359. L'Avventura (The Adventure) (1960)

Directed By Michelangelo Antonioni

Synopsis

A woman and her lover plus her close friend, plus some other friends go on a yacht tour of the islands. The woman gets lost. Her lover and her friend start getting it on after her disappearance. What happened to her? You'll have to watch the film not to find out!

Review

Of the three films that helped redefine Italian cinema for the 60s, the others being Rocco e Suoi Fratelli and La Dolce Vita, L'Avventura is the less interesting of the three. Still, it does a couple of interesting things.

First you are misdirected into thinking someone is a protagonist while in reality she disappears off the screen quite early on. Antonioni manages to make her still present throughout in the mind of those who were around her and her presence is felt all the way through the film. Second, the ending is supremely unsatisfying for a film that again misdirects you into thinking it is a mystery film.

The film is shot in some beautiful locations around Mediterranean islands and the acting is quite good. Monica Vitti is particularly stunning. That being said, for a film which presumes to explore human emotion and relationships, the characters show little emotional evolution, they just shift gears suddenly, which for a film which lasts 2 and a half hours and has little action other than the inner life of the characters is really unnecessary. For example Vitti's character goes from distraught to amorous to angry to forgiving without having any stages in between, it just does not ring true, well she does rebuke the guy's advances for the whole of 2 minutes.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Released in 1960 the film was booed by some members of the audience during its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (Antonioni and Vitti fled the theatre) but after a second screening it won the Special Jury Prize and went on to both international box office success and what has since been described as "hysteria." This controversy carried on for decades. L'Avventura influenced the visual language of cinema, forever changing how subsequent movies looked and has been named by some critics as one of the best ever made, but has been criticized by others for its seemingly uneventful plot and slow pacing along with the existentialist themes, which even stirred the "waggishly dismissive epithet of Antoniennui."

It's online, but you need to get Italian:

358. Tirez Sur Le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) (1960)

Directed By Francois Truffaut

Synopsis

An ex-concert pianist, who now lives by playing in a café, gets drawn into some shit one of his brothers did.

Review

My feelings about the French Nouvelle Vague are mixed at best, on the other hand my feelings about M. Truffaut are not, at least not up to now. This is another example of brilliant, innovative and free film-making.

Truffaut manages to make a film where most characters are purposefully cartoony a strangely moving piece, aided by brilliant soundtrack, editing, camerawork and performances with Aznavour playing the proto-Woody Allen as the geek who always has beautiful women interested in him for some reason.

The whole film mixes comedy, drama, tragedy and film noir in a completely organic way. It is actually pretty much a delight to watch, as an art film, as a technical achievement and just as entertainment.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is loosely based on the novel Down There by David Goodis. It shares the novel's bleak plot about a man hiding from his shattered life by doing the only thing he knows how to do, while remaining unable to escape the past. However, Truffaut's work resolves itself into both a tribute to the American genre of literary and cinematic noir and a meditation on the relationship between art and commercialism.

Film is online:

357. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

Directed By Karl Reisz

Synopsis

Arthur lives a grim life in grim Nottingham, dances, drinks and screws 'cause there's nothing else to do.

Review

Taking into account the fact that this film is 49 years old it is amazing how little things have changed in a certain area of the UK, among the majority of people. The pub as the central point in a life where it is the main means of escape from a crap job or, after Thatcher, no job.

The influence of the French new wave is more than evident throughout the film, the camera work is quite great, very fluid. The acting style is pretty realistic, with Albert Finney doing a bang up job in his starring début.

The use of regional accents gives it all an extra sense of realism, and here we see the beginning of the great British tradition of social-realist cinema. There is not much of a plot to it, just an accurate portrayal of crappy life. It's grim up north.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film is the origin for the title of the debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not of Sheffield rock band Arctic Monkeys. It is also the origin for the title of the live album Saturday Night, Sunday Morning by The Stranglers.

Trailer:

356. La Dolce Vita (1960)

Directed By Frederico Fellini

Synopsis

The film follows the character of Marcello through a sequence of events where the the squalid, depressing nature of wealthy boredom is explored.

Review

It is strange that this film has come to be equated with sophisticate lifestyles and it's title meaning "The Sweet Life" stripped of all irony. The truth of the film is that it is unrelentingly depressing, the superficiality of it is oppressive, the characters are vacuous and annoying.

The only thing that gels the film together is the character of Marcello, through which you see the situations in the film, even he, in the end, becomes a part of the decadence. This is a film about how boredom and money can strip people of their common humanity, in this sense it is highly political.

Even if Felinni eschews narrative linearity in the film the moral linearity is constant throughout, Felinni makes us feel his disgust for the over-privileged scenes he shows us. All the beautiful superficiality hides something very rotten indeed, like the manta-ray at the end, it has been dead for at least three days. The outlook is so bleak for mankind that Steiner's actions almost make sense in the film's context, all characters have given up being human at one time or another, in the end even Marcello gives up.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In a device used earlier in his films, Fellini orders the disparate succession of sequences as movements from evening to dawn. Also employed as an ordering device is the image of a downward spiral that Marcello sets in motion when descending the first of several staircases (including ladders) that open and close each major episode. The upshot is that the film's aesthetic form, rather than its content, embodies the overall theme of Rome as a moral wasteland.

Sad Clown:

355. Rocco E I Suoi Fratelli (Rocco And His Brothers) (1960)

Directed By Luchino Visconti

Synopsis

A large family composed of a mother and 4 children moves to Milan from the rural south to join the remaining son. The adaptation to city living does not happen smoothly and the family structure starts shattering.

Review

This is one of the first films in the redefinition of Italian cinema right at the start of the 60s. Italian cinema starts moving away from the neorealism that so dominated it during the 50s, and while there are still elements of this in Rocco, there are great changes that are in my opinion all for the better.

Firstly in Rocco all the acting is professional, which is a change I welcome, while the use of non-pros may at times increase the authenticity of the film it often just produced bad acting. Here you get to cherish the performances of some very good actors, with the exception of a couple of characters, such as the hysterical mother. Secondly the film is made on a grand scale, with its almost three hour running time with much more studied editing, camera work and lighting than most neorealist films.

In this way Rocco makes for a decisive improvement in Italian cinema in my opinion, not being the greatest fan of the excesses of neorealism, and it is a truly great piece of cinema. I still have problems with it: the bad dubbing which is a constant of Italian cinema for at least the next 20 years and the histrionics of so many of the characters (although they are Italian after all). But there are so many positives about he beautifully shot and directed film that it is hard to put too much importance on those.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The staff at Variety magazine lauded the drama, and wrote, "With all its faults, this is one of the top achievements of the year in Italy...Scripting shows numerous hands at work, yet all is pulled together by Visconti's dynamic and generally tasteful direction. Occasionally, as in the near-final revelation to the family of Simone's crime, the action gets out of hand and comes close to melodrama. Yet the impact of the main story line, aided by the sensitive, expertly guided playing of Alain Delon as Rocco, Annie Girardot as the prostie, and Renato Salvatori as Simone, is great. Katina Paxinou at times is perfect, at others she is allowed to act too theatrically and off-key."

Trailer:

354. Ukigusa (Floating Weeds) (1959)

Directed By Yasujiro Ozu

Synopsis

A Kabuki troupe returns to a village to put on a play. The leader of the troupe has some ancient history in that village, visits his old flame and his son who has been under the impression that his father had died when he was a baby so he is not demeaned by having an actor for a father. It all goes wrong.

Review

After the perfect Tokyo Monogatari by Ozu that we had on this list a while ago any film by him would have a hard time living up to the expectation. That was partly what happened but then this just is not as great as Tokyo Monogatari.

That being said it is still a pretty good film, as in most good Japanese cinema of this time it is unflinching in its portrayal of daily life as an unrelentingly depressing affair. Ozu's very still camera continues to help to reinforce that sense of boredom.

The story was not so compelling however, it would have helped to have fleshed out the characters more deeply so we as an audience could care more about their fate. This being said there are moments of truly beautiful imagery, and it is still a film worth seeing, even if you want an Ozu film I would still go with Tokyo Monogatari every day.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Early on, there is a travelling shot filmed from a ferry as it docks at the harbour. This is the only instance of camera movement in Ozu's six colour films.

First 10 minutes:

353. Le Trou (The Hole) (book says 1959 wiki says 1960)

Directed By Jacques Becker

Synopsis

Four prisoners have a plan to escape, they get a fifth element and have to decide whether to trust him or not. You follow their best laid plans, which end up as best laid plans so often do.

Review

You might have noticed in my previous reviews that I often have problems with non-professional actors in films. Jacques Becker has managed, however, to have pretty much perfect casting, even if using non-professionals.

It probably helps that one of the actors was actually one of the prisoners who attempted the escape in the first place, lending the film and the acting, an air of verisimilitude which probably rubs off on the non-pro actors.

The film is extremely well directed, Becker knows perfectly for how long to keep a shot going, how to create tension and drop subtle hints about the characters. Like most great films the plot is secondary to the relationship between the people portrayed in the film. Really great stuff, another amazing prison escape film, we have had so many and from La Grande Illusion onwards they have been uniformly fantastic.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

It was called The Night Watch when first released in the United States, but is released under its French title today.

Whole film online, get it here:  http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FDE78703216BC9C9 (sorry no embedding)