Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
380. The Hustler (1961)
Directed by Rober Rossen
Synopsis
Paul Newman is a hustler. Not that kind of hustler, one who uses his rod and balls to make money. A pool hustler. And he really wants to beat Jackie Gleason... whatever it takes, and it takes quite a bit.
Review
How can you make a 2 hour 15 minute film about shooting pool exciting? Well Rossen managed to do it with The Hustler. Of course the film goes way beyond pool playing, in fact it is about life and growing up, how to succeed by getting your focus on what is actually important in life.
In this case that realisation might come quite late in the film, and too late to salvage the Hustler's loved one, but it does come. And through it all the performances are astounding. Paul Newman is his beautiful self and plays Fast Eddie like he was born to do it, George C. Scott plays a bastard as only he can play them, and Piper Laurie feels genuinely damaged throughout.
If this was all there was to it, a thoughtful plot and great acting, it would already be worth watching, but there is also beautiful direction and cinematography, the black and white being more and more used as an artistic option rather than a technical imperative, and the great wide cinemascope shots being beautiful to look at, all complemented by exacting detail in the locations and extras. Great film.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Rossen filmed The Hustler over six weeks, entirely in New York City. Much of the action was filmed at two now-defunct pool halls, McGirr's and Ames Billiard Academy. Other shooting locations included a townhouse on East 82nd Street, which served as the Louisville home of Murray Hamilton's character Findley, and the Manhattan Greyhound bus terminal. The film crew built a dining area that was so realistic that confused passengers sat there and waited to place their orders. Willie Mosconi served as technical advisor on the film and shot a number of the trick shots in place of the actors (except for Gleason whose shots were his own and filmed in wide-angle to show the actor and the shot in the same frames). Rossen, in pursuit of the style he termed "neo-neo-realistic",hired actual street thugs, enrolled them in the Screen Actors Guild and used them as extras.
Fast Eddie talks about how he feels when playing pool:
379. Chronique d'un Été (Chronicle of a Summer) (1961)
Directed By Jean Rouch
Synopsis
A documentary follows common people around during a summer asking them if they are happy and how they live.
Review
The above synopsis gives us a simple premiss for what ends up being a quite complex film, complex not in its basic idea but in the brilliant execution of the whole thing and the methodology underpinning it.
Here, for the first time, we really see documentary cinema being painfully aware of itself. Rouch knows that the camera changes what is being filmed, and so instead of trying to efface it off the screen he admits its presence and his own as director and so do his subjects.
This ends up making the film not only a touching documentary following people's struggles in daily life and their own inner turmoil, but also a self-reflective film. By the end of it the film is shown to the documentary subjects and they try to judge where the "truth" in the film is. This ends up giving all kinds of reactions to the same scenes, showing us and showing itself aware of the subjectivity of truth on camera. Even if the film might get slightly dull at times it is full of very humane moments which are deeply touching as well as being honest about itself and the problems which are always present in documentary film making.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
"It must be said, all that we have done in France in the area of cinéma-vérité comes from Canada. It is Brault who brought a new technique of filming that we had not known and that we copied ever since. In fact, truly, there is a "brauchitis" spreading, it is certain. Even the people who consider that Brault is a nuisance, or were jealous, are forced to recognize it."
Original text
«Il faut le dire, tout ce que nous avons fait en France dans le domaine du cinéma-vérité vient de l'ONF (Canada). C'est Brault qui a apporté une technique nouvelle de tournage que nous ne connaissions pas et que nous copions tous depuis. D'ailleurs, vraiment, on a la "brauchite", ça, c'est sûr; même les gens qui considèrent que Brault est un emmerdeur ou qui étaient jaloux sont forcés de le reconnaître.»" Jean Rouch, June 1963 Cahiers du Cinéma No.144.
378. Såsom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly) (1961)
Directed By Ingmar Bergman
Synopsis
A family of four (Father, son, daughter and daughter's husband) reunite at a summer's house in Sweden and everything seems fine and happy... well the daughter is suffering from mental illness and in the space of 24 hours all goes to shit.
Review
If there is anything that makes all of Bergman's films a joy to watch it is just how great the acting is. Here you have a cast consisting solely of four people, but then you need no more than that to explore the gamut of human emotions.
So acting is flawless here, but the directing is also amazing, with an interplay of light and shadow which is truly beautiful, just look at the play scene or the scene inside the wrecked boat.
Then the plot is not exactly uplifting but it is also not completely a downer behind all the disaster pervading the family there is a lot of love going on there, of all kinds, and some of it misplaced or slightly self-interested but there is a sense of all the characters caring for each other deeply, but then it is the superb acting that makes it all the more believable they act like a family because these are are actors which have been working together for a while, isolated in the island of Faro, the intimacy of a cast of four really translates to the interpersonal relations on screen. Great stuff.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The spider god may be an allusion to Dostoevsky's character Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment who wonders of the afterlife, "But what if there are only spiders there, or something like that?" Karin’s reaction to the wallpaper in the attic may also be taken as an allusion to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’ short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Herbert H. Heebert graduates and in the same day has his heart broken. From then on he decided to forsake women. Then he gets a job at a all women boarding house! Oh the hilarity!
Review
Well there isn't much of a plot to speak of here. The whole film consists of a sequence of situations slightly united by plot with a kind of romance side-plot which is never really developed. That said there are plenty of interesting things here.
Jerry Lewis is both the best and worse thing about this film, the bad is his acting which is just too much over the top to actually be funny, the faces he pulls, his histrionics etc. are just too forced. The great thing about Jerry here is his job as director, he is a pretty good director there are several sequences which are amazingly well made.
An example of these sequences is near the beginning of the film where the girls wake up in the house and all the movement is done to music, the way the house is cut away to show all the rooms makes it almost theatrical but also always keeps you aware of the artificiality of what you are watching, but in a good way. The entrance of a TV crew in the house actually seems to break the fourth wall as the cameras are placed beyond the house where the actual cameras to film the film would be. And then there is the great Miss Cartilage scene, which is funny in its surrealness. If only Jerry hadn't acted in the film...
Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
It was released on June 28, 1961 by Paramount.
Great Sequence which I can only find dubbed in Spanish! Why do you people keep dubbing crap, can't you read subtitles?:
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.
