FINAL Lost in the Movies Patreon podcast • Episode 100 - Concluding the 10s & Reaching the 20s w/ 12 Films in Focus: The Tree of Life as Twin Peaks Cinema, The Lighthouse w/ guest Riley MacDonald, The Fabelmans, Avatar: The Way of Water, Moonlight, The Master, The Act of Killing, Amour, The Florida Project, The Turin Horse, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Toni Erdmann, 40s/30s/silent archive readings of Kiss of Death, Bambi, The Magnificent Ambersons, Three Comrades, The Mind Reader, The Battleship Potemkin, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Be Kind Rewind, Landmarks of Early Film + feedback & more

For most of this year, I've been promising a grand finale to the patron podcast that began in January 2018. This episode also doubles as a conclusion to the decades series launched in August 2023, in which I initially covered films from the 1980s and then stretched out in either direction, finally reaching the 2010s and 1950s in Episode 99. The bulk of the movies discussed in those earlier episodes were given the capsule treatment (less than ten minutes, often less than five, dwelling on just a few aspects); this time, every single topic is a "film in focus" with my review running at least fifteen minutes, in many cases in half hour, and in a few even longer than that. These dozen films wrap up the teens decade and tiptoe into the twenties with two relatively new releases - Avatar: The Way of Water and The Fablemans - which I saw in theaters earlier this year, and which pair up nicely given their complementary contrasts. The line-up also includes a guest discussion with Riley MacDonald on Robert Eggers' crusty psychological horror flick The Lighthouse and one last "Twin Peaks Cinema" analysis, comparing the David Lynch/Mark Frost series, especially but not exclusively the third season, to The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's epic meditation setting a fifties Texas childhood against the backdrop of the creation of the universe. While a couple selections are fairly random (The Master and The Florida Project), six of the other titles were specifically selected because they are the most acclaimed films from the decade that I'd never seen before: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Toni Erdmann, The Turin Horse, Amour, Moonlight, and The Act of Killing.

All of those reflections are packed into a single massive upload (my longest single podcast file) that was finally published a few days ago as a belated October $1/month tier reward; however, I'm cross-posting the whole Episode 100 separately from my monthly round-up because it actually spans several months. I released a set of public archival readings earlier in the year (extending the decades theme in the other direction by sharing pieces I'd previously written about forties, thirties, and silent cinema), and a couple months ago I published the opening of the podcast, an intro with some updates and a long gathering of listener (and viewer and reader) feedback. Though I intended to end that section before Episode 100, I received so many interesting responses in the spring and summer that I wanted to give it one last go. Altogether, the entire package runs over eight and a half hours. If you've not yet become a patron, keep in mind that by joining you'll be able to access not only this whole episode but an archive spanning half a decade including much material that was never made public. The monthly round-up will be presented in a few days but for now, the focus is on this farewell to one of my longest running endeavors...

The Olympic Films, part 7 of 7: Summer 1928 / 1924 / 1912 (+ 1920 & 1896 - 1908 bonus) & Winter 2010 / 2014 / 2018 / 2022 (broadcast)

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for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules

running from August 2021 to February 2022

The Olympic Films, part 6 of 7: Summer 1952 / 1948 / 1936 (+ 1932 bonus) & Winter 1998 / 2002 / 2006

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for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules

running from August 2021 to February 2022

The Olympic Films, part 4 of 7: Summer 1976 / 1972 / 1968 & Winter 1972 / 1976 / 1980

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for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules

running from August 2021 to February 2022

The Olympic Films, part 1 of 7: Summer 2021 (broadcast) / 2016 / 2012 / 2008 & Winter 1924 / 1928 / 1936 (+ 1932 bonus)

Visit the full directory

for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules

running from August 2021 to February 2022

belated March 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #26 - Season 2 Episode 18 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #77 - Blue Velvet in Twin Peaks Cinema, Opening the Archive & Twin Peaks Reflections (w/ Jean framing Cooper) + Film in Focus: Blue Velvet Revisited documentary (+ more Twin Peaks Reflections: Denise, Betty & the Briggs home, Dead Dog Farm & more)

I never realized how much I'd discussed Blue Velvet before - and how much I still had to say about it - until composing this multipart podcast (and assembling the public episode on Blue Velvet as a standalone film, which is a tie-in to this). David Lynch's eighties breakthrough was the movie which took him from being an avant-garde cult-figure (beginning to turn semi-mainstream director-for-hire) to a full-blown auteur whose name could be used as a commonly understood adjective. The story of a curious young man discovering dark sexual and criminal secrets in an all-American small town (or small city?), the 1986 feature also directly paved the way for his 1990 TV series which was both enabled by Blue Velvet's success and dependent upon borrowing and expanding narrative and stylistic aspects of the previous work. Those ties are the focus of my longest "Twin Peaks Cinema" discussion ever - challenged only by my episode on Mulholland Drive - but the subject spills out into other parts of the episode as well. In my "Twin Peaks Reflections" section, I relate a routine second season subplot to the ostensibly less genre-focused Velvet. And when I opened my archive to revisit my previous coverage of the film, I had so much material that in addition to reading three full essays in the main episode I had to spin off three decent-sized bonus episodes too.

When I watched the Criterion Collection blu-ray, I was surprised to discover that I'd never actually seen the bonus avant-garde documentary Blue Velvet Revisited, even though I'd wanted to for years. In fact I was so taken with this particular work - a gorgeous Super 8 restoration of footage shot on the North Carolina location in the mid-eighties alongside black-and-white photos, recordings of cast and crew talking off the cuff, and latter-day moody music and editing flourishes - that I devoted an entire "Film in Focus" section to it. Not only the peek behind the scenes of this unique production but the aching exploration of another era and its zeitgeist completely captivated me, sparking personal as well as cinematic musings. Inspired simply by the realization that my scheduled March "Reflections" subject, just a few minutes of material for the podcast, would include Blue Velvet, I ended up assembling a sprawling analysis of/meditation on a Lynch project that has both fascinated and frustrated me for years. It took a couple weeks for me to catch up and my "Lost in Twin Peaks" podcast also got delayed in the mix, although this allowed it to go up on the episode's thirtieth anniversary. Hopefully you find all of this worth the wait and have some of your own thoughts to share.

Lost in the Movies patron episode #77: Blue Velvet in Twin Peaks Cinema, Opening the Archive & Twin Peaks Reflections (w/ Jean framing Cooper) + Film in Focus: Blue Velvet Revisited (+ more Twin Peaks Reflections: Denise, Betty & Briggs home, Dead Dog Farm & more)

Blue Velvet archives: videos/podcasts (patron episode #77 bonus - 1 of 3)

Blue Velvet archives: Twin Peaks connections (patron episode #77 bonus - 2 of 3)

Blue Velvet archives: other connections (patron episode #77 bonus - 3 of 3)

Lost in Twin Peaks #26 - S2E18 (On the Wings of Love/"Episode 25")

Status update + NOW AVAILABLE: Lost in Twin Peaks #20 - S2E12 (The Black Widow/"Episode 19") open to all patrons

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a film inside of a film inside of a film. It encloses its various narratives, nesting them inside other narratives using a particular kind of dramatic twist - one that demolishes our initial context  - as a method of disorientation. Filmmakers from Alfred Hitchcock to M. Night Shymalan and David Lynch (who will definitely come up a couple more times in this review) walk the same crooked path this silent German Expressionist horror film paved. The power of the twist-trick, a gimmick at worst, an epiphany at best, is that nothing is the same afterwards: it doesn't only change our perception of whatever particular detail it skews, it makes us question everything - including the twist itself. Caligari is not the neatest use of the device, and at times it can feel clumsy, incomplete, or on-the-nose. But it is one of the most ambitious deployments of the twist (there are several twists, in fact) and one of the most deeply rooted in a profound historical moment.

The Favorites - Pandora's Box (#75)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Pandora's Box (1929/Germany/dir. G.W. Pabst) appeared at #75 on my original list.

What it is • Lulu just wants to have fun. Despite this seemingly simple motivation, she holds immense fascination for us as well as the characters onscreen. Her troubled past (there are intimations of both extreme neglect and abuse as a child) drives her into a hungry, unapologetic enjoyment of the present: cheerfully embracing various lovers, refusing to be tossed off as a diversion, always eager for excitement and sensation. The first hour of the film charts Lulu's rise from chorus girl to wife of her wealthy patron, and the second hour follows her fall through a variety of different locations and situations. This suggests an epic scale but Pandora's Box is more accurately described as a series of intimate moments despite quite a few crowded setpieces (the stage production, the wedding, the trial, the gambling barge). G.W. Pabst's direction is characterized by precision and focus, avoiding Murnau's ambitious scope or Lang's towering monumentalism in favor of detail and gesture. Above all, Pandora's Box is centered around the face of Louise Brooks. Film history is littered with star vehicles, many of which probably feature those stars in a greater quantity of close-ups or even screentime. Yet I'm hard-pressed to think of many other movies so utterly defined by the screen presence at their center. Pandora's Box is based on the iconic plays of Franz Wedekind, who turned Lulu into a cultural icon in Germany, and Pabst was a widely-respected director of silent cinema. In theory, the film should not be reducible to its star. And yet whenever Louise Brooks is on screen, it's as if everything else exists as a frame for her charisma. Which is...

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Faust (#91)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Faust (1926/Germany/dir. F.W. Murnau) appeared at #91 on my original list.

What it is • Faust (Gosta Ekman), an aged alchemist, hovers over his books and contraptions in a narrowed, clustered abbey. When a plague spreads through his village - depicted as a billowing black mist rolling through the steeples and gabled rooftops like a diseased avalanche - the doctor despairs of a cure and sells his soul to the devil for the good of mankind. Meeting Mephistophales (Emil Jannings) at the proverbial crossroads, he'll eventually sign a contract in blood. Sure enough, his healing powers increase - but so does his horror of crucifixes, leading the ungrateful villagers to discover his secret and stone him out of town. From there he embarks on a whirlwind journey, regaining his youth and soaring on a magic cloak to foreign lands where he will seduce princesses, brood atop volcanoes, and eventually depart for his beloved home for a romantic springtime interlude (chasing his beloved Gretchen - Camilla Horn - in a dewy glen) which will predictably be all too brief. Tragedy, misunderstanding, and betrayal ensue. Did the alchemist seal his doom with his crimson signature, or will love conquer all in the flames of martyrdom? Faust, F.W. Murnau's last film in Germany, is an Expressionist masterpiece - all iconic, exaggerated figures and fog shot through with beams of light and craggy, crooked sets - but it finds time to savor the human moment as well as go for the grand effects.

Why I like it •

Metropolis ("The Tower of Babel")

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.

Well, here we are again - "The Big Ones" has resumed after a two-week break. From now on, I'll be posting rapid-fire, twice a day since these entries have been written ahead of time. Part of the reason I took my extended break, besides blogger burnout, was ambivalence about the series mission. I think it's a great idea to grapple with the warhorses of cinema history, but sometimes it can be difficult to find something to say. Not necessarily because so much has been said already (I feel everyone has their own unique perspective to articulate, and that they will notice things or make connections others have not) - but because I don't always respond strongly to the work in question. "The Big Ones" is not "The Favorites" (though I'd like to do that series too someday) despite some overlap. To be honest, I probably would not repeat the exercise, as there's a "forced" quality to the viewing - even the ones I normally enjoy - that can make it more of a chore than a pleasure, though I hope the pieces themselves have been enjoyable.

Metropolis is a no-brainer for inclusion in such an exercise. It's a hugely famous film, maybe the most famous of the silent era, and its influence on science fiction, one of the most popular screen genres, has been immense. It's one of the two or three most celebrated films of an iconic auteur, Fritz Lang, whose very visage screams "film director" with only Erich von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille as rivals. And it's part of one of the key national movements in film history, German Expressionism, with its lavish sets, moody lighting, and stylized acting. However, to be perfectly honest, I've never been crazy about Metropolis. I love many of the images and sequences but as a whole it fails to capture me. The story is not particularly enticing and so much of the movie revolves around the narrative; individual set pieces get to soar skyward but there's always some plot development or expositional sequence to bring the film back down to earth. The fault is probably with me, for missing some key connection that everyone else is getting, but there it is. There are other Langs I like way more (Die Nibelungen particularly strikes my fancy) and really, I'm much more a Murnau guy anyway.

However, for two or three minutes Metropolis completely sucks me under its spell. That's the passage I want to discuss right now, by far my favorite sequence in the movie: Maria's mesmerizing reimagining of the Tower of Babel, delivered during a sermon to desperate workers who slave away in the underground factory that keeps Metropolis humming.

The Lives of Others

#66 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series counting down the most acclaimed films of the previous decade.

Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a top Stasi agent, not the kind whose flashy skills and pride draw attention to himself, but the kind who quietly and methodically does his job, never questions authority, and seems to actually believe in the principles he operates under – or at least has never given them enough thought to really object. Then again, it’s hard to tell; the very reticence which makes him an ideal snoop and a hard-to-read interrogator means that we can’t quite be sure what’s going on in his mind: is he a loyal soldier, or merely someone who knows his place? German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s debut film, the 2006 winner for Best Foreign Film, The Lives of Others is about Wiesler’s slipping grasp on his own stoic rigidity, internal and consequentially external as well. The suggestive title conflates state-sanctioned snooping with sympathetic voyeurism, and indeed as Wiesler spies on a bourgeois artist couple, playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), his impassive surveillance gives way to emotional involvement – eventually one will have to give in to the other. Village Voice critic J. Hoberman has astutely noted the similarity to Wim Wenders’ seminal Wall- era Wings of Desire, writing, “No less than Bruno Ganz’s empathetic seraphim, Wiesler longs to be human.” Indeed, after listening in on a robust lovemaking session, Wiesler orders himself a home visit from a busy (and buxom) prostitute; though perhaps physically satisfying, it doesn’t quite scratch the spiritual itch Wiesler has been developing. Perhaps more telling is an encounter on an elevator just prior. A little boy, bouncing a ball casually asks Wiesler if he’s “really Stasi”; asked if he knows what this even means, the boy inadvertently informs on his father’s bilious characterization of the secret police. “What is the name of your f-” Wiesler stops himself, and pauses: “…of your ball?” The little boy chuckles and runs off, not knowing how close he came to turning the old man in. And Wiesler probably wonders what possessed him to show mercy, a quality he may not even have realized was within his power until now.

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

“Shooting and f*cking are the same thing.” – Member of the Red Army Faction, a German left-wing terrorist group, in response to a Jordanian guerrilla who tells them to stop sunbathing nude at the training camp.

Of such surreal juxtapositions is 1960s radicalism made, at least in the Western world. Behind the Iron Curtain, the revolutionaries were trying to breathe the fresh air of the Prague Spring – and though the response was an incursion of Soviet tanks, few fired back. In the Third World, on the other hand, guns and bombs were not in short supply, while libertine sexuality and pop cultural acumen were regarded as bourgeois conveniences: serious revolutionaries had no time for the counterculture. Yet in relatively liberal democracies like France, West Germany, and the United States the New Left was drawn mostly from student ranks, from young people who had grown up for the most part in comfort, in the paradoxical postwar atmosphere of hope and fear. They dreamed of fusing the libertarian ethos of the hippie counterculture, the badass attitude of urban outlaw culture, and the heady exuberance of Marxism (sans the dead weight of the USSR) into a Molotov cocktail of youth revolution. Their credo was, in Jim Morrison’s words, “We want the world and we want it now.”

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

For those who have seen Dziga Vertov's manic masterpiece first, Walter Ruttman's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1926) will evoke inevitable comparisons to 1929's Man With a Movie Camera. And those comparisons may redound to Vertov's favor, but they are at least somewhat unfair. For one thing, quite obviously Berlin came first and so, in part, set the template for Movie Camera. Furthermore, the films have unique and divergent traits to offer: Berlin its own titular city, Movie Camera (if I'm not mistaken) both Moscow and Odessa. Berlin has a traditional structure, guiding us through a single day in its metropolis' life, while Movie Camera is not so clearly chronological - its journey leads deeper into the thickets of dizzying reflexivity rather than along any clear time map. Berlin offers a document of a capitalist society, Movie Camera a communist one. But of course, there are a great many similarities between the two, comparisons are inevitable, and yes, Movie Camera is the superior film.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Though Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is usually cited as the first full-length animated feature, it is actually The Adventures of Prince Achmed which has a better case to make (excepting some possibly apocryphal Argentinian projects which have been lost). Yet one can see why it has been overlooked in the history books. Aside from the fact that it flopped on its premiere and took fifty years to recoup its cost, Prince Achmed was not a Disney film - in fact it was not even American (and was silent to boot!). The German feature (at sixty-seven minutes, it's longer than Dumbo) was also the brainchild of a woman, Lotte Reiniger, who worked into her eighties producing films in her own unique style - which brings us to the final point. The Adventures of Prince Achmed was not created using conventional cel animation but was instead meticulously assembled through the use of shadow puppets - the entire film takes place in intricate, astonishingly crafted silhouettes.

Warning Shadows

In Warning Shadows, a German silent film, a travelling entertainer shows up at a mansion to put on a show. The owner of the estate is married to a beautiful woman, and he jealously watches as she flirts with several other men. Then the entertainer puts on a shadow play with puppets, mesmerizing - even hypnotizing - his audience. What ensues is an increasingly violent exhibition of the rich man's jealousy and his wife's treachery. Reflections and shadows abound, sometimes illuminating hidden realities (the husband sees a suitor leaving his wife's bedroom in a mirror), at other times creating illusions (in the picture above the men are actually not caressing the woman - it's a trick of the lighting inside the house). The spectators' worst fantasies are played out as the husband forces the suitors to stab his wife and is then himself thrown out a window. But it turns out this was all a vision conjured by the entertainer and as the audience awakens from their disturbing collective hallucination, they take heed of these "warning shadows" and back off their decadent game-playing.