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Sooooo bleak. Not the normal kind of resistance movie. Their struggle is necessary but hopeless. Movie opens with our main guy escaping from a camp, then having the guy who ratted on him killed. Many small triumphs and large defeats later, we end with the gang shooting one of their own then driving away as the titles tell us how each of them later got killed in the struggle.

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Hardly any non-diegetic music, superbly shot, dark and dreary but not in a tiring way, more of a matter-of-fact “this is how things are” straightforward way.

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These are not heroes in the regular movie sense of the word. Theirs is not a glorious fight… it’s hardly a fight at all, more a struggle for survival. The problem is that it would be easier to survive by living ordinary lives, by cooperating with the nazi regime, by ratting on their fellows, by doing any of a number of things they refuse to do, by giving in. The movie is about how much it can suck to be moral, to stick to your convictions. While those in the resistance who survived the war can’t have much to be proud of… unlike most residents of their country, they also can’t have much to be ashamed of. A great, great movie. Nice contrast to the portrait of resistance to nazi occupation in Black Book this year.

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by ·Comments Off on L’Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)

The first time I watched this, I felt bad for not liking it. Just… nothing ever happened, and it seemed to mostly consist of people standing theatrically far apart from each other and looking away. Bored me to death. Then I embraced my dislike of L’Avventura since I found that more and more Italian films made me feel tired and annoyed. And geez, can those mofos not lip-synch properly. I will never get over that. But watching L’Eclisse and talking to Dawn convinced me to give this one another go, and so I have…

And what a masterpiece it is! Beautiful from start to finish. I guess knowing what I was in for (pace-and-plot-wise) and knowing what to look for (camera compositions, not an engaging story) really helped. Played most of the commentary track afterwards and that helped too.

There is a story here. Gorgeous Claudia (Monica Vitti) vacations with her friends Anna (reconnecting with fiance Sandro after months away) and Giulia (with her drab husband) on a cruise. At a rocky island, Anna disappears and never returns. Claudia and Sandro search everywhere for her, extending the search to the mainland, where they finally fall for each other and give up on Anna.

Story’s not so bad, characters not as horrible as all that, just can’t believe that Antonioni can set up EVERY shot so beautifully.

by ·Comments Off on Play Time (1967, Jacques Tati)

Wow, this is one of my favorite movies now. I was right about watching it in the theater (on film)… really helped see everything properly. More important, possibly, was seeing it for a second time, already knowing the pace and the organization of story (such as there is a story), being able to sit back and enjoy.

First third (?) of the movie is an architectural dream, all buildings and structure and angles, beautiful and disorienting. Whole movie is concerned with structure and glass.

Funny, but not punchline-funny so much as enjoyable and light, building up towards the end of the crazy restaurant sequence when suddenly humor’s flying from all directions.

I feel like I “got it” this time, but also feel like I missed a lot. Not in a bad way, more in a “could see this again and again” way.

I’d thought Mr. Hulot wasn’t in this one but of course he is. What was I thinking of… Parade?

Katy, Jimmy, Misty, even Adam liked it.

by ·Comments Off on Autumn Afternoon (1962, Yasujiro Ozu)

Ozu’s final film, released less than a month before he died. Only my second, after Tokyo Story. Another film about family life, with emphasis on the play between generations in the same family and neighboring families. I know, that’s what they say all of his films are about.

It again stars Chishu Ryu (star of most late Ozu films, who lived through the 90’s and appeared in Kurowawa’s Ran) as a father (Hirayama). His wife died young, oldest son is married (and having money trouble), younger son lives at home, and daughter is marrying age but stays home to take care of her father and brother. Hirayama’s friends tell him that he should marry her off before she gets too old, and learn to take care of himself. He soon sees the wisdom in this, and tries first to pair her with a boy she has a crush on, the older brother’s friend. But when the boy turns out to be engaged already, the father goes to a guy his friend had in mind (who I don’t think we ever see).

Some post-war bits (we find out Hirayama was in the army when one of his former soldiers recognizes him in a bar). Oh, and he goes to the bar because the barmaid looks like his late wife when she was younger… would be a sorta sad scene, him drinking alone and gazing at this woman, if not for the soldier distractingly (comically) playing battle hymns and marching/saluting along.

Apparently this was the part of Ozu’s career when he had started to sympathize with younger generations, instead of showing them to be lazy and disrespectful (see: Tokyo Story). Didn’t sympathize TOO much though, as the oldest son is spoiled and irresponsible, taking money from his dad and blowing it on golf clubs. Even only having seen one of Ozu’s films before, I was startled when the movie began because it was in color… I think of him as a black-and-white filmmaker. So happy to see that Ozu is the Master everyone says he is, that his movies are so heartfelt and wonderful to watch. I get that Jean Renoir feeling of well-being afterwards, even though Tokyo Story (and The Lower Depths) was mostly depressing. Looking forward to his other 40+ features!

by ·Comments Off on The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Bunuel)

Part of Bunuel’s really good stretch, this came between Viridiana and Simon of the Desert. Glad I finally watched it… probably one of my favorite Bunuel movies now.

After a dinner party, about twenty ridiculous upper-class people (and one waiter) are mysteriously unable to leave the room. And nobody outside can enter the house. They do get out, over a week (and three deaths) later, by recreating the moment when it first happened, standing in the same position they were at 3am the first night. Then they all go to church together and it happens again.

In between, we’ve got chicken feet in a woman’s purse, mountain vistas in the bathroom, dreams and voiceovers, sheep and bears running through the house, morphine, lovers dying mysteriously, and the total breakdown of high society.

Hard to keep track of who’s who most of the time, except for the gay guy who complains a lot. I occasionally recognized Silvia Pinal (the hostess, Tristana). The steward Julio is Simon of the Desert, and a few other actors from this one were in Simon (incl. Silvia as the devil). A couple of these guys were in Bunuel’s early Mexican movies, one woman was in Brainiac, and two people were in Samson vs. The Vampire Women, released the same year!

A Brazillian movie won the Golden Palm at Cannes that year, beating Exterminating Angel, Cleo from 5 to 7, L’Eclisse and The Innocents. The IMDB is probably stretching when it says this movie was referenced in both A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Blair Witch Project.

by ·Comments Off on Mothra (1961, Ishirô Honda)

So you’ve created Godzilla AND Rodan, directed The Mysterians and made almost thirty other movies. Now what?? Well, Mothra, obviously.

When a ship is in trouble (it’s always a ship in trouble with these japanese monster movies) some guys wash up on an island long thought to be empty and used by Japan for nuclear testing. They meet some natives and tiny girls who give them something to drink that makes ’em impervious to the radiation. Neat. Back home in Tokyo, scientists want to know more and set up a team to check out the island.

Amer… I mean Rolisican jerky businessman Nelson leads the expedition and intrepid reporter Fukuda sneaks along without permission. They find the “tiny beauties” (just like in the 90’s Rebirth of Mothra) and Nelson kidnaps them to make money showing off their tinyness and their beauty and their singing to sold-out theater in his home of New Yor… I mean, New Kirk City.

But their song awakens Mothra, who is drawn towards the song like a moth to… well you know. Fukuda and photographer friend Michi and some damned kid team up to return the tiny beauties to Mothra… but not before many, many models are destroyed, usually by being blown down model streets by Mothra’s giant flapping wings.

This director would later make about fifteen more monster movies and end on a high note, co-directing two of Akira Kurosawa’s final three movies.

by ·Comments Off on Paris Belongs To Us (1961, Jacques Rivette)

Rivette was working on this from 1957-1960. In ’57, Chris Marker did Letter From Siberia. In ’58 we had Le Beau Serge, Elevator to the Gallows and a couple shorts. ’59 brought Pickpocket, Hiroshima Mon Amour and The 400 Blows, then Breathless and Shoot the Piano Player were in 1960. So Rivette might have started everything, in a sense, but by the time he’d made his statement public (in ’61, along with Cleo From 5 to 7 and Last Year at Marienbad), the whole “new wave” was in full swing in the theaters.

Betty Schneider (of Mon Oncle) is young innocent Anne with brother Pierre (Francois Maistre, later of a buncha Bunuel films). She meets theater director Gerard (Giani Esposito of French Cancan), paranoid American Philip (Daniel Crohem) and mystery woman Terry (Francoise Prevost of Rivette’s 1981 Merry-go-round). Movie gets more disturbed and paranoid (as well as loose and rambling) as it progresses, ending with the deaths of a buncha characters. Somewhat like The Dreamers. Incidentally, “Paris Belongs To Us” would’ve been a better title for that movie.

Interesting parallels with Out 1, both being about theater groups and city-wide conspiracies. In this one, we never find out if the conspiracy even exists, and in Out 1, the group does exist and is partially uncovered, but the group has no sinister purpose, never even did anything together and have been long dormant.

Much is made of the cameos by Godard, Chabrol, Rivette and Demy in the promo material, but I can’t say I noticed any of those.

Michael Rowin in Reverse Shot calls it “a fascinating disappointment”.

the calm:
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the storm:
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the intrigue:
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by ·Comments Off on Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961, Blake Edwards)

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that Audrey Hepburn’s character was named Holly Golightly, but elsewhere I assumed she was named Tiffany. The jewelry store never occurred to me.

5-time oscar-nominated audrey/tiffany:
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I read that Holly is a “call girl” and that she’s a “socialite”. I prefer the latter. Audrey (who I barely remember from Charade) runs around with a buncha guys looking for a nice rich man to marry, but she sorta falls for boring lumpy novelist George Peppard (Hannibal from the A-Team!). He falls harder for her, for obvious reasons, and their relationship seems like an excuse for us to get to watch her for two hours, which is worth doing anyway.

Patricia Neal (Cookie in Cookie’s Fortune, and herself in Bright Leaves) is a neighbor, Buddy Ebsen (Barnaby Jones and Jed Clampett!) is Holly’s ex-husband, and Andy “Mickey Rooney” Hardy plays a surprisingly horrible Japanese caricature of an upstairs neighbor (“Miss Goriightryyy!!”). Audrey’s cat “Cat” is in almost every scene. Blake “Pink Panther / Peter Gunn” Edwards directs from a Truman Capote story (my second, after The Innocents (also from ’61)).

“the most distasteful thing I ever had to do on film”:
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won an honorary oscar:
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A good movie (when Rooney’s not onscreen), but not a romantic comedy like I thought it’d be… more of a drama / character exploration. Holly has a hidden past as a rural wife and homemaker with a dear brother who’s off at war (she renames Peppard “Fred” after her brother) and she doesn’t do relationships very well. It sometimes seems like a story of a modern liberated woman, but then Peppard will go into his spiel about how she belongs to him and people need to be together, and is he proven right at the end?

Katy suggested/liked it.