Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
384. Dog Star Man (1962)
Directed By Stan Brakhage
Synopsis
A man climbs a snowy hill with his dog... and shit.
Review
Well this is half an hour of my life I won't get back (I didn't watch the whole cycle of films from 61 to 64, only Part I from 1962). I know this will annoy plenty of uptight film students but it was not the most enjoyable experience. I suspect it would be better in the correct context, but in front of my PC it didn't do much for me.
This is not to say that I don't recognise its importance or its worthiness as a presence on this list. This is cinema at its most experimental something which was all too infrequent from the beginning of talkies until the 60s, and in that sense Brakhage was playing with film in an original and worthy way, just not in one which is particularly exciting for the viewer.
I would also figure that the film would be greatly enhanced by mind altering substances, which I didn't partake of. It is half an hour of silent film with images bombarding the viewer more often than not being completely abstract. What I probably found most interesting about it were the parallels between the film and the Philip K. Dick "Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep" Mercerism thing where they get absorbed into a film of a man climbing a hill and falling down becoming almost a religious experience. I seemed to be missing an "empathy box" for this film, however.
Final Grade
6/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film is part of the by Brakhage: an Anthology Criterion collection DVD.
The same footage was also made into a much longer film, The Art of Vision. Both are generally considered the masterpieces of his first mature period.
The film follows two hours of a pop-star's life, while she waits for some biopsy results which will tell her whether she has cancer.
Review
Agnes Varda is one of the great, if not the greatest female director of the French New Wave. In a film style that is kind of defined by the misogyny of Godard, it makes it quite fresh.
Varda was married to Jacques Demy, and that shows through in this film, there are similarities throughout with Demy's Lola, not only due to the central character being a beautiful and troubled woman, but in a certain lightness of touch absent from the dourer films of Godard. The importance of music is another thing that connects Lola and Cleo.
That being said while Lola is a film seen very much through a man's eyes, Cleo is a much more female-centred film, which is very much not to be confused with it being a "chick-flick". The way the film develops almost in real time is a really interesting exercise, as is the shifts in perspective from one character to the next, all of the shifts being signalled through subtitles in the film. Cleo is a slightly annoying character, but one who slowly improves as her priorities in life shift throughout the film and by the end you can see her on a path going beyond superficiality. Good film.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film includes cameos by Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine and Jean-Claude Brialy as characters in the silent film Raoul shows Cleo and Dorothee, while composer Michel Legrand, who wrote the film's score, plays "Bob the pianist". It was entered into the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.
Directed By Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti, and Franco Prosperi
Synopsis
The film shows several shocking or absurd scenes from around the world in a "documentary" style.
Review
Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction Mondo Cane is a really hard film to make up your mind about. Is it simply a commentary on the voyeurism of documentary cinema? Is it a slightly racist shock-fest? Is it an exercise on the idea of documental truth?
Well you can take it as you like, but it is definitely a powerful film which not only makes you feel depressed about human nature but also manipulates the viewer in their most basic feelings, and which is at the same time admirable and disgusting. In purely technical terms it is extremely well filmed and some close ups of faces are almost prefiguring later Italian film-makers such as Sergio Leone, seeing faces as ugly landscapes.
The film is extremely nihilistic in its outlook, while at times there might be a sense of some racism inherent in the exoticisation of the foreign as with the Papua New Guinea scenes, the film seems to be an equal-opportunity offender as European and American people are equally mocked and treated with paternalistic condescension. Of course most of the things in the film aren't really real, or are at least puffed-up versions of what is actually happening in order to serve the film's purpose. The lack of context in most scenes helps the film's end of portraying humanity as beyond the pale, but is ultimately unfair. If this is a commentary on the limits of documentary film-making it is indeed a poignant criticism, if not it shows dishonesty, but it is in any way a truly enlightening film.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
As well as encouraging sequels, Mondo Cane's shock-exploitation-documentary-exquisite corpse style is credited with starting a whole genre: the Mondo film. Examples of mondo film include Mondo Bizarro, Mondo Daytona, Mondo Mod, Mondo Infame and Mondo Hollywood; later examples include the Faces of Death series.
Much can be said about this as a film, but the real merit goes definitely to the original musical, Bernstein's music and Sondheim's lyrics just make this an amazing musical which would then lead to a great film without needing to add much to it.
However it also shows us that musical theatre was far ahead of the cinema in what came to social politics, and it is weird to find that one of the most politically and socially hard-hitting films of the early 60s is indeed an adaptation of a musical. Problems of racism, immigration, social inclusion, police brutality and institutionalised racism are explored at a deeper level here than you would expect.
The casting is sometimes pretty bad, the two main characters are unconvincing, but it is filled with some great minor characters with Rita Moreno pretty much stealing the show throughout. And it is really when it comes to the musical numbers that the film becomes the most affecting and fun. Great Stuff.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Elvis Presley was originally approached for Tony. However, his manager, Colonel Parker, strongly believed the role to be wrong for Elvis and made him decline in favor of other movie musicals. When the movie became a hit and earned 10 Oscars, Elvis later regretted having given up the part. He was only one of many young stars that were in consideration for the role of Tony. Several Hollywood men auditioned for the part, including Warren Beatty, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins, Russ Tamblyn, Burt Reynolds, Troy Donahue, Bobby Darin, Richard Chamberlain, and Gary Lockwood.
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.”
