The Last Ten Films I’ve Seen

1. Secret Honor (Robert Altman)
2. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa)
3. Cléo From 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda)
4. One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda)
5. Night On Earth (Jim Jarmush)
6. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
7. Lokita & Tori  (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
8. I Know Where I’m Going (Powell/Pressburger)
9. King Creole (Michael Curtiz)
10. Suspiria (Dario Argento)

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1- The first time I saw Nashville was a seismic event in my movie life. I followed it all around New York that summer, dragging along anyone who would come with me. I hoped that I would have similar epiphanies with other Altman films, but that has not been the case. I diligently watch them whenever the opportunity comes up, but the addiction never sets in. I like most of them just fine, but I never go crazy. People talk about McCabe and Mrs. Miller with the same incantatory tone that I do with Nashville, but it always leaves me cold. I keep doing my due diligence, and when the Criterion Collection featured Secret Honor I tried it. It is not a film to be passionate about, but that’s fine. It is a fascinating filmed monologue of a deranged Richard Nixon about a decade after the event of Watergate making a sort of taped confession/explanation of what happened. It is mostly paranoid nuttiness as you would expect, but it is very much a piece of its time, before the revisionist views of Nixon started cropping up (“He was bad domestically, but a brilliant foreign policy president.”} . Was the coverup of Watergate that forced Nixon out of office, really a coverup for something much worse involving the State Department and China and heroin? Probably not, but it is fun to watch the increasingly nuts Nixon trying to convince himself and whomever he is talking to on the tape.

2- Most people only know the ‘samurai’ films of Akira Kurosawa but he has about as many ‘contemporary’ films that examine the same moral complexities. High and Low is a dizzyingly involving movie. Shot in wide-screen, the first half or so is disorienting since it takes place in a single room. The wide screen camera gives a sense of claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time. At the start, it presents itself as straight-forward thriller with a kidnapping plot. But that plot is unraveled by the mid-point of the movie. We then get a fascinating parallel portrait of tormenter and tormented. The end is overwhelming.

3- The best thing about the Criterion Collection is having the complete or almost-complete filmography of great directors. I am particularly grateful for the huge collection of narrative and documentary films of Agnes Varda. I didn’t know much about her until I watched her early masterpiece Le Bonheur. I have been playing catch-up with her this month. I watched Cleo from 5 to 7 and One Sings The Other Doesn’t. I had seen the latter when it first came out, but remembered nothing about it. It was a delightful watch. It was refreshing to see a sweet feminist fantasy where men are largely irrelevant. It has a kind of hippy vibe to it. The life choice that the overt feminist, the one who sings, makes are questionable, but she is very happy with her decisions and so is everyone around her. I found the whole thing a little loopy and dated but endearing. I missed the scathing feminism of Le Bonheur, but that isn’t what this was about. Cleo from 5 to 7 came out at the beginning of the New Wave in France. I never took much to those films, I find them quite adolescent and undisciplined. Some find that refreshing. I find it tiresome, like listening to a teenager rant about their view of the world. I must say that Cleo is quite a different experience. Rigorously designed but totally accessible. The ‘real time’ gimmick of the film is subtle but works. You even get to see Michel Legrand as Cleo’s pianist.

4- I’m continuing my tour of Jim Jarmush’s films. I just adored Night on Earth. The gimmick of four separate taxi rides on the same night in Los Angeles, New York, Rome and Helsinki was exhilarating. We wind up with four very different genre. The only one I couldn’t wait to be over was the Rome section mostly because of the insufferable Roberto Benigni. I find his kind of comedy insufferable. I once described Robin Williams’ comic style as “I am going to keep throwing everything I have at you until you laugh, goddammit!” Benigni is like that, but in Italian. The Helsinki vignette was especially touching. Just a beautiful film. Looking forward to the next one.

5- The first night after the horrible heat wave last month reminded me of Halloween with its cool winds and darkness. I had to celebrate the coming Spooky Season a little early by watching Psycho for the thousandth time. Watching it now for me is like listening to a favorite symphony. It is so perfectly constructed. The alternating moments of horror, humor and pathos are deftly handled. This time I was so impressed with Anthony Perkins. His performance is so beautifully modulated. If it is possible to watch the movie now without knowing how it ends, one will marvel at his portrayal of Norman Bates goes from sad, sweet loner to monstrous son without ever losing our sympathy. I always am amazed at the scene when he is sinking the car containing Janet Leigh’s body in the bog. At one point it stops thinking and everyone in the audience is thinking “Oh no! Norman is going to get caught” Then there is the relief when it finally sinks all the way. Hitchcock is NOT the master of suspense. He is the master of audience complicity.

6- I Know Where I’m Going is exactly the kind of Romance I like. Quirky, edgy characters in almost-fantasy settings (here the far north of Scotland). Wendy Hiller is a goddess.

7- I always heard that King Creole was the best of all the Elvis Presley films. That must be a pretty low bar. I found it stilted and cliched. Apparently Elvis was brought in as a substitute for the recently deceased tortured young Method Actor James Dean. I am sure that Elvis did as good a job as that scenery chewer would have done. But the whole thing is sluggish. Amazing since the film is directed by Michael Curtiz who directed the most unsluggish of all Hollywood productions, Casablanca.

8- I think I saw Suspiria a long, long time about, but I didn’t remember a thing about it, which is unusual for me. It is so stylized and so over the top that the plot, what little there is, becomes incoherent. But plot is not the point here. 1970s sex and violence are what is paramount here, and don’t you forget it. The murders are gory and unforgiving. And the whole thing just kind of ends. It boasts the great Alida Valli and the not-so-great Joan Collins in major roles. I liked it better than the other fever dream from 1977, the Japanese House.