Just Watch.

Dirty Harry

Don Siegel, 1971

Clint Eastwood is, of course known for being a badass, and he certainly provides that, but he's not as fun to watch here as he is in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Of course, that film has more of a fun tone than this one, but there's no reason chasing a serial killer shouldn't be amusing. But the smirkiness and the cool, appraising quality is gone, he seems kind of dead inside, which is I suppose sort of the point. But even given the "do you feel lucky?" speech -- which is repeated, something I found a little hokey and excessive -- we don't get the sense that he's having any fun being a badass. He just seems worn down by life, and that mood pervades the film.

It's interesting, in the post-Lecter age, to see a film that totally glosses over the inner life and psychology of the serial killer. That being said, Andrew Robinson gives perhaps the most terrifying portrayal of a killer I've ever seen, Lecter included. (Although we're supposed to find Lecter kind of seductive.) I think it works so well because there's a vulnerability and an out-of-control quality going on that's scarier than pure evil in caricature.

A Nous La Liberte

René Clair, 1931

Before I start, a major caveat: I watched this streaming on Netflix, and the subtitles were absolutely shameful. This film is, for all intents and purposes, a musical, and none of the songs have titles, nor does much of the dialogue. I hope the Criterion edition is better than this.

I almost feel like I can't properly comment on the film with this handicap, but on further reflection with Clair such considerations mostly prove irrelevant. In many ways he's a silent film director working with sound in non-narrative ways. Dialogue isn't strictly necessary. All the relevant information -- in this case the critique of mechanized industrial society and the general absurdity of a universe where fights seem to break out for no apparent reason -- can be gleaned from the visual realm and the sound effects.

Jane Eyre

Robert Stevenson, 1943/44

So Wikipedia puts this film at '43; Wikipedia says '44 -- does anyone know which one is correct?

So I have to tell you that I kind of hate Jane Eyre with a passion -- the character, not the book. I just find her kind of up on the cross and martyr-like about her own goodness in a kind of smug self-satisfied way. She's also kind of crazy; I was taught by a graduate student in college who said that if Jane were around today, she'd be in a teal Honda Civic outside some guy's house stalking him. 

For the class that guy taught, I wrote a paper about how Jane Eyre functions as this unrealistic mode of womanhood who just sits on her hands and does nothing and gets the man, the house, and the money. She basically functions as an ideological device designed to keep women in line, and I think I resented her for that. But when I had to reread the book to revise that paper for my grad school applications, I found myself softening too her. Sure, she goes to insufferably masochistic measures to prove she's "not that kind of girl" and her intensity proves kind of creepy sometimes, but I often find creepiness to be fun, don't I? Plus she's uniquely spirited and twisted in really interesting ways; Joyce Carol Oates is right when she calls Jane one of the most singular voices in literature.

The Piano

Jane Campion, 1993

So I don't know how to explain to you why I sort of...wanted not to like this film. You see, there's this thing -- and I wonder if it's particular to modern womanhood or if it existed before then -- where you don't want to look too girlie. Sometimes this is just a matter of personal affinity, but often it has to do with points of pride and/or wanting to be cool. For me this, I think, first manifested itself in a strong conviction that I didn't want to get married, before I ever thoroughly considered the issue, or really had cause to consider it. With film I find myself in kind of a tricky situation: as someone deeply interested in questions of sex and gender in film, things marketed to women often interest me, but I find stuff that appeals to women in a too obvious and stereotypical way unappealing, uninteresting, and insulting to my intelligence. Added to this is a notion that liking anything too explicitly girlie is naive and soft and uncool, a notion I seemed to have gleaned from the criticism of Stephanie Zacharek. I remember her writing that while watching a film by Candida Royalle, the porn star who founded her own production studio to make adult films for women, she fell asleep. This made me laugh; though I don't think I've ever actually seen a movie that billed itself as such, I maintained the conviction that porn made for women was too safe, namby-pamby, and sanitized, and not something in which I had any interest. So I considered myself ensconced in the club of the cool, tough chicks club. But I didn't feel secure in my position there, and was afraid of any display of cultural weakness.

On a related note, film scholar Vivian Sobchack frequently references the scene where Baines touches Ada's leg through the hole in her stocking as particularly charged and moving; Linda Williams cites this quote frequently. And after reading it so many times, having this moment built up in my mind, I thought there's no way I won't be disappointed when I actually see it. But you know what I wasn't at all; it was powerful and intense and great. Actually I think as a whole that this film handles sex and intimacy very well, with a mixture of feeling and deftness. Sex occurs in different moods and registers here -- first it's uncomfortable, coereced, and transactional, then it's more consensual and passionate -- and Campion handles the transition well. (The emotional transition that effects this change remains somewhat shrouded in mystery, but that's often the case in real life, it didn't bother me so much.) She also includes quite a bit of voyeurism, which is always a sly thing to do in a film, and it works in quite sophisticated ways. The moment where Ada's button falls through the floorboards onto Stewart's face struck me as quite poignant. Attention to small details like this are often cited as a hallmark of feminine perspective and maybe that's true, but I think it's also an attribute of old-fashioned, gender-neutral good filmmaking.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

Walter Ruttmann, 1927

I guess people don't really make city symphony films anymore; though their legacy lives on in smaller interludes in narrative films. But just think, if you were to make one, you would face quite a challenge between including visually interesting things and providing an accurate portrayal of a day in the life of a metropolis. If you were to make one today, how many shots of people at their cubicles dicking around on the Internet?

The films you have to compare this to -- at least the ones I've seen -- include Man with a Movie Camera and A Propos de Nice. I think I prefer those two to this one -- they display a little more sophistication, touches of surrealism, a little more evident concern for how images follow one another aesthetically. However, Ruttmann does find the hidden beauty in everyday things, such as when the curtain goes up on a shop window and the mannequins are gradually bathed in light. He includes the obligatory commentary, through juxtaposition of images, on the disparity between rich and poor. He also shows an obsession with trains that strikes me as especially Teutonic.

The city symphony films evoke this (to me, anyway) really glorious era of early twentieth century modernity where cities were upheld as temples of man's achievement, the seat of techonology, sites of teeming life and dynamic vitality. It gives me a kind of intellectually-sanctioned thrill, like when I get all swept up in the visual fun of a department store and allow myself the guilty pleasure by citing Walter Benjamin.

Red Desert

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964

Read it here .

Totally, Tenderly, Tragically

As promised, my piece on Godard and love. 

There were some things I would have liked to have added, which I referenced here. Maybe it's just as well they didn't make it in, it's already pretty sprawling in its scope. All things considered, I have to say I'm probably more pleased with this than anything I've done in a while.

Z

Costa Gavras, 1969

This movie gets off to a great start; in the credits we see a montage of military medals, establishing (subtly) an atmosphere of authoritarianism. The music, by Mikis Theodorakis, is thrilling and amps up the suspense and also creates a vaguely Greek atmosphere. (The film, a thinly veiled account of the assassination of Greek opposition politician Gregoris Lambrakis, was shot mostly in Algeria and the dialogue is in French, there's Greek beer but the country is never specified.)

Anyway, then we go into a government lecture on removing mildew, which develops into a metaphor for suppressing uprisings. This scene displays brilliant construction, almost grotesque closeups of government officials rubbing their mustachioed faces with pencils automatically pits us against them. As a matter of fact, the whole film is put together quite slickly and stylishly, with multiple perspectives and angles, displayed to form a fragmented, confused whole.

Holiday

George Cukor, 1938

I saw this film in the light of multiple (though importantly, not recent) readings of Stephanie Zacharek's lovely piece about it. I'm always scared to read stuff too soon before or after seeing or writing about a film, for fear of undue influence, but maybe if I'd reread this one it might have properly aligned my expectations. I was expecting a bubbly, champagne-infused screwball comedy; as Zacharek noteds there's a great deal of sadness and anxiety here -- she says it makes her "wistful" and that it cuts "too close for comfort." Maybe I feel guilty and sad for not falling in love with it as totally as I'd hoped I would; maybe I should watch it again. 

And of course, now having reread Zacharek's piece it is, predictably, difficult to form my own opinions about the film. The picture ultimately concerns itself with intimacy between people -- what it's made of, how it's formed. (Or as Zacharek puts it, "What do you want out of life, and whom do you want around while you do it?") If I had to point out one stylistic conceit of Holiday, I would cite really beautiful, intriguing compositions of people's faces and bodies in relation to one another. The film requires us to accept very quick intimacies and affinities between people, and the composition aids in achieving this effect.

She Done Him Wrong

Lowell Sherman, 1933

The filmmaking here is perfectly workmanlike and serviceable, if nothing to write home about. The script, adapted from a play by Miss Mae herself, shows the traces of vaudeville origins -- a bit too much of the proscenium staging here, a little too much expository dialogue there. But I will say that as a writer, West displays an uncanny knack for showing her famous one-liners to best advantage. She also throws a lot of balls into the air, plot-wise, and I didn't think there was going to be time to wrap it up in 66 short minutes, but everything gets dispensed with quite nicely, mainly by getting straight to the point and using most of the time for sexual innuendo. And I mean, amen to that.