Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
83. L'Atalante (1934)
Directed By Jean Vigo
Synopsis
Village girl gets married to barge man. Barge man is jealous and in a fit of jelousy leaves village girl in Paris, sailing off in his barge. Man goes desperate and eventually lovers get reunited.
Review
Ok, this is a much hyped film, and was recently voted the 6th best film of all time. I can see why this happened, this does not mean that I loved it all that much, however. Yes, it is a lovely film, and a lovely fairytale. The direction is faultless, Vigo's eye is above any reproach, as is the superb editing. But there is something missing here, it might be depth to the characters, all flimsy compared to Michel Simon's character Pere Jules.
Pere Jules is a bit of a rehash of Boudu from Renoir's film, but he still steals the show, as a slightly demented old sailor who is actually the most empathetic character in the whole film. As I said before, the editing is superb, when the lovers get separated there is a stupendous scene where each lies in bed longing for each other in a series of inter-twining cuts, which is at the same time pitiful, sexy and makes the whole point that the film sets out to make.
It is ultimately a fairy tale, about a lover's incompleteness without his or her other half. Ultimately , Pere Jules is the only complete character because he goes beyond gender, as he says when pointing at a naked picture of a young lady: "That is me when I was little". Pere Jules has his cats, his music and his imagination and dispenses a mate. The two common mortals in the film are, however less than full characters, and maybe this is on purpose, because they are not full without each other. In the end I liked it, and as I am writing this review I am thinking more about the film and it's meaning is kind of unravelling itself to me.
There is a kind of surrealist hazyness sorrounding the film, which helps put it in a type of fairyland. When the married lovers walk from the church to the boat they seems to go through all kinds of landscapes and they have literally left the rest of the people in the cortege behind them, a long way away. It is a story of co-dependence but one which ends nicely.
The original distributors cut the film's running time in an attempt to make it more popular and changed the title to Le Chaland Qui Passe, the name of a song from the time, which was also inserted into the film.
L'Atalante was chosen as the 10th-greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound's 1962 poll, and as the 6th-best in its 1992 poll.
The much lauded cinematography was by Boris Kaufman. He would later go on to shoot great Hollywood films such as On the Waterfront. Nevertheless, he described his years working with Vigo as "cinematic paradise."
It's Springtime for Hitler and Germany... well actually it was September, but it was a good joke... I'm going to my room now.
Review
Leni uses her gifts for evil in this most spectacular of propaganda films. We have had other propaganda films here, like Battleship Potemkin and we will have more, however this is probably the most famous of them all and with good reason. The direction is just spectacular, the innovation in terms of camera angles and techniques as well as great editing give this film its only plus points.
The film is however extremely boring, after the first hour you have kind of gotten the great tricks Riefenstahl is using, you don't care for the message, or at least you shouldn't and just spend the next hour think, "Wow, that's a lot of people... Hitler looks silly there... not another fucking regiment!".
I would like to be the one to burst Hitler's bubble but the Soviet influence in this film is more than obvious. Riefenstahl took a lot of pointers from Eisenstein from angles and editing techniques to an even identical shot of Nuremberg reflected in the water just like the factory is reflected in a puddle in Strike!, funny but true. Of course most people in Germany would not be aware of Eisenstein's films and therefore this must have been an extremely effective film. Its intention was to wow the German people with the might of the Nazi party, and it did that perfectly.
Another plus point here are Riefenstahl's amazing aerial shots. She had cranes and planes and cameras mounted on flagpoles, it was just crazy. Also her marriage of music and cinema, particularly in the fireworks scene is just impressive, no wonder Walt "Fantasia" Disney was such a Nazi supporter. This could only happen in a film with full state support, so if nothing else Triumph Of The Will gave us that. Get it from Amazon UK or US. Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Film critic Roy Frumkes has called Triumph "the antithesis of an objective work" and suggested that because of the special accommodations Riefenstahl received (one scene featured aerial searchlights requisitioned from the Luftwaffe) and because "the film was altered by practically every in-the-camera and laboratory special effect then known" the film can be labeled anything except a documentary. Ebert also disagrees, saying that Triumph is "by general consent [one] of the best documentaries ever made," but added that because it reflects the ideology of a movement regarded by many as evil, "[it poses] a classic question of the contest between art and morality: Is there such a thing as pure art, or does all art make a political statement?"
Susan Sontag considered Triumph of the Will the best made documentary of all time. Brian Winston's essay on the film in The Movies as History : Visions of the Twentieth Century, an anthology edited by David Ellwood (published by the International Association for Media and History), is largely a critique of Sontag's analysis, which he finds faulty. His ultimate point is that any filmmaker could have made the film look impressive because the Nazi's mise en scène was impressive, particularly when they were offering it for camera re-stagings. In form, the film alternates repetitively between marches and speeches. Winston asks the viewers to consider if such a film should be seen as anything more than a pedestrian effort. Like Rotha, he finds the film tedious, and believes anyone who takes the time to analyze its structure will quickly agree.
Grocery shop owner gets inheritance and decides to buy orange farm in California.
Review
If I was writing in my last review about Laurel and Hardy's cringe humour, the same thing is applicable to this film, only more so. In fact the whole film is cringe worthy, you always know there is something going wrong and you keep watching nonetheless. W. C. Fields cuts one of the most pitiable characters in the films reviewed until today, in fact you can't help but sympathise with his situation, living with his terribly annoying wife, his annoying custumers and neighbours. What surprises you is how mild mannered Fields remains through the movie.
W. C. Fields is a great actor here, and he plays the murmmering pitiable drunkard old fool to perfection. If you want to compare it to modern comedy Fields acts a lot more like Geoff out of Marion and Geoff while Hardy is much more a Ricky Gervais in the Office type.
Fields' character is sad and sympathetic, you really wish everything to go right with him and it doesn't until the last minutes. Still, it makes you laugh because you are fortunately not as sad, and surrounded by so many bad people as he is, and no one's life goes so wrong. A great performance in a film that is marred by less than stellar direction and editing, you can sometimes see the cuts in the middle of the scene and in one scene where Fields cracks open a can of tomatoes you can clearly see that is is coming not from the can at all but off-screen, from the left. Still get it at Amazon UK or US.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Fields spent his final weeks in a hospital, where a friend stopped by for a visit and caught Fields reading the Bible. He inquired as to why, to which Fields replied, "I'm checking for loopholes." In a final irony, W. C. Fields died in 1946 (due to a stomach hemorrhage) on the holiday he claimed to despise: Christmas Day. As documented in W. C. Fields and Me (published 1971), he died in a bungalow-type sanitarium where, as he lay in bed dying, his long-time and final love, Carlotta Monti, went outside and turned the hose onto the roof, so as to allow Fields to hear for one last time his favorite sound of falling rain. According to the documentary W.C. Fields Straight Up, his death occurred in this way: he winked and smiled at a nurse, put a finger to his lips, and died. Fields was 66.
Fields kept a thermos of martini for purposes of refreshment, which he referred to as his "pineapple juice." One day a prankster switched the contents of the thermos, filling it with actual pineapple juice. Upon discovering the prank, Fields was heard to yell, "Who put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice?"
Ahhh a nice little racist Walt Disney cartoon with W. C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty and see how many more you can guess:
Laurel and Hardy want to go to a convention of their Freemasonry like society "The Sons Of The Desert". Hardy pretends to have a nervous breakdown and the doctor advises him to go to Honolulu, they go to the convention instead. Wives find out.
Review
I've never been a fan of Laurel and Hardy, in fact almost all my ideas of it come from a crappy animated series that used to play in the morning in Portugal, when there were only 2 TV channels and channel 2 was probably playing Mass or Agricultural Bulletins for farmers to use the right pesticides... or Soviet Bloc cartoons in this show by a guy called Vasco Granja which people of my generation tuned into each week in the vain hope of getting something slightly exciting instead of animated newspapers waiting in a breadline while an animated dog made out of matches represented the evils of capitalism.
So, with that out of my system, I quite enjoyed the film. The animated series was almost certainly sanitised and Sons of The Desert has its amount of violence, alcohol, smoking and near-tits. Of course many of the jokes are dated, but it still managed to elicit a couple of laughs from me and my girlfriend and it was a generally nice experience to watch.
Actually, pretty surprisingly I enjoyed this film a lot more than Duck Soup, for example. At least Laurel and Hardy aren't constantly trying to make racy jokes which simply don't work today. Sons Of The Desert is what we call today "cringe" humour, a bit like the Office or Marion and Geoff and so on, you are looking at it thinking "No... ohh... shit is going to happen, and these people are so sad". The humour comes from the fact that fortunately you are not as sad as these people and you can therefore laugh at them. Laurel and Hardy are dumb, self-deluded and live as the abused in an abusive relationship with their powerful wives, and most of the humour derives from that. Good film, buy it at Amazon UK or US. Koniek
Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Throughout Laurel and Hardy's career, the driving force behind the team was Laurel, who wrote the scripts and frequently produced (and sometimes directed) the films, and always insisted on being paid twice as much as Hardy.
Puritanical missionary girl comes to China to marry her childhood sweetheart. She is saved/kidnapped by General Yen, a dashing yet evil Chinese warlord. She falls in love with him against her better judgment. Yet after losing his money and province commits suicide while the girl is crying and kissing his hand.
Review
Most Frank Capra's films, with the exception of It's A Wonderful Life are not that seen today. This is a pity, particularly when it comes to films like this, a truly original and innovative work breaking all kinds of barriers.
The plot of interracial love, altough tame by today's standards, was a shocking thing at the time, as was the fact that in the end it is the woman who abandons everything for the Chinese man. The way in which this relationship is developed is equally fascinating, the dream sequence, which owes something to Murnau's Nosferatu, has Davies, the girl being attacked by a vampire like Chinese man, Yen, while being saved by a masked mystery man, who turns out to be Yen himself.
Also interesting is the way in which Davies goes from bigotry to an admiration of Chinese culture, even while in captivity. She starts the film calling Yen a "Yellow Swine" and ends it unsure if she can go back to her American lover. The majesty of Chinese culture is also present in the amazing sets made for the film. Of course this isn't racial bliss and Yen is played by a Swedish actor "Yellowed-Up".He is, fortunately, the only non-asian playing a Chinese man.
Even while Yen is a bit of an evil man, with summary executions of those who oppose him and a generally ruthless approach to human life he never comes across as despicable as his "Financial Advisor" a renegade American, in it only for himself. Even the renegade American redeems himself at the end, with a delicate comentary on the afterlife of Yen. A very interesting film which deserved to be watched. Buy it on Amazon UK or US. Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From WIkipedia:
In 2000, the film was chosen by British film critic Derek Malcolm as one of the hundred best films in The Century of Films.
A Propaganda film by Capra, Why We Fight from 1943:
Directed By Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Synopsis
KING KONG! TADA! (surely you know it, big ape falls in love with poor actress, carnage ensues).
Review
Fortunately while reviewing this film I have Peter Jackson's version of the film pretty fresh in my mind, having seen it a few months ago. And this is definitely the more enjoyable of the two films. Of course the effects are better in Jackson's version and Andy Serkis is phenomenal as the big ape. Still, just the fact that this film is about half the length makes it the better one.
Of course the premiss of the film is totally silly, and that also where this version of King Kong wins, it's very easy to forgive the sillyness in a 1930's B-Movie. The models are laughable but also surprisingly good for the time, if you have seen later films like the Ray Harryhausen'sJason and the Argonauts and Clash Of The Titans for example, you know what to expect in terms of animation, of course later models are better but the animation is about the same.
This is enjoyable, there's no filler, the action moves along at a brisk pace, and in my opinion it is even better in terms of political correctness than Jackson's version. Here the natives of Skull Island are not zombie like monsters who immediately attack the film crew because they are "primitive", the first contact in the 1933 film is much more realistic, there is dialogue between the crew and the tribe who never attacks the crew. When Kong comes after Ann Darrow in the island the islanders help the crew fighting back. Of course it is all grass-skirts and war-paint, but there is no obvious black-up at least.
King Kong was influenced by the "Lost World" literary genre, in particular Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) and Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot (1918), which depicted remote and isolated jungles teeming with dinosaur life.
In the early 20th century few zoos had monkey exhibits so there was popular demand to see them on film. William S. Campbell specialized in monkey-themed films with Monkey Stuff and Jazz Monkey in 1919, and Prohibition Monkey in 1920. Kong producer Schoedsack had earlier monkey experience directing Chang in 1927 (with Cooper) and Rango in 1931, both of which prominently featured monkeys in real jungle settings.
Capitalizing on this trend "Congo Pictures" released the hoax documentary Ingagi in 1930, advertising the film as "an authentic incontestable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to mammoth gorillas!". Ingagi was an unabashed black exploitation film, immediately running afoul of the Hollywood code of ethics, as it implicitly depicted black women having sex with gorillas, and baby offspring that looked more ape than human. The film was an immediate hit, and by some estimates it was one of the highest grossing movies of the 1930s at over $4 million. Although producer Merian C. Cooper never listed Ingagi among his influences for King Kong, it's long been held that RKO green-lighted Kong because of the bottom-line example of Ingagi and the formula that "gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits".
The special effects were influenced by the unfinished 1931 film Creation.
Feel Good Documentary of the year, like March of the Penguins only with dead babies, a Goat falling to its death off a cliff and a Donkey being killed by bees and eaten by a wolf. Fun for all the family.
Review
In this laugh a second rom-com romp Bunuel shows us the region of Las Hurdes in rural Spain... following the crazy antics of it's inhabitants ina Benny Hillesque pace actually using Yackety Sax for a soundtrack.
Well... not really. Buñuel brings surrealism to documentary film making like he had done at the beggining of L'Age D'Or with the little scorpion documentary. Again the images are focusing on death, the death of animals and human being that live in conditions little different from the animals themselves. If you expect this to be a realistic portrayal you would be profoundly wrong, however.
Buñuel's anti-clericalism is more than obvious throughout the film, as is his political agenda, this is not to say that he isn't portraying a kind of "reality" just that it is a caricaturised reality seen through the lenses of anarchical surrealism. Life in Las Hurdes was tough but Bunuel makes it almost like a caricature of anthropological documentary, the disinterested voice over seems to not give a shit about the terrible suffering being witnessed making it all the more poignant. No one seems to give a shit. You can't get this from anywhere, I got it in a french DVD of Los Olvidados which has Las Hurdes as an extra, try to get it from eBay. Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Although it is often described as a documentary, Land Without Bread is actually an early parody -- some would say a Surrealist parody -- of documentary filmmaking. The film focuses on the Las Hurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town La Alberca, and the intense poverty of its occupants. Buñuel, who made the film after reading an ethnographic study (Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine (1927)) by Maurice Legendre, took a Surrealist approach to the notion of the anthropological expedition. The result was a travelogue in which a disinterested narrator provides unverifiable, gratuitous, and wildly exaggerated descriptions of the human misery of Las Hurdes.
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