#446: An Autumn Afternoon

(Yasujiro Ozu, 1962)

So, can I just watch An Autumn Afternoon every day for the rest of my life. Actually, can I just be inserted into An Autumn Afternoon so I can live inside of it?

This movie is SO GREAT. I love pretty much everything about it. The performances are beautiful and moving. The cinematography is impeccable. The story is both sociologically fascinating and emotionally engaging. The music is great, it's funny - I could go on. But what I love the most about the film is how much it feels like an Ozu film, yet how subtly but profoundly Ozu was able to ease himself into the modern era. An Autumn Afternoon still has the visual iconography of Ozu's prime, but it also has his most overtly sexual humor, his most complex exploration of the Japanese family culture, and a truly profound thread of reflection about Japan's modern transition from imperial aggressor (and defeated empire) to modern economic powerhouse. Along the way, Ozu covers nearly all of the themes he explored in his best movies - the generation gap, the parent-child relationship, the evolving modernity of Japan, the shifting capitalistic attitudes, the passage of time, the balance of technology and industry with nature and humanity.

As noted in Criterion's essay, Ozu didn't intend for An Autumn Afternoon to be his last film. But it's hard to think of a better final film from any master. Unquestionably a masterpiece, An Autumn Afternoon might even rival Ozu's better-known classics for me as the pinnacle of his career. Essential viewing.

#436: Before the Rain

(Milcho Manchevski, 1994)

The Balkan war was a distant distraction to America in the mid-1990s, a religious and cultural battle that was mostly framed around  Clinton's peacekeeper doctrine of engagement and Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes. The public had little understanding of either, making Before the Rain a film that is completely divorced from cultural context - or at least it was until 9/11 placed the centuries-old battle between Islam and Christianity at our doorstep. Without going into the politics of that horrifying day, a modern viewing of Before the Rain makes clear not just the significance of the conflict the film depicts, but the timeless nature of its message.

Before the Rain is composed of three interconnected stories: a monk who has taken a vow of silence hides an Albanian girl being hunted down by Macedonians, a London photo agent deals with her affair with a war photographer, and the same photographer returns to his home in Macedonia after years away. What's most interesting about the structure Manchevski uses here is that it has been separated not just from linear chronology but from a logical one as well. Really, there is no way the events of the film could have happened in the way that they do (unless the second story is wildly fractured), since people are dead who come alive and vice versa. This illogical plot separates the film from its ostensibly docudramatic intentions, just as the film's themes have been separated from its literal grounding. This "print the legend" philosophy ties in nicely with the interesting comparison between the film and the Western genre made in Criterion's accompanying essay (though I was surprised Christie didn't point out the most obvious connection: the scene of a group of kids circling a turtle, a direct nod to Peckinpah's opening of The Wild Bunch).

The recurring saying of the film is "Time never dies, the circle is not round." This line - which as far as I can tell is native to the film - is in the mouths of characters and graffitied onto the walls of London. Unsurprisingly, it's the key to the film's central message of violence begetting new violence in a neverending spiral of hate and destruction. This is not a new message, of course, so beyond the cultural novelty of a Macedonian film providing a unique perspective from an area of the world to which we are rarely exposed (or I guess, as claimed in the depressing first sentence of the New Yorker review of the film, an opportunity for us to expand our cultural bragging rights) Before the Rain needs more to offer. Fortunately, Manchevski's elliptical plotting, beautiful cinematography, and compelling characters (most notably the photographer, who is the heart and center of the film) make the movie not just relevant, but truly moving. I wouldn't call Before the Rain a masterpiece, but labels are for another time and right now I'm glad Criterion has made this little movie widely available for an American audience that is so rarely shown the humanity of the overlooked corners of the world.

#433: Patriotism

(Yukio Mishima and Domoto Masaki, 1966)

Yukio Mishima is not especially well known in the West, and Paul Schrader's biographical film Mishima has a much higher profile within the Criterion Collection. So Patriotism might seem like a companion piece to that film, an oddity that would feel more at home as a supplement on that DVD. I'm not sure I would have disagreed with that choice, but I also see where Criterion was coming from with a full release. Patriotism is a provocative and beautiful film, made with a stylistic eye and a conservative radicalism that must have seemed ever more outrageous in the Japan of the 1960s.

The story of the film couldn't be more basic. In fact, the complexities of the plot take place off screen and are described in scrolls handwritten by Mishima at the beginning of the film. By summarizing what might be the bulk of a more conventional film, Mishima downplays the specifics of his protagonists' deaths and places all of his focus on their final acts. This is further emphasized by his choice to place all of the action of the film on the Noh stage, eliminating most sets and further detaching the events of the film from the world around it (while simultaneously underscoring the unity of the suicides with the core of Japanese culture). It does not matter why the friends of Mishima's character chose to murder high ranking members of the cabinet, only that they did so with the Emperor's best interests at heart and that now Mishima's only honorable choice is seppuku. It does not matter where he and his wife live, what their relatives or friends or acquaintances think of their decision. It does not matter who they were or who they will be. Do they have children? Do they have plans for the future? Mishima is not interested in tying these characters to relatable responsibilities or dreams. They have chosen to die, and this provides them with the greatest love of all.

Despite the graphic depiction of disembowelment in the film, the most controversial element is undoubtedly the parallel drawn by Mishima between true love and ritual suicide. Love in this case is meant in both senses of the word, both emotional and erotic. The lieutenant's wife Reiko is enthusiastic about killing herself along with her husband because she loves him as much as he loves the Emperor and Japan (the equivocation of the relationships between husband and wife and country and man is predictably patriarchal). But even more chillingly, when they have finally decided to stab themselves to death, the film becomes an erotic depiction of their sexual freedom, brought on by the liberating realization that their bodies will no longer be their own. (It's important to note that Mishima's scroll only speaks to Reiko's liberation from shyness, not the lieutenant's; it seems that men do not need to devote themselves to self-mutilation to have great sex - though ostensibly it doesn't hurt.) That Mishima films their suicides as lovingly and sensually as he does their sex scene is no surprise, then. Sex is death, but more importantly death is sex.

Patriotism is a loving and obsessive ode to a morally corrupt and destructive ideology. In this way, it's similar to one of the greatest and most morally repugnant documentaries of all time, Leni Riefenstahl's The Triumph of the Will. However, while both films speak to the respective cultures that created them, where Hitler's self-aggrandizing propaganda was a message about humanity as a whole, Mishima's Patriotism is more personal. Of course the comparisons break down rather quickly and start to seem absurd - Mishima is no Hitler. And really, if it wasn't for the simple fact that the author-turned-director ended up committing seppuku himself less than five years later, it might be easy to dismiss this film as a simple provocation. But he did, so here we are, presented with a chilling paean to killing yourself in the name of honor. It's a psychotic and terrifying thesis, one that places the turmoil of Japanese culture front and center in all its ugly beauty.

#438: Mon oncle Antoine

(Claude Jutra, 1971)

What is it about movies featuring children that give the viewer such a sense of place? Mon oncle Antoine might be just another impeccably made story of the childhood transition from boy to man based on story alone. The plot points are delivered effectively and movingly, the cast is affectless and sympathetic, and the direction alternates between gritty neo-realism and whimsy with a deft and confident hand. But all these things could be said about any number of movies: Ratcatcher, My Life as a Dog, Murmur of the Heart, Kes, The 400 Blows - and that's just movies in the Criterion Collection. What unique about this film - and many others in that list - is the priceless opportunity to be exposed to a life unlike any seen on the big screen. For some reason, this tends to happen frequently when a child is at the center of the story.

Here, it's Benoit, a boy being raised in the mining towns of Quebec in the 1940s by his aunt and uncle, who run the local general store. There are elements here that are recognizable from other films about mining towns, poor country villages, nostalgic coming of age tales. But the culture and geography are uniquely Quebecois, and its this remarkably detailed look into a relatively close but seemingly impossibly distant world that makes the film so gripping. In fact, most of the first half hour of the film is devoted to characters other than Benoit, like a man frustrated with his English-speaking boss who leaves his family to work in the forest where he will be happier. Benoit and this family converge in the end in a very moving sequence that had me frozen, staring at the screen.

The story of Benoit has plenty of intense emotional moments, but it's the little details and broad strokes of the place where the movie becomes more than its story. We see a rundown bar the local workers congregate at, the thoughtless Christmas presents the local boss has tossed into the mud by workers too lazy to get out of their truck. It's the 1940s, but Benoit's uncle still makes his trek to pick up bodies (as part of the store, they run a funeral home) by horse and carriage. The film might be a coming of age story like any other until these concrete touches elevate it to the realm of essential world cinema.

#442: Twenty-four Eyes

(Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954)

A lot of women cry in Twenty-Four Eyes. They cry in just about every segment, and the film is two-and-a-half hours long, so it really adds up. It's Japanese, so it's never over-the-top crying. And the film is shot in that Ozu-style-melodrama way, so everyone is sitting around crying quietly while they talk in hushed tones and move through domestic spaces. This makes the crying easier to take; while Twenty-four Eyes is sad, it's not emotionally overwhelming.

I don't begin with this observation as a slight to the film, but simply because that was my perhaps overly superficial thought throughout its running time: "Jeez, this scene ends with crying, too." The film is on the longer side, covers a wide stretch of time, and has a great deal to say about the most important Japanese generation of the 20th century, the men who went to war and then came home defeated, intent on rebuilding their country into a global force. This makes it a capital "I" Important film, and really there are two kinds of those: the ones like Boys Don't Cry or Do the Right Thing which very consciously challenge audiences with their social statements, and the ones like Schindler's List or Philadelphia that are geared towards a larger audience, uninterested in complex realities and confronting their viewer with their own role in whatever "issue" the film centers around. Twenty-four Eyes belongs to the latter category, firmly targeting the better angels of Japanese culture both before and after the war. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "Women's Picture," but it has that air around it.

The irony, however, is that this ostensibly "safer" anti-war film is actually more radical than any later Japanese film that questioned the actual actions of the Japanese soldiers during the war. When anti-war films are made about war crimes or even just the horror of actual combat and the tragedy of innocent fallen soldiers, it leaves room for interpretation. Surely there must be some legitimate fight worth fighting? But when war is engaged on a more personal level, as a question of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, it becomes more difficult to find the good fight, the worthy cause. Twenty-four-Eyes makes its most powerful points in this regard - not by questioning Japan's motives or actions in the war, but by questioning the values of war itself. No country is served by sending its sons to death.

Most tear-jerker teacher movies are sentimental love letters to youth and the infinite paths the future offers. The tears come in when someone - usually the teacher just before dying or retiring - regrets greatly the path he (as in most movies, it's almost always a he) has chosen, only to realize he has touched so many other lives due to his own self-sacrifice. It's like a mini It's a Wonderful Life. Thankfully, Twenty-four Eyes is fairly uninterested in this (though that shot of the bike at the end is a killer). Sentimentality has its place in the film, but the purpose of the story has everything to do with the war and its impact on civilians, especially women who failed to understand the macho fascist culture that rose up around them, the dark side of the quiet honor of the average Japanese person. It might be a whitewashed story of the Japanese role in World War II, but it doesn't whitewash war itself - in fact, refuses to acknowledge it on its own terms altogether. This redeems the film's melodrama and makes Twenty-four Eyes relevant war viewing even after much more graphic and honest films have followed.

#427: Death of a Cyclist

(Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)

Death of a Cyclist is statement film, a subtly ambitious genre pic, and a terribly entertaining message movie. It's also the earliest Spanish film (in terms of theatrical release) in the collection. This seems fully appropriate - like another ambitious genre pic, Citizen Kane, it's entirely believable that an industry could have sprung from the roots it planted, such is the impact the film seems to have even now on a stagnant cinematic landscape.

The film starts with the titular event, caused by a car driven by the two main charaters, Juan and Maria. Fearing their illicit affair would come to light if they stopped to call the police, they leave the man to die on the road. That cover shot, bicycle wheel spinning at the bottom of the frame, is the closest we get to the victim. This movie isn't about the event, but rather its aftermath, which throws everything in these characters' lives, both personally and professionally into disarray. As their fates become clear, the movie slowly builds to its inevitable climax - like Hitchcock, who obviously influenced the film, Bardem generates suspense despite the fact that there is never a doubt as to where the film is headed. The flashiest section of the film is probably the first act, where time shifts all over the place while scenes are connected by seemingly separate actions (one character blows smoke, another character in a different place and time watches smoke float across their face). But the movie is consistently fresh throughout its running time, and the final result works on many levels, from classic noir to social critique.

The characters in Death of a Cyclist are richly nuanced and defiantly conflicted. This makes the wide ambition of the movie work, because Bardem was able to say everything he wanted to say while still providing an entertaining premise. The director is the uncle of Javier Bardem - probably the most famous Spanish actor after Antonio Banderas - so his family has a substantial presence in Spanish cinema. But it's this film that remains a stand out in his career - along with The Devil's Backbone (which was directed by a Mexican), this might be the best Spanish film I've ever seen.

#441: The Small Back Room

(Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1949)

I'm not really sure why Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger chose to follow up their masterpiece The Red Shoes with this small character study. Maybe they were eager to do something a little less ambitious - which is not to say this movie isn't attempting to reach within its genre. Powell and Pressburger were certainly never able to be pigeonholed into a style of film, and unlike a great American contemporary like Howard Hawks they seemed to float between genres less because of studio contract options and more because they genuinely wanted to stretch and the relative freedom of the British system allowed them to do so.

The Small Back Room is an appropriate companion piece to the recent Oscar winner The Hurt Locker. Both films delve into the psyche of bomb technicians specifically and soldiers in general, though the more recent film is making a broader statement where The Small Back Room is very much focused on one man, almost to a degree that recalls a film like The Lost Weekend, where another protagonist struggled with alcoholism, only Wilder's film was vastly more heavy handed and overacted (as Wilder himself would later admit). Centered around a man who has lost a foot and struggles with non-stop pain - previously alleviated through whiskey, which led to alcoholism. Now he trudges along in a bureaucratic wasteland where incompetence reigns and his cynicism has kicked in. Running through the film as a side plot, a British officer comes to him to get his opinion on bombs that have been dropping in the British countryside, apparently sent by Nazi planes to terrorize the British.

This latter plot is far more interesting than the main plot, and it's a shame it didn't take up more of the film. The rest of the more personal elements and politics were almost entirely dull - it felt like a well-written novel that simply didn't translate to the screen (this was a novel, by the way). I have a lot of respect for Powell and Pressburger, and the bigger moments in the film - most notably the awesome dream sequence and the bomb defusing scene - did capture my attention. But the rest of the movie was overly melodramatic and uninteresting.

#439: Trafic

(Jacques Tati, 1971)

Trafic is Tati's follow-up to his masterpiece, Playtime. Because that film performed so poorly at the box office, Tati had to make Trafic for much less money and funding issues hounded his production. The end result lacks the big budget sets from Playtime, but it also lacks its sparkle.

The movie is still undeniably charming. Loosely centered around a group of car public relations people (with Hulot at the head) hauling a camping car to a road show on the back of a big truck, the movie is no different than Tati's other Hulot films in that it ties a series of comic adventures into an overarching story that is a commentary on modern life.

It has been said that all humor is inherently angry, but I can think of no better exception than Tati. His work in Trafic focuses on the car culture that by the 1970s had taken hold across the world, but as in his other films, Tati is less interested in criticizing this culture than he is in observing it. The humor comes out of the funny things people do around cars and the gap between this behavior and their natural behavior. Many of these moments aren't even jokes, such as the montages of people picking their nose or yawning, but are instead observations of a culture - as if the film was a National Geographic expose on an undiscovered tribe.

Because the film has longer stretches of observation between its jokes, the pacing can be slow - much slower than in Playtime where, true to its title, there is always something new to distract you. The Hulot character was beside the point in Playtime, but here he seems against it - Tati only used Hulot to get funding for the film, and clearly the character that existed in M. Hulot's Holiday or even Mon Oncle has been mostly eliminated, the cropped trousers and Tati's bumbling walk all that's left of a comedy icon. Not only because of this, Trafic feels like a last film even though it technically isn't. Tati's work here still has the same effortless charm of his earlier films, but the magic seems to be wearing off.

#430: The Fire Within

(Louis Malle, 1963)

Unlike his reflections on The Lovers, Louie Malle's thoughts on The Fire Within were almost entirely positive, perhaps more positive than they had been when he initially viewed the film. And just as its maker had higher regards for it, so too did I. Like the earlier film, the Fire Within depends largely on one performance. Here, it comes from Maurice Ronet, the other star of Elevator to the Gallows (who looks vaguely like Jude Law). However, Malle has more restraint here than he did with Jeanne Moreau, and the film (and the performance) consequently comes alive in a way The Lovers never really did for me.

The plot is an extremely interesting - and extremely sad - exploration of the suicidal mind. It is roughly based on a novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle about his friend, surrealist poet Jacques Rigaut, who committed suicide. (Rochelle himself took his own life, largely due to his misguided support of the Vichy government - though obviously having written a book about suicide, it wasn't too far down on his list of things he was interested in.) Ronet plays a reformed playboy who is nearing the end of an extended stay at a hospital where he had gone to kick his alcoholism. After a night with a former flame, he returns to the hospital, only to venture out again into the city to reconnect with his old friends, hoping to make one last connection to save him from himself.

What's most interesting and affecting about The Fire Within, particularly to someone like me who has been personally affected by suicide, is that the film seems less about the person who commits suicide than about the people who surround him or her. This might seem strange since everyone who isn't Ronet seems to fade into the background - the movie really is exclusively about him, as much as Cléo from 5 to 7 is only about Cléo.  No other character has any sort of evolution in the film. No character even gets to experience or respond to his death, as the film ends on Ronet's shot to the heart. But the character is constantly reaching out to everyone else in the movie, and it seems only to emphasize his isolation that his encounters seem so out of focus. The camera is complicit in this absence of empathy, and we remain unconvinced Ronet will really do the deed until it's finally done. The ending words of the film don't seem to come from the protagonist as much as they are seared into the conscience of his acquaintances, or at least that's how they seem to me, so full of guilt and anger, so devoid of relief and sensitivity.

It's no surprise that Malle was proud of the film. Of the three films in the collection up to this point in his career, it's the first mature, towering work. Elevator in the Gallows is a more enjoyable, possibly even more perfect film. But The Fire Within is a complex exploration of a very personal and very serious question: as Shakespeare famously asked, "To be or not to be?" That Malle was able to explore this question in such an effortless and moving way speaks to his developing talent, and says a great deal about the masterpieces he would go on to make.

#429: The Lovers

(Louis Malle, 1958)

Like The Silence a few years later, The Lovers was an international sensation not on its merits, but instead due to the fact that it was rather racy. But keep in mind, this was racy by 1958 standards, which means one brief, passionate scene of lovemaking. There's a bit of a nipple, and a woman has a (gasp!) orgasm, which I don't think existed before this movie was released (I'll have to check the special features to confirm). This all makes me more depressed for people who lived in 1958 than it does make me more or less interested in the movie, which was Malle's follow-up to his debut masterpiece Elevator to the Gallows - which was made when the son of a bitch was just 24.

Age didn't seem to have much of an impact on that earlier film (which is in the collection, but I have already seen multiple times of the course of fifteen years), but it does seem to have hurt The Lovers, which feels mannered and a bit overly idealistic to the point of simplicity. Malle seems to agree in an interview from the 1990s that is included on Criterion's release. The film seems like it is an exercise in love philosophy rather than a genuinely realistic movie (perhaps the one thing it has in common with one of the more unusual inclusions in the collection, Chasing Amy, also by a director in his 20s, albeit a far inferior one).

The film focuses entirely on the radiant Jeanne Moreau, for whom Malle made the film. She plays a bored housewife in the country, stuck between her dull, controlling husband and her brief dalliances with a man in Paris whom she sees on weekend getaways. One day, entirely through chance, she meets a man and falls so head over heels in love that she abandons her entire life (including her young daughter) to be with him. The story is so simple that it hardly seems like the point of the film. And it isn't, really. These are archetypes, a fable meant to be timeless, classy even. Malle is working at poetry here.

But that's just it: the seams are showing. Though the director would go on to make many great films, The Lovers comes off as a failed experiment. Moreau's character reminds me a great deal of the unnamed protagonist of The Earrings of Madame de..., but her emotional roller coaster lacks the complexity of that film. The final switch over where she goes from mildly annoyed with the man to madly in love - willing to drop literally everything of value in her past life - is wildly abrupt and unearned. This is almost certainly on purpose: love has no explanations or reason, Malle is saying, it is a light that is turned on and obliterates everything that was previously visible. It's a silly notion, and I'm torn between two camps, one which sees the power of love to do things society deems unacceptable (like leave your child) and one which sees a misguided romantic's idealized love, a love - oh, if he only knew! - that pales in comparison to the real thing.

The movie is also obviously a stab at lyricism for Malle early in his career before he found his footing. Malle's best pictures are moving and beautiful, but they are never abstract (the ones I've see anyway). The whimsy feels forced and mannered instead of effortless. In the interview from the 90s, Malle seemed slightly embarrassed by the film, or at least by its success. Considering his life at the time - which found him as an aging, universally heralded director, a once divorced but now happily married father of a young girl of his own - it's not a surprise he would feel that way. For me, two years into a marriage to the love of my life with a baby on the way, The Lovers doesn't look like any love I can recognize either.

#434: Classe Tous Risques

(Claude Sautet, 1960)

Classe Tous Risques is a very good movie, but it's a lock for inclusion in the Collection because it stars two of the greatest French stars of all time, Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Watching these two together (Belmonde had just made Breathless, and was not yet a star) is a real treat, and it turns a slightly plodding film with no real transcendent moments into an enjoyable exercise in noir.

Ventura plays a crime boss who fled France years before at risk of being arrested. When he attempts to return with his wife and children, he realizes the path isn't going to be as smooth as he had expected. Before long, his old friends have turned on him, and only a rogue thief played by Belmondo is willing to help him out.

Both actors give their trademark performances, with Ventura projecting a complex and quiet strength, while Belmondo effortlessly oozes cool. But the movie itself is only intermittently suspenseful, and while the performances make it compelling and engaging, Sautet (who was essentially debuting as a director) isn't the filmmaker Jules Dassin or Jean-Pierre Melville was. I also found the narration, while informative, to be awkward and abrupt, particularly at the end, which left me somewhat unsatisfied.

Classe Tous Risques ends up being a worthwhile viewing for anyone interested in the 50s and 60s French noirs. But it's definitely not a classic of the era, and remains more notable for its stellar pair of stars.

#440: Brand Upon the Brain!

(Guy Maddin, 2006)

Let's try this again. Brand Upon the Brain was the first movie I've seen during this project that I had the opportunity to watch on the big screen. I'm thankful for that, because I might not have made it through this challenging and unique film on DVD. On the big screen, the film is absorbing and unique, a true assault on the sense that might be more easily compared to commercials or a Michael Bay film than a film by David Lynch or other filmmakers that play on the edge of narrative film.

I enjoyed a number of things about the film, especially the tone, which melds dark suspense and off-kilter humor with a mad scientist's glee. But the thing I like most about Brand Upon the Brain is the fact that Guy Maddin is totally invested in his material. The movie could so easily come off as pretentious and campy, a kind of weird joke on the audience. But instead, it feels passionate and personal. It seems like its the only movie Maddin could have made at that point in his life.

To be sure, this is a weird, weird movie. It's unlike anything you've ever seen before. Most people are going to hate it (which is not to say that most people don't like new things, but rather that most people will think this new thing is better left undiscovered). But for some people, especially people who love cinema and have a rich sense of its history, this movie will be a unique experience that is certainly worth viewing.

#428: Blast of Silence

(Allen Baron, 1961)

Before Criterion released it, this movie was little known outside of film nerds who specialized in either New York, noir, or independent filmmaking. It is an exceptional depiction of all three. Watching this and The Naked City so close to each other was extremely enjoyable, and a great way to watch New York breathe on film in two different eras. The fact that both are noirs shouldn't be surprising: films that demand a sense of the place and therefore shoot on location are often crime based.

But unlike The Naked City, which told a basically conventional murder mystery story and argued that it was just one of the 8 million stories in New York, Blast of Silence is getting at something much darker - maybe there's only one story out there in the naked city: destruction, alienation, death. The movie's story is so simple yet executed in such a striking way that it feels as if you are hearing the story of a hitman for the first time.

The movie is far from perfect. The acting could use a few more pros (Baron wrote, directed, and starred in the film). Baron's character occasionally falls into what I like to call the James Dean school of acting, flailing about at the inner turmoil tearing him apart. Certainly the low production value shows. But the score is pure fun, the direction is interesting without being overly flashy, and the film's boiled down noir sensibility gets to you. Like some of the lesser noirs (Detour comes to mind), Blast of Silence almost seems more in line with the genre's philosophy than, say, The Postman Always Rings Twice. It's a grittiness that doesn't just come from the characters' natures or the film's abstract and ominous lighting. Add on the fact that the first murder in the film is truly harrowing, the kind of messy, violent sequence that couldn't have been made ten or fifteen years earlier when noir was in full swing.

The last thought I had during this movie was what would it have been like without the narration. This isn't to say the narration is bad. It's actually one of the best things about the movie. But the movie could have been made without, and might have been that much more revolutionary. Can we watch a man stand on a boat, sit in a car, follow someone down a road, all the time knowing this is the process for killing someone? It may have made the procedure, the unintroduced protagonist, and finally the deed itself more horrifying, simply because unknown evil is much more powerful than a conflicted, damaged man.

#435: The Furies

(Anthony Mann, 1950)

Barbara Stanwyck is one of the great movie stars of all time, a uniquely and strikingly beautiful woman that was able to shift between different kinds of roles, all straddling the lines of morality, driven and even at times demented. Her performance here and that of Walter Huston, another legend are what makes The Furies more than just an interesting early Mann western with a dark side and healthy does of Freud.

The point at which I really started to think this movie was doing something different was when Stanwyck throws the scissors at Huston's new fiancee, disfiguring her for life. This is not a happy exploration of the westward expansion, nor is it a Searchers or Wild Bunch deconstruction of the western mythology. It is instead, as the cover might imply, a noir re-imagining of the civilized invasion, and a kind of twisted Citizen Kane without laws. That being said, the ending is a little too pat, much in the same way Bigger Than Life wrapped up everything too quickly and easily. Not surprisingly, Mann and Ray had a common ability to work within the system to produce something entirely outside of it, and both directors are largely undervalued outside of cinephile circles.

But it all comes back to Stanwyck here, who gives one of my favorite performances by her that I have seen. This movie was made the same year Bette Davis made All About Eve, and while that film is a far better one, the performances are similar in that they highlight many of their respective strengths, and typify the kind of character that made them the stars that they were. Too often these days women are written to play off of the male lead, making their characters afterthoughts in both plot and theme. With Stanwyck, that was never a problem.

#444: Le Plaisir

(Max Ophüls, 1952)

Probably my least favorite of the three Ophüls films I have watched so far, Le Plaisir is nevertheless a breezy yet moving exploration of love and lust that fits right in with the director's other films. Occasionally, the movie can be shockingly and effortlessly groundbreaking - most notably when the titular character in the final story, The Model, threatens suicide and the camera seamlessly merges with her POV as she ascends the stairs and jumps out of a window, crashing into the glass ceiling below.

Despite moments like this one of both technical and emotional beauty, the movie didn't pull me in as a whole, mostly because the second story (which makes up the bulk of the film) was not as interesting to me. But the movie is certainly worth seeing, and I'm very much looking forward to Lola Montes, Ophüls's full-color spectacle.

#443: La Ronde

(Max Ophuls, 1950)

La Ronde is deceptively airy, a study in human connections that never lets the audience pause to consider its lighthearted touch.  Ophuls made my favorite film I've watched during this project, The Earrings of Madame de..., and La Ronde is similarly opulent and fluid. But instead of earrings, it's sex that connects these characters in a merry-go-round of love and lust all put together by an omniscient host, the man on the cover of the Criterion disc.

The opening scene is truly memorable, as the narrator moves from a stage to a movie set to the early 1900s all in one take, donning old clothing as he goes. It must be the thing Baz Luhrmann has based his whole career on, a wild self-reflective trip through entertainment and audience alike. Each transition in the film is equally enjoyable, as woman turns to man turns to woman before the whole thing circles back on itself.

Depending on how flashy you like your directors, Ophuls will be a revelation or a painful distraction. It's amazing to me that he and Ozu were making movies at the same time, and were they to see each others' films I would imagine their heads would have exploded. But for me, Ophuls is exhilarating. His camera work melds so perfectly with his subjects that you can't help but get swept up in the energy of his storytelling. He is truly one of the masters, and if La Ronde doesn't quite reach the heights of The Earrings of Madame de..., it's still a must-see.

#448: Le Deuxième Souffle

(1966, Jean-Pierre Melville)

Le Deuxième Souffle is another Melville masterpiece. It's a film that straddles the line between abstract fatalism and procedural realism, balancing complex time stamps with the protagonist's uninterrupted journey towards an inescapable end. It's also a movie in love with movies, torn between the pulp its ideas stem from and the gritty truths only attainable through film. Melville is perhaps best know for his heist sequences, and this one doesn't disappoint: from the moment the characters gather in a room to discuss the deed to the final scene of them silently stacking hay over the boxes of platinum they stole, the sequence is unbelievably riveting. Like the best noir, the film's plot can be confusing at first, but once you put in the minor work, it all falls into place.

Besides A Man Escaped, which serves as a kind of reverse blueprint for Melville here, maybe the movie I was reminded of most during the film was The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Like that film, the protagonist's fate seems sealed from the very beginning, and the cold-blooded and meticulous crimes depicted are both terrifying and oddly mechanical. They are also complex crime tales that give everyone their own motives and hidden plans, making the films that much more rich and realistic.

I had said earlier that Meville is much more successful with color, but here is a film where he really uses black and white as well as anyone. One need only look to the first sequence, the prison escape, to confirm this: it's as beautiful and visually compelling as any sequence in the greatest of noir. Melville is quietly becoming one of my favorite directors.

#447: Le Doulos

(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1962)

Like Veronika Voss, Melville's Le Doulos does not feel of its time, but instead seems stuck in the 1940s, maybe even in Los Angeles if the characters didn't insist on speaking French. The film isn't Melville's first noir, but it is the first film that he made that touches on the themes and elements that would be present in most of his future films (and masterpieces). It's an extremely entertaining film, first and foremost, and it's an easier viewing than Bob Le Flambeur, which is more of a moody character piece.

The movie is also deliberately misleading in its plot, and brings up the question of whether or not a director should lie to his audience. Even ignoring the subjective POV that is required to make the film's twist work, the plot developments here are impossibly convoluted, and would stretch believability if you stopped thinking for a minute that the movie was trying to resemble The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon more than reality. But, of course, no one would.

Over the course of this project, I have found renewed love in the films of Melville and Clouzot. While their films are similar, the difference lies in their attitude towards both their material and their audience. Clouzot was constantly focused on making his work entertaining and intriguing, like a puzzle. Neither director had much concern for reality, but Clouzot turned to cinema as a technique rather than a medium. Melville, on the other hand, was one of those first masters that drew on his love of film inherent to the artform, turning his films back on themselves until the only thing left was cinema itself. Both have their appeal (and their disciples) but Clouzot's work seems to stand on its own, defiant, while Melville's greatest films (with the clear exception of Army of Shadows) would have no meaning outside of the context of the gangster pictures that came before and after them. For this reason, they seem more fulfilling, even if (as in this case) they don't always measure up to Clouzot's best.

#449: Missing

(Costa-Gavras, 1982)

Where has this movie been all my life?

I've long been interested in the US involvement in Latin America, and their (at best) complicity in or (at worst) orchestration of the Chilean coup that put Pinochet in charge is one of the most significant historical moments. This film takes a look at this moment in history through the eyes of a wife and a father who are trying to find their loved one, who went missing during the coup.

Costa-Gavras is famous for making "political films," his film Z, which is also in the Collection, is a masterpiece of procedural thrills. This film might be even better than that. I don't think I've ever seen a film that gives the viewer a better idea of what it must be like to be a bystander in a country that is being torn apart. The characters sit in cafés as men come and take patrons away in military vehicles as women scream and cry. They sip water and barely flinch as the gunshots ring out around them. They huddle in corners when they get trapped out late after curfew to avoid being shot in the streets. For the lucky Americans, they desperately struggle to reach their embassy or someone in charge to get them safely out of the country. It's a riveting depiction, one that is a stark reminder of what stable government affords its citizens.

But the real treat of Missing is maybe the best performance I've ever seen by Jack Lemmon as the father. Sissy Spacek is wonderful, too, as the wife, but it's Lemmon's film. He is responsible for taking the viewer's journey into this unknown world. The film is his political awakening, just as it is meant to be ours, so he has to be stubborn and proud as the American who believes his government can do no wrong. He has to balance his slow realization that the embassy is not looking out for him with the heartbreak of a father losing his only child, while still making the transition seem believable and powerful. He does not disappoint. It's hard to imagine seeing a more tragic character out of Lemmon than the one he plays so beautifully in Glengary Glen Ross, but his performance here is so heartbreaking and natural that it's almost like America itself loses its glow during the course of the film.

This is another truly great film, one that shouldn't be overlooked by people who think Z is the only essential film in the director's catalog.

#432: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

(Paul Schrader, 1985)

The Last Temptation of Christ is one of my favorite films ever made, and it's one of the twenty or so Criterion DVDs I actually own. Obviously, Taxi Driver is a great movie as well, and I love both of these scripts. But something about Paul Schrader's work as a director doesn't give me the same pull that I experience with his collaborations with Scorsese. So I put off watching this one perhaps more than I otherwise would have if the same film had been made by someone else.

The first part of the film takes a while to get going, but once it does, the film really opens up, and it's clear what Schrader's intention was with the movie. Here is an unconventional biopic that nevertheless achieves what most biopics never even consider: Mishima gives the viewer a sense of what its subject believed in, what his life was like, and what his work and death were about.

I feel like I know some things about Mishima after viewing the film, but most of the finer points of his life are not here. This isn't Ray or Gandhi, it isn't even really Che or Walk the Line. It's an interweaving of art and reality, life and death, and, as is so often highlighted in the film, action and words. The sets and cinematography are amazing, and the film's subtle technical flourishes (matched with some brief over-the-top ones) are beautiful and occasionally astonishing. Perhaps the best part of the film is the score by Philip Glass, probably my favorite by the much-heralded, much-ridiculed composer. Without being distracting, his hypnotic work is so woven into the fabric of the film that it becomes essential to the themes of Mishima's life. It's impossible to envision this film without it.

Still - and this should already be clear - the movie isn't going to be for everyone. The interwoven narratives are off-putting at times, and the theatrical sets that recreate his works could come across as distracting and articifical (precisely what Schrader no doubt intended). But for people who are interested in Schrader's work, I think the film says just as much about its maker as it does about its subject.