#801: I Knew Her Well

(Antonio Pietrangeli, 1965)

Italy was in a very dark place in the 1960s. Despite the hair, the short skirts, the tailored suits and slim ties, the go-go-influenced pop, the exploding construction industry stretching high rises across the country, the Italian soul was corroding in the sun. Just a quick look at the 25 or so Italian films from the 60s that are in the Collection puts the country's attitude front and center: Antonioni's modernist trilogy. Fists in the Pocket. Il Sorpasso. Seduced and Abandoned. Rosi's two political masterpieces, Salvatore Giuliano and Hands Over the City. Dillinger Is Dead. Fellini's work is in a category all its own, but even the king of Italian cinema spent the decade dabbling in sharp socio-political commentary with Juliet of the Spirits, 8 1/2, and the iconic La Dolce Vita. These are angry films attacking both the status quo in Italian culture and the modern "solutions" to traditional social barriers.

Masculinity is particularly skewered across these films, though Antonioni's work in particular puts Vitti and company front and center more often than not. None of these films come close to the almost complete focus on the protagonist in I Knew Her Well, a lesser-known Italian entry from the swinging 60s that was released by Criterion last month. But the shift to issues of femininity and the struggles of beauty and youth does not soften the tone. I Knew Her Well can easily sit next to those other films in the dark Italian 60s, even before the film's upending final moment.

I Knew Her Well is a dark comedy, but for the first half or so it's mostly just comedy. Adriana's early dalliances are harmless enough - a great early joke is when she is filing a woman's nails at a beauty salon where she works and unconsciously shifts to her own nails as the customer looks on in disbelief. Later moments are more profoundly sad if thought about, but can be treated as playful easily enough if you ignore the ending. When Adriana wakes up in the hotel where her one-night stand has abandoned her, she must pay for the night with a bracelet he gave her - which later turns out to have been stolen. It's not funny ha ha, but funny ouch.

I was also reminded of Scorsese's work in the later sequences, particularly the party scene, which has to be the saddest and cruelest tap dancing sequence ever. Pietrangelli places him just at the edge of the table so we don't know if he's going to topple over, further embarrassing himself. The dance is cruel enough though. The scene might be more difficult to watch than most of Salò, but it's reminiscent of the ball-busting sequences in Goodfellas, moments that underscore the poisonous culture that emerge from the social acceptance of the characters' more sinister actions. This sequence is interesting because Adriana is absent from the scene, instead being interviewed as a set up for her own later humiliation.

The parallel is hard to miss, and most of the metaphors in the film are similarly heavy handed. But what makes these moments more complex is the realization at the end of the movie that Adriana's final fate is still shocking despite the preceding two hours of humiliation and empty human interactions. We are so accepting of the portrayal of young and beautiful women as empty vessels bouncing from thrill to thrill that the idea that they could have inner lives (especially in movies) is barely considered until it's too late.

Although I had no serious issues with the portrayal of Adriana in the film, I was somewhat annoyed by the framing of Pietrangelli in the extras as a "director who loved women." I think it's great that he was especially concerned with the female experience, and this is a very sensitive and complex take on a woman's psychology that never feels like it's pretending to be coming from any place other than the male gaze - the title even gives it away, explaining the misguided perception of the omniscient man certain he's figured Adriana out right until the final moment when she takes over and we finally get a POV. But I can't help but think it comes across as "surely a woman herself couldn't make a movie, so it's a good thing we have men who are sensitive to women." Women and people of color are not horses or super heroes or children or dead historical figures - they can make movies about themselves if given the opportunity. I Knew Her Well shouldn't be at fault for that - Pietrangelli never pretends he is inside Adriana's mind, and his purpose is often precisely the opposite of what can be achieved by gaining insight into characters that can only come from relatable personal experience. But I think it's important to note what we've missed all these years and wonder what a movie about this same character could have been like if it was made by a woman, particularly in Italy.

#747: Fellini Satyricon

(Federico Fellini, 1969)

When I watched Amarcord, I thought it was an enjoyable distillation of Fellini's unmistakeable style, the concept of "Felliniesque" taken to its logical conclusion. One of the reasons I didn't truly love the film was that I thought his excesses of style and aesthetics were taken to such an extreme that the movie lost its grounded intentions amidst the surreal and flamboyant visuals. I assumed Fellini would be well-served (as he had been in his masterpieces from the late 50s and early 60s) by taking it down a notch.

Little did I know that Amarcord had already come down a substantial notch from the pinnacle of Fellini's Felliniesque period two films earlier. In fact, Fellini Satyricon likely represents a stratosphere several notches above Amarcord, at a height where only Fellini would dare to Fellini. I said in my post on Juliet of the Spirits (a film I have come to regard very highly since my mixed initial response) that that may be the most Fellini movie Fellini ever made. I was deeply, deeply mistaken. Here is Fellini in all his Fellini glory, when a director has produced so many masterpieces and establish such an identifiable style that he becomes a brand, applicable to whichever genre he deems Felliniable.

How you feel about Fellini Satyricon will largely depend on how nice of a TV you have. Ideally, you don't own a TV but have a really great repertory theater near you that will play whatever you want; get them to run this one through their projector. Fellini Satyricon is a visually awesome experience. The sets, production design, and cinematography are gorgeous and surreal. They reminded me strongly of Jodorowsky's work of the same era both in terms of basic beauty and surreal depth (though El Topo is probably one of the few films I've seen that would make this movie seem downright commercial).

The story of Fellini Satyricon is less exciting. As a serial, I found it fairly uneven, with a success rate of about 40% and no strong connection to carry me through the stories that were less compelling. I think seeing this movie in a theater would improve its value tremendously, but I don't know if even this extra effort would propel the movie, as style-heavy as it is, into the upper tier of Fellini's work.

#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.

#778: A Special Day

(Ettore Scola, 1977)

Don't read a goddamn thing about this movie before you see it.

A Special Day is a stunningly beautiful movie starring two stunningly beautiful people. The cover Criterion chose for the film is accurate, but it's also a bit misleading. This is not a Sirkian melodrama or a doomed romance - although in some ways it stands in for these subgenres. It's not a movie about Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni - although you never forget these are the people you are watching. It's not even a sepia-toned period piece about the faded nostalgia of misremembered good old days - though again, the film's cinematography is unique and sumptuous.

This is a movie about Italy. I've mentioned briefly before the country's unwillingness to confront its complicity with Nazi Germany, but Rome, Open City was about much more than that, whereas A Special Day confronts this issue head-on. By 1977, Italy had been celebrating Liberation Day, a remarkable national agreement to present its history as a sunny lie, for 30 years. It's still intense in America in 2016 to see the six minutes that open this film in which Italy welcomes Hitler and the Nazi leadership into Rome, but to Italians in the late 70s it must have been a slap in the face. It's especially remarkable considering the fact that Scola was one of the most significant comedic filmmakers of his generation (though by this point he had turned to outright political drama) and these are arguably the two biggest stars in Italian cinema history. Yet here is a film that begins with documentary footage using contemporary broadcasts describing the jubilation upon Hitler's welcome, with little more than some credits beforehand to assure viewers they were at the right theater.

This theme is not just established at the beginning and then forgotten as the personal drama plays out - a loud radio playing the parade along with planes flying overhead keeps the pressure of the impending war pressing down on the couple throughout the film. It's hard as an American to understand what this means or would feel like to most viewers of the movie, people who were either alive during the time the film was set or were raised by people who lived their prime during the time.

The story between the two leads is radical as well, particularly Mastroianni's sexuality. There have been some objections to the couple's consummation of their relationship considering his sexual orientation, but I think the film handles it in a very moving and respectful way. The emotional connection between the two characters is earned, and even though the film often dips into melodrama, it has enough nuance and complexity to avoid falling off the deep end.

I really loved A Special Day and think this is a great choice from Criterion. Although the cast alone would be enough to make it a no-brainer in the Collection, the cinematography and vital take on the politics of Italy in both the 1930s and 1970s is what elevates it to an essential release.

#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.

#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.

#682: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

(Elio Petri, 1970)

Note: There's a chance that if you've seen a movie I'll reference I am about to ruin the ending of this movie, so if you care about that sort of thing, stop reading.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is a direct precursor to American Psycho, to the degree that I'm shocked at how little this connection is discussed. Basically, the movie is to fascism what that movie was to capitalism, and it's just as biting, hilarious, and challenging intellectually. Of course, this movie came out thirty years before that one and nearly two decades before the book upon which that was based, so there's a pretty good case for the film as a cutting-edge satire ahead of its time.

Of course, the film fits perfectly into its era of Italian filmmaking, and makes a nice double feature with Marco Ferreri's Dillinger Is Dead from the previous year. Both films are major send-ups of Italian masculinity, and derive much of their pleasure from the unexpected actions of their main character and how they subvert expectations of their characters. Petri's film is more immediately engaging, no doubt, because the narrative is structured in such an engaging way. I guess it's a bit like Absolute Power, where a murder is shown in great detail but we don't know who the perpetrator is until the big reveal afterwards (is that too obscure of a reference now?). Either way, it starts the film off right and sets the tone for what is one of the most entertaining recent Criterion releases - and one of the best.

#678: La Notte

(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961)

I watched La Notte years ago while struggling to come to terms with Antonioni - at the time, I was obsessed with Blow-Up, but found L'Avventura puzzling and dull - but I remember little of it and I actually think I probably fell asleep halfway through. This doesn't really matter, but I mention it because I probably wouldn't have liked the film anyway as I was certainly too young to understand the sadness and longing in the film. Made just a year after Antonioni's masterpiece, La Notte maintains the same tone and modernist perspective, but in every other way feels like it was made by an artist twenty years older. It's Autumn to L'Avventura's Summer.

La Notte is more actor-driven than its better-known older sibling. This is partially because the film is more specific to its characters, but its mainly due to the presence of three iconic actors: Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, and Antonioni's muse Monica Vitti. They are all wonderful here, and they make the movie a more immediately engaging film than L'Avventura, even if it is more subtle and less audacious. I love Moreau to death in Jules and Jim, but her character her is equally engaging and yet very different. The final scene is so emotional and real, a perfect ending.

La Notte is perhaps best compared to Kubrick's final masterpiece, Eyes Wide Shut. Both films revolve around a married couple that has lost their passion for each other. They have reached the point where intimacy becomes dullness. One night throws all of that into disarray, and they are left with only one option - fucking. The films are equally dark, but La Notte never feels like the dream Eyes Wide Shut is constantly flirting with. It's a very real film, but with a sharp psychological edge that makes it a compelling portrait of a broken marriage and two lonely people desperate for a connection. It might not have the remarkable vision and ambition of L'Avventura, but its a masterpiece in its own right.

#672: 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman

(Roberto Rossellini, 1950-54)

Rossellini is about to become the only director with two spine-numbered boxsets in the Collection, a designation that's well-deserved. The director is often overlooked on lists of the best filmmakers ever - even Italy has produced a number of filmmakers that often get mentioned before him, such as Fellini, Antonioni, and De Sica - but his influence on modern film, especially in Europe, cannot be overstated. The three films in this boxset were made during his most notorious era, when he met Ingrid Bergman and began an affair with her, despite the fact that both were married to other people at the time.

3 Films by Roberto Rossellini has no chance of measuring up to its cousin and Criterion's #500 spine, Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy, which contains three of the most significant films in history. The movie that comes closest is Journey to Italy, the third film in the set and ironically the least ambitious. Although it shares a late epiphany with Stromboli and some drawing room melodrama with Europe '51, the film is much more mature and restrained than either of the other films in this box. It's also a deep and complex examination of marriage and generally knowing a person too well. Kiarostami was heavily influenced by the film when he made Certified Copy, one of the great films of the last decade, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ranked high on Antonioni's list either.

Criterion is still doing a giant service with this set. All three of these films have been unfairly neglected (none were originally hits) and the only available prints or discs were in shoddy condition. I'm excited to see the finished product, especially with regards to Journey to Italy, which I would say is one of the great overlooked films of the post-war era.

Links to individual reviews:

Stromboli
Europe '51
Journey to Italy

#674: Europe '51

(Roberto Rossellini, 1952)

Europe '51 is one of the oddest films by a major director in the Collection. The movie is a cross between an upperclass melodrama and a religious parable; at times I was reminded of The Passion of Joan of Arc, All That Heaven Allows, The Flowers of St. Francis, and Secret Sunshine, four very different Criterion films. The story centers around Ingrid Bergman's self-absorbed society lady character, a woman more concerned with her dinner party going off without a hitch than with her son's anxiety and need for attention. When tragedy strikes, she falls into a deep depression, only broken when she transforms her life into a sacrifice for other people.

The strangest thing about Europe '51 is the push and pull between the heavy-handed political statement and the equally purple soap opera of Bergman's family life deteriorating. The politics of the film are notably more engaging than the melodrama, mainly because Rossellini doesn't seem especially interested in the latter. His camera work is reminiscent of Vittorio De Sica's in his earlier The Children Are Watching Us, but it's not nearly as visually appealing and often feels more like a TV drama than something made by the same person who filmed the memorable tuna fishing in Stromboli. His anointing of Bergman with all types of martyr imagery is equally ham-fisted, if somewhat more enjoyable.

Europe '51 is the only film in the upcoming Rossellini/Bergman boxset that is not available on Hulu, and it's probably no coincidence that it's by far the least important or impressive. That said, it still has its occasional charms, and is worth viewing for any fan of the two. It also features an unexpected treat in seeing Ingrid Bergman and Guiletta Masina share the screen, which alone makes it a special moment in film history.

#673: Stromboli

(Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Stromboli is a metaphor for itself. Although she was born in Europe, Ingrid Begman was perhaps the most glamorous Hollywood star of the 1940s. By the time Stromboli was made, Bergman was only 35 and had already had a string of successes, including two of the best movies ever made, the perfect Notorious and the incomparable Casablanca. Roberto Rossellini was equally accomplished, having finished his War Trilogy and perhaps single-handedly ushered in a new era in filmmaking. But the director's neo-realist style was practically defined in opposition to the Hollywood films that Bergman made; they were a supremely unlikely pairing.

This is reflected in the film - Rossellini's only Hollywood-backed feature. Bergman plays a Lithuanian refugee desperate to leave Europe for a better life in Argentina. When she is denied passage, she accepts a marriage proposal from a young Italian solider, who promises to take her back to his charming Italian island in the beautiful Mediterranean. The island turns out to be an active volcano, with only a few small villages with meager wages from fishing. The moment Bergman gets there she wants to leave.

Stromboli is about worlds colliding: the expectations of a young woman who dreams of something better for herself and the resigned but indignant fortitude of the peasants who populate a small and inhospitable bit of land far removed from the centers of society. But what shows up on screen is impossible to ignore - Bergman, looking just as strikingly beautiful as ever, standing in for all of Hollywood and everything shimmering and soaring within it, desperate to escape the neo-realist hell she has been unceremoniously plopped down into without any hope of escaping. It's this combination that makes the film so striking, in a way that the later collaboration between the two artists (and lovers) Voyage to Italy isn't at all. Bergman even acts the way you would expect Hollywood to act - don't get me wrong, this isn't Did You Hear About the Morgans?, but Bergman does sort of flop around petulantly, flinging her sexuality at whatever man she can find, desperate to use them to achieve her goals. Not that the neo-realists come off any better - Bergman's husband is abusive, while his fellow villagers couldn't be bothered to have empathy for puppy that was drowning if it was doing it in an improper way.

This parallel level of conflict, however, makes the movie even more compelling, and the battle between Hollywood and the Other is deeply felt in the film's final moments, which do more to point the way toward Antonioni's early 60s work than anything I've ever seen. Bergman's volcano epiphany lends her character more closure than Antonioni's protagonists, of course, something also true of the similarly proto-modernist Voyage to Italy, but the way Rossellini uses the landscape to mirror Bergman's internal struggle and ultimately merges her strife with the inevitability of nature is certainly a lead-in to Antonioni and similar European directors who would emerge from the neo-realist soil.

Stromboli also has brilliant moments that come unrelated to the oddness of Bergman's presence. The most notable is obviously the tuna fishing scene, which is simultaneously horrifying and mesmerizing. This one scene does more to explain the experience of living on the islands of the Mediterranean than maybe anything I've ever seen, and it's quintessential neo-realism. The difficulty of Bergman's character makes the film sometimes difficult to watch - even as someone who loves her more than maybe any other actress ever - but Rossellini's sure hand makes it a well-spent hour and a half at the movies.

#17: Salò

(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)

There is a truly harrowing moment in Salo, but it's not any of the moments often cited as difficult to watch. Unlike those scenes, it doesn't involve excrement, knives, or gruesome torture. Instead, a handful of victims is found to be in violation of the rules and, rather than deal with their inevitable punishment, they rat out other victims for breaking the rules. They do this even most likely fully aware that it will not save them, but in a last ditch attempt to have power over someone else in the way they themselves have already been dominated.

Salò is undoubtedly the most notorious film in the Criterion Collection, and arguably the most notorious film made by a serious filmmaker in the history of cinema. Watching the film is a rite of passage into that most daring (and insignificant) group of cineastes who are willing to go the extra mile to satisfy the urge to complete their cinematic education. It's also sought-out by viewers with a thirst for the extreme, those who would group it in with The Human Centipede and Cannibal Holocaust as a graphic ordeal that is unafraid to explore the limits of exploitation and extreme violence.

Though I understand the latter group, I generally reject the appeal of that sort of movie, so, apart from simply wanting to have a fully finished list of Criterion movies with no cheating, any desire I would have to see the film would stem from my allegiance to the former group. Either way, I think both groups would and should be dissatisfied with Salò. As a film, I don't think it's especially impressive, and as a piece of horror-slanted torture porn, it's rather awkward. Salò neither delivers a compelling political or cinematic case for its existence, nor treats its most disgusting and shocking moments with enough reckless abandon for horror fans to enjoy it. The lack of story, the disappointing way in which homosexuality is treated (especially infuriating since Pasolini himself was gay), and the thin line between the horrors of fascism being exposed and the thrill of fascism being glorified makes the film a somewhat meaningless viewing.

Still, the enormous reputation of the film, combined with my own long journey toward viewing it (or even being ready to view it) seems to demand an evaluation. Like so many visceral films, Salò must be evaluated on two separate levels: the experience of watching it, and what is actually on the screen. Pasolini's most beautiful shots (essentially all of which come in the first half of the film) can not conceal the emotional dread this beauty invokes simply because we know what's going to come next. Similarly, the repulsion that is unavoidable in what Pasolini so accurately dubs "the circle of shit" cannot be overlooked when attempting to place these moments in a political context. Without fully bisecting the two, I'd like to address them separately.

As an emotional experience, Salò will tell you a lot about your relationship with movies, specifically violent movies. Nearly 40 years on, the film has lost little of its power to repulse audiences, but the film is not nearly as shocking as it must have been at the time. If anything, Salò is a reminder of how low we've sunk - regardless of your opinion of the film, you have to assume Pasolini was saying something here, even if it was just to elicit some sort of response. The most violent movies today (e.g. Saw, Texas Chainsaw, the above-mentioned Human Centipede) are created for the passive viewer in hyper-aggressive ways. Salò, for better of worse, toys with your feelings. Movies today assume you have none, and are in it for the kicks. Would anything here truly be above being used almost exactly in a contemporary horror film geared at squirming teenagers and their dates? The final horrific torture scene, in which victims are tied to stakes with every limb, seems to have been transposed directly for use in The General's Daughter, a procedural crime film starring John Travolta which made over $100 million at the box office with hardly a peep from offended parties.

On a personal level, much of your ability to stomach the film will depend on how easy it is for you to separate what is on screen from the reality of the production. For some viewers, the fact that what is being done to these human beings is not real, that they did not suffer, and that the poop is most likely chocolate is no consolation, and those people really have no business watching the film. Without this ability, I can only imagine what seeing this movie would be like. And yet, with this ability, I fail to see the worth in seeing these things done. Am I supposed to be proud of myself for being able to stomach reenactments of the true horrors humanity can inflict on one another? Perhaps I am supposed to internalize the violence to ensure that I will treat real acts of a similar nature with more gravity? Neither self-congratulation nor humility seems worth the experience - one is an intellectual circle jerk, the other, preaching to the choir.

Technically, Salò is an extremely well-made film. Pasolini only made films for a decade and a half, but his chops were already on full view in Mamma Roma, and this film, made a decade later, shows his maturity and steady hand. His musical juxtapositions might come off as too obviously ironic, but the classical framing during the story telling and the near-documentary style of the opening sequence in which the victims are rounded up seems absolutely essential to presenting what comes afterwards with the necessary weight. Of course, some shots do seem entirely designed to disgust for the sake of being disgusting (a certain close up of an unappetizing dish being the most obvious), and moments like these reminded me of the wasted talents of directors like Gaspar Noe and often Michael Haneke. There is certainly a "sound and fury" effect to Pasolini's films when viewed from outside of the cultural context against which Pasolini believed he was raging (and which arguably did him in). Furthermore, the narrative is so simple, the characters so spare, and the philosophical discussions so haphazard, that any knowledge of where to put the camera becomes irrelevant pretty fast.

Beyond the actual process of watching the film, Pasolini's political take on the film seems to be dependent upon how seriously he intended to connect his fascist antagonists with his modern day "neo capitalist" targets, and whether the shots fired were intended to be directed specifically at them or were instead meant to be all-consuming. Fascism has become such an easy target that any rejection of its supporters feels like beating a dead horse, but even if Pasolini had used some other example it wouldn't have changed much - this isn't exactly a subtle film. But if the argument becomes whether or not Pasolini intended to express a counter-philosophy or simple nihilism, the film makes for a more interesting jumping off point.

Inevitably, that discussion must come back to that moment when victim turns on victim. This seems to me to be the heart of the film (if it can have a heart), and challenges the simplistic construct of the narrative to make a more complex point about humanity. But there is a second moment which demands evaluation: the pianist's suicide. This character, hardly noticed before her final moment, is the clearest stand-in for the viewer, not necessarily in their role as a viewer (after all, this position is taken much more clearly by the fascists as they sit with binoculars and view the torture below), but in their role in society, serving the powers that be as they stand by allowing evil to continue. From this perspective, her fate can be taken in two ways: surrendering to the inevitability of the evils she has just witnessed, or rebelling against that evil in the only way she could manage to assure they would no longer control her. I honestly can't say what Pasolini's intention was in this scene, but it does read to me as the most important scene in the film, and I am somewhat surprised it is not discussed more frequently when Salò is considered. Of course, it is quite possible Pasolini simply intended to show one more shitty thing, which leads us back to the great mystery of the film.

I've written a lot about Salò at this point, somewhat ironically despite the fact that I ultimately don't think the film is worth intense examination. Perhaps assuming many viewers would feel the same, Criterion has included more essays in this release than in any other release I can recall. None of these really changed my mind about the worth of viewing Salò, although Catherine Breillat's essay is a wild ride. I think the thing I will remember most about the experience of seeing this film is the impossibility of meeting expectations. No film is as horrifying as your imagination can make it seem, none is so explosive as its reputation (although House really is that weird). This renders shock cinema somewhat impotent. Removed from its notoriety, the fact that film is banned in multiple countries, has horrified numerous unsuspecting filmgoers, and maintains a reputation as the most daring and disturbing film ever made, Salò is a mean little movie that says a lot more about its creator than it does about society. You already know if you can stomach Salò or not, the question is, should you really even bother?

#296: Le notti bianche

(Luchino Visconti, 1957)

Although it is dependent upon grounded, intense emotion, Le Notti Bianche is most impressive in its moments that seem least grounded in reality. In the scene in which Maria Schell tells a story in the same location where it occurred, Visconti pulls back from Schell in the past, only to reveal it is the present and Mastroianni is there. The sequence in which the couple dances in a rock club seems far too perfectly choreographed for it to be an accurate depiction of a small city in Italy in the 1950s. Meanwhile, the couple wanders through obvious sets that make the whole film dreamlike and grandiose in ways the real, beautiful Italian streets couldn't manage. I was frequently reminded of Japanese films like Kwaidan and The Ballad of Narayama in the use of purposely artificial sets for the purpose of creating a mythological tone that is otherworldly yet strangely familiar.

Le Notti Bianche is based on a Dostoevsky story, and Visconti presents it as part-melodrama, part-humanist. Mastroianni is excellent as always and Schell, who I've only seen in a few other films without really noticing her, is the emotional backbone. But the film is really elevated from memorable to great by Visconti's direction, in much the same way All That Heaven Allows or Brief Encounter is. Like Sirk and Lean, Visconti takes his "women's" films absolutely seriously, well-aware that the themes and simple plots allow for enormous space for artistic license. This film might not be quite as good as those all-timers I mention, but it puts Visconti in the same neighborhood as a director of melodramas.

Le Notti Bianche is certainly one of the most forgotten Criterions. Released in the pre-"C" days but well after the initial rush of classics that began the DVD portion of the Criterion journey, it's since been overshadowed by Senso, which is not as good, and Visconti's masterpiece, The Leopard. His two best-known films, Rocco and His Brothers and his debut, Ossessione, based on "The Postman Always Rings Twice," are notably missing from the Collection, but I think Le Notti Bianche is as good if not better than those classics. It certainly deserves a reevaluation from the Criterion masses.

#456: The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

(Roberto Rossellini, 1966)

The Taking of Power by Louis XIV was originally made for television, which would make a lot of sense today, but seems less logical in 1966. Indeed, this is the kind of nuanced, detailed drama that has begun to thrive on television in America post-Sopranos - it might be better than The Tudors or The Borgias, but it's not far off in intention or execution.

This might be seen as condemnation of the film, and it certainly prevents it from rising to the level of Rossellini's earlier masterpieces. But TV is so good these days (or at least good TV is) that it's hardly the mediocre dying grounds it used to be, and that this film would fit in with the best is a testament to its intelligence and entertainment value. It's also a pretty interesting history lesson and philosophical exploration of power and its virtues and vices. This is slight work, to be sure, but it happens to be really really well made slight work that has a deeper message that shouldn't be overlooked.

#463: Il Generale Della Rovere

(Roberto Rossellini, 1959)

Il Generale Della Rovere belongs to the mini-genre of films about flawed, nihilistic characters who come to see the light and stick their necks out for the greater good. A disproportionate number of these movies are set during World War II, the war still often held up as the shining and untouchable example of a necessary and just fight. As far as those films go, this is one of the better ones, mainly because of two people: Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica.

Just that these two towering figures would collaborate makes the film relevant, but they are both close to the top of their game. De Sica's performance is pitch perfect, making his character's arc extremely believable and earned, while Rossellini balances between docudrama-style preciseness and poetic beauty. The end of Il Generale Della Rovere comes abruptly, but it is well-earned and moving. This is a beautiful movie about the soul of Italy at one of its darkest moments, just 15 years after the fact.

#631: The Trilogy of Life

(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971-1974)

The Trilogy of Life is the first of two big box sets Criterion will be releasing for the Holiday season, and it's arguably the higher-profile one. This would no doubt be endlessly amusing to Pasolini, as he imagines Americans all over the country exchanging his most sexual works in plastic-wrapped high-end packaging under the Christmas tree. This is not the most typical gift for the season that I can think of, but it is certainly one of the most awkward.

Of the three films, I certainly liked Arabian Nights the most, although The Decameron is probably the most entertaining and accessible film in the bunch. Those two films are head-and-shoulders above The Canterbury Tales, which is so disappointing that I'm sure it would not have received a Criterion release had it not been tied to the other two, Pasolini or not.

I am beginning to appreciate Pasolini as an iconoclast, but I have yet to be truly impressed with any of his movies. I doubt I will start with Salo, but I'll try as best I can to keep an open mind...

Links to individual reviews:

The Decameron
The Canterbury Tales
Arabian Nights

#634: Arabian Nights

(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1974)

At one point in Arabian Nights, a story is told within a story which is being told within a story within the film. This is indicative of Pasolini's third film in his Trilogy of Life, by far the best and most innovative of the three.

Like The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights is based on an iconic literary pillar of its respective culture, with an emphasis on the sexual tales. However, Arabian Nights is a much more cohesive narrative - though this is a bit misleading. After all, the story winds its way through numerous protagonists and settings, with stories told in so many layers that the movie takes on its own narrative framing, where the overarching story of the film informs the stories within it. There is just as much sexuality in Arabian Nights as the previous two films - in some ways more. And it's just as ludicrous at times, like when one character aims a penis-tipped arrow at a woman's nether regions. But Arabian Nights never feels cheesy and borderline soft-core where the others practically exalted this tone as the pinnacle of their artistic striving.

Arabian Nights isn't a great movie. It's too long, with too many side stories that aren't interesting, and it lacks compelling character development up front that would have made the core story more enjoyable and engaging. I liked watching Arabian Nights, just as I liked watching The Decameron. But I don't know how much I'll really think about this movie, despite its unique structure and enjoyable scope.

#633: The Canterbury Tales

(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972)

I did not like The Canterbury Tales. It came off like a mediocre version of The Decameron, with fewer jokes and more people farting in each other's faces. The scene in Hell, which has been much-touted and highly praised, is more impressive for the fact that it was actually made than for any quality. Maybe I'm just not a bathroom humor guy.

It's not surprising that the film would be grouped together with The Decameron as two thirds of a trilogy. Their similarities are legion: classic text adapted with an eye towards the more sexual and controversial themes and elements, a series of loosely connected stories rather than one overarching narrative, and again an unusual aesthetic and tone that walk the line between high art and low art.

But The Canterbury Tales lacks the novelty of its predecessor. Part of this is inevitable since it came second, but in reverse I suspect this movie would be seen as the failed experiment that produced the enjoyable and successful follow-up. This is because The Canterbury Tales lacks the affection and playfulness of The Decameron. It seems overly concerned with its own controversial nature, and stuck in a rut of iconoclasm without purpose.

Maybe I just don't like fart jokes, though.

#632: The Decameron

(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971)

The Decameron veers tantalizingly close to the steamy series and old features that dominated Cinemax and Showtime late at night in the 1990s. The combination of bad dubbing, almost old-man levels of sexuality, and a tie in to classic literature that walks the line between homage and excuse for "high brow" soft-core skin is all familiar to the insomniac of the pre-internet era. There was often a great deal of humor in these films to go with the nudity, making The Decameron even closer to the genre.

So what sets this film apart from those unmemorable dirty hours of content? For one, The Decameron is rather well shot - unsurprising coming from Pasolini, but strange to watch when this type of content would so typically be the realm of mediocre directors who don't know how to use their low budgets. More importantly, The Decameron is genuinely funny, with some of the stories making me laugh out loud (most notably the one in which a father feigns surprise that he has discovered his daughter in bed with a boy so that he can force the boy - who he feels comes from a good family and is a good match for his daughter - to marry her). Having lived my whole life in an era when this kind of nudity and explicit sexuality was accepted in film, I have a hard time getting behind this movie as a significant commentary on anything - though I'm sure Pasolini's decision to make a film like this seemed quite controversial at the time. But it is a fun watch for people who aren't going to be offended by things like penises, poop jokes, and nuns getting down and dirty.

#113: Big Deal on Madonna Street

(Mario Monicelli, 1958)

Big Deal on Madonna Street sits in an early, rare string of comedies in the Collection, bookended by Tati's great Hulot films and the sparkling screwball classic My Man Godfrey. The film is also the first Italian comedy in the collection (unless you count Nights of Cabiria, which anyone who has seen the final sequence should not), and it has not been joined by much company along the way. This shouldn't be much of a surprise: most Italian comedy is pretty brutal. I don't want to pile onto the Roberto Benigni-trashing bandwagon, but broad physical humor that emphasizes exaggerated caricatures in ludicrous situations gets old pretty fast.

Big Deal on Madonna Street walks the tightrope, though, and even with a few real close calls manages to make it to the other side. This is mostly because the performances are believable and mindful of keeping the characters grounded in the reality of their environment. Monicelli, who would later make the worthwhile recent Criterion addition The Organizer, certainly has a bit of that social consciousness in mind here, even if it's being used in the service of comedy. Not that this would ever be mistaken for a message picture - the film serves only to make the viewer laugh, and it got me enough times that I enjoyed watching it.

Where Big Deal on Madonna Street came up short for me was its reputation as a noir satire. The movie clearly had ancillary noir products like Rififi in mind, but that film straddled the heist and noir worlds very effectively. Big Deal on Madonna Street lacks any of the noir elements that might make it a more compelling parody of the genre. Without this edge, the film is simply a bumbling thieves farce - albeit one of the first. Many of the movies that have come after it were influenced by this, but I happened to like them better. The film ends up being a pretty brilliant, almost archetypal premise for a movie done fairly well, which makes for a worthwhile Criterion entry but not necessarily classic status.