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SCREENING LOG
-3/15-3/21, 2004
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Force of Evil (1948, Abraham Polonsky)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040366
This movie has some of the most beautifully written and
delivered dialogues I've ever heard. The rhythms and repetitions
of street talk elevated to the level of Shakespeare. You could
teach an entire semester of English grammar with this movie's
abundant assonance, consonance and alliteration. The acting
and story were good too: as with BODY AND SOUL (another John
Garfield vehicle scripted by Polonsky) it's about a prize
protege -- this time a corporate lawyer -- who's on the brink
of turning his back on all his loved ones for the sake of
the big score. In the lead role Garfield gives a more powerful
and less deliberate Hamlet-in-moral-crisis performance than
Olivier. Small-scale but blessed with some really potent moments
of moral confrontation.
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969, Abraham Polonsky)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065079/
After 20 years on the Hollywood blacklist Polonsky got to
direct his second and last feature, with Robert Blake and
Katherine Ross as a pair of fugitive Native American lovers
being chased by sheriff Robert Redford. The performances are
pretty good all around (except for Ross, lamentably in darkface);
it's watchable but never totally engrossing, an awkward mix
of perfunctory romantic-outlaws-on-the-run sequences with
long scenes of white people talking. Overall it just lacks
focus, other than the standard liberal white-guilt message
of Native American genocide.
Hamlet (1948, Laurence Olivier) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040416/
Handsome and effective if rather static version of that play.
I want to say that it takes itself too seriously, but it doesn't
quite become ridiculous. The brooding tracking shots down
hallways and across rooms are interesting and a bit ostentatious.
An entertaining film, neither stately dull nor intriguingly
personal, and not quite vivifying enough to recharge my long-flagging
interest in the source material and its author.
The Return (2003, Andrei Zvyagintsev)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376968/
Two boys warily welcome the return of their father, absent
for 12 years, who immediately takes them out on a fateful
boating and camping excursion during which he inflicts abuses
upon them. Very little is explained as to why the father was
absent or why he acts like such a jerk -- he's simply a given
that the two boys have to deal with however they can. This
abstract situation resonates remarkably with the mystery of
a child's kind of awareness, how they act within a limited
scope of understanding. The long Tarkovskian takes of bleak
landscapes add to the sense of metaphysical portent. The ending
is undeniably powerful in its brutal primacy, with a kind
of political connotation to be discerned as well about the
spectral power of authoritarian governments, even those that
have crumbled. If we can only figure out how to pronounce
the director's name, we can assert that this is a most promising
start to his career.
Macbeth (1948, Orson Welles)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040558/
Eh... it's good and has that typical Wellesian caffeinated
energy to it. THRONE OF BLOOD is definitely more memorable
and cinematically more inspired, if only because it doesn't
feel saddled by an obligation to re-enacting the original
dialogue.
Echoes (2002, Atsushi Funahashi)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317403/
A quiet, Jarmuschian tale about a lower East Side prostitute
who hitches a ride out of town with a couple of Italians and
ends up confronting her mother in Virginia about an unknown
sibling. The main character seems to be trying to confront
a giant void in her life that she can never fully grasp --
I wonder how much her family secret really is behind her sense
of emptiness, or if it is just something she tries to use
as an alibi for the void she feels. The bleak black and white
cinematography lingers on silence and empty spaces -- the
wide, long-take style is bold, in a calm, cool, detached way.
Funahashi, a Japanese transplant with an outsider's eye on
American life, is a talent to watch.
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