Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. V

If you're looking for further details on the Maya Deren video I just posted on YouTube, here is the blog post mentioned at the end.

Short thoughts on: Fists in the Pocket • Michael Medved • Goodbye, Mr. Chips • Russian Ark • My Night at Maud's • Claire's Knee • Paris Belongs to Us • 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her • Jean-Luc Godard • Europa '51

I've become a broken record on this subject, but I swear that within a few weeks I will have a huge backlog of Monday posts, more than I know what to do with - including a video that relates to the above picture. January is going to be very busy (although the work is mostly done, I'm waiting for other sites to cross-post). Unfortunately at this moment an interview, a guest post, at least four videos, and a podcast appearance are all waiting in the wings rather than in the bag. (That said, I did finally upload the "Cinepoem" video I blogged about back in November.) So I'm turning to one of my old standbys today, the archival of my old IMDb comments, where my online film commentary began. I've done this four times before, each time moving a bit further into the past. Some of these comments are actually almost a decade old, so be advised that they may no longer reflect my opinions (hell, I even left in some of the typos!). In many cases they represent my first engagement with the work in question, as a 23-year-old hungry for as many cinematic experiences as he could devour.

In fact 2006-07 was in many ways a peak viewing period for me; I was falling back into cinephilia after many years of caring more about music than movies. Most of the topics below relate to mid-century European films, particularly French filmmakers like Rohmer, Rivette, and Godard. Some of these films I loved, some I did not, but all of them seemed to me worthy of discussion - and still do. I would like to hear your thoughts as well, if you've seen these films (and if you haven't, I hope this serves as encouragement). Did Fists in the Pocket surprise you? Is Europa '51 too didactic? Does Goodbye Mr. Chips need a stronger narrative throughline? Is Rohmer subtly encouraging us to criticize the protagonist of Claire's Knee? Is Godard an incredibly consistent genius, an emperor with no clothes, or a hit-and-miss experimenter? Let me know what you think, and I'll let you know where I do and don't agree with the old me.

(I originally used a different image, culled from a Wonders in the Dark post several years earlier, but I replaced it with this one in 2017 when I cross-posted that Wonders piece on this site.)

Eraserhead & Paris Belongs to Us (Lynch/Rivette Retrospective #4)

This is the third entry - but, technically, the fourth double feature - in a series covering the Lynch/Rivette retrospective at Lincoln Center, running from December 10 - 22. I attended the double feature of Paris Belongs to Us (1961) and Eraserhead (1977) on the evening of Tuesday, December 15.

This is arguably the most paradoxical double feature of the series. Eraserhead and Paris Belongs to Us are weirdly complementary: both debut films that took years to shoot, both set in an uneasy urban location, and both unusually black-and-white (the only other monochrome title in the retrospective is L'Amour Fou). But these two films are also radically, jarringly different. Paris Belongs to Us is concerned with a very specific time and place - the opening card tells us when ("Summer 1957") and the title tells us where - and Rivette was operating within the context of a larger film movement: the French New Wave. Eraserhead, influenced by Lynch's stint as an art student and young father in Philadelphia but shot in sunny Los Angeles' lesser-known industrial quarters, takes place in a nightmare metropolis of the mind, deeper into the subconscious than even German Expressionism dared to go. Thirty-eight years later, there's still nothing else quite 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 Sunday Matinee: Paris Belongs to Us

This is an entry in The Sunday Matinee series.

Paris Belongs to Us, France, 1960, dir. Jacques Rivette

Starring Betty Schneider, Giani Esposito, Françoise Prévost, Daniel Crohem, François Maistre, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Luc Godard

Story: Anne Goupil is slowly drawn into a mysterious and complicated plot involving her brother's bohemian circle of friends, one of whom is directing her in a play. She slowly discovers that Juan, a young musician and supposed suicide, may have been murdered, either by the femme fatale Terry or a worldwide conspiracy of fascists...or both, or neither. (review contains spoilers)

"I want to tell you that the world isn't what it seems."

- Philip Kaufman

"It's shreds and patches, yet it hangs together over all. Pericles may traverse kingdoms, the heroes are dispersed, yet they can't escape, they're all reunited in Act V. ... It shows a chaotic but not absurd world, rather like our own, flying off in all directions, but with a purpose. Only we don't know what."

- Gérard Lenz

"I speak in riddles but some things can only be told in riddles."

- Philip Kaufman

• • •

Whether you find Paris Belongs to Us a richly original debut, a frustrating mess, or a bit of both depends on how you come at it. The first time I saw it I loved it, falling deeply under its spell; more recently it seemed somewhat more limp than I remembered, its ragtag assembly less charming, the aloofness of its allure more challenging (you must be willing to approach and enter it before it unfurls its tentacles and wraps you in its embrace). If you are in the right mood, Paris Belongs to Us intoxicates - and the ambivalence of its appeal reflects the nature of the conspiratorial mindset itself: to those prone to paranoia, all the loose and dead ends add up to form a complex puzzle that only the "in" can see - if you are lucid enough to step aside and maintain your skepticism, the bits and pieces fall apart and toxic anxiety is exposed as its own self-poison. Ironically, Rivette is able to capture the mood of the first mindset while himself embodying the second: this conspiracy belongs more to the imagination than reality, and Paris Belongs to Us is in part a cautionary tale about the dangerous allure and self-fulfilling prophecy of paranoia.

The Director's Chair

My 32 favorite directors (maybe)

My picks are subjective - these are favorites, not best, though I think all of them can stand among the best. They are conditioned by what I've seen, at age 26, and of course by what I haven't...yet. Nonetheless, I think it's an exciting list, and a great guide for anyone looking to expand their experience of auteurs. This post is a response to Films from the Supermassive Black Hole; meanwhile Justine Smith responded to my own tag at The House of Mirth and Movies. (Impressed by her "Unofficial Female Film Canon" I encouraged her to follow suit with a director's list and she did).

For my own picks, I took the visual approach - a title card representing each pick, followed by a lineup of great video clips, perfect if you want to re-live or (better yet) introduce yourself to the fascinating worlds of these filmmakers. Enjoy...

A dirty dozen

My 12 films: Some Came Running, God's Country, Paris Belongs to Us, Rosemary's Baby, Pandora's Box, Daisies, Scarface, Baby Face, Air Force, Yellow Submarine, Last of the Mohicans, Easy Rider

Do memes last more than a week? It's been eight days since Piper at Lazy Eye Theatre challenged bloggers to program 12 films at the New Beverly Cinema. Eight days in the blogosphere seems like an eternity but I'll go ahead and bite (not that anyone asked me to). The idea is to create a rep program of twelve films, in themed couplets (for example, Piper sticks High Fidelity with Punch Drunk Love as romantic comedies, and Song of the South with Coonskin as half-animated, racially controversial adaptations of Uncle Remus' tales). Some have chosen to give the entire program an overarching theme; hats off to them, but I found it hard enough deciding what to include and what to leave out.

My pairs are themed, but the overall program is not, save that they are all among my favorite films, ones I would love to share with an audience. I tried for diversity, and there are some classics, some more recent films (nothing from the past 15 years, though), all in different styles and genres. There are silents and talkies, black-and-white and color, animated and live-action, even documentary. Admittedly, all but three or four are American. And one persistent consistency proved impossible to overcome: fully half the films are from the 60s, my favorite cinematic decade. It's a testament to that era's richness that the list still feels diverse. Anyway, on to the explanations...