#780: Code Unknown

(Michael Haneke, 2000)

Code Unknown is accurately titled. The movie is constructed out of a loose collection of scenes that wouldn't be that disconnected if it wasn't for the slow fades that separate them. The way Haneke constructs each scene requires the viewer to get his or her bearings in the first moments, unsure of who we are with, how it is connected to what has come before, and when we are with Juliet Binoche, if the scene is part of the movie or the movie within the movie. Films that are about how the world is big and diverse and we are all disconnected from each other often hit you over the head with their message - think Babel or Crash - like a person you already agree with yelling at you too close. Code Unknown takes another route, leaving the viewer feeling as detached from the movie as the characters within it are from each other.

I'm not a huge Haneke fan, though I haven't seen many of his most famous films like The Piano Teacher or Amour. I feel like in a lot of ways Cache is the more accessible version of this film, and I liked that one much better, though again it didn't really stay with me. He has obvious technical skill, but I find his work very cold and, like Lars von Trier, he often seems more interested in how his films make the viewer feel than in what is happening on screen. That's certainly okay, but I think there's a higher bar for provocative cinema, and I don't think Code Unknown clears it, not the least because I wasn't particularly provoked by what I was seeing. I was bored.

#802: Paris Belongs to Us

(Jacques Rivette, 1961)

It's impossible for anyone my age to understand the impact of World War II, but it seems to me like people have spent far too little time putting the French New Wave in the context of postwar Paris. This might be because of the core group of filmmakers that helped define the New Wave, only Resnais directly grappled with the thing in two of his films in the collection, Night and Fog and Hiroshima Mon Amour, and even those aren't about the French experience. The surrealists who were surely the most famous Parisian artist movement until Godard and Co. were famously influenced by the horror of World War I, yet the New Wave does not have the same immediate connection to World War II despite the war's arguably more severe impact on France in general and Paris specifically. This may be because the filmmakers had other more apparent influences, most notoriously the American (though often by way of Europe) filmmakers of the 30s and 40s but also the modernist artists of the time and the political revolution of the 60s. Of course, all three of these things were also directly influenced by World War II, so even the movement's deepest origins come back to the war.

This is not to say that the shadow of World War II is never connected to the New Wave. Godard in particular is frequently linked to the political effects and philosophical ramifications of the war; the filmmaker himself has often referred to World War II (quite obviously correctly) as the key event of the 20th century. But I'm less interested in how these filmmakers handled the war in their art than I am with how it informed their desire to make art and their decisions about what kind of art they would make. Some of this was likely conscious (see Resnais again), but a lot of it was surely subconscious, an involuntary reaction to the world they had witnessed and were inheriting from the previous generation. What is it like to live in a city that for hundreds of years dominated the world's urban attention, and yet for one brief moment of history was itself nearly consumed by that same world? How does that inform your being, your worldview, your voice? The setting becomes even more complicated when you consider the post-war politics of France, where the more political faction of the New Wave was practically a declared enemy of the de Gaulle government that had been the de facto leader of the resistance.

In this context, Rivette's first film, Paris Belongs to Us, makes significantly more sense - it's no surprise that even the Criterion description of the film mentions "post-WWII disillusionment," as this seems to be the driving force. The conspiracy element of the film that springs directly from this disillusionment apparently runs throughout much of Rivette's work in the 1960s (I have yet to see any of his other films from the era) and parallels the same spontaneous generation in Thomas Pynchon's work of the era. In some ways, Pynchon's postmodern prose plays the same role in his web that Rivette's interest in the theater rehearsal process plays in his films, pulling back the curtains on the gears that make reality turn. I'm far from the first person to compare Rivette with Pynchon, but I do find it interesting that both artists are more commonly identified with the counterculture movements of the 60s and 70s when so much of what they are talking about is a direct result of the past generation's more literal battles. Like so many social and political movements, the context and groundwork is often sacrificed in order to deliver a cleaner story.

There's much to like about Paris Belongs to Us as a film. It's not as flashy as the other debut films of the New Wave, but it's packed with fully formed characters and smart dialog as much as it is open plot threads, missing pieces. Betty Schneider holds the film together as Anne - just as Rivette's style walks the line between familiar and fractured, her performance is often relatable even as I continued to feel like I didn't know her two hours into the running time. This blog is (mostly) intended to reflect my initial feelings about a movie after watching it for the first time, but films like Paris Belongs to Us are not intended to be understood on first viewing. I don't know if I'll be ready to go back into this one for some time, but I do look forward to diving into the rest of Rivette's catalog to see how his worldview evolved as the war grew more distant in both his own memory and that of the city he called home.

#760: State of Siege

(Costa-Gavras, 1972)

The three films that catapulted Costa-Gavras onto the international film scene in the late 60s and early 70s are all political statements about the use of violence and authoritarian power. Technically, however, they range greatly. Z, the best of the three and the most successful, was shot it a documentary style that put the viewer on the street as events were happening. The Confession was more composed and painterly, lending the story a deep sense of tragedy through its timeless qualities.

State of Seige, on the other hand, is more subdued than both and settles into the territory between the two extremes. The way it shifts smoothly between the various players and lets its story unfold with minimal hand-holding is reminiscent of the best crime thrillers of the past few decades, but ironically the film is perhaps less of a thriller than either of the other two Costa-Gavras films from this period. This is both because we find out the end of the story within a few minutes and because as the final moments suggest so little of what we are seeing is of any real significance. There's an illusion of suspense that Costa-Gavras purposely exposes by eliminating the question of whether or not Montand will survive in order to emphasize the futility of the rebels' fight.

The role of the US in South America politics is something that I've spent an enormous amount of time reading and thinking about, whether it's the CIA-sponsored coup that toppled Allende's government in Chile (where, in a sad coincidence, this movie was filmed prior to the coup and which would later become the topic of another Costa-Gavras masterpiece, Missing) or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua who faced off against a contra force financed in part by the CIA's illicit drug trade. The topic is also well-worn territory within the Criterion Collection, both in docudrama form and surrealist commentary. Outside of slavery, there are few more difficult sections of America's history to reckon with as an informed citizen than our systematic destabilization and promotion of authoritarian dictatorships throughout South America, and one of the great tragedies of American education is that this history is essentially unknown by the vast majority of the country.

With this personal history - both intentional and unintentional - I can only look at State of Siege through the eyes of an American, which is important because the film is so unconcerned with this perspective. In a typical well-meaning American film on the same topic, there would be substantially more humanizing of the Americans, and the only voices of Americans we heard for any notable amount of time would not be limited to the central figure played by Montand. Similarly, there would be substantially more explanation of the situation, even in a nameless country like the one used here. Costa-Gavras is unconcerned with these things because he is not trying to stop America from doing the things it's doing - he know that will never happen. State of Siege is entirely about the movement to fight against these invasions - what is sacrificed, what is deserved, and what it means to fight against an invisible and unending power.

The essay that accompanies the film from Criterion sees the ending as hopeful. There will always be a determined underground resistance ready to fight the new boss, same as the old boss. I see it as defeating and tragic. These men have given up their souls for what they believed could save innocent lives, only to see that there is a never-ending supply of evil and oppression. Costa-Gavras realizes the futility of the fight and the charade of a clear, graspable enemy. Despite a central villain in Montand, the title's state of siege refers to a mentality and a literal state, an amorphous government impossible to destroy because it is always out of reach. Its many heads can be chopped off, but a new one will grow in its place.

Watching movies made for other people about your people is not a typical experience for an American white male. The fact that State of Siege was made in the middle of when these events were happening (though you can argue similar events are still taking place in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia) makes the document even more difficult to handle. We don't do much reckoning with history in this country, but what makes State of Siege so disturbing is its lack of interest in holding our hand through its world, the dark side of American international affairs. We don't see the boss behind the curtain pulling the strings and tearing apart both sides because it's us.

#759: The Confession

(Costa-Gavras, 1970)

This is usually not the place to discuss current entertainment news, let alone political news. But watching Costa-Gavras's deeply disturbing and intense film has clear implications for what's happening in the world today both generally and within the United States. The now decades-long debate in this country over torture and its benefits or lack thereof represents an extreme abandoning of the lessons of the past and America's dedication to at least ostensibly projecting an image of moral authority in the world.

Like any good film that attempts to tell the complex and unflinching truth, what you take from The Confession will likely be informed by your worldview. For conservatives, this is likely to be seen as a takedown of the socialist satellites of the USSR and by extension a rejection of the underpinning communist philosophy. As a work of art, this would be a largely useless piece of propaganda that would have outlived its usefulness three decades ago. For people who are more generally cautious of institutional power (a group to which Costa-Cavras himself undoubtedly belongs considering his decades-long stretch of career choices), The Confession is much more universal, and presents a harrowing argument against coercion as a tool in law enforcement. That said, I do think there is a strong anti-communist message here, though it's one that isn't necessarily shared by the director. Costa-Gavras simply tells the truth in The Confession, but his final moments end on a call for Lenin to rescue his movement from the evils that transpired in its wake. I'm not sure Lenin (or anyone) could help, for the very nature of the system created in Russia guaranteed corruption of power - after all, it's not capitalism or communism or any other political system that owns the darker side of human instinct, and only an open society can root out the ill-willed forces that would threaten to destroy it.

It's this larger point that goes beyond interrogation methods and torture that seems more important to me at this stage in history. Maybe I just thought of the comparison because the news is happening right now, but The Confession reminded me most of the battle Apple is currently fighting to keep its operating system secure. Although smart phones may be just a momentary blip in technological terms, their current dominance means that they represent the greatest threat to authoritarian governments today. Giving these governments access to any phone they wanted would mean that criminals would also have access to them, for sure, but even more importantly it would mean that dissidents and political fighters would need to go elsewhere for security. The Confession does not have any direct implications in this regard (even home computers were unheard of when it was made) but it does highlight the damage that can be inflicted on people when their government is given total control over their lives. Although the torture sequence that takes up the bulk of the first half of the movie is intense enough, it's the second half that highlights this terrifying truth, making it equally if not more disturbing.

Of course, I haven't discussed the movie much, but instigating political discussion (and ideally action) is largely the purpose of Costa-Gavras's films. Though he is a very cinematic and technically sound director, his main focus is using the medium to get a political response. The Confession was added to the Collection along with its follow-up State of Siege, which I have yet to see. But it also joins two masterpieces already included, Z and Missing, similarly political thrillers. While I don't think The Confession is quite as good as those two films, it's more universal than either, ironically because the journey is so personal and hyper-specific. I don't know that I've ever seen a better indictment of torture, and the film's complex depiction of the state's manipulation will sadly resonate even as the USSR grows more distant in the rearview mirror of history.

#744: Every Man for Himself

(Jean-Luc Godard, 1980)

Godard's celestial position in film history belies his challenging body of work. In comparison to even the other pillars of the Criterion Collection - Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, and Ozu - Godard's catalog lacks any movie that would be easy viewing for the average modern filmgoer. Even relatively lighter films like A Woman is a Woman or Alphaville are dense, analytical statements that require multiple viewings to absorb. Breathless, his masterpiece and perhaps the most important movie in film history, has many moments that point the way into the narrative, but in comparison to the most famous films by those other directors like Seven Samurai, 8 and 1/2, and even Seventh Seal or Tokyo Story Godard's debut remains a shock to the Hollywood-fed system (ironic of course because Breathless is so obviously indebted to the earlier incarnation of that system).

Having said all that, Godard's first ten years of filmmaking produced relatively straightforward films when compared to his subsequent career, which began with radical political video in the 1970s before transitioning into experimental (though comparably more conventional) features in the 80s where Godard's politics reattached to his commentary on the nature of his chosen medium. This new Godard 2.0, which began with Every Man for Himself, which Godard called his "second first film," was less interested in film as a driver of change than as a tool with which to illuminate that change already taking place. That Godard viewed the film as a return to beginnings is not surprising considering what he had been doing for the past decade. But it also feels true. Though there are connections to his earlier work here, it is closer in style to In Praise of Love than Vivre Sa Vie.

Godard is not just challenging on a technical level, however. His films are usually angry, often dark, and walk the line between exploitative and radically confrontational. His obsession with prostitution is perhaps the most challenging aspect of his films for me, and I often wonder if he crosses the line from investigating the nature of misogyny to exploiting and perpetuating it. The "outrageous" sex circle that a john creates late in this film seems as empty thematically as it is emotionally, and it's moments like this where Godard's ostensible feminism seems overly confident that the average viewer will catch his gist. The whole Isabelle Huppert segment here was much less interesting to me because of Godard's hooker thing, but I don't know that I can say I "enjoyed" the couple's stories either. These are distasteful people for the most part, and I think a reason why Godard's later films have never been able to generate a strong reception the way his earlier work did (though I have yet to see his most recent film, which was a relative success) is that everything after his time in the wilderness lacks the cinematic glee of his first decade, which went a long way toward making the bitter pill go down. By this point in his career, Godard no longer believed in the movies, something even his angriest films like Weekend and Contempt had going for them. Godard of the last 45 years has implicated himself in film's shortcomings, which leaves us all vulnerable.

#728: Sundays and Cybèle

(Serge Bourguignon, 1962)

How you feel about Sundays and Cybele is going to depend largely on how you feel about the central relationship. Is the love expressed between Pierre and Cybele innocent and harmless, or is it exploitative and dangerous? Even if it is innocent, does this whitewashed portrayal of a platonic love affair between a 30-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl represent a disingenuous case for allaying suspicion in real-life cases that may include actual abuse? Bourguignon's adaptation of the novel makes this even more complex - in the book, Pierre's history is a violent criminal past that pops up frequently in the present, while the film gives Pierre a guilty-but-not-guilty memory of an accident where he killed a young girl in the heat of battle. Though his violence comes up here, too, it's portrayed as an after-effect of his trauma, and sadly the moment in which he hits his girlfriend was not the immediate character condemnation it would be today when the film was released in 1962. This leaves the viewer with a less complicated Pierre, one whose sole purpose seems to be to protect Cybele, whereas the book's Cybele seems like more of a metaphor for Pierre's innocence, which he is constantly at risk of destroying. It doesn't seem too different from adapting Lolita and making Humbert a savior who rescues Lolita from an empty and lost existence.

The politics of the film make it difficult to love, but within its own universe, this is a wonderful movie. The cinematography by the legendary Henri Decae is absolutely gorgeous and Criterion's transfer makes it look like it was shot last year. The performances are great, too, especially the young Patricia Gozzi, who delivers her precocious dialogue with maximum believability. The success of the movie rests on this fact, because the more you accept that she is a willing and aware participant in the relationship, the easier it is to take the film as what it wants to be. Pierre's depression and abandonment demands a motherly touch, not a girlfriend's, and Cybele provides this to him. Nowhere in the film does Bourguignon sexualize Cybele - even when Bernard learns of the relationship, he is more concerned with Pierre killing her to alleviate his guilt about the woman he killed than he is with rape or sexual abuse. When Cybele talks of marriage, it is of cooking and cleaning, not the consummation that comes with it, and in fact it is Madeleine who is sexualized, as we meet her in bed and watch her bare back as she dresses. This is not to forgive the film's portrayal of the relationship, but to acknowledge that the movie believes in its innocence and advocates for the purity of its lead characters.

From a plotting perspective, the most deliberate choices here come at the beginning and the end. The way Pierre's accident and fate are presented leave plenty to the viewer's imagination. Each is certainly an unconventional way to deliver the information, and using Madeleine to deliver the crucial final information is decidedly anti-climactic. But there's a certain inevitability to Pierre's death that comes with occurring off-screen, as if he was dead all along or at the very least was destined to die. If we had seen the shootout, the suspense of the film would have easily overwhelmed the tragedy. Perhaps more interestingly, the viewer will never know if the police were actually right to kill Pierre - perhaps Bernard was right after all and this Christmas recreation was merely his final gift to the doomed little girl who had wandered unsuspectingly into his catharsis.

Sundays and Cybele was Bourguignon's first feature, and it's always interesting to watch a successful debut (this movie won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars) from a director that didn't end up amounting to much. There are plenty of flashes of style here, but the care with which Bourguignon treats his characters and his camera's gentle movement are the most noteworthy marks of his skill. Though most filmmakers who make their best movie first end up amassing a reasonable career filmography that can range from terrible to often pretty good, few flame out as gloriously as Bourguignon, whose film directing career didn't make it out of the 60s. It's great to have this in the Collection, then, looking gorgeous and preserved for future film buffs. Although the morals/politics of the film make it a difficult one to recommend to everyone, it's a haunting and complex work that should be seen, and a nice New Wave-parallel entry from a time when France's cinematic potential seemed limitless.

#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.

#749: The Soft Skin

(Francois Truffaut, 1964)

A few weeks ago, a fellow Criterion completist posted a quote from Truffaut that basically invalidates my whole blog. As revenge, I thought it fitting that I should queue up Truffaut's follow-up to the masterpiece Jules et Jim, The Soft Skin, the only film of his in the Collection that I have yet to see (Day for Night was released after this one, but I have seen that film a couple of times, though it was years ago at this point). The film was poorly received when it was released, and despite some vocal proponents it remains a lesser entry in the director's catalog. I've had it in my Hulu queue since it appeared there and I was pleased when it received a proper release because it would force me to watch it sooner rather than later.

The Soft Skin is an odd film. On the surface it's a French morality tale that nods to the country's history of domestic melodramas. Yet this might be Truffaut's most technically sophisticated and rich cinematic display to this point in his career. Though the film provides little of the flash and overt style of earlier films like The 400 Blows or Shoot the Piano Player, the way Truffaut uses the basics of framing, shot selection, pacing, and the underrated POV makes it his most assured and neatly composed film.

Because of the narrow focus of the story and its traditional arc, Truffaut could focus entirely on these technical elements; Molly Haskell notes in the Criterion essay that Truffaut was working on his Hitchcock book at the time and it certainly shows. Look at the way Truffaut shoots the scene where the two lovers stop for gas and Françoise Dorléac sneaks away to change into a skirt - although the stakes seem as small as possible, the tension in the way Truffaut cuts back and forth from the characters to the car to the road to the meter on the pump is more reminiscent of the final sequence in Fat Girl than of a typical trip to the gas station. There are plenty of moments like this elsewhere: the claustrophobic style of the dinner Desailly finds himself trapped at while his mistress waits in the hotel room, the extended build of tension from the moment we see the gun to the final explosive act, even the way Desailly is filmed once he realizes he's been caught in a lie by his wife - all of these sequences are treated as high suspense when even the gun would barely register in other hands as anything other than a domestic detail.

The Soft Skin reminded me immediately of Tarantino's films. The way pulp is elevated by style and technique in QT's work makes the act of movie watching interactive and expectation-defying. Here, Truffaut's dedication to the story extends beyond his deft hand behind the camera by consistently damning Desailly's celebrity professor through his actions. But it even extends beyond the scope of the movie, as Truffaut himself would go on to leave his wife shortly after the film's release. In fact, a close look at Lachenay makes his similarities to the director (who was himself a celebrity who initially stood on the shoulders of artists before him to catapult to fame) seem hardly more obscured than those of Fellini or Allen to their respective alter-egos in 8 and 1/2 and Stardust Memories. The more Desailly seems like a stand-in for Truffaut, the more the film feels like a self-loathing confession and punishment, though just as Godard would long to be Belmondo in Breathless, so too would Truffaut be thrilled to die in a hail of bullets, sacrificed for the tragic passion of an ill-fated affair.

Despite the impressive execution of The Soft Skin, I have to wonder if this effort wouldn't have been better served with a stronger story. I don't think Truffaut earns Franca's choice to take up arms, just as Nicole's immediate turn on Lachenay (and his implied contempt toward her) felt more like a plot device than a realistic depiction of the end of an affair. Similarly, the depiction of Lachenay's adolescent impulses and his evolution as a husband and lover doesn't break any new ground. An A+ presentation of a B- story can't save the overall impression from being one of a missed opportunity, and The Soft Skin becomes a mid-level Truffaut film, a must-see for fans of the director but well behind the timeless masterpieces he made before and after.

#695: Blue Is the Warmest Color

(Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

I am not a lesbian. This is probably obvious to anyone who has read this blog before, but it's worth noting here because it's especially essential to understanding where I'm coming from in this response to Blue Is the Warmest Color, one of the more fascinating, controversial, and enigmatic recent entries into the Criterion Collection.

By its very nature, film is an interaction with the Other, most literally with the past, but often with different cultures, locations, people, realities. It might seem like a (kind of) lesbian love story should be no different than a Japanese domestic drama or a Swedish medieval parable - as a white straight American male, there is always the risk of translating the themes and politics of a film poorly, of valuing its "otherness" as a fetishized progressive ideal instead of meeting its humanity head-on with balanced perspective.

Yet some films are especially hard to evaluate, even for viewers who identify as belonging to the world the film is attempting to depict. Blue Is the Warmest Color has an unfair weight placed on it simply because there are so few films with which to compare it. The number of lesbian love stories in mainstream cinema in any country is almost criminally small, while the number of those films which attempt to depict sexuality in explicit and authentic terms is, well, seemingly non-existent. When something like this happens, there's nowhere for a film to hide, nothing to place beside it. Some reviewers clumsily stumble toward The L Word, a show with a deeply conflicted fanbase, saddled with a flawed show that is nevertheless the only thing they have to point to in the culture at large.

It is not Blue Is the Warmest Color's fault that it must carry this weight, but there are other strikes against the film that make it difficult to love. I begin with the rareness of Blue's subject matter because it is a tragic state of affairs, a black mark on cinema that raises the larger issue of the dominance of male voices in the medium - particularly straight white ones. This stems entirely from the enormous amount of money required to produce a film, which places more prejudices in play - a gay woman can sit down to pen a comic book memoir quite easily, but it takes many wealthy men making big decisions to greenlight the same story's big-screen adaptation. The easiest response to the criticism that Kechiche shouldn't have taken on content that would almost certainly have been better produced by a woman is to say "look around at who gets funding - if he didn't do it, who would?"

The other strikes I mention are perhaps just as complicated, but more common and certainly not singular. There are three basic areas of controversy surrounding Blue Is the Warmest Color, though all have deep roots in gender politics: the treatment of the actresses on set (and how it relates to Kechiche's general approach to filmmaking), the depiction of women in the film (both in the technical tradition of "the male gaze" and in the specific presentation of Adéle), and the more specific depiction of lesbian sex (few critics have complained about the general depiction of lesbians beyond these explicit scenes, so the controversy extends beyond the bedroom only insofar as these intimate moments inform one's viewing of the larger picture). Many articles on the movie have confused the two latter topics, preferring to think of the film as inherently about lesbians rather than women. I think this is a mistake that damages an investigation of the first topic, which is to say that assuming the film is a mere attempt at a lesbian love story (or even one at all) gives short shrift to all three issues and misses both the conscious and subconscious point of the film.

I'll begin with the controversy surrounding the making of the film, both because it is the easiest to dismiss and because it informs the way anyone sees the other issues. Although there were some serious labor allegations already brewing, the bulk of the controversy came out of an interview in The Daily Beast shortly after the Cannes win (where the actresses shared the Palmes D'Or with the director, a move that speaks to the uncomfortable politics wrapped up in the film's power dynamics), where the two leads discussed their negative experiences on the set of the film. Initially much of the criticism seems to come from their (understandable) embarrassment over the emotionally raw and explicit sex scenes, but it quickly opens up into more serious descriptions of abuse that depict working conditions that sound certainly toxic if not borderline criminal.

As a leader of an actor's guild, an activist focused on developing healthy gender-safe working conditions, or perhaps a studio executive considering bankrolling the next Kechiche film, these testimonials would merit more concern. As a filmgoer, I'm not sure they are worth very much. Obviously the limits of cinematic exploitation exist, and there's a line at which the story behind the making of a film can overrule any of the artistic value of the finished product (the most extreme being snuff films, but really any film in which intentional physical suffering with long-term damage is difficult if not impossible to accept). But these stories seem more like the psychological scorn heaped on Shelly Duvall by Stanley Kubrick in the making of The Shining than anything approaching dangerous. Without evidence of wrongdoing that goes beyond someone being a terrible person who treats everyone like garbage, wholesale dismissal of a movie seems understandable but hardly mandatory. The grand example of hating the artist but loving the art is either Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will, and in both cases the flaws are so baked into the work itself that it's impossible to avoid. Blue Is the Warmest Color may be fatally masculine in its perspective, but it would be harder (though not impossible) to argue that the film is misogynistic.

So if the film is to be taken for what is on the screen and nothing else, what is to be made of the three-hour personal epic that is Blue Is the Warmest Color? The first thing to note about the film is something everyone notes about it: Adéle Exarchopoulos is a movie star of the highest order. Though this isn't the grandest performance (she's still very young), she's in nearly every scene and it's impossible to look away - nor do you want to. Adéle has that incredible pull in front of the camera that is only tangentially related to beauty, an excitement about what she'll do next that feels dangerous and exciting at the same time. It's fitting that she's making a movie with Sean Penn, who shares the same talent as an actor, and she's the one piece of Blue that needn't be debated.

The next thing everyone notes about the film is that, despite the hype, the sex scenes take up about ten percent of a three hour movie. That means there's a whole (pretty long) movie here that has no sex whatsoever. Once the first blush of the love affair has faded, there's about an hour and a half of the film without any sex at all (though it features a handful of gratuitous ass shots that Manohla Dargis rightly took offense to). I think this is most important because the movie's most complex gender issues are revealed outside of the bedroom, as are the true intentions of the film. The movie certainly wouldn't have received as much attention if it was not for the lengthy sex scene that is the center of the controversy surrounding the movie, but if the film treated this aspect of their love story in an honest way that asserted the importance of sex in the role of relationships, is it the movie's fault that countless other films have had the same opportunity but, fearing the backlash and pigeonholing that comes with explicit sex, have timidly faded to the morning after?

There is no denying the significance of the sex scene, though, and here is where the movie gets into hot water. As someone with no lesbian-sex experience (yet!), I can't tell you how "authentic" the sex is. I can say, however, that the scene felt pretty fucking awkward. In fact, the scene it reminded me of most was the horrible, wonderful waterfall sex scene in Showgirls, which is so special that if you haven't seen it you should really do yourself a favor. That film's sex scenes were odd because it frequently felt like the movie had been made by ten-year-old boys who not only had never had sex before, but had never seen anyone have sex, had never been to Las Vegas, and seemingly believed a "showgirl" was someone who got aggressive about french fries. Needless to say, the fact that I was reminded of this while watching Blue Is the Warmest Color is not good - I guess what I'm saying is that intrinsically I felt this wasn't how any real person had sex. I don't think that's just because the movie is depicting such an unusually passionate encounter - I've seen In the Realm of the Senses, and while the sexual scenes in that film were certainly umm.... interesting? and significantly more plentiful than they are here, they never felt inauthentic.

That said, I have a really hard time making any sort of universal judgment about the scene, because this is where I think many of my straight while male co-conspirators have gotten into hot water. I'm not about to bust out the "mansplaining" headlines, but I tend to think that if you are in a position of privilege and someone calls out a depiction of their gender, race, or other oppressed class as potentially troublesome, it's a good idea to shut up and listen, instead of thrilling at the opportunity to shoot down their concern. Is the sex in Blue Is the Warmest Color unrealistic, pornographic, doomed by "the male gaze"? Perhaps. But the only way I could come to a better conclusion on that is to engage, to discuss, and to read pieces like the wonderful and provocative one by Manohla Dargis.

What's most disappointing about the debate over the sex scene is that it obscures what I see as the more significant problem with Blue Is the Warmest Color, which is its depiction of women, like Dargis points out, not as they are but as they are seen. There are a number of revealing moments throughout the movie that give me pause, but the one that is most apparent - and has been discussed most frequently elsewhere - is the scene in which an art director explains that he believes the female orgasm is magical, that women can experience much more pleasure than a man, and essentially describes the role of the director in the very sex scene that just happened in the film.

It's telling that the secret theme of a film that features two lead women with a focus that almost never strays from their relationship is delivered by a male character we hardly know and never see again. This stand in for Kechiche has just given away the game, and his sly insertion into the love story at hand is most troubling because it is done so consciously, like a gleeful criminal daring us to catch him.

The uncomfortable male gaze of the film doesn't stop there, it's infused in nearly every frame of the movie, from Adéle's casually drooping cigarettes to the camera's remarkable ability to be where her body is going before she gets there. Even as I dismissed the backstory of the filming, it's impossible to overlook the fact that Kechiche has a history of casting beautiful young women in his films. When combined with the pure physical passion of Adéle's character, this fact sticks out in my mind, and the eroticism of her story threatens to overthrow her humanity at every turn. Even a beautiful scene like the art party, infused with empathy and authenticity, artfully paced and shot, can be ruined by a boorish speech or a juxtaposition of Adéle's jealous stares at her girlfriend flirting with an ex and a man she has just met doing the same to her, fascinated by her unattainable status as "Lesbian." The men in the film, constantly sexualizing Adéle, might feel more like critical commentary on the state of men if the film didn't seem so fascinated with the same things they are (and if the implication of the ending wasn't that Adéle would eventually end up with one of them).

These concerns have been obscured by the sex debate, so that moments that have troubling implications and reinforce one of the oldest, most disturbing power dynamics in cinema are overlooked by defenders who dismiss critics as prudish, close-minded, overly sensitive. This is especially a mistake because the lesbian nature of the sex scene obscures the fact that the movie itself is neither about a lesbian (Adéle is bisexual, or at the very least confused about her sexuality) nor is it a lesbian film - which is to say that it is not presenting a lesbian or queer perspective and, illustratively, its director does not consider the movie to be about lesbians. By fixating on the idea that the movie is about lesbians, the conversation has overlooked the larger question of femininity and its role in male-dominated cinema.

I've written a lot here because I am fascinated by the absence of female voices in cinema and dedicated to re-engaging with film in a way that challenges conventional notions of what women should look like on film. Blue Is the Warmest Color stirs up these issues both intentionally and unintentionally, and in many ways its difficult to determine where the film lands on these ideas. There is real truth in many of the moments between Adéle and her lover, and Kechiche's dedication to perfection is apparent throughout the film. Immediately after watching the film, I thought it was a worthy inclusion in the Collection and a noteworthy - if flawed - film in cinema history. After reading about the movie and writing this piece, I'm not sure that the film's most notable achievement isn't that it was able to deliver 20th century gender politics with a 21st century façade.

#746: A Day in the Country

(Jean Renoir, 1936)

A Day in the Country is a simple and lyrical short intended to be a vignette in a larger work by the great Jean Renoir. Because the project was not finished, this piece didn't see a release until a decade after it was filmed. As a standalone Criterion release, A Day in the Country is an odd choice: it's only 40 minutes long and is certainly a minor work in the director's catalog (though it's hard to argue any of Renoir's work is truly minor considering his stature). The outtakes compilation included on the disc is longer than the film itself, making this set more about the supporting extras matching up with the main text than it is about the movie on its own.

Despite this, there is much to love in A Day in The Country. A couple of great performances from the two lovers anchor the film, while the romance/storm montage is striking in its beauty and poetic framing. The depiction of the city/country dichotomy is quite stereotypical, but the film is not striving for any complex grand investigation. It's equally easy to forgive the "no-means-yes" kiss scene, which has been replicated hundreds of times before and after this film.

Ultimately, though, the movie is fairly slight and it seems unlikely that anyone but Criterion or Renoir completists would be interested in purchasing this one. I'm glad to have seen it, but I doubt I'll watch it again.

#693: La vie de bohème

(Aki Kaurismäki, 1992)

La Vie de Boheme is a delightful little movie that is meticulously realized. At its center are four great and understated performances, surrounded by a visual world that is half fairy tale, half realist. Adapted from the classic novel and moved into an alternate late 20th century, the film tells the story of three awful artists struggling to make something of their lives without sacrificing their art. Kaurismaki manages to avoid glamorizing their idealistic lives while still delivering admirable portraits of all three of them; he pokes fun at their mediocre work without belittling their ambition or their humanity.

Kaurismaki's work here reminded me strongly of two other Criterion directors: Wes Anderson and Mike Leigh. In many ways, Kaurismaki's work is just as stylized and ambitious as Anderson's, but La Vie de Boheme (and his more recent Le Havre) lack any of the precious self-awareness of even Anderson's best work. This primarily stems from his core humanism, a dogged determination to sympathize with his characters at all costs. Leigh has a similar affinity for his characters, but his films lack the whimsy of Kaurismaki, and often descend into tragedy. Even as Mimi lays dying at the end of La Vie, Kaurismaki's tone avoids this realm, shifting to a melancholic dream-like state that fits perfectly with the rest of the film.

I really loved this movie. Each shot is a beautiful and surreal portrait of these characters, and the way they relate to each other is endearing and often funny. Too frequently films of this nature are quickly digested and forgotten, while bigger, flashier, but not better movies end up getting the press. Every director should strive to make a film as beautiful as this contained but subtly genius work of art.

#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.

#663: Shoah

(Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

[There are a number of times during Shoah when an interviewee says there are no words to describe their experience. Although it is crude to compare watching a movie to what these people witness in their lives, there are truly no words to describe Shoah. It is both one of the truest representations of cinema and undoubtedly the most harrowing and life-altering film I have ever seen. There is no other film with which to compare it. There is, perhaps, no other film. Some thoughts, messy and honest:]

It took me nearly a month to watch all of Shoah. Part of this is my busy schedule and the film's nearly ten hour running time, but most of it is the need to fully digest and attempt to comprehend each section of the movie. As it moved deeper into its narrative, it became more and more difficult for me to process. There were moments when I stopped paying attention because the emotions were overwhelming. Other sections I rewatched because they were so dense and perspective-altering.

Shoah is a reminder that horror movies are made to understand our deepest fears, while documentaries about horrors are meant to destabilize those same fears. Nightmare on Elm Street is therapy and Irreversible is abuse, but both of these things are comfort, in a way. Shoah is uncertainty in the form of truth. It's the electron knocked out of its orbit, hurtling towards us.

I've never been to Germany, though my last name is German, from a family that emigrated in the 1850s. In some ways, Lanzmann paints a more damning picture of Poland, though his account is extremely controversial and should be balanced by the knowledge of how many Christian Polish people died during the war, often fighting what they knew was a losing battle. But it is Germany that is stained by the Holocaust, and the German people - many of whom had no idea what was going on - who must live with it until there is no longer a Germany. I don't think I could ever go to Germany after having seen Shoah. I don't really think there should be a Germany any more to go to.

Many of the key people Lanzmann interviews in the film are now dead. Lanzmann interviewed them in the 70s, just 30 years after the events they describe. It is horrifying to me that the 70s were just three decades after the Holocaust. It fills me with great sadness to think that the men and women who can tell us first-hand what happened will soon all be gone from this Earth. I want them to have peace, I want the pain to be gone from their eyes. I want them to live forever, though. I don't want anyone else to tell their stories but them.

Fuck Saló.

My maternal grandparents were 20-something American Jews when they found out about the Holocaust. My grandfather fought in Europe, spending time in France and Italy, mostly. I don't know if it matters that you are Jewish - maybe if you had family in Europe that was killed or barely survived like they did it meant more to you. I like to think it didn't, but it's hard to find the kind of impact the Holocaust should have had in American culture in the late 40s. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe there was any culture.

I lived through 9/11, like we all did, only I was a little closer than most and still miles away. I lived just below Canal St. and watched both towers fall. I saw people walking up the streets covered with soot and dust, some with minor injuries that were ripples from the tidal wave that hit the bottom of the island. Rumors swirled of more attacks and we all wondered what could possibly happen next. I say this because we all try to take our own experiences and feel like we can relate to the stories we hear. The fear and confusion I felt that day and in the subsequent weeks is my own, but I am ashamed of it. I have lived a life of privilege. We all have.

Perhaps the most harrowing section of the film is a letter that ends the first half in which problems with the vans that were being used to commit mass murder are laid out in bland bureaucratic prose, referring to the Jews as the "merchandise." It's a chilling inadvertent commentary on any system's ability to normalize the ultimate horrors through political language and mental separation. The letter was written by Walter Rauff, a Nazi whom many consider to be responsible for the murder of 100,000 Jews. He also allegedly worked with Israel after the war as a secret agent meant to foment unrest among the new country's neighboring enemies. When his mission failed, the Israeli secret service helped him escape capture and flee to South America, where he worked with Pinochet and died of lung cancer in the 1980s. This kind of self-serving purposeful dismissal of justice is almost as horrific as the crimes of which Rauff was accused.

Although the bulk of the film's information comes from spoken words, like all pure cinema you don't need the sound to understand the full impact. There are essentially three images in Shoah. The most common is not human, but is instead the scene of the crime, as one understated synopsis put it. The camera winds its way through contemporary Europe, spending most of its time in the overgrown ruins of the camps themselves. Unlike Night and Fog, shot twenty years earlier and whose poetic and haunting exploration of the camps is in no way rendered obsolete by this definitive work, Shoah is shot in a workmanlike manner that dwells on the natural elements of the ruins' surroundings. Lanzmann has no interest in telling you what it was like to be in the camps by showing you this footage. He is binding all of us on Earth to them through common signifiers. It's a constant reminder that this happened, not in a place but to humanity, perhaps if one is inclined in front of God, surrounded by Him. The second image in Shoah is of the complicit, the Polish citizens who stood by and watched and the German SS and bureaucrats who were at best willfully ignorant. Some of these people are unrepentant and soulless, content to rattle off facts as if their testimony absolves them. Most, however, are at war within themselves, desperate to justify their inaction even when it was clearly justified and they really were powerless to help. These people are us, and we must reconcile that knowledge with who we believe we are today. The third image is the survivor, and this is the image one will never forget. The stories in Shoah are unlike any you have heard before, but the look in the eyes of these men and women is indescribable. If there is one feeling they all have, it is guilt. I think most Holocaust survivors would reject being called victims, even though the horrors they went through and must live with are incomprehensible. They are survivors because someone else died in their place and there was nothing they could do about it. They are at their most emotional when they plead with Lanzmann to understand that there was nothing they could do, even if what they did do was more than any of us could have. They do not cry for themselves, but for their families, for strangers.

Lanzmann is a controversial figure, particularly in Poland where the film was denounced as an attack on the Polish people that omitted much of the hardship and tragedy that country suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Certainly, if you only watched the film and knew nothing else of World War II history, the depiction of Warsaw in the final sequence of the film would lead you to believe that things were normal and sunny for the non-Jewish population. Yet Lanzmann's forceful perspective on the Holocaust is essential to his telling of the story. His anger and disgust is present in his interviews with SS members, while his aggression towards the Polish who in some ways benefitted from the deportation of the Jews is evident and sometimes feels illogical and unfair. But without this emotion the film would feel dead and the story would not have nearly as much impact because there would be nothing with which to engage. Telling the story of a grand tragedy without a perspective is an act of cowardice. Lanzmann knew that.

I don't think most people know that the Nazis kept their industrial-scale mass murder of the Jews secret from even high-ranking members of the SS. Many people chose to turn a blind eye, for sure, but there were undoubtedly many who honestly had no idea of what was being done in their name. As explained by the only historian in Shoah, the reason this was so easy to do was that every other thing done to the Jews by the Nazis was old hat in Europe. Basically anything up to the actual "final solution" had been done before, so most Europeans basically said "Here we go again." Perhaps more difficult to conceive of is what he indicates that this means - up until this point, the Nazi bureaucrats did not need to make their personal mark on what they were being asked to do. It was only when they were asked to commit the greatest organized crime against humanity perhaps in history that they needed to think outside the box. Because the secret needed to be kept, nothing could be detailed in communication from the leaders to the field, which meant they were somewhat on their own. The Holocaust was, in essence, a triumph of middle management.

Everyone should see Shoah, but don't ever see Shoah. It's a terrible truth that once it's known you can't forget. It's history made eternally relevant, a social service that is invaluable. It's hopefully something we'll never need, but it's vital to have it on reserve. It's also a living thing, cinema that sinks into you even in its most static, uncinematic moments. Roger Ebert said it shouldn't be judged against other movies and vice versa, and I know exactly what he means. As a film, it would rank with the greatest ever made. But there are no films to rank it with. There is only Shoah.

#655: Pierre Etaix

(Pierre Etaix, 1963-1971)

Criterion's Pierre Etaix boxset is going to be a revelation for just about anyone interested in digging into it. As a filmmaker, Etaix ranks somewhere between "occasionally listed as influential" and "totally forgotten," especially considering the fact that he hails from one of the highest profile cinematic countries. But a combination of rights issues, poor championing, and a career that existed primarily during an era when his light touch was not in line with the dominant radical tastes of the cinematic elite has left Etaix in a position totally undeserving of his talent. This set should reverse that.

While I wouldn't put Etaix on quite the same level as Tati, the comparison is not without merit. Both directors have relatively small catalogs, and both operate in light, mostly visual humor with a sharp satirical bend that gives their work more heft. At his best, most specifically with Yoyo, the absolute masterpiece in the set and a solid candidate for best comedy of the 60s, Etaix can rival Tati in his deft delivery and execution. Some jokes in these films are truly sublime - as a part-time comedian, I found myself in awe of Etaix's ideas and ability to execute them multiple times. This is comedy in its highest form.

Of the five full-length films included here, the only one I didn't especially care for was The Land of Milk and Honey. After a promising opening, the footage Etaix shot never really comes together. And his talent lies in his impeccable execution so much that the documentary format takes away from his perfectionism, making him less special. His four fiction full-length are pretty consistently enjoyable, even As Long As You've Got Your Health, which is essentially a series of mostly silent shorts cobbled together. As a whole body of work, it's extremely impressive, and while his style is somewhat tied to his era, it would have been really wonderful to see him evolve into the 70s, 80s, and even 90s (Etaix is still alive, and contributes to the box). As it stands, this must be one of the most underrated comedic voices in film. Don't overlook this set.

#648: Chronicle of a Summer

(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960)

I feel asleep on two separate occasions while watching Chronicle of a Summer. This doesn't mean it's a bad movie or I didn't like it (I have a one-year-old, so late nights are anything past 10), but I bring it up because I expected to be totally enraptured with this movie, and was quite surprised when it ended up causing me to drift off. Part of this was the pacing, but a lot of the problem was simply that the people in it were not as interesting as I expected them to be.

There were still a few moments that kind of blew my mind. The first happened towards the beginning of the film when an old man is interviewed. He tells us that he was born in '82, the same year I was born - only 100 years earlier in 1882. This of course immediately made me think about the fact that I will be 78 in 2060 - if I live that long!

The second moment occurred later during a conversation that was initially about race. It was a somewhat uncomfortable conversation, both for the viewer and the people having it, and it was a reminder that while racial politics have changed enormously in the last half-century (something that's quite obvious in the conversation), this  awkwardness when addressing the topic has not diminished much. However, partway into the conversation the facilitator asked two of the men if they knew what the numbers on one of the women's arm referred to. Here was a woman who was probably around my age who had survived the Holocaust! In a lifetime of watching movies, I don't think the proximity of that most horrifying of events to my own time had ever seemed more real to me. It made me immediately recontextualize all of the films I had seen about the Holocaust from the 50s and 60s. Works like Night and Fog, The Two of Us, and The Shop on Main Street were connected to real people who went to see them, people my age who couldn't look at them as works addressing a generic "history" but as works speaking to their own histories. It's not a thought that is easily reconcilable with an innocent view of the world, and it's impossible for me to understand what it would be like to have to shape a world in which that was your introduction to what humans are capable of.

Both of these moments were, of course, unintentional. But they affected me much more than anything the film did with purpose. This is an inevitable product of a documentary, and it's not even an undesirable one - in fact, it might be the most powerful thing about the format. But without a sense of purpose that feels inspired and impressive, the movie felt a little flat to me, like they were stumbling in the dark and occasionally hitting something worthwhile. It makes for an interesting viewing, but not necessarily a memorable one.