Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
376. Viridiana (1961)
Directed By Luis Buñuel
Synopsis
A young woman is going to become a nun, but before that she goes to visit her old uncle who has financially supported her all her life. Because she resembles his dead wife, he wants to keep her with him forever. When she doesn't agree he commits suicide leaving all his possessions to her and a son he had out of wedlock. She decides to create an auberge for the poor in the uncle's land while his son starts living there. Eventually they leave all the beggars at the property while they have to go to the lawyer or something. The beggars break in to the main house and have a party, leaving a lot of damage behind. Heartbroken, Viridiana loses the will to be charitable and submits to the flesh.
Review
From that synopsis the film does not look particularly shocking, and the same was what the Spanish authorities during the Franco dictatorship thought... but this is Buñuel, a master at showing rather than saying and it is in the visuals that the truly avant-garde stuff happens.
We need to remember that Buñuel was already extremely active during the silent film era, with Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or, for example, so he is no stranger at making the images do the talking. And here is where the blasphemies, lecherousness, transvestism, necrophilia and incestuousness come in. When the uncle dresses his niece up as his dead bride and then drugs her, he puts her hands in place like a corpse and then proceeds to kiss her. While Viridiana takes off her socks the camera stops longingly in her legs, as the beggars blow their chances for a comfortable life in one night of excess they pose as the last supper, when Viridiana tries to milk a cow her hesitating fingers cannot grasp the teats in what is a very phallic moment.
With Buñuel the devil is always in the detail, it cannot be described, the eye of the director is infinitely more important than the written script, and surprisingly it never feels like a gimmick. And this is what has always made him such a great director, and this such a good film.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
After the film was completed and sent by the Spanish cinematographic authority to the Cannes Film Festival, and awarded, the government of Francisco Franco tried unsuccessfully to have the film withdrawn and banned its release in Spain. L'Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, described the film as "blasphemous." The film was released there in 1977, after Franco's death, when Buñuel was seventy-seven years old.
However the film was acclaimed at Cannes, winning the Palme D'Or. Buñuel himself said that "I didn’t deliberately set out to be blasphemous, but then Pope John XXIII is a better judge of such things than I am".
Fickle lady likes to fuck around. Jules, her husband, is what we in Portugal call a "corno-manso" (tame-horn). Jim, his best friend, eventually joins in the fun. She goes a bit obsessed, and turns to psycho bitch killing herself and Jim, leaving her husband to take care of her daughter.
Review
When looking at French new wave there are two giants who rear their heads, Godard and Truffaut. In my opinion, however, Truffaut is vastly superior, not only in the way he uses film-making techniques but simply because he has a heart.
Truffaut is a deeply human director, while Godard isn't, Truffaut can create images and situations which resound with the spectator in a way Godard simply cannot. Jules et Jim, even if it is at moments an annoying film (Jeanne Moreau's character is a bit detestable), is a film shot through with moments of great beauty.
In a way the film contrasts the purity of the almost homoerotic relationship of the two title characters with the destructive influence of the female coming in from the outside. In a sense it is as misogynist as Godard but he makes beauty while doing it. Also his visual techniques, use of panning, archive footage, dissolves etc. is pretty innovative interesting and keeps your attention throughout.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
One of the seminal products of the French New Wave, Jules and Jim is an inventive encyclopedia of the language of cinema that incorporates newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voiceover narration (by Michel Subor). Truffaut's cinematographer was Raoul Coutard, a frequent collaborator with Jean-Luc Godard, who employed the latest lightweight cameras to create an extremely fluid and distinctive film style. For example, some of the postwar scenes were shot using cameras mounted on bicycles.
A couple is falling out of love, they go to a hospital, walk about, go home, go to a night club, and to a party.
Review
Marcello Mastroianni plays his usual caddy self in another Antonioni film. My wife was saying that Antonioni's films seem to be all middle... and it is a bit true. The travels the viewer makes in his films are really not about getting anywhere, they are about a frozen moment.
Only Antonioni drags that moment through hours. There is nothing wrong with that, and in the moments where he does it well it is really worth watching. Seeing as this is a kind of loose trilogy with L'Avventura which we've had here already and L'Eclisse which we will have, I will reserve judgement on his portrayal of bored superficial rich people until I do the Eclisse review.
I can safely say, however that this is a better film than L'Avventura, the acting is much better, with Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau doing great and a now brunette Monica Vitti brightening up the screen. It is also not as frustrating as the "mystery with no solution" of L'Avventura. This being said there is very little excitement to be had and little to empathise with as well. Oh well.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
A subtitle at the end of the credits of the Monty Python movie Life of Brian contains a recommendation to see La notte.
A film about a poser with whom poser fans identify with while missing the whole point of the film.
Review
I really like Breakfast at Tiffany's. In fact it has a special significance for me as it was the first film me and my wife went to see at the cinema after we started going out together. Ahhh young romance.
Now some things are pretty objectionable about the film, first and foremost the character of Yunioshi, played by Mickey Rooney, "yellowing-up" for the part, is pretty disgustingly racist, from round glasses to buck-teeth to tea ceremony to exaggerated accent it still rings terribly of WWII propaganda. Blake Edwards seemed to have a penchant for racial stereotyping. Just at the pretty disgusting The Party from 1968 where Peter Sellars "browns-up" to play a comic Indian character again with all the comedy appealing the the most basic racial stereotypes... and this is not even mentioning the Pink Panther series where French(Inspector Closeau) and Asian (Kato) stereotypes are the basis for the whole series of films. At least Kato was actually Chinese.
However Yunioshi is very much a secondary character of the film and his presence should not let you stop from appreciating it. Audrey Hepburn is dazzling throughout the film even if she plays a character which is at the same time sweet and a complete air-head with her heart in very much the wrong place. It is George Peppard who is the real hero here, no matter what all the movie posters tell you. He is the one who is able to shift his life from superficiality due to his own initiative and eventually save Hepburn from herself. It is in the realisation of the emptiness of the "stylish-life" that the great moral teaching of the film appears, there is more to life than this, which is what most fans of the film seem to miss.
On the positive side the film is immensely pretty, the set and clothing are great throughout and with such good taste that they sometimes look downright timeless. Mancini's soundtrack is one of the great plus points of the film creating a completely adequate atmosphere throughout. The acting is passable... Hepburn not being such a great actress but looking pretty.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
In the 45th anniversary edition DVD release, producer Richard Shepherd repeatedly apologizes, saying, "If we could just change Mickey Rooney, I'd be thrilled with the movie."Director Blake Edwards stated, "Looking back, I wish I had never done it...and I would give anything to be able to recast it, but it's there, and onward and upward."In a 2008 interview about the film, 87-year-old Rooney said he was heartbroken about the criticism and that he had never received any complaints about his portrayal of the character.
A free outdoor screening in Sacramento, California, scheduled for August 23, 2008, was replaced with the animated film Ratatouille after protests about the character Mr. Yunioshi. The protest was led by Christina Fa of the Asian American Media Watch. In light of the protest, Sacramento vice mayor Steven Cohn stated that "the intent was never to create controversy, to make political statements or to be on the avant garde of the movie world, let alone to offend significant members of our community."
Lola is a dancer, she awaits the return of her son's father, who left 7 years ago to seek his fortune. Meanwhile her childhood friend loses his job and is contracted to carry a briefcase to Johannesburg, but he finds Lola and decides to put it off because he loves her, she doesn't love him so he decides to leave. Her son's father returns.
Review
You can't tell much about the film from this synopsis, you can't particularly tell how delightful the whole thing is. Demy is attempting to create a musical with no musical numbers here, and despite a musical moment he manages to do it beautifully.
The dialogue has that lightness of touch so common to French cinema of the pre-Nouvelle Vague age. The characters, no matter how secondary, intertwine their plots and lives through the story in a way that is both spectacular and very funny.
The film ends up not being a comedy but being comedic all the same in the way the tropes of musical cinema are used in a serious context, the way characters parallel each other and in the simple events and references of the film. The acting is good but better still is the camera work and cinematography in a clear tribute to Max Ophuls. Another great film.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda.
A gang composed of Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and Ensign Smith rob a bank. While enjoying the fruits of their labour the federales come after them and Ensign Smith gets shot to hell. Malden and Brando take a stand, and Brando sends Malden to get fresh horses. Does he? Does he bollocks. After coming out of prison Brando wants to take revenge, he meets Malden and plans, he manages to impregnate his step-daughter who falls in love with him and eventually he gets arrested by Malden who is now a Sheriff. He escapes, there's a shoot out, Marlon Brando and impregnated lady are happy ever after... or are they?
Review
There is definitely something happening in the world of Westerns, in this case we have Marlon Brando very much taking method acting to the Western scenery. If you add to this the convention braking idea of having a Western shot next to the sea, there is something really new here. The dialogue is natural, the acting is great and the idea of Western as b-movie is completely out the window.
This is, unfortunately, the only film directed by Brando, but it is indeed a great one. The cinematography is amazing, and even if the plot is completely secondary and quite predictable the acting keeps it together through the 2 hours something of it.
In fact the film is completely made by the characters and dialogue, each main character is so multi-faceted that they become real riddles, your opinion on Brandon and Malden change throughout the film, also because they are both so adept at transmitting good and evil on the screen that they manage to do both equally convincingly in the space of 5 minutes. Great film.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The movie had very little resemblance to the Neider novel, and what remains has much more resonance with history than fiction. At various times, the two credited screenwriters and the uncredited Peckinpah have claimed (or had claimed for them) a majority of the responsibility for the film, and Karl Malden has answered the query about who really wrote the story: "There is one answer to your question — Marlon Brando, a genius in our time."
After World War III the victors do experiments on prisoners to send them to the past and future so that humanity may survive.
Review
This is a very short film done completely by making a sequence of stills connected by narration. And this is all you need to make a film, sequential images and a plot on screen.
In fact the film is so well paced that after some 5 minutes you start forgetting its particular style and just follow the story of it. This is experimentalism how it should be done, not as a chore for the viewer but as something that the viewer can enjoy at least as much as its creator. So the visual style is challenging? Put some interesting plot in it. The plot is strange, mundane or cryptic? Do it in a visually interesting way. Sometimes both might work as in Yasujiro Ozu's films where the camera is still and the subject mundane but touching, but that is rare indeed.
So the film works great both as a piece of entertainment (which then would give origin to 12 Monkeys) and as an example of what sequential images on a screen can do even without the "moving" image. Somewhere between the Comic and the Film, this is a unique piece of Cinema. Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
La jetée has no dialogue aside from small sections of muttering in German. The story is told by a voice-over narrator. It is constructed almost entirely from optically printed photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying pace. It contains only one brief shot originating on a motion-picture camera. The stills were taken with a Pentax 24x36 and the motion-picture segment was shot with a 35mm Arriflex. The film score was composed by Trevor Duncan. Due to its brevity, La jetée is often screened in theatres alongside other films; Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965) was the film with which it was first released.
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, and lived there 'till I was 18 and came to the UK to study Comparative Religions and Social Anthropology, later did an MA and PhD in Religious Studies. Now back to Lisbon to get on with life and do a Post-Doc.
