SCREENING LOG -3/8-3/14, 2004

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Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019760/

YES (barely -- contrary to what I had assumed, it's not that much better than BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY -- this time I couldn't discern a line of thematic development, which is less than what I can say for Ruttmann's film (which actually may have too much of a thematic through-line, the film ends up buckling under its weight).

Take Out (2004, Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391483/

mixed (the production story is a true inspiration though)

15 (2003, Royston Tan)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0344766/

yes (close to YES)

Bright Future (2003, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363235/

mixed (Kurosawa's deadpan tone can be as impenetrable as it is refreshing. Maybe a second viewing will help me get into this more. I have the same difficulty with Imamura sometimes, and this film feels like it was directed by Imamura -- the poisonous jellyfish let loose in Tokyo's water supply is something Imamura could have conceived).

A Good Lawyer's Wife (2003, Im Sang-soo)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372782/

YES (only saw half of this though; another person who saw it said however that it gets ugly in the second half, and didn't shake him from the impression that Korean cinema is among the most misogynistic in the world).

The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927, G.W. Pabst) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018087/

yes

Pandora's Box (1929, G.W. Pabst) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018737/

YES (Basically my YES is for Louise Brooks. Her presence in this film is beyond description. She's just so liberated, and her power to unlock the libidos of everyone around her is utterly compelling. On the other hand this time I was watching it -- and JEANNE NEY -- specifically for Pabst's cinematic qualities, which are flashier and more lyrical in JEANNE NEY. Perhaps with PANDORA'S BOX Brooks was enough of an eyeful that Pabst didn't feel the need to dress it up anymore with his camerawork. As it is, I'm not sure that I would call Pabst an auteur; though I've found all four of the movies of his that I've seen very memorable, I'm not sure what it is that drives him as an artist)

The School of Rock (2003, Richard Linklater) third viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332379/

still yes

Key Largo (1948, John Huston) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040506/

yes (Huston does an impressive job making this look far less stagy than it could have been - excellent handling of tone and dissection of space. Not sure which character is more of a weary stereotype, Claire Trevor's damaged goods drunk or Edward G. Robinson's gangster bully)

The Bicycle Thief (1948, Vittorio DeSica) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040522/

YES (I think DeSica's greatest and worst asset was Zavattini's bulletproof writing -- when you have a script this good it has a way of making the director subservient to it, hence how much this resembles a William Wyler or Carol Reed movie without the production values. This is not to say that DeSica doesn't have his own gifts -- like Reed he's very good at moving things along and making things look busy, shooting street scenes for expressionistic effect. The way crowds swarm imperceptibly around a hapless individual, the extraordinary father-son relationship and the overall tone of tender social outrage of this film are traits one finds later on in Spielberg. It's just hard to see any ideas that he brings to the picture that aren't already in the script.

Faust (1926, F.W. Murnau) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016847/

YES (I still feel the second half is kind of a letdown but the imagination of the first half is immense)

La Terra Trema (1948, Luchino Visconti) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040866/

YES YES (the only way I could see this again was with an unsubtitled copy, and it turned out to be a tremendous blessing, because it was closer to the way this film was intended for its Italian audience to see it, not totally understanding the Sicilian dialect spoken by the characters. In fact not understanding Visconti's voice-over narration of the events may be another blessing, in that one is then confronted directly with the rawness of the images and sounds, and then it becomes apparent that this is Visconti's PLAYTIME, the rhthyms, the sound and the music of a community captured in such an unprecedented way that Visconti had to slap a voiceover narration on it so people could understand what they were seeing (could one imagine Tati doing the same?). No matter, the breakthrough is still there. If Visconti's cinema often gets described as opera, then this for me is the film of his that most closely attains my own appreciation of Italian opera -- knowing the story is helpful but is ultimately secondary to feeling the direct impact of the medium. And for me this is the closest Visconti got to attaining pure cinema, yes even moreso than THE LEOPARD.

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