The story of Michael Corleone, from childhood to his ascension as "Godfather"
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The Corruption of Michael Corleone
The story of Michael Corleone, from childhood to his ascension as "Godfather"
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Moolaadé (Best of the 21st Century?)
#83 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series counting down the most acclaimed films of the previous decade.
With its sun-dappled village huts, its jaggedly Gaudi-like mosque (topped with a 150-year-old ostrich egg), its gorgeously bright primary colors, its grins and laughter, Ousmane Sembene’s Mooladé is a film of immense good cheer. It is also a movie about female genital mutilation, in which the tortured deaths of several young girls are acknowledged, in which a husband whips his wife mercilessly in the public square, in which a man is murdered outright, in which a brutal system of female subjugation, social oppression, fearful superstition, and child abuse is maintained, exalted, and bloodily enforced. But Sembene’s film is neither superficially naive, nor self-importantly morose. It is manifestly the movie of an 81-year-old master, simple in presentation but echoing with depths, observing tragedy with a sad smile, and buffoonery with the indulgence of a satirist – affectionate but hardly gentle. Despite his knowledge of human weakness, despite his awareness of the power of the elders and the men and the female priestesses, Sembene offers up optimism, not the avoiding, weak kind but the earned kind, the kind that rests in reservoirs of strength, for which good humor is not a front but rather a manifestation of indomitable resilience and wisdom.
The Wind in the Willows - Introductions
Part 1 of a microseries devoted to Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and its film and television adaptations. (This post was heavily revised 11/1)
"The Willow Wren was twittering his thin little song, hidden himself in the dark selvedge of the river bank. Though it was past ten o'clock at night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of light from the departed day; and the sullen heats of the torrid afternoon broke up and rolled away at the dispersing touch of the cool fingers of the short midsummer night. Mole lay stretched on the bank, still panting from the stress of the fierce day that had been cloudless from dawn to late sunset, and waited for his friend to return."
-the first lines of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
The Fall of The Dancing Image
That's "Fall" as in "Autumn," not as in "Downfall." But hopefully I've got your attention.
With the change of season, I'm again shifting - and vastly expanding - my approach here. This will entail daily posting (at least during the week) and adherence to a schedule in which each day serves a different purpose. Here's what's to come, certainly through October, and probably through December:
MONDAY is reserved for a random posting, usually a movie review of at least five paragraphs. It makes sense to start the week with this reliable standby, since it's how I began the blog and is often what attracts the most attention. As always you're invited to share your thoughts and responses to the film in question.
TUESDAY is "series" day. It will be devoted to the latest entry in an ongoing series, each of which will probably have 5-10 chapters. First up is the long-awaited Wind in the Willows series, which will mostly be an examination of the themes in the book, but using references and multiple images from the various cinematic or televisual adaptations. After that, I have a number of ideas I'd like to explore: an episode guide (probably combining multiple episodes into each entry) of the enthralling German miniseries Heimat and its sequels, another adaptation series on Dickens' Great Expectations (this one would be focused more on the adaptations than the source), and an extended analysis of post-9/11 cinema, including fiction and documentary films dealing with that day, the ensuing War on Terror, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the next six weeks, however, it will be Wind in the Willows to start things off.
WEDNESDAY is going to offer an intro paragraph and link to my latest "Best of the 21st Century?" review, which will be posted in its entirety, as always, at Wonders in the Dark (the weekly - no longer biweekly - review will go up at
THURSDAY is spotted for the second part of my blog-title. This year especially I've become enamored of the screen-caps, so every week this day will be devoted to sharing about 25-30 images from a given film. A wide variety of movies will be represented (Hollywood/art-house, live-action/animated, famed/obscure, all different genres and eras), and occasionally I'll take the opportunity to indulge in something a little more ambitious. This week, for example, I'll be offering a follow-up to the popular "Fall and Redemption of Anakin Skywalker" by examining, in pictures, the character arc of another famous character from a different classic. Usually, however, the approach will be shorter and more informal.
FRIDAY actually began serving its new purpose last week. For those of you who missed it, I've kicked off a brand-new, very long-term project called "Remembering the Movies." Every week I'll look at the movies that came out 10 - 100 years ago (in decade increments), and then hopefully you'll offer your own recollections, opinions, or anecdotes of the films in question. It should be a lot of fun (if also a bit of work for me, at least initially) and I hope you enjoy it.
So that's what's in store as the air grows cool and the leaves fall from the trees. Enjoy your own autumn, and I hope you'll make The Dancing Image a frequent pit stop during this time. There will certainly be plenty of action to make it worth your while!
OCTOBER UPDATE Add a sixth day to the retinue: I have just initiated a new series on Sundays, at 12 o'clock noon: The Sunday Matinee. It will explore personal favorites of mine, beginning with European cinema of the 60s.
100 Years and Counting: Remembering the Movies, September 10 - 16
The inspiration for this endeavor comes from an NPR show on which our host guides us through a century of music, playing the hit singles from the past in ten-year increments. I can't offer the direct experience of that radio program - films are not as readily available as records. And even if I could, the movies would be too long to render such an exercise feasible. Instead, wherever possible (and, this week at least, it proved surprisingly doable) I'll link to a trailer, clip, or other video artifact, so that it isn't all talk. This way you can get a bit of the flavor of the moment, a snapshot of cinema history so to speak. I will also include a snippet from a contemporaneous critical assessment. In the end, I'd love to hear from anyone who's seen these films - particularly the more obscure ones. I've only caught two of this week's entries so I'm all ears.
Most importantly, right now anyway, I'd like to hear from you on the project itself. Are you interested? Is this something you'd like to see more of? I don't plan on continuing the series unless it seems worthwhile, so if you like the idea, speak up (lurkers included)! Now excuse me while I rev up the DeLorean...
Hooray for (Hating) Hollywood
This directory was added in 2010, although the "Hooray for (Hating) Hollywood" series was completed in 2008. Its purpose is to organize links to this whole series into one convenient location. Now, whenever you click the label "microseries" any of my short-term series directory posts will pop up, one post per series from which you can go on to explore the various entries. Enjoy.
"Hooray for (Hating) Hollywood is a series revisiting those classics of the early 1950s which turned a withering gaze on the American film industry. Whether due to the blacklist, the decline of Hollywood's Golden Age, or America's more generalized postwar anxiety, Hollywood's screenwriters and directors were suddenly driven to lift the curtain from the dream factory and take a closer look at what went on behind the silver screen. Be warned: these reviews will contain spoilers."
The series began in August 2008 and ran through October 2008. There are six posts total, and they represent a journey from gentle spoofing to merciless black satire, so while they can be read in any fashion, there is a certain sense to be had in following them in the order they appear here:
The Fly
This is an entry in Tony Dayoubs's David Cronenberg Blogathon. It contains spoilers.
Some horror concepts enter the popular consciousness and take on a life of their own. Oftentimes, these are cinematic manifestations of mythic or literary antecedents - the Frankenstein monster predated James Whale's 1931 film by over a century, though it's Boris Karloff whom readers tend to think of when re-visiting Mary Shelley's original. Other pop icons, like Dracula or the Wolf Man, are merely individual variations on long-known archetypes - while later, more human monsters like Norman Bates, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger have established an enormous cultural presence without transcending the films that made them famous. They are their personalities, not just their images; whereas older monsters seem to exist as pure icons, talismans of the unconsciousness. We know, without quite having to recognize on a personal level, a Dracula or a "Frankenstein" (the creature having taken on his creator's name in a kind of osmosis which The Fly would appreciate).
Likewise, perhaps, The Fly. Even if one does not know the behavior of the mutant insect-human or the plot surrounding it, one probably recognizes and shivers at the image, the idea. First crafted by George Langelaan as a short story, the narrative - losing little in translation - was first presented onscreen in the 1958 film of the same name. In the movie, a scientist builds a teleportation device but in the process of disintegrating/reintegrating him across space, a fly buzzes into the machine and the confused computer mixes up the two creatures. This results in a dreadful fly-headed human, whose inner state detoriates until finally, with his wife's help, he has himself "swatted" by a gigantic hydraulic press.
Certainly this is the version which gave the "fly and man switch body parts" concept its widespread recognition. Whether nicked for a "Ninja Turtles" villain or parodied on "The Simpsons", the fly-headed scientist is usually derived from the '58 version. David Cronenberg's 1986 remake is a bit knottier and headier, more difficult to pin down in a simple image or idea. It is itself a riff on the earlier film, so that's no surprise - yet it has its own distinct cultural legacy, and very much its own flavor. The two Flys share similar outlooks and tap into similar anxieties, but they take the material in different directions, demonstrating its potential for various tangents as well as differences between the 50s and the 80s (culturally and cinematically), and the distinctive stamp of David Cronenberg himself.
Wendy and Lucy
#82 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series counting down the most acclaimed films of the previous decade.
The zeroes did not see many high-profile "movements" or artistic trends in American cinema. Indie cinema, the big news of the early to mid nineties, was co-opted by Hollywood, and (perhaps resultingly) few new young directors emerged; likewise widely-embraced new developments. Still, there were transformations, some subtle, others under the radar. With Royal Tenenbaums setting the tone, studio "independents" embraced quirk as their defining characteristic - a once marginal taste now became the norm. Financially independent (which is to say, actually independent) cinema reacted accordingly. There were two prominent approaches, both defiantly smallscale. The first, and more low-budget, was dubbed "mumblecore." Its subjects were middle-class youths, usually well-educated but not concerned with work (either for mysterious reasons or because they were given rather unconvincing "cool" jobs). The narrative focus was almost always on (heterosexual) relationships, and the form took anti-sleekness to its extreme: handheld camera, tiny casts and crews, often shot on video. Long-held close-ups were the aesthetic trademarks of the mumblers, and this (along with the filmmakers' penchant to cast themselves and their friends in the main parts) often led to charges of narcissism.
At any rate, "mumblecore" received more media attention (albeit exclusively in hip, trendy outlets) than any other indie movement, and seems to have spent itself after reaching a high-water mark a year or two ago. Meanwhile, quietly but with growing acclaim and less controversy, a number of independent films appeared at festivals with an opposite tack: rather than explore the emotional travails of the financially secure but spiritually wandering young, it sought out subjects on the periphery of society: struggling immigrants, street orphans, crack addicts in the flooded hinterlands. Stylistically there was a similarity, in that these indies were usually shot low to the ground, but it should be noted that (ironically) the films with more impoverished subjects sometimes had bigger budgets, more access to professionals - even movie stars, and more established backers (Wendy and Lucy was produced by Todd Haynes). Movies like Ballast, Frozen River, and particularly the films of Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, and Goodbye Solo) represented this trend which, unlike mumblecore, shows no signs of dissipating at the moment. Wendy and Lucy very firmly belongs to this category.
Civilisation in Pictures
A visual tribute
Not so long ago, I re-watched "Civilisation," a fantastic series which originally aired on the BBC in 1969. I discovered this program five years ago, on VHS in Kim's Video in New York. Most of the tapes I rented from there were rarities, avant-garde films with a radical edge. By contrast, "Civilisation" was retro-history, an art scholar offering his old-fashioned views on Western civilization. This was initially part of the charm, in a hip-to-be-square kind of way; what could seem stodgy has in fact gone so far out of fashion that it feels fresh once again. Yet there was more to it than that - and soon I was hooked. Later I discovered my grandmother owned the book that went with the show, I "borrowed" it, read it cover to cover, and still have it on my shelf. Kenneth Clark is a charming host, particularly for American viewers, to whom his Britishisms (polished pronunciation, slight stiffness in delivery, and, let's face it, really, really awful teeth) are novel. He's also a tad awkward onscreen, often gripping his elbows and squinting, occasionally pausing and clearing his throat mid-sentences as if he's camera-shy.
Yet he is incredibly erudite and, what's more, utterly un-pretentious - remarkable given his approach. The show is billed as "A Personal View" and Clark makes no bones about the subtitle. Even narrowing the focus to Western Europe, whole countries are absent (Russia and Spain barely register). Because television is an audio-visual medium, music, painting, and sculpture are privileged - an occasional poem is read out loud but there are no prose excerpts and philosophy is hardly mentioned (with a few exceptions, in which case the thinkers are dealt with more as representatives of a zeitgeist than formulators of systems). The twentieth century is alluded to through shots of airplanes and computers, but no modern art is shown. Elsewhere Clark tells us, evidently serious despite the tongue-in-cheek reference to criticism, "I've spent my life in trying to learn about art, and I am completely baffled by what is taking place today. I sometimes like what I see, but when I read modern critics I realise that my preferences are merely accidental." This is a slight disappointment; even with its limited scope, the series would have felt near-complete had it devoted even just five or so minutes to the whole of twentieth-century art. Instead we get one peek at a Pollack painting (in an earlier episode, where he's connected to J.M.W. Turner) plus the bemused, wordless fondling of an abstract sculpture before Clark exits the film at the conclusion.
What the show lacks in comprehensiveness it more than makes up for in individuality. It surveys about a thousand years of art and manages to touch on most major movements and artists, but "Civilisation" feels neither rushed nor generic. Partly this is due to Clark's unifying presence and pointed perspective, partly it's due to the impeccable craftsmanship of the production. This is another aspect of the series which grew on me; initially, its old-fashioned style provided a retro charm but upon further viewings I realized that the show was far more accomplished as a documentary series than television today can pull off. It varies its scope and style depending upon the material, imaginatively utilizes different locations, techniques, and approaches (while maintaining an overall cohesiveness), and most importantly, it takes its time. We are allowed to drink in the artworks, the music, the locations; even Clark's brisk and often tightly-packed monologues are given enough room to sink in (though it may take several viewings to catch everything).
In short, the series is worth purchasing, or renting if you can find it (the DVD is currently unavailable on Netflix for some reason). As Allan Fish said beneath his eloquent tribute, Clark and his documentary will "make you want to look at the stars." But for now, look at these pictures...
The pictures follow the jump - preceded by a video to give you a sense of the film's flavor:
"From now on, continuity shots are out": Reading Godard
Originally published exclusively on Wonders in the Dark in 2010, this was only re-located to this site in 2017.
In what may become an ongoing gesture, I'd like to point your attention to an interview conducted nearly 50 years ago. In December 1962, Cahiers du cinema spoke with their alumnus Jean-Luc Godard, who in just about three years had become a prolific and world-famous filmmaker. Many of you have probably read this, but it's worth re-visiting, because of the 50th anniversary of Breathless (A bout de souffle), because we've been discussing relevant issues here (from Godard's method to the relationship between filmmaking and criticism), and because it's always fun to read Godard. Hopefully a lively discussion will ensue.
I was going to transcribe the piece, but luckily it is excerpted in Google Books, and the first page is here:
"Jean-Luc Godard: 'From Critic to Film-Maker': Godard in interview (extracts)"
Just to kick off some conversation, here are a few prime quotes:
"I had written the first scene [of A bout de souffle]...and for the rest I had a pile of notes for each scene. I said to myself, this is terrible. I stopped everything. Then I thought: in a single day, if one knows how to go about it, one should be able to complete a dozen takes. Only instead of planning ahead, I shall invent at the last minute. If you know where you're going it ought to be possible. This isn't improvisation but last-minute focusing. Obviously, you must have an overall plan and stick to it; you can modify up to a point, but when shooting begins it should change as little as possible, otherwise it's catastrophic."
"Already in Le Petit soldat, where I was trying to discover the concrete, I noticed that the closer I came to the concrete, the closer I came to the theatre. Vivre sa vie is very concrete, and at the same time very theatrical. ... I started from the imaginary and discovered reality; but behind reality, there is again imagination.
Cinema, Truffaut said is spectacle - Méliès - and research - Lumière. If I analyse myself today, I see that I have always wanted, basically, to do research in the form of a spectacle. The documentary side is: a man in a particular situation. The spectacle comes from when one makes this man a gangster or a secret agent."
"American scriptwriters, too, simply dwarf even the better French writers. Ben Hecht is the best scriptwriter I have ever seen. In his book The Producer, it is extraordinary to see how Richard Brooks manages to construct a very fine, coherent script based on the Red Sea story which had been suggested to him. The Americans, who are much more stupid when it comes to analysis, instinctively bring off very complex scripts. They also have a gift for the kind of simplicity which brings depth - in a little Western like Ride the High Country, for instance. If one tries to do something like that in France, one looks like an intellectual."
The House of Mirth
#77 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series counting down the most acclaimed films of the previous decade.
Though helmed by a bona-fide auteur, House of Mirth fits snugly inside the conventions of the art-film adaptation style, the elegance for which "Masterpiece Theatre" and Merchant-Ivory are bywords, and which those who don't like can tag, with Truffautlike scorn, "the tradition of quality." Some have tried to read a "queer eye" subversion into Terence Davies' handling of the material, but viewers not keyed in to the director's idiosyncrasies (myself, for example) will see a more or less faithful handling of Edith Wharton's source novel, gracefully executed without seeking the propulsive vision Martin Scorsese brought to Wharton in his 1993 Age of Innocence. (In that film, the ornate and coded appearances and behaviors of society are filtered through the rapid-fire, visceral sensibilities of the director; some were impressed by the friction, some didn't notice, and others found the combination incongrous - like Jonathan Rosenbaum, whose characterization of Scorsese led to angry letters and, fifteen years later, a fascinating blog thread which Rosenbaum himself eventually joined. But I digress...) On the aforementioned thread, Arthur S. notes that Scorsese's film is "a rare film which adopts the novelistic narrative rather than the old standby of make the book a play and shoot the play"; though Davies' film has been praised for its cinematic qualities, its approach struck me as very much the latter. (Quickly defined: the cinematic approach emphasizes uniquely filmic qualities, such as editing, camera manipulation, or intimate and/or complex visual viewpoints; usually the "cinematic" will stress presentation rather than text, at least compared to a play.) However, this observation should not be taken as a thorough-going criticism: there are virtues in the "theatrical" on film, and Davies makes the most of them.
"What's the difference?" (The Asphalt Jungle & The Killing)
This is an entry in Adam Zanzie's John Huston blog-a-thon. It contains spoilers.
Maybe Sterling Hayden should just stay away from horses. In John Huston's 1950 noir masterpiece The Asphalt Jungle, Hayden plays Dix, an honorable but desperate "hooligan" who bets - and always loses - on the races. His bookie turns to him to provide muscle for a jewel heist; inevitable complications ensue and Dix winds up with an infected gunshot wound in his side. Like a haunted man, he flees his midwestern city for the countryside, loyal girlfriend Doll Conovan (Jean Hagen) at the wheel as Dix slumps in the passenger side mumbling to himself deliriously. What about? Horses, and not the ones you bet on. Rather, the ones you raise and ride, the ones you race perhaps, while other people bet on them, earning you money. As consciousness enters its last dissolve, Dix's car pulls up at a ramshackle Kentucky field. Earlier in the film, we heard him tell Doll about his happy childhood, a long lifetime ago, when he grew up on this free and open horse farm. Now it's gone to seed - and so has he, reeling and stumbling through this equestrian limbo until he finally falls hard onto the soil, dead along with his dreams: an Icarus who never even made it off the ground.
Johnny, Sterling Hayden's character in Stanley Kubrick's 1956 breakthrough The Killing never makes it in the air either, though he comes damn close - all the way to the airplane tarmac in fact. But let's rewind for a moment, an appropriate gesture given this film's chronologically fractured storyline. If Dix loved horses, Johnny treats them rather callously: he even hires a hitman to kill a certain Red Lightning, ahead in the final stretch of the seventh race of the day. His hope is that the pandemonium ensuing from the guaranteed spill will create a cover for his daring robbery of the racetrack. It's a meticulously planned job, and this time Hayden is not a mere hooligan, but the head honcho. His luck is no better, however, even if he makes it out alive this time. It won't be a horse that accompanies Johnny's failure, but a yapping, foppish little dog, whose collision with the luggage cart sends Johnny's suitcase - and with it the whole loot - crashing out onto the runway, whirled around by the propellers in a mad mockery of his planned flight. Hayden's expression is priceless as his girlfriend tells him to run and the film ends as he delivers the most exquisitely limp and pathetic closing line of all time. "Meh," he mumbles half-inaudibly, "Wasadifference..."
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