to the Swedish reality?

knives wrote:The Vanishing
I found essentially nothing to like here with frankly incompetent storytelling and direction paired off with a dull duo for leads. There's a five minute stretch after the vanishing where the film looks like it will be a tense, paranoia driven thriller and begins to be genuinely terrifying, but Sluzier decides to shoot himself in the foot with a stiff flashback to the killer who loses all enigma replacing it with comically inept villainy which theoretically could have some nice Hammet style upturning of expectations, but Sluzier is too in love with Blondey to let him fall from his lame 'sociopath' pedestal. I really don't get why this film is ever cited over nearly all of its precedents and subsequent films. If it is just because of the wacky C getting people all hot and bothered why not shoot with Insomnia which is much more competently told with more compelling leads? Hell even compared to that silly film Secret Window which it has too much in common with The Vanishing just doesn't stand for me.

phew I've had this for a while and been meaning to watch it but Insomnia struck me as being a flat would-be mood piece too in love with the anti-hero at its center- if that's the superior version of this, maybe I should just skip it

It's not a complete 1:1 comparison, but the two films share a lot in common. They both deal with European globalization (so I guess timely) with the break down of language and location playing an important part to the plot. Here it is not pulled off in as interesting a manner as Insomnia, but there's a lot about the breakdown of the Dutch and French languages with, if I understand the plot right, a decent chunk of the film set in Belgium. The film also does a weak sauce version of the hero/ villain as two sides of the same coin in dialogue thing though it never makes the villain compelling in the mundane bits they show and the hero lacks any personality besides wanting to figure out what happened. There's a few other similarities, but I assume you get the idea.

I suspect if you switched out the leads of each film I might have different reactions to each though the flashback structure and tin ear for dialogue made The Vanishing particularly dull for me. I think I would rank it with some of the goofier Sharon Stone '90s thrillers.

knives wrote: That's not to say the story isn't also very compelling. It's honestly amazing how much story and storytelling tactics had already evolved from Birth of a Nation just over five years earlier.

You know, I'd been worrying a lot about trying to hop into the pre-20s list, because outside of silent comedy and The Phantom Carriage my experience of that world had been mostly Griffith (whom I think I despise as a filmmaker, as well as a person, though I need to give him another chance) and Méliès and Feuillade, both of whom I like but find trying to watch too much of- but the more I watch of it, the more I've been falling in love. I've just got this, along with a bunch of stuff from the DFI (including Blind Justice and Præsidenten) and I'm genuinely looking forward to watching it, instead of thinking of it as a chore to be worked through, after falling in love with Die Puppe and The Land Beyond the Sunset.

I haven't seen Blind Justice yet, but the Dreyer is a really amazing film. It's weirdly more similar to his very late films like Gertrude rather than his other silent films which are a little more real world for a lack of better way to describe it. I think for the earliest of films though Rohmer's Louis Lumiere doc makes for some good homework for how to look at them critically as a piece of art rather then historical stepping stone. Langlois makes some really salient points which really allow for a transformation in how they appear. As for the Feuillade, I assume that you are primarily familiar through the serials? I can see how those can be exhausting, but I found the ones on the Kino set to be primarily light on their feet and a lot of fun if still presented in the more primitive style.

matrixschmatrix wrote:

knives wrote: That's not to say the story isn't also very compelling. It's honestly amazing how much story and storytelling tactics had already evolved from Birth of a Nation just over five years earlier.

You know, I'd been worrying a lot about trying to hop into the pre-20s list, because outside of silent comedy and The Phantom Carriage my experience of that world had been mostly Griffith (whom I think I despise as a filmmaker, as well as a person, though I need to give him another chance) and Méliès and Feuillade, both of whom I like but find trying to watch too much of- but the more I watch of it, the more I've been falling in love. I've just got this, along with a bunch of stuff from the DFI (including Blind Justice and Præsidenten) and I'm genuinely looking forward to watching it, instead of thinking of it as a chore to be worked through, after falling in love with Die Puppe and The Land Beyond the Sunset.

Get yourself some Evgenii Bauer; his films are astonishing. The highlight of the last pre-20s cycle.

It is interesting to hear a less overall positive take on The Vanishing and Insomnia, even if I'm not sure I agree! I think both of these films are magnificent, and just one look at the US remakes of both of those films that rather miss the crucial reason for being of the stories shows just what a delicate (and obviously missable!) balance they were taking! I had not really equated the films together too much before now but I guess they are both in their own way about the intellectualising of a crime - of taking a horrible serendipitous event and distancing it into almost abstraction, even if both still eventually end up having 'real world' consequences.

Spoilers for both follow:

Insomnia, or at least the original, is much more of a psychological portrait of its detective central character and I'd agree with matrix that it is a mood piece, though that's what makes it such a great film - the crime isn't particularly important as anything more than a way of spinning the detective off into his mental turmoil, accidental killing and evidence tampering. In a way the killer, by being kept so peripheral to the bulk of the main action for the longest time before dying by an accident (albeit an accident capitalised on by the detective to watch him die - tying into the idea of inaction being another form of choice, conscious or not), ends up becoming more sympathetic. At least he understands the nature of his crime, even if he is similarly trying to get away with it!

The Vanishing does not really have that same kind of sympathy with its flawed central character, and that's the result of a number of factors: the early argument and tunnel abandonment of the girlfriend; partly because of the time jump that seals the original girlfriend's fate and turns her more into a riddle to be solved than someone to be saved (the torment our lead faces isn't about perhaps still being able to 'save' her, just about knowing); and really because of the regular cutting away to the killer himself.

I agree that the initial jump to the killer and their story is a little jarring at first, especially for how soon the film tips its cards, but then that's because this isn't really a mystery film at all in the sense of whodunit, its more a 'whytheydunit' and 'whatexactlytheydun'! Compared to the (accidental and single victim?) murderer in Insomnia we get much more information on the insane kidnapper here. We get involved in the mechanics of his plan, see the (normal seeming) family that he heads up and seemingly well to do circumstances. Then in the final section he entirely takes over the narrative of the film itself with his 'explanatory' flashback story to illustrate his pathology, and this is all while the nominal 'hero' of the film fades further and further into the background, driven to destroy a new relationship by his death drive need for resolution of the previous one.

Its an interesting contrast to the killer in Insomnia as while the killer there is actually more interested and amused by the detective's plight than anything to do with the crime, the haughty kidnapper in The Vanishing getting the opportunity to gas on at length about their motivations and meticulous planning is really just looking for an audience to impress and dominate with his diabolical schemes. The bad guy gets more time in this film, and literally dominates the narrative, but he's less sympathetic than the killer in Insomnia because of that domination.

In a way the ironic tragedy of The Vanishing is less the horrible fate that our callow hero appears to want more than anything (he at least gets the answers he's been desperate for) but that of the kidnapper who cannot ever reveal his crimes and get recognition for his diabolical schemes. The only outcome he has is that his victims (or at least this one victim) finally understands what he's been doing, but of course they have to die soon afterwards! And unless the kidnapper sticks an infrared camera in there to capture his victim's torment even he is cheated of the pleasure of their final realisation of their predicament!

That actually makes me think there is an interesting meta-element to The Vanishing in the way that the film itself sort of has its attention wander away from the 'hero's journey' towards the dark side. The kidnapper himself then takes over the narrative with the flashback section, and once the tormented hero literally drugs himself into unconsciousness to in a way abdicate his responsibility for moving the narrative forward, the film itself is left in the hands of the villain. Maybe the harrowing final fate of the hero itself is the horrible resolution playing out perfectly as the villain imagines it - the claustrophobic fate of his victims that he'll never be able to witness, just imagine their reaction. The film can get right in there with the victim though and that's what makes this film so powerful and disturbing beyond the audacious twist. With the control over the film shifted from one character to the other it's still wish fulfilment, but for the villain as much as for the hero. (And for the filmmakers themselves, as they get an audience to witness their audaciously diabolical payoff! In the end we're in the most privileged, least marked position of all)

(It's also another reason that this is different from something like Secret Window, as The Vanishing and Insomia are predicated around the two characters duelling against each other but being entirely separate beings. The characters may be solipsistic but while they are fighting as much internally as with an external enemy, the films are taking a more objective perspective of a wider world beyond the story filled with people with their own solipsistic motivations! The 'good' and 'bad' guy in the story might make for effective contrasts with each other, but they seem more kindred spirits not literally facets of just one person!)

Anyway, both the remakes of these films completely miss these elements and turn them into less complex 'beating the bad guy' or 'atoning for sins' plots. They're probably the two most interestingly instructive of recent remakes though (also the US remake of Pulse fits too) for showing that just copying the plot beats whilst manipulating or even entirely losing tone, nuance, even a guiding philosophy, can turn the same basic material into something completely different.

matrixschmatrix wrote:You know, I'd been worrying a lot about trying to hop into the pre-20s list, because outside of silent comedy and The Phantom Carriage my experience of that world had been mostly Griffith (whom I think I despise as a filmmaker, as well as a person, though I need to give him another chance) and Méliès and Feuillade, both of whom I like but find trying to watch too much of- but the more I watch of it, the more I've been falling in love. I've just got this, along with a bunch of stuff from the DFI (including Blind Justice and Præsidenten) and I'm genuinely looking forward to watching it, instead of thinking of it as a chore to be worked through, after falling in love with Die Puppe and The Land Beyond the Sunset.

I was in the same place starting this project, and so far my experience with the silents has been great, with the only "chore" so far being Die Nibelungen (which I'm going to finally finish tonight, I swear!) Les Vampires felt like a bit of a drag before I decided to approach it as a TV show instead of a film, watching only a chapter or two at a time with other films in between to keep me from getting burnt out. The Keatons were great fun of course, but I already knew beforehand that I would like them based on how much I've enjoyed his shorts. And despite it's long run time, I was completely enamored with Greed. But the real treat for me so far has been Murnau- Nosferatu, Der Letze Mann, and Faust were all wonderful surprises. The problems I had with the Lang (lingering on each scene far longer than necessary, with little in the way of story advancement), the Murnau films move at an exuberant pace, and are so chock full of creative energy and stunning effects that I have a hard time believing anyone with an interest in film could be bored with them.

Yeah, I got past my mental blocks with silent movies from the 20s a little while ago- but just for this list I've watched 7th Heaven, A Cottage on Dartmoor, and The Unknown, and been blown away again by how easy to watch (and how gorgeous, or in the case of The Unknown, gorgeously strange) late silent film got. Don't judge Lang by Nibelungen- the super slow takes and staticness of the whole thing are specific to the material there and not representative of him as a filmmaker. I love Lang, but that one bored me stiff too.

I'm looking forward to picking the Bauer set Milestone put out, I just haven't gotten the chance yet. I'm glad someone actually does like him, though- the only person who'd mentioned him previously was Dom, in a negative context.

You and I seemingly watch movies differently, so I imagine my tastes have little to no relation to your own, but yes, I'd say the two Bauers I watched for this project were at the least the worst silents on the list, if not also among the worst overall for me. Not for any particularly illuminating reasons, I just found them tortuously overwrought and annoying to sit through

Bauer was probably the major success story of the last pre-1920s round. Seven of his films made the overall list, with two in the top 10 (the two that are eligible now). After Death appeared on 12 of the 14 lists submitted at the time.

Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
DePalma does Hitchock Redux better and, surprisingly, it's the more conventional genre elements that Lynch can't quite deliver on: Frank Booth is much more silly than frightening, the mix of tones occasionally works against the film (unlike DarkImbecile I find the quotable/comedic aspects often forced and out of place), and it never makes you feel the screws of the plot tightening like great thrillers do. But what works really works and on the big screen it had an emotional impact I was not expecting. The crux of the film's power for me is in its insights on a personal favorite sub-genre, the amateur detective movie, coming together in maybe the greatest scene of its kind: the all-important confrontation between sinister and innocent worlds, which happens for the first time in the mise-en-scene of a single shot. Mike and Dorothy don't belong in the same image and this dissonance rings through the rest of the scene, becoming almost unbearable in Sandy's response to the horror around her. Jeffery had darkness in him before, which he is only now exploring, but Sandy is completely unprepared to deal with such ugliness.

Lines like "I don't know if you're a detective or a pervert" and "Do you really like mysteries that much?" (response: "Yes, I do.") are irresistible and perfectly (too perfectly?) summarize the fascination with these kinds of films. Since, Lynch has found better outlets for his obsessions elsewhere, and in other genres (his sensibility works better in the context of a soap opera in Twin Peaks, a noir in Mulholland Drive, etc), but this is a valuable text for innocent, aspiring private eyes like myself. It's in no danger of making my list, but I'm glad I gave it another look.

Here's a trio that just didn't hit my critical faculties at all regardless of how much or little I liked them. Hell, the A Separation unmaking of doc on About Elly struck me as being more interesting to talk about. Hopefully the next few I encounter whether good or bad give me something more to talk about.

About Elly
This isn't much more than an Antonioni knock-off, but at the very least it is as good a knock-off as one can get. Farhadi is really masterful at switching tones without noticeably shifting style or story. The transition into a horror movie in the second half from the Renoir beginning comes along basically in one shot and even before it he has managed to shift gears masterfully. The most interesting element to the film and what makes it stand out against other attempts at L'avventura is the different facts of life for this milieu when it comes to Iranian society today versus Italy in the '60s. Farhadi never really emphasizes this as an Iranian film so such things are in the necessary aspects of presentation. We're still left with relatively young middle class people disconnected from word responsibilities, but most of them are married with even one purported to be divorced and of course children coming out of the walls. The children are a very interesting new element to the storyline though I don't think Farhadi utilizes them as fully as he could leaving them out of the picture for large stretches of time.

Modern Romance
That ludes scene. It just goes on and on and pushes the anti-humour the film otherwise deftly balances way too far. After climbing that mountain though this plays as an excellent, if not quite as good, if not as good, counterbalance to the optimism, if that's the right term, of Lost in America. Brooks captures so perfectly a certain type of pathetic hopelessness and magnifies it beyond the disgust it should elicit. The last act with James Brooks doesn't seem to really fit into that though it works well enough as its own silly thing. I liked Modern Romance overall, but it feels significantly more like a lumpy first film than Real Life did.

Birth
This is a pretty fun and truly gorgeous film which is just plain old fashioned entertaining and engaging. I don't think it is great nor particularly intelligent in handling its themes, but I don't particularly care on that account because of how entertaining and beautiful the whole affair is. Also there's just such a murderer's row of actors here it is fun watching them play around.

I by Day and You by Night
First and foremost this is just an excellently produced film showing off a great handle of classical technique that would make all but the best jealous. It manages to float multiple narratives whose source of comedy is often very different in a way that feels uniform and coherent. While perhaps not one of the best examples of screwball or early musical comedy it is obvious why it would work very well for some people. Though that virtue is also the film's single biggest vice. There's too much plot going on. The movie comes across like a series of rough sketches that could be developed into more full movies. This occasionally works (the movie in the movie stays around exactly the right amount of time), but often leaves a lack of connection to the happenings with the title plot in particular feeling half baked and bored. This effect is only made worse because elements of the plot are slightly reminiscent of The Shop Around the Corner. The problem proves itself to be a minor one in the long term, but keeps the film equally minor.

The film really does fly as a great film in its final scene after all of the misunderstandings are clarified though. The balancing act of when to breach reality and under cut the wealthy philanderer plays out very well even if it maintains only Astaire and Rogers level strength and never Lubitsch. I also have some misgivings with the way the class element is settled in the film though I'm fine leaving such problems as a limitation of the place and the time. The use of Jewish characters for the main subplot is also interesting. There's a little playing into Merchant of Venice type antisemitism with the father being portrayed as a fool and his relationship to the daughter. One could also interpret the film's emphasis that she get with Wolf to highlight a certain fear of miscegenation. I think, though, that Berger himself was Jewish? If so then the film is open enough on some points to where these elements could be seen as slightly subversive or at least only causally antisemitic.

The Wheel
This is easily the weakest of the Gance films I've seen though it must be Guy Maddin's favorite. The reason for this weakness when spelled out seems a bit childish leaving me doubtful of my own meh reaction. Essentially the subject matter isn't serious enough. It does not have the weight to carry the seriousness with which the narrative acts out nor the immense runtime (I could see a version even half as long coming across as a bit overdone) nor just the overall Gance-iness. It almost falls into comedy how Gance can't do a single scene of levity without introducing some over the top dramatic moment. For instance the scene where we are introduced to the children grownup plays well as a light moment before the storm, but then he does that ridiculous running over gag for whatever reason which just undermines the feeling of the scene and what it accomplishes for the movie. It's telling that one of the most emotionally involving and just plain well done scenes is the father's confession to the son about half way in. Gance plays it small with a simple shot reverse shot where Mars underplays the part with a dripping irony only strengthened by the casual appearance he puts forth his not really incestuous incestuous revelation.

Yet despite these severe dramatic and narrative failings it is hard not to admire the film as long as one ignores Gance's better accomplishments before and after. There is such a technical prowess here that it almost, almost, doesn't matter what story it is attached to it is so easy to fall for the beauty. The montage of course is superb, but it doesn't overly lean on that (which is good considering how perfectly Napoleon does), but instead shows off Gance's ability with mis-en-scene. There's a lot of experiments here with aspect ratio some of which still come across as daring. A lot of the overlays are rather impressive too though none as great as the march of death in J'accuse. The plain movement of the actors in the frame is practically an equal of the aspect ratio stuff with each shot set up as a perfect painting fully grasping the ideas of the scene and the movie with each movement having an amazing subtlety in causing cinematic difference from the painted image. Interestingly it is usually not the overtly artistic images which last in the mind the longest, but the small everyday ones. For example the sequence of shots that close out the first disc is very impressive and intended to arouse sadness in the audience with all sorts of tableaux it is the immediately proceeding image of the co-worker lying on the front of the train and how his face shifts in the shot which marks the deepest impression of what leaving means for Sisif.

The film touches me with a greatness at the final hour which feels like the whole point of the film. Yet it feels like an epilogue pushed too long as its own film. While all of this talent does take the sting out of many failings, i.e. the film moves along quickly so that it is only after the film all of the filler becomes clear and the want for a shorter version develops, that just leads to the eternal question of if aesthetic is an absolute priority over the content contained within. In this case since there's nothing much to the content beyond a simple melodrama, with the incest stuff being so lightweight to the approach it couldn't possibly cause much of a debate, I'd be willing to say yes, but would prefer some discussion over the film first.

knives wrote:I by Day and You by Night
First and foremost this is just an excellently produced film showing off a great handle of classical technique that would make all but the best jealous. It manages to float multiple narratives whose source of comedy is often very different in a way that feels uniform and coherent. While perhaps not one of the best examples of screwball or early musical comedy it is obvious why it would work very well for some people. Though that virtue is also the film's single biggest vice. There's too much plot going on. The movie comes across like a series of rough sketches that could be developed into more full movies. This occasionally works (the movie in the movie stays around exactly the right amount of time), but often leaves a lack of connection to the happenings with the title plot in particular feeling half baked and bored. This effect is only made worse because elements of the plot are slightly reminiscent of The Shop Around the Corner. The problem proves itself to be a minor one in the long term, but keeps the film equally minor.

The film really does fly as a great film in its final scene after all of the misunderstandings are clarified though. The balancing act of when to breach reality and under cut the wealthy philanderer plays out very well even if it maintains only Astaire and Rogers level strength and never Lubitsch. I also have some misgivings with the way the class element is settled in the film though I'm fine leaving such problems as a limitation of the place and the time. The use of Jewish characters for the main subplot is also interesting. There's a little playing into Merchant of Venice type antisemitism with the father being portrayed as a fool and his relationship to the daughter. One could also interpret the film's emphasis that she get with Wolf to highlight a certain fear of miscegenation. I think, though, that Berger himself was Jewish? If so then the film is open enough on some points to where these elements could be seen as slightly subversive or at least only causally antisemitic.

A very interesting take on this film. I haven't seen the film for quite some while (but after all I'm responsible for making it English-friendly and thus should know it more or less by heart), but unless my memory really lets me down, I don't remember anything particularly Jewish about the character of Herr Krüger and his daughter. He's the rich and stupid guy, but that was more or less of a stock character in the Weimar comedies of the time (see a lot of films starring Ralph A. Roberts, for instance), mostly in the ones NOT produced by UFA. That company only adapted to the plight of the working classes rather late, in 1932, when the economic circumstances made it more or less impossible to simply continue with the promotion of the romantic or easy-going purely escapist operettas they did so extremely well. So in 1932 UFA transferred their formula a little bit 'down' to reach the audience, which resulted not only in this film, but also in the Lilian Harvey/ Willy Fritsch /Willi Forst masterpiece "Ein blonder Traum" (which is now probably my favourite UFA sound film, but as it's not eligible, I'll only come back to it when the next 30s round is due).

I actually don't know whether Berger was Jewish or not, but I know for sure that co-writer Robert Liebmann and composer Werner R. Heymann were (and both of them were UFA's major artists in their respective fields, having written the scripts and the music for most of the company's most major successes), so this seems to contradict the idea of antisemitism if it comes to this film.

I would agree that the film is probably not fully on the level of Lubitsch's very best work, but please consider that "The Shop around the Corner" was only made eight years later, and a much better comparison might actually be Fejös' "Lonesome", considering the way these lovers find and lose and then find themselves again. Only that Berger's film plays in a much more light manner, of course. But the way how it comments on the whole history of UFA escapist romances via the film within the film and also on the at the time very popular films about Frederick the Great (via the Sanssouci episode, which clearly references the 1930 UFA film "Das Flötenkonzert in Sanssouci"), and not least on the entire mystique and dreams associated with cinema-going at the time, especially for the 'common people', makes this film a very multi-layered and often tongue-in-cheek masterpiece which nevertheless manages to reaffirm that very mystique in a very endearing way. I mean, is there any better song about the cinema experience than "Wenn ich sonntags in mein Kino geh"?

Oh, and if it's on the level of Astaire and Rogers (which I think it definitely is), that's more than enough praise

The film makes it explicit he is Jewish by having Jewish paraphernalia like a Chanukkiah clutter the background in his house. This is especially clear in a shot when he is talking on the phone in his introductory scene.

Yep, I specifically remember that shot because of course it's only natural to sit up a bit when Judaism rears its head in Gemran cinema during this time period, though I don't recall anything too untoward in the film's depiction tied directly to his religion

I felt the stuff about his ethnicity was mostly subtextual with that shot just there to make sure you don't miss out on what the subtext means.

That's fair. Also, I don't have it fresh in my memory so I may have forgotten evidence one way or the other

The paraphernalia was the main evidence with the story he was stuck in and the relationships developed having many tropes typical of European writings on Jews which is why I casually brought up The Merchant of Venice earlier. The film plays them either as a subversion with the daughter going to a fellow Jew against the wishes of her father or as part of the evolving European fear against Jews turning from a religiously sourced one into an ethnically 'scientific' (great stretching of terms on my part I guess) sourced one.

Japanese Girls at the Harbor

Phew, as much as I loved Mr. Thank You- and I'm delighted that I watched it first- I was utterly nonplussed by this one. It's certainly not a bad movie, and it's hard to begrudge it the 70 minutes it takes to watch, if only for some of the photography- I particularly liked the jump/zoom effect used for the shooting and unshooting of Yoko- but the plot seemed kind of baffling. Like, I can follow literally what happened- Sunako lapses into prostitution out of combination of fleeing from her crime and guilt (and attendant lack of self worth) over it, but the morality of it, which seems to view the prostitution as a greater moral crime than the actual attempted murder, and the way that Henry never seems to be likable in any way nor held accountable for anything he does, made it hard to get a foothold.

There's an intense, uncomplicated idea that 'respectable' is good and underworld is evil throughout the movie, one that doesn't fit at all with the somewhat radical humanism of Mr. Thank You. Obviously, there are cultural barriers to my complete understanding of the thing, too- but like, the ending is that, having realized she didn't actually do anything she need feel guilty about, Sunako goes off to restart her life, leaving the evidence of her life of prostitution behind- but brings with her a creepy dude who latched on to her, wouldn't let go, and attempted to scuttle a relationship she valued out of spite? Is this meant to be read as good because he is a parallel to Henry, who is respectable, or simply that she is being magnanimous towards him, as others had been to her? Couldn't the movie have wound up with Henry getting shot and Dora and Sunako getting together (and while this may be bringing in ideas that don't belong, there was a sense of a sapphic relationship between the two, with Henry's appeal being that he was a proxy for the other to each, by the end)?

I don't even know what I'm complaining about, really, it's just a movie that didn't click for me.

Modern Romance
That ludes scene. It just goes on and on and pushes the anti-humour the film otherwise deftly balances way too far.

MR is still an all time favorite of mine and i go back with it nearly 25 years so i can understand this reaction but the character brooks plays (robert cole) is so...nearly unbearable at times that this scene (along with the sneaker store and "foley" scenes later on) serves as a perfect reminder why someone as seemingly well put together as his girlfriend mary would have anything to do with this guy. he's almost pathologically jealous but he's also too goofy to be dangerous in any serious way. in a lot of ways this movie is the flip side of Star 80...

knives wrote: Modern Romance
...The last act with James Brooks doesn't seem to really fit into that though it works well enough as its own silly thing.

The filmmaking scenes draw parallels between Brooks and L. Brooks endlessly reworking minutiae in their cheap space movie, which is going to be bad regardless, and Brooks trying to work around and reshuffle the problems in a relationship that is unfixable regardless. He says something like this himself in the opening scene: he's too busy trying to fix what's wrong with the movie that he can't tell if it's any good or not. For a detail-oriented artist like myself, this is one of the film's most depressing implications. I like how Brooks' first three features are all in some way about how movies can ruin your life: In Real Life, people's lives are destroyed for the purposes of making An Important Film. In Modern Romance, the protagonist uses his impotent filmmaking methods in his personal life to similar results, as he's also alternatively blinded by the cliches of paranoid thriller and romantic comedy. And in Lost in America...well, seeing Easy Rider is bad enough.

Maskerade
This is definitely one of the best films I've seen for this project (though it is unlikely to be one I vote for). It's just as effectively told a romance as I've found with a great cinematic flavour which reminded me of von Sternberg in its use of black in the lighting and production design. Of course the highlight is Walbrook how shows yet another side to his performance ability doing something like a benign variation of his Gaslight character. He's able to so expertly give this sense of ambiguity that the script doesn't offer making Poldy's conflict in the climax much more real then it should be. The role of the women is also pretty interesting taking a more Mizoguchi (particularly Utamaro styled) approach of the male eye versus the more typical in America and Europe at the time approach of female POV. It works and that difference allows the movie to stand out as unique in the crowd though.

A Cottage on Dartmoor
I didn't think that Asquith had this in him. This is so much more stylish and cinematic then his enjoyable if rather text based sound films I have to wonder where else this keen Asquith pops up. Seeing Libel, a Preminger light court room drama, so soon after this really paints a more compelling image of him then the more readily available features in isolation suggest though. It is not clear what caused him to mellow out or even if this film is a one off stylistically speaking. The use of lighting, editing, and even in one early instance title cards to convey the story is so much flashier then what I've come to expect. I think even in one of the montages of insanity that become increasingly common there's a flash of red that I have to learn how they accomplished that. One of the most interesting techniques though is also probably the most basic. Starting in the theater sequence, but reoccurring afterwards Joe is left to the outer rim of the frame often cut off and hidden. Even when he takes full force as the supposed center of the frame Rodwell's camera has him standing too low and off to the side as if the filmmaker's can't directly look at him any more. He's a hidden shadow of a man.

As a small aside I hate that they were talking about going to a talkie all throughout the film, but it is clear they go to see silent movies instead with an orchestra in the pit and everything. I hope that BFI can put this out on Blu soon (especially with the two other Asquith silents out) as their DVD extras sound significantly better then Kino's.