#91: The Blob

(Irvin S Yeaworth, Jr., 1958)

I last watched The Blob when I was about 13 and just about the only thing I remembered about it was the horrible theme song which runs over the opening credits (and by horrible, I mean awesome). Watching for the second and final time, I was most struck by two things. First of all, the idea that Steve McQueen is still in high school is not a legitimate premise - was this the beginning of the TV trend to cast 45-year-old actors as teenagers, or had that ship already sailed? (I also love that his name in the movie is Steve. Did they at least have a conversation about changing it? Or did they actually change it to Steve when they cast him? Inquiring minds..) Second was the fact that the film had an enormous amount of talking. Like a lot. In fact, most of The Blob could easily be performed as a play with very few rewrites and only minor set changes. In terms of production values, it makes Equinox look like The Rock.

It's astonishing to watch The Blob and think that just fifty years ago this movie was a blockbuster. The lack of action would have had modern-day studio execs killing themselves before their bosses did. How would they deal with all that talking in the overseas markets? The movie's novelty is no longer the amorphous blob that takes over the town before being frozen out (that is, until global warming, chillingly predicted in the film's final moments), but instead the idea that this movie would have ever entered the American mainstream. At least there's a catchy song, right?

#84: Good Morning

(Yasujiro Ozu, 1959)

A few months ago I was looking through the (still long and very intimidating) list of films I had yet to watch and settled in on the Ozu films to come. At the time, I had yet to see the diptych that makes up Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu, and the director's work still seemed disconcertingly foreign to me. In this context, Good Morning stood out as a different kind of Ozu film, one I might even be able to enjoy. These days, my appreciation of Ozu's signature style has improved greatly, and I ironically longed for the subtle and deep rhythms of his earlier works while watching Good Morning.

That's not to say there aren't signature Ozu moments in the film. The plot - in which a boy and his younger brother decide to forgo speaking until their parents get a television set - is simple enough that the movie exists virtually on slight social cues and the minutiae of everyday life alone. The back-and-forth gossip of the middle-class housewives is both entirely recognizable in Western suburban culture of the time and oddly political - it doesn't feel too far from the machinations behind the plot of The Wire, oddly enough - which might just be a different way of saying the motivations feel realistic instead of forced, natural rather than dramatic.

Of course, there aren't many Ozu films centered around fart jokes. Even aside from the farting, Good Morning is Ozu's most Western film of the handful I've seen to date - it's certainly the only one that could be transferred to a suburban US setting without substantial changes. Oddly enough, it's the first Ozu film Criterion released on DVD, way back in 2000. It's a good entry point for Ozu's work, but it's somewhat lacking for the budding Ozu fan who needs a hit, and it's far from his best work.

#80: The Element of Crime

(Lars Von Trier, 1984)

Sigh.

Well, I will say one thing about Criterion and their insistence on liking Von Trier: it's not an overnight phenomenon. As an early addition to their DVD run, The Element of Crime is a strange frustrating installment, a bizarre mix of uninteresting trashy noir and technically impressive (but ultimately hollow) cinematic style. The movie looks beautiful, and by beautiful I mean horrible, disgusting, unappealing, and unlikable. Perhaps this is what I meant Hunger should look like, which makes me doubt why I was complaining about that film's appearance anyway. Who wants to look at crap when they can look at beauty?

And, really, The Element of Crime is crap. It's partially crap on purpose, and it's also crap for a lot of reasons I have problems with Trier's work. The two that most bother me with his work are that it's incredibly sexist, and it has a disdain for conventional filmmaking that is only matched by its constant derivation of material from classic filmmakers. But really it's crap because Trier is an incredibly talented filmmaker who has occasionally stumbled into great work, seemingly unintentionally. I don't say that because he is clueless, but instead because I genuinely don't think Trier has any interest in entertaining an audience, or even really engaging with one. He just wants to be an asshole. Sometimes assholes make great art because what they say needs to be said. I personally think that's happened a few times with Trier, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong.

#77: And God Created Woman

(Roger Vadim, 1956)

And God Created Woman is not a good movie. It is, in purely objective terms, perhaps one of the most mediocre films in the Criterion catalog, a passably directed, poorly acted, inadvertently attractive movie. The fact that it sits next to Wild Strawberries and The Seven Samurai in the collection is entirely a testament to Brigitte Bardot.

Well, check that, Brigitte Bardot's body. See, Bardot isn't much of an actress. Say what you want about Marilyn Monroe, but she displayed more energy, more sizzle, more style and wit in The Seven Year Itch a year earlier than Bardot could probably have mustered in an entire career - actually, definitely, since she tried and could never quite do it (undoubtedly, her most relevant performance was in Godard's aptly titled masterpiece Contempt, where Bardot's natural gifts are almost used against her - thankfully she quit while she was behind in the early 70s). So I say with all due respect to sex goddesses that Bardot has little to offer in And God Created Woman but her body.

The film itself is not much better, sporting a melodramatic plot that would have made Douglas Sirk roll his eyes and a jumbled mishmash of dated sexual and racial politics that is so ancient you can almost hear the creaking underneath a line like, "She's brave enough to do what she wants, when she wants." Chuck Stephens's essay which accompanied the Criterion release of the film ten years ago barely even acknowledges its existence: the author discusses the actual movie for just one paragraph, changes the conversation to the almost criminally superior Contempt for another, and devotes a full six surrounding paragraphs to Bardot specifically. "Eventually," he writes, undoubtedly while holding back laughter, "Juliette will brave fire and sea, ecstasy and despair, and - as a result of her unquenchable desire - erupt into a kind of Mambo-inspired madness." So, um, yeah. People wonder why Armageddon is in the collection.

There are a few well-executed moments in And God Created Woman. The scene of Bardot coming down to her new husband's family, who are all waiting for the couple to eat dinner with them, wearing only a robe and promptly gathering up food and carrying it back to the bedroom is fucking ballsy. It's just a "holy shit, this lady is punk rock" kind of moment. But for every moment like that, there's one where her character feels hopelessly tied to gender stereotypes, like when she knows doom is on the horizon when her brother-in-law moves home. Is this lady kick-ass or vulnerable? Is she supposed to be tamed or can nothing destroy her? Are we really meant to take away from the film that wild women will destroy the men who love them, and only through forgiveness can they both be happy?

Just to be clear, I am entirely aware that Brigitte Bardot is an incredibly beautiful woman. I just happen to feel this is not enough to sustain a film. It's impossible for me to view And God Created Woman from the perspective of a person who lived the culture of 1956. So I don't know what it would have been like to see a woman portrayed in this way for the first time in film. Obviously Vadim knew what he was doing, naming the film what he named it and shooting Bardot (his then wife, dude was creepy btw) the way he shot her. But from a modern perspective, all the sex that's left is a lingering feeling that something here was dirty that isn't anymore. Instead of feeling alive with energy, the movie feels long dead, the casualty of new paradigms of sexual politics and sexual cinema.

#79: W.C. Fields - Six Short Films

(Monte Brice, Clyde Bruckman, Edwin Middleton and Leslie Pearce, 1915-1933)


Comedy isn't easy. Great dramas are almost inevitably timeless, because they speak to the human condition in a consistently identifiable way. Love, for example, is love, no matter where you live or when you were born. Comedy can be much more topical, obviously, but it can also be tied to the times in more subtle ways, like playing to the audience's sensibilities and taste. A good drama need not be original, but comedy requires a certain element of surprise in order to succeed. This can date humor much easier than drama or even action (the latter being a matter of technology).


There is also, of course, the matter of taste, and if you think something isn't funny, well, there's not much you can do to improve your experience viewing a film. This comes into play much more often with older films, I've found, because many of the great masters of comedy from the early years of cinema represent a certain base branch of comedy, so if you find one more appealing than the other, you may gravitate towards one performer or another. Personally, I have a hard time with Charlie Chaplin, but love Buster Keaton. I find Laurel and Hardy to be hit or miss, but I can't stand the three stooges. The Marx brothers are probably my favorite, however, partially because they specialized in highbrow silliness, a soft spot in my comedic heart, but also because they represent a precursor to much of the great cinematic humor I love from the last 50 years, bridging the gap between those performers (Woody Allen, Steve Martin, the Zuckers) and the earlier Jewish vaudeville comedy of the turn of the century.


But then there is W.C. Fields. Known primarily for The Bank Dick - which is to say he's not really known at all by the average moviegoer - Fields is the comedian who may be most tied to modern humor, yet least appreciated by modern film lovers. He pioneered a dry, almost vindictive style of humor that is unmatched by any of his more contemporary malcontents such as Bill Murray and Bob Newhart. These shorts are a great introduction to that style, even if they are a bit hit or miss.


The first short in the series is Pool Sharks, Fields's first film. It's silent, and therefore mostly useless as an introduction to what makes Fields great. In fact, the actor seems to be channeling Chaplin here more than forging a new comedic voice. The Golf Specialist is better, but still seems a little gimmicky. It's not until the outright hilarious The Dentist that Fields comes into his own. Bordering on the ridiculously unlikable, Fields bumbles his way through a golf scene that's much funnier than anything in the previous golf film and into a scene at his office that is absurd and hilarious. None of the other films afterward are quite as strong, but each has a moment of comedic bliss, and each lets its star shine in a way that is truly unique and original. Fields may be too much of his time to rank with Groucho or Buster, but he's one of the great voices in film comedy, and this collection is a great example of the best (and edgiest) he could do.

#81: Variety Lights

(Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada, 1950)

Variety Lights is a good film, but the only reason it sits in the collection is that it represents Federico Fellini's first film as a director (though he co-directed it with the already-established but now-eclipsed Alberto Lattuada). It's maybe more relevant than other film debuts because so many of Fellini's themes were already present. The film's subjects are stage performers living hand to mouth, traveling from town to town putting on a show for the natives, and like his other films Fellini uses them to address issues of outcasts, pain associated with love, and the troubles associated with aiming for the stars a little too high.

The story of the film is very simple, but unlike the similarly basic La Strada lacks a significant emotional punch. The film's characters don't really stretch beyond their expected emotional range, and the ending is not a surprise, and in fact feels like a predetermined fate. It all makes for a movie that ends up being relevant only really to Fellini fans, few of whom I would think would single this film out as their third or fourth favorite film by the director, let alone his best.

#86-88: Eisenstein: The Sound Years

(Sergei Eisenstein, 1938-1958)

Eisenstein is probably best known for his silent film The Battleship Potemkin, thus the title of this box set, The Sound Years, which includes three films: Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II. I watched the first of these about six years ago, and was pretty disappointed in it. Yes, it was technically accomplished, the score by Prokofiev was great, and the scope was impressive. But it lacked any emotional impact, and I barely got through it.

Which is why it took me this long to watch the follow-up, Ivan the Terrible. Too bad, because these are pretty fucking spectacular, especially the first one. Originally planned as a three part series before Eisenstein, um, died making the third one, the series begins with Ivan rising to the throne and ends in the second part with his rule being solidified after a failed assassination attempt. But the plot doesn't really matter, because it's the visual spectacle that makes these films really memorable. The second is noteworthy for switching to color halfway through its running time, but it's the first film that really establishes itself as an impressive visual statement. Every shot is a work of art, with each character defined by their faces and the framing of their costumes. There are probably four or five shots here that I'll never forget, despite the fact that the pacing of the film seems primitive and the plot moves glacially.

Overall, I don't think the two films are something I'll ever watch again, but I am extremely happy to have seen them.

#93: Black Narcissus

(Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Netflix just put up a bunch of Powell and Pressburger films, and this is the first one I watched. The duo has made a few of the best films ever made, most notably The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom (though the latter was Powell alone), so I'm looking forward to getting through them, despite my disinterest with The Thief of Baghdad.

What made me watch this one first? The guarantee of strong visuals, and I wasn't disappointed. The best scenes involve the crazy nun (played completely over the top by some British lady) running through a bamboo forest lit in green, as she slices through it in her deep red dress. When she faints, the camera takes on her POV and then red seeps in before the whole screen goes blue, as if the DVD feed had been cut off from the television (probably not their original intention, but it has a remarkable effect nevertheless).

It is uses of color like this that make the film so successful, one of the best representations of the Technicolor era that I've seen. The tones used throughout the movie evoke the mood of the people, they seem alive and ever-changing, deep in way that seems impossible in reality. While the movie's story has its faults, which might prevent me from saying I really loved the film, it's the visual impact of the movie that will be difficult to forget.

#98: L'Avventura

(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

This is the third time I've seen L'Avventura, but I think it's really the first time it sunk in. The first two times I was watching it mostly for the technical beauty of the film. Its compositions and editing are unlike any other movie, and Antonioni's work here is literally awesome. I always knew it was a great film. Today, I think it may be the greatest of all Italian movies, the purest representation of the struggles of Modernism ever put onto film.

Released the year after Fellini's similar La Dolce Vita, the film follows a group of wealthy modern men and women struggling with their own ennui, generally giving in to their whims and urges, and searching for anything other than the person they were looking for, the woman who disappeared off an island in the Mediterranean. She was supposed to be their friend, their lover, their daughter, but they seem more concerned with, well, what concerns them at the moment. The difference between these cold, lost souls and the middle-class subjects of Fellini's film is that those people were indeed searching for the sweet life, trying at every moment to live it. Here, Antonioni's characters seem stuck in a rut they have no interest in staying in, but make no effort to get out of.

I can't help but wonder if Antonioni didn't intend so much when he named the film "The Adventure" and created a plot that involved a missing beautiful girl on an exotic island, and then proceeded to make a movie about how nothing is there. The experience of viewing L'Avventura can be just as existential as the experiences these characters go through. Why do we watch movies, anyway? To be entertained, or to search for a deeper meaning in life? Did we expect the woman to be found, did we hope for some mysterious revelation that wrapped it all up? Both or neither, I couldn't help but feel like Antonioni was mocking the very idea of getting answers from film, or even of being exposed to another world, the "adventure" of the title, in making this movie. As the sun comes up at the end of the film and the two protagonists commiserate, we are left with the profound emptiness of their lives, the deep disappointment of a journey that does not breed satisfaction.

If I really believe that is what the movie is about, and I also believe what I said about the film struggling with Modernism, then maybe L'Avventura is just another movie about how microwaves give us hot food fast but don't really make us happy. But the film isn't rejecting the modern life. It's asking for the new within us, so we can reconcile our vision of ourselves with the new world around us. All this, and I haven't even mentioned the filmmaking. And, oh, the filmmaking. It's amazing to think Antonioni had previously made little-known pictures before producing this dynamic and poetic masterpiece. Honestly, I am at a loss to think of any movie made before this that is like it. I think this may be the first truly novel use of the widescreen, and everything here, from the framing to the blocking to the lighting, couldn't be more impressive (this needs to be on Blu-Ray, right now).

What I'm saying is that I enjoyed this movie.

Actually though, the only bad thing about this movie is that Lea Massari, who plays the missing Anna, doesn't get enough screen time. Probably one of the most beautiful women ever put on screen, I'll see more of her when I get around to Malle's Murmur of the Heart. For now, please see this movie if you haven't yet. And if you have, watch it again.