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Great appreciation, therewillbeblus! One of my favorite things about the film is that, as you say, it's maybe Hitchcock's most tranquil and laid back work, and yet it opens with a jump scare! Just constantly upending expectations, and always in the most pleasing way. I love how it handles the inevitable third act conflict between the romantic leads, not taking it too seriously and thereby deflating the frustration that usually attends that trope (at least, for me). It also has far and away the best Hitchcock cameo!

To your jump scare/upending expectations point, one of my favorite parts (aside from Grant’s majestic initial escape and Kelly’s angelic presence in that dress resembling a painting-on-film) is the late scene where we peer around in the darkness with the camera as our surrogate wondering when the thieving action is going to start and where it will come from, only to have the camera spin around to a violent struggle already taking place, and then over within seconds - quicker than the build up!

It was my third favorite in the Hitchcock list project so it'll definitely rate highly here for me as well.

Nothing will beat North By Northwest, but less than two handfuls of films do for me in absolute term so that bar is set. The question will be whether Strangers on a Train lands the second spot as the Hitchcock that I used to adore as a kid, lost some steam along the way and last watch made a full recovery. I wrote up my thoughts about it already in this thread but I think it may be his darkest film in the commentary on morals, celebrating selfish weakness masquerading as righteous veering towards nihilism, while Vertigo takes that dark ribbon for its implications on powerlessness and control, with both exposing solipsistic defenses, but one gets away with them while the other is trapped in cyclical hell over them. I don’t know which idea is darker!

Mr Sheldrake wrote: Wed Mar 25, 2020 3:49 pm I enjoyed these three Antonio Pietrangeli comedies currently on Prime. The liveliness in their depiction of the mysteries of human behavior fit the bill in distracting from the dismal news.

The Bachelor (1955) features a terrific comic performance by Alberto Sordi who plays a thirty-something confirmed bachelor who is finally persuaded by family and friends that he needs to marry but is completely unprepared in how to make the right choice.

It Happened in Rome (1957) is a breezy travelogue in summertime Italy (including Venice) following the exploits of three young women hitchhiking and meeting men of all sorts. These include Vittorio de Sica, Gabriele Ferzetti and Sordi. Pietrangeli’s first color movie in need of restoration and not shown in the proper aspect ratio, still eminently watchable, not least for the presence of Isabelle Corey who played the memorable teenage femme fatale in Melville’s Bob the Gambler. Look for a brief appearance by Dario Fo as a museum tour guide.

In March’s Child(1958) Jacqueline Sassard is top-billed with Gabriele Ferzetti in an emotional study of a mis-matched (by age and temperament) married couple. You might recall Sassard from Chabrol’s Le Biches and Losey’s Accident where she is used more or less as a mannequin. Here she is a non-stop chatterbox playing a spoiled brat who can’t seem to figure out how to be happy. The poignancy is that the much older Ferzetti can’t seem to stop loving her despite all.

Good spot. Shame about the second film. Nata di Marzo had a Japanese Blu-ray a few years ago, which explains why that one looks so good.

What seems to be the whole of Amori di mezzo secolo is also on there.

Venom and Eternity (dir. Isou)
I would perhaps like this a fair amount better without the first part which falls by its own cowardice and the fact that the children of Isou, especially Godard and Duras, make the film (with that portion in particular) redundant and useless. Now, obviously this has immense historical importance which is plain from the first frame, but important and good are not synonymous terms.

The opening plays out as if Isou had written this treatise, but couldn't figure out how to play it so to speak. Hearing the words, even if they're jumbled up by a teenager like insistence on tough conversation, my imagination jumped to the wonders Chris Marker, a true photographer, could have done with this. Instead we get a surprisingly traditional situation where we hear a conversation while seeing the aftermath of it. That makes all the talk of radicalism seem like trite posturing.

The subsequent film fairs a lot better though I'm not sure if it really takes advantage of its own ideas very well. Certainly not as well as Duras' Lorrie. It mostly uses pre-existing techniques that you see in a lot of experimental films from the '30s and even some going back to the dawn of cinema to tell a tale not dissimilar from a million French New Wave stories. There's the arrogant young man and the ideal young woman he falls for and thus hurts and numerous other signposts of what was to come. If I sound tired or bored I suppose there is a little of that since the film is more bluster than action, but what action is here is at least mostly enjoyable.

I will say though this makes me very curious to see Guy Debord's Howls for Sade which sound like a much more complete and well thought out application of the treaty. Though I Have no clue how I'd succeed in watching it given how terrible my French is.

My Sister Eileen

There is something about this film in particular that has impeded my ability to write about it for a while because all the energies in it (gender politics, immaculate staging, choreography in dance and blocking, emotional isolation, and need for shared experience and individualized validation) continue to expand an overwhelming feeling I have about the pulsing ideas in the mise en scène, like a balloon on the verge of popping, but one where the layered contents within are too reverberant to connect. I’ve finally been able to piece together why I believe this film carries its profound effects, which is that on a self-reflexive level Quine saturates us in the freedoms in restriction that we find omnipresent in our social world mirrored in that of cinema.

On a formalist level, this is a constricting film, one of strictly defined architecture and spatial awareness whether in a claustrophobic basement apartment or an outdoors miniature set that is artificially limited by the parameters of stage. The narrative too feels shortchanged at first on certain characters’ development and growth, but there is so much happening within those restrictions. Genre does well with limitations which inspire creativity. That the film establishes this through its own modesty in imaginative scope allows for an extra sensitive reflection to the experiences of Garrett and Leigh, who too find creative ways to thrive under their social limitations.

The women of the film are the marginalized focus, but there is also a brutal truth about the binding forces that not only women but men are driven by in determining their actions. Lemmon and Fosse each carry expectations that are anchored to sexual fetishes and ownership, respectively (as does Rall in his competition for Leigh as prize), but through their differences they both reduce the women in their lives to objects. They are each confused and unmotivated to change their worldviews, or perhaps simply unable to, and while they do make progress in small gestures to validate their partner’s dignity and worth to the extent that they can, these alterations are mild in practice.

Dick York seems to be the gender neutral character (insofar as he is not completely motivated by sex) who can move between worlds, but even he is subject to social norms that make his life unmanageable by hiding rather than facing restrictive powers, perpetuating the formidable cycle of dogmatic mores that don’t discriminate across gender in their broad threatening stance that regulates behavior. Just like York, there is a painful side to Lemmon, Fosse, and even Rall’s characters, in that they struggle to overcome their sexual ideals in expectations despite some of their subtle facial expressions and body language indicating that they know this would be so relieving, and so they too are subject to oppression. Who hasn’t had the experience of finding an ideal companion, a nice, loyal, funny, and smart member of the preferred sex who we just can’t fall for because they don’t match that uncontrollably selective critique that defines our need for specific romantic engagement. Overall the men seem comfortable in their positions of power, and any readings of their own struggles must be taken with a grain of salt in the way that the concept of male privilege is more complicated than the unfair absolutist proclamation of 'having it easy,' while simultaneously 'having it easier' in certain contexts, especially involving women.

Garrett’s rejections are sad because her negative core beliefs about men are reinforced with consistent evidence against Leigh’s naive pleas that are solely based on her own solipsistic experience [As an aside, what a wonderful demonstration of how solipsism can be so warm! Eileen is such a great character, in some ways the most empathic, and yet behaves as completely blind to her sister’s perspective, unintentionally invalidating her experience by trying to help selflessly from her fixed vantage point]. On the other side, the men are also living with ennui in their inability to overcome such rejection measures, disproportionately magnetized by sexual and romantic ideals sustained by internal innate drives and external social messaging, victims themselves to the sobering truth of the honest value of superficial beauty.

The men aren’t the focus of this film though, and they don't earn the victim status of the women, who are the stars of this story and the focal points of this subjugation. I’m not sure the male vaults of restraint are intended to be dissected this strongly at all, and I only bring it up to emphasize how nobody is spared by these boundaries of social exchange via patriarchal measurements, even if the imbalance is skewed to significant disproportional lengths. The women are depersonalized so many times that the exhibitions seem alien, with various men acting instinctively on their cerebellum sex drives which shadow every higher function to animated degrees, including in the characters who we’re meant to root for. And yet these women are the strong agents in this film, and they find freedom through the restrictions of the patriarchal movement, that they can pivot within to self-actualize on their own subjective terms through compromise with objective reality.

There is also a feminine camaraderie in how each lead wants to escape from their own individualized persecutions, with Garrett pretending to be Eileen to gain sexual attention, and Eileen vying to evade the confines of her objectification wanting to be seen as a platonic nonsexual person like her sister. Eileen may attract sexual urges, but her character is almost asexual in her aims, and despite her apparent cluelessness, she desperately seeks solitude from the pursuit that is pressed upon her. The discomfort with identity is a stage on the road to self-acceptance, and each sister finds resilience through humor, suppression, sublimation, and of course music.

In focusing on the small stages of these mezzo-systems, and packing them with surging emotion and ideas, we are afforded an intimate invitation to witness that these are individuals overheating with passion boiling over in a vacuum, each frame bursting with an intensity of spirit that we sense is too great for even the constraints of the aspect ratio in Cinemascope. Through cinematic restrictive staging and excluding a broader scope of flair, every detail lights up and a magical presence permeates the typically mundane.

Upon revisits, these details that practically suffocate every frame begin to breathe in their own internal paradox, in a similar way to how Garrett and Leigh find ways to breathe in their own suffocating world. The dance numbers are gentle in their expressions of liberation, an aspect of dance that has rarely been as unpretentiously demonstrated as it is here. Quine’s camera is masterfully choreographed in the framing of the actors, fluctuating to match the most minute movements, especially heightened during the Fosse/Rall hat-dance (I’m going to get hyperbolic and say I’m not sure I’ve ever seen as strong spatially-cognizant cinematography in a studio era musical). The songs are funny, inspiring, and playful in their range of moods, confidence, and thematic nudges. The humor is dipped in the dark oils of manipulation, judgment, and suffering, from the landlord’s withholding to the subway blasting to the policeman’s prostitution assessments and embarrassment of the ‘audition’; but it’s also relatable beyond daily struggles to the self-consciousness of interpersonal challenges ("You must be Eileen's sister" - "That's what they call me") and basic strangeness inherent in social dynamics (“Only because we’re from Ohio” always gets a resonate laugh for me).

The pathos exists in the same place as the comedy, especially in the social comparisons that pervade Garrett’s negative self-concept next to her sister. The evidence for this that I mentioned as harsh can be humorous too though, like the little boy who runs away at Garrett’s face mask as she sings about her low self-esteem, or the neglect at being offered a seat on the train as Eileen is whisked away; and the external oppressive forces can persist as physical gags like the noise and spraying water quelling the sisters even in their own home. The mesh of light comedy and serious drama forms a grey space of complex emotions, the film constantly making settlements with itself.

The colors are always on the verge of exploding under the suppressive regime of the sterile milieu, both in physical restrictions of space and sociological restrictions of agency. The film even deprives us of a big finish, under the guise of a grandiose spectacle with a mob of people’s attention on our stars, though at this point the growth has only begun and the penultimate scene presents as if it may be the start of a strong third act only to be finalized abruptly. I always felt slightly let down that there is no swarming dance number that hits the ceiling with macro-bliss, but that would mean that Quine was offering an escape from our corporeal realism, which he can only do through rushing artificial male growth and igniting what will be a longer process of honest female growth that he thankfully doesn't prune in leaving them in their early stages of evolution in healing identity, in media res.

Instead the catharsis is found in an anti-climax that gives us exactly as much information as we need to see the beginnings of acceptance of life on life’s terms, optimism in the act of letting go and exercising the freedoms we have, which sometimes means playing the games we don’t want to play. The message may be a depressing solution to some, but it’s also emancipating in its own way as an existentialist bargain that permits and empowers the will through embrace of restraints, just like Quine does with his exhibition of the medium. The film is oddly humanistic under realistic, not idealistic circumstances, principally because Quine acknowledges the barriers in our milieu to achieve humanism through his own, and creates a lens of empathy that reigns supreme.

Dear Forum

Today I watched La grande guerra and I soliti ignoti for the first time.

Today was a great day.

Good Night, Forum.

On the Passage of a Few People through a Relatively Short Period of Time (dir. Debord)
What a major step up from Isou's nonsense. It cuts through the posturing and gets a direct presentation of its ideas in an engaging format. This is an incredibly easy film to enjoy as it presents a traditional post-Kantian philosophical script to images in a way that seems to be genuinely engaging with that script as a visual. It helps that Debord is well humoured throughout with a cheeky poke at the nascent wave arguing for a sort of cinema that weirdly reminded me of Soderbergh.

Sunday in Peking (Dir. Marker)
I should have known that it would be impossible for Marker to disappoint even this early in his career. This largely takes the typical form of a travelogue, but Marker's unique perspective and humour keep it engaging and make it stand out. You don't see any of the experimental radicalism that Rouch was doing at the same time, but as this film is more driven by perspective then form that seems appropriate. For example, Marker takes a break from looking into his fish bowl to marvel at how he is equally a fish to them as they're engaged by the exotic elements he has brought from France. Though the most fun part of this short is how it engages in time like a precursor to La Jetee. Past and present (and even a little future given that one of the first images we see is a masked man) co-exist for Marker as even is a representation of what he believed about China and what he is coming to understand.

The Bachelor (dir. Pietrangeli)
This is a perfectly okay comedy, but definitely several orders of magnitude reduced from I Knew Her Well. It's a bit cartoony in spots and at times it comes off like an especially well polished Vince Vaughn comedy from the early aughts. There is a small sequence though which temporarily elevates the movie into something special. After a serious illness Sordi decides to become the marrying kind, but first leaves Rome to visit the village of his youth. The on location footage is gorgeous and the film shifts gears to become a more old man sort of comedy as we get a sense of how seriously Rome was in transition at the time (the bombed out village feels like a relic from before Mussolini). Unfortunately the narrative comes to an end to show a montage of prospects for Sordi to leech on before he inevitably gets his goal of marriage. This is not a bad film, but the offer of a great film within makes the rest more disappointing than it would be if made by a hack.

Mid Century Loves (dir. Various)
Unquestionably one of the best omnibus features I've seen with a unifying premise that warrants the omnibus treatment. It helps that it is all shot by Tonino Delli Colli, Italy's cinematographer, who seems to be trying the same techniques that were used on The Aviator by having the look of the film evolve with each era. That leads to the brilliant premise, which in short, seems to be telling a love story best representing each decade in Italy's 20th century history.

The film opens up with its most brilliant segment by Pellegrini who wows by telling a fairly simple and classical story (I had literally just been reading the same thing beat for beat in Don Quixote a day earlier) with such verve as to totally wow. All by itself it warrants the whole film.

Next up is Germi doing a story I would have never guessed from him (and still don't) in a way I'd never guess. It's also a lovingly told tale of doomed love though this one by the fate of being told rather than economic necessity. It remains a beautiful and touching portrait not just of young love, but also of peasantry.

The third story is why I think I have my credits incorrect is technically directed by Mario Chiari, writer of Miracle in Milan, but seems to have been made by Tex Avery as it has more gags a minute than I can count and dissolves into such utter violence. It's a brilliant bit of showmanship though it is such an odd fit with the sincerity of the rest of the picture Chiari's work just doesn't feel right. It doesn't help either that some of the editing is choppy in the climax leading me to genuinely wonder if the edition I saw is incomplete (it runs 72 minutes).

Roberto Rossellini's '40s(?) set short is a return to drama as he plays out a missing episode from Paisan. The fact that Rossellini has been here before and better does reduce the short for me a little, though it is still incredible using body language as its primary storyteller. It ends with one of his most effective images though and it really gives the sense there is nothing else to say about war. It probably runs the middle of the pack for me in the series, but I could easily chalk that up to mood.

Finally, Pietrangeli gives another comedy through a carousel ride with a doctor who is hired by exhausted lovers to lie to their lovers about their health condition. The punchline is obvious from the word go making it all the more impressive that it lands so well. This, I would argue, is the weakest of the shorts and yet it still is a film I'd go to bat for and it greatly impresses me.

Les Girls (Cukor, 1957): Given the lack of fanfare or opprobrium this release's announcement received, and primed with watching the initially effervescent and steadily deflating Let's Make Love last week, I had hoped for something at best pleasant and inconsequential, something for a committed Cukor fan like me to admire briefly and move on. I even skipped a local screening of this in a Kelly series a while back and hadn't even really planned on picking up the disc, but the MSU Press book of interviews with Cukor has been hanging out on my night stand for a few months to be picked through on occasion, and Cukor clearly thought highly of George Hoyningen-Huene's "color consultation" on A Star is Born, where they were just figuring out Cinemascope, and here (where they, it turns out, had goddamn mastered it), so I figured why not pad out my 4 for $44 order. Cukor talks a lot in those interviews about how the technicians and higher-ups kept giving them rules about how to shoot with the nascent Cinemascope format—you need to use colors like this, and stage things like that, and compose for focus here because it won't handle there properly—and he and Hoyningen-Huene just smiled and nodded and did what they very well pleased. But good god—I feel like this movie beats Suspiria to the punch by 20 years. You can almost hear Cukor behind the camera saying "go ahead, call me an actresses' director one more time..." If there's anything to take away from this movie, it's the absolutely irreverent use of color and space. Nothing makes sense, in any way, except as composition on a flat screen. It's the Busby Berkeley fantasy theater stage metastasized to the entire movie set. Why are the doors to their apartment like that? There are two, and everyone rings at the top door, leans down to reach into the utility cage by the short steps between them for the key, then scampers down to the bottom door to use it!

The plot, so much as it matters, follows three headlining dancers in a touring stage show, currently in Paris and run by Gene Kelly, who live together in an MGM-typical Parisian walk-up, hobo-chic with perfectly fabulous views out above the perfectly shabby alleys, and Kelly right next door. And Kelly has one rule: don't. get. complicated. But hey, it is a movie after all. So not only do the girls get complicated, the retelling is framed by a libel suit some years down the road, where one dancer accuses the other of slanderously fabricating those complications, the various conflicting accounts of which let us see the goings-on from as many angles as Cukor can imagine. So yes, Rashomon, as others have said, but with died ostrich feathers and a "What is truth?" sandwich board. Subtlety is over-rated. The plot is mostly inconsequential beyond being a perfectly acceptable late musical spectacle, which is to say, excised of all relationship to socioeconomic reality and just compelling enough a means to justify all that color, all that texture, all that motion and sparkle and layered fabric and perspective and to ballast it with a little emotion—this is a visual tour-de-force, and that's what you should watch it for.

Letter from Siberia (Marker)
This comes across as Marker making his calling card, but that works out better then most because his card is such infectious joy. I suppose he wryly describes himself best by calling the film an ironic naivete. It's such a flashy and fun loving film that its didactic nature moves along smoothly leaving me to only really be cognizant of it only once I sat down to write and was left with no subtext to expand on. Not even the aesthetic leaves room to talk Marker is so impishly naked.

Thus Another Day (Kinoshita)
This starts off a great movie. Something of a horror image to the same year's Good Morning or a more rustic Being Two Isn't Easy. We're presented with a young family overwhelmed by the fast changes Japan has made in a decade. Transforming its caste system into a fully consumerist society with the negative fallout such a reality incurs. There's a lot to swallow about financial insecurity as well as a child who is a disrespectful brat crying about a television and other modern conveniences. The husband is desperate to think up anything to get ahead in the world while his wife suffers. The gorgeous score in this section helps a lot as it comes across like something from one of Hitchcock's more serious films.

As the film transitions into its main plot Japan in transition eases into the background a little bit as we instead get Kinoshita's version of a Sandra Dee flick. The teenaged shenanigans are a pleasant distraction while Kanzaburo's plot keeps the film in a heart wrenching state of mind. The film remains good even if it fails to live up to its promise.

Vendetta of a Samurai (Mori)
In contrast to the Kinoshita this Kurosawa scripted film shows how much Japanese storytelling was still evolving in the '50s. This is radically different from all the other Mori films I've seen keeping toward an older style and only giving hints at the future director he would become in the '60s. It's a talk heavy picture with even the verse sparse action done in a classical style without the intimacy that would be introduced in a couple of years.

Kurosawa's script though is very daring even if it never manages to reach its goals. We're presented with a kind of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance plot explaining that classical techniques of storytelling are less interesting fictions compared to the terser reality. As the thesis is laid out you can see the screws turning that would eventually get us that ending to Sanjuro. The script never really warrants its own bombast, but it all the same retains interest and works well even beyond its fascinating auteurist elements for Kurosawa and Mori. Also just a quick word for Mifune who does a great job here: This is so opposite to his other performances that it makes them even better now knowing the full extent of his range. Instead of the naturalistic emotional expression here we have an Olivier-esque classical actor quietly enforcing a staged understanding. It's a beautiful example of classical acting.

senseabove wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2020 8:34 pm Les Girls (Cukor, 1957): ...

I just wanted to thank you for your write up of this movie. I was debating with myself during the recent Warners Archive sale on whether to buy this or not. I ended up passing, since I really didn't know anything about the movie, but, after reading your comments on the film, I'll definitely be checking it out next time I have the chance. Even if you had only posted that still, Kay Kendall may have sold me on the film by itself. My goodness.

Hope it lives up to the hype! I have the impression enthusiasm for it is uncommon, if not quite mine alone; I at least have David Hare and Eric Rohmer to keep me company. And for anyone who swings the other way, let's just say Cinemascope is good for snakes and funeral trains and for Gene Kelly laid out napping in a paddle boat.

Chabrol named it one of the best films of the year, as did the aggregate list that year for Cahiers

Rohmer was a half jest about my own bad taste—I think we all know the Cahier crew often had heart-goggles on for their pet auteurs. I mean, they also rated Beyond a Reasonable Doubt in their top ten that year and, assuming the two ill-reputed ones I've left to see from his entire career are irredeemably horrendous, that's at best Lang's third worst movie.

I’ve been working my way through topping off all of the films Chabrol ever named in his top tens and I’ve actually almost seen all 92. He... had some eclectic tastes. Like all of his colleagues. But seriously, the Night Fighters??

Time to indulge in revisits of favorites: Here are arguably the two bleakest films in their respective genres, and also two of the best (and most entertaining… don’t judge me).


Kiss Me Deadly

One of my favorite openings in film noir, a jarring half-naked Cloris Leachman (in her debut) hitches a ride with a grade-A asshole. She is scared, mute, and confused while he is only concerned about his car. Soon enough she’ll be spewing feminist truths reducing his masculinity to a pathetic tagline and we’ll be introduced to imaginative violence, two ideas that feel more out of a 70s film than a 50s one.

But that is this film, known as a mean-spirited noir by reputation and it knows it. When Meeker leaves a room characters are so disgusted they need to open a window. This is noir’s fatalism incarnate: a narrative involving human beings at their worst, brutal, individualistic, materialistic, and a narrative that has apocalyptic consequences. The world is literally on the verge of ending here, reflecting that embittered noir disillusionment, and amidst all the fantastical elements there is a raw realism of people using each other so many ways to Sunday that they don’t have time for a moral code or philosophy- even if it’s a one-note objective before the end, other than a self-serving job of purposeless curiosity driving us toward death like experimental mice, human beings who have regressed back into our cerebellums, a de-evolution as we near the social apocalypse externalized into a real one.

This is an incredibly fun film though: fun because it’s a joy watching Aldrich and co. squeak scenes by the censors and fun because the story and style are simply supreme entertainment. My favorite noirs tend to involve the protagonist navigating various underground spaces and this is full of them. We meet characters who may or may not matter, but we get a lot of enjoyment out of the setpieces, especially with a loose cannon doing the digging. Some shots are delivered in expected form while others are surreal in their exposition, as characters flaunt unprecedented sexual fluidity (the introduction through open-mouthed kissing and touching may slyly be the most outrageous inclusion in this movie!), and they break down and creak out anxieties in ways that are authentic but feel uncomfortably foreign in cinema. This is an alien world for the movies that most replicates our own, and the continual shifts from predictable content to disemboweling and recontextualizing it happen so erratically that the film functions like the jump from a dream into a nightmare.

Meeker’s violence is abrasive, whether with his fists or his tongue, and sometimes it’s cruel, though not always: there is an element to the self-defense that feels warranted in our reality but not in cinema, and this film asks "why not?" For the less charitable actions, in forcing us to align with a character this compromised we can validate the parts of us we aren’t proud of too. We walk through the oily milieu not as tourists but as residents, for it’s probably more like our actual world than any other noir - and we know it.

Did I mention this film ends in the most perfect possible way and that is completely in step with where noir has been building to over the last decade? For me this is the ‘last’ noir, maybe not chronologically, but in spirit. It’s no coincidence that the finale is probably my favorite horror-scene in cinema, even though even I can’t argue that this is a horror film! I can’t imagine a bleaker vacuum of soul that simultaneously, and somewhat ironically, functions as one of the most energetic professions of cinematic possibilities and is reflective of the world we occupy. The final product is almost too much to reckon with; and watching it - no matter how many times - is a reminder that sometimes the darkest pictures are the most alluring.





Man of the West

Is this the most deceptive western of them all? It’s definitely the most complex. Mann dresses the scenes up in color and whimsical mystery, and even as the anxiety brews in the initial ten minutes we are under the spell of bright charm. Cooper may be nervous but he’s Gary Cooper after all. The score signals grace and optimistic possibilities to come, the train pushing towards what may be a variety of setpieces, open areas, new characters and space to traverse. Wrong. There is a wonderful (maybe the best in the history of westerns) yet jarring action scene, breathing smooth and tightly edited, harsh and perfectly choreographed.

And then we are deprived of what we have expected, as a noirish fatalism magnetically draws Cooper back into his old life. He literally walks into his past in a scene that feels like a dark fairy tale- a Wizard of Oz moment when the sun goes down and physical boundaries and our five senses can no longer offer the protection against the pull back to history. Cooper has never been better, and like Stewart in The Naked Spur, Mann uses his typical virtuous Everyman staple as a guise for the psychological secrets that plague all men indiscriminately. As soon as Cobb enters the screen we are aware of the slimy underbelly that westerns have ultimately failed to give us in full-measures: exaggerated gangsters who have embodied their personas as a coping mechanism, not as an actual identity.

Mann provides a film so packed with competing flavors that they bleed into each other, and this becomes a painting indirectly about identity, the ones we construct and the ones in our nature, and how we need to confront both our natures and facades to achieve a sense of harmony. Like a fairy tale, Cooper is drawn back into his nature, never having made peace with this part of him that was buried. Cobb and his cronies have never acknowledged the facades they have built to emphasize their dirty lifestyles and nihilistic codes; and so neither man has a confident identity, both are hiding from a piece of themselves that they don’t want to face. The sickness in this film isn’t just the nasty outlook on Hobbesian humanity, the Western theme of space only dubbed moral by law and order imposed, not nature, rejecting Locke in essence. It’s the projection of this idea onto the definition of ‘self’ - the dilution of meaning in identity by filtering any taste of self-actualization from the security of the human brain onto the vast space of barren desert.

Cobb shatters Cooper’s sense of self immediately by telling him that every idea in Cooper’s head was “mine,” that he was his “property,” sucking every drop of agency from the first half of his life in two sentences and claiming it for his own. Cooper must wrestle with this truth and reach self-actualization the same way morality is established in the western, by acknowledging its existence as separated from essence, by admitting its social construction, its compromise, its lie. His sense of self is a protector against his self, and in this film Mann suggests that our identities may have motives divorced from authenticity, a conformist quality driven by fear of humanity’s worst defaults, with gravity pulling us that direction. I don’t know if it gets any more sour than that, but a literal stripping of clothes is so emasculating, vengeful and animalistic that the line between society and impulse blurs to the point of becoming its own falsehood in separation. Only the passenger who takes a bullet restores some faith in humanity, before that man spurts out emotionally-desolate logic as his reason and we're back to square one.

Other than the thematic depth, this is a masterful exhibition on formalism, juxtaposing the diseased conditions of men in a palette of beautiful colors and quiet, constricted spaces. The performances are so loud they fog up the tight rooms of Doc’s hideout, claustrophobic with unpredictability dripping from every interaction. The back and forth from Cobb on his loyalty to Link vs. his animal instinct to forfeit this for rape is so slippery that he constantly seems to change his direction (I refrain from saying 'change his mind' because that's the point - Doc's sense of morality and emotional intelligence has rotted to a place of blindness like a broken compass), and his character becomes like a horror-movie monster in his actions following a pattern that feels unhuman, with the nauseating, sobering truth is that this is human nature.

Cooper’s performance is so good because his delivery of playing his part lingers between a tender reservation and distrust in himself to come back from the dark side if he returns, as well as a deep regret and shame, barely able to recognize his previous life. He is a shell of a man, uncomfortable in any shoes he walks in, and unable to sell himself fully, even at the cost of his life, because it would be at the cost of his own sense of self. It's a bitterly ironic and contradictory piece of acting, the very quality he must accept as partly unstable and false is also the strongest and most honest drive he has.

Mann’s film embraces a meaningless world without advocating for nihilism, allowing for the reading that subjective morality is the ‘right’ way to live, while also recognizing that objectively there is an absence of God separating the animated from inanimate in worth. This is a film that celebrates man’s ability to do this himself, but admits that it takes a lot of work, and that a deficit of innate principles leaves an uncomfortable amount of luck equated to who taps into their emotions to create a less harmful facade, and who puts up walls around them to create a more harmful one. The idea of these villains as vacuums of personality is even more frightening than the confident nihilism of other western villains, because at least those are tangible and simple. In Mann's world, we have to face the fact that we are only steps away from being synonymous with the unthinkable.

One performance that I’ve never paid enough attention to is Julie London, who embodies a crucial arc to the film, not only as the focal point Cooper’s actions revolve around protecting, but because of how she responds to the interpersonal relationships around her. She initially reacts to the company of strangers and the serious predicament of being deserted and lost with glee and acceptance, a true pure doe-eyed innocent, but then she faces the threats of assault with intelligence and careful defense. Her identity seems secure and untainted, and becomes that of an object, a treasure that is a person - which is significant because this reflects that both the idea of identity and humanity are the most valuable assets, and also that people and objects are interchangeable from a cold, detached vantage point. Cooper has a wife, his motives are not sexual in nature like the ids of the crew, but he is solely driven by adopting a humanistic, empathic position in the world, even if it kills him. London manages to recover from an unimaginable trauma with calm resilience, delivering the final lines of the film as a call to live life for "this feeling" of love- even unreturned love, reclaiming subjective meaning as critical by exclaiming her passion for existence with every ounce of heart, thus becoming an authentic identity regardless of the asterisks attached.

After the brilliant final shootout where Mann commands his comprehension of physical space, but where he still has his characters implement desperate tricks rather than trigger-skills in order to win, there is a final shootout between Doc and LInk that ends in a strange way, completely against expectations in cinema and anthropological knowledge. The unpredictable nature of directionless man caves in on itself in the least climactic fashion and once more expectations are upended, as man is revealed more than ever as a frightening enigma divorced from logic, emotion, and even self-preservation, the lowest reptilian function of the brain. Thank god for London's optimistic coda, because for me the revelation of that bizarre sequence is unmatched in siphoning hope for understanding humanity bone-dry.

I watched Les Girls this morning, and unfortunately I couldn't stand it... I enjoyed reading your impassioned thoughts, senseabove, much more than anything in the film. It looked pretty nice but the numbers fell flat and the characters bothered me enough to tune my brain off to anything but the spectacle, which sadly wasn't enough. Maybe one day I'll see the light though, and as always, I wish I was able to see the film you did!

Running down the library of personal favorites, here are a few more revisits.. the latter of which is sure to place near the top of my list:

Seven Samurai

Returning to this old favorite, I was struck by the strength of the screenplay, which introduces characters patiently without overexplaining their personalities, instead opting to rely on interpersonal interactions to shape identities. The early scenes are set with tones and expressions of desperation, and the samurai themselves live by existentialist codes privy to specific influence. In a sense this is like seven disillusioned noir heros grasping for reasons to join a unified cause. I’m not sure to what extent Kurosawa, who was heavily influenced by American cinema, borrowed from the noirs for this one, but the mood feels just as palpable to this genre as to the western or adventure epic.

I always forget how anti-epic this epic is, with Kurosawa’s scope more interested in playing out action in small spaces, with intimacy brewing in relationships, not necessarily translating to harmony. Tension and serenity can coexist in a scene and tell us all we need to know about respective characters, while each serve as reflective surfaces for the other’s responsiveness, and occasionally, change. The formalist shooting and gliding camera makes the challenging task of dividing attention across characters feel effortlessly inclusive. At times a shot will move to capture the emotions of a handful of actors in mere seconds without making a cut, which requires skills in blocking and a grand mastery over physical space that strikes meticulous notes without ever feeling overbearing. This is a film that breathes narratively and with subtle flexible technique. You get the impression that Kurosawa was having as much fun behind the camera as we are watching what he places in front of it.

What makes this film so perfect is that it’s an eclectic feast of ideas, tones, and personalities. There is a very real looming threat that makes the stakes gravely serious, a lifestyle of poverty plaguing all characters indiscriminately, even samurai to an extent, and yet there is a resilience that manifests in vastly different responses from the unique characters. The spectrum from calculated and calm to deranged and insane is rampant, but even these are unfair labels to assign to people who show different shades throughout when faced with circumstance. There is a degree of camaraderie and morality that flows between the men, strengths and courage unveiled unexpectedly, and a powerful exposition on how people react to any given instance differently to highlight their complex natures and development. The vibes can be aggressive, horrific, humorous, thrilling and charming. Messages can be delivered with undiluted appreciation, or toughness and empathy at once in a realist form of affection, and any resistance or malice is exposed as emanating from within the one experiencing the feeling, the others directly or indirectly helping that member to work through the deficit back to the warmth of the company.

The polarized ends are Mifune’s wild beast and Shimura’s tranquil monkish leader, but the group dynamics’ organic progression through the dilapidated milieu oppressing all is inspiring, and the universality of hardship unites and celebrates humanity. The emotional sides of everyone are split through a kaleidoscope affecting and internalizing through the acute socialization that none are accustomed to, having lived isolated lifestyles primarily until now, and the result is an exhibition on the elasticity of people under the protection of communal sharing of differences mixed with commonality of experience to beget collective and individual maturation. Ethical practice is infectious, and the thematic translation of utilitarianism in collaboration, even under the menace of annihilation in war, is incredibly optimistic and empowering. Our acclimation to Mifune’s core is fascinating and there is a key moment where it clicks for us that his fury as synonymous with compassion, a conscience emerging from within the shell of dirty apathy he externally wears.

The fear from the villagers creates a burden of inherent mistrust that must be remedied through evidence, and the process of the samurai earning this faith is revealed to the townspeople just as it is to us. This film is a giant learning experience, and Kurosawa knows it takes a 3+ hour runtime to authentically attain the investment and allegiance of an audience when introducing strangers to skeptics. The ability to dress each man as a three-dimensional figure, validate their own individuality, as well a group function, and the fears and resistance of the community residents, is a testament to his commitment to vision and mastery over all aspects of the medium.

And of course, this is a movie that - in its incorporation of assorted flavors into one consolidated environment - becomes the pinnacle of adventurous enjoyment. It’s rare that acquiring so much knowledge and character comprehension, or witnessing this much growth and action, can be purely entertaining with minimal exhaustion, but Kurosawa pulls it off. The setpieces that unfold across the second half are so enthralling, meditative, and attentive to the understanding of space, time, and cinematic suspense, that they feel unparalleled by any 'epic' in memory.

I first watched this film as a child, have seen it many times over the years as my appreciation and own comprehension of film language has developed, and I’m still in awe at how he achieved a final product this captivating and tonally diverse that is exceptionally complex without feeling complicated. It’s, simply-put, cinema at its most generous and smooth.

The scene where the group infiltrated a hideout and peep at a woman inside staring blankly into nothingness is a powerful picture burned into our retinas, precisely because it slows life down to a still image of pathos and respect for human life before the impermanence ignites like the literal fire and time commences. The dual aspects of intelligence in strategic planning by the samurai and the emotion impact of scenes like these mimics Kurosawa’s own comprehensive hold on his smart, deep film. It’s a gift of cinema’s opportunities, nothing less.





Touch of Evil

Hands down, unquestionably, my favorite Welles, and yet this used to be my least favorite. The allure I used to feel about Welles' more thematically-heavy films has dwindled in the face of his monstrous capacity for manipulating style to service mood. There is nothing obviously special about this noir's concept other than its location and ethnic politics, which aren’t explored well enough to leave a mark. What does scar each frame with intense branding though is the technical assault of sharp intrusions into the lives of these characters. Leigh wonders what she has to lose by following important, sinister characters who pop up out of the shadows. She knows exactly what she has to lose, but her powerlessness is accepted as she is caught off guard by the unexpected threats. She is an intelligent women with self-preservation skills, but a shock propels her into a trapped position, and this will happen again and again to a variety of characters.

Lights go off in the dark, townspeople pop up and flash a camera, a kid comes out of the corners to attack, doors open with unfriendly faces behind them. Characters rub their bodies against one another in spontaneous confrontations exploding with anxiety over their mystery, not only to us but to the people involved. This is a film that takes place in a milieu where instinct becomes truth because there is a black hole of nihilism encompassing any worth in facts. The chaotic temperament of human nature reigns, with Welles’ cameras emphasizing disorder with angular nausea and epileptic editing. We are forced into closer proximity with smarmy, sweaty faces than most films would allow, abrasively suffocating us in a coercive invitation to blend in with, and greet, the grime. And yet this kind of filmmaking is so alive it frees us from the rules we didn’t even know existed.

What transpires is half-dream, half-nightmare, cloaked in a web of false realism. More action occurs within the first fifteen minutes than perhaps any movie, period; as far as character introductions, lies told, murders attempted, and dynamics established immediately with concrete disdain. No matter how many times I watch this, I become dizzy at all the mechanics spinning their wheels at once, in plot, swift action, and erratic behavior yielding unbearable oppression upon us while the methodology liberates us with unique expressionism and stimulating, accelerated momentum. Jazzy scores only aid the twisted suspense, and there is a scene in a motel room where Leigh is trapped in what I can best describe as social horror, with Welles relying on medium operations to exploit all of our senses. It’s one of my favorite scenes in all of cinema, and one of the most disturbing.

The reason I think I used to feel mixed on this film is that I really don’t care about the plot. I could name many other noirs where plot specifics excite me and propel me along with more superficial attractiveness compared to this tale of border-corruption. After all, why should I care about these characters who have a stake in murdering a man while I’m waiting for him to say more than a few words and form an identity? The answer is because of the feeling of the plot dynamics, which forms the content of the picture. This narrative runs not on its story but the movement and turbulence in its details, and so I deeply care about the jarring shifts in image, sound, and physical forces that consume the audience, characters, and swallow the atmosphere whole without a moment’s notice. This canister of gunpowder is overheating on itself, each character on the verge of their own personal apocalypse. Welles' dirty cop relapses in this film after a huge chunk of sober time. Why now? Nothing about this case feels earned on paper, but the insecure presentation alerts us to the walls caving in from every angle, nonselective as to who, when, or how. We get the feeling this has been gradually happening all along, and "why now" is the wrong question: why not now?

I don't care much for Charlton Heston or his character, but Leigh's is a personal favorite, precisely because she is strong, intelligent, and independent, yet despite these clear strengths her agency is rendered impotent by Welles' electric climate. Her assertive confidence isn't shamed, but held in high regard in spite of all the ways in which it fails her. This isn't an easy feat, drawing a character so likeable, willful, and admirable who loses this much. She isn't just involved in one terrifying scene though, in fact there is another late in the film that is so fierce and unnerving the film briefly finds a home in slasher-horror without the physical knife. Wells' camera is enough.

This is one of my all-time favorite films, for so many more reasons than I can describe in words, but mainly because there is nothing else like it out there - familiar ideas are lathered in the externalizations imagined from a brain with unique tools to invite us into its sick dream, one where life is subject to corroded rules, raw unfiltered emotions, and violent impulses. After so many watches I never know when the camera is going to invade or retreat, dance or jolt, whether people will explode or escape into quiet combustion, when the menace will blindside me or magic will infuse the screen with elated delirium, and finally the perpetual thrills of wondering when that menace will come back again to agitate fires of emotional climax. And it’s such wild, tumultuous fun.

Dietrich's final nebulous lines denote a complexity in humanity that Welles himself refuses to answer, and which feels like the theme of why he made the film the way he did. Objective meaninglessness coincides with meaningful perspective; compromised people can be right, people with socially acceptable morals can be weak, and words don't service any person other than to discredit their enigmatic truths. So instead we get this exhilarating ride drenched in grey waters to wake us up to an illusory version of our world and sit with what we can see, which is not very much if we want philosophical rationales; but if we convert those questions into exclamations of the tangible demonstrations of fear these questions spark from, we hit something profound, mysterious, and real.

A Man Escaped

Bresson proves that one does not need a loud score, performance, setpiece, or style to create tension, engagement, and allegiance to character or predicament. I admire this as an action film that transcends all the flair of artifice self-consciously piled on to force thrills, by demonstrating how the simplest path can be the most effective in the hands of a master who can concoct these thrills organically. Thoughts are translated into tangible actions, intelligence into physicality. Measurable, attainable goals are set and met. It’s a form of palpable assessment, a philosophy reduced to the basic for survival. This is a perfect film for succeeding at exactly what it attempts to do, even if it's missing the breadth of philosophy and emotional power I find crucial to his two best films, also of this decade. The relief when he escapes barely registers until the key element of cinema finds its voice, emphasizing the achievement with a resurgence of oxygen that reminds us what fresh air tastes like.




Pickpocket

In the lonely place between self-conscious loathing and the need to be seen, Michel writes confessions about his thefts. These are not acts of an immoral man, but of a man who, as a response to excruciating ennui, decides he must find agency in momentary thrills. It’s not a thriller because there is no objectivity to the action, it’s an internalized battle where physical, tangible activity reigns in the face of barren philosophy.

The man feels alive because his actions break the facades of order that oppress him into an identity constructed for him, governed by imposed rules and culture, assigned roles as worker, son, or friend, and internal control from abstract emotions. In a strange manner, this film is the answer to what would happen if the physical focus in A Man Escaped took place in the penitentiary of society, with more room to breathe and all that much more air to suffocate on with mysterious vacuums of anti-illuminations.

The ‘supermen’ theory of the skillful being given flexibility to break rules and take on new roles is the ultimate fantasy and one offensively dismantled by the policeman immediately, and yet the idea is one of false confidence as Michel withers away in the argument. It’s a dream to break free, and any consequences in its practicality are blinded by the consequences for stewing in realism without an outlet for entertaining such delusions. The opening script dictates that this is a narrative of a man’s nightmare, and it is- one where he can only escape in improbable dreams and dangerous, harmful action to achieve a sense of self-actualization.

Michel weighs risk logically but the magnetic pull to action is derived from emotional devastation, an aversion of deep discomfort in numbed apathy rather than accepted antisocial sociopathy. The philosophical dilemmas are rooted in the emotional rather than cognitive spaces, and yet - like most of us - his consciousness lives in a cognitive area, as the emotional landscapes are nebulous and inaccessible. Michel can’t decide what to think of himself when presented with actual social engagement. He wants to be a superman, to boldly face off with a policeman, to rebel against the system, but he has no identity or beliefs to propel him into sustaining this stance. His nightmare is that of a man caught between a physical world without connotation to provide meaning and a mind ready to interpret but blocked from significance, and only a body in between to grasp at objects to feed the inestimable gap. Absurdist existentialism is taken very seriously here, for loneliness is truly one of the most intolerable states of being.

Michel expresses anger at the policeman for taunting him, but he is preoccupied and paranoid for contradictory reasons - he wants to be challenged by life but fears the interaction. The policeman attempts to get him to “see” truth but MIchel becomes livid at this, in his most intense expression of the entire film, as his reality of a nihilistic worldview is invalidated. Does the policeman have a point though? Bresson doesn’t seem to be hinting at a simply didactic message as his opening script indicates, but there is a point to this exhibit. The policeman may be right in the broadest sense: not that his ethics are objectively moral, but that principles and rules can provide a foundation for morality to form, develop, and be put into practice. What Bresson finds is an avenue for this to occur in the most roundabout and honest method, by allowing these regulating forces to entrap man into a psychological awakening of 'defeat as essence' to promote self-discovery, rather than having him find significance in the ideological concepts themselves. This would be too easy, unrealistic, and unearned. This is not how life works for those prone to existential crises. Bresson is amenable and smart enough to know that the 'truth' the inspector finds ethical law, Michel will find in his own unique place, with the only common denominator being their roots in externalizations as divorced from the black hole of anguished self-will.

Michel lies to Jeanne that he steals to “get ahead” but this is playing into the cold ideology of cutthroat economical success as the path to emotional stability - it’s a lie of course because his existence is dominated by confusion for the sole purpose of experiencing through detachment to 'find,' though he has no idea what he is looking for. If he was telling the truth, it would be too mockingly unfair to the character. But he may believe this as his truth in that moment, as he is a man in the dark from knowing himself. Michel tells his friend he cannot imagine what a prison is like.. But how does he know? He’s in that isolated world of an ‘egomaniac with an inferiority complex,’ as they say - a person so miserably self-involved and devastated that they project their experience onto others as the truth, are unwilling to acknowledge any objectivity, and unable to dig out of the pit of despair to take perspective, doomed to be uncomfortable.

That is until he finds love, paradoxically through this whirlwind of ethical compromise - a yin/yang adventure to uncover the opportunities we only notice in our corporeal milieu through participation. Michel is a man who has coasted along with unmanageable stress manifesting as immense pain, but he still places his feet on the ground after waking up in the morning and throws himself out in the world naked and vulnerable. There is a resilience in his meekness that becomes honorable through courageously coping with failure. After attempting to live an “honest” life for a new existential purpose, he falters, and the final image is one of acceptance and surrender to the actual truth in life - not any specific moral or ethical compass direction as superficially proposed by the inspector, but the truth of learning through experience, including failure and defaulting to deficits, failing to learn from mistakes, to fall to temptation and desire. In short, to think with one’s emotions.

The grand acceptance of this natural course of imperfections in nonlinear progress ultimately creates a bridge of emotional intelligence that, in physical entrapment, liberates him from the chains of his own self-constructed mental prison toward emotional expressiveness and interpersonal relations. Ironically, in his most corporeally strained circumstances, he has found spiritual growth, alleviation of ennui, and an authentic existential purpose through humble submission. We need to deconstruct ourselves and become right-sized to evolve into a place where we can invite the power of god, energy, or unconditional compassion into empathic connections.

The beautiful classical music is important in that plays loudest over Michel's early experiences learning the tricks, practicing these exercises, and leaving his mark on the world in fleeting highs, as well as the mirroring side of his maturation later in the film as he does the opposite - honest work out of empathy, all in the service of freeing himself from his agonizing cocoon of disorientation and depersonalization toward attachments to humanity, his and - most importantly, someone else's.

This is perhaps what Jeanne meant by "the real world," and the ending here marks the beginning of Michel's reception to it. Denouements don't get more inspiring than this sublime welcome mat. This movie marks the journey of so many men in the modern age, and to me is what existence is about in its distilled marrow. What a strange path life takes to see the light - and what greater experience of grace than escaping one’s own solipsistic obsession with the self to truly see, feel, and embrace external, tangible love.

therewillbeblus wrote: Thu May 07, 2020 1:39 am I watched Les Girls this morning, and unfortunately I couldn't stand it... I enjoyed reading your impassioned thoughts, senseabove, much more than anything in the film. It looked pretty nice but the numbers fell flat and the characters bothered me enough to tune my brain off to anything but the spectacle, which sadly wasn't enough. Maybe one day I'll see the light though, and as always, I wish I was able to see the film you did!

I confess it's one you probably need to be on board with before it starts, really, because the spectacle is what it is, and I can imagine that's only sufficient if you don't begrudge it. Those two nonsense pans, across the booksheeeeeelf and the feathered mask, are, for better or for worse, the appropriate précis.

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday

Tati’s first masterwork creeps up on us with a bizarre sound design where nondiegetic alien noise infiltrates the exaggerated diegetic familiar tunes of devices and human action, all before Tati’s Hulot enters the scene. This has always been my secret favorite Tati, and while Playtime is the puzzle film that I keep returning to in order to discover more hidden gems, this one I revisit to gaze at the physical gags and meditative mannerist-jabs at social interaction. There is a more leisurely attitude to this one than the other Tatis, which appear calm but are layered with busy ideas. The jokes never let up but they are in sequence and the cuts to different angles assist in guiding us to exactly where the vicinity of the gag will land. Maybe that’s not the challenge Playtime devotees are eager for (and don’t be fooled, I am quite fond of that film as well) but the formula to this feature fits the brisk vibe of Hulot’s character and the paradoxically strange and banal world he occupies.

It helps that this all takes place in the sun, at the beach, in the summertime. The milieu is the incarnation of relaxation, so the subtle anxieties brewing and tumbling into each other are even more amusing while we can’t help but feel a soothing comfort just by the invitation to spend 90 minutes in these spaces. The experimentation with sound is also at its most absurd and ungrounded since this milieu isn’t one of pragmatic industrialization. A favorite moment of mine is the squeak that follows each slight bodily movement in an aerobics class, which never fails to get a laugh or two at minimum. Tati himself is a more personable and funny character here comparatively to the other films, utilizing his physicality as well as his innate geniality. In a twist of tempo, the end disrupts that tranquility of quiet days at the beach with an explosive evening racket as fireworks trigger loud jazz music and characters spill out from their cozy slumbers. Still, this is mayhem for a Tati film, where even the chaos is gentle.


Mon Oncle

Tati faces off against mechanics first on the small scale here, and in a nice bridge this entry serves as a stepping stone between the overwhelming social and sterile world of Playtime and the micro-systemic interactions in individual relationships from the previous film. Hulot’s time with family or acquaintances carries a warmth that contrasts with the cold repellent of modernism.

Tati’ s reactions to appliances in his relatives’ home is like a watered-down version of Sartre’s Nausea as a comedy of generational puzzlement rather than existential dread and identity diffusion. The entire house and bourgeois mannerisms are amusing, but it’s the side ventures like boys throwing rocks at a store that populate this film with loose ideas, creating a diverse composite of life stuck between eras.

The act of going through the motions per societal expectations is a running theme though, and this makes that clearer. A riding lawnmower, eccentric windows rising in unison, and a house tour that lasts a moment to check a box of flaunting possessions and cookie-cutter lifestyle, all amplify the rigid fixtures we place on our own existence.


Sansho the Bailiff

As far as classical Japanese melodrama goes, Mizoguchi’s expansive tale of disbarring a family system and the traumatic effects is the peak of the movement. The tracking shots angled slightly upwards provide a fluidity of movement through space that mimic the empowerment of the characters’ agency, and the static shots looking down on them from above conversely reflect the oppressive forces muting their wills. The film operates like a historical legend, yet the children are disabled with such severity that their damage will be permanent to some extent. It’s real-world horror transmitted into a fable-like ether, with heavy, concrete consequences felt.


Ugetsu

Spells cast on man using spiritual iconography as allegories for the allures of greed and sex. I’ve always enjoyed this folklore piece as a fantasy narrative and visual feast, but beyond the entertainment I don’t get the accolades from Scorsese and the like who declare it one of the all-time greats. I can’t say a bad word about it all the same, and it could be a list-contender for many based purely on its sensitive technique to cinematic storytelling, regardless of how hollow the messaging.


The Wages of Fear

They should show this film in defensive driving courses.

It’s tense, epic, and reflective of the core of universal humanity under the skin of personas. But for all the musings on constructed identities of superiority, and softness by way of desperation, I keep returning to this one as a breezu piece of passive entertainment. I don’t think it’s the masterpiece many do, but as far as action-thrillers this inverts the best of them and shows what one can do with less noise.


All That Heaven Allows

Well it sure looks pretty- though the rest is a pretty thinly veiled thesis for separating from social norms towards desire. Not that Sirk is trying to hide his pursuits, which he blatantly wears on his sleeves to exploit the dramatics with artifice of exposition. I get it, and it certainly serves a purpose for validating the suppression of self-actualization for 50s housewives, back when the MPDG was Rock Hudson, but the didacism is so thick it almost feels like cheating.

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri May 08, 2020 7:44 pm All That Heaven Allows

Well it sure looks pretty- though the rest is a pretty thinly veiled thesis for separating from social norms towards desire. Not that Sirk is trying to hide his pursuits, which he blatantly wears on his sleeves to exploit the dramatics with artifice of exposition. I get it, and it certainly serves a purpose for validating the suppression of self-actualization for 50s housewives, back when the MPDG was Rock Hudson, but the didacism is so thick it almost feels like cheating.

Can you say a bit more regarding this? I ask in part because some of your phrasing is vague or unwieldy ("to exploit the dramatics with artifice of exposition", "validating the suppression of self-actualization for 50s housewives"), and in part because you're obviously just gesturing towards your ideas than making a full statement. I don't want to respond until I actually know what I'm responding to. But, while it took me quite a long time to warm up to All That Heaven Allows, each time I watch it I like it more, and its politics seem more radical.

HinkyDinkyTruesmith wrote: Fri May 08, 2020 9:57 pm

therewillbeblus wrote: Fri May 08, 2020 7:44 pm All That Heaven Allows

Well it sure looks pretty- though the rest is a pretty thinly veiled thesis for separating from social norms towards desire. Not that Sirk is trying to hide his pursuits, which he blatantly wears on his sleeves to exploit the dramatics with artifice of exposition. I get it, and it certainly serves a purpose for validating the suppression of self-actualization for 50s housewives, back when the MPDG was Rock Hudson, but the didacism is so thick it almost feels like cheating.

Can you say a bit more regarding this? I ask in part because some of your phrasing is vague or unwieldy ("to exploit the dramatics with artifice of exposition", "validating the suppression of self-actualization for 50s housewives"), and in part because you're obviously just gesturing towards your ideas than making a full statement. I don't want to respond until I actually know what I'm responding to. But, while it took me quite a long time to warm up to All That Heaven Allows, each time I watch it I like it more, and its politics seem more radical.

Okay, you're right that I'm not stringing my ideas together - I wasn't intending to be curt about the film but I guess I didn't feel like there is as much density here to explore in a detailed writeup as I usually do, at least not the kind that can't be deciphered from watching the film without accompanied analysis. That's not a dis though, and so I suppose that does warrant an explanation. I agree with you that the politics are radical, and I actually admire Sirk for unflinchingly portraying the seething urges in an invisible demographic without batting an eye. By "to exploit the dramatics with artifice of exposition" I meant that he creates sets and draws scenes so boldly colorful and meticulously constructed that the characters appear as shiny, almost cartoon-like artificial cutouts of people, as if they are being lit from inside their bodies.

However, in a sense this makes them feel even more real, like when Dorothy wakes up in Oz, or Homer emerges as a clayfigure in that Treehouse of Horror Simpsons episode - in placing so much emphasis on vivid, radiant images, this all reflects the romance externalized from Jane Wyman's suppressed desires and needs. She has been, and is, marginalized into a role that is deceptively faux-respected but her agency can only stretch as far as her social circle will allow. Her age places her even further down in a caste system of not exactly being prohibited from acceptable behavior (though that comes too) but an acceptable identity. It's important to note that she is enthusiastically paraded to certain older men, and encouraged to marry by her own kids who only turn on her contingent on who - simply because it is unexpected and outside of the wheelhouse of the identity that has been concocted by others for her. They simply cannot take perspective, see the peripheral colors we, she, and Hudson can see - those of choice outside the framework of ideological state apparatuses.

I don't think this specific judgment against Hudson has to do with social status as much as social norms at its core, though one obviously is influenced by the other. Hudson is younger and embraces a bohemian lifestyle, and this is frowned upon - if he were older and conformist, I don't think socioeconomic status would be the dealbreaker, cause the daughter to cry, or the son to shame. Hudson provokes fear in them because he represents radicalism. They don't need to know his transcendental worldviews to know that he doesn't subscribe to theirs, because they don't see him at their parties or because his conversations are quiet and not filled with loud intelligentsia or because his fashion doesn't match their styles.

By "validating the suppression of self-actualization for 50s housewives" I mean what I've already attempted to flesh out (and I think that phrase functions pretty clearly for those who have seen the film, not “vague or unwieldy”), but to go further, at the time this film came out, in a purgatory between post-war regression of agency into nuclear family roles and the blossoming 60s counterculture movement spawning attention to identity as separate and divorced from paradigms of values as well as the feminist movement coinciding with it, women like Wyman were not invisible, but their humanity was. The idea that women had needs and desires was a foreign concept that threatened to pop the dominant patriarchal balloon of power in complexity of yearning dreams and freedom in action that would take them outside of the home environment.

I did not mean to reduce Wyman or Sirk with my comment by shoving it into a corner with "yeah yeah yeah, I get it" pejoratively, which is perhaps how my comments read. What I meant is that I've seen this film probably about four or five times, from film class in college through my 20s and a few times now since I bought the blu-ray (which I bought because I do like the film, even if I was being hard on it) yet I still feel about the same about it as I did in that college class on melodrama - that the themes as reflected in the exposition of imagery and social-problem narrative suit the melodrama like a glove, so perfectly in fact that I don't think Sirk needs to venture beyond the surface. I don't think the melodrama is special because it unlocks secrets about systems or layers deep emotional ambiguity or paints conflict itself as morally complex validating all perspectives (like Peyton Place which I adore and consider probably the very best melodrama on a personal level), but because it refuses to give equal credit to the kids' and neighbors' points of view, to pragmatic ideological concepts, to any devil's-advocate point that may make Wyman's emotions ambiguous - because in Sirk's world and worldview it would then invalidate them.

This is a film about her, full stop. She needs to be released from the prison of not specifically domesticity but of coercively bound identity. Peyton Place works because it is interested in exploring a melting pot of ideas and philosophies and polarizing generational lenses in a transitional time period; All That Heaven Allows works because it is so focused on one oppressed population that it refuses to conform to any stance, even in a half-measure, that will not fully empower her. And for that, it's an absolutely important and audacious exhibition in breaking the chains and forcing an audience to truly see these women for the complicated and dignified human beings they are. I think Hudson's personality serves purely as ignition for Wyman, and his lack of development or arc mimics what we now see as Manic Pixie Dream Girl though here as a relaxed, self-actualized hunky male. There is nothing wrong with that (just as I don't think MPDGs are always problematic *cough, Elizabethtown*... and maybe many others..) and is actually another credited move by SIrk to invert his role to thin variable, a representation of an idea, by which Wyman can be even more accentuated. Even the other couple used him for his service - stating that they fought bitterly before they met him. He's like a genie in a lamp, but one that is wise and life-changing.

I enjoyed dissecting that, so perhaps I wasn't in the mood earlier after writing so much on other films I like more and calling so many parents to explain that their kids might have COVID to have patience for her situation - which isn't fair on my end, but I still stand by my initial statement that I think the film tells us all of this very simply, even if the ideas are radical - but I also don't think that's unfair to Sirk who isn't trying to coat his movie in conceptually grey soup. I'm sure Sirk scholars would be irritated because there is surely more meat to the bones to pick apart than I can see, but on a purely thematic level I think Sirk wants it to be just as accessible as it is, bold and in your face, and that's the film's greatest strength. It is a "thinly veiled thesis" and he "isn't trying to hide his pursuits," but those weren't meant to be bad.

The only other part of my writeup I have yet to explain is the last part. I do find the dialogue from Hudson at times to be frustratingly didactic to the point where it takes me out of the film, unlike other Sirk films that take similar positions but are a bit more clever in linguistics, but again- this film is so aggressively didactic at its center that it's less a fault and more of a personal grievance I have for conversations that lay all their cards on the table without an ounce of coyness to decipher for ourselves. I tend to be drawn more to movies that make me think, feel, and participate in with my own philosophies, emotions and life experiences, rather than be spoon-fed or hand-held through a very clearcut yet significant lesson on social justice. That's just how I read the film, however unfair that may be- though I don't dislike it as much as it appears I did, I just prefer a different kind of movie and I'm aware of that being a “me” problem, and I think I've acknowledged enough strengths for the analysis to be somewhat fair now. I hope that explained my initial writeup better to a satisfaction worth responding to.

I don't have time at the moment/need more time to think over all that you've said (I asked for further thoughts, and I sure got them!), but I just want to say I didn't mean to suggest that you didn't have a right to dislike it, or that your comments weren't worth responding to. I, quite literally, was having trouble understanding what you were exactly saying, and because all of us here are so familiar with your longer write-ups, I felt it was obvious that you weren't perhaps saying all that you had in your mind, but just gesturing to it––which also makes sense for such a well-known, oft-tread film, so I didn't see your "gesturing" towards your arguments as necessarily an issue. I apologize if it came off as mean-spirited. I understand your arguments now, although I still stand by my issues with your initial phrasing.

Exploiting dramatics with artifice of exposition makes me think that, with the artificiality of exposition, the mechanical nature of telling the audience what it needs to know, Sirk is doing . . . something with the dramatics. I still can't follow it back to "exploiting". But you meant by it, that Sirk's exposition is so artificial ("cartoon-like") as to sort of jumpstart the drama ("makes them seem more real"). That I follow. As for "validating the suppression of self-actualization of 50s housewives"––those words in that order suggest that Sirk agrees with those suppressing it––you're validating the suppression––but your argument that follows actually is about validating the self-actualization of 50s housewives. I apologize if I'm being obtuse, but that was my thought process when initially reading it which is why I asked for further explanation.