rewatched The Lighthouse (Rob Eggers, 2019): 2.5/5

B&W sophomore effort that I respected for its crazed ambition but didn’t actually much enjoy (and will not be revisiting again).

Ultimately the madness feels arbitrary, skin-deep, as if Eggers settled on the actors and location without fully working out what they’d do there. THE WITCH drew considerable power from its sheer nightmarish conviction, and that element is largely absent here. (Also not a big fan of fart jokes.)

Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964): 3/5

"The Woman of the Snow" is far and away the best of the four, in terms of both visual splendor and overall creepiness.

Ballad of a Soldier (Gregoriy Chukhray, 1959): 3/5

Pleasant picaresque of handsome, young Russki soldier given a six-day leave after some accidental heroics to visit his mama. Along the way he encounters and chastely falls in love with a beautiful, young devotchka. The shot in the beginning where Vladimir Ivashov is pursued by a tank and the camera turns completely upside-down is pretty cool. But the final meeting with Mother in the rustic village is just too drawn out and mawkish, and director Chukhray is no Mikhail Kalatozov; THE CRANES ARE FLYING is in a whole other artistic league.

Frownland (Ronald Bronstein, 2007): 3.5/5

Dore Mann, in his screen debut, concocts a specimen so ghastly as to be at once unwatchable and utterly mesmerizing. Truly one of the most amazing performances of a social pathology I've ever seen.

Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000): 0/5

Without a single redeeming quality, this THING - this mistake in nature - lives up to its infamy as a cinephile's bete noire. (LITERALLY EVERY SHOT IS A DUTCH ANGLE. I NOW HAVE PTSD WHENEVER I SEE A TRANSITION WIPE.)

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (John De Bello, 1978): 2/5

Every bit as ridiculous as I'd expect a movie about killer tomatoes to be, but also more funny than I'd have imagined, too, which was an unexpected surprise. (Think of AIRPLANE's more slapstickish elements, viz. none of the clever wordplay but all of the constant satire poking). That lack of cleverness is essentially what drives the film's score down for me, because even at just over 90-minutes, it exhausts most of its comedic firepower within the first half and kind of just riffs off those same basic ideas for the remainder of the movie . The film's composure is laughably bad, too, but I'm sure that's "part of the charm," literally seeing tomatoes just roll over bodies lying on the floor.

Best bit: "I work for the personnel proficiency planning for Pago-Pago Paratrooper Platoon Patrol." / "Ohhh, Operation PPPPPPP [mouthed fart noise]."

Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002): 2/5

Interesting that this got made as is, with no concessions to commercial viability whatsoever. (Most of the film consists simply of Damon and Affleck silently walking, or sitting, or eventually shuffling. Many shots are held for a small eternity.)

Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948): 3/5

Expressionistic opening is a stunner, and from a purely formal standpoint, MOONRISE may well be Borzage's masterpiece. The film really needed a stronger lead than Dane Clark, though—Borzage reportedly wanted John Garfield, who would've been perfect—and the script has an unfortunate tendency to articulate its themes in dialogue, as if we're too dense to understand why Hawkins is a tortured hunk of self-loathing.

A Married Woman (Godard, 1964): 3/5

I think this might play for people who normally struggle with Godard. In many ways this is his most minimalist work. The political screeds and homages/references to older films are tamped down as Godard tries to work through his feelings about men and women, love and sex (presumably as his own marriage slides inexorably toward doom).

The Whole Town's Talking (John Ford, 1935): 3/5

This reminded me a lot of an old Looney Tunes where Porky has a gangster doppelgänger.

What I personally found most fascinating was the effects work. Ford employs a nearly flawless combination of simple shot/reverse shot editing, body doubling, split screen composites and front projection to achieve the twinning of Edward G. Robinson. There's even a wide shot, both twins on either side, with a mirror straight in the center of the frame just next to the composite seam, just to sell the illusion that much more. Also pretty amazing is a shot of Robinson and his double both reflected in a mirror, before the camera pulls back to have Robinson enter the foreground while he, his reflection, and the double's reflection all remain in focus in the mirror. At first I thought there must have been a hole in the wall instead of a mirror, but realized eventually that there must have been a projection screen behind Robinson and the camera, with the mirror reflecting both. Really jaw dropping stuff.

Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974): 2.5/5

Based on its reputation and Criterion's descriptive synopsis, I was so excited to finally see this. "A time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama." Those elements are there, but I'd hardly call it an "adventure." More like an undisciplined, ad-libbed nonsense with a 3+ hour runtime. (Speaking of which, after three hours of tomfoolery, witchcraft, drunken potions, shadowplays, and goofing with ghosts I was worried that we would be late to the party. Don't worry! Celine and Julie do, in fact, go boating.)

Love Unto Death (Alain Resnais, 1984): 2.5/5

Almost every scene (and in many cases even just individual shots lasting a few seconds) is followed by footage of snowflakes drifting through what's presumably a night sky, accompanied by urgent, keening strings. It's the sort of vaguely mysterious emotive device that usually recurs a handful of times over the course of a movie to time-lapse key moments—but here Resnais makes it the cement holding every brick together, so intrusive that it almost functions as a wordless Greek chorus. It really generates an uncanny amount of free-floating tension, and I was soon ready to follow LOVE UNTO DEATH (which kicks off quite dramatically even if one ignores those soul-stirring interludes) wherever it might lead.

Sadly, the formal mastery serves a narrative that I find both frustrating and kinda repellent, though it's only in the home stretch that those qualities decisively emerge. (Spent most of the film engrossed and intensely curious about where it was headed.) My frustration lies in Simon's inexplicable resurrection ultimately seeming all but irrelevant. Lots of philosophizing in the third act, but none of it has anything to do with the apparent miracle that opens the film, which could be excised without the need to change a single word. And it's just hard for me to embrace what's essentially a pro-suicide tract, or at least a film that's clearly sympathetic to the notion that one's love for a partner of only TWO MONTHS (!!!) can be so strong that life without that person is no longer worth living.

4:44 Last Day on Earth (Abel Ferrara, 2011): 2/5

That the world would go about its normal business right up to the end makes for a lovely, at times deeply moving idea, especially as punctuated by occasional plangent acknowledgements of loss.

But I'm afraid I do have to register the standard objections, beginning with Shanyn Leigh and her inexpressive anti-gaze—not as problematic as it might be, given that she spends a big hunk of the film silently painting, but she's still pretty much half the cast, so finding her deeply uninteresting is a problem. Dafoe fares better, naturally, but often seems to be inventing his character as he goes along. The film feels sketchy and sparse in ways that don't complement its solipsistic vision.

Annette (Leos Carax, 2021): 3.5/5

Totally bonkers and sure to be one of the most divisive films of the year. Yeah it's uneven and it doesn’t always hold our breath, but that uninterrupted opening sequence in the streets of Los Angeles (that was filmed right on my street!!!!) was worth the price of admission for me.

The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021): 3/5

A collection of good-looking sequences, at times underwhelming... mostly enjoyable and ultimately aesthetically on brand.

I liked it, I did. I just wanted more from it. Blame the hype or blame the fact this didn’t come out 10 years ago. Or also blame the LAMB trailer that came on right before and stole its thunder.

Also, does every A24 period piece officially require featuring both parents from THE WITCH?

The Aviator's Wife (Eric Rohmer, 1981): 4/5

New favorite Rohmer.

Tabloid (Errol Morris, 2010): 4/5

"He was a DOO-DOO DIPPER."

I'm not convinced there's a whole lot of subtext to this tale apart from "crazy people are crazy," but the Believe It or Not quotient is off the charts; each new development is even more gobsmacking than the last, to the point where Morris' efforts to goose it even further—underlining salacious remarks with tabloid-style graphics and so forth—seems like overkill. For all the ostensible commentary on the media, what I mostly took away from McKinney's saga is the alarming gulf between intelligence and sense. Her I.Q. may well be 168, as she claims—it does indeed take a certain kind of genius to flee the country by posing as a deaf-mute mime—but every idea that big brain comes up with ought to be quarantined.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003): 2/5

me *every 5 minutes*: “where’s Cate Blanchett???"

I don't regret not watching this earlier to be honest. I just don't have the gene in me that will make me like LOTR.

Modern Romance (Albert Brooks, 1981): 2/5

Uncannily prefigures The Onion's classic story "Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested."

John and the Hole (Pascual Sisto, 2021): 2/5

More like YAWN and the hole!!!!!

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973): 2.5/5

As Roger Ebert put it: "this one could have been titled 'The Man Who Loved to Hear Himself Talk.'"  Basically a three and a half hour cinematic endurance test not of attention span but of tolerance for unlikeable characters loafing and loathing.

Val (Leo Scott and Ting Poo, 2021): 2/5

Being a celebrity is not enough to make a biodoc inherently interesting -  you have to put the celebrity's life in some greater context, make them relatable, etc. and for me this film didn't do that. Best wishes to Val in his continued recovery and I hope he has a happy and healthy remainder of his life but go ahead and skip this one. 

Lux Eterna (Gaspar Noe, 2019): 3.5/5

Fresh off the relatively commercial and unanimous success of CLIMAX, Noe returns to his more experimental and boundary-pushing roots with Lux Eterna, a metafictional chamber-piece set in the most hellish of places — a film shoot. A claustrophobic work that sees Noe riff off De Palma’s split-screen and reference the canonical fixtures of theological and exploitation cinema, Lux Eterna interrogates both the troubled artistic visions of cinema’s many auteurs as well as the dysfunctions of a production whose social and commercial realities, sadly, will always possess a frictive relationship with the former. An intriguing and nauseating piece from a perpetual iconoclast.

Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021): 2.5/5

CANDYMAN was a mixed bag of sweets and sours for me. Enjoyed Nia DaCosta’s haunting atmosphere, striking camerawork, the dark score and powerfully disturbing themes. But the economically rushed storytelling resulted in dull characters, a disjointed narrative and a messy examination of its many ideas.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005): 2.5/5

Roman Duris: I've always found him insufferable and bland. And the whole which-parent-should-I-emulate? business (Mom, now dead, was a renowned pianist; Dad is a slumlord who goads his son into collecting his debts) is irritatingly facile. The film's strength resides largely in isolated moments of somber beauty and quiet grace, epitomized by the lovely, diffident relationship that gradually develops between our protagonist and his Vietnamese piano tutor (Linh-Dan Pham), who doesn't speak a word of French. 

I haven't seen Toback's FINGERS.

A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016): 2/5

 Bloated, meandering, senseless. Real potential with editing though. This is pretty but for the most part banally so, all typically weird asymmetry, at least until a few climactic scenes, and it doesn't feel like even Verbinski cares about its endless convolutions.

I've Loved You So Long (Phillipe Claudel, 2008): 3/5

Claps to KST, her French films are better than her British ones.

All Good Things (Andrew Jarecki, 2010): 2.5/5

The only good thing about this is that it brought us THE JINX.

The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021): 2/5

Ponderous and lugubrious. Full of scenes of our hero walking through (lovely) landscapes and images—as opposed to grappling with other humans in a meaningful way. Bored. 

Annette (Leos Carax, 2021): 2/5

A couple of arresting sequences but overall, extremely awkward. The songs are sing-songy, tuneless, repetitive and literal. 

Zola (Janicza Bravo, 2021): 3.5/5

Mixes Elmore Leonard’s free-flowing psychos with the style of America Honey, Spring Breakers, and Tangerine, but genre. The acting is good, and the story is not bogged down by (too much) Tarantino-esque irony or exaggeration. Nicholas Braun is a rock star.

Pig (Michael Sarnoski, 2021): 2.5/5

A character study and a portrait on an artist, but highly affected and full of narrative and stylistic cliches. Self-satisfied and cartoony. 

Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage (Garret Price, 2021): 2.5/5

Similar feelings here as with Summer of Soul: the narrative of social significance is over-emphasized and the music under-emphasized. I demand to hear an actual Korn song! Easily the most interesting material is the Limp Biscuit performance fragment, which is legit eloquent and powerful (accidentally)—analogous (in a reduced, 90s sort of way) to the Stones’ performance of Sympathy for the Devil at Altamont in Gimmie Shelter. The artist looking out across the crowd and wondering who is manipulating who.   

The Suicide Squad (James Gunn, 2021): 3/5

I was amused by the bloody humor and the satiric characters for the first half. In the second half the characters are somewhat overwhelmed by scale. Still, not bad.

The Jungle Cruise (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2021): 3/5

Relatively warm and funny for a blockbuster. Good visual storytelling, with no long scenes of exposition—a surprisingly common problem.  

Blow Out, rw (Brian DePalma, 1981): 4/5

I have recently heard a couple of people call it his masterpiece and perhaps they are right. It’s both derivative and highly original. Both gonzo and suspenseful. It’s dumb but I can’t think of a single European director who could have achieved this level of suspenseful execution, while retaining all the sloppiness and sweat. (I limit it to European because Kurosawa) My mom and dad took me to see this movie in the theater in 1981; I was 14. I loved it (more than my parents, since they hated the ending), and I had obviously never seen Blow Up or The Conversation (which are both better and obviously way more high art). 

Irrational Man (Woody Allen, 2015): 3/5

Really good performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone (two of my favorites) in another version of Crime and Punishment (after Crimes and Misdemeanors, of course). Full of event, character arc and actual tension. A swift hour and 33 minutes. 

Men at War (Anthony Mann, 1957): 3.5/5

So minimal and primal, it can’t help but be cliche. The scene where they realize they are standing in a mine field. The scene where the guy in the back of their line disappears, and they have to go back and see what happened. Robert Ryan, Vic Morrow and especially Aldo Ray make it worth watching. Significantly, there are two shell shocked characters (out of 15.) 

10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer, 1971): 3.5/5

An almost unbearably ghastly and cold portrait of a meek, English doctor-type murderer. For me, it honed in so exactly on feelings of shame and being found out that I only made it through on the third try. Made by the director of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Soylent Green (as well as Mandingo).  

Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston, 1967): 3/5

Definitely a John Huston movie about being gay in the military. Innocent horses and Elizabeth Taylors are harmed. Brando’s accent makes the beginning rough-going, but eventually he gives us some moments of real emotion and introspection up on that screen. Robert Forester meanwhile runs around naked like he’s in a Jean Genet novel. Brando can’t fuck him, so you know what the only alternative is.  

The Dead (John Huston, 1987): 3/5

The first hour is a tedious dinner party with older relatives that one must indulge (too much like real life for me), but the last 20 minutes is a moving and beautiful meditation on memory, the depthless mystery of relationships, and death. Would it have been as powerful without the first hour? That notorious dumbfuck Joyce seemed to think so.  

Insidious (James Wan, 2010): 2.5/5

Often effective, yet paper thin. No real human conflict grounds what is occurring to the characters. 

Ingmar Bergman Film Fest

Introductory notes:

• I like the way Bergman’s films tend to eschew long, atmospheric passages showing the environment and someone looking into space and perhaps thinking something. Instead, his movies charge right into the personalities of his characters and the conflicts that must be addressed. Oppositions and grudges are articulated and confronted, without delay, which is thrilling (whereas delay and sublimation/symbolism is the lifeblood of action, horror or suspense genres.) 
• Bergman’s not sentimental; I like to cry in movies, but none of these moved me to tears. However, he is interested in emotions, especially the irrational—the contradictions and reversals in our feelings and actions.
• His movies are psychedelic in the sense that their subject is consciousness. They endeavor to help you enter into the thoughts, feelings, memories, fantasies and dreams of others.
• I like that most of these movies are 1:30 or even less. These are lean machines of deep-feeling characters, intense emotions, acute observation of human psychology, and questions about where meaning can be found. Since they are so short, they rarely wallow in any mood too long, and they allow themselves to be untidy—shooting off on unexpected tangents that contrast to the main plot or theme. 
• Bergman obsessive themes: marital infidelity (including what happens when the cuckolded partner confronts the two adulterers directly; he depicted this at least four times, all very different-feeling), unwanted pregnancy, the life/temperament of artists, cold or absent fathers. 
• I just love directors who work with a stock company, and here we have one for the ages: Eva Dahlbeck (6 movies with Bergman), Ingrid Thulin (8), Bibi Andersson (10), Liv Ullmann (11), Max von Sydow (11), Erland Josephson (12)—and my favorites, Harriet Andersson (10) and Gunnar Björnstrand (19).
• I’ve now seen 36 of the man’s works, but he filmed so many plays for Swedish TV that I’m barely past the half-way mark, completist-wise.

Crisis (Ingmar Bergman, 1946): 3/5

Bergman’s directorial debut, a melodrama about the prodigal daughter, off to the big city. Presents the love and suffering of a mother as well as ample country/city contrasts. In case you’re wondering about Bergman’s opinion, people in the city tell her she’s an ‘anchor of reality’ to them. 

Thirst (Ingmar Bergman, 1949): 2.5/5

Infidelity, including a wife confronting the couple. Life of an artist. Unwanted pregnancy. The woman is quarrelsome and restless. A late-term abortion has left her barren and miserable, possibly representing the war-ravaged Europe through which they are traveling by train. The movie proceeds through a series of disjointed flashbacks and even follows tertiary characters for a surprising amount of time (Bergman is always willing to confuse the viewer, but it turns out this was an adaptation of a book of stories). Features a murder and a suicide. 

To Joy (Ingmar Bergman, 1950): 3.5/5

Infidelity. Life of an artist. Unwanted pregnancy. (I’ll stop this but you get the picture). Two young musicians meet, fall in love, have twins, succeed and fail in their careers, argue and reconcile, and live an ordinary happy life. What I haven’t told you is that the first thing we are shown is that the wife dies in a fire when the children are still toddlers, and the story is told after learning this fact. Which demands you keep two opposing emotions in your mind the whole time. 

It Can’t Happen Here (Ingmar Bergman, 1950): 2/5

There are four Bergman films that are universally considered to be his worst— this one, The Touch, All These Women, and The Devil’s Eye—and, boringly, I agree: This is a noirish political thriller, complete with vertical-blinds lighting, murder, car chases and a disappearing corpse. I had some trouble telling the good spies from the bad ones, but perhaps that’s the point.

Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman, 1951): 3/5

A ballet dancer experiences summer love and shocking loss, with a lovely reverie in the second act and an enigmatic third. 

A Lesson in Love (Ingmar Bergman, 1954): 3/5

A straight-up screwball comedy of remarriage. Similarly wry and knowing (slash cynical) regarding love, marriage and affairs as the more successful and funnier Smiles of a Summer Night, the following year. As a matter of fact, both movies have the same actors (Gunnar Bjornstrand and Eva Dahlbeck) as the cheating husband tired of his affair and wishing to return to his wife figure. 

Dreams (Ingmar Bergman, 1955): 3/5

Ironically for Bergman, no actual dreams are depicted in this tale of a couple of days in the life of a fashion photographer and model. The photographer is having an affair, when the man’s wife confronts them in their hotel room, and in one unbroken five-minute shot devastates both of them by correctly guessing their whole previous conversation and psychology regarding their love—their mutual dream if you will. 

Smiles on a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955): 4/5

Wonderfully mean and genuinely funny screwball comedy or about love and sex. Shot through with dreamlike reveries of great beauty and grace. Oh, what fools these mortals be. 

Wild Strawberries, rw (Ingmar Bergman, 1957): 3.5/5

Memory, dream and fantasy are all on board for a trip across the country and through the mind. 

Brink of life (Ingmar Bergman, 1958): 2.5/5

Three women in a maternity ward, three fates, all pretty cruel. Is there unwanted pregnancy? Why yes. Traditionally stage-bound, free from interiority. A throwback to Bergman’s earlier melodramas; not written by the man.

The Magician (Ingmar Bergman, 1958): 3/5

The titular stage artist suffers and hates, mysteriously and theatrically, granting those he encounters permission to do the things they really want to do anyway, while hiding behind a facade of “the Magician made me do it.” I can see how Trump offered this for paranoids and racists. In the end, it’s a debate about science vs the uncanny, the desire to discover the soul through autopsy, the real magic of (fake) actors, and the silence of God (as the Magician pretends to be mute.) 

The Devil’s Eye (Ingmar Bergman, 1960): 2/5

A self-described comedy (although laughless) about Don Juan returning from hell to take a girl’s virginity. Some parody of seduction and love ensues. 

Through a Glass Darkly, rw (Ingmar Bergman, 1961): 5/5

Bergman’s Joan d’Arc. Here Karin is capable of intense, terrifying bouts of ecstatic and sexual madness concerning the imminent presence of God. Harriet Anderson incredibly beautiful and free—expressing great rapture and suffering. God is declared to be a hideous spider, not so much a belief as an experience. 

Winter Light, rw (Ingmar Bergman, 1963): 5/5

Like a couple of my other favorite films, this is a priest in crisis. “I put my faith in an improbable and private image of a god, who loved mankind but me most of all. An ignorant, spoiled and anxious wretch makes a rotten clergyman,” says Father (doubting) Tomas. At least six characters who can no longer experience a feeling of the presence of God, terrifying or otherwise—including a suicide. When people criticize Bergman’s despair and angst, this is certainly the kind of movie they mean. Yet this is more probing than painful. Like Night and Fog (let’s say) it attempts to get down to some brass tacks. An hour and 22 minutes. 

The Silence, rw (Ingmar Bergman, 1963): 4/5

An experiment for the often-logorrheic Bergman, and quite a successful one. This focuses on the stuff you do when you don’t talk (or can’t really communicate). Taking naps, daydreaming, masturbating, reading, getting drunk, dying of tuberculosis, fucking, thinking “You will be dead soon” or “I hope you die soon” not to mention that old chestnut “I will be dead soon.” In their silence, our three characters are even more isolated than usual. Beautiful and sensual. God is not mentioned, but I suppose it’s implied?

A Dream Play (Ingmar Bergman, 1963): 2.5/5

The preface describes it as “a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations. The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, disperse, assemble. But one consciousness rules over them all, that of the dreamer.” This is as good a description as any for many of Bergman’s works as well as Lynch’s. Thereafter, numerous characters rhapsodize on the brief joys and prolonged suffering of love, education, vocation, family life, belief in God, with the tone being abstract and ghostly a la Beckett. “Life is strife between the agony of ecstasy and the ecstasy of agony.” The play was written in 1902. According to Wikipedia, “Strindberg wrote it following a near-psychotic episode. During that time, he came to be extremely disturbed, thinking witches were attempting to murder him.”

All these Women (Ingmar Bergman, (1964): 1.5/5

The broadest comedy in Bergman’s career and certainly his worst movie. Filled with airless physical comedy, wacky Dixieland music, Benny Hill-style fast motion and garish soundstage sets. A satire of critics, it also possible his most bitter, which is saying something. Remarkably, this self-described “convincing and well-deserved fiasco” is sandwiched between The Silence and Persona.  

Daniel (Ingmar Bergman, 1967): 2/5

Home footage of the first two years of Bergman’s son

The Rite (Ingmar Bergman, 1969): 3/5

A defense of pretensions theatre as transgressive and punishing to the status quo. Yet it acknowledges that the artists themselves are out-of-control hedonists (but actually really cool in a dark-sunglasses way). Comparatively slight, but experimentally fragmented and only 1:16, so fine. 

The Touch (Ingmar Bergman, 1971): 2/5

Elliott Gould is muted, and his attempts at naturalism produce only a kind of Woody Allen stutter and hesitation. The script has him cycling rapidly and randomly through strong emotions in a way that seems unnatural. Is this the way all of Bergman’s scripts are, and I just never noticed since it’s in Swedish? Bergman uncharacteristically uses a sunny pop instrumental (first literally and then increasingly ironically).

Cries & Whispers, rw (Ingmar Bergman, 1972): 3.5/5

Very much a movie about dying—about being in the same room as your dead sister. So not a great time at the movies. Still, it has a deep gravity and stretches out its lines of inquiry in many directions. Has any other movie had fade-to-red as a motif? Typical of Bergman to casually break all the rules, especially to blast out a feeling of the interiority of the characters. The red is pain, I think, and the interior of the human body with all its feelings, memories and contradictions—in short, consciousness. A person in the same room as you is so present and real and vast, it’s hard to believe they ever cease to be. Making Harriet Anderson—the very embodiment of youth, sex and beauty in Summer with Monica and Smiles of a Summer Night—the one dying here is especially cruel. 

The Magic Flute (Ingmar Bergman, 1975): 2/5

The least psychedelic of his films—a surprisingly straightforward, stage bound, strictly proscenium mise en scene, made for Swedish public television. 

From the life of Marionettes (Ingmar Bergman, 1980): 3.5/5

Now that I’ve seen a dream play it’s much easier to see this, like Cries and Whispers and Persona, as a series of monologues, all coming from the dreamer, Bergman. In C&W, they arise in contemplation of the death of a young person to cancer; in Persona from a more abstract existential crisis. Here they are in reaction to an unexpected murder—and also to compulsive and insatiable sexual desire. Yet as is often the case, these monologues are so sensitive and articulate about what people are like that they put most other movies to shame. As ever, I take great pleasure in the characters (finally) just saying all the terrible things on their mind to one another. It’s a naked lunch, and we finally get to see what is on the end of everyone’s fork. In German.

After the Rehearsal (Ingmar Bergman, 1984): 4.5/5

Such a typical Bergman film, as they all are God bless him. A thinly veiled version of himself (Erland Josephson from Scenes from a Marriage) having a long conversation with a hot young actress that mixes banality, inner thoughts, arguments, memories suddenly walking on stage, revelations, fears, brinksmanship, rapid cycling through emotions, mother issues, father issues, meta commentary on actors acting and directors directing in their real lives. And lines like this that destroy me: “the temperature of a love can only be measured by the loneliness that precedes it.” And the idea that to imagine something and live it in a fantasy is actually more real than to actually do it, since reality is ultimately full of lies and humiliating self-deceptions. And the mysterious power of everyone in a room (whether it be two or a thousand) believing in a piece of shared fantasy, somehow really thinking it true and sharing and having all the emotions. In short, love and/or theatre. All in 1:13. 

Karin’s Face (Ingmar Bergman, 1984): 3/5

Spends 16 short, emotional minutes investigating his mother by looking at her expression and circumstance in a number of photographs over the course of her life. 

Data Dump #1: The Silent Era

 

How to get the most pleasure out of silent cinema:

— Avoid the terrible public domain dupes that too often are found on YouTube and Amazon Prime.  There's been a huge amount of restoration work done in the last couple decades, and good 2K or 4K restorations can easily be found and should be supported.  This is an especially visual form, and print quality is especially important.

— There are too many generic "Shakey's Pizza" solo piano scores, and even some of the recent hip, modern orchestral scores (Mont Alto, Alloy) can get tedious at times.  If you're losing patience, use ear buds and create your own soundtrack.

— Consume laudanum or bathtub gin before viewing to ease into the period atmosphere.

The Birth of a Nation, rw (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

It's often noted that if only the first half (depicting the war) were released, there'd be little controversy today.  The second half is truly jawdropping in its myopia, as it focuses almost exclusively on how the end of slavery brought financial hardship and the threat of cultural extinction to Southern White land owners, who rose up from their sorrows and... well, you know the rest.  [Kino Blu-ray]

Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919): 4/5

A poetic, opium-laced fever dream, or so I thought after consuming similar intoxicating substances. [Streaming on Amazon]

Way Down East, rw (D.W. Griffith, 1920): 3.5/5

A creaky, overlong, but seminal American melodrama, redeemed by Lillian Gish's luminous talent and her adventure on the ice floes.  [Kino Blu-ray]

Blind Husbands, rw (Erich von Stroheim, 1919): 3.5/5

The most accomplished directorial debut in American cinema prior to Citizen Kane.  Stroheim, age 34, first wrote a novel, then adapted it and convinced Carl Laemmle to produce it.  All the trademark "Von" traits are here: marital philandering, fetishes, sadism, military regalia, feats of physical endurance (mountaineering here) and an obsession with pictorial realism and spectacle that he absorbed from working on Griffith's Intolerance.  Such extravagances would doom Stroheim to be exiled from Hollywood within a decade, whereas Lubitsch wisely produced similar naughty psycho-sexual narratives on the cheap with studio interiors and thus thrived for decades. [Kino DVD]

The Merry Widow (Erich von Stroheim, 1925): 5/5

The same but more, with bigger budget and bigger stars: flamboyant John Gilbert and an appropriately merry and trashy Mae Murray.  Contains a humorous shoe fetish allusion that would make Buñuel smile.  [TCM streaming]

Safety Last, rw (Harold Lloyd, 1923): 3/5

The Freshman (Harold Lloyd, 1925): 2/5

Of the three major silent comedians, Lloyd is the least interesting and most annoying.  While Chaplin and Keaton were developing their definitive screen personas in the late 1910s, Lloyd was floundering with his "Lonesome Luke" character, which he finally abandoned.  His "glasses" character is a product of the Roaring Twenties, embodying the decade's "pep" and can-do enterpreneurial spirit; for this character, there's no obstacle that can't be overcome by simply running faster or climbing higher.  There's no doubt that Lloyd's films are well made, with lots of inventive stunts and visual gags.  And he certainly got the last laugh by avoiding the perils of divorce and drink to become the richest of all silent film stars (Jeff Bezos' newly purchased mansion in Beverly Hills sits on just a portion of Lloyd's former estate).  But the overeager glasses character's single-minded pursuit of success, never questioned, feels spiritually empty compared to the raggedy pathos of Chaplin and the deadpan angst of Keaton.  If Chaplin is for poets and Keaton for philosophers, then Lloyd is for MBAs.  (*)  [Criterion DVD]

Zaza (Allan Dwan, 1923): 1.5/5

Gloria Swanson stars as Zaza, a tempermental stage actress and insufferable bitch beyond redemption.  This was Swanson's first of six pictures with Dwan at Paramount, and it was a hit — but it's difficult to comprehend how anyone could find this character attractive. [Kino Blu-ray]

Manhandled (Allan Dwan, 1924): 4/5

Solid romantic comedy in which Swanson plays a shopgirl who gets a taste of high society.  Opening scene of Gloria fighting for space on the subway is classic. Only extant print (from 16mm elements) is missing her Chaplin impersonation that was praised by contemporary reviewers; for now we’ll have to settle for her bit in Sunset Blvd. [Kino Blu-ray]

Stage Struck (Allan Dwan, 1925): 3.5/5

Smalltown waitress Gloria dreams of becoming a famous actress and connives to meet a riverboat theater actor who could be her ticket to the big time.  First and last reels are shot in early Technicolor, the first depicting Gloria's fantasies of being feted as a successful actress and playing Salome (another perf referenced in Sunset Blvd). The color intro's mannered, Art Deco invocation of an actress in exotic ritual immediately brought to mind Kenneth Anger's Puce Moment.  [Kino Blu-ray]

A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin, 1923): 3/5

A girl from the provinces becomes the titular woman of Paris and must decide between earnest, starving artist and wealthy philanderer (Adolphe Menjou, in a role that established him as Hollywood's leading cad in tails).  It's sad to see Edna Purviance, Chaplin’s rom-com beauty, looking a bit bloated and dowdy here, and she lacks the ego and charisma to pull off a feature-length dramatic role.  A box office dud due to Chaplin's screen absence, its underplayed acting style and the realism of the relationships were influential in Hollywood, and greased the wheels for Lubitsch's mature explorations of marital infidelity.  Great party scenes, all too brief.  Chaplin composed the stiff, overly formal score at age 86; I played Tycho's moody electronica instead, and it energized the experience considerably.  [DVD]

The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924): 2.5/5

The blueprint for Lubitsch's "sophisticated" romantic farces, depending on a series of now-familiar misunderstandings, miscommunications, and missed elevators.  Florence Vidor is lovely; Marie Prevost is a tart; and 34-year-old Adolphe Menjou already looks like an old man.  [DVD]

He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjostrom, 1924): 3/5

Story and play predating The Blue Angel, in which humiliated scholar Lon Chaney is reduced to playing a clown in the circus — but in this case intent on revenge.  Lots of weird visual effects and dissolves with clowns and globes.  I've never been enamored with the commedia dell 'arte clown shtick, whether it's done by Chaney or Crazy Joe Davola.  Early star-making perfs by the cross-eyed Norma Shearer (who looks pretty only in profile) and John Gilbert as young lovers.  First appearance of MGM's Leo the Lion.  [Criterion Channel, Film Foundation restoration]

Variety, rw (E.A. Dupont, 1925): 5/5

A real treat: a frothy backstage melodrama involving a love triangle of acrobats, featuring the visual dazzle of Karl Freund photography, and Emil Jannings actually demonstrating youth, physical agility, and masculine appeal before he characteristically descends into tragic self destruction.  Dupont, a journalist, never made another film approaching this quality.  Credit is given to UFA producer Erich Pommer, who kept the project away from Murnau ("too sexy" for him), and to Freund, who continued the "unchained camera" experiments he had unleashed with Murnau the previous year in The Last Laugh. [Kino Blu-ray, restored to full-length 95 min.]

It’s the Old Army Game, rw (Edward Sutherland, 1925): 5/5

W.C. Fields doing silent versions of several routines that will appear with sound—and to better effect—in It’s a Gift: the pharmacy, the sleep porch, etc.  Fascinating nonetheless, with an added bonus: a stunning 19-year-old Louise Brooks as his shop assistant.  [Kino Blu-ray]

Sparrows (William Beaudine, 1926): 3/5

The most artistically satisfying Pickford feature I've seen (but I have yet to view Lubitsch's recently restored Rosita from 1923).  Mary is held captive with ten younger kids in a human trafficking operation in a swamp, eventually leading them to freedom.  Astonishing photography by Charles Rosher in the swampland--esp. Jesus with lambs appearing to take a dead child to heaven.  Many of Rosher's camera experiments here would be continued the following year on Murnau's Sunrise. [Amazon Prime, poor transfer]

La Boheme (King Vidor, 1926): 3.5/5

Oh, how wispy, angelic Lillian suffers for her self-respect (and for cinema), while next door neighbor Jack Gilbert hams it up in this adaptation of the Puccini opera about starving artists in Rome.  The first of several Gish films at MGM in which she had unprecedented power to choose her stories and directors.  [WB DVD, poor transfer from 16mm elements]

The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjostrom, 1926): 5/5 

The first Gish-Sjostrom collaboration is every bit as good as The Wind, only less uniquely cinematic due to the familiarity of the Hawthorne novel.  Sjostrom and lead actor Lars Hanson bring proper Scandinavian restraint to the grim proceedings, and Gish is a revelation as Hester Prynne.  For reasons both economic and selfish, MGM/TCM have never released The Scarlet Letter, The Wind, nor King Vidor's The Crowd on DVD.  [TCM streaming]

Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice, 1926): 2.5/5

Not much to recommend here, other than the fact that it's Valentino's last picture. [Kino Blu-ray]

The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926): 3/5

Epic western of desert settlers attempting irrigation, in the mold of James Cruze's The Covered Wagon and John Ford's The Iron Horse, where the focus is on profiteering vs. community, rather than fighting the natives.  Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky are the star-crossed lovers, with a young Gary Cooper, in his first credited role, as the humble third wheel.  Cooper is the only reason we're able to see this today: producer Sam Goldwyn's wife destroyed most of the archived Goldwyn silents but kept this one because of Cooper.  [Restored print on Amazon Prime]

Underworld, rw (Josef von Sternberg, 1927): 5/5

Sternberg always maintained that he wasn't interested in gangsters, but screenwriter Ben Hecht, who started as a Chicago newspaperman and grew up around organized crime, was interested.  Hecht went on to write the original draft of Scarface, which repeats some of the motifs seen here, such as "The City is Yours" advertising sign and the steel-walled apartment hideout.  The foundations of the genre are here, just not as pronounced, given Sternberg's nocturnal stylizations.  Interesting casting of oddball slapstick comedian Larry Semon as Bull Weed's right-hand man, which would be like casting Jerry Lewis as consigliere in The Godfather.  [Criterion DVD]

The Docks of New York, rw (Josef Von Sternberg, 1928): 4/5

Sternberg's visual style gains full realization.  It's still hard to believe that, before Marlene came along, dumb mug George Bancroft was Sternberg's star in four pictures.  [Criterion DVD]

Ramona (Edwin Carewe, 1928): 3/5

Stars a beautiful Dolores del Rio as the titular tragic mulatto (White/Native American) who rejects her White benefactors to marry a native (Warner Baxter in brownface) and then is persecuted and terrorized until she comes crawling back to the safe haven of White patriarchy.  Written in 1884 as an Uncle Tom's Cabin to expose Southern California's exploitation of native peoples, this is considered the truest film adaptation (DWG did a short version starring Mary Pickford).  Curiously, gorgeous canyon exterior scenes were shot in Utah.  [LOC restoration on Amazon Prime]

The Circus, rw (Charles Chaplin, 1928): 5/5

Chaplin returns to his carny roots and the physical comedy of his two-reeler days.  Made between The Gold Rush and City Lights, this eschews their high concept and sentimentality and provides more physical and visual gags—probably the most Keatonesque of the Chaplin silent features.  An absolute delight.  [Criterion Blu-ray]

The General, rw (Buster Keaton, 1926): 5/5

Not just one of the best silent features, but one of the greatest American movies.  Astonishing in its inventiveness, technical prowess, and sheer entertainment.  [KL Blu-ray]

The Cameraman, rw (Edward Sedgwick, 1928): 4/5

Buster’s first and best film at MGM, and the last good film of his career.  [Criterion Blu-ray]

Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick, 1929): 3/5

Entertaining at times, but you can see Buster straining to do sit-com gags per a continuity script required by the execs at MGM.  Contrary to legend he was eager to experiment with sound in this film, but MGM doubted his abilities and allowed only a synchronized score.  MGM was the last major studio to convert to sound.  [Criterion Blu-ray extra]

Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929): 3/5

Another pairing of Sunrise couple Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell at Fox.  Farrell goes off to WWI, returns a paraplegic, and must compete with the small town bully for Gaynor's hand in marriage.  Good thing Farrell's got a "lucky star" that will enable a fantastic but ludicrous finish to this slow, poetically told tale.  Confirms Borzage's reputation as a director of "dreamy" stories in soft focus, but sometimes they can be a chore to get through.  [DVD]

Earth, rw (Alexandre Dovzhenko, 1930): 4/5

If cinema had been produced in the 12th century, it might look something like this — more biblical than socialist.  Then again, after multiple viewings I still hadn't realized that the stranded tractor wouldn't start until men filled the radiator with their own urine, a demonstration of collectivization so genuine that neither I nor Stalin himself could ever have thought of it.  [Kino DVD]

 

(*)  Apologies to Justin, who, in addition to having an MBA, is a philosopher and poet, partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction.  I'm pretty sure he prefers Keaton.