Avant-Garde: The Silents ("Fixing a Hole")

A new month, a new theme for "Fixing a Hole". The year ends with the avant-garde, and today I've tapped Maurizio Roca, whose noir countdown was one of the highlights of 2011, to address three of his favorite avant-garde films of the 1920s. I added the pictures and videos. Maurizio writes about Entr'acte, Emak-Bakia, and Ghosts Before Breakfast here:

Read "Avant-Garde: The Silents" on Wonders in the Dark

"Opening with a startling close-up of a man looking through a movie camera, we are quickly led to a barrage of abstract and animated images (some taken from the earlier Le Retour a la Raison) that instantly plunge us into a world of bewilderment. A similar tact was taken by Clair’s Entr’acte, when after a relatively docile opening, the filmmaker quickly pulled out the rug from under us with a swift journey into abstraction. Emak Bakia (at least in the Kino version) is greatly aided by the mournful string-heavy score that accompanies it. Early on, the visual focus, like Entr’acte, is centered primarily on slow-motion movement. We are given the various traits that make up film art and watch as they are applied in nonlinear and unconventional ways. The concentration always seems to be simply about reveling in this new medium’s impressionistic possibilities above all else. Where the dancer was the underlying image of movement that Clair returned to early in his short, Ray instead decides to devote his time with distorted depictions of artifacts we cannot make out clearly. They come and go with no established delineation other than to reveal the ability to gracefully move before our eyes."

Remembering the Movies, Apr. 15 - 21

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

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

Yesterday I announced a return to visual tributes along with a line-up of fresh pictures. Check it out here if you missed it.

This week, a classic or two alongside some definite oddballs, including Ringo Starr in a fur toga and Phoebe Cates' creepy imaginary friend. Also, on a more serious note, an utterfly fascinating - and blistering - attack on Holocaust dramatization by Jacques Rivette.

I Married a Witch

I Married a Witch could easily have been a novelty item, a slight trifle which was forgotten with time, but the serendipitous involvement of two major personalities guarantees its legacy as a comedy classic. First, there's French director Rene Clair -- this is the first of his American films I've seen, and if its tonic whimsy and imagination is any indication, then his Hollywood period may be seriously underrated. In making the trans-Atlantic jump, Lang, Renoir, and some guy named Hitchcock all earned praise - eventually, if not initially - from intellectuals but Clair is rarely discussed following his early talkies. Yet his tinkling sense of magic and erotic energy feel as present in I Married a Witch as in A nous la liberte. Perhaps this was a rare high point, but at any rate, it crackles with invention.

Oh, and then there's Veronica Lake. Ah, Veronica Lake. Now that I have a DVR again, there are a few factors which overwhelmingly determine which movies I'll be recording and prioritizing. Ranking somewhere between "this is supposed to be a masterpiece, and I haven't seen it" and "hey, this sounds kind of wacky and interesting, why not?" is "ok, she's in it..." As far as forties films go, if I see Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, or Veronica Lake in the cast listing, I'm in. Lake has a warbling, pulsating charisma that's hard to pin down. Yes, she's gorgeous (in a surprisingly offbeat way when you look closely) but it's also that voice, not exactly coy in its open flirtation yet somehow wholesome and erotic at the same time.