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.