SCREENING LOG - 2/04--2/10, 2002

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I watched Ordet, Body and Soul, Les Vampires 1-4, Mother and Son, The Bandwagon and Chinatown. In order of preference:

Ordet (1953, Carl Dreyer)

Simply put, this is one of the greatest depictions of a family ever filmed. A seven-member family in a heavily religious community goes about its business until disaster brings about an earth-shattering reckoning with God. Dreyer's camera technique, may seem like "filmed theater" at first, but his meticulous long panning takes connect the characters even as they fail to connect to each other; it's the closest a director has come to touching the hand of God. As we share in their space, the family grows on us both as individuals and as members of a collective unit, with "God" as the unseen missing member; that is, until his unexpected arrival brings forth an event that challenges the assumptions and beliefs of everyone, including the audience. A work borne of boldness and compassion, ORDET is a meditation on faith, love and family without equal.

Les Vampires (1915, Louis Feuillade)

After much debate with others on the aesthetic and historical merits of this 10-part serial involving a mysterious crime spree that sweeps through Paris, I decided to revisit the first four episodes, and found even more to like this time than my first viewing. The endless succession of multiple disguises, trapdoors and out-the-window exits, and plots within plots creates a self-contained funhouse with infinite rooms for play. Scenes like the first Vampire entrace, silhouetted in a doorframe, and the bat dancer's dance of death, are enough to affix the film in one's cinematic memory. You can take your token pedestal giants Griffith and Eisenstein -- my silent hero is cinema's best kept secret. This is uquestionably one of the major landmarks of the crime film, of the silent film, of all film.

Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)

One of my favorite films as a child, it enthralls and terrifies me even more as an adult. One of the most perfect screenplays ever written (by Robert Towne) charts the convoluted path of a fallible private detective as his stubborn quest for the truth, informed by a hard-edged cynicism, leads to the undoing of himself, a mysterious woman he comes to love, and the city they live in. Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, as the leads, were never better; neither was Roman Polanski, whose assiduous craft leaves no room for doubt when we are faced with the conclusion in all its ugliness.

Mother and Son (1997, Alexander Sokurov)

The living heir to the legacy of Tarkovsky is Alexander Sokurov, who takes Tarkovsky's meticulously meditative aesthetics to an even greater level of abstraction. This 73 minute account of the last moments between a mother and son has minimal plot and maximum beauty. There isn't a single shot in the film that is less than gorgeous, filled with color and obscured with a mysterious haze. Use of a distorting anamorphic lens also effectively conveys the painful torment of the mother in her death throes. One of the closest things I've seen to cinema-as-painting, and painting of the highest order at that.

Body and Soul (1925, Oscar Micheaux)

A highly provocative and fascinating work of social criticism by the first major Black American filmmaker, starring the indomitable Paul Robeson as an ex-con turned preacher who uses the power of the church to commit his atrocious crimes. Micheaux's social agenda realized as persuasively (and problematically) as D.W. Griffith; so powerful that Micheaux had to cut 8/9 of the film to get its release! Overall it's a rich piece of filmmaking, a must-see for anyone interested in American silent film.

The Bandwagon (1953, Vincente Minnelli)

Was this the pinnacle of the Hollywood musical, or the threshold of its decline? For me, a bit of both. It's a well-meaning and often vibrant attempt to celebrate the melding of vaudeville, theater and ballet into the movie musical comedy, but its ambitions ultimately outpace its abilities. Fred Astaire is great, but he just doesn't hold up in color the way he does in glamorous black-and-white, and his presence adds a sense of desperation to the proceedings, an acute awareness that obsolescence is waiting around the corner. Still, it's a fine way of going out, and both "The Girl Hunt" and Cyd Charisse's legs ensure this movie's place in musicals history.

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