#721: Love Streams

(John Cassavetes, 1984)

One of the hardest things I had to get over in my initial burst of activity in this journey was making assumptions about a film based on prior films by directors I was less than enthusiastic about. Staring at 10 Ozu or Fassbinder films and assuming they would all be boring or distasteful (respectively) was not going to allow me to open my mind to an individual piece of art and experience it with a fresh perspective. This would inevitably take me down the path to viewing my watching habits as a chore to be completed. Avoiding this pitfall has paid dividends, particularly when looking at the two directors mentioned above - Ozu is now one of my most loved directors, and while I may have a more, ahem, complicated relationship with Fassbinder, a few of his films have been spectacular cinematic experiences I will treasure.

Still, this isn't always easy, and it gets progressively harder the deeper into a filmmaker's Criterion catalog you get. After having a fairly mixed response to the Cassavetes box, when Love Streams popped up as a Criterion release I couldn't help but think "dammit." This is especially true because of the nature of the film. As I mentioned in my post on Une chambre en ville, many Criterion films from the 80s are late-era works by the established masters of 50s and 60s cinema, and many of them are not particularly good when viewed outside the context of their respective director's oeuvre. So knowing that I didn't like Cassavetes too much and seeing that Love Streams was a lesser-known later work from the director made me quite wary. It immediately seemed like a token release only for the fans, a movie that wouldn't belong in the Collection without the name above the title. I sat down to endure it and file it away on the blog.

I was totally wrong. Not only do I think Love Streams is deserving of its place in the Collection, I think it's one of the best Cassavetes films, and it's the one that I loved the most. What's most interesting about my reaction is that this is most definitively A Cassavetes Film, with verite-style camera work, craft-heavy performances, and deliberate pacing. It's also got all the raw drama and broken characters of his more high-profile work from the 60s and 70s. Yet the movie never seems like an exercise in character craft the way even his strongest early films like Faces do. This is a fully formed world Cassavetes reveals, and the fact that the movie is based on a play would be difficult to pull out of what we see (apparently it was heavily rewritten by Cassavetes). Rowlands in particular, one of the great underrated actresses of her generation, inhabits her role so seemingly effortlessly that you hardly remember you are watching a performance. The way Cassavetes shoots her only underscores this impressive feat - look at the shot they used for the cover, the way he frames her in between the composed background and the harsh imposing foreground, squeezed into a folding chair. Her brother is reaching out to her but we can only see his hand - the camera doesn't move to reveal him, but instead lingers in this middle-ground emptiness for the length of the shot. Nothing about the way Cassavetes does this is overbearing or even necessarily prominent, yet it is deliberately present. This is filmmaking of the highest order.

Although it doesn't get to the core of what I loved about the film, the most striking thing about watching the first half hour of the movie was how much it reminded me of Boogie Nights. Despite the fact that this film wasn't available for large stretches of its afterlife, I have little doubt that PTA saw the movie and examined it for style and rhythm. The most obvious comparison is the custody scene, which PTA seems to have lifted almost directly from this movie, but Rowlands in general must have had an impact on Amber, Julianne Moore's character in Boogie Nights, and Cassavetes also seems like a direct influence on the Burt Reynolds character. Similarly, the way Cassavetes pities his characters while following them unflinchingly into their emotional depths and living with them there is the most impressive achievement of Boogie Nights (and PTA's early career in general). The characters that Cassavetes and Rowlands portray here are not good people, but they are people, real and breathing and fighting for life.

Boogie Nights, of course, is packed with flashy cinematic flourishes and modern ideas about editing, music use, and dialog. Love Streams is a much quieter and more confident picture. Part of this contrast is that one film was made at the beginning of a career, the other at the end. But most of it is the way in which the two directors work. I am a big fan of PTA, and I think the last three movies he's made will eventually have a stronger reputation than any of the first four. But he's a director that is constantly crafting a movie. He wants you to know it's a movie, partially because he wants you to see all the things he's doing, but mostly because he really likes movies. Why not make your movie a movie?

Cassavetes doesn't particularly care for movies. He's a filmmaker almost incidentally, because it's the pen he uses to craft his work. Just as he carried on his acting career to support his filmmaking, his filmmaking is there to support his worlds. What's most important to him is his characters and their inner-journeys, and finally how this reflects back onto our own inner-lives. I think this is a big part of why I didn't immediately identify with his films (I'm a movies guy, fyi) but here with his craft so refined and spare it doesn't keep me at so much of a distance. There is plenty of heartbreak in Love Streams, but the way Cassavetes lets his characters breathe assures us that they will live to fight again.

There's always a lot of consternation on the internet about projects like mine. "Gosh darnit, movies shouldn't be a mission to complete!" etc. There's probably something to that, and it certainly isn't for everybody. But with an infinite number of films available (especially these days with streaming), picking a curated set of movies and forcing yourself to take in each and every one means you will inevitably watch a large number of movies you would never otherwise watch. Many of these movies will end up being ones you never should have watched after all (Salo and The Magic Flute come to mind in my own journey, for entirely separate reasons). But a handful will change the way you look at movies, and over the course of a journey it will change the way you look at watching movies. Love Streams reveals for me personally that even after nearly 800 of these films I still have things to discover and learn in the most unexpected places. I'm eternally grateful to Criterion for that, and whether you are doing what I'm doing or pick whatever you're in the mood for tonight, I hope you make an effort somewhere in your artistic consumption to force yourself out of your comfort zone.

#713: Essential Jacques Demy

(Jacques Demy, 1961-1982)

Halfway through watching the films from The Essential Jacques Demy this fall, and despite the fact that all six main films in the box are available on Hulu, I bought the set. I did this partially because I got a great deal (40 bucks through a B&N eBay malfunction) but mostly because I wanted to see the rest of the movies in HD, particularly The Young Girls of Roquefort, and I was interested in the Varda extras. As much as I like Demy, I like Varda significantly more, so getting the chance to see a few documentaries by the filmmaker was an added bonus to owning Umbrellas on blu.

After watching the whole set, I'm very glad I made the purchase. I'm looking forward to making my way through the extras on each disc, but most importantly I know I'll revisit at least three of these movies: Lola is an early New Wave masterpiece that balances many of the great forward-thinking concepts at the heart of the movement with an entirely different kind of tone and life philosophy. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (which I've seen a handful of times years ago - including once on the big screen!) is one of the great French films of the 1960s and perhaps one of the best musicals of all time. And finally, The Young Girls of Roquefort is a visual and musical delight, a great movie to watch with the subtitles off.

All Criterion boxsets belong to one of three categories: a complete filmography of a director, a trilogy or series of films tied together with one story, style, or theme, or a random assortment of films by one filmmaker. This Demy set belongs to the latter group, but unlike 3 Films by Malle or 4 By Varda, this is the only set to be titled The Essential. Considering the fact that the set contains a little less than half of the director's feature output, it's worth noting this title and wondering about the process by which they decided on these specific films. Obviously, the only glaring omission here is Model Shop, which is a somewhat sequel to Lola. Although the film is likely tied up in rights (it's out of print on DVD at the moment) it's also difficult to see that film's English-language, Los Angeles-set, Hollywood hippie vibe meshing well with the rest of this box, sequel or no. The rest of Demy's catalog lacks a film that would merit any serious objection to the labeling of this box as "essential" - if anything, there are a number of film nerds out there who would argue there are too many movies in this set.

It's very possible that Model Shop or perhaps one of Demy's 70s films could make their way to the Collection someday, but for now this set does seem like truth in advertising and it's nice to have gotten all of the films in one fell swoop instead of parceled out like Chaplin or Lloyd (though there are other obvious reasons - legal or not - for them to be more judicious with those releases). Because Demy's films were light and even in tragedy or melodrama lacked the thematic heft of his fellow Frenchmen (or even his French wife), they were often forgotten. This set feels like it rights that wrong with admirable style and efficiency.

Links to individual reviews:

714. Lola
715. Bay of Angels
716. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
717. The Young Girls of Rochefort
718. Donkey Skin
719. Une chambre en ville

#719: Une chambre en ville

(Jacques Demy, 1982)

Une chambre en ville is yet another wonderful example of the 1980s being unable to stand in for any other time period. Here, the 50s gets run through the 80s warp, but survives nicely enough. After all, this is not a movie you are going to mistake for reality any time soon - unless you and your friends go around singing instead of talking to each other.

I was going to explain my response to the film as it went on in this post, but then I read Aaron West's post on his Criterion Blues site and discovered that he had already had the exact same reaction to the singing and subsequent engrossing plot. There's nothing especially noteworthy about the story here, but it's told with just enough twists and turns to keep even the most violently anti-musical viewer interested. Like Aaron, I think the film loses something without the inclusion of Michel Legrand as composer, though I do think there are some strong recurring melodies here and the music never grates. I was much more involved in the intimate scenes of music, as it was pretty difficult to buy into the singing riot (musicals, amiright?) and casual speak-singing. But after about 30 minutes, I stopped caring too much about the fact that everyone was singing and just enjoyed the ride.

There is a huge gap between Donkey Skin and this movie in real time, easily the largest in the Criterion box. Demy made six features that are not included in the set. His first four films are in the box, but they jump over Model Shop, which is out of print but in English and owned by Sony, likely why it is not included here despite being a sequel of sorts to Lola. After Donkey Skin, the director's sixth film, Demy made three films before Une chambre en ville, one of which was in English and another two that don't get very good reviews (though A Slightly Pregnant Man seems to be considered a slight romp), and two films after, one of which was a documentary of sorts on Yves Montand. So on paper, Une chambre en ville fits together with the other films in this set better than anything else he made in the 70s or 80s. So the question is not why this one and not another, but rather why this one at all?

I think Criterion saw in Une chambre en ville a chance to look at Demy's late career approach to filmmaking that was largely informed by his previous work. The film doesn't just share the musical genre with most of his first run of films. The setting in Nantes is present, as are the technicolor palette (though it's intentionally subdued here) and the chance meetings that find the characters crossing paths (really only present here with Edith and Francois). Criterion has been dedicated to releasing later works by their core auteurs since the beginning, even if they are of lesser quality when compared to the masterpieces from the same directors. And the Ship Sails On, The Last Metro, and Identification of a Woman were all made around the same time as Une chambre en ville, and all are more noteworthy for how they inform earlier works by the same director than for their quality. Unlike those films, I don't think Demy's would have received a standalone release if they did not have enough films for this box available, but Demy is also less significant as a director than Fellini, Truffaut, or Antonioni (which is hardly an insult). As a work that sums up the films that came before it and works as a final standout of the director's career, however, it's a fine addition to the box and worthy of its spine number.

#718: Donkey Skin

(Jacques Demy, 1970)

Demy's career took another quick turn with Donkey Skin, a film that preserved his musical ambitions but settled into a sort of fractured Disney structure, matching a somewhat straightforward telling of a classic French fairy tale with both parody and adult-friendly winks at the camera. Although it doesn't reach the heights of any of the previous films in the Demy boxset - especially not those of Lola or Umbrellas, the two classics - it manages enough charm and visual vibrancy to carry it through its brief running time.

Of course, Donkey Skin can't be discussed without a mention of its rather distasteful main conflict, which revolves around a princess being forced to avoid her father's desire to marry her. Rather than being repulsed by the idea, the princess is dissuaded from the proposal by her fairy godmother, who sings her a happy tune about how fathers and daughters really shouldn't marry. Of course, the godmother has her own reasons for turning her friend off of the whole incest thing, which is a nice distraction from the fact that this is all a bit off, and anyway this is all just a French fantasy so lets just dismiss the whole thing.

Two things won me over during my viewing of Donkey Skin. The first, and most obvious, is the production design. Demy by this point was virtually identified by his technicolor palette, and Donkey Skin would not change anyone's mind about this characteristic. Everything from the impressive way he pulls off the various dresses made for the princess to the blue/red themes of the two major kingdoms in the film (horses, men, and various objects are covered in the respective colors) creates a fantastical universe to explore and get lost in. Demy takes a similarly liberal approach to cinematic tricks, deploying slow motion, rewind, and various other tricks whenever the urge arrives. It matches the film's imaginative story and playful tone nicely.

The second thing that got me wrapped up in the film was the wink Demy turned toward the audience. At one point, the princess's fairy godmother explains that her powers can sometimes run low, "like a battery," to which the princess quickly replies "what's a battery?" In the final moments of the film, the godmother and the princess's father arrive at the wedding in a helicopter Walker-style. In other moments, the film isn't as anachronistic as it is knowing, like in the cake-baking scene where Deneuve's performance nearly bubbles over, threatening to spill out of the pot into the fire of parody. I don't think the film needed these moments to carry it through, but in the same way that a Pixar film is bolstered by jokes that only adults will understand, Donkey Skin is a better movie because of this added layer.

There are definitely parts of the film that don't come off cleanly. The shifts in perspective are a bit frustrating, as the prince lacks any real charisma and even Marais as the king is fairly unlikeable (not only because he wants to sleep with his daughter), though the actor's presence links the film eternally with Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (the director's films are referenced throughout the film, as pointed out in the accompanying essay). So the film doesn't come off as well as the previous four films in the set, but it's nevertheless a fun ride and one that I imagine would reward multiple viewings for the production value alone.

#717: The Young Girls of Rochefort

(Jacques Demy, 1967)

Criterion calls The Young Girls of Rochefort "an effervescent confection" in their description of the film, and it's hard to put it more accurately than that. Visually the film has much in common with its immediate predecessor The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy's most famous film and a true classic of French cinema, and it also shares the musical genre with that film. But the themes of The Young Girls of Rochefort are nearly identical to those of Demy's first film, the marvelous Lola. Both films weave multiple romantic and familial threads together on the coast of France to tell a story of chance and fate that delights as often as it surprises. Here, however, the B&W drama has been replaced with technicolor music, and while some of the artistic impact has been lost in transition, the sheer pleasure of the thing remains and perhaps has even improved.

As I've mentioned before on this site, I'm not a huge fan of musicals, though I can pick out the ones I love when I see them. One of the thing that immediately won me over in The Young Girls of Rochefort was the style of the music - any pop nerd like me knows that 60s French pop was one of the peaks of the genre, and artists like Serge Gainsbourg, Francois Hardy, and Jacques Brel (who was technically Belgian but whatever) informed a strand of pop that turned seriously avant and cutting edge in subsequent decades. Michel Legrand was on the outskirts of this movement, with one foot firmly in the jazz world, but his work here has many echoes of the popular music in France of the time, and it's seriously awesome, the kind of stuff that transcends the cheesy reputation of musical theater.

The story of The Young Girls of Rochefort is largely enjoyable, though no one generates the kind of sympathy that Lola does in Demy's earlier film - it's never unclear here that you're watching a movie rather than peeking in on the lives of characters. In fact, the next time I watch The Young Girls of Rochefort I plan on turning off the subtitles, and I recommend anyone reading this do the same at least for one round of viewing - perhaps even the first. Sure there are some great plot threads that get tied together and a few brief stretches of notable dialogue. But the vast majority of the film is enjoyable but inessential lyrics quickly tossed at the viewer to distract them from the wonderful music and striking visuals.

It's funny, I'd only ever seen Umbrellas before watching any of the other films in this set - in fact, I'd only heard of Lola before the box was announced. For one reason or another the former film exists outside of Demy's catalog, the masterpiece that rises above the rest of his presumably pedestrian output. His second most noteworthy claim to fame was being married to the great Agnes Varda, and that was that. Yet this set recasts the director as a forward-thinking auteur who had a particular point of view from the beginning, even as he refined his delivery system throughout the 60s. I'm very much looking forward to the next two films (even though they are considered less effective than the first two thirds of the set) and The Young Girls of Rochefort is an easy recommendation for anyone open to the music and style of the 60s, even if the filmmaking prowess on display is not likely to grab them the way it would anyone who appreciates a professionally and lovingly made film.

#715: Bay of Angels

(Jacques Demy, 1963)

Demy's second film is more out of step with his subsequent musical rampage than Lola, though it shares a broad range of qualities with that debut. Like Lola, Bay of Angels is shot in black and white, sharply dividing it from the rest of director's catalog that is primarily known for its vibrant colors. But the film also features a milquetoast lead doomed to love a seductive woman who loves another - though in this case it's not a person. French coastal towns are seen. A happy ending is paired with the almost certain knowledge that it will not remain that way forever.

The similarities may end there, however, as Bay of Angels is a deeply sad film intently focused on two individuals. A third character sets the protagonist off on his path - and pops up again briefly just to assure us all that he was not a figment of our imagination - but other than that there are just a handful of characters with even one full scene. The only cycles in Bay of Angels are psychological, mistakes made over and over again to feed a sickness that overwhelms everything around it.

I'm not a gambler. It's perhaps the thing I know most about myself. I never make bets, I don't like going to casinos, I even feel uncomfortable putting my money in mutual funds. So the addiction of gambling is completely foreign to me. I've never been addicted to anything, but I've done drugs and can see the danger of getting sucked into the vortex, even with something as simple as coffee. My personal tendencies toward addiction are more harmless things like collecting (could you guess?), so seeing someone become addicted to gambling is, for me, a little like if someone told me they couldn't stop eating nails.

In a way, this made Bay of Angels even more sad. When you see someone succumb to a pleasure you understand, there's an immediate relatability. Outside of that appeal, you only see the disease, the empty routine of addiction. Jeanne Moreau's Jackie is a tragic figure whose life has disintegrated around her yet continues her descent. She's accepted her illness and seems unwilling to change it until the very final moment, which only feels unearned until you consider the dependency that addiction demands. Like Lola, Jackie knows what she wants and rejects the male protagonist's attempts to alter her desires. But Jackie's empowerment is empty, masking her weakness. Casting one of the all-time great movie stars in the role was a gamble in itself - we may immediately understand Jean's infatuation with Jackie but would we be able to see the fatalism through the bleached blonde glamour? Like Catherine in Jules et Jim, Jackie is trapped, but Moreau plays both characters without the rage that other women might have brought to the roles. Her tragedy is unknown to herself, even in self-reflective moments, because she seems to have so much control over herself. This is partially the character that Demy wrote, but it's mostly Moreau's dominance of the camera and complete confidence as an actress.

Her counterpoint in Claude Mann is less memorable, and here is where the film fails to live up to its predecessor. Mann has been in other strong movies (most notably Army of Shadows) and he looks a bit like a young Dominic West, but he lacks any real magnetism as a leading man. As I mentioned, Demy has created his second-straight boring young white guy protagonist here, but without the colorful secondary characters and plot complications of Lola, Bay of Angels suffers much more for it. The straightforward narrative here demands two memorable leads, and the lack of balance means Jackie as a character is significantly more notable than the film itself.

That being said, Bay of Angels is an entertaining movie even if it is pretty sad and at times hard to watch, though again that speaks to the strength of Moreau's performance. This Demy box is shaping up to be a real treasure.

#714: Lola

(Jacques Demy, 1961)

Lola is the first film both in Criterion's boxset of Jacques Demy's core early films and of the director's overall filmography. Built with overlapping stories of relationships both emotional and fleeting, the film straddles the many worlds of French cinema. At times it seems like a quaint relic of the French system, a light and occasionally Soapy romance of criss-crossed lovers. Other moments feel like kin to the New Wave classics being made at the same time, in love with movies and reality in equal measures. The film recalls Ophuls (to whom it is dedicated) as often as it predicts Jeunet. It hints at the darkness of his next film, Bay of Angels, as easily as it predicts his technicolor-splashed later work. It manages to feel playful without resorting to comedy and tragic without delivering bad endings for its characters. I think it's an undersung masterpiece.

The story of Lola isn't much of one at all, as simple coincidences give way to poignant exchanges of love both sexual and familial. Characters remind characters of other characters, cities pop up in the past, future, and fantasies of various people who are unaware of the connections they share. The nature of the city of Nantes is reflected in the various players, constantly coming and going - when they are there, they want to leave, when they are away they wonder when they will return. The movie is at once as fantastical as a David Lynch movie (is Cecile perhaps literally Lola, whose real name is after all Cecile?) and as humanistic as a Marcel Carne melodrama. Frankie, one of the sailors that defines Nantes as a constant state of flux, sleeps with Lola but bonds with Cecile, who reminds him of his sister. Roland pines for Lola, whose heart belongs to Michel, but desires to flee to an island in the South Pacific, where unbeknownst to everyone Michel has made a fortune. The plot doubles back on itself frequently and revolves around a cafe where Roland lounges with a painter - it's apparent that the film had a huge influence on Amelie.

All of these elements make Lola a joy to watch. There's a certain feeling of serendipity and a charmed melancholy that Demy is able to deliver here that is almost never present in a director's debut. His work is not as stylized as Wes Anderson's - though simultaneously more about movies than the younger director - but the combination of a breezy tone and deep sadness is shared by the two filmmakers. It's much more in line with Truffaut's elemental 400 Blows than the aggressive newness and removed cool of Breathless, but it has none of the animosity toward conventional (or maybe safe) filmmaking that both directors had in their earliest work. A casual viewing of Lola would do fine, which ironically is perhaps what has made its place in history less noted than its contemporaries.

But dig a little deeper and what's here delivers elements that reward investigation and reflection. Lola is a powerful woman, perhaps saddled with the cliche dancer/seductress role so overused in film but defiant in her self-sufficiency. Anouk Aimee is both perfectly cast and perfect as Lola, to the point where she seems as inseparable from the character as the character feels separated from the world of the movie. Demy's deliberate technical flaws are also gems waiting to be reevaluated for their influence on future filmmakers, their own small ripple in the torrent of New Wave's storm. Then there is Nantes itself, shot as sleepy and wild, a temporary town of fairs and dances and markets where scheming smugglers hide, as mysterious as Casablanca but without the wartime tension, so people and things and ideas and love flow freely through its ports. The city is just as much the star of Lola as Lola, and it makes the movie feel just as alive and magical now as it must have felt fifty years ago.

#704: Riot in Cell Block 11

(Don Siegel, 1954)

What a find. Riot in Cell Block 11 is a certain kind of film Criterion puts out rarely, but always with impressive confidence and great value to the marketplace. Created as a b-level social picture in the wake of a series of prison riots in the early 1950s that stemmed from poor treatment of the prisoners, this is a lesser-known early picture from Don Siegel, who would go on to direct Criterion release The Killers before producing the higher profile Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz. It's not the best-acted movie I've ever seen, and it can often feel a bit preachy in its consistent social message. But it also rings just as true today as it did in its time.

The style of the film is a reminder that throughout film history movies that were considered lesser or even exploitative often had more to say about the ills of society than the prestige pictures of their era. The movie that won best picture the year Riot in Cell Block 11 was released was another future Criterion film, Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, and while I'm not here to discount that masterpiece, I do think the message of Siegel's film is more complicated and more relevant in today's America.

The scenes with the warden are generally didactic, but it's the final scene, in which the warden explains to the leader of the riot that he has been betrayed, where the message is most loud and clear. It's the truth no one wants to believe but everyone should see as obvious: riots work. They work because people are afraid of society crumbling, and part of the way society stays afloat is that the people with less and who are forced to stay that way agree to keep the peace (at least generally speaking). That detente is broken only when things get so bad that the system needs a virus to run through its body and clear out all the toxins. In Riot in Cell Block 11 (as in the US of the early 50s), the oppressed community was prisoners, growing up in LA it was black people in the early 90s. As the movie shows, riots don't solve everything, but they do bring the kind of attention to oppression that only violence can bring.

People who think prisoners should rot in jail for whatever they did to get there will probably be able to ignore the message of Riot in Cell Block 11. For people like me, the film is preaching to the choir. Yet there is a whole middle of the population that simply hasn't considered these kinds of issues because they didn't need to. These are the people Cell Block 11 was made for, and just as the political message of riots had to be draped in violence, so too does a message such as this need to be drenched in noir and simmering with pulpy aggression. Does Riot in Cell Block 11 raise to the level of many of the classics in the Collection? Of course not. But it doesn't need to - it does what it was meant to do, now just as well as in 1954. This is a vital thread of film history in the American system, and this particular film represents one of the best, making it a great addition.

#707: Il Sorpasso

(Dino Risi, 1962)

Il Sorpasso is the kind of movie Americans almost never see. The majority of foreign films that make it to our shores are serious, ambitious films that would be labeled prestige or art pictures even in their own country. Comedies are rarely imported, even from English speaking countries (with the exception being the occasional quirky inspirational English country comedy), while some films that hardly get a release in their own country are trumpeted upon their arrival in the US.

So here is an odd installment in the Criterion Collection: a loony commercial comedy in the middle of Italy's late 50s, early 60s golden age. One of the protagonists even dismisses Antonioni as boring - maybe the first instance of a film talking trash about other films in the collection? It's no surprise that Il Sorpasso is largely unknown in the US, despite being hugely popular in its native country.

(Spoilers below.)

But what's most interesting about Il Sorpasso is how often it defies its low-brow nature. The movie's basic premise couldn't be more Hollywood: two guys, one uptight and inexperienced and one borderline insane and fun-loving, spend a day racing through the Italian countryside, encountering colorful predicaments along the way. And yet its ending, in which the car careens off the road, sending the young man to his death on the cliffs below, wouldn't get past the first submitted draft of the script in any Hollywood studio.

It's this moment which is inevitably the crux of the film, and it sends a shadow over everything that came before it. It's all over so quickly that it's difficult to process as it is happening what it means for the picture as a whole, but it leaves you with such a sour taste in your mouth that it's hard to retain the freewheeling joy of the rest of the movie without feeling implicated in an innocent man's senseless death. In other hands, the movie might have ended with the same tragedy, only played with a sly wink to the audience, a dark joke between the director and his viewers. An equally likely choice would have been to send Bruno to his death, leaving the younger man to ponder the implications of the whirlwind day in which he was caught. Yet Risi's decision to kill off the law student and leave Bruno empty-handed turns the tables on his Italian viewers. One man's awakening to the carefree life becomes an indictment of Italian machismo in an instant.

How you responded to the ending will likely depend on how you viewed Bruno in the rest of the movie. Characters like this have become ingrained in Hollywood films over the last fifty years, so his carefree brutishness is less jarring than it might have seemed in the 1960s, perhaps making the ending feel even more surprising, out of place, and/or unwarranted. I've seen comments online from people raving about the movie but stating that they will pretend the last few minutes of the movie didn't happen, while others (rightly) argue that the ending is the whole point of the movie. For me, Il Sorpasso is a reminder that films needn't subscribe to one genre, one tone, or even one viewpoint. Fun can be fun, even when it leads to tragedy. This is so often forgotten in modern Hollywood that it bears repeating: once art is pigeonholed, it loses much of its power.

#710: Judex

(Georges Franju, 1963)

Judex is basically a French version of The Shadow, an early prototype of the superhero genre that would define comic books for the modern era and is currently holding the summer box office in a choke hold. This remake of the original film adaptation of the character is a movie in love with movies, the illusion and freedom that define the artform.

I had never heard of Judex (or even the character) before the title was announced, though it wasn't a totally left-field choice considering Franju had directed Eyes Without a Face, an early addition to the Collection. I enjoy that movie a lot, and what little I read about it before watching had me thinking this was going to be one I really loved. It sounded like a stylish and playful mind game that didn't bother to follow the rules of logic or realism.

Ultimately, though, I just sort of really liked it. The core story of the film is interesting but doesn't lead to much, as a lot of the explanation of backstory that was supposedly included in the original film has been nixed. This makes the movie a bit more like a fever dream, which is cool enough but doesn't allow the experience to add up to much. There's also a woman at the center of the film who is pretty much everything you could ask for in a stereotype of woman as a ruthless bitch, which is either a coincidence or a symptom of the time. But the movie is so pulpy and silly that it's hard to criticize it for anything other than not being pulpy and silly enough to elevate it to something really special.

#706: Master of the House

(Carl Th. Dreyer, 1925)

It's not that I didn't like Master of the House, an engaging and gentle little movie that shows off Dreyer's early skill with the camera. It's just that all of the talk about its revolutionary and progressive stance on gender roles is largely unfounded. Within the context of 1925's political discourse, a movie that highlights a woman's work and the need to value them in their role is certainly admirable. But a better attitude from men is not the goal of feminism - it's simply the barest necessity of entry into the human race. Master of the House does nothing to strike against the larger injustices of the patriarchal society, it simply uses them to tell a light and harmless but ultimately traditional story about a man taking his wife for granted.

There's a certain condescension directed at the past, where racism and sexism are graded on a curve. Anything that appears remotely empathetic toward people who aren't white men is declared revolutionary, while the notion that social justice or progressive thinking could have existed before the 1960s is supposed to be a revelation on par with the discovery of complex tools in the caveman era. The truth is that Master of the House is mainstream entertainment designed to play with the already widely held beliefs of the general public, and only the stodgiest traditionalist would have complained about it.

Moving beyond this complaint - which is generated through no fault of the film itself - Master of the House is an enjoyable film. Though it is certainly minor when compared to Dreyer's later work, his technical skill is clear, and I like seeing more silent films in the Collection, regardless of how "revolutionary" they are.

#708: Like Someone in Love

(Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)

Certified Copy is possibly my favorite movie of the last ten years, so Like Someone in Love was a highly anticipated viewing despite the conventional wisdom that seemed to place it a step down from Kiarostami's last film. Even though I would agree that the movie doesn't quite live up to its predecessor, Like Someone in Love is a perfect companion piece to that film, and a rewarding and engaging cinematic mystery.

Like Certified Copy, the movie deals in vague plot details matched with vivid characters. The three main players here, like the two in Certified Copy, feel just as real and relatable as the protagonists of any movie, and yet we know so little about their backgrounds as to feel we are getting only an abstract portrait of their inner lives. Unlike Certified Copy, however, the film revolves around one character that holds the key to understanding - Takashi, the older man, who knows the truth about his relationship with Akiko but declines to reveal it. This makes the film much less of an intellectual exercise than Certified Copy, where both main characters seem to be toying with the viewer in a surrealist and removed way, but it also makes it a tad more infuriating, since it seems like the whole matter could be easily cleared up in a confessional scene.

Kiarostami is, of course, totally unconcerned with such matters, and remains much more engaged with the ways in which people relate to both each other and the outside world. As in his previous films, the post-modern flair, obtuse thematic structure, and car driving/riding sequences define the director's aesthetic. But Someone in Love firmly resides in Kiarostami's second career, that of an exiled artist obsessed with his national crisis. It's no surprise that Kiarostami's two films outside of Iran, Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love, immediately imply removal from a subject - for Kiarostami, every film he makes outside of Iran is removed from its true intentions, a simulacrum of the film he really wanted to make. The final moments of both films are revelation interrupted, a moment of foreplay or violence that speaks to the greater truth of the respective film, and the ultimate metaphor for Kiarostami's identity unrealized by his exile.

It might be a crude comparison, but this era of Kiarostami's work reminds me of Caetano Veloso's exile from his home country of Brazil. Both artists fuse modern global aesthetics with personal and national styles which are distinct to their respective countries, and Veloso's 1971 self-titled album feels unsettling and mysterious. Like Kiarostami, Veloso chose to work in a language that was not his own, but that of the country in which he was creating art. If the metaphor is to hold, the Iranian filmmaker has much more experimental and arguably difficult land to traverse. But the journey will never be anything less than invigorating and impressive. Kiarostami is certainly one of the great living filmmakers - that he hails from one of the world's most notorious and complex countries only makes his emergence that much more powerful.
_____________

On a personal note, this is my 500th post on a Criterion movie on this blog. I honestly never thought I'd get this far, but it's been a thoroughly rewarding journey, one I wouldn't trade for any other artistic endeavor I've made. I've obviously slowed down a great deal since I "caught up" with the collection - which has made me slip a bit in terms of keeping up. But as long as Criterion continues to put out movies, I'll continue to watch them and post here. Even as they encounter more financial issues and turn to ever bigger releases to maintain their place  in the market, I believe in what Criterion is doing and continue to have faith that they will be around for spine number 1000 and beyond. Here's hoping we are all there to see it happen.

#720: The Big Chill

(Lawrence Kasdan, 1983)

I watched The Big Chill for the first time when I was a teenager, and there are few more depressing movies to watch at that stage of life. For people with limitless options ahead of them, this is a film about people who are dead inside, horrified with the decisions they have made, and desperate to regain their freedom. They are unlikable and self-absorbed. Like Kevin Kline's later film, The Ice Storm, it's an unpleasant and uncomfortable viewing because it's hard to wrap your head around the choices you watch.

Once you've grown up, started a family, waded deep enough into a career or whatever they call it these days, the film is oddly less depressing, more comforting. It's a reminder that no matter how bad things get, you can always go home. It's a reassurance of the interpersonal connections that don't go away when philosophies and priorities change.

Of course, while the fundamental conflict of The Big Chill, the struggle with getting older and wrestling with dreams and responsibilities, is timeless, the resolution is specific to the boomer generation the film claims to represent. If The Big Chill was made today - and seeing how difficult it is to have adult dramas get made in the Hollywood system, it wouldn't be - the moral of the story would be distinctly anti-nostalgia, a lesson about appreciating what you have in life instead of longing for the past. If the children are our future in The Big Chill, the future is a disembodied voice we police from a distance while we dance and screw away the blues to the safe pop rhythms of our youth. The Big Chill is drenched in a nostalgia that would be tossed aside immediately by my generation, even as we struggle to uphold our own truths from a bygone era.

At one point, a character complains that "even fortune cookies are getting cynical" - a cynical comment about too much cynicism. The group of friends in The Big Chill finds comfort in the idealism of their youth because they know how foolish and carefree they were; they've tasted the apple and wish they hadn't. This was a bitterness that was passed on to their children, a generation intent on avoiding the disappointment their parents endured, but destined to fight some other kind of disappointment that doesn't come from anything more specific than the realization that no one is exempted from losing their cool.

The Big Chill is far from a great movie, but it's lasted as long as it has not because of its impressive cast and almost unbelievably stacked soundtrack but because it speaks to a simple and quiet truth about a milestone in life that often goes unmentioned. These are the kind of moments the Hollywood of the 80s was best equipped to handle, and it's a reminder of what our current cinematic landscape is missing: movies that aren't for everyone, but might mean everything to you.

#702: The Great Beauty

(Paolo Sorrentino, 2013)

It would be easy to describe The Great Beauty as Fellini with Facebook, a contemporary retelling of the grotesque modernism of Fellini's core work, most notably and obviously La Dolce Vita (finally announced as a Criterion title earlier this month). To do so, however, would marginalize the film's own merits as a commentary on modern life just as much as it would reduce modern life itself to the tools we use to navigate through it.

Certainly, there is a strange anachronistic feeling to the modern components characters wield in The Great Beauty - the music they dance to, the cars they drive, the nude photos they offer up. The film feels so much like La Dolce Vita that these details serve as an odd reminder that we are not watching something that was, but something that is. Sorrentino has made a film about a man surrounded by history: his own, his city's, his film's. It's a quintessentially Italian endeavor - perhaps even uniquely Roman - but the lessons he dwells on are universal and eternal, an idea easily reinforced by everything that has changed in the last fifty years in Rome and everything that has stayed the same.

As in La Dolce Vita (and fellow modernist masterpieces L'Avventura and Through a Glass Darkly), the best moments in The Great Beauty are in the morning after, the sleepy but clear realizations that the cycle goes on. The film is also stunningly beautiful, almost to a default, and Sorrentino says as much with his camera as he does with his script. His protagonist is an empty shell stuck at the long party, but it's a beautiful party, and the way Sorrentino seduces the viewer allows Jep's momentum to seem less pitiable, more understandable. We wait for the next rush of adrenaline, desiring our own power to ruin the party - not to use it, but to know that we have it.

The Great Beauty's success is so frequently technical and theoretical that it can be hard to interact with the text's intentions. Jep is searching for the titular prize, but isn't everyone? We believe his desires but we don't recognize anything new - in a way, this is the point of the movie, that we're all living a cycle, that modernity and society's progress is a lie to cover up the fact that we are all in tatters. They say caged animals are the only ones who have time to be depressed, and we have yet to devise a better cage for humans than that of eternal comfort. The Great Beauty might be trudging over worn territory, but there's no more terrifying prospect in modern life than getting everything you want and still feeling empty.