The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Writing about this movie, the first thing that comes to mind is the beautiful scenery. The film was shot in postwar Vienna when the city was in the process of rebuilding, and the city was splintered into four racial groups which all spoke different languages. A character is running through an orderly city block, and the next shot slinking down a destroyed staircase. The cinematography is absolutely perfect. Shots are from a distance or slightly off-kilter to precisely express the emotional feel of the scene. The visual aspect of the movie is just plain incredible.
The plot is a mixed bag. I like the way it satirizes the noir genre. The main character is an American writer of crime novels who comes to Vienna looking for his friend Harry Lyme, only to discover his friend is dead. He decides then to prove his friend's death wasn't an accident. He immediately accuses the cops of corruption and starts accusing everybody directly of conspiracy. In his hilariously hapless attempts to play private eye, he makes just enough connections to keep him convinced his friend was murdered. Without giving away anything, it turns out the cliches of his novels don't hold true, and there is a clear cut good and a clear cut evil.
Therein lies the problem with the movie. Good and evil are so clear cut that when they pose it like a serious ethical debate, the bad guys just sound ridiculous. 'Oh, you can't tell me if I gave you twenty thousand dollars for every random person who dies you'd seriously have a problem. They're happier dead.' Orson Welles characters often come off as straw men. They take a real life ethical debate and present one side in a blatantly villainesque way. Yes, if a person is selling diluted penicillin to babies with meningitis, then the cops are obviously right to persecute him. But that doesn't apply quite so easily to lesser offenses or any real life controversies, and the cops shouldn't have had to go out of their way to convince the writer how bad the bad guy was. The movie would have been better if it had stayed the anti-noir noir film it seemed like for the first hour.
Rating: **** / 5
33/101
Current movies:
Greenberg: **** / 5
Greenberg is a movie that, for me, hits a little uncomfortably close to home. Or at least, 'When I was in high school/college' home. If I had stayed that way until I was 40. It's a character-driven movie about the hypocrisy of counter-culture. Ben Stiller's character refuses to do anything that doesn't fit into his idea of what's cool, and in his attempts to be a hipster just ends up being a jerk to people. My only criticism of the movie is that it's a little too long for it's content.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
#61: Gone With The Wind
Gone With The Wind (Fleming, 1939)
Gone With The Wind is one of those movies that a lot of people consider the best ever made. The reason is obvious. It probably had the best production value of any movie when it came out, by a wide margin, partly because it was so near the beginning of color films. Also, it's nostalgic for people who lived in the south while the Civil War was recent enough to still be in our cultural memory, and it has a lot of populist melodrama. What the movie is trying to be, it succeeds. It all depends on whether you like what the movie is trying to be.
To appreciate the movie for what it is there are a lot of aspects a modern American has to overlook. First and foremost that the movie seems to be nostalgic for slavery. The movie takes place in that idyllic southern gentile fantasy where it's shameful for a woman to make her own money but okay for a husband to commit marital rape.
You might be inclined to excuse this as a sign of the period. But the plain fact is, such an idealistic presentation of southern gentility is not the way things were. It was only how the rich plantation owners saw themselves. The powers that be created a set of standards for piety that put themselves in a position of cultural authority and allowed them to say "If you don't play by our rules, we kick you out of our civilization and away from all this money". So after the war when Scarlet started behaving more like a man and trying to control her own money and her own life, I thought it was great. But according to the movie, it was a disgrace. I don't think this vision of the world was true to life even by 1939 standards. This vision of the 1860's is just as false as the idyllic vision of the 1950's a lot of people hold now.
Then there's some slight hackiness with the plot. Characters die off the moment they become inconvenient, and happen to show up at convenient times. In a way Gone With The Wind is the Avatar of 1939. Great production values, shallow plot, and blatant political distortions of reality. The production values are good enough to get it three stars from me, but beyond that I can't forgive the glaring flaws.
Rating: *** / 5
32/101
Others:
The Secret of Kells: *** 1/2 / 5
A beautiful little fairy tale with excellent animation. It's kind of like an anime except not Japanese. The only problem I had with it was it was more kid-oriented than I expected.
Next: The Third Man, Rules of the Game
Gone With The Wind is one of those movies that a lot of people consider the best ever made. The reason is obvious. It probably had the best production value of any movie when it came out, by a wide margin, partly because it was so near the beginning of color films. Also, it's nostalgic for people who lived in the south while the Civil War was recent enough to still be in our cultural memory, and it has a lot of populist melodrama. What the movie is trying to be, it succeeds. It all depends on whether you like what the movie is trying to be.
To appreciate the movie for what it is there are a lot of aspects a modern American has to overlook. First and foremost that the movie seems to be nostalgic for slavery. The movie takes place in that idyllic southern gentile fantasy where it's shameful for a woman to make her own money but okay for a husband to commit marital rape.
You might be inclined to excuse this as a sign of the period. But the plain fact is, such an idealistic presentation of southern gentility is not the way things were. It was only how the rich plantation owners saw themselves. The powers that be created a set of standards for piety that put themselves in a position of cultural authority and allowed them to say "If you don't play by our rules, we kick you out of our civilization and away from all this money". So after the war when Scarlet started behaving more like a man and trying to control her own money and her own life, I thought it was great. But according to the movie, it was a disgrace. I don't think this vision of the world was true to life even by 1939 standards. This vision of the 1860's is just as false as the idyllic vision of the 1950's a lot of people hold now.
Then there's some slight hackiness with the plot. Characters die off the moment they become inconvenient, and happen to show up at convenient times. In a way Gone With The Wind is the Avatar of 1939. Great production values, shallow plot, and blatant political distortions of reality. The production values are good enough to get it three stars from me, but beyond that I can't forgive the glaring flaws.
Rating: *** / 5
32/101
Others:
The Secret of Kells: *** 1/2 / 5
A beautiful little fairy tale with excellent animation. It's kind of like an anime except not Japanese. The only problem I had with it was it was more kid-oriented than I expected.
Next: The Third Man, Rules of the Game
Friday, March 26, 2010
#85: Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
If it weren't so grim, Aguirre would almost be a dark comedy, or a satire on western arrogance. It follows a Spanish expedition in 1560 into South American jungles, looking for 'El Dorado', a land of gold that doesn't exist. It's made obvious from the beginning that the entire expedition is doomed. Right of the bat an entire raft of men gets stuck in an eddy, then picked off with arrows by Indians. At this point the leader of the expedition wants to turn back, but the second in command pulls a mutiny, saying 'Cortez defied orders and kept going, and that's how he conquered Mexico!'
As the film goes on their delusions get more and more comical. The noble they dubbed 'Emperor' is floating down the river eating up the last of their food, saying 'I hereby claim the lands to the left. I hereby claim the lands to the right. Yes…our country is already six times as big as Spain and grows bigger by the day!' Meanwhile everybody who tries to defect gets executed. They even are given a chance to make peace with the natives, and all they try to do is convert them to Christianity and kill them for not understanding what the Bible is.
Other than those two Indians who tried to talk to them, we hardly get a glimpse of them. They never attack them outright. They pick them off one by one with arrows from behind trees. The Spaniads' attitude remains unphased. "We're Christians, they're not. We're civilzed people, they're not. Thus, victory is our destiny." There's never any self awareness, nobody ever makes a speech about how foolish they all were. It's not that sort of movie. All we see is the Spaniards' journey into oblivion, and we're left to draw any extra implications for ourselves.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
31/100
Next: Gone With The Wind, The Third Man, Rules of the Game
Others:
Cries and Whispers **** 1/2 / 5
One of Bergman's later more realistic films, Cries and Whispers follows a rich family during and after the drawn out, agonizing death of one of their sisters. While she's dying the only one comforting her is her servant Anna. Her two sisters keep their distance and coldly manage the affairs of the estate. There are lots of dreams and flashbacks that show the sisters' inner emotional reactions and their humanity, but outside of flashbacks they barely act human. Their inability to share their real selves with anyone keeps them from connecting with the important people in their lives.
If it weren't so grim, Aguirre would almost be a dark comedy, or a satire on western arrogance. It follows a Spanish expedition in 1560 into South American jungles, looking for 'El Dorado', a land of gold that doesn't exist. It's made obvious from the beginning that the entire expedition is doomed. Right of the bat an entire raft of men gets stuck in an eddy, then picked off with arrows by Indians. At this point the leader of the expedition wants to turn back, but the second in command pulls a mutiny, saying 'Cortez defied orders and kept going, and that's how he conquered Mexico!'
As the film goes on their delusions get more and more comical. The noble they dubbed 'Emperor' is floating down the river eating up the last of their food, saying 'I hereby claim the lands to the left. I hereby claim the lands to the right. Yes…our country is already six times as big as Spain and grows bigger by the day!' Meanwhile everybody who tries to defect gets executed. They even are given a chance to make peace with the natives, and all they try to do is convert them to Christianity and kill them for not understanding what the Bible is.
Other than those two Indians who tried to talk to them, we hardly get a glimpse of them. They never attack them outright. They pick them off one by one with arrows from behind trees. The Spaniads' attitude remains unphased. "We're Christians, they're not. We're civilzed people, they're not. Thus, victory is our destiny." There's never any self awareness, nobody ever makes a speech about how foolish they all were. It's not that sort of movie. All we see is the Spaniards' journey into oblivion, and we're left to draw any extra implications for ourselves.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
31/100
Next: Gone With The Wind, The Third Man, Rules of the Game
Others:
Cries and Whispers **** 1/2 / 5
One of Bergman's later more realistic films, Cries and Whispers follows a rich family during and after the drawn out, agonizing death of one of their sisters. While she's dying the only one comforting her is her servant Anna. Her two sisters keep their distance and coldly manage the affairs of the estate. There are lots of dreams and flashbacks that show the sisters' inner emotional reactions and their humanity, but outside of flashbacks they barely act human. Their inability to share their real selves with anyone keeps them from connecting with the important people in their lives.
Friday, March 19, 2010
#31: Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
There's a style of narration in old films, mostly noir films, that's cynically charismatic and a little amusingly overliterate. Sunset Boulevard isn't a noir film (Though it does start and end with a murder), but it's that style of narration that drives the feel of the movie. It has both the effect of putting you in the mindset of the main character and making you think of noir movies from the 30s and 40s.
The plot is about an aging silent film star. Fame raised her expectations so much that when talkies came out and people forgot about her, she couldn't handle it. She still hangs on to the idea that she's a big star and her fans can't wait for her return to film. When a failing screenwriter tries to hide his car in his garage to escape from the repo men, she tries to absorb him into her fantasy and her narcissism. Other than the narrative style and strength of the script, the movie thrives on the lead actress, resulting in some of the most memorable scenes in movie history. "Mr Demille, I'm ready for my closeup now." "Now they have words. We didn't need words, we had faces!"
The film satirizes the fickleness of Hollywood culture and it's impact on the stars' self image. This is long before the mainstreaming bulimia and plastic surgery, but the toll on a person's self image hasn't changed. Hollywood is all about the moment and never lingers in the past, so no matter how big you are, it will abandon you the moment you can't give audiences what they currently want. Actors and especially actresses are conditioned to base their self worth on how much fanfare they're currently getting, which leads them into a cycle of desparately doing anything to stay at the top of the mountain. And when they're not, the only reasonable explanation is there's something wrong with them. The aging silent film star in Sunset Boulevard can't even accept that she's anything short of the icon her old audience dreamed her up to be, leading her to completely disconnect her perception from reality. It's easily one of the best movies ever made.
Rating: ***** / 5
30/101
Others:
Magnolia: **** 1/2 / 5
A very impressively scripted movie. It's one of those multilinear stories with multiple divergent but cosmically related plots. It's funny, if a film is driven by coincidence it's called lazy writing. But if the film goes out of it's way to talk about coincidence and fate, it's brilliant. Even if it's the case what I suspect that the whole dialog on coincidence and the first fifteen minutes in the movie were just an elaborate way to hang a lantern on it.
Paul Thomas Anderson movies I seem to either love (Punch Drunk Love) or think are crazy-overrated (There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights). The deciding factor for me seems to be how much the writer wants you to sympathize with the characters. Paul Thomas Anderson has a distinct style of characterization, which for some reason only works for me when I emotionally relate to the characters.
Before Sunset: **** / 5
Another impressively scripted movie. It's one of those really simple, short movies that's beautiful in it's presentation. Nine years earlier (In Before Sunrise), a man and woman have a fling. They fail to meet up again when they planned to six months afterward. Now the man is married with a child, and they meet again, at the end of a book tour for a book he wrote about their fling. The writing is intelligent and emotionally nuanced, the characters are extremely well fleshed out, and the ending is ambiguous. You're left with the sense that clearly, both of them feel the day they met nine years ago was the happiest day in their lives. But is the possibility of having that back worth giving up the important things in their lives now? That depends, as the man says near the beginning, on your world view.
Mother: *** / 5
The previews said "The best Hitchcock film in decades". It doesn't feel like a Hitchcock film but I can see why a critic would say that. The relationship between the main character and her son is what you might think the villain from Psycho's childhood was like. And when her son is accused of murder, she goes out to prove him innocent. There is psychological drama similar to a Hitchcock film, but the feel is completely different. It revolves around her obsessive clinginess and inability to separate her own life from her son's.
Next: Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
There's a style of narration in old films, mostly noir films, that's cynically charismatic and a little amusingly overliterate. Sunset Boulevard isn't a noir film (Though it does start and end with a murder), but it's that style of narration that drives the feel of the movie. It has both the effect of putting you in the mindset of the main character and making you think of noir movies from the 30s and 40s.
The plot is about an aging silent film star. Fame raised her expectations so much that when talkies came out and people forgot about her, she couldn't handle it. She still hangs on to the idea that she's a big star and her fans can't wait for her return to film. When a failing screenwriter tries to hide his car in his garage to escape from the repo men, she tries to absorb him into her fantasy and her narcissism. Other than the narrative style and strength of the script, the movie thrives on the lead actress, resulting in some of the most memorable scenes in movie history. "Mr Demille, I'm ready for my closeup now." "Now they have words. We didn't need words, we had faces!"
The film satirizes the fickleness of Hollywood culture and it's impact on the stars' self image. This is long before the mainstreaming bulimia and plastic surgery, but the toll on a person's self image hasn't changed. Hollywood is all about the moment and never lingers in the past, so no matter how big you are, it will abandon you the moment you can't give audiences what they currently want. Actors and especially actresses are conditioned to base their self worth on how much fanfare they're currently getting, which leads them into a cycle of desparately doing anything to stay at the top of the mountain. And when they're not, the only reasonable explanation is there's something wrong with them. The aging silent film star in Sunset Boulevard can't even accept that she's anything short of the icon her old audience dreamed her up to be, leading her to completely disconnect her perception from reality. It's easily one of the best movies ever made.
Rating: ***** / 5
30/101
Others:
Magnolia: **** 1/2 / 5
A very impressively scripted movie. It's one of those multilinear stories with multiple divergent but cosmically related plots. It's funny, if a film is driven by coincidence it's called lazy writing. But if the film goes out of it's way to talk about coincidence and fate, it's brilliant. Even if it's the case what I suspect that the whole dialog on coincidence and the first fifteen minutes in the movie were just an elaborate way to hang a lantern on it.
Paul Thomas Anderson movies I seem to either love (Punch Drunk Love) or think are crazy-overrated (There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights). The deciding factor for me seems to be how much the writer wants you to sympathize with the characters. Paul Thomas Anderson has a distinct style of characterization, which for some reason only works for me when I emotionally relate to the characters.
Before Sunset: **** / 5
Another impressively scripted movie. It's one of those really simple, short movies that's beautiful in it's presentation. Nine years earlier (In Before Sunrise), a man and woman have a fling. They fail to meet up again when they planned to six months afterward. Now the man is married with a child, and they meet again, at the end of a book tour for a book he wrote about their fling. The writing is intelligent and emotionally nuanced, the characters are extremely well fleshed out, and the ending is ambiguous. You're left with the sense that clearly, both of them feel the day they met nine years ago was the happiest day in their lives. But is the possibility of having that back worth giving up the important things in their lives now? That depends, as the man says near the beginning, on your world view.
Mother: *** / 5
The previews said "The best Hitchcock film in decades". It doesn't feel like a Hitchcock film but I can see why a critic would say that. The relationship between the main character and her son is what you might think the villain from Psycho's childhood was like. And when her son is accused of murder, she goes out to prove him innocent. There is psychological drama similar to a Hitchcock film, but the feel is completely different. It revolves around her obsessive clinginess and inability to separate her own life from her son's.
Next: Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
Monday, March 15, 2010
#72: To Be Or Not To Be
To Be Or Not To Be (Lubitsch, 1942)
This is the first movie that I really don't understand how it got in the top 100. The other ones I haven't liked, I at least get it. Maybe it's one of those ones that got in because it was controversial when it came out, and us modern progressive types have to prove how open minded we are. It's just a really stupid movie. It's a 'farse' comedy, except about Nazis. This troop of actors is in with the Polish resistance and pretend, successfully, to be Nazi officers, Nazi collaberators and Hitler. And it works. None of it is very well written or funny. It does sport a style of dark irony that's more modern than other comedies at the time. But that doesn't change that it's a comedy, that's not funny.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
29/100
This is the first movie that I really don't understand how it got in the top 100. The other ones I haven't liked, I at least get it. Maybe it's one of those ones that got in because it was controversial when it came out, and us modern progressive types have to prove how open minded we are. It's just a really stupid movie. It's a 'farse' comedy, except about Nazis. This troop of actors is in with the Polish resistance and pretend, successfully, to be Nazi officers, Nazi collaberators and Hitler. And it works. None of it is very well written or funny. It does sport a style of dark irony that's more modern than other comedies at the time. But that doesn't change that it's a comedy, that's not funny.
Rating: ** 1/2 / 5
29/100
Friday, March 12, 2010
#12: Sunrise
Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
Sunrise, in my opinion, is not only the best silent film, it's the best film to be released prior to Citizen Kane. It's incredibly emotionally expressive with nothing but body language and hardly any captions. The movie starts with text that says: "This story happens nowhere and everywhere. It could happen anywhere at anytime." It's presented as a modern instance of a story common to all man. The characters don't have names (As is the case with many silent films) and are presented as archetypes, but also as extremely human and animated individuals.
Considering the limitations of 1920s technology, the visuals are incredible. Things the characters are thinking at the time are illustrated masterfully with nothing but double exposures. In terms of pure visual expressiveness, Sunrise hasn't been surpassed.
The story is, a man and a wife live on a farm, and the man is having an affair with a woman from the city. The woman lures him with stories of how fun and exciting it is to live in the city, and tells him they could live like that together if he just sells the farm. They plot together to kill his wife, then at the last minute he changes his mind. So the man goes to the city with his wife and has the fun time he was imagining with the other woman. It's such a simple, elegant story about love and temptation, that works because the characters are so human.
Also, Sunrise is an interesting cultural study. For instance, the murder plot relies on the assumption that neither the husband nor the wife can swim, whereas the assumption in today's culture would be that they can. Also, you see in the 1920s a married woman really had no options but to stay with her husband. After he plots to murder her then changes his mind, she runs about frantically with no idea where to go except back into her husband's arms. When they go into a church and he begs for her forgiveness, she gives it immediately. Anytime after the 60's the same plot would lead almost immediately to divorce. Then there's the technology of the 20s. Cameras where you look into from the back and see an inverted image, then have to block all light and remove a shutter manually. Cars with wooden wheels and horse drawn carriages sharing the same road, with no traffic lights. I also think the ways people in the 20s have fun look a lot more exciting than the ways people in the 00s have fun. When I'm going out with a group of people I'd rather go to a fair and dance to a big band then just go watch a movie or go somewhere and drink. (Stupid modern culture.)
Rating: ***** / 5
28/101
Sunrise, in my opinion, is not only the best silent film, it's the best film to be released prior to Citizen Kane. It's incredibly emotionally expressive with nothing but body language and hardly any captions. The movie starts with text that says: "This story happens nowhere and everywhere. It could happen anywhere at anytime." It's presented as a modern instance of a story common to all man. The characters don't have names (As is the case with many silent films) and are presented as archetypes, but also as extremely human and animated individuals.
Considering the limitations of 1920s technology, the visuals are incredible. Things the characters are thinking at the time are illustrated masterfully with nothing but double exposures. In terms of pure visual expressiveness, Sunrise hasn't been surpassed.
The story is, a man and a wife live on a farm, and the man is having an affair with a woman from the city. The woman lures him with stories of how fun and exciting it is to live in the city, and tells him they could live like that together if he just sells the farm. They plot together to kill his wife, then at the last minute he changes his mind. So the man goes to the city with his wife and has the fun time he was imagining with the other woman. It's such a simple, elegant story about love and temptation, that works because the characters are so human.
Also, Sunrise is an interesting cultural study. For instance, the murder plot relies on the assumption that neither the husband nor the wife can swim, whereas the assumption in today's culture would be that they can. Also, you see in the 1920s a married woman really had no options but to stay with her husband. After he plots to murder her then changes his mind, she runs about frantically with no idea where to go except back into her husband's arms. When they go into a church and he begs for her forgiveness, she gives it immediately. Anytime after the 60's the same plot would lead almost immediately to divorce. Then there's the technology of the 20s. Cameras where you look into from the back and see an inverted image, then have to block all light and remove a shutter manually. Cars with wooden wheels and horse drawn carriages sharing the same road, with no traffic lights. I also think the ways people in the 20s have fun look a lot more exciting than the ways people in the 00s have fun. When I'm going out with a group of people I'd rather go to a fair and dance to a big band then just go watch a movie or go somewhere and drink. (Stupid modern culture.)
Rating: ***** / 5
28/101
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
#97: Double Indemnity
Double Indemnity (1944, Wilder)
If you look at Billy Wilder's four most acclaimed movies, you see a weird pattern. There's Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, which are very similar to each other, but completely different from Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, which are very similar to each other. Wilder's filmmaking style seems schizophrenic depending on whether Jack Lemmon is around.
When Lemmon is nowhere to be seen, Wilder films use the narration technique where you start at the end of the plot, then the main character spends the movie explaining how he got to this point. In the case of Double Indemnity, the movie starts with the main character confessing to a failed murder-insurance scam, telling his boss that he was right about the entire scheme, except wrong about the culprit. He is an insurance agent, and he thought because of his insider knowledge of the industry he could beat the system.
The wife of a rich man calls him over to buy an accident insurance policy from him. It's obvious from the beginning the plan was to allure him into using his expertise to kill her husband for her without her getting caught. Like any great manipulator, she not only convinces him to do it, she convinces him it was his idea. Together they pull off a very clever, almost seamless murder. Keyes, the absurdly brillaint detective-type he has for a boss, of course finds the seam and unravels the entire plot.
In true film-noir style, the scripting is verbose and intricate. Characters talk fast at each other, constantly question each others' motives and call out their lies. It's all really well written, and the characterization is wonderful. The wife is one of the first mainstream movie characters to use her sexuality to manipulate everybody without a trace of moral reservation, which at the time was so controversial it was difficult to find actors willing to play the roles. Double Indemnity is also an example of simple, to the point old school plotting. It's to the point and doesn't have all the excess films a newer movie would have.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
26/101
Others:
Wings Of Desire: ***** / 5
A movie about angels who watch and inspire men, considering whether they want to trans-substantiate and become human themselves. The movie analyzes what it means to be human by analyzing what it means not to be: The angels are never in the moment, and don't experience the aesthetic pleasures human beings do. But, being human also means being mortal. The film seems to accept that being human is more fun than being an angel, and show some angels willing to sacrifice immortality to be human, and some not. The cinematography which shows the angel perspectives in black and white and the human perspectives in color is perfect for the themes of the film.
And the actor who played Columbo is in it, playing himself, filming an episode of Columbo in Germany. That was cool.
Next: To Be Or Not To Be, Sunrise
If you look at Billy Wilder's four most acclaimed movies, you see a weird pattern. There's Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard, which are very similar to each other, but completely different from Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, which are very similar to each other. Wilder's filmmaking style seems schizophrenic depending on whether Jack Lemmon is around.
When Lemmon is nowhere to be seen, Wilder films use the narration technique where you start at the end of the plot, then the main character spends the movie explaining how he got to this point. In the case of Double Indemnity, the movie starts with the main character confessing to a failed murder-insurance scam, telling his boss that he was right about the entire scheme, except wrong about the culprit. He is an insurance agent, and he thought because of his insider knowledge of the industry he could beat the system.
The wife of a rich man calls him over to buy an accident insurance policy from him. It's obvious from the beginning the plan was to allure him into using his expertise to kill her husband for her without her getting caught. Like any great manipulator, she not only convinces him to do it, she convinces him it was his idea. Together they pull off a very clever, almost seamless murder. Keyes, the absurdly brillaint detective-type he has for a boss, of course finds the seam and unravels the entire plot.
In true film-noir style, the scripting is verbose and intricate. Characters talk fast at each other, constantly question each others' motives and call out their lies. It's all really well written, and the characterization is wonderful. The wife is one of the first mainstream movie characters to use her sexuality to manipulate everybody without a trace of moral reservation, which at the time was so controversial it was difficult to find actors willing to play the roles. Double Indemnity is also an example of simple, to the point old school plotting. It's to the point and doesn't have all the excess films a newer movie would have.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
26/101
Others:
Wings Of Desire: ***** / 5
A movie about angels who watch and inspire men, considering whether they want to trans-substantiate and become human themselves. The movie analyzes what it means to be human by analyzing what it means not to be: The angels are never in the moment, and don't experience the aesthetic pleasures human beings do. But, being human also means being mortal. The film seems to accept that being human is more fun than being an angel, and show some angels willing to sacrifice immortality to be human, and some not. The cinematography which shows the angel perspectives in black and white and the human perspectives in color is perfect for the themes of the film.
And the actor who played Columbo is in it, playing himself, filming an episode of Columbo in Germany. That was cool.
Next: To Be Or Not To Be, Sunrise
Saturday, March 6, 2010
#54: Intolerance
Intolerance (Griffith, 1916)
Intolerance is the oldest movie I've ever seen by about nine years. It's also arguably the first art film. Coming one year after Griffith's most famous film Birth Of A Nation which was accused of racism (And that was by 1915 standards), Intolerance portrays a struggle between human love and social repression that's been waged all throughout history. The film jumps back and forth between four parallel stories: One about the downfall of Babylon, one about the crucifixion of Christ, one about the Protestant Reformation, and one in modern day. The most important of the time periods is the modern day, because it's the one being compared to the other three.
In Babylon, the priests of Marduk are angry that people are worshipping this new Ishtar cult, so they betray Babylon to the enemy. This ends up in a bloody massacre.
In Christ's time, the Pharisees are mad that Jesus is going against the system which places them in a position of moral superiority, so they have him crucified.
In the 1500's, the Queen is mad that people are turning away from Catholicism, so she goads the King into repressing them. This ends in in a bloody massacre.
In modern day, a woman who is angry she's no longer seen as part of the youth culture organizes a society called 'The Uplifters', a group of political activists to 'Protect the moral purity' of youth. (A theme which has obvious relevance to today's culture.) They gain the help of this business who, to pay for the political movement, has to cut employee wages by 10%. This causes a strike which is met with violent retribution. Later in the film, the main character gets caught using drops of whiskey to help put her child to sleep (Which, reprehensible by today's standards, is explained in the film to to be 'Frowned upon, but practiced by doctors'.) The Uplifters then sue her to take her child away from her. She then tries to go to a criminal to take her baby back for her. Her fiance shows up to stop her, and then there's a violent struggle in which this member of the Uplifters spying on them shoots the criminal with the husband's gun. The husband is convicted of murder and sent to be hanged. During this storyline, it repeatedly cuts back and forth to the other three to expose parallels in terms of persecution and the toll it takes on the innocent. But out of the four storylines, the boy in the modern timeline is the only one who gets saved. The message seeming to be 'Let's learn from the past and work to fight intolerance in the present'.
Somebody should edit the film with clips from Fox News. The Pharisees of modern day.
The film is successful in it's artistic expression, but it's hard to ignore the problems with film technology in 1916. The light level's always fluctuating, the score doesn't always fit the action like it does in later silent films. The captions are over-explanatory. They put words on the screen, you read them, then it shows the things you just read happening. It's like a picture book. You should be able to tell what's happening mostly based on the action, and the captions should be bare bones, like in the later Chaplin silent films.
Rating: *** / 5
25/101
Others:
Ghost Writer: **** / 5
A Polanski movie that starts out looking like a political satire then turns into Chinatown about the Iraq War. It's clearly fiction, but it's also obvious which character is supposed to represent which real life political figure. Good movie on the whole, but would have worked better if they ended it about two scenes earlier. They traded realism for the more obvious 'I am Roman Polanski' ending.
Intolerance is the oldest movie I've ever seen by about nine years. It's also arguably the first art film. Coming one year after Griffith's most famous film Birth Of A Nation which was accused of racism (And that was by 1915 standards), Intolerance portrays a struggle between human love and social repression that's been waged all throughout history. The film jumps back and forth between four parallel stories: One about the downfall of Babylon, one about the crucifixion of Christ, one about the Protestant Reformation, and one in modern day. The most important of the time periods is the modern day, because it's the one being compared to the other three.
In Babylon, the priests of Marduk are angry that people are worshipping this new Ishtar cult, so they betray Babylon to the enemy. This ends up in a bloody massacre.
In Christ's time, the Pharisees are mad that Jesus is going against the system which places them in a position of moral superiority, so they have him crucified.
In the 1500's, the Queen is mad that people are turning away from Catholicism, so she goads the King into repressing them. This ends in in a bloody massacre.
In modern day, a woman who is angry she's no longer seen as part of the youth culture organizes a society called 'The Uplifters', a group of political activists to 'Protect the moral purity' of youth. (A theme which has obvious relevance to today's culture.) They gain the help of this business who, to pay for the political movement, has to cut employee wages by 10%. This causes a strike which is met with violent retribution. Later in the film, the main character gets caught using drops of whiskey to help put her child to sleep (Which, reprehensible by today's standards, is explained in the film to to be 'Frowned upon, but practiced by doctors'.) The Uplifters then sue her to take her child away from her. She then tries to go to a criminal to take her baby back for her. Her fiance shows up to stop her, and then there's a violent struggle in which this member of the Uplifters spying on them shoots the criminal with the husband's gun. The husband is convicted of murder and sent to be hanged. During this storyline, it repeatedly cuts back and forth to the other three to expose parallels in terms of persecution and the toll it takes on the innocent. But out of the four storylines, the boy in the modern timeline is the only one who gets saved. The message seeming to be 'Let's learn from the past and work to fight intolerance in the present'.
Somebody should edit the film with clips from Fox News. The Pharisees of modern day.
The film is successful in it's artistic expression, but it's hard to ignore the problems with film technology in 1916. The light level's always fluctuating, the score doesn't always fit the action like it does in later silent films. The captions are over-explanatory. They put words on the screen, you read them, then it shows the things you just read happening. It's like a picture book. You should be able to tell what's happening mostly based on the action, and the captions should be bare bones, like in the later Chaplin silent films.
Rating: *** / 5
25/101
Others:
Ghost Writer: **** / 5
A Polanski movie that starts out looking like a political satire then turns into Chinatown about the Iraq War. It's clearly fiction, but it's also obvious which character is supposed to represent which real life political figure. Good movie on the whole, but would have worked better if they ended it about two scenes earlier. They traded realism for the more obvious 'I am Roman Polanski' ending.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
#73: Viridiana
Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961)
Viridiana
All but one of the Bunuel films I've seen has the same central thesis: "Catholicism is stupid". Viridiana is no exception. It's a great movie, but it could probably afford to be a little more subtle and less flippant. (Seriously, I don't know what those nuns did to Bunuel when he was a child, but it must have been terrible.) Viridiana is a nun acolyte who's invited to her dying uncle's estate. Her mother superior orders her to go because he's her last living relative. When she's about to leave, her uncle doesn't want her to, so he drugs her with the intent of raping her (Thereby disqualifying her as a nun so she can't go back to the convent). He decides against raping her at the last minute, but when she wakes up, tells her he did. Then when she's about to leave, tells the truth, that he didn't. Viridiana, because of this imagined sin that wouldn't have been within her control even if it did happen, is too ashamed to stay at the convent. When her uncle then kills himself, she decides it's her calling to go stay at her uncle's estate. She also finds out he had a bastard son, who also then moves into the estate.
The son is a modern man with very secularized moral beliefs. He's lustful and indulgent in modern pleasures, which according to Bunuel's idea of catholicism makes him sinful, but throughout the character he's the most noble, and also the most practical character. As soon as he moves in he uses has electricity installed in the house. Viridiana on the other hand is portrayed as well meaning but laughably impractical. She can't do a simple task such as milking a cow, and uses her uncle's fortune to bring in a bunch of street bums. In dealing with these street bums, she assumes they will all behave like good Christians just because she's being generous. Her attitude toward them is naive and maternalistic (As Bunuel sees all Catholicism). Later when they're left alone on the ranch for a day, they break into the house and, intoxicated by the rare opportunity to indulge in luxury, ravage the place. As they're eating from the kitchen table, they pose like the Last Supper, just because they know they're in a Bunuel film.
The film works well as a critique of Bunuel's catholic upbringing, but as previously mentioned, it's a bit too flippant and unsubtle.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
24/101
Others:
Cinema Paradiso **** / 5
The missing influential link between Fellini and Almodovar. The film is broken into three parts, one where the main charater is a young child, one where he's a teenager, and one where he's a middle aged man. The first part reminds me of Amarcord, and the last part reminds me of the 2009 Almodovar film Broken Embraces. The story follows a boy who loves film and learns to run a film projector when he's a child. You also see the transformation of his village. In the 50s the cinema is the only entertainment in the whole village and the community revolves around it. The village seems quaint and rural, whereas when he comes back in the 80s, you see highways and all kinds of modern buildings, and nobody visits the cinema anymore. The main idea of the film seems to be, whatever may have happened in the past, you need to leave it in the past and live in the present, no matter how much you may have wished you did things differently.
Ajami **** / 5
The film takes part in five chapters. The first four seem scattershot, jumping around between storylines and timeframes, but in the last chapter you realize it was all to drop pieces of information here and there to set up possibly the most depressing twist ending of all time.
Shutter Island ** / 5
Pretty decent movie, but it's so conspiratorially dense at the beginning and so obvious everyone is lying, you stop caring what the resolution is. Then the twist ending doesn't make very much sense.
Next: Intolerance, Double Indemnity
Coming soon to theaters: A Prophet, Ghost Writer, Green Zone
Viridiana
All but one of the Bunuel films I've seen has the same central thesis: "Catholicism is stupid". Viridiana is no exception. It's a great movie, but it could probably afford to be a little more subtle and less flippant. (Seriously, I don't know what those nuns did to Bunuel when he was a child, but it must have been terrible.) Viridiana is a nun acolyte who's invited to her dying uncle's estate. Her mother superior orders her to go because he's her last living relative. When she's about to leave, her uncle doesn't want her to, so he drugs her with the intent of raping her (Thereby disqualifying her as a nun so she can't go back to the convent). He decides against raping her at the last minute, but when she wakes up, tells her he did. Then when she's about to leave, tells the truth, that he didn't. Viridiana, because of this imagined sin that wouldn't have been within her control even if it did happen, is too ashamed to stay at the convent. When her uncle then kills himself, she decides it's her calling to go stay at her uncle's estate. She also finds out he had a bastard son, who also then moves into the estate.
The son is a modern man with very secularized moral beliefs. He's lustful and indulgent in modern pleasures, which according to Bunuel's idea of catholicism makes him sinful, but throughout the character he's the most noble, and also the most practical character. As soon as he moves in he uses has electricity installed in the house. Viridiana on the other hand is portrayed as well meaning but laughably impractical. She can't do a simple task such as milking a cow, and uses her uncle's fortune to bring in a bunch of street bums. In dealing with these street bums, she assumes they will all behave like good Christians just because she's being generous. Her attitude toward them is naive and maternalistic (As Bunuel sees all Catholicism). Later when they're left alone on the ranch for a day, they break into the house and, intoxicated by the rare opportunity to indulge in luxury, ravage the place. As they're eating from the kitchen table, they pose like the Last Supper, just because they know they're in a Bunuel film.
The film works well as a critique of Bunuel's catholic upbringing, but as previously mentioned, it's a bit too flippant and unsubtle.
Rating: **** 1/2 / 5
24/101
Others:
Cinema Paradiso **** / 5
The missing influential link between Fellini and Almodovar. The film is broken into three parts, one where the main charater is a young child, one where he's a teenager, and one where he's a middle aged man. The first part reminds me of Amarcord, and the last part reminds me of the 2009 Almodovar film Broken Embraces. The story follows a boy who loves film and learns to run a film projector when he's a child. You also see the transformation of his village. In the 50s the cinema is the only entertainment in the whole village and the community revolves around it. The village seems quaint and rural, whereas when he comes back in the 80s, you see highways and all kinds of modern buildings, and nobody visits the cinema anymore. The main idea of the film seems to be, whatever may have happened in the past, you need to leave it in the past and live in the present, no matter how much you may have wished you did things differently.
Ajami **** / 5
The film takes part in five chapters. The first four seem scattershot, jumping around between storylines and timeframes, but in the last chapter you realize it was all to drop pieces of information here and there to set up possibly the most depressing twist ending of all time.
Shutter Island ** / 5
Pretty decent movie, but it's so conspiratorially dense at the beginning and so obvious everyone is lying, you stop caring what the resolution is. Then the twist ending doesn't make very much sense.
Next: Intolerance, Double Indemnity
Coming soon to theaters: A Prophet, Ghost Writer, Green Zone
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