CODA (Sian Heder, 2021): 4/5

A Hallmark movie on an extremely high level. A great argument for using actual deaf people to play deaf people. I loved that they didn’t caption the sign language; I’ve seen enough movies to know what was being communicated and I think it encouraged audience engagement. But I’m a sucker for young people achieving their dreams, especially in music. So just call me a sobbing, Sundance bitch. 

Persona, rw (Ingmar Bergman, 1966): 4.5/5

Bergman’s most radical mise en scène and editing—and perhaps the closest he got to A Dream Play. Stylish, abstract and devastating. The last 20 minutes are an elliptical puzzle. 

The Silent Partner (Daryl Duke, 1978): 2/5

By 1978, Elliott Gould seems to have lost his mojo. In this cold Canadian thriller, he’s supposed to slowly transform from nebbishy to suave but can’t convincingly manage either. 

The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi, 2014): 4/5

Probably my second favorite Dumont (after The Life of Jesus). By which I mean a brutalist portrait of brutish people. This one benefits from zero spoken dialogue or music, as well as a startling long-take, traveling medium-shot mise en scène as well as horrorshow, Taxi Driver-adjacent subject matter. The movie’s silence is powerful.

Stuart Rosenberg Film Fest

He directed Cool Hand Luke in 1959.

WUSA (Stuart Rosenberg, 1973): 2/5

The most inconsistent, tonally, of the Rosenberg movies I’ve seen, and slavered with Robert Stone’s bitter and purple prose. Newman and Woodward are fully doing the Cassavetes free thing. But when Newman goes to work for a cartoonishly exaggerated Fox News-like radio station, the tone switches to colorful and cartoonishly sarcastic. Tony Perkins is also wandering around feeling sorry for black people with a Norman Bates look on his face. Poor Cloris Leachman shows up as a prostitute finding her own peace. 

The Laughing Policeman (Stuart Rosenberg, 1973): 3/5

Cops Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern wander around a gritty 1972 San Francisco, trying to solve a murder and encountering many dirty hippies, pimps, junkies, leather daddies and strippers of various genders. 

The Amityville Horror (Stuart Rosenberg, 1979): 2/5

Based on his behavior when the evil creeps in, Brolin’s character is a guy who would secretly like more alone-time and time for his hobbies (such as chopping wood and impotence)—and Kidder’s character is very needy of his attention and service. Plus there are some obvious step-father resentment from both sides as well as parenting-style differences. But if so, let’s confront it, bitterly and vituperatively argue about it, and resolve it. Instead, the movie is all overflowing toilets and dripping walls. Lighting, make-up and mise en scene is pure tv, and Brolin and Kidder are not gifted screen presences. I feel like I almost always prefer the 70s version of most movies, but in this case The Conjuring is 10 times better. 

Brubaker (Stuart Rosenberg, 1980): 3.5/5

Rosenberg returns to prison, this time not just to play out a martyr narrative. Southern prison horror show turns inevitably to full-on prison reform movie. Excellent work from Redford, Brian Keith, Yaphet Kotto, M. Emmett Walsh and a bunch of other familiar 70s faces (eg. Murray Hamilton and Matt Clark—look them up!) doing great character work. 

Pope of Greenwich Village, rw (Stuart Rosenberg, 1984): 2/5

Rafifi and Grisby, with (even) more toxic masculinity and method acting. After watching The Laughing Policeman and even Brubaker this one comes off as rankly sentimental and broad. “Tough like shoe leather, that Moozarel” Rourke is doing dime-bag DeNiro, and Eric Roberts is slurring so bad you can hardly understand his lines. Lots of sub-Raging Bull “Charlie Charlie” and “Polly Polly.” I should add that I loved this movie when I saw it in theater when I was 16. I definitely thought handsome, strutting asshole Rourke was cool, and I related to fuck-up Roberts, whose character does seem to be about 10, emotionally and intellectually. 

Pre-80s Robert Redford Film Fest

One of the least method-y big actors of the time. If Redford pauses before saying something, it isn’t because he’s summoning up great stormy depths of feeling; he’s just being present with the other actor or serving the story. Redford often picks stories set in the past, and in fact his charms are old-fashioned. He also doesn’t shy from playing dumb or shallowly dickish characters. Two movies each with Syndey Pollack, George Roy Hill, Michael Ritchie.

The Chase (Arthur Penn, 1966): 2.5/5

Robert Redford’s escape from prison and imminent return to a small Southern town exposes some sub-Payton Place spouse swapping and racism—and gives the town residents an excuse to get drunk and act badly. Brando is strong and silent as the outsider sheriff. Cast also includes Robert Duvall, Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson and James Fox, establishing or furthering their personas as introverted cuck, sexpot, nice girl with big boobs, and chinless wonder, respectively. 

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, rw (George Roy Hill, 1969): 4.5/5

Prefigures Tarantino in that it yada yada yadas through robberies and celebrations to get to the parts where these criminals are just hanging out and talking and bitching, mostly in a light comic mode in contrast to the violence and fatalism of much that surrounds it. Poor Cloris Leachman again shows up as a prostitute finding her own peace. Redford is playing an exaggeratedly terse character-actor role and excels, making a big impression during his scenes and disappearing when it’s Newman’s time to shine. 

Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie, 1969): 4.5/5

Spare in dialogue but with a beautiful physicality and authenticity. Some unusual editing radically shortens dialogue scenes and other cliches. Redford is utterly believable and easy to watch as perhaps his most gormless character (among many). 

Little Fauss and Big Halsy (Sidney J. Furie, 1970): 3.5/5

As in Bonnie and Clyde, Michael J Pollard falls in with a charismatic ne’er-do-well. Redford first appears shirtless and continues to smile, fuck and drink around the desert dirt-bike racing circuit with charming insouciance and a wide variety of hats. Lauren Hutton’s hippy chick is shown reading a paperback copy of Burroughs’ Soft Machine and then, later, Naked Lunch (?!). Certainly the most explicitly sexy of Redford’s roles. 

The Candidate (Michael Ritchie, 1972): 3.5/5

Proceeds more from enjambment and interruption, compared to the blissed-out, physical and near-silent Downhill Racer. Redford starts out as a strong silent type, but the demands of his position require increasingly more talking, each word of which leads him farther from his convictions and his true self. Here Redford is smart and aware of his bland handsomeness—and what it lets him get away with—but also naive and corruptible. 

The Way We Were (Sydney Pollack, 1973): 2/5

This movie has a “oh man, I remember exactly where I was when I heard FDR had died” moment. Since that’s 1945, I figure this movie is for people around my mom’s age. (B. 1940). She was 33 when it was released, so this makes perfect sense. Pollack himself was 11 when FDR died. Redford is beautiful and empty (a symbol of all that was “too easy” about America’s success, also see Gatsby). Enlivened by Streisand’s manic Jewish pixie. 

The Great Waldo Pepper (George Roy Hill, 1975): 3/5

As with Butch Cassidy, this begins as a light-hearted romp and slowly turns more serious, until it eventually becomes a story about people who would prefer to die on their own mythic terms than betray their essential identities. Similarly concerned with the end of an era (here, of bi-planes and barnstorming) and with the distance between legend and reality. 

Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975): 3/5

Although I prefer Redford’s easygoing hang out movies like Downhill Racer and Little Fauss, I still relished all the (pretty dumb) plot here because it meant that Redford had to act—to be afraid, sad, brave, freaked out, tender, angry—and he’s actually pretty good at it. Believable and well-calibrated. 

All the President’s Men, rw (Alan J. Pakula, 1976): 4.5/5

“Reporter as private detective” is still super sexy, although obviously we have lost faith not necessarily in reporting but in the idea that it would make a difference. In this void, what’s left is Hoffman and Redford, and it’s plenty. Redford is confidently underplaying every scene and is generous to Hoffman and every other actor on set. Hoffman attempts and often achieves an almost sexy, nebbishy intelligence. With all the obscure, paranoid, tenuous lines flying everywhere, it reminds one most of JFK and Inherent Vice. The movie is all investigation; all the emotional payoff is done in text just before the end credits. 

A Bridge too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977): 2.5/5

An old-fashioned, three-hour, “War is Heck” movie, and a massive display of how well-equipped the American military was in 1944 and the American film industry was in 1979. Dirk Bogarde and Sean Connery carry the first act. James Caan, Elliott Gould and Anthony Hopkins the second. And Ryan O’Neal and Redford the third. (Also features Gene Hackman, Edward Fox, Michael Caine, Liv Ullman, and Laurence Olivier. Where the hell were Steve McQueen and James Coburn?) No doubt because of his current status in Hollywood, Redford leads a very Saving Private Ryan river crossing, possibly the best sequence in the movie. In the lack of actual acting requirements, these actors rely with ease on their personas. Good enough. 

One more from George Roy Hill

Slap Shot (George Roy Hill, 1977): 3/5

More hanging out, talking and bitching. But maybe since this is more stupid and raunchy, it’s easy to see these characters as irresponsible man-babies. And upon reflection, maybe the Butch Cassidy and Waldo Pepper characters were as well. Newman soulfully embodies a dumb, ridiculous character with a silver chipped tooth, brown pleather leisure suit and wide-collared silk print shirt. 

The Day the Laughter Stopped

Labor Day, 1921

Roscoe Arbuckle Suite

St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco

 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.