Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. VI

Short thoughts on: Stanley Kramer • Howard Hawks • Vivre sa vie • Anatomy of a Murder • John Ford • The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Mouchette • Young Mr. Lincoln • Ordet • Jules and Jim

Here we are with another collection of IMDb comments, my sixth in about as many years (albeit my second in two months, so maybe you can expect more in the near future). As we move back in time, here we reach the period where I was really posting on those board prolifically, watching many movies and eager to share my thoughts in the primary forum I used at the time. While the previous (or should I say, chronologically, next?) round-up featured a lot of European films, here I seem to be at least as much focused on American classics. What do you think of these movies? Do you agree/disagree with my judgments? Since this was almost a decade ago, I'm not sure how frequently I concur with my conclusions, but it is interesting to revisit these earlier opinions.

Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. IV

Short thoughts on: Love Exposure • Batman: Mask of the Phantasm • Kwaidan • The Honeymoon Killers • Richard Linklater • Les Bonnes Femmes • Running on Empty • Phantom of the Cinematheque • Out 1

My response to Boyhood, The Giver, and the recent spate of "death of adulthood" articles is almost entirely written but won't be ready in time for Monday morning. Hence I'll hold off on it till next week and present some oldies instead. For the fourth time (but the first in two years) I am collecting IMDb comments (mostly) left many moons ago during the era when those boards were my main online cinematic stomping ground. Most notably, my first response to the epic and enigmatic Out 1 is recorded below: I wrote these words in the immediate afterglow of a very memorable screening. Enjoy. (And if you do, make sure to check out the previous round-ups.) Disclaimer: my opinions circa 2007 are not necessarily still mine although I suppose I wouldn't re-post them if I didn't think they had some merit (even if 2014 me disagrees with their premises).

Visions of Filmmaking: 2 quotes from Truffaut & Godard

 Overheard in the documentary Two in the Wave (2010)

Jules and Jim

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

Even fifty years later, there aren't too many films like Jules and Jim. It exists as freely on its own terms as its mercurial heroine Catherine. Like her, it does not linger dutifully over necessities or continuities (in this sense, Manny Farber's classification of the film as "white elephant" art is confusing). It is restless, impatient, yet it can also luxuriate in a moment if the mood is right. It blows hot and cold: some passages are lyrical, others are exhausting or exhausted. This correspondence is ironic because, while evoking her essence in style, the film also conveys the impression that Catherine is unknowable. Her smile is as sphinxlike as that statue; Jules and Jim seem to pin her down convincingly, yet she's always leaping overboard to prove them wrong. Nonetheless, the title characters continue to explain her, to themselves, to one another, to their other women, even to Catherine herself, and she continues to act in impulsive defiance, into the fatal last reel. Essentially, Jules and Jim embodies Catherine's spirit in form, but that same spirit eludes it in content - the shape of the movie tells us more about who she is than she herself does.

Remembering the Movies, Oct. 15 - 21

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

This is a week of outlaws, villains, and renegades - some good, some very bad. Quite a few gangsters, a dictator, and even Satan himherself make appearances, yet there's still room for more ambiguous or even positive rebels, ranging from a vigilante-fleeing hoodlum to a couple precocious punker girls. There are mavericks behind the camera as well: a silent clown taking on the world's leading tyrant, an Establishment-loathing Frenchman paying tribute to the American crime films that inspired him (wait, make that two Establishment-loathing Frenchmen), and another French citizen - this time a Frenchwoman - not only shooting pictures but establishing a studio on American soil. Vive la français (et les diaboliques)!

Three by Truffaut

In my introduction to "Reading the Movies," I noted the titles I was reading at the moment. Among the Kael, Sarris, and sundry I declined to mention The Films of My Life by François Truffaut, which I've been reading off and on since April. I already transcribed the marvellous introduction; as for the rest of the book, I'm cool on some of Truffaut's criticism. At times he becomes too absorbed by plot descriptions (which, possibly due to translation, become cumbersome and hard to follow), at others his epigrams seem too obscure (I know, I know, I'm one to talk...). But unlike Truffaut's films, which I can only enjoy from a distance like Moses viewing the promised land, there are passages in his writing which leap from the page and hit me where it hurts - in a good way. Following are three wonderful essays which I've reproduced here for your enjoyment. So making their online debut (to my knowledge):

"Citizen Kane: The Fragile Giant" - Fantastic tribute to one of the greatest movies of all time, not from a perspective of technical admiration but of zealous, totally enraptured enthusiasm (and with a focus on the characters and story, which is also how I first knew and loved Kane - and in some ways, still do).

"Muriel" - Slightly bewildered appreciation of the Resnais film, with a great Hitchcock anecdote. Hitch's punchline, Truffaut's closing paragraph, and the film in question are all somewhat mystifying though I like the first two more than the third.

"Roberto Rossellini Prefers Real Life" - Tip of the hat to a very unique filmmaker, a man Truffaut worked for (much of the essay is devoted to personal reminisces). Years later, he still seems to be astonished by Rossellini's distractible intensity; Truffaut's tone is simultaneously admiring and disbelieving.

What Do Critics Dream About?

by Francois Truffaut (from the introduction to The Films of My Life, published 1975):

One day in 1942, I was so anxious to see Marcel Carne's Les Visiteurs du Soir, which at last had arrived at my neighborhood theater, the Pigalle, that I decided to skip school. I liked it a lot. But that same evening, my aunt, who was studying violin at the Conservatory, came by to take me to a movie; she had picked Les Visiteurs du Soir. Since I didn't dare admit that I had already seen it, I had to go and pretend that I was seeing it for the first time. That was the first time I realized how fascinating it can be to probe deeper and deeper into a work one admires, that the exercise can go so far as to create the illusion of reliving the creation.