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SCREENING LOG
-3/22-3/28, 2004
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/
YES - Among BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION, this is
the least self-conscious and most gleeful in leaping into
the fathomless chasm of Charlie Kaufman's imagination, and
in doing so it acheves an emotional resonance not found in
the films helmed by Spike Jonze (I wonder if this emotional
heft is due to Kaufman's evolution as a screenwriter or to
a talent on Gondry's part that Jonze relatively lacks). As
with the other Kaufman scripted films, the performances are
all top-notch, everyone burrowing into their roles and effacing
their star personas to wonderful ensemble effect. There's
always a kind of novelty factor to Kaufman's scripts that
risk wearing off with time and familiarity, but for now this
one had me hooked all the way.
The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057427/
yes - sort of hard to get into despite the very moving and
chilling opening; Anthony Perkins cast as Joseph K amidst
a slew of European actors was a bit jarring with his golly-gee
line readings, but the film moves in a way that's both jaunty
and lugubrious, with a portentous melancholy air hanging about
it that's very Communist Bloc Eastern European, not to mention
Wellesian. This could be a major Welles film, testifying to
his career-long sense of entrapment, with some astounding,
vast interior visuals that anticipate Kubrick. And yet, somehow
the Welles films of '50-65 don't hold as much a sway over
me as what preceded and followed -- maybe it's the prints
I see, but they all strike me as murky. For now I'll just
assert that Romy Scheider is De-licious!
He Walked by Night (1948, Anthony Mann)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040427/
yes - Probably the least psychological of the five Anthony
Mann films I've seen, this is sort of a Hitchcock movie without
the Freudian sexual stuff, leaving the focus almost completely
on the cat-and-mouse machinations between a brilliant criminal
and the detectives out to snare him. Did Carol Reed rip off
the brilliant sewer chase ending of this film for THE THIRD
MAN?
Raw Deal (1948, Anthony Mann)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040723/
YES - Somehow I like this more than the more-touted OUT OF
THE PAST -- another film where the hero tries to overcome
the oppressive spectre of his seedy boss; another love triangle
with the characters themselves not sure of what they really
want, what desires and emotional loyalties really bind them.
Mann's direction is clean and clear, less mannered but no
less potent than Tourneur's microscopic tonal shades of gray.
Claire Trevor is put to much better use here than in KEY LARGO,
shifting from being the object of condescending pity to being
the subject of deeply conflicted emotions through which the
viewer experiences the story.
Utamaro and His Five Women (1946, Kenji Mizoguchi)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039074/
YES (and maybe another YES pending re-viewing) - I now have
a third film to weigh alongside STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS
and SANSHO THE BAILIFF as the best Mizoguchi film (UGETSU
doesn't quite make it up there). Of these three, UTAMARO has
the most dynamic narrative, juggling several stories and milieus,
not unlike two other Mizo masterpieces SISTERS OF THE GION
and STREET OF SHAME, and it has a casual feel to it that's
less typical of Mizo's stoically melodramatic odes to secular
suffering; it's more reminiscent of the playful multi-character
studies of human interaction one finds in Ozu, Fellini or
Altman. But throughout the bustling plot there are plenty
of startlingly prescient Mizoguchian moments of inner reflection
and melancholy among the characters -- an upstart painter
who stares at a painting after he's just had his ass handed
to him in a painter's duel; the jaw-droppingly graceful image
of a woman staggering along a riverbank after learning of
her man's infidelity... The story tackles the mysterious dynamics
between art and life, possession and transience, men and women
in a way that seems to touch on a deep personal significance
to the director.
Mon Oncle (1958, Jacques Tati)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050706/
yes - not consistent enough for me to merit unqualified praise,
but fascinating in its depiction of the transition of French
society from a quaint and squalid, village-like sense of community
to the antiseptic spaces of modernity... and by the time we
get to PLAYTIME it's evident how much the latter has steamrolled
over the former... and how much, by the time we get to PLAYTIME,
Tati's artistry has risen to meet the challenge. Here Tati
seems unsure of whether his film is narrative or non-narrative;
one can say the same of Chaplin but somehow the Tramp had
a way of pulling it off more seamlessly.
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