Baby Doll

Elia Kazan's Baby Doll is a little gem from the 1950s, a lascivious tale of fractured masculinity and budding sexuality. Not surprisingly, it caused a huge stir when it came out, and was even banned by the Catholic League of Decency, among other things. Having been released around Christmas time, it was too unwholesome for many viewers who were over-steeped in family values of the kind this film casually shatters. Today, it is still surprisingly titillating, despite its lack of the modern quota of flesh (and probably because of that). I have read that Kazan was a fantastic director of actors, jump-starting the careers of some of the greatest talents like Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Eva Marie Saint. Not that the following hypothesis necessarily holds with that statement, but I have a theory that Kazan used Karl Malden for this role simply because he has the most phallic-looking nose that has been or ever will be. Perhaps, Malden method-acted from the tip of his nose outward, thereby creating the frigid, frustrated persona that is so memorable in this film.

Happy Thanksgiving

Cat People

Through suspenseful horror, Jacques Tourneur's Cat People grapples with mysogyny (and xenophobia, although I'm not really addressing that here). Cat People an alluring movie, not just because of the subject matter, but thanks to the memorable way Tourneur and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca drape each frame in dense, impenetrable shadows. It is an absolutely stunning movie to look at. Amazingly, especially by today's standards, you really never even see the titular cat; its presence is merely implied by editing, reactions, and shadow. This decision (whether budget-influenced or not) lends a psychological, nightmarish quality to the film, making it unclear whether the cat truly exists, or whether it is just a projection of the subconscious, of the escalating fears of the characters.

Zeitgeist

This is not something I would normally post, but I thought it was interesting, and something I wonder about, on and off. How will my generation accurately document its experience in movies, when such a large part of that experience takes place in a digital void? How does one go about expressing life in a digital realm, in this, the sleek age of ipad and Kindle? Thus far, the web's influence seems to have been on form, rather than content, reflected by a tendency towards more frenetic editing in action films and the like. In novels, Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves being my favorite example, the form of the text on the page, as well as the copious indexing reflects an audience that is accustomed to reading on the web. On television shows like 30 Rock, or Arrested Development we expect a short flashback or aside to explain a joke, and we also expect several concurrent storylines; it's like performing an immediate Google search to answer a question, or following several open internet tabs with unrelated subject matter. We are simply more receptive to information that comes at us quickly, from all directions, at the speed of surfing a trail of hyperlinks on Wikipedia. So, perhaps movies that are truly about the internet will remain on the internet in mediums that are purely of the internet. Like this:

The Player

I'm on a Robert Altman kick right now, probably because I keep finding used VHS of his movies from the 90s all over the place. I can't even begin to express my new found love of VHS. Very soon they will be entirely obsolete, but right now there are still buckets of them in video, book, and record stores everywhere with a fruitful combination of small, forgotten films, and great ones that have been re-released with equally great DVD packages. The only problem is that VHS does not supply a means for screen capping, forcing me to scour the internet for representations.

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

This lovely experience in meticulously constructed claustrophobia is my latest foray into the Fassbinder oeuvre. Though Mr. Fassbinder asserts his presence through exquisite framing and staging, within the camera's view, there is nary a man to be seen. In the Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, the titular character has set herself apart from men, and for the most part, from humanity, building a confining cave of longings and tensions.

Shivers

One of Cronenberg's first, if not the first of his feature length films. In an insular suburban high rise, a scientist creates a strain of parasites resembling dildo-turds, which are meant to provide a substitute for failing organs, but instead turn the residents into sexually deviant zombies (probably related to their phallic shape).

Kansas City

Recently, after an exhausting day filled with travails of every kind, I settled in on my couch to watch a movie for pure escapism. This movie ended up being a used vhs of Robert Altman's Kansas City that I had just bought for about the price of a gum ball. I had myself braced for mediocrity, since this was an Altman movie I was unfamiliar with, but no. Kansas City is engrossing and expressive, representing the kind of playfulness that Robert Altman was known for. A great deal of screen time is given simply to the interplay of jazz musicians at the Hey Hey Club, the raucous underbelly and heart of Kansas City. I like the observational style of cinema, the sheer joy of watching that Altman encourages with his many performance-centric features. With Altman, you often feel at home with a film. His wide shots, overlapping dialogues and grand panoramas are as realistic as they are virtuosic; his sparing use of close-ups makes you feel like another, unseen person in the same world the characters inhabit. He lulls you into a sense of realism and sneaks in a close-up every now and then to allow you to engage and empathize. But the distance keeps the events from ever becoming histrionic. Instead, the empathy you feel for the characters is something that is slowly developed, leaving a gentle ache for them, rather than a feeling of being manipulated by the filmmaking (although, of course, that is inescapable).

This is sort of a female buddy movie, laced with gender and racial politics. The central story is the relationship between Blondie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her captive, Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson), the wife of an ambitious senator (Michael Murphy). What ensues is Stockholm syndrome of a sort, as the two women, who are obviously members of very separate classes, develop a bond born of empathy. Blondie is desperate to retrieve her husband, Johnny (Dermot Mulroney) from the Kansas City mob, controlled by the far-reaching Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte). Johnny is a small time criminal who crosses the mob by committing a robbery in blackface. Johnny is white; the mob is black.

Hoping to use Mr. Stilton's political sway to remedy the situation, Blondie kidnaps Mrs. Stilton, who seems to recognize from the start that Blondie's efforts are a pointless exercise. Stilton spends most of her screen time stoned on opium, which might provide some inkling of how enjoyable she finds life as a senator's wife. In the mean time, Mr. Stilton's actions reveal that his main concern with her kidnapping it its affects on his campaign. Mrs. Stilton misses countless easy opportunities to escape capture. While this at first might be deduced to her drug use and resulting mental incapacitation, it begins to seem more like loyalty to her captor, and reluctance to face the vacuum of her home life. Then, by the end of the movie, it is apparent that she is much more cognizant that we ever could have realized.

The final act really stuck with me on this one. The moral of this experience is that even the overlooked films of a master auteur are worth hunting down.

The Dead Zone

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. While engaging in a B-movie, 80s horror kind of way, it was far from being a masterpiece. Mainly, it was one small step towards my goal of becoming a Cronenberg completist; Someday soon, I will have seen every single one of this films. This one is more widely available than some others, and it stars a younger Christopher Walken. No Cronenberg movie is ever bad, as long as it bears his combination of subtle and totally un-subtle trademarks. The Dead Zone is plagued by issues shared by many adaptations, in that it seems like the screenwriters couldn't stop themselves from stuffing too much narrative into a feature-length time frame, leaving things kind of under developed.

Do you tumbl(e) too?

If you actually happen to enjoy reading this blog, you could take a look at my Tumblr. Though it bears a similar title, it actually is not associated with this blog at all, except that I am responsible for both of them.

If nothing else, it is evidence that I am active in between my posts here.

On a completely different note, I am so intrigued by this:

Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple. As opposed to the American remake of Let the Right One in (which just seems completely, completely unnecessary to me), this looks absolutely inspired.

Trouble Every Day

I meant this film to be my introduction to Claire Denis, but what engaged me most when watching it was the cinematography, which can be credited to none other than Agnes Varda. Regardless of which of the two women dominates the aesthetics, this film represents a powerhouse collaboration of estrogen, resulting in something less than typically "feminine." At least, it doesn't deal with anything remotely fluffy. Aside from the interest in gore, it's not surprising that this film is the result of a female filmmaking team, because of its investigation into the dynamics of relationships. Buried deeply, there is even a subtext of eco-feminism. This is a thought-piece masquerading as a horror film.

the smell of human flesh in the morning

I found an amazing piece on zombie movies, which relates Hobbes's political philosophy to the evolution of the zombie movie. I don't mean to imply that I'm at all familiar with Hobbes, because I'm not. But I am familiar with zombies, as most of us are. As you've probably noticed, zombie movies are enjoying a resurgence in popularity, after about a decade or so of relative dormancy.

This article is worth the time it takes to get through:

The Running of the Dead by Christian Thorne.

Best of all, Thorne reiterates what I love about the horror genre. Besides satisfying the bloodiest urges of scopophilia, horror (science fiction, too) is probably the closest filmic reflection of societal preoccupations and fears. That, and I sometimes enjoy limpid, unequivocal metaphor; don't you?

Being John Malkovich

I am fascinated by puppetry, which is one thing that attracts me to this movie, despite its flaws, despite its sometimes being just too much. However, it is as engrossing as it is bizarre. I doubt that many people have actually experienced the art of puppetry the way it is portrayed in Being John Malkovich. It can be very unsettling to watch something lifeless become animated in the hands of a puppeteer. It can also be the most natural thing in the world, like in the musical Avenue Q, an ingenious Sesame Street parody. The puppeteer seems to disappear entirely, but they are an inseparable piece of the experience; you somehow read their emotions and transcribe them onto the inanimate object they are maneuvering. A few years ago, I saw a puppetry performance outside the Pompidou in Paris (try saying that five times, fast). I can still remember that thing's eyes, and how woeful it seemed, wandering around in its artificial circle, voiceless. Most of all, I remember that it really seemed to be alive. This was just a street performance, but I can recall it much more vividly than anything I saw once I actually entered the museum. To return to the point, puppeteering is an excellent metaphor for all of the themes in Malkovich, and it acts partially as a metaphor for film making--the director pulling the strings, manipulating the unknowing characters around a set. In this film, when wooden puppets are shown, it is editing, and the raw power of film making that breathe life into the puppets, as with the opening scene depicted above.

Early birthday

Hey suckers, I'm going to see the Cremaster Cycle at the Music Box Theatre. I'm as excited as anyone could be about having their brain melted away. Stay tuned.

Eyes Without a Face

So here I am in Chicago, Illin'-ois. I began this blog about exactly a year ago when I was in a similar state of aimlessness (er, joblessness), so although I'm currently on the hunt for another dead end job, I'm looking forward to some empty hours that I can use getting lost in the cinema.

I discovered this title, as I am wont to do, by performing a Google search for "50s sci-fi" or the like. What I was really looking for was some good old American camp, but I ended up finding this haunting piece of French film instead. It's from 1959, but according to my Criterion insert, Franju operated on a parallel trajectory from the New-wavers. Still, to me, it seems like the ground-breaking nature of this film might put him in a similar arena. Like Godard, Georges Franju had an affinity for American films. He just happened to like our gory B horror films, instead of Humphrey Bogart noir pictures.

Coming Soon

No internet in my apartment yet means no blogging for the mo'. But I do have some new acquisitions to my collection, including David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich, and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, so my blog will not be stalled for long.

Wild Grass

I found Resnais' latest effort every bit as baffling as his New Wave era films. This was only surprising because the reviews made it sound like Wild Grass would reveal a softer side to the philosophical puzzle-master. Apparently, he had set aside his heartless experiments to create something with more feeling, even some narrative. Not that I have never thought of Last Year at Marienbad or Hiroshima Mon Amour as heartless formalism at all. To me, they are deeply moving. Wild Grass may be masked in a narrative of unrequited love (albeit, a circuitous one), but it is still filled with Resnais' calling cards, and then some. Notably, when each character is introduced, it takes a good five minutes for us to see their face; we are stuck in their point of view for a while, within their actions, before we really get a sense of who they are. Is the purpose of this to set up a fusion between character and viewer? Who really knows. In addition, there are many points of view to juggle. There is an omniscient narrator carrying us along, as well as internal monologues, and a camera that sometimes drifts aimlessly as if it has become bored of its subjects.

I honestly don't have enough time to spend on this as I would like (I'm currently taking advantage of friends' hospitality until the 1st when my apartment becomes mine). But here's what I've got:

Chicago Bound and Bueller... Bueller...?

via

In 1 day and about 5 hours I will be relocating from Rochester, NY to Chicago, IL. Could I have picked a more refined cinematic representation of the Windy City? Honestly, this is the first one that came to mind. It's a fantastic representation of the city itself. Also, the longing for such an epic tale of truancy is never far from my heart. It's been a while since I was actually in high school, but everyone has that day when they fantasize about escape. Most people don't manage the style of Ferris, though. Most people call in sick and watch his exploits on TV, because this movie is on every other day. But then again, not everyone has such a fantastic city to play around in, and that's what escapism is all about. Thank you, Ferris Bueller.

p.s. Anyone heard of the Ferris Bueller challenge?

Happy Birthday, Beautiful

Exit Through the Gift Shop and some ravings on representation

On a whim, more because I felt like going out to a particular theater than I felt like seeing a particular film, I saw Exit Through the Gift Shop. It was actually a really rewarding experience, and a unique one. As someone who doesn't generally gravitate towards documentaries, I can say that they are refreshing every one in a while. And just like any film I sit down to, except on rare occasions, I end up being relatively engrossed, traditional narrative or no.

The Gleaners and I

So, as excited as I was to see Metropolis... it ended up slipping my mind completely. I came home from work absolutely starving, and at the prospect of going out for Mexican food, I forgot anything else. I felt very stupid when I realized what I had done, but I don't entirely regret it.

Sad as I was to miss that, I did pick up this Agnes Varda documentary, which I described to everyone around me as "a French documentary about gleaning," revealing that it is no mystery how I end up watching my movies alone on the couch with a mug of coffee. This is a poor description of what this film is, but I guess I didn't bother to elevate its charms much, since I knew I would end up watching it alone, regardless.

Pauline a la Plage

Eric Rohmer's Pauline a la Plage has a nice sense of theatricality about it, which comes from the centrality of the dialogue, and the downplaying of visual style. The swinging gate of the beach house operates as a velvet curtain, framing the narrative and isolating it within this sun-soaked Eden. Having set the stage, Rohmer has only to set up the camera and let the comedy of errors unfold. This styling is anything but passive, though, as the hapless young people are strategically grouped within the frame. The camera is often static, allowing the characters to wax poetic about the intricacies of love, as if delivering soliloquies on a stage.

Oh no, oh my

I'm a bad blogger

It's true. There's a lot going on in my life right now. Namely, I'm moving from Rochester, NY to Chicago. Yes! It will be good for me in the long run, but as it turns out, there's a lot involved in transplanting oneself.

So I will not be posting as regularly, but I have no plans to stop. For example, I am going to see the new restoration of Metropolis. Afterwords, I don't see how I will stop my eager little fingers from tapping away at my laptop keyboard. See you then, if not sooner.

Double Dose: Delicatessen and Shutter Island

By coincidence I saw Delicatessen and Shutter Island relatively close to one another. They have almost nothing in common, save for one thing, which is actually kind of an interesting similarity. Both of these take place totally in one isolated setting. And this is important element in both. The house in Delicatessen is a self-contained universe, essentially a microcosm of the brutal life outside of it, while Shutter Island is equally isolated, operating as a metaphor for the human mind, as well as serving practical purposes in support of the narrative.

Delicatessen

Objectify

Night Nurse

I recently became interested in pre-code films, and I am always interested in Barbara Stanwyck. At the intersection of these two interests is Night Nurse, one of her earliest films. She's quite baby-faced in it, and sort of green-seeming in comparison to her later persona, although she's still great in this. Accompanying this movie on the "Forbidden Hollywood" collection is a documentary about pre-code Hollywood entitled Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-code Hollywood. I learned quite a bit from it. For instance, the Hay's code was actually written prior to the release of most of the films that are now considered "pre-code." The stricter enforcement of the code had to do with America's economic climate, and the national attitudes that went along with it. As soon as the flux was over, Americans wished to return to a state of normalcy, which include good old conservative values. Hollywood films really do serve as an excellent barometer for national attitudes, which is one of the things that makes old Hollywood so fascinating. As much as I dislike most of what the Hollywood machine cranks out these days, I wonder what they will say about us as a people when we look back in a decade or so at Shrek 15 and Iron Man 2, or The Blind Side.

The Man Who Wasn't There

I still love you, but I've kept you hanging on. I sincerely apologize. It only took me about two weeks to get this post up.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

In the year 1900 in Australia, a group of girls from Appleyard College, which seems to be little more than a bourgeoisie finishing school, go on a picnic to Hanging Rock, a beautiful, and craggy geological formation on the edge of the bush. Several students and one of their teachers vanish without a trace. This story is rumored to be based on truth, but as far as I can tell, it is entirely fictional.

In the novel upon which Picnic at Hanging Rock is based, the author actually included an explanation of what happened to the girls who disappeared. When it was published, this piece was left out because the story is so much stronger without it. One of the prettiest of the differences between fiction and real life is that in the fictional realm, no explanation is necessary. Real life doesn't offer that kind of poetic power. If the girls had disappeared in real life, there would be an answer somewhere, and during sweeps season, the hard-working scientists on CSI would find it. In Peter Weir's adaptation of Picnic, there is no causal explanation, no physical evidence, only speculation that the girls did not belong in the world they found themselves in, and thus, ceased to exist.

The Land That Time Forgot

I caught this cinematic gem on TCM today. To make a long story short, a group of people find an island upon which dinosaurs and primitive humans live together against a backdrop of volcanoes and oil pits. The finer points remain undeveloped, and the narrative concentrates more on lava and dinosaur wars than the explanation of why this all exists in the first place. Naturally, it is a better experience as a result.

When I say "undeveloped," I mean that there is relatively casual introduction of a theory that each living thing on this island goes through the entire stages of evolution in its lifetime. There is a quick shot of women squatting in a fountain, supposedly laying eggs, and then the situation devolves into volcanic eruption and neanderthal abduction. But who really cares about that stuff? Show me more dinosaur fights.

A Serious Man

Or as I like to refer to it: A Srs Man. That's the title for the Internet generation. This is a fairly complicated film that can be summarized relatively succinctly as a movie about the search for meaning in an entropic universe. Kind of like honing in on an elusive television signal in a vast, empty sky.

Wild at heart and weird on top

There's a long and boring story about how I saw this movie for the first time, and was really too young and inexperienced to comprehend it. I didn't quickly forget what I saw, but it was a few years before I really "got it" in any profound way. It was my first David Lynch movie. After I saw it the second time, it really clicked for me. In a big, big way. I credit this film almost entirely with my love of cinema. Well, that's kind of a big claim. But it was one of the earlier times when I was really moved by film making and style, as opposed to narrative content.

Wild At Heart

fire

Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution

I'm going to hurriedly scribble some thoughts on this one. It's been a few weeks since I saw this now, and I've got a backlog of films, most of which will not make it on here. Anyway. I don't remember how I discovered the existence of this movie, but as soon as I learned of this Godard-directed, pastichey sci-fi noir, I leaped upon it immediately, like a moth to the proverbial flame! In a traditional sense, it is very noirish indeed. Godard makes something out of almost nothing, by which I mean, the budget. Most of the scenes are indoors, and except for some flashing lights and machinery, Alphaville could be any city, anywhere. Much of it could have been filmed in someone's basement or high school hallways.

The White Ribbon

I'll make this one relatively brief, mostly because it's so hard to know where to begin. Watching Haneke's films I always feel like I'm being taunted by a being whose intelligence is far greater than my own. His films are incredibly open ended, leaving some viewers claiming that there are no answers, while some claim with positivity that they know just what he was aiming for (check out the imdb boards). To me, Haneke is brilliant. He's the only director I can think of who is a master of visually storytelling, yet manages to make a movie, purposefully eliminating what other filmmakers would consider key scenes, only to have the film turn out better for it. In the White Ribbon, there is a masterful play of show and tell. Haneke makes choices that might be completely wrong in the hands of someone less capable.

Haneke manages to straddle some elusive barrier between subtlety of message and overtness. I mean, it's a morality play shot in high contrast black and white; that's pretty blatant metaphor. Also, it deals with the oppressed children in a German rural township who will grow up to be the Nazi generation. Yet, there's a profound deepness to his work, and i think it somehow hearkens back to what he chooses to show and what he doesn't. He doesn't condescend to his audience by handing them the answers on a platter. His films reflect a world where there are no easy answers.

The movie depicts a period of time, about a year in length, in which a serious of increasingly violent crimes are committed. Almost every single one happens off screen; we only see some of the aftermath--a body, a boy crying. Rather than cutting within the scene, Haneke tends to position the camera, then having his subjects walk in and out of the frame. Once in a while he will pivot the camera to follow them, but the camera remains stationary. He uses this method in the powerful scene depicting the punishment of two of the priest's children. They enter a room at the end of the hall, closing the door behind them. The camera rests, statically, and gradually we hear the sounds of whipping issuing from behind it. It has been said of Haneke that he likes to test the modern audience and its desire to witness violence acts; therefore, he deprives them of that pleasure. Here, denying us access makes the punishment even more shaming. The rest of the missing scenes work in a different way, because we are able to imagine any number of people executing the crimes. And forcing the audience to use their imagination in this way, makes even us possible perpetrators.

In another scene, the school teacher (Christian Friedel) witnesses one of these children, balancing tenuously on the railing of a bridge. The teacher anxiously yells for him to come down; the child claims, inscrutably, that he gave God a chance to punish him, but God didn't take the chance, so he must want him to live. Likening his parents, the highest authority he knows, to God, creates the oppressive state of ignominy leading to his and the other childrens' sociopathy. Throughout the film, we bear witness to the adults' hypocrisy. Their adulterous and incestuous crimes go unpunished, while the children are tied to their beds to prevent masturbation, or beaten for staying out too late (although what we are meant to assume they are doing might be deserving of such a punishment, or worse).

Did the children commit these crimes? Probably, yes. But Haneke, as he has done in the past, implicates everyone in these violent occurrences. Directly or indirectly, nearly everyone is responsible.

(image the first)
(image the second)
(image the third)

Les Diaboliques

If this movie seems somewhat dated now, it's only because it set the precedent for movies of its kind. It is a well-known influence on Psycho, for instance. I think it probably operates in a different way now than when it was first released. Any modern viewer who is even partially literate in the thriller genre will have a pretty good idea of how it might turn out. In that case, the thrills lie in the movement from point A to the inevitable point B. And you can revel in the filmmaking that takes you there. In Les Diabolique, Michel Delassalle's (Paul Meurisse) wife, Christina (Vera Clouzot) and mistress, Nicole (Simone Signoret) conspire to kill him. This plan is already in place at the outset of the film; his murder takes place in the first 45 minutes or so. From the on, the narrative is driven by Christina's contrition, fear and consequential hysteria.

The scene above foreshadows the coming events, and demonstrates the power relationships pretty nicely. In contrast to Michel and Nicole, Christina is brittle and weak, with a heart condition to accompany her emotional fragility. Her already diminutive appearance is accentuated by the school girl braids that adorn her head throughout the film. She is dominated by all the characters around her, including Nicole, who pushes her to carry through with their homicidal plans.

Close ups! Reaction shots!

Due to the nature of Michel's death, there is an understandable focus on liquids. The opening credits take place over an abstract sort of background that is later revealed to be the swimming pool in the school yard. Bathtubs and pools are filled and emptied, as are pharmaceutically altered wine bottles, like the one that leads to Michel's immobilization. At one point, Plantiveau (Jean Brochard), the caretaker compares a full bottle to the soul, which, as we reflect on the doctored wine from a few scenes earlier, adds a new level to Christina's religious guilt about her actions. I also like to think there's some Stygian metaphor here, particularly in the many images of the murky pool water. The image above is very reaper-esque to me. There is also a sense of fatalism as Christina waits for the caretaker to discover the body once he has drained the pool. Meanwhile, the boys behind her are reciting their language lesson, conjugating the verb "to find."

The best part of the film is the denouement, of course. Where the film, which has been relatively fast paced up until this point, slows down dramatically. The sense of space becomes drastically different, as well. The hallways that the frightened Christina stumbles through seem endless and labyrinthine. The way the sequence is edited, it is nearly impossible to ascertain where Christine is in the house and whether she is the one following or the one being followed.

(Spoilers) Another thing I like about this ending is the way in which it recalls an earlier moment in the film where Christina notes that she her only wish is that Michel would be aware that she had killed him. In a similar fashion, Christina will never know exactly how her own death came about. She is positive that she has committed murder, and that she is a murderer. Therefore, it is true. It doesn't matter that Michel was never actually dead. She still intended to kill him, and took all the necessary steps to ensure that it happened. In the end, they are all sinners; they are all devils.