Five Great Films I Saw in the Month of October, in Alphabetical Order

Total seen: 26

Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)

The Freshman (Newmeyer & Taylor, 1925)

Love and Death (Allen, 1975)

Rififi (Dassin, 1955)

Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990)

Hon. mentions: Cat People (Schrader, 1982), Mutiny on the Bounty (Lloyd, 1935)

Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)

My erection was THIS big last night.  Thanks, Cialis!

In his Great Movies article, Ebert says that it’s at the point where Morten and Peter, the two old Hatfield/McCoy, Montague/Capulet-like patriarchs of their respective families of differing dogmatic sects of Christianity in a small farming community, sit down to air out their differences in the wake of Peter turning down Morten’s son Anders’ request for Peter’s daughter’s hand in marriage, that “the film has taken its grip.  We will not be able to look away again until the end, and we will think of nothing else.”  Having wisely waited to read this article until after watching the film after I made the mistake of reading first with another film, resulting in my high expectations being dashed, I was stunned at how Ebert’s reaction matched my own to a T, for at this scene, where Peter quite literally wishes death upon Morten’s in-labor and gravely ill daughter-in-law so that Morten can see the light of fundamentalist Christianity and Morten proceeds to tell Peter to go to hell, a lightbulb went on in my head, and where I was bored before, at this point I was riveted. Before this point, I was bored to death. Nothing but people walking slower than the mad son Johannes speaks (I was particularly amused when the doctor was adamant that they must act quickly to save the pregnant Inger’s life, and then proceeds to walk slower than molasses to go get a tool for that life-saving procedure ) (and Johannes speaking his prophecies believing himself to be Jesus = ), people discussing theological issues all philosophical-like as if they’ve never actually discussed such things before even though they’ve lived under the same roof their entire lives, and these people speaking such things while staring off into space, like…

eye contact, people!   Seriously, they might as well be drooling with how catatonic they look while discussing such lofty issues as how prayer can only work when true faith is attached, or whether miracles are possible, or anything else God-related. In other words, God, God, God, God, God. Bored the hell out of me, like a poor man’s Bergman.

But then, once the two patriarchs take off the gloves and do the ultimate no-no, insulting each other’s religious beliefs, shit gets real. The movie’s no longer a series of plotless, mindnumbing philosphical/theological lectures that you’d hear in a seminary or a college course, but a real place with real people rather than Dreyer’s personal religious mouthpieces, with a very real, very serious issue at stake, as the life of the Borgen family’s beloved Inger hangs in the balance. The long night as the doctor works on Inger and the family waits is long and drawn out in agonizing detail and suspense, and the dread of the family is completely palpable. As Inger’s husband Mikkel stays by her side, Morten paces and wrings his hands, and the mad Johannes laments that nobody will listen to his prophecy of Inger’s death and resurrection as his little niece believes him and tries to comfort him (depicted in an impressive shot as the camera does almost a full 360 around the two, the little girl holding Johannes with warmth but also nearly sexual and incestuous implications. Very breathtaking, very sweet, somewhat disturbing scene). Suddenly, these peoples’ lives aren’t an aimless series of religious arguments, but entirely centered on this one important event, so that all the boring, lifeless discussions before now have a context and a specific event to attach all those implications to. Even if my non-religious ass considered the ending complete hogwash and ‘what-the-fuck’-esque (Dreyer may’ve used the G-word as often as Bergman did, but that’s where the similarities end.  Dreyer’s film is to faith as any one of Bergman’s is to atheism), the combination of a lack of any type of musical score, amazingly low-key and unobtrusive cinematography, and real smiles and real tears where once there was stiff acting on par with a medieval morality play, made the second half of this film equally joyous and devastating. Every conceivable human emotion is in these 45 or so minutes of cinema…and that’s just after a first viewing where I was zoning out like crazy for the duration of the film’s first half.  I can’t begin to imagine how much more rewarding a rewatch will be, and it just goes to show that I’m probably not giving the first half the credit it deserves…after all, how could I be so riveted in the second half and care so much about what happens to these people if the first half didn’t somehow do its job perfectly?

My favorite scene in the film, lasting no more than a minute or two, involves a bishop and the doctor sitting on a couch, amiably and intelligently discussing what contributed more to a minor miracle that has just occurred, the bishop’s prayer or the doctor’s skill as a physician (asking Morten to settle the debate, the old man pridefully sides with the bishop and asserts that faith and prayer did it. Although I myself am not at all religious and therefore couldn’t completely buy into this film’s subject matter, seeing the previously despair-ridden and shellshocked Morten have his faith reaffirmed in this moment was incredibly rewarding). As far as I can remember, of all the moments of religious debate and discussion in this film, this was the only one in which the participants actually made eye contact and were actually speaking, you know, normally, and it really made me think about the role of faith, if any, in an increasingly secular and science-driven world.  My only disappointment when this film was over was that the ending seemed to try to put a single, authoritative answer to this question, when moments like the thought-provoking yet satirical and darkly funny argument between Morten and Peter, two sides of a dogmatic coin, as well as Morten’s later embracing of faith after a seeming miracle, argue both against and for organized religion respectively.  Hell, the proclamations of Johannes alone can be read either way, as his insistence that prayer must be infused with faith to be effective rings true by film’s end, while the humorous way he speaks can be read as an easy criticism of religion.  This film was rife for a deep consideration of organized religion and faith, and really does seem to weigh both sides of the argument, but I would’ve at least wanted some ambiguity by the time it was over.  Still, it’s pretty ironic that when similar discussions about the use or lack thereof of faith between, say, an old man and his daughter-in-law, or a father and son, or a mad uncle and his inquisitive niece, were stilted and artificial, the one between a bishop and a doctor, quite literally the archetypes of faith and science, turned out to be the most believable and grounded in reality.

8.5/10

The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, et al, 1925)

The young opera starlet, Mary Philbin’s Christine’s, agonizingly slow creep-up to and unmasking of Lon Chaney’s Phantom is arguably one of the most famous moments in all of silent film and horror film, and rightly so when you lay your eyes on that grotesque mouth, bulging, glassy eyes, and noseless face, all thanks to a makeup job that was the creation of Chaney himself.  It is one of those indispensable moments in cinema history, and apparently director Rupert Julian, et al knew as they were filming “The Phantom of the Opera” that this one moment would live forever…or at the very least they were trying their absolute hardest to make it into something special with an endless lead-up to the big moment.  The plot is already thin enough, as the deformed Phantom, living in the dank caverns beneath the Paris Opera House, falls for the young singer Christine from afar and manipulates the goings-on of the Opera to further her career and to possess her for his own deranged self, but miraculously that plot is made even thinner when you consider that practically ever moment of the first portion of the film is devoted to people talking about the Phantom…what he looks like, where he lives, how batshit crazy he is. “His eyes are ghastly beads in which there is no light – like holes in a grinning skull!”, one man says.  “His face is like leprous parchment, yellow skin strung tight over protruding bones!”  “His nose – there is no nose!”  And on and on – so much of the beginning of the film is just…this.  Just dancers and stagehands and well-to-dos going about their everyday lives within the Opera House, and apparently the entirety of their everyday lives involves telling each other ghost stories about the Phantom and chasing each other around.  It’s like a more bizarre version of that long stretch of “The Red Shoes” that simply shows the dancers and what-not going about their daily routine, only in that film they actually danced, and here they just fuck around and worry about the Phantom.  Sure there’re some wonderful images, like the Phantom’s silhouette as he lures Christine towards that mirror, but these are mostly either overused or just thrown in there.  On the whole, this film has spurts of visual brilliance, but is just very, very uneven.

It’s so incredibly shallow and without depth and purely there to build up the mystery of the Phantom, to make you want to see this hideous face that’s being described for you in infinite, lurid detail (when you have Christine, long after the Phantom lures her into his underground kingdom, exclaim “You…You are the Phantom!” in one of cinema’s greatest no-shit moments, abandon all hope of depth and subtlety, ye who enter here).  It’s rather tasteless and damn near shameless…but for once, the actual visual scare lives up to the hype.  I’d seen Chaney’s famously done-up face millions of time out of context before, so the shock value unfortunately wasn’t there, but regardless, it’s still a damned ugly, scary face.  “Feast your eyes!”, the Phantom says, “Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!” (there’re a lot of exclamation points in the title cards, in case you haven’t noticed).  Well, we pretty much already have in how much the face we’re now seeing has been described to us, so you don’t need to tell us twice.

The entire purpose of the film to this point has been to make our mouth water in anticipation of seeing this face, and now that we have, it’s no surprise that the film basically comes crashing down afterwards.  Sure there’s some cool stuff to be had, like the primitive use of colors during the big ball to showcase the Phantom’s red costume, and the underground, watery maze that the Phantom calls home is imm ense and detailed and paved the way for many cinematic dungeons to come, but otherwise it’s just Christine begging her doofus boy-toy Raoul to protect her, the Phantom looking on with mad envy, and lots of underground chase scenes.  It’s all dull as hell once the chief purpose of slowly revealing the Phantom is done with and the shock value of the Phantom’s appearance wears off, but despite that, the power of Chaney’s mannerism-driven performance rarely wanes.  Was there ever another actor more willing to go through every pain and mutilation imaginable to deliver a great performance?  What Chaney did to his legs in “The Penalty,” he does to his face in “The Phantom of the Opera.”  It’s all histrionics, but there’s something undeniably powerful when he madly proclaims his obsessed love for Christine while trapping Raoul in a flooding chamber right beneath, and then sees a crazed mob coming towards his safe haven as he maniacally points towards and taunts them and cackles away, as he either considers himself invincible, welcomes his grisly fate, or a little bit of both.  And dare I say it, there’s a tiny bit of profundity in the performances of Chaney and Mary Philbin, that look of ravenous curiosity on Philbin’s face as she moves her fingers closer and closer to that mask, followed by a look of histrionic yet powerful terror right up there with the likes of Lillian Gish.  But ultimately, this is all about one moment, one noseless and scrunched-up face – a superficial novelty of a film solely meant to titillate and scare, and in a later decade maybe, just maybe, would’ve found the time to actually focus on the sexual and psychological tension and implications that this seemingly simple story seems rife for, but in this early era of cinematic experimentation, at least it got something right.

7.5/10

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (Marina Zenovich, 2008)

It’s a sad commentary on the United States Judicial system when the behavior of one of its judges overseeing the case of a 43 year old man who drugged and raped a 13 year old girl is nearly as despicable as the defendant’s.

To be fair, though, I’m not sure what to believe from this film now that it’s come out that that David Wells guy, one of the talking heads, was out and out lying in this film about many of his meetings with the judge in question, which have now been revealed to be completely fictional. Obviously that casts everything else in the film into doubt, but if the accounts of the prosecutor, Polanski’s attorney, etc. are true, then this documentary did exactly what it was supposed to: fill me with rage, not just at Polanski, one of cinema’s greatest artists, for committing a crime arguably more heinous than murder, but at the U.S. Judicial system and one of its beyond-corrupt, fame-seeking officials (and the attorneys who knew that what the judge was doing was grossly illegal, but went along with it for far too long before finally, FINALLY, saying enough is enough) for actually making me go against all the values I stand for and genuinely feel sympathy for a statutory rapist (he has had a tough, tough life…parents dying in a concentration camp, the Sharon Tate murder…not that that’s an excuse for what he did to that girl, obviously. In fact, his occasional lack of remorse in interviews in the years after the incident is downright sickening, so this documentary certainly isn’t one-sided on the side of Polanski and against the judge. Each side gets their fair shakes.), that he was right to flee from what was essentially a kangaroo court and zero chance at a fair trial/sentencing. Don’t bother asking me my opinion on his recent arrest and whether or not he should be extradited, because I’ve flip-flopped on that debate every day practically (on one hand, I know that if this was Joe Shmo instead of the great Roman Polanski, I’d say fry the bastard, making me a hypocrite, I freely admit, and on the other hand, he already served the parole board-recommended sentence before fleeing, and the victim has stated for decades that she doesn’t want Polanski to serve any further punishment, nor does she want to relive the incident in further proceedings – both entirely valid arguments that I’ve weighed considerably), and this very fascinating documentary has only made my ability to come to a concrete opinion that much more difficult.

8/10

The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin, 2000)

This was really cool, a lot like ‘Brand Upon the Brain!’, which I also loved, but only 6 minutes long and really, really odd and tough to follow (at least for me…I should probably rewatch it. Not like it’ll take a huge chunk out of my lifespan). Doesn’t really matter though, I really loved the ‘Metropolis’-like imagery and the sexual symbology and what-not. Since its hyper-stylized take on silent cinema is so similar to ‘Brand’’s, and Brand was closer to 120 minutes than this film’s 6, I guess that means that ‘Brand’ is 200 times better than ‘Heart of the World’…or hell, maybe ‘Heart’ is 200 times better than ‘Brand’ because it does so much of what ‘Brand’ does in a twentieth of the time. Eh, somewhere between the two…’Brand’’s by far the richer of the two, despite all the visual similarities, but this one’s like a ‘Brand’ or like Maddin at his manic best for the man on the go.

8.5/10

Five Great Films I Saw in the Month of September, in Alphabetical Order

Total films seen: 39

The Bank Dick (Cline, 1940)

Love Exposure (Sono, 2008)

The Loveless (Bigelow & Montgomery, 1982)

Night and the City (Dassin, 1950)

Yellow Sky (Wellman, 1948)

Hon. mentions: Bad Timing (Roeg, 1980), Bigger Than Life (Ray, 1956), The Bride Wore Black (Truffaut, 1968), Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009), In the Mouth of Madness (Carpenter, 1994)

The Bride Wore Black (Francois Truffaut, 1968)

This is supposed to be Truffaut’s homage to Hitchcock, and it’s certainly that when you consider the little Hitchcockian touches that abound in this revenge tale: the near-fetishistic camera draw-ins and close-ups on vital clues or items that’re gonna be important in the immediate or distant future of the plot (an early shot of money being laid out on the bed is pretty much directly lifted from Psycho), the sweeping Bernard Herrmann score (and boy is this one sweeping…), the long stretches of nothing happening before the instant of something happening (a poisoned liquor bottle, a game of hide and seek amidst a thunderstorm, and the anti-heroine posing for a portrait with a bow and arrow are particularly great standouts of drawn-out, suspenseful teases – you know something bad’s gonna happen, just not when), the sudden ending (although this one was actually really cool and unexpected, unlike some of Hitch’s copout endings), etc. I liked how Julie’s motivation for seeking out and killing these five seemingly nice, unassuming men is revealed gradually, but not too gradually (it’s right around the middle of the film when a flashback shows you that it’s all Michael Chiklis’ fault) – first you sympathize with the men, as they’re victims of a bizarre series of deaths at the hands of the deranged Julie, then you sympathize with Julie when you learn that she’s avenging her husband’s death, while still unaware of how it happened, then you’re back on the mens’ side when you learn the circumstances of that fateful wedding day (and when one of her potential victims, an artist, innocently begins to fall for her, and it seems that even she begins to have a pang of conscience). It’s all a completely shallow revenge tale, not to mention utterly implausible (how on earth did Julie learn the identities of the five men, let alone track them down? ), and Julie’s motivations could’ve been tweaked (although a stock moral qualm scene here and there probably would’ve done more harm than good with this type of material), but with this kind of simple story, I don’t even see that shallowness as a problem. Truffaut does a great job in shifting the audience’s allegiance between the stone-cold master of disguise Julie (seeing her put on her nice-girl game face to deceive the little kid and his father is quite creepy), who nevertheless has a hint of morality despite her dead-set quest for vengeance (props for getting that teacher off the hook), and the men she’s out to kill, and the long, drawn out sequences of the huntress going after her kill are truly worthy of the filmmaker Truffaut was trying to emulate. This was really awesome.

8.5/10

Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980)

The overriding themes I picked up on in Louis Malle’s “Atlantic City” were loneliness and decay…physical decay, and the decay of past values, sensibilities, and eras.  In its first scenes, we watch Burt Lancaster’s elderly number-runner Lou as he watches his pretty young neighbor Sally rub lemons on her skin from the confines of his dark, musty apartment.  You don’t see any actual grime or cobwebs or such, but his apartment just feels old and stale, its archaic furniture and trinkets and white-haired inhabitant plucked from another time and place.  Lou tries to convince others, but maybe himself most of all, that he was once in the big time, one of Bugsy Siegel’s cellmates, in fact, but all that’s in the past now, (and maybe not even that, when you consider how his behavior as the film progresses seems to contradict everything we thought we knew about who this man was), and Lou’s now just an old man reduced to watching his neighbor bathe herself in lemon oil and acting as dog walker / errand boy / gigolo for Grace, the slightly demented hoarder across the hall, and the widow of a no-goodnik not unlike Lou himself.  And Sally, who works at an oyster bar and has pipe dreams of becoming a blackjack dealer in Monte Carlo, spends her nights listening to her precious opera tapes and unknowingly putting on a show for her just-as lonely neighbor.  They live in their own worlds – Lou in the makeshift graveyard of circa-1940s culture that is his apartment and Grace’s down the hall, and Sally in an impenetrable bubble of unfulfilled desires, and the fantasies that it seems that even she herself knows are farfetched.  They’re so discontented, so similar in their loneliness that their eventual meeting, and unlikeliest of courtships, by a twist of fate involving a stolen stash of drugs and Sally’s loser ex-husband Dave, is like an incredible breath of fresh air – their paths towards each other are nearly as set in stone as their destiny to end up far, far apart. 

Once we leave that run-down apartment complex and start strolling the famous boardwalk with Lou as he imparts his old-time wisdom on his wayward, makeshift protégé Dave, the feel isn’t that different from before, and yet drastically different at the same time.  My oh my Atlantic City is a dump when you’re not standing in the middle of one of Donald Trump’s casino floors, and you realize this as Lou makes his rounds through the slums collecting his tiny little bets.  Just as Lou’s apartment, as well as his own wrinkled body and outdated yet stylish suits, are the decayed evocations of a bygone era, so too are the crumbling, soon-to-be-demolished apartment buildings that line the boardwalk, making it all the more powerful when Lou, older and dressed much more differently than everyone around him, laments the decay of his once-beautiful building to the younger Dave – one symbol of the past remembering another.  I might be mistaken, but I think that nearly every outdoor scene in “Atlantic City” might be set to cloudy skies, further compounding that air of despair as what was once Lou’s world of glitz and glorious depravity crumbles before his and our eyes. 

And yet, at the same time I was surprised, and damn near startled, when we first left Lou’s time capsule-like apartment, only to see a thoroughly then-modern day Philadelphia and Atlantic City, inhabited by the likes of the grungily-dressed Dave, the piggish and foul-mouthed gangsters out to get Dave and their stolen dope, and all the pimps, hoes, addicts, dealers, and degenerates in-between that you’d never see in the old-school gangland that a man like Lou seems to have come from.  Hell, the first time we see the insulated Lou and Grace meet Dave and Chrissie, Sally’s pregnant kid sister who Dave ran away with, it’s contrast defined, as the penniless, shabbily-dressed and Zen and reincarnation-obsessed Chrissie and the off-kilter and shrill yet thoroughly old-fashioned Grace form the unlikeliest of bonds, as we often see them just lounging together in Grace’s bed as Lou and Sally, the main players, do their own thing.  It comes off as a kind of weird, unsuccessful attempt at comic relief as Lou and Sally deal with those gangsters in the main plot, but it’s actually oddly touching to see this bizarre, nearly wordless and never-explained bond between old widow and young flower-child, the strange collision of the representatives of two cultures/eras, and almost a Shakespearan parallel to the more obvious bonding of the elderly Lou, whose time to shine has long past, and Sally, decades his junior and still seemingly with something to live for.  It’s all a little too allegorical and sacrifices some sense of realism in the characters, especially in the minor characters like Grace and Chrissie, and overall too much of this movie involved people talking about Atlantic City like it’s the most literarily metaphorical place in the universe, and old-timey songs in dance halls about Atlantic City itself.  As great as the ongoing image of ruined buildings is, a lot of this film overdid the whole depiction of place thing to the point of saturating its effectiveness (a billboard taunting the physically displaced Dave and Chrissie and the emotionally displaced Sally with the phrase ‘Atlantic City, you’re back on the map.  Again.’ is the posterchild of too-obvious symbolism that the film occasionally reverts to).  

Ultimately, though, it’s all quite evocative and complex, especially when it comes to the more fully-realized characters like Sally and Lou.  When you consider one of my favorite scenes, which is nothing more than Lou in a bathroom reminiscing about the old days with the washroom attendant, an old friend of his, and then all the disgusting and crumbling buildings that tower above the old man as he tells Dave about his glory days in Vegas, you realize that this movie is actually quite apocalyptic, as if this iteration of Atlantic City is a waste land, the physically and emotionally ruined leftovers of a more glorious time and place.  If the subplots leave something to be desired, despite some nice images, and the timing of the plot’s twist and turns – the gangsters showing up at the perfect moment, Lou and Sally seeing a crucial (and contrived…) news report just at the right time, etc. – are a little too convenient and manufactured, then at least the motivations of Lou and Sally are really, really difficult to pinpoint.  Susan Sarandon can overdo it now and then, going nuts when she’s thrown out of a casino, for instance, but there’s a certain maturity and sadness to her portrayal of Sally that actually makes it believable that she’d become enamored and sensually take off her blouse in front of Lou as he tells her all the little details of the lemon ritual he’s watched her do nightly.  And Burt Lancaster…my goodness, what a performance.  Just when you think you’ve figured Lou out, when it looks like he’s after Sally because his aging libido’s found one last ounce of strength, or because his sudden stumbling onto thousands of dollars in drug money has reinvigorated his zeal for the fast life, something about Burt Lancaster’s understated performance, a kind of combination between yearning for the past and all-out despair, that suddenly casts doubt on why Lou’s doing what he’s doing.  I’m probably giving Sally the short-shrift, which is testament to how “Atlantic City” is so seemingly simple in its story and so deceptively complex in its character’s motivations, so you can’t be sure why Lou breaks free from the confines of his shitty apartment to risk life and limb for some drug money and a beautiful neighbor, or why Sally lets this outwardly-lecherous old man be her sugardaddy and act so apathetic when her husband meets his own sad and pathetic fate.  I’m still not sure what the ending means, what becomes of Sally and that car, and what it means to see Grace of all people in a situation you’d never expect to see her in, but I’m pretty sure a rewatch of this movie, flawed around the edges yet filled to the brim with unspoken backstories and feelings, might shed some more light on the intertwining of two people separated by age, brought together by fate and their mutual need for…something.

I mean, just look at Lou, and how fleshed out he is, precisely because Burt Lancaster is so subtle and soft-spoken, and so much of Lou’s backstory is gleaned in tiny bits and pieces as he reminisces in that bathroom or tells Dave maybe-memories, maybe-tall tales.  You can learn so much from this man simply by looking at his face as he watches Sally bathe in lemons – studying her as a scientist quantitatively conducts an experiment, with a hint of forlornness.  Hell, the look on his face of anguish and ‘what have I done’ when the gangsters accost Sally because of the drugs that Dave stole, unaware that it’s Lou who’s reaped the benefits, defines great acting better than any Oscar-bait word jumbles could.  The whole time, you’re under the impression that Lou was once a well-to-do gangster and number-runner and tough guy, based on the stories he so eloquently tells, because of his cool and suave demeanor when he tells his drug customer ‘hands off the suit’ and brushes him aside, because of his angry dismay at being unable to go all chivalrous on those thugs in aid of his new dame Sally, and that he goes on this one final adventure of drugs and riches and lust and passion because he misses the good ol’ days, because he wants one last taste of being a somebody, a real important tough guy instead of a pitiful peeping tom.  But then, when you see his incredibly comical and overly-enthusiastic reaction after dispatching a couple of bad guys (Lou Pascal really, really, really did not read the Dr. Richard Kimble Handbook on Being a Fugitive), when you see how he foolishly brings attention to himself by immediately spending ill-gotten drug money on flashy clothes and what-not, all behavior incredibly unbecoming of a professional and calculated hoodlum, you start to get that feeling in the back of your mind that, as the villainous Mr. Butler said in “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” ‘that man’s never killed anyone,’ and that this isn’t Lou’s attempt at evoking his past, but rather fantasy fulfillment.  And suddenly, he and Sally have one more thing in common.

8.5/10

Los olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950)

So, I guess Buñuel tries his hand at Neorealism…that is, until a a really trippy dream involving chickens and a bully rising up from beneath the bed reminds us that this is, indeed, a Buñuel film. Other than that and other faintly off-kilter Buñuel touches like the blind man rubbing a pidgeon across a woman’s bare back, this was probably the most grounded-in-reality film of Buñuel’s that I’ve seen, which is both something of a breath of fresh air, as well as a disappointment in that with this guy at the helm, this could’ve been something a lot more, shall we say, interesting. Oh well, can’t have it both ways, obviously. As it stands, this was pretty good, I guess. I’ve certainly seen significantly better kids-in-the-shithouse-and-having-to-fend-for-themselves-and-develop-a-rugged-street-mentality movies – The 400 Blows, Salaam Bombay, and City of God to name a few – and I was surprised how preachy this got in certain spots, especially with those idealistic speeches by the rather saintly school principal (Buñuel’s certainly been preachy in other films about the hypocrisy of a class system, but usually that message has been inherent in the satirical material of films like The Exterminating Angel or Belle de jour, not spoken outright here, all Hawks’ “Scarface”-esque). Also, the dichotomy and feud between the troubled young protagonist Pedro and the vicious Jaibo was a little too much – in other words, the grungy, rugged nature of these kids was played up a little too obviously for my taste. But, Buñuel was never one for complete and utter realism or subtlety, so overall this film’s mix of (neo)realism and little oddities here and there, albeit in a rather derivative and predictable setting and story (although many of the plot elements, like Pedro being sent away to a juvie-like school, was used by films like The 400 Blows after Los olvidados, so maybe I should be criticizing those later films for being unoriginal, but eh, I think they did ‘em better, so…), is pretty interesting. Good, could’ve been better.

7.5/10

La ronde (Max Ophüls, 1950)

I wish I could have Anton Walbrook narrate my life and fuck with people so that my tryst with a beautiful woman could go as smoothly as possible

I had little use for the stories themselves – their interconnectedness made them SO convoluted after a while that I just stopped caring and didn’t bother to keep track of who everyone was and what was going on (although the one involving Simone Simon’s (  ) maid and the man she works for was charming and sultry enough…). All that mattered was Walbrook, acting like a Rod Serling with benefits in not just overseeing the stories and being something of a Greek chorus, but being a jokester-like participant in them as well. I mean, that first uncut tracking shot as Walbrook changes wardrobe to reflect the time period, and the sun appears instantaneously and dissipates the fog, is absolutely remarkable (the cinematography as a whole was outstanding, with all those smooth, effortless tracking shots, although there were a few too many Dutch angles here and there – always a major pet peeve of mine), as was the way he’d, as I said, fuck with people with all his disguises and what-not so that the stories go the way they’re supposed to, and even guide some characters from one story into the next. Such a great and innovative breaking of the fourth wall, and such an endearing and charming and goofy and entertaining God-like narrator he made, he turned what I’d otherwise call a worthless bore of a film into something really, really worth watching.

 

Pull the string!  Pull the string!

 

7.5/10