The Favorites - The Best Years of Our Lives (#64)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946/USA/dir. William Wyler) appeared at #64 on my original list.

What it is • The war is over...the big one, the one that galvanized the country and affected every life, at home or abroad. Of course it didn't have the same effect across the board. Some, like soldier Al Stephenson (Fredric March), sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), and airman Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), experienced the battlefield for themselves and are returning with wounds psychic (in Fred's case) or physical (in Homer's - he is played by a real-life double amputee). Others, like Al's wife Milly (Myrna Loy) and daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright), experienced its shocks more indirectly, through the absence of their loved ones and more subtle social and economic changes on the homefront. And still others, like Al's banker boss Mr. Milton (Ray Collins) or the right-wing isolationist who gets in a fight with two of the veterans at a soda fountain, barely seem to have been affected by it at all except as an abstraction or an imposition. This diversity of experience is one of the brilliant qualities of The Best Years of Our Lives, which centers around the three veterans (attempting) to adjust to their old lives, only to discover that those lives don't exist anymore. It doesn't simply offer one prepackaged notion of how the war impacted America and the individuals in this story; it explores many different points of impact with rapt fascination. In telling this story, William Wyler's attention to detail and Gregg Toland's astonishing deep-focus camerawork create a world so textured that after nearly three hours we feel as if we live there ourselves.

Why I like it •

The Prisoner - "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

I have only been warned about two episodes of The Prisoner - and this is one of them (the other is still to come). As it turns out, I can see why...but I still enjoyed watching this. I got a kick out of the conceit, contrived as it was, and was curious to see where it would go. Given my viewing order, which seemed constructed to taper off before the big climax, I was also surprised to see an episode this conceptually ambitious and ranging so far afield. Granted, its concept is kind of screwy on several levels. The series has flirted with cheesy sci-fi shenanigans several times but this is probably the only occasion where it really does go over the line. In previous outings, say "The Schizoid Man," the theme always seemed to lead the gimmick. In "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" the gimmick is definitely punching above its weight. Above all, the convenience of the episode's device is pretty transparent. I was going to joke that perhaps McGoohan had pneumonia when this one was written and shot, but I stumbled across the real reason for his notable absence while looking up casting details. Apparently, he was off shooting a film, leaving the writers with the nearly impossible task of crafting a chapter of The Prisoner in which the central, title character, the only even vaguely consistent member of the cast, would be reduced to one scene and a few lines of dialogue. Given the absurdity of that challenge, I'd say they pulled it off as best they could. If you take this in the right spirit - I laughed out loud when I realized where this was going (and surmised why it was going there) - "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling" is a bit of fun.

The Magic of the Film Clip (video preview for 32 Days of Movies)

Or, technically, I guess the video clip...although most of my examples were originally shot on film. Anyone familiar with this blog may have run across my "32 Days of Movies" series before: I first posted it in 2011 and updated it last year on Vimeo. Now I've created a video introduction for both YouTube and Vimeo which explains the series' roots and invites viewers to visit. The intro also includes some fun montages and juxtapositions, so I hope you'll check it out even if you've already watched the series itself.

WATCH THE FULL SERIES

Relevant links, the Vimeo upload, and more updates follow the jump.

The Favorites - Au Hasard Balthazar (#65)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966/France/dir. Robert Bresson) appeared at #65 on my original list.

What it is • One of the most famous statements about Au Hasard Balthazar is attributed to Jean-Luc Godard, who went on to marry its leading lady (Anne Wiazemsky, at the time of Balthazar a completely inexperienced 18-year-old nonprofessional). Godard describes this deceptively simple, minimal, quiet film as "the world in an hour and a half." Virtually - maybe even actually - the entire film takes place in a village so provincial that the occasional car or transistor radio seems vaguely anachronistic. Yet this isolated hamlet truly does feel like a microcosm of the wider world, with characters who are starkly defined and delineated. They exist not only in isolated corners of the narrative but are also forced to interact with one another, creating clashes or attachments that illuminate both parties. The tapestry woven by this novelistic ensemble includes the intense, fiery cruelty of Gerard (Francois Lafarge), the miserly, lustful cynicism of the merchant (Pierre Klosowski), the belligerent but oddly impotent alcoholic rage of Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert), the infuriating, self-defeating pride of the schoolteacher turned farmer (Philippe Asalin), and especially the demure, despoiled innocence and growing self-awareness of the farmer's daughter Marie (Wiazemsky). The needle that weaves these threads together is the title character, Balthazar, a donkey suffering above and beyond the usual misery of a beast of burden. Over the course of the film he passes between a series of masters, frequently returning to and departing from the home of Marie, where he was baptized in the film's early minutes (some viewers perceive this act as giving him a soul, which heightens his awareness and "humanity" throughout the rest of the movie). We meet him before the film even begins, braying abrasively under the opening credits, and he is at the center of the first and final shots. The story is seen through his eyes even though there are many sequences in which he's not onscreen, in which characters discuss things that have nothing to do with him. This explains why the above description comes as something of a surprise to me even as I write it. The bustling, picaresque nature of that narrative is a far cry from the film's muted, spare storytelling. Even having seen the film numerous times, it's never really registered as a plot. There is character psychology at work; for example, Marie's complete submission to Gerard seems to be at least partly a response to (and perverse reflection of) her own father's harmful stubbornness. And there is a larger story unfolding, of a community that preys upon and breaks down its weakest members, of a child's fatal illness and an offscreen murder and a legal battle dividing longtime friends and a criminal conspiracy led by a choir boy gone astray. But the incidents occur mostly offscreen, and the relationships are implied rather than stated or even observed. The film's body is made up of acts, glances, and gestures of cruelty and occasional kindness that appear random to us, however deeply rooted they may be. Does the donkey's perspective strip this story of any relatable human context? Or does it reveal its emotional substance, free of distracting narration?

Why I like it •

The Prisoner - "A Change of Mind"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Here we finally reach an episode which doesn't attempt to out-do the previous ones in terms of its high concept. This might be the first since "Checkmate" to take a fairly straightforward approach to the goings-on of the Village, without any grand escape attempts, massive twists, or unconventional premises. With that in mind, it's a relief that the episode feels so solid (though I've had some warnings about two of the next three, so I shouldn't breathe too easy yet). With a let's-break-Six-inside-the-community conceit that recalls "The Schizoid Man" and "A., B., and C." but without the cleverness of either, "A Change of Mind" is about as close to a filler episode as I've seen so far on The Prisoner. As such, it hones in on the core hook of the series: the notion that Six needs to maintain his independence and self-awareness in the face of the authorities' challenges to his autonomy. And it reminds us that his "superiors" have limited power. For whatever reason, they don't actually want to overtly manipulate him - even while they want him to think they have that power.

Status update, 2/29 (w/ Obnoxious & Anonymous podcast)

I'm usually a stickler about posting something Monday mornings, 7am. Today I held off because I thought I had a visual tribute that would be ready later on. Well, now it's a few minutes before midnight and it still isn't ready - so it'll go up another week, I guess. A pity as I was rushing this weekend to get certain elements together, but at least it's mostly done. In fact, the work on the visual tribute gave me ideas for a video, which you may actually end up seeing before the image post that inspired it.

Meanwhile, I'd like to point you to my recent Oscar-related video which, to my disappointment, didn't get much traction although I thought it was pretty good and its message - support for the Honorary Awards that the broadcast has dropped - is something I very much wanted to share. I suppose it isn't as relevant the day after the ceremony, but I still hope people will check it out. Especially since the Vimeo upload, which for some reason is noticeably higher quality video than the YouTube, received zero (!!) views over the entire weekend despite numerous tweets. Oh well...

Last week was pretty busy between video essays, podcast appearances, and the usual series entries (for The Prisoner and the Favorites - covering Rear Window this time) and in this intro for my "Oscar Blues" video I provided links to most of my my recent activity*. March will also be very busy: for one thing I'm hoping to start posting more on Fandor Keyframe including, perhaps, the video inspired by my work today. It's disappointing I couldn't have this visual tribute ready today but I think I'm forging the path ahead to finally build up my backlog, so that things like this don't happen again (meanwhile, I will be posting less frequently on Tumblr, as I announced today).

It's easy to announce such plans and then discover afterwards that I fell short of the goal. This has happened to me - on this blog, no less - more times than I care to admit. So I'll shut up and hopefully put up for the rest of March. Here's to a new month.

*That recent work included a podcast which was linked but not embedded anywhere on this site at the time. Years later, I'm embedding it here for archival/completionist purposes.

It is cued up to the point of a discussion on the upcoming Twin Peaks season. I left a comment on the YouTube page clarifying the earlier part of the video, which covers some then-current but now fairly obscure online fan issues.

The Favorites - Rear Window (#66)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Rear Window (1954/USA/dir. Alfred Hitchcock) appeared at #66 on my original list.

What it is • L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is a globe-trotting photographer at home in exotic locales ranging from remote wilderness to combat zone. In the skies over Europe or the Pacific in World War II, he befriended co-pilot Thomas Doyle (Wendell Corey), now a police detective in New York City. Jeffries is in New York too, recovering after an accident on a car race track which broke his leg (but the picture was worth it). Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly), a lovely high society girl, flits from social event to social event on Park or Fifth Avenue, but her heart is in humble Greenwich Village with Jeffries, whom she hopes to marry (he's resistant both to accepting and breaking off their relationship, preferring the non-commital status quo). Meanwhile, the man who lives across the courtyard from Jeffries, Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) has sent a woman off to the countryside - perhaps to Connecticut or Long Island, and perhaps she's his wife...or his mistress. But if it's his mistress, where is his wife? Buried somewhere else? Stashed away in the apartment? Ghoulishly scattered across the city and in the East River? (I just now got Thelma Ritter's "I want no part of it" pun for the first time.) Our story of adventure, romance, and murder spans all of these various locations...

Except it doesn't. Rear Window takes place entirely within a single apartment (save for a few one- or two-second shots in the courtyard). Even when we look into other rooms we are doing so from Jeffries' vantage point. This is the brilliance of Rear Window: it locks itself down to one location despite its multiplicity.

Why I like it •

Oscar Blues montage: Honoring Spike Lee & Gena Rowlands

It's been a busy week. Since last Thursday, my long-delayed Fandor video on Anna Karina went up, I released three more (also long-delayed) videos that I'd been working on for a while (see The Killing & The Asphalt Jungle Side by Side and Rimbaud's "The Stolen Heart" in addition to this one), my short guest spot on the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast went up (and I also made appearances, via feedback, on a Star Wars episode of No Ship Network and guested on Obnoxious & Anonymous - jump to 35:16 for the beginning of our Twin Peaks season 3 speculation/discussion). Additionally, one of my videos was featured on this week's Twin Peaks Tuesday column on One Perfect Shot. After something of a dry spell in terms of productivity and (especially) output, the old saying "It don't rain but it pours" certainly applies.

With all of that catch-up out of the way, this latest entry in my Montage series may be the work I'm most excited to present this week. Its origins stretch back to my dissatisfaction with the Academy Awards six years ago, when I learned that they had decided to stop airing the Honorary Awards. Frequently given to film veterans who had never actually won an Oscar in competition, the Honoraries were a great way to pay tribute to the medium's past and remind us, amidst all the superficiality of the ceremony, that the movies are an art form created by imaginative, hard-working individuals, many of whom are misunderstood or underappreciated in their time.

Further explanation, relevant links, images from the video, and the Vimeo upload all follow the jump.

The Prisoner - "Living in Harmony"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

This is probably the least successful episode so far for me, yet it's also one of the most interesting. Every week I say "The Prisoner couldn't possibly stretch its conceit any further" before being surprised. At the risk of going out on a limb, however, it's hard to imagine any future chapters (aside from the gloves-off finales) taking a bolder approach than this. Of course, how much can you twist the show's basic premise without venturing into decadence? I spent about as much of "Living in Harmony" admiring its cleverness and enjoying its eccentricities (and this is a very eccentric episode) as I did frustrated by the moments that lapsed into self-parody and bizarre-for-bizarre's sake mannerisms. At one point, when the mute outlaw/deputy "The Kid" (Alex Kanner) started performing some sort of drunken avant-garde dance with his pistol I decided I was just going to go along for the ride without asking too many questions, but that wasn't always easy. I guess I should dive right into the big twist... When "Living in Harmony" begins, it follows the structure of the usual opening shots pretty closely. But instead of riding in a sports car, Number Six is on a horse. He's crossing the prairie, not the busy streets of swingin' London. Instead of pounding a table in a sleek, modern office and turning in his resignation he throws a sheriff's badge on a U.S. marshal's wooden desk. "Living in Harmony" is a Western.

Honoring Twin Peaks Day tomorrow with Twin Peaks Unwrapped

Look closely at that chair to see David Lynch (w/ headphones) caught in the reflection!

Every month, I will be offering at least one post on Twin Peaks...up until Showtime re-airs the original series. Then I will post extensive coverage of each episode (mixing new reactions with my many older pieces) immediately after they air. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The episode is up!

Original message

Late tonight or early tomorrow, Ben and Bryon of the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast will be posting their latest episode: a special honoring "Twin Peaks Day" (since February 24, 1989 is the day the pilot episode takes place on). I will be one of their guests, along with many other fans and commentators sharing what Twin Peaks means to them and why it remains relevant. I will share the program here as soon as it's available. (I'll also be appearing on Twin Peaks Unwrapped again in about a month, for a much longer discussion on the mid-season two episodes.)

Meanwhile, my long-delayed Side by Side video analysis of The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle finally made its debut this weekend. My third Cinepoem video, one of my more abstract works (an interpretation of a Rimbaud poem) will upload later today and I'm also hoping to have my Montage video - which was originally scheduled for a few days ago to go up on Thursday. It relates to the upcoming Academy Awards so I want to have it ready soon.

The Passion of Anna K. (video essay on Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina)

Although I prefer to stick to the 3-a-week schedule, it looks like this week I'll be posting on Tuesday and Thursday as well, so stay tuned.

This is a video that has been on my mind for at least four years. Now I'm finally able to realize it for Fandor Keyframe.

Here is my written introduction for the non-narrated video:

Introduction

For six breathless years, actress Anna Karina and her filmmaker husband Jean-Luc Godard forged a cinematic partnership that remains legendary. Their collaboration is charted over the course of seven feature films: Le Petit Soldat (1960), A Woman is a Woman (1961), Vivre sa vie (1962), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville(1965), Pierrot le fou (1966) and Made in USA (1966). Split into seven montages (one for each film), "The Passion of Anna K." traces the evolution of Karina's craft as well as her purpose within Godard's work. Each montage is bookended by Karina's first and last appearances in the particular film, a guideline that yields surprising revelations. We witness her transformation from playful ingenue to hardboiled pro. Trajectories emerge with tidal rhythm rather than the logic of a straight line: from love to disillusionment, affection to respect, spontaneity to rigor, passivity to power. (To reference a straightforward explication of the couple's relationship and collaboration, see Tyler Knudsen's complementary approach in "Godard and Karina: A Marriage on Film", which I discovered after making this).

Each montage features a simple title to guide us through the ebb and flow of this onscreen relationship.

"Muse" depicts Veronica from Le Petit Soldat as a cherished object of affection, observed externally. Concerned with capturing her vivacious aura but unable to enter her mind, the film itself eventually seems to close in on this butterfly.

"Performance" presents an actress simultaneously more enigmatic and more exposed (especially when Godard includes Karina's weepy line flub), reflecting the fact that in A Woman is a Woman Angela is the central subject rather than just a love interest.

"Discovery" echoes Vivre sa vie's structure with 12 shots (one from each chapter of the film) weaving together Godard's reverential but cold photography of Nana, the actress' growing command of gesture and expression, and the director's own narration of an Edgar Allan Poe story detailing an artist's lethal desire to capture his wife's presence in his art.

"Conversation" reflects Band of Outsiders' raw, uncertain dynamic of director and star, pushing forward from the previous film's breakthrough/dead end. Godard veers between vocalizing Odile's thoughts himself, and allowing Karina to express the character's own ideas and feelings.

"Awakening" chronicles the longing emotional distance between Alphaville's stoic hero and the brainwashed Natasha. Linking Karina's acting prowess with Godard's growing alienation from his muse, this genuinely poignant scenario climaxes with a declaration of love whose formality echoes the couple's first collaboration, suggesting lovers as strangers.

"Rupture" represents Pierrot le Fou as the collaborators' passionate, doomed final fling. Marianne's story is a brilliant microcosm of the entire Karina-Godard dynamic (from meet-cute through intense romance to disenchantment, distance, and destruction), conducted with a despairing self-awareness climaxing (for the third and final time) with the death of Karina's character.

"Freedom" serves as a surprise epilogue, using Made in USA to move beyond the previous films' framework. Karina plays Paula, a strong if also cartoonish heroine (the comic-book stylization of the film has been heightened by the montage's own design). Following a bittersweet reversal of the earlier films' climaxes, we conclude on a cautiously optimistic note, with the character, the actress, and the director all moving into an uncertain, open-ended future.

Update 2017: H. Perry Horton wrote a great little piece to accompany this video for Film School Rejects called "The Muse Matters" - check it out!

uploaded to YouTube 2017 (update 2020: but the link is currently private due to a copyright back-and-forth that I don't want to deal with again until my Twin Peaks videos are finished... as of 2022, it is public again)

The initial impetus for this idea came from Richard Brody's thorough Godard biography Everything is Cinema (2008) which connects the dots between Godard's tumultuous relationship with Karina and the stories he tells, events he depicts, and ways that he scripts and especially photographs Karina's characters. While that context isn't mandatory to appreciate the video (let alone the actual films) it certainly does add another interesting dimension to their dynamic, especially given the personal, confessional nature of Godard's filmmaking. Personally, I think Godard's and Karina's collaboration gets to the heart of movies - the interaction of an author's point of view with the larger world, a world that (especially when embodied by the human form of a performer) may push back with another identity, creating new complications and yielding unforeseen treasures.

Additional pictures follow the jump...

The Favorites - The Apu Trilogy (#67)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu/1955-1959/India/dir. Satyajit Ray) appeared at #67 on my original list.

What it is • The Apu trilogy begins and ends in the countryside, but between the opening verdant village and the final wide-open path, the story contains multitudes. The first film shows a difficult rural life through the joyous, impressionable eyes of a little boy (Subar Bannerjee); the second film uproots the growing child (Pinaki Sengupta and Smaran Ghosal) and his family as he works, gets an education, and experiences hardship; and the third film takes the young man (Soumitra Chatterjee) into adulthood, offering greater rewards and even greater challenges as he finds his way in the world. Rare for films on my list, this entry actually covers several works rather than just one, some of which were released before others had even been conceived with the entire process of creation taking about a decade. As such, the trilogy reflects not only the growth of its characters but of its filmmaker. Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray's debut picture, was a very faithful adaptation of a classic novel. It was crafted almost entirely outside the prodigious Indian studio system on a shoestring budget, with long gaps during shooting when money ran out. Many of the actors were nonprofessionals, or had theatrical but no film experience, and Ray (who worked as an assistant on Jean Renoir's The River, which appeared earlier on this list) had never directed a foot of film. Aparajito, adapted a little more loosely from that novel's follow-up, was shot partially in studios. By now Ray had received international acclaim for the first film but was still finding his way. By the time he concluded the saga with The World of Apu he was departing more radically from the source material, and his filmmaking had taken on an exceptionally impressive, professional sheen - with a bravura sense of elaborate mise en scene replacing the charming, rugged, and poetic neorealism of the first movie.

Why I like it •