The Last Ten Films I’ve Seen

1. Elena and the Men (Jean Renoir)
2. Zéro de Conduite (Jean Vigo)
3. Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)
4. The Holy Man (Satyajit Ray)
5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong  Weerasethak)
6. Of Time and the City (Terence Davies)
7. My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle)
8. David Holzman’s Diary (Jim McBride)
9. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
10. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman)

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I recently subscribed to the Criterion Channel and I cannot believe what an incredible streaming service it is. I have watched 13 movies in 5 days and am ready for more!

1- I have watched all three of Jean Renoir’s ‘trilogy’ including The Golden Coach, French Can-Can and now Elena and The Men. I find them all quite amateurish and dull.  This is especially in light of having just rewatched the earth-shattering Rules of the Game.  Is this like Citizen Kane, the one work of genius in a director’s oeuvre? Although hearing Ingrid Bergman speak French for an entire film was entertaining

2- Clouds of Sils Maria is a film that I have been wanting to see for a while and having the Criterion Channel made it possible.  A beautiful and mysterious film. The performances are magnificent especially Kristen Stewart.  I had tucked away in my head a snippet from a review which said that it was a riff on All About Eve and I spent the first half-hour waiting for that to come to light. This turns out not to be the case at all.  It is an examination of how a work of art changes as we change. In this case, an actress who became famous creating the younger of two lead roles in a now-famous play  20 years before, is approached to play the older lead. Her view of the play is in fascinating contrast to the new actress who is taking the role she originally created.  Heady stuff and very moving.

3- I loved the magic realism Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Apparently the director is very influenced by the culture and religion of the area near the border of Laos where much of the film was shot. The depictions of life after death, or death in life, (or perhaps reincarnation) were moving and very puzzling to me.  I wish I knew more about it. The film is stunning to look at.  I love the monkey ghosts.  I need to watch this again very soon.

4- Watching My Dinner with Andre and David Holzman’s Diary was a little too much New York for me.  The 1967 New York of the latter film was something I lived through.  Grimy, bleak, dangerous…all these feeling came back and made it hard to concentrate on what this very clever and witty meta-fictional film was doing.  I think I got it but I don’t want to go back to find out for sure.

 5- I know that I will love any film that I watch by Satyajit Ray.  The Holy
Man is more of a divertissement compared to his other more profound film, but I found it delightful and very funny.  Thank you Criterion.

6- I wonder if someone of my age who grew up in Liverpool would have had the same reaction to Of Time and the City that I had watching David Holzman’s Diary. I would think not, because Terence Davies is a certifiable poet and the grime of the past in his film is so rich and emotional.  Also, the Davies film is a memory piece where as the McBride is more cinema-verite, albeit a funny send-up.

 If you haven’t seen anything by Terence Davies, this might not be the place to start. I heartily suggest the magnificent The Long Day Closes.  

7- I spent a lot of my birthday watching Celine and Julie Go Boating. I had a very happy birthday.

8- This post seems to be a lot about memory and The Fabulous Baron Munchause was something I am sure I had seen on local New York
television when I was seven or eight. OP The combination of cut-out and live action had a madeleine-like effect on me. Funny, beautiful and extremely weird. 

The Baron and friends on the moon

 

The Last Ten Films I’ve Seen

1. The Silver Cord (John Cromwell)
2. Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle)
3. Brewster Mccloud (Robert Altman)
4. Deep in my Heart (Stanley Donen)
5. Shoot the Piano Player (François Truffaut)
6. La Règle du Jeu (Jean Renoir)
7. Coming Home (Hal Ashby)
8. Mother (Mikio Naruse)
9. Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard)
10. Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita)

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1- Much has been written about how camera movement was suddenly restricted in the beginning of the talkies due to the restraints of the technology. Early sound films often look like filmed stage plays, and that is because they were often just that. The Silver Cord was a Broadway hit. It is a very odd story of a mother’s sick and controlling hold over her two sons. She breaks up one son’s engagement and nearly destroys the other’s marriage. Pretty potent stuff. And to think that this gorgon of a mother was played by Laura Hope Crewes, the dotty Aunt Pittypat from Gone With The Wind.

2- Both Elevator to the Gallows and Shoot The Piano Player are examples of what happens when French New Wave directors make their homage to film noir. It is clear to me that Louis Malle is by far the more accomplished filmmaker of the two. I believe this might have been his first feature. It is masterful and fascinating. Shoot The Piano Player is ok but the whole time I would just saying to myself, “Oh. I see. Truffaut is making hommage to film noir. It is the more artificial of the two.

3- It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I consider Nashville perhaps the greatest film of all times….at least the greatest American film. Yes, I am giving into hyperbole and I am not forgetting about Citizen Kane, The Godfather and All About Eve, but Nashville, even after 45 years, still thrills and satisfies. This preamble is to emphasize how disappointed I am with just about every other Altman film I’ve seen and yes, that includes everyone’s favorite, McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Brewster McCloud is weird and fun but I just couldn’t get a handle on what it was trying to do. It made me laugh a lot, and it was creepy, too. It is the first film to feature Shelley Duval doing her kooky Shelley Duvall thing, so that is fun. But when it was over, I said ‘Huh’?

4- Watching Deep In My Heart made me realize what a weird, stylized subgenre MGM musical biographies of the great song writers is. They always seem to have the same weird features:

a- a weirdly intrusive voice-over narrating the story

b- a completely fictionalized love story

c- cameos of the composer’s greatest hits sung by the big MGM musical stars of the day.

Deep in my Heart is a particularly demented version of the above mostly because it is about a mostly forgotten songwriter and it stars the totally uncharismatic and unmusical Jose Ferrer. You have not lived until you see Ferrer do a soft shoe routine with Metropolitan Opera Wagnerian soprano Helen Traubel. She steals the movie, by the way.

5- Coming Home was a satisfying surprise. I had never seen it and I felt it would be too dated to watch it now. No way. It is a wonderfully adult depiction of a very complicated set of relationships. Jane Fonda is subdued and powerful. Jon Voight is heart-wrenching. For once there is a sex scene that is not smarmy/gratuitous but which really underscores the bond between the two lovers. I remember at the time people were rejoicing that Hollywood was finally dealing with Vietnam. It was the year that The Deer Hunter won the best picture Oscar. Coming Home was robbed.

** I am happy to have finally subscribed to the Criterion Channel. What a treasure it is! The next three films were the first three I watched**

6- I love Mikio Naruse, but the problem is that only one of his sound films is available in Region 1 DVD format, the stupendous When A Woman Ascends The Stairs. The Criterion Channel has many of his sound films available to watch. The first film I watched on the Criterion Channel was Mother. It completely validated my opinion that he is one of the masters.

7- Readers of this blog will know about my humiliating struggles with the films of Jean-Luc Godard. For some reason though, I keep trying. I always think if I watched one more, it would all click. I must have seen at least 15 of his films so far. Is this bordering on masochism? My latest foray into the world of JLG was Contempt. I had great hopes for this one because it is universally praised and since it stars Brigitte Bardot, I thought the chances of accessibility would be high. I was right. I was quite taken by the whole thing. The supersaturated Technicolor and the Cinemascope look stunning. The music by Georges DeLerue was as overpowering as anything Max Steiner cooked up for MGM. I even think I have a good idea about what the film was trying to accomplish, which is no little feat for me watching a JLG film. It is such a nice feeling to come away from a film and not feel like you have just been kicked in the head.

8- After tempting fate with Contempt, I went back to safer stuff with The Ballad Of Narayama. This is the first filming of this brutal story and I found it very affecting. It uses many Kabuki tropes (music, costuming, sets), and that is always a plus for me. Looks like the Criterion Channel is already turning out to be a great investment.