Schindler's List, Gilliam, Porter

I watched SCHINDLER'S LIST tonight for what I realized was the first time in 21 years, the last time being when it aired, uncut, on NBC in 1997. I had picked up the DVD recently on a trip to Barnes & Noble, and was interested in revisiting the film as I've re-watched many of Spielberg's films in the past few years. I don't know why it's taken me so long to come back to this one, though. It's undoubtedly one of the strongest works in Spielberg's filmography -- powerful and moving while only very occasionally (near the end of the film) moving toward the kind of manipulative sentimentality that often mars his work. Technically it's brilliant, and in terms of the ideas, certainly one of Spielberg's most sophisticated (and sincere) films.

I remembered that Terry Gilliam had criticized SCHINDLER'S LIST for what he saw as Spielberg's neat and reassuring conclusion to the events of the film, and quoted Stanley Kubrick as saying that SCHINDLER'S LIST “is about success. The Holocaust was about failure”.

Without disputing his point, I'm not sure it's fair to criticize Spielberg for not making the film that Kubrick would have made.

There's also a very powerful visual touch -- the young girl in the red coat seen early on in the film, whose reappearance later on is made all the more visceral by the standalone use of color. This device recalls Edwin S. Porter's use of the hand-colored red coat worn by a little girl in his film, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, where the selective use of color was also an effective form of visual punctuation.

Christine (2016)

As most viewers going into the film are presumably familiar -- as I was -- with the tragic story of news anchor Christine Chubbuck, who committed suicide on live television, CHRISTINE works in reverse, looking back from rather than leading up to its conclusion (which, crucially, is tastefully portrayed with a sobering matter-of-factness).

Perhaps because of this, the film rises or falls on its depiction of Christine, and thankfully, Rebecca Hall turns in a fine performance that fully works to center the film and hold it all together. She brilliantly conveys the pain and frustration of the aspiring news anchor's personal and professional struggles.

Especially poignant is the moment in which Christine learns that her colleague has received the promotion which she desired so strongly for herself. It's a heartbreaking moment, for sure, but Hall plays it with an astonishing restraint and honesty that makes it all the more painful to watch.

Currently streaming on Netflix.

 

Pocket cameras, 3D

After writing about Sony's Bloggie 3D camera the other day, it occurred to me that these kinds of pocket camcorders are quickly becoming a thing of the past due to the ubiquity of smartphone cameras. That's understandable, but I hope they don't go away completely. The Bloggie that I have was listed as out-of-stock even when I first began looking into getting one three years ago.

I currently have a smartphone that I use mostly for work, and while it has a nice camera on it, I find it less convenient to use than a pocket camcorder. For one thing, the storage space fills up more quickly, and getting the video off of it can be a bit of a hassle, but overall I can certainly see why most people would be perfectly content to use the smartphone as an all-purpose still- and video-camera.

Still, I hope that the market for these pocket camcorders holds on. I remember the first one that I ever bought, back in 2009, when I was making the switch to shooting in HD. I didn't want to spend a small fortune on an HD camcorder when I wasn't quite sure what to do with the format yet, so I bought one of those cheap Aiptek cameras at Best Buy. I can't recall how much I paid for it now, but I believe it was less than $100, maybe even less than $75. The only things I didn't care for about it were the fact that it had a very close lens (which I was able to workaround by adding my own attachment for a wide-angle adapter), and the fact that it had absolutely no image stabilization whatever, which made it almost impossible to get decent handheld shots. Other than that, it was the perfect transitional camera when I began shooting in HD.

My modified Aiptek with wide angle lens attachment (2009).

I also had one of those MiniHD Flip cameras for a short time, which I had been given as a gift, but I can't say I used it very often. It was a very convenient little pocket camera from what I recall, and it came in very handy for filming a conference presentation I gave at NYU around the time I had received the camera. Unfortunately, it seems that the battery began to fail rather quickly, and I could no longer re-charge it via the USB stick. The Flip cameras were discontinued not long after I had received mine -- no doubt another casualty of the Smartphone market.

The Sony Bloggie 3D works great, though, and after looking into some new editing software, I'm drawn to the idea of starting to shoot more 3D footage. YouTube used to automatically convert the left/right images into anaglyph 3D, but did away with that feature, so I now have to figure out how I can do that with the editing software I have (although it looks like I'm going to have to upgrade that in order to be able to do so. I love the idea of having the option to record in 3D on a regular basis. I'm hoping to put together a new short film project this summer and, if I can get the technical issues sorted out, would like to make it my first short film in 3D. The little Bloggie will be getting a good workout on that project, I'm sure!

Day for Night, Cinema is King

I screened a clip of the "Cinema is King" montage from Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT and was struck once again by how well it captures the joy and triumph when the making of a film comes together. Godard attacked Truffaut for romanticizing and sugarcoating the filmmaking process. I still find DAY FOR NIGHT more resonant of my own experiences on making my own small little movies, than any other film on the subject (Tim Burton's ED WOOD comes close, actually). In contrast, I found Godard's take on the process in CONTEMPT to be a little too jaded and cynical. While I have no doubt Godard was sincere in his attitude toward the process, it doesn't ring as true for me as the joyful sense that Truffaut conveys so well in his film. With Truffaut, there is no doubt that -- for him -- cinema is king.

Hugo

I began watching Scorsese's HUGO again the other night on DVD. It's a film I want to like a lot more than I do. It fell flat for me even when I saw it in its 3D presentation and theaters, and a subsequent viewing on Netflix did little to improve my overall impression of it.

Still, there are some moments that really work. The re-creations of Georges Melies' studio and the making of his films are vivid and work quite nicely. I could watch those scenes again and again.

There is a really odd moment somewhere toward the middle of the film, when the two children take a journey through the history of film. Scorsese puts the film on hold while he delves in to an appreciation of the magic and power of cinema. It's obviously a highly personal moment for Scorsese, and there's no denying that there is something powerful about the sequence, but it still stands out quite sharply, almost like a scene from another movie.

Godard, Sony Bloggie 3D

Jean-Luc Godard filming with the Bloggie 3D camera

I had received one of these little cameras as a Christmas present a few years, and still love using it. I believe they went on the market back around 2010 or 2011, and by the time I had got mine, the cameras had apparently already been discontinued by Sony, so they're harder to come by now.

I was thrilled to learn about the options for budget 3D cameras on the consumer market,and the Sony Bloggie 3D produces a nice image. Up until a few months ago, you could view the footage in 3D by uploading it to YouTube and watching it with red/green 3D glasses, but they have since disabled this function. The nice thing about the camera is that you can toggle between 3D and 2D filming options. I use the latter just as often, because the camera's size and light weight makes it the perfect pocket camcorder to take on trips or just carry around in your pocket.

Browsing the web last night, I came across this image of Jean-Luc Godard using one of these cameras, presumably during the shooting of his 2014 3D film Goodbye to Language. I love that this most innovative of filmmakers continues to find new ways to use consumer tools.

Ready Player One (2018)

I saw Spielberg's new film, Ready Player One, on its opening night. There's rarely any film that attracts me enough to see it on the day of its release, and I have zero interest in the current crop of slick, overproduced, corporate blockbusters, and about the same amount of interest in video games. But I was interested enough to see what Spielberg had done with the material.

Set in the near future, it deals with a lonely young man who spends his days inside the fantasy world of an immersive role-playing video game. His only friends are his virtual ones, and his life experiences are limited to being tethered to the virtual reality station. When he begins to fall in love with a female avatar in the game, and has to stop an evil corporate scumbag from hijacking control of the entire game for his own nefarious purposes, the lines between reality and virtual reality begin to blur.

This is another one of these science fiction stories reflecting the anxieties of our obsession with technology, our loss of humanity within the fantasy worlds created by social media, the stunted development of generations raised perpetually plugged-in to electronics and glued to screens, etc. None of it is explored in any real depth here, and the ending is too facile in its dealing with any of these ideas to offer much to think about afterward.

It's a little difficult to buy any such idea from this film, anyway, when it's obviously conceived as an escapist withdrawal into the world of '80s and '90s pop culture nostalgia. The result is such a hodge podge that you come away from it feeling a little dazed.

I will say that I enjoyed it considerably more than his previous film, The Post, which is Spielberg at his safest and most ossified, and totally predictable, yet -- perhaps like the nostalgia mined in Ready Player One -- there can be something oddly comforting in that.

Mystery Liner (1934)

I came across this little Monogram thriller -- based on an Edgar Wallace story about an ocean liner that is being controlled remotely -- last night on one of the public domain Roku channels. It was just over an hour long and looked like the perfect thing to watch late at night before bed.

One thing that always strikes me about these Poverty Row productions of the '30s is how often it appears that every scene was shot only in a master shot, presumably due to scheduling issues. And not only that, but that you can sometimes see the actors hesitating or pausing between lines, or starting to speak over each other, as if a re-take was called for but the time and budget didn't allow for one. It gives these movies a pace and feel all their own, one that is really accentuated when watching them late at night.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)

Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice is a brilliant satire -- funny, touching, surprisingly honest and profound. It follows a well-off, upper-middle-class Southern California couple who return from a New Age retreat changed by the experience -- or so they think. The couple uses the teachings of the encounter group as an excuse to escape their comfortable middle class trappings and explore their muddled, newfound ideas of "sexual freedom" by cheating on each other, but are finally forced to confront the emptiness of their new pursuits when they bring another couple -- their best friends -- in to the experience with them.

At first, it seems that Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice could be a freewheeling sex comedy taking advantage of the new permissiveness of the late '60s. But soon something sadder, more desperate, more neurotic comes through. The brilliance of Mazursky's approach involves using such attractive characters who seem to have it all, which makes their supposed "enlightened" attitudes toward sex all the more seductive. Interestingly, both Bob and Carol defend and justify their infidelities by describing them as empty experiences. Although both characters eventually seem satisfied with this justification, it does eventually raise the question: if it is such an empty experience, just what exactly is the point?

That is the question that the two couples are forced to face at the end of the film, which provides them with the realization they have been seeking. As the song says, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love."

A Corner in Wheat (1909) and The Sower (1850)

These farm scenes in Griffith's A CORNER IN WHEAT (1909) -- modeled after Millet's "The Sower" (1850) -- were shot in Jamaica, Queens. I loved that this shot turns up in WALL-E (2008) as an artifact of planet Earth for people of the future.

Streaming: "Desk Set" and "Rashomon"

I recently watched a couple of films on streaming. The first was Desk Set, available on Netflix through the end of January. I thought I had seen this one a few years ago, but apparently not, as it was definitely new to me. I suppose I was just familiar with the premise and could imagine how it played out so that it felt like I'd seen it.

Desk Set is one of the last Tracy-Hepburn pairings. Tracy plays an eccentric computer engineer who has come to the research department of a big TV network in order to install his machine to streamline the research process, and Hepburn is the brilliant, long-time head of research who sees the computer as a threat to her future at the company. The plot is pure romantic comedy silliness, although Hepburn and Tracy certainly lend the material a certain charm and dignity that always keeps things interesting. Most striking is the use of big splashy DeLuxe color and enormously wide CinemaScope framing, in which characters can become practically lost when watching the film on the small screen. The computer-as-villain is sort of an interesting counterpart to the usual TV-as-villain trope that appeared in Hollywood films of the time. All in all, an enjoyable if forgettable trifle, acted by two first-rate stars.

Next up was Akiro Kurosawa's Rashomon. Unfortunately the version I saw on the streaming channel I was watching (MyRetroFlix on the Roku device) cut off after an hour, but I was so thoroughly engrossed in the film that I had to pull out my DVD copy to watch the remaining half hour. I had last seen this one about ten years ago, in a beautiful 35mm restoration on the big screen of a local historic movie theater. Watching it on the small screen couldn't compare to that, of course, and yet I found myself more struck than ever by what an incredibly beautiful film it is. I do not use that term loosely; I watched transfixed by the power of the images Kurosawa captures, especially those shots looking up through the trees, with the sunlight poking through between the branches. And that torrential rainfall, pouring down over the roof of the structure where three men debate the different testimonies heard at the trial that frames the narrative of the film -- what an image! So haunting, so lyrical.

Marc Sober Interview Part 10: Current Film Culture -- Baltimore Film History Series

Final part of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing how Baltimore's film culture has changed since he first became involved with it during the 1960s.

Marc Sober Interview Part 9: George Figgs & The Orpheum Cinema -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part nine of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing the importance of Baltimore's Orpheum Cinema.

Marc Sober Interview Part 8: Filmtalk Series -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part eight of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing the Filmtalk series at Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Marc Sober Interview Part 7: Film Scholars -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part seven of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing film scholars based in Baltimore and film education in the area during the 1960s-80s.

Marc Sober Interview Part 6: Baltimore Film Festival -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part six of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing the early history of the Baltimore Film Festival.

Marc Sober Interview Part 5: Film Exhibition & Festivals -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part five of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing the Baltimore Film Forum's relationship with the independent film industry including exhibitors and film festivals.

Marc Sober Interview Part 4: Baltimore Film Forum -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part four of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing the Baltimore Film Forum.

Marc Sober Interview Part 3: John Waters and Stan VanDerBeek -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part three of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing filmmakers John Waters and Stan VanDerBeek.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

I had the opportunity to see John Huston's film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre tonight on the big screen, thanks to the Fathom Events series which brings classic Hollywood films back to theaters for select engagements. I mention this because such a thing would have been unthinkable twenty, even ten, years ago -- that you could go to your local megaplex and there, alongside the latest blockbusters, have a chance to see one of the great films of Hollywood's Golden Age right there in a state-of-the-art theater.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a film that I would count among my favorites. It is certainly one of the bleakest films to come out of the Hollywood studio system, with its story of three men torn apart by greed and paranoia. Humphrey Bogart gives one of his very best performances as Fred C. Dobbs, a down-on-his-luck American in Mexico who teams up with a couple of his displaced fellow countrymen -- Curtin, a laborer (Tim Holt) and Howard, a grizzled old prospector (Walter Huston) -- for a gold prospecting expedition in to the hills. It is Howard who plants the seed of this idea in to the minds of Dobbs and Curtin, but he also warns them of all the dangers that come with it, not least of all the temptation to keep accumulating more and more gold -- a compulsion that, like a gambler on a winning streak, often results in losing it all.

Sure enough, the men do strike gold, but it's not long before their suspicions begin to get the better of them, and they find that despite having to do battle with bandits, wild animals, and the elements, the greatest danger they face is their own human nature.

John Huston adapted the script from the novel by the elusive B. Traven (who supposedly worked on the film as a technical advisor under an alias), and took the unusual (for the time) step of shooting portions of the film on location in Mexico, which certainly lends it an air of authenticity and grittiness missing from most studio films of the period. The sense of atmosphere is greatly enhanced by Ted McCord's excellent cinematography, which masterfully contrasts between the unrelenting brightness of the hot day sun, and the menacing shadows of the dark night. Max Steiner delivers a typically fine score, though -- as others have similarly noted -- it is sometimes a little too grand, a little too bombastic, in a way that works against the realism that Huston works to achieve in other aspects of the film.

In addition to Bogart, mention has to be made of Walter Huston's wonderful performance. He brings an impish sense of humor and world-weary wisdom to his role as the voice of reason among the three men. Tim Holt has perhaps the best role of his career (with the possible exception of his George Minafer in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons) as the honorable young prospector who finds himself at the mercy of Bogart's increasingly paranoid and violent behavior, and Bruce Bennett brings just the right balance of sympathy and menace to his brief role as a Texas prospector who intrudes, fatally, on the group's venture. Another standout performance in the film is Alfonso Bedoya as the bandit Gold Hat, who manages to be extremely intimidating by oscillating between jocularity and threatening outbursts in his dealings with the prospectors. (He also gets the film's iconic line of dialogue, when asked to show his badge.)

In retrospect, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is an interesting transitional film -- on the one hand, it's very much a film in the Classic Hollywood tradition, a studio picture and a starring vehicle for Humphrey Bogart. But it is also a sign of things to come, with its personal authorial vision from writer-director John Huston, to its use of Realism in favor of Big Studio gloss, and the existentialist nature of its conclusion. If there is a precedent for Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the American cinema, it is Erich von Stroheim's Greed, a film it resembles in both theme and imagery. When Bogart's unshaven, dusty Dobbs walks his burro through the sparse, barren fields, collapsing of heat exhaustion, toward his ill-fated destiny, it brings to mind the protagonist of Greed, stranded without water in Death Valley, handcuffed to his murdered rival, his dead mule lying beside him as he awaits his own inevitable fate.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre deserves to be seen on a big screen, where the full scope of the cinematic canvas that John Huston uses so brilliantly can be seen in all its glory.

Marc Sober Interview Part 2: Baltimore Film Culture -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part two of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing the film culture of Baltimore in the 1960s and 70s.

Marc Sober Interview Part 1: Theaters & Johns Hopkins Film Society -- Baltimore Film History Series

Part one of a ten-part interview with film historian Marc Sober, discussing Baltimore movie theaters and the early days of the Johns Hopkins Film Society.

Wall Street (1987)

A stinging indictment of unbridled, corrupt capitalism that, like so many social critiques, seems to only become ever more relevant with age. Oliver Stone creates a taut crime thriller with this rise-and-fall story about an ambitious young stockbroker (Charlie Sheen) who becomes seduced by the instant gratification and big rewards of insider trading, but quickly gets in over his head when he finds himself an unwitting part of a plot that would destroy the company his working-class father has devoted his life to.

Although Michael Douglas' performance is rightly the one that everyone remembers, the quiet dignity that Martin Sheen brings to his role as the union leader father is a remarkable performance in its own right. Stone populates his supporting cast with top actors including Terence Stamp, James Spader, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young, Hal Holbrook, James Karen, John C. McGinley, Saul Rubineck, among others, who make the most of their roles. Robert Richardson's enthralling moving camerawork brings you right in to the frenzied world of the trading floor and effectively conveys the sense of money-fueled mania.

Charles Laughton and "The Night of the Hunter"

CHARLES LAUGHTON DIRECTS THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is one of the most thorough and revealing looks into the making of a film that I've yet seen. It provides a fascinating look at the different takes of each scene and how Laughton coached the actors through them. It's like watching the movie take shape before your very eyes.

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is such an utterly unique film that I've often wondered what specific influences may have shaped its style. With this in mind, it was interesting to learn that during pre-production, Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez spent a good deal of time at MoMA watching silent films for inspiration, many of them early films by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish.

The influence of silent film acting relates directly to something that always deeply impresses me about Mitchum's performance in the film, in that it is such an intensely physical performance. He twists and contorts his body into the very personification of evil.

The entire 2 1/2 hour documentary of CHARLES LAUGHTON DIRECTS THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER can be found on Disc 2 of Criterion's excellent Blu-ray edition of the film.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Watched this again recently for the first time in years and am still processing the film's powerful effect. It's one of the great counterculture statements put on film and just as relevant as ever (if not more so) -- an explosive indictment of institutional abuse, the scourge of authoritarianism, and societal pressure to conform and obey.

Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched is the personification of "the system", of cold, heartless authoritarianism, enforcing the rules at the expense of the humanity of her patients. Her cool, calm demeanor belies her sadistic nature and one can sense the pleasure she derives from wielding her power over the patients in her ward.

Jack Nicholson's McMurphy is an explosive force that upsets the order of hierarchy and turns authority on its head, a non-conformist who fights the system but is ultimately crushed by it. Even though he represents a triumph of individualism, it is his concern for the happiness of his fellow men that reveals the hypocrisy of the institution supposedly responsible for caring for them and wakes them up to rebel against the injustices and humiliations they suffer under authoritarian control.

"True Grit", Melodrama, and Landscapes

Since seeing True Grit again two nights ago, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the film. As I was laying awake, sometime around 2 AM, and running through some of the film's images that stuck in my mind, that where the Coens take True Grit from being an exceptionally well-made Western and into the realm of something else entirely occurs toward the end of the film.

I suppose I should issue a "spoiler warning" here before proceeding, for anyone who has not yet seen the film. If you haven't, I highly recommend doing so at the earliest opportunity.

The pivotal moment for me occurs during what it supposed to be the dramatic climax of the story we think we have been watching up to this point, when Mattie Ross finally gets the drop on Tom Chaney, the man who killed her father, and shoots him in the chest, sending him backward over the edge of a cliff. It mirrors a scene earlier in the film during her first encounter with Chaney, when they spot eachother while getting water from a stream and Mattie wounds him with one shot before running out of bullets.

After Mattie blasts Tom off the side of the cliff, she is propelled backward by the force of the gun, down a hole in the mountainside, where she gets tangled up on a vine that breaks her fall, but also traps her down in the hole next to a nest of snakes, one of which bites her on the hand.

All of this seems quite melodramatic at first glance, a fast-and-furious race of events, one might even say conveniences, to place Mattie in ever-greater danger at the last minute and heighten the suspense. But what follows is essential to understanding the film. Mattie's rescue by Rooster Cogburn is central to the film. Cogburn descends into the pit, frees her from the vine, and cuts her hand with knife to suck the poison out of the snake bite. From there, it's a race against time to get Mattie to a doctor before the poison spreads further.

Their ride takes them across the landscape at a furious speed, riding first across a spectacular sunset, and then under a starry night sky that appears almost stylized in its sheer grandeur. The Coens have always had an eye for landscapes, from the bleak frozen terrain of Fargo to the sprawling rural backwoods of O Brother Where Art Thou, and many others. The vast wilderness of True Grit is the environment in which the Coens place their characters to undergo this transformative experience. It is at once beautiful and dangerous.

Under that starry night sky, Mattie's pony collapses in exhaustion, and she watches in pain as Rooster puts it out of its misery with a gunshot to the head. Rooster then carries Mattie in his arms the rest of the journey. This is the moment of Mattie's transition into adulthood, and Rooster's spiritual redemption, pushing himself to ever-greater physical and emotional limits to save the life of another person.

The Coens and "True Grit"

Joel and Ethan Coen are such offbeat, unique filmmakers that it was surprising when they chose to make True Grit, a film in the Western genre, and to do so with a straight approach that respected the conventions of the genre and one that was both a literary adaptation and a remake of an earlier film (Charles Portis' novel, and Henry Hathaway's 1969 film version, respectively).

The Coens' film of True Grit is one of the best films of its decade, and one of the best films the Coens have made, though it is unlikely to go down as one of their best-remembered films, though that is only because it is so different in approach from the style of their most popular movies.

There is so much to praise in True Grit, from the impeccable design and period detail, to the startling maturity and emotional honesty of Hailee Steinfeld's performance, but in my estimation, two things really make it stand apart in a class by itself: the writing by the Coens, and the starring performance of Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn. The 1969 film of True Grit provided the iconic John Wayne with one of his best roles, but Bridges manages to completely embody the character and make the role his own here.

The script is one of the best that the Coens have ever written, taking a sincere and straightforward approach to the material, the characters and dialogue imbued with honesty and poignancy without ever sliding into easy sentimentality or hitting a single false note. It's truly one of their finest achievements and, without exaggeration, one of the finest films yet made in the 21st century.

Moving Pictures: "Bathing in a Stream" (Alice Guy, 1897)

This is a frame from an early film by Alice Guy, titled "Bathing in a Stream", from 1897. I was watching this short actualitie subject the other day and was reminded of a comment made by film historian Richard Koszarski (in an interview included on the Edison: Invention of the Movies DVD collection). Koszarski says that, essentially, that these early film subjects were conceived as "moving pictures" in the truest sense; that they have to be understood in terms of the conventions and expectations of still photography of the time.

Koszarski's statement is central to thinking about these early film subjects as sophisticated, fully realized cinematic works in their own right. The framing of "Bathing in a Stream", for example, is so exquisite, the movement of the water flowing down toward the camera, the actions of the people moving throughout the frame, is all meticulously organized and displays an expert eye for detail and composition.

The April Fools (1969)

I had never heard of this 1969 comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve until last night, when I came across a DVD copy while browsing at the video store. I always enjoy Jack Lemmon, especially in his films from around this era, when he seemed to specialize in playing uptight middle-class white-collar types who undergo a personal transformation, often as a result of his relationship with a free-spirited type who opens him to new experiences. From the plot description, it was also clear that this would be one of those films from that transitional period in Hollywood when the movies were dealing with the changing times, new freedoms and permissiveness of the post-Production Code era. And the pairing of Lemmon with Catherine Deneuve was intriguing enough in itself for me to check it out.

The April Fools is steeped in late-60s New York chic. The film begins swiftly as Wall Street broker Howard Brubaker (Lemmon) is arriving at a big Manhattan office building to accept a new promotion. His boss (Peter Lawford) is in the process of throwing a big office party, filled with beautiful people. Lemmon awkwardly tries to ingratiate himself with the crowd, but things only start to pick up when he meets a young French woman, Catherine (Deneuve) -- who, unbeknownst to Lemmon, also happens to be the boss's wife. The two leave the party together and spend the night wandering around Manhattan, enjoy an evening with a freewheeling, funloving older married couple (Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer, who are an absolute delight to watch). By morning, the unhappily married Brubaker and the unhappily married Catherine have fallen in love with each other. In fact, they are so deeply in love that both immediately take steps to quit their jobs and leave their spouses to run off to Paris together.

There is much to enjoy in The April Fools. Lemmon and Deneuve give fine performances, and are ably supported by a strong cast including Sally Kellerman (as Lemmon's distant and selfish wife), Jack Weston (as Lemmon's alcoholic friend), Harvey Korman (as an oversexed suburban lothario), and Kenneth Mars and Melinda Dillon (as a "sensitive" New Age couple). Unfortunately, these supporting characters are a little too one-note, with too little screen time, to really make much of them, but these performers all shine whenever they are on-screen. The film also features the Burt Bacharach-Hal David classic "I Say a Little Prayer" (although Dionne Warwick performs the film's title tune, she does not perform this song here, which was a hit for her when she recorded it).

Where The April Fools falls apart is in its superficial treatment of its premise. The events transpire entirely too quickly, and with only the flimsiest of motivation, resulting in an unsatisfactory conclusion that feels both rushed and empty. The implications of such major decisions as leaving one's career and family behind are largely unexplored, and the script seems to be in such a hurry for Lemmon and Deneuve to pair up and fly off to Paris together that it never fully manages to convince us that there is necessarily much potential in the relationship.

The avoidance of dealing with these issues in any depth is perhaps necessary for the romance to resolve itself within the expectations of light romantic comedy. The hollowness of this romantic triumph reveals the underlying desperation of the protagonists -- successful people surrounded by all the trappings and excesses of material culture, but frantically searching for something real in their lives.

Re-visiting "It's A Wonderful Life" (1946)

This past Christmas Eve, looking for something to do, I saw that a local megaplex theater was showing Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. I decided to go see it on the big screen, as I had just missed an earlier screening of the film at another theater the previous day, and although the film is hardly a "holiday tradition" for me the way it is for some people, it's still a film I like to re-visit every few years.

To be honest, it's a film that I always approach with some trepidation, because it packs such an emotional wallop that I know I cannot possibly go in to see it (or come out of seeing it) casually. In contrast to the hip cynicism (or outright cluelessness) from some quarters that chide the film as saccharine or sappy, It's A Wonderful Life is instead one of the most achingly honest, sincere films Hollywood has ever produced. That it was made at all is, frankly, a wonder. It ranks alongside Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) as one of the most emotionally mature films of the Classic Hollywood era.

Its message, that a man's life has inherent value beyond the monetary, is an extremely radical one, certainly a radical one in the Hollywood of 1946, and one unthinkable in our current age of unbridled Capitalism and consumerism run amok. It's not surprising that the FBI cited the film as subversive, anti-American, Communist propaganda at the time of its release (for reference, you can read the full report here). Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Potter is the very personification of the scourge of money, of valuing the almighty dollar above the well-being of humanity. His mean, petty theft of the money that means the difference between survival and disaster to the Bailey Building & Loan perfectly encapsulates the real danger of money: the power that it brings with it, and the ability to wield that power for the sole purpose of furthering one's own gain.

As I suspected, the final third of the film left me an emotional wreck. The celebrated fantasy sequence is an incredibly brutal and emotionally exhausting depiction of the dark night of the soul. There is a moment toward the end that I consider to be one of the very most beautiful in any. It occurs just after Stewart has returned to the spot on the bridge where earlier he had intended to end his life. After experiencing a harrowing vision of the impact his life has had on others around him, he pleads with God to let him live again. At that moment, the snow begins to fall again, silently, an indication of the affirmative answer to his prayer. It's A Wonderful Life is, indeed, a powerful celebration of life and humanity.

"Fire!" (1901)

Frame from James Williamson's FIRE! (1901).

Williamson (part of the group of early British filmmakers that French film historian Georges Sadoul called the "Brighton School") was a pioneer of both trick films and narrative films. FIRE! was a direct influence on Porter's THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN, made at the end of 1902. Although Williamson's staging of the interior scenes is handled nearly identically by Porter, Williamson's shooting of the exteriors of the burning house are made more dramatic by closer placement of the camera and the diagonal framing, which makes the action clearer to the audience.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

This is one of Lubitsch's finest films (in a career full of many fine films). It's also one of his gentlest films, directed with a kind of leisurely pace and repressed energy that only heightens the romantic tension between James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Lubitsch makes great use of Stewart in a quiet, understated performance. But as with most Lubitsch films, it's really an ensemble piece that belongs to his entire cast of fine character actors, especially Frank Morgan who brings his comic skills to bear in a flawless performance.

Cabaret (1972)

Given his background in theater, it is remarkable just how cinematic Bob Fosse's directorial efforts in film were. Indeed, he began directing films at a time when the musical genre had largely become passe, ossified by over-produced, stiff and lifeless works that were a far cry from the glory days of the genre a couple decades prior.

Enter Fosse and Cabaret (1972), which re-defined the genre and breathed real vitality and verve into the musical film. What is remarkable about Fosse's direction is how he uses the camera and editing as another part of his choreography -- not through cute or clever gimmicks but rather by integrating them so completely that they are all really of a piece. His style is at once electric and explosive, and yet, somehow, never calls attention to itself in a way that makes anything seem out of place. The performance of Liza Minnelli is central to the film's style, her physicality so perfectly in-tune with Fosse's visual approach that their collaboration achieves a kind of synergy.

Cabaret follows the relationship between Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), an American cabaret singer in Weimar-era Berlin, and British student Brian Roberts (Michael York), who is in Berlin as part of his doctoral research. The cabaret itself, the Kit Kat Klub, serves as a kind of communal spot in a city that is beginning to become overrun with Nazis, whose rise to power parallels the events in the lives of Sally and Brian over the course of the film.

Although based on the hit Broadway show of the same name, for his film Fosse returned to the original source material (The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood) for inspiration, and songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb jettisoned all but one of the tunes from their Broadway score, and wrote new songs for the film. The result is a remarkably rich, poignant, and stylish film that has lost none of its power.

Iron Man (1931)

Tod Browning is so closely associated today with the macabre and often gruesome thrillers for which he achieved his greatest fame (Dracula, Freaks, The Unknown) that it is easy to forget that he worked in a number of different genres. One example is Iron Man (1931), a pre-Code boxing melodrama that was one of three films he made for Universal in the early '30s, sandwiched in between his loose 1930 remake of his 1921 crime drama Outside the Law, and his iconic horror film Dracula.

Iron Man stars Lew Ayres (one year after his star-making performance in All Quiet on the Western Front) as a young prizefighter who bounces back after losing his first fight, but once he achieves some success, his gold-digging wife (Jean Harlow) re-appears in his life, and after convincing him to dump his long-time manager (Robert Armstrong), the boxer's career begins to fall apart.

Browning had a knack for this kind of hard-hitting, gritty, urban material, as evidenced here and in Fast Workers (1933), which makes one curious to see what he would have done had he been able to explore it more frequently in the pre-Code sound film period.

"Le Squelette Joyeux" (1897) -- A Lumiere Trick Film

This is an interesting subject from Louis and Auguste Lumiere, of the kind of subject matter one does not typically associate with them.

It would appear to have been inspired by the early trick films of Melies, whose HAUNTED CASTLE of the previous year features a skeleton (although it doesn't dance). Or it could be a case of the Lumieres borrowing from similar theatrical traditions to branch out into new avenues of filmmaking.

Either way, it's an intriguing little subject. What I find most interesting about it is how, despite its fantastic nature, it actually appears quite drab and plain compared to the strikingly rich photographic compositions of the Lumiere actualities, which breathe with life and vitality.

I wonder which of their cameramen shot this subject, and if he ever did anything else similar to it?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

There was an anecdote I read years ago -- and I've forgotten where I read it now -- about a joke circulating in Hollywood during World War II, something to the effect of "In the case of an air raid, go over to RKO Radio Pictures -- they haven't had a hit in years."

That always puzzled me, because it seems to me that RKO produced many of the finest individual films of the studio era. Of course, it's possible that this did not translate to big box office hits that some of the other studios may have enjoyed, but the quality of the studio's output speaks for itself with such fine films as Citizen Kane, King Kong, Gunga Din, Bringing Up Baby, Little Women, and the Astaire-Rogers cycle, among many others.

Chief among the examples of RKO's great films must be the 1939 production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Charles Laughton in the title role. His achingly beautiful performance stands as one of his finest accomplishments in a long career filled with memorable roles. It has been noted that the Hunchback has relatively little screen time for what is the starring role, and yet Laughton's presence looms large over the film. Even when he is off-screen, we never forget about him. Laughton is one of many fine actors in a cast that includes Maureen O'Hara (in her first Hollywood film), Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, and a youthful Edmond O'Brien, among others.

What really stands about the film is its exceptional production values. I have read that, at the time, Hunchback was the second-most expensive production RKO had yet undertaken (the most expensive being Gunga Din, released the same year), and it shows. Medieval Paris is brought to life in great scale on the RKO backlot, aided by impressive matte paintings. William Dieterle, one of the more interesting studio craftsmen working in Hollywood's studio system, and frequent John Ford cinematographer Joseph H. August create a vivid atmosphere that brims with bustling activity in the daylight, and a sense of quiet menace in the shadow of night.

Perhaps because it was released in that remarkable year of 1939, The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been overshadowed somewhat by the other great films of that year, and does not seem to be revived as often as some of those other films (not just the perennial favorites Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, but also the genre-defining Stagecoach and the Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). But it stands as the equal of any of the other great films of 1939, and remains one of the finest achievements of the Hollywood studio system.

Justus D. Barnes: Early Film Star

Justus D. Barnes (1862-1946), who achieved immortality on film as the bandit who fires his gun into the camera at the end of THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY. He came to films from the stage, and worked for both the Edison and Thanhouser companies. He retired from acting in 1917 and later worked as a milkman and ran a cigar store.

Laurel & Hardy in "The Devil's Brother" (1933)

The first of Laurel and Hardy's operetta films, and quite possibly the best, adapted from the 1830 show by Daniel Auber. The boys play down-on-their-luck vagabonds in 18th century Italy who reluctantly become the bumbling assistants to the notorious bandit chief Fra Diavolo ("The Devil's Brother"). Comedy highlights include Laurel's "kneesy-earsy-nosey" finger games and Laurel becoming intoxicated while filling bottles in a wine cellar. The soundtrack retains a number of the songs from Auber's original score. Singer Dennis King brings the perfect mix of menace and charm to the title role, supported by a fine cast including Thelma Todd as the bored noblewoman, James Finlayson as her cuckold husband, and Henry Armetta as the long-suffering innkeeper whose inability to imitate Laurel's "finger games" causes him no end of frustration. One of the only Laurel and Hardy films directed by their long-time producer Hal Roach.

Sturges and Slapstick

Watching THE LADY EVE again, I was struck by something about Preston Sturges' technique that I've written about before here. I always hedge about coming out with this outright criticism of his otherwise marvelous films, but after having recently seen both LADY EVE and UNFAITHFULLY YOURS, those films have re-enforced my opinion that Sturges simply never mastered the kind of slapstick comedy of which he was so fond of inserting into his films, and that, contrasted with the smooth flow of his dialogue, the slapstick moments stand out for their awkwardness.

The major slapstick moments in THE LADY EVE occur during the part in which Fonda is re-introduced to Stanwyck posing as another woman. He is so distracted by her resemblance to the con-woman he fell in love with on his ocean cruise back from South America that he is continually tripping over himself. Fonda, never a slapstick performer, handles the business admirably, but it feels labored and stiff, not helped by the undercranking to underscore the comic effect. Only his third bit of slapstick in this sequence -- when he brings his head up on a tea tray -- provokes the kind of surprised laughter that the best slapstick earns. It is that element of surprise, created from building up the gags, that Sturges seems to struggle to find in these moments.

In a previous post on SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, I'd written that Sturges never seemed to be able to solve the problem of finding a way to get his characters to fall into a swimming pool. As Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake argue, she threatens to push him into the pool, and in the rather chaotic ensuing struggle between McCrea, Lake and the butler, all tumble into the pool. When Sullivan's valet attempts to pull the butler out of the pool, he is himself pulled in, at which point the scene ends. It's funny enough, but feels chaotic and hurried.



That is something I have come to admire all the more about Sturges' contemporaries in film comedy, especially Leo McCarey, George Stevens and Frank Capra, all of whom had come up in silent comedy and understood slapstick staging and timing inside out. These men knew how to make the slapstick sequences organic to the whole and of a piece, whereas in Sturges' films, these scenes stick out and call attention to themselves.

As a contrast with how Sturges handles the pool scene in SULLIVAN, I would point to the famous scene in Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, with the floor of the high school gym opening up to reveal a swimming pool in the middle of the Charleston contest. As Stewart and Reed dance deliriously, blissfully unaware of the potential embarrassment that awaits them, we watch in anticipation of the big moment when they will fall in. It's a cathartic moment they finally do, and is only heightened by the other students diving in. The flustered school principal, watching nervously from the sidelines, finally decides that it looks like so much fun that he dives in, too -- a nice capper to the sequence. A scene like this could easily be out of place and distracting in a film like IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but Capra draws on his slapstick training to make it entirely of a piece.



As a final point of contrast, I would point to a scene from another Sturges film I had recently seen, UNFAITHFULLY YOURS. This is one of Sturges' most brilliantly conceived and executed comedies, almost like a symphony in its intricate construction. But there is a lengthy and protracted slapstick sequence with Rex Harrison, involving his efforts to retrieve his dictation machine from a top shelf, which brings the proceedings to a halt. Sturges lets this scene play out for minutes on end, and while it was clearly intended to be a comic exercise in frustration à la W.C. Fields, it is instead just frustrating in its failure to build to anything.

I offer this only as an example of how Sturges' contemporaries, who had spent years working in silent comedy for producers like Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, were able to keep the slapstick tradition alive in their films 20 years on. Sturges was unmatched at creating unique comic worlds, populated with his favorite character actors speaking that wonderful concoction of Sturges dialogue that is his hallmark. But when it comes to slapstick, I continue to believe that Sturges never quite mastered finding a way to integrate it into his world of comedy.

"Saturday Night Fever" (1977) Director's Cut

It's an interesting contradiction that a film that is so very much of a specific time and place (late '70s Brooklyn, at the height of the Disco craze) has held up so well for 40 years. It's one of those films that, I imagine, must have seemed hopelessly dated in one sense just a few years after its release. But perhaps now, separated by the distance of time, we can better appreciate its strengths and qualities that keep audiences coming back to it.

The story of Tony Manero, a young working-class Italian-American man in Brooklyn struggling to find himself through the only thing that matters to him -- dancing -- is certainly one audiences continue to identify with. John Travolta's star-making performance, John Badham's energetic direction and the pulsating music of the Bee Gees elevate the film to an experience that still brims with vitality. Norman Wexler's script (based on "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", an article by Nik Cohn that appeared in New York Magazine the previous year) is startlingly honest, granting real seriousness to Tony's struggle to move beyond the world he knows and make a name for himself.

After seeing SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER on the big screen, I was struck by just what a nicely-photographed film it is. I think this gets lost when watching the film on TV, or even on DVD, where some of the definition and detail is lost, but there are some moments that are really quite stunning. The cinematographer, Ralf D. Bode, frequently shoots the closeups of Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney together with a soft, gauzy look that gives them a dreamlike quality, which contrasts effectively with the naturalism of the scenes with Travolta and his friends. He brings a similar quality to the dance sequences (particularly the "Night Fever" number), heightened by the colorful flashing lights and fog on the dance floor. Looking over his filmography, I realize I have only seen a couple other films photographed by Bode, but I do not remember anything particularly unique about their cinematography. In any case, he did really fine work on SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, which is greatly emphasized by seeing the film on a big screen.



Further Reading:
"Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night" by Nik Cohn
Roger Ebert's 1977 Review of Saturday Night Fever
Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" review of Saturday Night Fever
Janet Maslin's Review of Saturday Night Fever in the New York Times (Dec. 16, 1977)
"Saturday Night Fever at 40: You Should Still Be Dancing"

"The Movie"

Something that has stuck with me, ever since I first read Roger Ebert's review of CASABLANCA, was his description of it as "The Movie". I knew exactly what he meant by that, and still agree with the assessment. Although I prefer to avoid such hyperbole as "greatest", "best", "most important" and other such ultimately meaningless platitudes in talking about films, there is something about CASABLANCA that has elevated it to a level of enduring cultural iconic status that is, I think, perhaps unique.

It was especially fun seeing the film on the big screen in a state-of-the-art megaplex (the Towson Cinemark theater). We went for the 2pm show but it was already sold out, so we got tickets for 7pm and it played to a packed house. Some of the Bogart cult was in attendance, complete with trenchcoats and fedoras, reciting the iconic lines.

Especially in this day and age, when the moviegoing experience seems to be split between bigger, louder, and emptier Hollywood fare, and the museum-like reverence of the art and revival house, it can be a breath of fresh air to view a classic like CASABLANCA as a living, breathing, vital experience, as fresh today as it was 75 years ago.

Movie Soundtracks & Frame Blow-up Books

Going through my collection of movie soundtrack albums tonight, I came across these two old favorites. One is a collection of recordings of routines by W.C. Fields (subtitled "...His only recording"), also featuring eight songs by Mae West, and the other is a collection of scenes from the films of the Marx Bros., featuring "the original voice tracks from their greatest movies". These albums were extremely popular during the height of the nostalgia craze in the early '70s, and were also quite useful in the pre-home video days, when such albums were the only way to re-visit favorite scenes from these films.

There was also a series of books, many by Richard J. Anobile, that served a similar purpose and included frame blow-ups and dialogue transcriptions from famous films. I have one called Why a Duck?, which consists of scenes from the Marx Bros.' comedies. Anobile wrote others, too, including Who's on First, A Flask of Fields, A Fine Mess, plus individuals volumes on classics such as PSYCHO, THE MALTESE FALCON and FRANKENSTEIN, among others. He even wrote one on THE GENERAL, though it's hard to imagine how his scene-by-scene frame blowups would work for a silent film.

I wonder how many people still collect these? Home video eventually rendered these kinds of books and albums obsolete, but as classic film comedy fans know, it's hard to ever pass up a chance to spend time with your favorite comedians, no matter what the format.

Unexpected Audience Laughter

I noticed something interesting at last night's SUSPIRIA screening -- though it was hard to miss, as it was actually quite distracting: sometime around the second half of the film, roughly half the audience began laughing raucously at the film, which totally took me right out of the carefully-crafted, haunting atmosphere of the experience.

It reminded me of my experiences watching VERTIGO, another haunting, dream-like film that often inspires fits of uncomfortable laughter from audiences. At least in that case I can understand the laughter as a nervous response to the increasingly unhinged behavior of the Jimmy Stewart character.

I'll never forget the first time I saw VERTIGO with an audience in film school years ago. There was one moment in particular that got such a strong laugh from everyone in the room but me, and I've never understood it. It occurs when Scottie Ferguson gives the distraught Judy Barton a brandy and tells her to drink it down. That moment got a huge laugh from everyone. The professor, also laughing, said, "Hey, it was the '50s..."

I still didn't get it.

There was another incident I recall, more recently, during a screening of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT at Loew's Jersey City. At the moment of the reveal that Kropp's leg has been amputated, someone in the audience let out a loud burst of uncomfortable laughter, possibly out of surprise. The poor devil was the only person in the entire house to react that way, so it must have been embarrassing.

At least it was an honest reaction.

Hitchcock's Perfection

Taking in a screening of Hitchcock's THE 39 STEPS recently, I realized that this has become probably my most oft-watched Hitchcock film. Certainly it's the one I can return most frequently without losing any of the suspense or freshness of Hitchcock's technique. As I wrote in a recent post on NORTH BY NORTHWEST, sometimes the iconic sequences of Hitchcock's best-known films can come to play better in my mind, where they exist in a kind of rosy retrospection.

That is not the case with THE 39 STEPS, however. It is a film I have seen probably at least a half-dozen times if not more, and each time I am swept up anew in the breathless pace of the endlessly engaging story, the erotic chemistry of Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll's performances, and of course, Hitchcock's masterful technique that shows his fertile creative mind at its most active and visionary. After the screening, I commented that the film is one of the very few that I would describe as "perfect" -- not a wasted frame or extraneous moment in the entire piece.

I find, more and more, that I am drawn to the early works of directors, often those formative films made before they hit their full stride and became identified with a certain style or genre. I'm not sure if I would consider THE 39 STEPS to be an "early" Hitchcock film, given that it was already something like his 20th film as a director, and made fifteen years after he'd entered the film industry. But it nonetheless contains the kind of energy and vitality and creative experimentation that I associate with the earlier films of directors, and in terms of Hitchcock's filmography, it certainly set the standard for many of his most successful films to follow, not to mention establishing a prototype for the entire espionage film genre.

"Rosemary's Baby" and Great Character Actors

ROSEMARY'S BABY must have one of the finest casts of character actors since some of the classic Universal horror films of the '30s and '40s. Made by Paramount in 1968, the film straddles the very tail end of the last vestiges of the old studio system, and the era of New Hollywood. And one of the best aspects of the former is the great roster of character actors who make up much of the supporting cast.

Watching the film again at the Charles Theatre recently, right before Halloween, I raced to count all the familiar names in the opening credits: in addition to the wonderful Ruth Gordon, we have Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, and Elisha Cook Jr., among others. Seeing these familiar faces as characters involved in a Satanic cult makes the proceedings all the more unsettling. Polanski likely chose these actors precisely for their strong identification with certain "types", which would have been especially recognizable to moviegoers in 1968. It's an inspired casting decision. 

And I love seeing John Cassavetes do his impression of Elisha Cook!

Monterey Pop and the Avant Garde

I watched D.A. Pennebaker's film of MONTEREY POP a few weeks ago at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore for the first time, and hadn't jotted down any thoughts on it yet, perhaps because it is such an "experience" beyond being just a filmed record of the concert.

However, something that I have found myself thinking about quite a bit since then is the way that the film, and indeed, much of the Direct Cinema movement, fuses the concepts and energies of both the documentary and avant garde traditions. There are sequences in MONTEREY POP show the direct influence (and directly influenced?) the techniques of Jonas Mekas' diary film shooting style, for example.

Similarly, if you look at an earlier film by Pennebaker, DAYBREAK EXPRESS (1953), it's difficult to even classify -- is it a documentary of a morning train commute, or an avant garde city symphony (or jazz riff, in this case), animated in light and shadow? Why can't it be both?

The Blair Witch Project & Low Budget Filmmaking

In retrospect, I've wondered if it was the success of BLAIR WITCH PROJECT that really kicked off the period of excitement for low-budget DIY filmmaking in the early 2000s? Certainly the early success stories of Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith paved the way for this kind of thing, but even in the '90s, there was still considerable cost involved if shooting on 16mm or 35mm. That BLAIR WITCH (shot on 16mm and Hi8 video) coincided with the availability of consumer-level digital tools made filmmaking seem open to anyone with a good idea, and the possibilities endless.

I wonder if there is a film since then that has had the same kind of impact on aspiring filmmakers?

North by Northwest (1959)

I caught a screening of this Hitchcock classic as part of the Filmtalk screening and discussion series at the Enoch Pratt Library this afternoon. I hadn't seen it in several years, at least. Despite its status as perhaps the "ultimate" Hitchcock film, I have to confess it is not one that I re-watch as frequently as some of his other movies, even though it is undoubtedly an immensely enjoyable film. This isn't so much due to overexposure, as I have not actually seen it that many times compared to, say, PSYCHO, or THE 39 STEPS, or even ROPE. For some reason, it's a film that has tended to play better in my mind, perhaps due to the standout sequences (the crop-duster, Mount Rushmore) that rank among some of the most iconic in all of cinema.

So it came as a pleasant surprise, upon seeing it again for probably the first time in at least a decade, that I enjoyed this highly entertaining film even more than expected. More than ever lately, I have found how much more I enjoy seeing films with an audience, even if just a few people, where you can share in the experience of the film together.

As I mentioned above, NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a film that holds few surprises for me at this point, even if I do hold a good deal of affection for it. This time around I was struck more than ever by the playfulness of Hitchcock's approach, and even moments of wry humor, such as the strains of "It's a Most Unusual Day" wafting through the hotel lobby moments before Cary Grant is kidnapped. And I was struck by Hitchcock's unconventional (especially for the period) use of space and time in building up to the crop-dusting sequence. The lengthy stretches of silence and the vast expanse of the landscape in the moments leading up to the attack by the plane look forward to his use of similar elements, to an even greater degree, in THE BIRDS a few years later.

And was there ever a director with more of a gift for making actors look good than Hitchcock? NORTH BY NORTHWEST offers strong evidence that the answer is "no".