Criterion Collection Reviews 2014-2021
The idea that I would watch all of the titles of the Criterion Collection was first made possible by the emergence of streaming platforms. I remember watching Criterion Collection titles on both Netflix and then a dedicated Hulu channel back in 2013, 2014. The second enabling circumstance was the end of my marriage which gave me several months of solitude where I could actually sit around in my house and watch long, boring, foreign movies without anyone wanting me to do anything else. After I started dating my current partner, about a year later, I simply didn't have the time or inclination to sit down and watch these titles. There was a brief revival of interest in my part in 2021 when the Criterion Channel emerged as a stand alone streaming service, but again, there simply wasn't the time for me to be sitting, alone, watching these films, which is the only practical way to do it, because they are long, often boring and often complicated.
Mostly what I remember from the Criterion Collection escapade are the films of the 1950's from Japan, Sweden and Italy. Even though it is a subject that never comes up, I feel well-grounded in the world of those films. If Ingmar Bergman or Frederic Fellini ever comes up in conversation I've got five to ten minutes of plausible material.
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It's also worth mentioning here that the Criterion Collection subculture is one of the saddest I've encountered in the world of culture. I continue to be a member of the Facebook group of Criterion diehards and they are a sad bunch. It's ironic that even though this blog has the vibe of a collector-completist and I actually make vinyl records and sell them I basically despise the culture of collectible artistic artifacts, i.e. book collectors, vinyl record collectors, dvd collectors.
Nowhere is that attitude more apparent than in my utter abandonment of writing about movies in the past few years.
Published 2014
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975)
d. Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta
Criterion Collection #177
I guess I haven't mentioned many of the German Criterion Collection films by Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog because I've seen them all. Werner Herzog especially- Many of the recent films in the theaters. Soooo.... Scholndorff, who has seven films in the Criterion Collection, is like the most famous German director who's films I've seen or heard mentioned by anyone at any time in my entire life.
Both Katharina Blum and Young Torless, the other Schlondorff film I've seen, are versions of literary novels. Schlondorff is pretty on the record about not wanting to write movies, and his choices of source material within the German world certainly limited his appeal in the English speaking film markets.
Katharina Blum is a young divorcee in 70s Germany who has the misfortune of falling in love with a terrorist/army deserter. She is hounded by the press after her arrest on suspicion of aiding a terrorist. The "shocking" ending involves her murdering the reporter responsible for tarnishing her name AND the fact that she is, actually, a communist sympathizer. At least that is how I read The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. The psycho sexual nature of the abuse she suffers at the hands of the "system" is a point of emphasis in the film: the obscene phone calls and greeting cards she received are harped upon, repeatedly.
That sexual element is a kind of thematic link to the subject of "internet fame"- the tabloid culture that is the primary target of this movie. Like then, is now, unwanted attention from the media can have a very rapey element, and Katharina Blum is a kind of rape at the hands of strangers parable, compete with a revenge fantasy tacked on at the end.
Published 2014
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
d. Victor Erce
Criterion Collection #351
I know my quest to watch every Criterion Collection film AND read all 1001 Books listed in the 2006 edition of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, but I am making progress. As I write this I am accumulating the harder to obtain titles in the period between 1900 and 1920 in 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. Criterion Collection just re-upped with Hulu- making it more likely that additional titles will join those already available.
Initially released in 1973, the Criterion Collection of The Spirit of the Beehive released in 2006 was hailed at the time as an excellent version of an all-time classic film. The Spirit of the Beehive has a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from the important 2006 Criterion Collection edition release- with 19 favorable critical reviews- most from the 2006 DVD release.
The Spirit of the Beehive is a film set in the 1940s in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, made during the 1970s, while Franco was still in power, so it's a movie that is elipitically "about" Spain under Frcianco while actually telling the very non-political story of a little girl, played by the immortal Ana Torrent, who becomes obsessed with Frankenstein after seeing the movie in her rural village.
The tale unfolds in a pace reminiscent of Japanese cinema: A LOT of static composition and lingering images of interiors. Specifically, director Erce seems inspired by Ozu. This point is made by film scholar Linda Ehrlich in a featurette that is basically a 15 minute film professor lecture on the film. Based on her material, it seems like The Spirit of the Beehive was subjected to a good deal of 90s style academic film criticism. I'm not sure any of that would really add to a movie that is classic and enduring because it is delicate and vague.
There is a lot you could say about The Spirit of the Beehive, but that seems like its besides the point.
Published 2014
Shadows (1959)
d. John Cassavetes
Criterion Collection #251
Part of John Cassavetes: Five Films
Criterion Collection #250
Ever since I discovered John Cassavetes via a Le Tigre song reference, he's been presented as a take it or leave it proposition. The lyric in the Le Tigre song is, "What's your take on, Cassavetes? Genius? Alcoholic!" This trope is mirrored in much of the critical literature discussing his films within the Criterion Collection. The Criterion Collection John Cassavetes: Five Films includes Shadows- which is his first feature, Faces (1968), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) & Opening Night (1977) are all amazing films, each and every one. Additionally, he was the first figure in the American Independent Film Movement. Saying you dislike Cassavetes is tantamount to saying you hate independent film. I mean even if you have some kind of problem with Cassavetes as a human being, I just don't see how that in any way compromises the importance of his art AND his status as an independent producer of art and artist simultaneously.
Shadows, shot over a period of 2-3 years and compiled largely from two separate versions of the same story shot more than a year part- cost 40,000. Released in 1959, the same year as Godard's Breathless, its impossible to watch Shadows and not consider/compare it to Breathless and other films of the French New Wave. However even a cursory consideration of the two films leads the viewer to the inevitable conclusion that Shadows was just raw as fuck. Precisely how raw is brought into focus by the accompanying feature-ette about the restoration process that preceded the re-release of the restored version of the film that is available for viewing on the Criterion Collection Hulu plus channel.
Shadows is transparently a revolutionary film by virtue of its subject matter, technique, style, sensibility and mode of production. It is loosely "about" an interracial brother/brother/sister combo and their circle of musical/literary friends. Hugh, the older brother, is a dark skinned African American. Lelia, the younger sister, is (thought played by a white lady) light skinned African American who effortlessly "passes" for white in the desegregated world of books and music in late 1950s New York City. The depiction of the intellectual milieu of late 1950s New York- filled with be bop jazz, party talk about existentialism, and self conscious Beats who are anxious to avoid any discussion of Beats, will ring a bell both with those familiar with the era in question or hipsters in any generation.
The technique: using non-actors, shooting in a variety of lighting conditions and scenery gives Shadows (and all of Cassavetes films) a pulsing energy which has come to define the style of Independent film, as well as becoming highly influential within Hollywood itself. I could go on. I guess I just don't see the argument AGAINST Cassavetes AT ALL and I think if you don''t like Cassavetes you are ignorant or haven't watched his hits. Go watch his hits.
Movie Review
The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)
d. William Dieterle
Criterion Collection #214
I guess this is what you would call a "lost classic." Based on a now forgotten short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, The Devil and Daniel Webster is about a small New England farmer who hits a run of bad luck and sells his soul to the devil in exchange for seven years of fortune. The Devil or "Mr. Scratch" is memorably depicted by Walter Huston in a "worth it just to see him" kind of way. His Mr. Scratch is more akin to a character our of a 90s independent film then one from an American film shot in the early 1940s.
The Devil and Daniel Webster is really ABOUT Daniel Webster and America in a way that strikes a contemporary viewer as being, to say the least, overly sentimental. That's more a flaw of the source material then the film itself, which uses expressionistic effects and surreal dream time sequences to elevate the film far above the short story which spawned it.
Watching The Devil and Daniel Webster almost requires reading the two(!) accompanying essays at the Criterion Collection website. The 2003 essay by Tom Piazza about the performance of Walter Huston as Mr. Scratch, and the 1990s essay about the troubled post release and restoration history of the film; both give the needed background to really get into the mode of the film. Without context, a modern viewer is likely to want to take a pass after the first ten minutes.
Movie Review
Only Lovers Left Alive (2014)
d. Jim Jarmusch
The release of a new Jim Jarmusch film is a rare and exciting event for anyone interested in Criterion Collection type films. Jarmusch already has three features in the Criterion Collection proper: Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law, Mystery Train and Night on Earth (??) He also has multiple titles that probably worthy of the Criterion Collection treatment: Ghost Dog and Dead Man. One Bill Murray starring certified indie hit, Broken Flowers (13 million dollar domestic box office.) Jarmusch averages approximately one film every four years. His last movie, The Limits of Control, released in 2009, was his biggest flop.
Your average Jim Jarmusch joint clocks between 1 and 3 million in box office. He has resolutely maintained his independence as a film maker, which I think means that he does not do work for hire. It doesn't mean that he distributes his own films. Only Lovers Left Alive is released by Sony Classics and his two films before that were Focus Features.
It's a fair observation 20 plus years in that Jim Jarmusch is not for everyone. When you compare his box office results to similar film makers like David Lynch, the Coen Brothers or other well known indie film makers like Wes Anderson that share a similar "target audience" Jarmusch will inevitably have a smaller audience.
This is perhaps understandable in terms of Jarmusch's use of a slow, contemplative style that links all of his films with the work of Italian proto-auteur Michelangelo Antonioni. Jarmusch evokes comments from the Audience similar to critical responses to Antonioni, namely that his movies are slow and boring. Saying that a specific Jarmusch film is "slow or boring" is not a particularly valid point because the films are supposed to be like that. He's drawing on a half century of international cinematic language, and it is no surprise that his foreign box office is often double or triple that of the US box office.
The Antonioni connection is particularly significant in the context of any discussion of the artistic merit of Only Lovers Left Alive because Tilda Swinton, the vampire Eve, is to Jarmusch what Monica Vitti in L'Aventurra, La Notte, L'eclisse, and Red Desert, is to Antonioni's in his most enduring films. To put it bluntly, if you want an Audience to sit and stare at the screen for an hour and a half while nothing much happens, put a woman (and/or man) in the frame who merits that much attention. Tilda Swinton is that woman (or man depending on the role.)
For a film maker to find such a muse so far into his career seems unusual, if I was to think of examples: Godard with Anna Karina, Antonioni with Vitti, Tarantino with Travolta, I would say the muse usually shows up earlier rather than later. But Jarmusch has never been in much of a hurry has he? His progression, from defiantly "art house" pictures, to genre experiments, to some kind of synthesis of the two is typical of that of the independent auteur trying to adhere both to a specific artistic vision AND continue to make films.
In framing Only Lovers Left Alive as a "vampire movie" Jarmusch has pulled off the clever tactic of cloaking an art house wolf in genre sheeps clothing. It is a tried and true tradition more than a half century old at this point. Ghost Dog and Dead Man represent earlier, and in my opinion less
successful attempts to do much the same thing that he accomplishes in Only Lovers Left Alive.
Most surprising about Only Lovers Left Alive is the humor, something awol from many of his reent efforts. I laughed aloud repeatedly in Only Lovers Left Alive- it was truly a funny movie, and cool, and thoughtful. The vampires are the artists, the zombies are the audiences, and the facilitators. Only Lovers Left Alive is a metaphor about the life of the Artist in the contemporary world.
Published 2014
Il Posto (1961)
d. Ermanno Olmi
Criterion Collection #194
Certain to be a hit with people who fetishize early 1960s Europe, Il Posto is an intimate look at a young boy from the suburbs who goes to work for a faceless corporation in post war Milan. Although the brief description might make Il Posto sound like a late 60s Godardian nightmare, the reality is that Il Posto is one of the warmer Italian films of that period, with a real sympathy and fondness for young Dominico, played by Sandro Panserio. Loredanno Detto is alluring as his love interest, Antonietta.
For me, the best scenes took place during their lunch break, as they wander the cityscape of late 50s/early 60s Milan and do memorable things like having espresso or looking in store windows. It's enough to make me wish I was there, and that I could travel back in time. There's a palpable sense of innocence and naivete that is a far cry from Antonioni's bleak-ass existentialism, and that sense does set Il Posto apart from contemporary Italian films
Published 2014
Dillinger Is Dead (1969)
d. Marco Ferreri
Criterion Collection #506
Ferreri is not one of the better known Italian directors of the 60s/70s, but he evidently has his fans among the lords of the Criterion Collection, who call Dillinger Is Dead a "magnificently inscrutable masterpiece." Well it is inscrutable. Near as I can tell, the whole movie is "Man" played by Michel Picolli, coming home from his job where he designs gas masks (satire alert!) to his "Wife"(Anita Pallenberg.) He farts around in his house: feeding his wife pills, cooking a meal, and playing with a pistol. He listens to music. Then, five minutes before the end of the film he puts a pillow over his sleeping wives face and shoots her in the head three times, before driving off and joining the crew of a Tahiti bound yacht as a chef.
Not entirely sure why Dillinger is Dead would be hailed as a masterpiece, but there you go.
Movie Review
Elena and Her Men (1956)
d. Jean Renoir
Criterion Collection #244
Another popular category within the Criterion Collection is the lighter works of directors who are generally considered to be "serious" types. Elena and Her Men, a romantic comedy starring Ingrid Bergman as a Polish Princess, fits neatly into this category. Set after the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, Bergman's Princess Elena Sorokowska is the object of affection for multiple men. You've got Henri de Chevincourt, a quiet but influential aristocrat who prefers to stay out of the limelight, then you've got General Rollan, who is being pushed by his supporters to assume dictatorial powers in the aftermath of a border dispute over a "captured" French observation balloon.
I don't think Elena and Her Men is supposed to be anything other than light comedy, but a movie about a potential dictator in the aftermath of World War II seems like a strange choice for a romantic comedy. Throughout the film, Bergman is pushed to use her influence with the General to get him to become Dictator, but ultimately she tells him to follow his heart and helps him escape his fate by means of kissing his romantic revival (she makes out with the revival in front of the assembled masses while the General slips out the front door.)
For me, 85% of the pleasure of watching this movie came from Bergman's performance and 15% from the post-Franco-Prussian War milieu. Renoir does a stylish, professional job executing his task, but I can see why the New Wave critics might have found films like this wanting.
Movie Review
Secret Honor (1984)
d. Robert Altman
Criterion Collection #257
Another delightful surprise from the interior of the Criterion Collection, this is a Robert Altman directed version of a one man play featuring Richard Nixon, drunk and alone in his house in New Jersey, dictating to a tape recorder and ruminating about his past, his presidency and a shadowy conspiracy of global capitalists who controlled his rise to power.
In this film/play, Watergate was a ruse devised by Nixon himself to "get out." The reason to watch is Phillip Baker Hall playing Nixon. Hall is familiar to most people for his roles in Paul Thomas Anderson films, starting with Hard Eight (Sydney) but when Secret Honor came out in 1984 he was a nobody. Hall is nothing but extraordinary.
I wasn't expecting to actually be engaged by 90 minutes of Nixon ranting, but I found myself googling his off hand references and learned a ton about Nixon era conspiracies involving the Bohemian Grove, the Bay of Pigs, and the Committee of 100. Murray Choitner- the shadowy campaign manager. It was an interesting period in history. Richard Nixon was an interesting guy. Surely any hard feelings of him must be mitigated in light
Movie Review
That Hamilton Woman (1941)
d. Alexander Korda
Criterion Collection #487
I'll watch the shit out of an Alexander Korda picture. They are... delightful, like a series of films from an alternate universe where Hollywood came via London. His movies are Hollywood type pictures. The Thief of Baghdad is one of the first special effects spectaculars, The Four Feathers is a War Picture. That Hamilton Woman was shot during World War II on a very limited budget with the goal of making a film that would prop up morale in England during the early stages of the war. That Hamilton Woman stars Vivien Leigh as Lady Hamilton and Laurence Oliver as her adulterous lover and Naval hero, Lord Nelson.
Lady Hamilton is a real life lady who had an adulterous (and child producing) affair with Lord Admiral Nelson during the time of his greatest military triumphs. Her consort was co-Naval officer Admiral Hamilton. The woman was, in real life, a former show girl (and maybe prositute?) who is traded by her young aristocratic lover to his uncle (Admiral Hamilton) who is much older. Lady Hamilton meets Nelson in Italy and their passionate affair comes all the way back to London, where society is scandalized.
The last thirty minutes of the two hour run-time is highlighted by a French/English Naval battle that recalls the action scenes of Four Feathers and the special effects sequences of The Thief of Baghdad. Of course, Leigh and Olivier were in the midst of their own adulterous affair, mimicking the plot of the film. As a bonus you get an impassioned
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (1968)
by William Greaves
Criterion Collection #360
The Criterion Collection calls Symbiopsychotaxiplasm a one of a kind film, and it is a pretty amazing piece of work: A movie about movie making, made by an African American film maker in 1968. Greaves is best known as a documentarian, prior to making this film he worked in Canada on educational films (Boards of Canada are named after these films.)
Although Symbiopsychotaxiplasm clearly echoes some of the stylistic contributions of the French New Wave, Greaves own status as a documentary filmmaker informs Symbiopsychotaxiplasm throughout. Although it first appears to shambolic, the interplay between Greaves, "playing" himself as the director of the film, the crew, and the actors is intriguing and at times it's like watching a Robert Altman movie from the next decade.
There's not much a plot, just the two characters endlessly repeating a single scene where they fight about the guy possibly being a homosexual. The rest of the hour and fifteen minutes is either the actors complaining, Greaves counseling the actors, and the crew complaining about Greaves and debating his merit as a film maker. The extent to which the director William Greaves is the "real" Greaves is unclear, certainly the characters in Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is at times brutally negative about his capabilities as a film maker in the film-within-a-film. Hard to believe this is Greaves only film in the Criterion Collection, and that I'd never heard of William Greaves before watching this film.
Movie Review
Sweetie (1989)
d. Jane Campion
Criterion Collection #356
Adjusted for inflation Jane Campion's, The Piano grossed over 70 million USD. However it's Sweetie, her first feature, that interests me, mostly because it's just so weird. The Piano was nominated for three Academy Awards and won two, for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, but Sweetie is no less of a revelation. It's hard not to view Sweetie through the lense of its Australian-ness. The "Australian Literature" label on this blog has two entries, both films (Walkabout and The Last Wave.) Through 1929 there are exactly zero Australian books and one book written by a Kiwi (Katherine Mansfield was born in New Zealand but raised and lived in England. I'm also totally unfamiliar with any Australian painters or studio artists of note.
That makes film Australia's primary contribution to world culture. Campion was a clear and distinct female voice at a time when there were few female auteurs operating anywhere in the world. Part of the enduring quality of Sweetie is the visual style of the film, with off-kilter camera angles and frame composition. Another part is the performance of the two central actresses Lemon as Sweetie and Karen Colston as her frigid sister Kay. Sweetie is a mentally handicapped loud nightmare and the family dynamic is twisted indeed. There may or may not be an incest theme- everyone who has seen or written the film mentions it, and the film appears to keep it open ended (whether the Father molested Sweetie and or Kay.)
For sure, you can't forget the character of Sweetie. Truly immortal performance.
Movie Review
La strada (1954)
d. Federico Fellini
Criterion Collection #219
Federico Fellini is a core member of the Criterion Collection. In the United States, his name is/was typically invoked in the same way that people call something "Lynchian"(David Lynch) today: Having a surreal and/or grotesque visual quality. Criterion Collection is more concerned with showing the whole film maker than dwelling on Fellini's more extreme films. Satyricon, the most "Fellini-esque" of his films, does not even have a Criterion Collection release, and his early films which show is development as a neo-realist are heavily featured.
La strada is notable simply because it was Fellini's first international hit, and secured him an Audience (and funding) for his films for several decades. It also made a star of his wife, Giulietta Masina, who plays the mildly retarded Gelsomina Di Constanzo. At the start of the picture, Giuletta is essentially sold to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a travelling strong man who was previously "married" to Giuletta's older sister. Anthony Quinn, an American actor, is a brutal, terrifying thug and we watch the situation go from bad to worse between the two of them, with Zampano unable to do anything save bully and cajole, and Gelsomina foregoing several opportunities to ditch Zampano in favor of making pathetic ( and failed) attempts to "win him over."
Considering the quality of the two lead performances, I'd say it's easy for a contemporary viewer to see what all the fuss was about, and La strada is certainly a good starting point for someone looking to "get" the work of Federico Fellini.
Movie Review
The Threepenny Opera (1931)
d.Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Criterion Collection #405
The addition of sound to film was actually a set back for the art of film, in that recording sound with a motion picture required using a huge, immobile apparatus that prevented the movie camera from moving around the set, making the resulting sound pictures very static and uninteresting in terms of the film art. While The Threepenny Opera by Georg Wilhelm Pabst is an example of expressionist cinema, the film is based on Brecht's adaptation of a 1920s revival of the 18th century work "Beggars Opera." Originally meant as an iteration of the "Penny Dreadful" genre in the late 18th century, a revival in London in the 1920s made it way to Germany via the English speaking mistress of Bertolt Brecht.
Brecht used Kurt Weill to write the music for his version, and it would be these tunes that would end symbolizing the Weimar Republic for generations of Audiences. The most famous song is of course, "Mack the Knife" a song which topped the US charts in the 1950s during the Rat Pack era.
So yeah, it's a German expressionist version of a Brecht version of a 1920s English revival of an 18th century English popular opera. What else do you need to know? Oh, and it is close to 2 hours long, and there is a fifty minute documentary that Hulu Plus has thoughtfully included.
It is the musical numbers that stick with you, the impressive quality of the sound in 1931 and Pabsts' expressionist camera techniques- shadows and all that.
Movie Review
Before the Rain (1994)
d. Milcho Manchevski
Criterion Collection #436
It is hard not to associate Before the Rain with Kieslowski's Colors trilogy. Kieslowski was Polish, and Manchesvski is Macedonian what there is something memorably "European" about the visual look and storytelling feel of both Artists binds the four films together on an emotional level. Before the Rain was an American hit, and remains the only Macedonian sponsored film to be nominated for Best Foreign Film for the Academy Awards.
Manchesvski came from a background of helming music videos in the United States, and it is clear from the opening scenes that Manchevski has a visual style that summons to mind Enya and 90s U2. Although Before the Rain is about the violence that wracked the Balkans in the early 1990s, it's not a specifically Macedonian milleu- Macedonia having been the only Balkan nation to escape widespread violence. Manchevski also provides a story line centered in London, and his directorial touch is smooth whether he's in the outback of.... Bosnia? Albania? or shooting in downtown London.
It's easy to see why Before the Rain struck a court with international audiences, it seems almost perfect for the 1990s American Arthouse circuit that I experienced in the Bay Area and Washington DC growing up and going to school. It's very much a situation where if you liked the Colors trilogy by Kieslowski, you'll like Before the Rain.
Movie Review
An Angel at My Table (1990)
by Jane Campion
Criterion Collection #301
An Angel At My Table is Jane Campion's 1990 bio-pic on New Zealand author Janet Frame. Frame was notably confined to a mental institution for 8 years in her mid 20s, and given "over 200 rounds of electro-shock," as the story goes, she was rescued from a "fast-track lobotomy" at the last minute when her book of short-stories won an award. She was hastily deemed "cured" (decades later a board of English psychiatrists would issue a ruling that she was never schizophrenic). Her new found status as a prize winning author was sufficient to get her a grant to travel to Europe, England and Spain in particular, where she was able to "live life."
With a biography that itself evokes many of the literary themes of the mid to late 20th century: mental illness, early death of a sibling, loneliness, etc. there is an obvious question about whether (to quote the accompanying Criterion Collection essay by Amy Taubin, "Frame's autobiography is fictional or her fiction autobiographical or both." Under both formulations, it makes for a good movie, or miniseries for that matter. An Angel at My Table was originally shot as a television series, and its origins are revealed both by the three part one hour episodes (which correspond to the three volumes of her auto biography) and the fairly static "workmanlike" visual style, which is in sharp contrast to the stylistic virtuosity of Sweetie.
The themes of artistic development and being an "outsider" is central to both the 1001 Books project and the Criterion Collection. A high volume of "break through" projects by artists are based on the most interesting aspects of their personal history. "Write about what you know" is a truism of 20th century college education, but a more accurate statement might be "Write about what you are."
Janet Frame is emblematic of an artist turning personal flax into artistic gold, and it is easy to see why Campion, or any other artist would be interested in giving her life story the feature film treatment.
Movie Review
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
d. Alfred Hitchcock
Criterion Collection #696
Criterion Collection edition released 2/18/14.
Alfred Hitchcock arrived in Hollywood and released two films in 1940: Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent. Both were nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, Rebecca won, but Foreign Correspondent is probably the more relevant film in 2014, with a topical "Europe at the cusp of war" background and international spy story plot. John Jones (played by Joel McCrea) is a crime reporter working at a Daily paper somewhere in the United States. The editor, frustrated by the low quality of the reportage coming from his European reporters, sends Jones to the United Kingdom with the explicit direction to interview Dutch minister Van Meer, who "holds the key to war and peace" for unnamed reasons.
He chases Van Meer from London to Amsterdam, where Van Meer is (seemingly) shot in front of his very eyes- HITCHCOCKIAN HI JINKS ENSUE. There is laughter, tears, action sequences, unexpected plot twists, all of the elements of classic Hitchcock, right there the first year he shows up in Hollywood. Hitchcock is truly one of the paragons of artistic and commercial success in the area of film art. He was an inspiration for the "Auteur" concept, with his rigid control of every element of production from casting to, of course, directing.
Published 6/18/15
8 1/2 (1963)
d. Federico Fellini
Criterion Collection #140
One of the peculiarities of watching the Criterion Collection is that you are more likely to see the minor and/or early works of particular canonical director. Minor and early works are more often available and less often have a prior DVD edition, allowing Criterion to essentially introduce the film to their audience. Minor and early works are also more likely to show up on the Criterion Collection Hulu Plus channel, which is why the sudden appearance of 8 1/2 in mid May of this year was such a surprise.
Getting a handle on Fellini without 8 1/2 under your belt is nearly impossible. It's also one of the quintessential "movies about making movies" that seem to substantially define the mindset behind the "art film" as a genre. In it, Marcello Mastroanni plays Guido Anselmi AKA Federico Fellini. The plot concerns Anselmi/Mastroanni/Fellini's trials and tribulations immediately prior to the principle photography portion of a movie he is supposedly making. The movie remains un named and undescribed, but it appears to be a grand, complicated affair.
Anselmi's musings are nearly universal and concern the struggle about whether the creation of art is worth the effort. The role of naysayer is tellingly played by Anouk Aimee as Luisa Anselmi, the wife of the director. She inserts herself into a cozy weekend getaway for the director and his mistress, and it isn't long before she is talking about the lies he creates with his films, and how his art is ultimately self-serving, masturbatory and useless. Ultimately, Anselmi abandons the film, though a cryptic/surreal ending hints that maybe his decision is subject to a later reversal.
Through and through a masterpiece, 8 1/2 is a must if you have Hulu Plus- it was just uploaded, so don't delay in watching it lest they take it down before you get a chance to watch.
Movie Review:
Tess (1979)
d. Roman Polanski
Criterion Collection #697
This my second go at the re-telling of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel, Tess of the D'Ubervilles. I also took a look at the BBC miniseries from 2008, with Gemma Atherton playing Tess. I gave Thomas Hardy a label on this blog because he represents a kind of dark perfection of the late Victorian novel, and the Victorian period really was the high point of pre-modernist fiction. As a heroine, Tess is at the far side of the abyss which have the heroines of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters on the other side. Tess, a murderess, is an unabashedly tragic heroine in a way that both anticipates the future of tragic heroines, embodies his present in the Edwardian Period, and flawlessly harkens back to the prior period of late Victorian fiction represented by Anthony Trollope.
Polanski's Tess is the definitive filmed version, with three 1980 Oscars to its name and a total of six nominations. This three hour long movie also grossed 20 million at the box office, which would be close to sixty million dollars today. The Criterion Collection obviously does not have a problem with Polanski's flight from the United States to avoid facing charges of statutory rape/real rape of a child, but, hey it was the 1970s. At any rate, disliking an artist because they are a monster is the equivalent of saying you don't like any artist, because many of them have issues with people and engage in bad behavior of all sorts. It's not necessary to create great art, but it seems to be a favorite aspect of artistic life. The art they create is separate from their behavior, and exists independently of whatever they do as people.
The box office success and Oscar wins reflect that Polanski really nailed the Victorian novel adaptation Hollywood film genre in 1979. His production is anchored in the landscape of the English countryside, a languid pace allowing him to exploit said countryside for maximum visual impact, and casting Natassja Kinski (who was 19 during filming) as Tess, and these elements were enough to win the movie multiple Oscars.
I think a central fact to understand about the appeal of Hardy's original novel is that it was published in 1891, but covered time in the 1870s. In other words, Hardy was writing about a time period over twenty years ago. This is the same kind of nostalgia embodied by the film, American Graffiti or Grease, a romantic past, but of course with Hardy it turns out terribly badly. The ability of an Artist to succesfully reach back in time and capture the attention of an Audience at the time of the initial reception increases the likelyhood that future Audiences will react similarly. This is in comparison to works that reach the attention of an Audience because of their novelty or timeliness. Those works which initially gain attention because of their novel characteristics are less likely to be appreciated by subsequent audiences.
Movie Review
Revanche (2008)
d. Götz Spielmann
Criterion Collection #502
It's not everyday you watch an Austrian film. Götz Spielmann has a smooth, international style that reminded me of Krzysztof Kieslowski and Atom Egoyan. Revanche splits its time between the seedier precincts of an unnamed German speaking city and the bucolic country side of either Austria or Germany, and Spielmann seems equally drawn to both locales. There are many, many, many contemplative shots of the landscape, typically with a single character in frame, staring off into the distance. Call it Euro cinema, but it seems to happen where you have good cameras and technical staff a need to conserve and limit camera movement and fast cut editing for cost purposes.
| Johannes Krisch plays Alex in Revanche (2008) directed by Gotz Spielmann |
The happy ending comes as a welcome surprise, and Revanche ends more like a Hollywood movie than a dour European art form. Only released in 2008, I have to wonder if and when Gotz Spielmann will make it to Hollywood, and what they will have him do. He is a film maker to watch.
Movie Review
The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)
d. Roberto Rossellini
Criterion Collection #293
Merry Christmas! I like to keep the blog dark on major holidays but writing about The Flowers of St. Francis on Christmas was irresistible. While there are stylistic consistencies between Rossellini's better known Italian neo-realist trailblazers of the same period and this film, the thematic gap is likely to leave viewers double checking whether The Flowers of St. Francis is really a Rossellini picture. There is no hint of world weary irony or cynicism in his portrayal of St. Francis, here simply Francis. Rather the approach is classically hagiographical: a series of well known incidents from the works produced after his death by his followers.
Franciscan monks famously take a vow of poverty, and The Flowers of St, Francis will certainly fill you in on the medieval back story as well as the various ways Francis proved himself to his followers, who are also the "Flowers" in the title (I think.) Francis stands for peace, non-violence and kindness towards others. In the accompanying Criterion Collection essay, the author mentions that in contemporaneous interviews Rossellini compared St. Francis to Gandhi as a way of making the case for the relevance of his film.
Despite the ponderous and religious nature of the subject, the film possesses the quiet beauty of other Rossellini films, and by the end it becomes comparable to his other films and less the stylistic outlier that it at first appears to be.
Movie Review
In Vanda's Room (2000)
d.Pedro Costa
Criterion Collection #510
I feel compelled to restate every so often that there is no higher/pretentious purpose to watching all the Criterion Collection movies and reading all 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. It's just something I do in my spare time. I don't spend much time on these posts either, thus the typos and general lack of attention, and I don't feel bad is only 15 people read a specific post. Really, it just seems to me that in a world where we can get everything at any time it takes a little more than randomly casting about to see what tv series one is going to watch next on Netflix. I will cop to being a fast reader- basically 100 pages an hour, so that is why it appears that I read "so much."
It is not an exaggeration to say that my life prior to the streaming/free everything computer revolution was a constant search for new material to read, watch and listen to. If you didn't work, your choices were limited in terms of what books you could read, what films you could watch, and albums you could listen to. But people need to give examples of things to do beside binge watching all the tv shows of a sitcom in a weekend., or listening the Billboard 100 on free Spotify. So this blog is my idea about how to take advantage of being able to get anything anytime for free. After all what does everyone do with their surfeit of leisure time? Squander it, mostly.
All that says, there were moments during In Vanda's Room, a 2 hour forty five minute movie shot on digital video about a bunch of Portuguese junkies, that triggered the above reflections about why I should even bother. In Vanda's Room is an example of another recurring non-official category of the Criterion Collection, "Movies my 25 year old self would have been super excited about." I'm not saying that my present day self might not also enjoy some of these films, but 25 year old would have been like, out in the street, at bars, telling people about In Vanda's Room.
The two hour forty five minute length is all the more remarkable because Costa shot In Vanda's Room on digital video. Most of the scenes are static shots of the interiors of the junkie squalor chic of the now demolished Lisbon/Lisboa slum, Fountainhas. In Vanda's Room is actually the middle film in a trilogy which is set entirely in Fountainhas prior to demolition. The apartment complex at the center of this film appears to be actually in the process of being demolished during the shooting of the film, multiplying the already strong Verite vibe lent by the simple scene set-ups and digital video contrast. The Vanda of the title is a more-charming-than-most junkie and she is surrounded by a cast of characters who exist both inside and outside the titular room.
According to the Criterion Collection cast list, all the characters play themselves, which makes me want to say that he actually made a movie using junkies. Were they actors? The ambiguity is what sets In Vanda's Room apart from other entries in the Junkie film oeuvre that use recognizable professional actors. It's easy to see the choice to use non-actors in film as cutting across financial and artistic considerations. It is obviously cheaper, particularly in a country with a small domestic film industry. You can also argue that professional actors detract from other more artistically important aspects of the film, like the generation of mood and the mise en scene/composition.
Movie Review
Ikiru (1952)
d. Akira Kurosawa
Criterion Collection #221
Ikiru, directed by Akira Kurosawa, must be one of the most "Criterion Collection" titles within the Criterion Collection, since it satisfies virtually every criterion used to select films for the Criterion Collection AND because it also exemplifies those criterion. If you wanted to describe a generic film that would be included in the Criterion Collection, you would describe Ikiru. As the Criterion Collection product description page puts it, Ikiru is "[c]onsidered by some to be Kurosawa's greatest achievement." By whom, exactly? Ikiru is a work by an acknowledged master of a Foreign cinematic tradition, it is two and half hours long, it wasn't a hit in the United States upon initial release, it's about a guy with stomach cancer, it uses flashbacks and stylized mise en scene to tell a multi-faceted story about the protagonist.
Ikiru has all the qualities that make the Criterion Collection the Criterion Collection, and it also has all the qualities that make the films of Akira Kurosawa the films of Akira Kurosawa, and they are essentially the same qualities. One of the questions I've begun to ponder as I move into double digits with Kurosawa films is where the Western influence stops and the Japanese contribution begins. Of course, Western scholars have historically dwelled on the influence on Kurosawa by Western film, but he was very much a product of Japan and its film culture.
It is easy to see the Japanese contribution in his selection of subjects, which adheres to the Japanese distinction between Jidaigeki and Gendaigeki. The former of these are historical drama (including Samurai films) and the latter are drama's set in the present day. Whereas Western watchers may interpret Kurosawa's Samurai pictures as his take on the Hollywood Western, Japanese watchers will see a typical Jidaigeki influence by American director John Ford. Similarly, a movie like Stray Dogs, which will remind Western watchers of a police procedural/detective story, is a well executed Gendaigeki for Japanese audiences.
Japanese Gendaigeki differ from Western melodrama in that they are less often centered around the traditional Anglo-Western marriage plot, and typically don't deal with the drama of wealthy elites. Rather, the characters are typically normally people, with normal concerns. This day-to-day earthiness can perhaps be explained by Japanese filmmakers being less convinced of the merit of the Romance as a genre. I think it's almost impossible for Western audiences to conceive of a world where the Romance isn't the primary influence on domestic drama in filmed art. With Kurosawa and Japanese filmmaking you have a whole artistic universe not subject to the limiting dictates of romantic artistic convention.
This discussion is appropriate for a discussion of Ikiru because the story of a man dying of stomach cancer, with no wife and an estranged son, is the polar opposite of a romantic story. Literally about death and bureaucracy, Ikiru could only exist outside the world of Western art. One of the major "character traits" of Japanese culture that I've picked up from Japanese film is the deep fatalism of its hero's, and Ikiru is remarkable in that it depicts someone struggling against his destiny, and doing something other than submitting meekly to his preordained fate (dying of stomach cancer.)
| Masaki Kobayashi, director of J-Horror film Kwaidan and also Samurai Rebellioin, was an important Japanese film director in the 1960s. |
Published 1/12/15
Samurai Rebellion (1967)
d. Masaki Kobayashi
Criterion Collection #310
Masaki Kobayashi is better known for his early J-horror classic Kwaidan (also in the Criterion Collection), but Samurai Rebellion is impressive in its own way, with the inestimable Toshiro Mifune playing the lead role as Isaburo Sasashara, an initially faithful vassal in the late 18th century who is forced into rebellion when his liege lord first forces his son to marry a discarded mistress, then seeks her return after an untimely death makes her bastard son the next heir to the local feudal title. Like many Samurai pictures, Samurai Rebellion keeps the potential for sword play close by but reserves actual action sequences until the final act.
Instead, Samurai Rebellion is a rare-for-the-milieu classic "man against the system" tale. Kobayashi focuses his eye on the injustic of the feudal system, and his feudal Japan is a critical perspective that delves deeper into the actual feudal relations between lord and liege in a way typically absent from Japanese Samurai pictures.
Movie Review
Casque d’or (1952)
d. Jacques Becker
Criterion Collection #270
Initially a failure upon release, Casque d'or, a period piece set in and amongst the Apache Dandy-Criminals of the Parisian Belle Epoque at the turn of the 20th century, was revived by the critics of the French New Wave, who saw something endearing in the low life characters and setting. Casque d'or isn't exactly "gritty" or "raw" in the way we think of noir realism after the revolution in appreciation for film noir. It is, after all, a period piece, which stand opposed to everything that the French New Wave stood FOR. Becker worked as a cinematographer with Jean Renoir, and his style reflects the cool, professionalism internationalism of the major cinema markets prior to the earthquake of post-war European film innovation.
Because of that influence, Casque d'Or is almost a "Hollywood" film in terms of the simple moral fairy tale of the plot and the physical attractiveness of the actors. It is not a part of the French New Wave, and viewers looking for experimental camera and plot techniques are advised to stick to Godard.
Movie Review
Harakiri (1962)
d. Masaki Kobayashi
Criterion Collection #309
There are a good number of Criterion Collection titles I've already seen, but not written about. If you add that amount to the 231 films I've covered here, I'm probably closing in on 400 films watched, and that is almost half the collection. Of the films remaining that I haven't written about here and haven't seen already, about half of them are available on Amazon streaming video and the other half... Maybe from the library? I'd need a DVD player? That's really the "end game" portion of the Criterion Collection project.
The reason I bring up all the films I've already seen is that they are without a doubt the "easiest" films on the list- mostly Hollywood pictures- Robocop, Brazil, etc. That means that a disproportionate number of the films I've written about here- the ones I've actually watched as part of the Criterion Collection project, are the 'difficult' Criterion Collection titles. It really gives a distorted view of what the Criterion Collection is about, because I'm leaving out all the "fun" movies.
SO when I say that Harakiri, the 1962 movie by Masaki Kobayashi is about the practice of Japanese Ritual Suicide, I don't want people thinking that EVERY Criterion Collection title is about a Japanese dude falling in love with a ghost, or a 17th century historical drama centered around Seppuku (Japanese Ritual suicide.) In case you are wondering: No, Kobayashi does not employ any techniques to lessen or otherwise mitigate the intensity of a man killing himself by disemboweling himself and in fact heightens it by having a character kill himself using a BAMBOO sword.
The featurette of Japanese film scholar Donald Richie introducing Harakiri is most helpful, and its a reminder about how much those featurettes add to the viewing of a movie you might otherwise not "get." For example, Richie implies that Kobayashi's use of the informal Harakiri instead of the more formal Seppuku is meant to indicate the critical nature of Kobayashi's attitude towards the Samurai conception of honor.
Harakiri works as a criticism of government, and government bureaucracy and in this way it is very much a film of the 1960s, and stands out further from the mainstream of social thought (without being radical) in terms of questioning the idea of justice.
Movie Review
Richard III (1955)
d. Laurence Olivier
Criterion Collection #213
First substantive mention of a work of Shakespeare comes eight years into the history of this blog. Strange- I would think that at least one of Shakespeare's plays would be one of the "1001 Books to Read Before You Die" but I don't pick the titles for them. Shakespeare doesn't dominate the Criterion Collection either, there is Richard III and Henry V, both directed by Olivier. Olivier also stars in Richard III as Richard III and so what you get is a A LOT of Richard III.
It's a fairly timeless classic, and Olivier doesn't try to spin the material any which way. I remember I saw a theater version of this play in San Francisco and Ian McKellen played him as a fascist dictator. This is a traditional, historically accurate version in the style of a 50s Hollywood costume drama, with an incredible performance at the center of the film. Two and a half hours of Shakespeare is actually a watchable title in the context of three hour Japanese films and two hour French and Italian films.
Book Review
Gimmie Shelter (1970)
d. David Maysles, Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin
Criterion Collection #99
Widely known as "the death of the 60s, on film" Gimmie Shelter is also maybe the best music documentary ever made. It was also made by Maysles brothers, who are perhaps the world's most well known documentarians. Their Grey Gardens is another Criterion Collection stalwart and their shorter work Salesmen, about door-to-door Bible salesmen, is also included as a Criterion Collection.
Other than their extraordinary subjects, the Maysles are best known for their low key filmmaking style, but at the same time they appear as characters in their own films, most often as questioners from behind the camera. In Gimmie Shelters, David is largely on screen, since they use editing sessions as a framing device for "flashbacks" that recapture the magic at Altamount, which ended with the Hells Angels stabbing multiple fans.
To recap, at the height of their fame and the 1960s themselves, The Rolling Stones decided they wanted to throw a free concert "for the people of San Francisco" in the spirit of the Summer of Love and Woodstock. They first reached an agreement with the Sears Point speedway, but that deal fell apart on the eve of the concert itself, ironically at least partially over the question of rights to the anticipated concert film.
For whatever reason, The Rolling Stones decided to ask the Hells Angels to help with security, and the Angels were stationed around the stage. During the concert, there was an altercation between the Angels and Meredith Hunter, and 18 year old African American. Hunter was then stabbed to death by an Angel, Alan Passaro, who was charged with murder. At trial, a critical piece of evidence was film shot by Maysles' which appeared to show Hunter with a gun immediately prior to the stabbing. Passaro was acquitted on a theory of self defense after the film footage was produced as evidence.
The movie stops before the criminal case- you can only wonder how amazing Gimmie Shelter would have been if it had followed through to the trial where itself was instrumental in acquitting a man facing a life sentence. Still, Gimmie Shelter is still amazing without any follow up, and is certainly the best music documentary film ever made on a number of different levels, both in terms of the technique and the subject matter. The concert footage of the Rolling Stones nearing the height of their fame is priceless.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
d. Jacques Demy
Criterion Collection #716
The Essential Jacques Demy
Criterion Collection #713
Criterion Collection released The Essential Jacques Demy boxed set last July. Many, if not all of those films are now up on the Criterion Collection Hulu channel. One thing I've noticed about the Criterion Collection Hulu channel is that it doesn't get new movies all that often, so when it happens, it is distinctly a cause for celebration. Jacques Demy is terra incognita for me. I have a vague memory of a revival of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg garnering limiting publicity when I was in college.
"Delightful" is the word that you most often see used to described The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. All of the dialogue is "sung" in the sing songy way that most Americans associate with the work of Steven Sondheim ("Anyone can sing in a Sondheim play you just have to goooo like thiiiissss.") The story is a conventional drama about a virginal young woman (Denueve in her breakthrough role), living with her Mom, who runs an Umbrella shop in a town which is not Paris, but in France. Dad is not around, but my guess would be he is dead
Denueve falls in love with a handsome mechanic, and he is promptly shipped off to fight in Algeria, leaving Deneuve pregnant and alone. Enter a wealthy jewelry merchant, who is willing to take on Denueve, other man's baby and all. Mechanic returns from the war, is sad, and finds love with another. Other than the sung lyrics, the visual, Technicolor style of Demy is what give The Umbrellas of Cherbourg its lasting appeal. The mise en scene is nothing so much as a visual feast, and if you aren't staring at Deneuve, you are staring at whatever is behind her.
Movie Review
La Ciénaga (2001)
d. Lucrecia Martel
Criterion Collection #743
After going a couple weeks without watching a Criterion Collection title on their Hulu Plus channel, I find myself idly wondering during quiet moments about what is new. Only 416 Criterion Collection titles are on the Hulu Channel, and I've made it through 237 of those, more or less. I think maybe 25 plus of what's left are the Zatoichi samurai series and I'm not watching all of them, leaving about 150 movies available. Most of those remaining are Japanese films followed by Italian and French films. Of the non Hulu plus available Criterion Collection films, many of them are the best known American releases- Wes Anderson's movies, Repo Man, movies like that. I'd say I've watched maybe half of those films. So honestly, the project of viewing all of the Criterion Collection films is not especially complicated, if only because you can knock out more than half as part of a 7.99 a month Hulu Plus subscription.
What have I learned? A LOT about European art films of the 1950s and 1960s. Even more about Japanese film from that same time period. Less about smaller national cinemas and underappreciated American independent and genre films. Nothing about mainline Hollywood hits. If you were to predict the trajectory of future additions to the Criterion Collection, I would say that "World Cinema," especially films from non-traditional film industries, is likely to be the biggest area for growth.
For a good example of both the present and future of the Criterion Collection, you could do worse than La Ciénaga (2001) by Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel. Portraits of dysfunctional upper middle class families are a subject near and dear to the heart of the Criterion Collection and "serious" film makers everywhere. It has been that way from the beginning of European art film and it probably mirrors the larger cultural interest in Freud and family psychology that dates from the beginning of the 20th century.
La Ciénaga sits firmly in the tradition of the disintegrating "European" bourgeois family, though here the family is Argentinian. Although the accompanying essay on the Criterion Collections' website situates Martel among a tradition of 'new Argentinian' filmmaking informed by the economic turmoil of the 1990s, I saw this film as a fairly straight forward regional take on this larger genre. To her credit, Martel employs a diffuse and elliptical film making style that lessens the familiarity of the milieu, but to me the pleasure was in an artist doing a nuanced take on an already popular number.
Fans of dissolute bourgeois families and their drama will enjoy La Cienaga, for those not in that category, it will be the filmmaking technique that jumps out. This technique is best expressed as "hazy" and "gauzy"... it reminded me of a less polished variation on the films of Sofia Coppola. There isn't a main character at all, unless you count the decayed vacation home in which the action takes place. This house is like the embodiment of the locations in novels like Under the Volcano, where the geographic landscape mirrors the decrepitude of the characters. In particular, the unclean, murky green pool on the back patio of the house is like a psychic tumor hovering just off screen.
Movie Review
Donkey Skin (1970)
d. Jacques Demy
Criterion Collection #718
Part of The Essential Jacques Demy
Donkey Skin, Demy's take on the classic Charles Perrault (the French "Grimm Brothers") fairy tale, is a mouth-watering concoction, and it is one of those movies where the restoration of the film to its original technicolor glory is particularly important. The story is a dark version of the lost princess fairy tale. The King of the realm loses his wife, promising her that he will only marry a woman more beautiful than her. That turns out to be his daughter, played by Denueve, who is torn between her desire to please her doting father and well, the obvious fact that a marriage between a father and his birth daughter is monstrous. The voice of reason is her fairy godmother, winningly played by Delphine Seyrig, who tells her to obtain a donkey skin and wear it as a disguise. Denueve does, and she ends up working as the maid for a family of farmers. There, she is discovered by her prince, and singing ensues.
The sets are the star here- Demy's production is richly colored almost beyond comprehension, and you will be left gasping, even thought this fifty year old film wasn't shot in HD. Donkey Skin is a real tribute to the possibilities of color in film, and that is why you should give it a watch.
Movie Review
Speedy (1928)
d. Ted Wilde
Criterion Collection #788
DVD release 12/8/15
This was the last silent Harold Lloyd film, and it is his love letter to New York City. Speedy is a typical New Yorker, trying to make his way up the ladder of success through a series of low paying jobs that he can't keep for more than a day. Lloyd's "glasses" character was as American as Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp was global, and his presence in New York City makes engaging viewing. Speedy is also helped by a digital 4k restoration and a newish soundtrack from 1992.
If ever there was a service where I would pay for a stand alone source of entertainment, it would be for a subscription to the Criterion Collection. It seems like the audience for that service would positively dwarf the audience for the DVD's. It is very clear why Criterion chooses to withhold so many titles from the Hulu channel- either they don't have the streaming rights, or they don't want to compromise sales. Personally, I'd like to see them leave the DVD's behind, and act as a subscription streaming channel.
Movie Review
Blind Chance (1981)
d. Krzysztof Kieślowski
Criterion Collection #772
Released September 5th, 2015
Chances are that if you've heard of Kielowski it's via his career capping Colors trilogy, Red, Blue and White. Those three films, released in 1993 and 1994 are synonymous with European Art House cinema of the 90s. Blind Chance was his first feature film, produced and released in a firmly Communist Poland, and long censored and unseen in its original, non-censored form. Kudos to the Criterion Collection for bringing this film to the American DVD market, and even more kudos for putting it on the Criterion Collection Hulu Plus channel.
The take away from Blind Chance is that Kieslowski was already in firm grasp of the narrative and aesthetic principles that would manifest itself in the Colors trilogy in Blind Chance. In Blind Chance, Witek is a young medical student who "loses his callng" after the death of his father. At a pivotal point in his life, he runs to catch a train to Warsaw, and there Kiewslowski splits the story into three different "endings" (though these three endings constitute the bulk of the run time of the movie) where fate takes him in different directions based on whether he is able to catch the train or not.
The three fates resemble one another and recombine around a trip that each Witek wants to make to Paris. In Communist Poland, travel to the West was restricted. Kieslowski keeps the pace up. Like other Polish directors he combines Hollywood level technical expertise with some of the concerns of the French New Wave and by the end ti is clear that the triumph of the Colors trilogy was presaged at the earliest stages of his career.
Movie Review:
News From Home
d. Chantal Akerman
Eclipse Series 19: Chantal Akerman in the 1970s
I was sitting in a downtown Los Angeles cafe last month with Alex. We try to touch base each month, if only for me to give him a royalty check and I always ask what he is up to, artistically speaking, dreaming of the day when he completes a project he deems sufficiently "commercial" to spend his own money promoting.
You can see where Alex, with his catalog of Dirty Beaches albums and instrumental records, fits squarely within the program music tradition, and you could argue that he is one of the most exciting young practitioners of the form.
The funny part is that when he told me he was scoring News From Home, directed by Belgian film maker Chantal Akerman, I drew a blank. Despite my own near obsessive viewing of Criterion Collection titles ON THIS VERY BLOG, I'd never before heard of Chantal Akerman, let alone the film. The subject dropped over the holidays, but yesterday I saw the Cinefamily event page for the VideoSonics: LAST LIZARD (fka Dirty Beaches) VS News From Home—A Meditation on Chantal Akerman's 1977 Masterwork show on January 14th and I was compelled to watch the underlying film on Hulu Plus, where all of the films from Eclipse Series 19: Chantal Akerman in the 1970s, are available for immediate viewing.
News From Home is accurately described of "long takes of New York City, with some letters between the filmmaker and her family read every so often." Some of the long shots are static, others, the most memorable in my mind, move across city streets or even take place in a moving subway car. The letters are read in French, with subtitles, they come infrequently enough that you really have to make an effort to be paying attention, as otherwise it is almost impossible to not lose focus on "what's happening" on the screen.
Obviously, News From Home doesn't have any kind of popular appeal, being squarely an "art film" in the territory explored by Andy Warhol in his experimental films like "Skyscraper." Chantal Akerman died in October of last year, under troubled circumstances, but obituaries hailed her as one of the finest filmmakers of her generation. The audience, for News From Home is both film buffs and those who work in the media-industrial complex, particularly at the intersection of filmed entertainment and music. This Cinefamily event, regardless of any particular issues one might have with Cinefamily, is taking place on the home turf of this industry, the main locus, so for Alex, it represents an ideal return on the effort he is taking to come up with music for the lengthy "silent" parts of News From Home- I would say over 90 percent of the actual run time of the movie, the other 10 percent being the letters. It could well be 95/5.
Much of News From Home is entrancing, and I spent much of my time looking at the details of each tableaux. For me, the stand out scenes where the one inside the subway car and scene where the camera is carried on a truck "across town" in Manhattan. It is tough to maintain focus for the full film but the time you spend focused isn't wasted.
| Cover of Criterion Collection #829 A Taste of Honey (1961) d. Tony Richardson |
Published 1/12/21
A Taste of Honey (1961)
d. Tony Richardson
#829
The original idea for this blog was that I would read all 1001 Books and watch all the Criterion Collection films. When I started, Criterion Collection still had titles on Netflix, then it moved to Hulu, then there was a brief Filmstruck period and now there is the Criterion Channel which you can install on your smart tv. Criterion Channel far surpasses prior efforts, and it comes close to realizing the vision I thought I was getting into when I came up with the idea a decade ago.
When I stopped watching Criterion Collection films the entire collection was at #703, A Taste of Honey, #829 came out in 2016. That's the real problem with trying to stay current on Criterion Collection films- they come out five a month. A Taste of Honey is a film example of the "Kitchen Sink" realism school of English art, unusual in that it takes place outside of London and the source material, a play, was written by a woman. The story is about a high school student who lives with her louche mother in a succession of low-rent apartments in 1950's Manchester.
Part of the pleasure of A Taste of Honey is the Manchester locations- lovingly restored by Criterion of course. The extras give the always interesting journey of pathbreaking films in the British film environment- marked by the absence of any first amendment protection and the ever-present British Film Censor. Here, the controversy is obvious- an interracial coupling and an openly gay bff add to the native exoticism of the milieu.
| Cover of the Criterion Collection edition of A Night to Remember (1958) d. Roy Ward Baker |
Published 1/15/21
A Night to Remember (1958)
d. Roy Ward Baker
Criterion Collection #7
Billed as "the best movie ever made about the Titanic disaster" (take that James Cameron), A Night to Remember ultimately may be more memorable for it's low number position in the Criterion Collection: #7!!! It was enjoyable to watch- every time I watch a Criterion Collection movie from the good old days I am struck anew by how much the digital restoration helps to appreciate the film. Honestly, the ease that the Criterion Channel has brought to the watching experience makes me question why I would ever watch a contemporary film again.
One of the takeaways from this fact-based film is that a major cause of the disaster was the overloading of the telegraph office with orders from the finicky first class passengers, buying and selling stock, making travel arrangements, so that a warning from a nearby ship about an iceberg in front of them was ignored, and, in fact, never read.
| Great Expectations d. David Lean, Criterion Collection Edition Cover |
Published 1/21/21
Great Expectations (1946)
d. David Lean
Criterion Collection #31
The most interesting feature of the Criterion Collection edition of Great Expectations is the total absence of extra features. Just the original trailer from the UK! For the Criterion Channel they added a seven minute interview with director Julie Taymor, but other than that, nada. Great Expectations was less controversial than his Oliver Twist, due to the absence of Alec Guinness as a broadly anti-Semitic caricature of Fagin, Like Twist, Great Expectations frequently makes use of expressionist techniques, such as the treatment of the interior of Ms. Havisham's house- a nightmarish place that seems to consist entirely of Escher-like staircases.
| Criterion Collection Cover of Stalker d. Andrei Tarkovsky |
Published 2/1/21
Stalker (1979)
d. Andrei Tarkovsky
Criterion Collection #888
Stalker is a huge movie for people who call movies "films." In my mind it is one of the central movies of the entire Criterion Collection and it represents "World Cinema" in its purest form. Stalker is unwieldy, difficult to understand, comes with an "only in Russia" production story and bears little to no resemblance to its source material, a science fiction novel, but it has still managed to influence a generation of writers and filmmakers- most notably in the movie version of the Jeff Vandermeer novel Annihilation, which is basically a remake/homage/rip off of Stalker.
Clocking in at a full 161 minutes (it feels even longer!) Stalker is "about" the central character- more of a guide than an actual Stalker, who is hired to tour the "writer" and the "professor" around a mysterious era known as "the zone." The zone is a constantly changing, rearranging area that is never the same place twice, walled off from a sepia-tinged Russia that looks like it has just emerged from a World War. If, like me, you are expecting some kind of action or excitement from such a set up, you are due to be disappointed since the bulk of Stalker is shots held for minutes at a time and the characters engaging in dialogue whose closest Western equivalent would be a Samuel Beckett play.
It strikes me that Stalker is one of those movies where, once you make it through, you feel compelled to call it magnificent, but mostly I found it hard to pay attention. Sad!
| Cover of the Criterion Collection edition of Holiday d. George Kukor |
Published 2/25/21
Holiday (1938)
d. George Kukor
It's funny, but for all the translated literature and foreign films I take in, it is Hollywood movies from the mid part of the 20th century that often seem the most foreign to me. Basically, movies, made by Hollywood before the Nouvelle Vague revolution swept through America in the 60's, are as strange to watch as anything. Who are these people? Holiday is best known as a foreshadowing of The Philadelphia Story, which was also directed by George Kukor and also starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.
Based on a 1928 play by Philip Barry, Holiday stars Cary Grant as Johnny Case, the fiancé of Julia Seton (Doris Nolan) and sister of Linda Seton (Hepburn), who as luck would have it, are the daughters of insanely wealthy New York plutocrat Edward Seton Sr. Like every movie based on a play, the whole movie takes places in a series of interiors- mostly the Seton mansion. The plot is more interesting than you might expect from the set-up, Grant, an up and comer in "business" only wants to work long enough to drop out and smell the roses, which does not play well with Seton Sr.