Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Well, he’s not “wanted” anymore. When the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired premiered at Sundance in 2008, it seemed like an epilogue, the wrapping-up of a story which would never have a real ending. Today, with Polanski in the custody of Swiss authorities, it’s become clear that the story was not over after all. And as this film – available for instant viewing or rental on Netflix – reveals, the tale of Polanski’s crime, prosecution (or persecution), and exile is anything but a clear narrative with good and bad, right and wrong, clearly marked. Nonetheless, Wanted and Desired displays a general sympathy for the director’s plight as he is jerked back and forth by a publicity-seeking judge. The still used above is from the 1961 Polanski short film The Fat and the Lean; that’s Polanski himself, acting in his own film, running across a field toward the Eiffel Tower, fleeing a lumbering fat old man. Obviously crafted years before the filmmaker’s legal predicament, the simple, almost allegorical footage is nonetheless cleverly employed by the documentary to illustrate the complex situation Polanski found himself in. It also suggests Wanted and Desired‘s general attitude toward its subject.

For the Love of Movies

Andreas Winkelman … is repairing the roof of the cottage in which he lives as a literate hermit. At one point, he stares off at the sun that hangs low and dim—with its edges made ragged by a telephoto lens—in the Scandinavian sky. Suddenly the sun disappears into the gray-blue haze, but it’s as if Andreas had willed it invisible, much as he has tried to will himself invisible without taking the ultimate step. With this lovely image, Ingmar Bergman begins The Passion of Anna…”

Vincent Canby, The New York Times, May 29, 1970

A little more than halfway through For the Love of Movies, Gerald Peary’s enthusiastic and authoritative documentary about the history of film criticism, the above passage is quoted. While the narrator reads Canby’s words aloud (and they are as “lovely” as the film he’s describing), we are treated to Bergman’s images and even more importantly, the evocative, delicate soundtrack – Andreas’ hammer on the rooftop, the sheep-bells tinkling – which the critic does not describe. Prose – at once intelligent and impressionistic – is fused with solid yet elusive image and simple yet vaguely abstract sound; criticism meets art and the two shake hands in the light of Bergman’s, and Canby’s, disappeared disc. All in all, it’s a stirring tribute to the movies and to those who love them, both being the subjects of this film.

The Dancing Image presents "directed by Brian De Palma" (CINEMA VIEWFINDER DE PALMA BLOG-A-THON)

Tony Dayoub has recently initiated a ten-day celebration of the bearded auteur (who just celebrated his 69th birthday) at his great blog Cinema Viewfinder (make sure you check out the whole series here). My entry has just gone up.

The piece is a video tribute to Mr. De Palma and an examination of his thematic and stylistic obsessions, titled "directed by Brian De Palma." It runs about seven and a half minutes, and contains footage from my three favorite De Palma films: Hi, Mom!, Carrie, and Scarface, which were released, roughly, with seven years between each film.

I've spent the past week working on this project, and am very satisfied with how it turned out, so I hope you all enjoy it.


(Fair warning, however: the piece does contain some graphic footage of sex and violence - and combinations thereof. Granted, given the source material I'm actually kind of surprised there isn't more nudity and gore, but still, it's De Palma we're talking about, so take that as you will. Not necessarily for all viewers.)

Cross-posted at Cinema Viewfinder

updated in 2013: check out a higher-quality version of this video, plus an interview about it with Kevin B. Lee

Filmmakers of the Fall

A preview of coming attractions for the fall, with the focus on the directors behind the camera…

(Update 2010: links lead to the eventual reviews of these films)

Though the season does not officially begin until September 22, one doesn’t need the equinox to know autumn’s in the air. Every year, like clockwork around Labor Day, a breeze picks up, the air grows cooler, and one begins to detect a slight browning or yellowing on the edges of the still lushly green leaves. As the station wagon is packed one last time, the children cast melancholy glances at the twilit beach, to be abandoned for schoolbooks in a matter of hours. Yet with the shuffling off of lazy summer days, a new sense of purpose wafts in the air as well.

Nights and Weekends

For more background on mumblecore – a no-budget “movement” of young filmmakers, which has been building buzz through the 00′s – read my review of LOL, my follow-up on Funny Ha Ha and then the comments section for Funny Ha Ha, particularly this.

Nights and Weekends, 2008, dir. Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg, released on DVD Aug. 25, 2009

Most of the conversations in Nights and Weekends have a random feel, but one in particular is random with a purpose. Mattie (Greta Gerwig) is returning from a photo shoot with James (Joe Swanberg), her long-distance still-sorta boyfriend. At the shoot, the photographer coaxed the couple into playing cute for the camera, cooing “That’s adorable,” when an embarrassed Mattie cringed or looked at James with uncertainty. Sure enough, her snapshots transform the awkward into the semi-iconic and when the two look at them later on a computer screen, it’s almost enough to convince them they’re a real couple (they start making out, in the most genuinely sensual moment of the film, after viewing the uncomfortable kiss captured on camera hours earlier). “They’re like present us,” James tells Mattie before leaning in for the kiss, “only acting out past us.” Cue future us.

The Life & Death of Peter Sellers, or How We Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Zeroes

(This is a revised version of the review which recently appeared on Ibetolis' Film for the Soul, as a part of his fantastic Counting Down the Zeroes series. I strongly urge you to check out this venture; Ibetolis, a.k.a. Ric, has invited the best and brightest of the blogosphere to write up interesting films from every year of the 00's and right now the battery of bloggers is approaching mid-decade. So there's still plenty of time for you, dear reader, to join the fun. The review follows the jump. Many screen-caps are featured, so are (beware!) spoilers, including the very unexpected death of the title character.)

Historias Extraordinarias

What comes to mind when you hear the words “extraordinary stories”? An adventurous journey down a long river, pursuing a strange and possibly illicit mission? A mysterious murder, witnessed by a man who flees and hides from his pursuers while unraveling the crime? A journey spanning years and continents, in pursuit of a buried treasure? Is it war which quickens the pulse, with its threat of violent death and suggestion of enemies hidden away in the jungle, waiting to launch a guerrilla attack? Or perhaps you are a romantic, and your extraordinary story would involve an enigmatic woman, whose enchanted entrance into your life seems to foreshadow an implicit departure – one which arrives one day, confirming your suspicions while breaking your heart. As you’ll notice, the title of Argentinian writer/director Mariano Llinás’ remarkable film is plural. Not one but all of these storylines are pursued (simultaneously, no less), with surprising results.

Ludwig

Seen in the light of of the lugubrious Death of Venice, the impressive but stoic Leopard, and the emotionally devastating Rocco and His Brothers, the decadence and historical pageantry of Ludwig can seem almost refreshing. True, it has its psychological intensity, what with the physical and mental decline undergone by its hero (a deeply romantic, and possibly insane, Bavarian royal of the 19th century, whose reign saw his little kingdom swallowed up by the new Prussian-led German state). And at four hours long, it's hardly a sprightly jog through the park. Yet the film is lush, lavish, and entertaining - its long runtime absorbing due to the hero's wildness (he represents all the opposite tendencies of the aristocracy when compared to the melancholy, savvy, and dignified Burt Lancaster in The Leopard: self-indulgence, withdrawal into fantasy, irresponsibility).

Rocco and His Brothers

Among other things, Rocco and His Brothers is the story of a face. Not the face you see above, which a woman’s decorated hand is reaching to caress. That face belongs to Spiro Focas, cast as Vincenzo Parondi. Vincenzo’s visage, along with the rest of him, has already settled into lifelong complacency when the rest of the Parondis show up in Milan to pester their urban relation for support. (Incidentally, the owner of those feminine fingers – Nadia, played by Annie Girardot, will see her own expression shift from hearty cynicism to fragile vulnerability through passionate romanticism, ragged humiliation, coarse self-hatred, and back to the beginning again). Nor is it the face of Alain Delon (playing Rocco himself), which usually broadcasts arrogant assurance but here displays a touching and sweet naivete, broken up by intense disappointment and flickers of hatred (though traces of compassion never leave his brooding eyes or bashful smile). And it isn’t even the memorable face of Katina Paxinou, the Greek actress who portrays Rosaria, the fiery Sicilian mama of the titular brood, I have in mind.

The Leopard

If Italian films from the forties and fifties were dominated by a hard-bitten look at the present, with a transforming Italy moving from fascism and war through poverty and ruin to the cautious construction of a modern postwar world, then Italian cinema of the sixties can be seen as one long, mournful elegy for the lost past, in a variety of different keys. At the dawn of the decade, neorealism had already been relegated to the past, but that movement's overarching social critique and devotion to intense observation of daily life continued to inform works crafted by the best Italian directors. These qualities were put to work in a series of wildly different yet equally powerful films, which together paint a coherent picture of a nation caught in the whirlwind, its people having severed their roots once and for all, yet unable to establish connections to the new world being born around them.

Jaws

Jaws, 1975, directed by Steven Spielberg

The Story: “Sharkkkkkkkk!!!!!!”

And yet it’s so much more than that. At its heart, of course, Jaws is a fantastic monster movie, a film that plays on fears – that employs Hitchcockian suspense and haunted house surprise to hold us in the grip of masterful entertainment. It has been blamed for a dumbing-down of movie audiences, an onslaught of blockbusters concerned only with reeling in adolescents, and a retreat from the edginess and depth of 70s cinema. Yet Jaws consistently holds human figures at its center – and not only because the mechanical creature malfunctioned through much of the production, while a 27-year-old newbie filmmaker, one Steven Spielberg, had to improvise shooting around it. At heart, Jaws is a story about people more than about a shark.

The Hidden Fortress

The Hidden Fortress, 1958, directed by Akira Kurosawa

The Story: A samurai general guards and transports his clan’s gold and princess across enemy territory, departing from a hidden fortress in the desert mountains. Along the way there are spear duels, close escapes, pursuits through the forest mists, scrapes with the executioner, and even a paganistic wood-burning ritual around a giant bonfire. The story is told largely from the perspective of two pathetic and bickering peasants who accompany the general and the princess on their journey.