SCREENING LOG - 9/09-9/15, 2002

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I watched IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART II, THE FIREMAN'S BALL, NANOOK OF THE NORTH, THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL and THE THIEF OF BAGDAD. In order of preference:

Nanook of the North (1922, Robert Flaherty)

This immortal film documenting the ordinary and extraordinary travails of an Eskimo family is, as we all know, the movie that made feature documentaries into a commercially viable enterprise, thus leading to the full-fledged development of that storied genre. Whether this film can be categorized as a strict "documentary" has long been debated, since Flaherty staged many of the scenarios and presented the Eskimo lifestyle as being more primitive than it actually was at the time. I find this debate ultimately intractable, and would much rather praise this film for being an amazing achievement by any standard: direct, dramatic, and heart-warmingly human. Stunning footage of the artic landscape sets the stage for a number of brilliant sequences that give the action a thrilling sense of existential import: the walrus hunt sequence has a poetry that transcends its anthropological purpose; the final scene is both literally and figuratively chilling. This is an immensely watchable, exciting and ultimately moving experience, by any standard.

The Thief of Bagdad (1924, Raoul Walsh)

The biggest movie surprise for me this week was my being swept away by this highly accomplished adventure fantasy inspired by the Arabian Nights. A dazzling succession of spectacular sets, old school special effects, and barrelfuls of romance and good humor to swash the buckles makes this a grand entertainment. Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who spends a good part of the movie topless, offers plenty of robust charisma in the lead role, flexing muscles as he climbs ropes and walls while vanquishing the ladies with his invincible grin. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK seems cruel, self-important and redundant compared to this action masterpiece that is both breathtaking and fun, classic Hollywood in the best sense.

Ivan the Terrible Part II (1946, Sergei Eisenstein)

I didn't thrill to the second chapter of Eisenstein's unfinished trilogy of one of Russia's greatest tyrant, perhaps because the dizzying stylization of the first episode wasn't pushed even further to the extreme as I was somehow hoping; instead the film recedes to the shadows as Ivan consolidates his power with conscience-racking cruelty. As such it is considered by some to be a bolder, more direct statement of Joseph Stalin's regime than the first episode, but I just didn't find those issues expressed vividly enough for me to love it as much as I did Part I. Still, both movies must be seen to be believedÑthey really feel like they come from another world, insular and ingrown, stifling with visual paranoia: perhaps the perfect cinematic embodiment of postwar Russia.

The Fireman's Ball (1967, Milos Forman)

The fire station of a Czech town holds a fundraising party with a raffle and beauty contest that go terribly wrong due to bureaucratic (or just plain human) ineptness. Milos Forman's social satire is black with two lumps of sugar; his often hilarious perceptions of man's foibles amount to good-natured cruelty. Some liken this film as an Eastern Bloc version of Jacques Tati; and while I don't find it as archly constructed as Tati's films, I didn't find it as warm to humanity either; in that sense it more closely resembled the casual condescension of Billy Wilder; there's something very bitter at the bottom of this movie that is barely cloaked in its benevolent ribbing of its buffoonish cast. Somehow it manages to charm in spite of (or perhaps because of) its way of painting its characters with a thick brush dipped in crude oil.

The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismaki)

A young woman leads a desolate existence until circumstances begin to light a match inside her, which ignites into murder. This is the first film I've seen by Kaurismaki, who incidentally won the Best Director Prize at Cannes this year. I'll have to see more to get a better grasp of what makes him unique; watching this film it was almost too easy to bring other films and directors as reference points: most obviously Bresson (cf. MOUCHETTE) but also the distanced melodrama of Fassbinder, the moral complications of Kieslowski, even the masochistic feminist mazeplots of Zhang Yimou. Judged on its own terms, this film is as good as any of theirs, the only real fault I can find with it is that the story, its outcome and its meaning all feel pre-designed. However, I have this same qualm from time to time with the other directors (and Bresson, -perhaps ironically since he was the most formally rigorous, was probably the only one among them to transcend his structural limitations on a regular basis).

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