The All-Time List Discussion Thread (Decade Project Vol. 3)

[knives]

If you haven't check out the thread for the set which I remember as having some great conversation. This is my personal favorite of the eight or so Shimizu films I've seen due to how it is able to mix his dual tools of humanism and comic lightness. Even his wartime propaganda films are strongly defined by people being decent and loving even when the situation suggests they shouldn't. Shimizu himself was not unlike his own characters doing a lot of public service work and even adopting a gaggle of war orphans after making a movie about them. You can see that here with the very touching scene with the Korean workers which confronts the racism in a way that I think is even braver then Oshima's given how intimate Shimizu was to the situation. The scene wasn't a part of the original script, but in a move that would make Jafar Panahi proud when Shimizu saw the Korean workers and how terrible the condition was he decided to include them in the film just to show they exist (and also probably because it creates such a touching and character defining moment for Arigato-san). I'm a real sucker for Stagecoach styled films and to see one which turns Ford's political bitterness into something so sympathetic is a rare treat.

[domino harvey]

Yes, Mr Thank You is a great movie and one of the best discoveries from this project (though, and this is becoming a mantra, it won't be making my list). I don't like Japanese Girls at the Harbor at all but the other films in the Eclipse are quite good

[matrixschmatrix]

I was wondering if she was Korean! It's always tricky to catch an accent in a language you don't speak, but you could tell something was going on there. It stuck out as a sweet moment (well, a bittersweet one) even without knowing that, but in retrospect it's nigh-profound.

[swo17]

If you have time before the youth list deadline, Shimizu's Four Seasons of Children (from the children-themed box that Criterion hasn't yet replicated) comes highly recommended.

[Satori]

I also recently watched Mr. Thank You for the project and heartily agree with all the praise. It's one I plan to revisit towards the end of the project as I could see it sneaking onto my list. I also have a writeup prepared for an all-time favorite which I think shares some similarities with it: both are pleas for humanity made in historical moments of institutional brutality.

Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931)

It’s the close-ups that stick in your mind long after the film is over: the way Hertha Thiele’s eyes glisten with tears during Manuela’s first private meeting with Von Bernburg, her anguished face when Bernburg sends her away towards the end of film, and, of course, the superimposition/dissolve of Thiele and Wieck’s faces at the climax of the film (the latter opening the film up to a supernatural reading: Bernburg has seemingly received a psychic cry for help from Manuela, kind of like in the end of Jane Eyre). Their faces speak to the torment and joy of a youthful crush and the despair of being ground up in the uncaring institutional machine of the school. These moments of the film are magical.

Rewatching it recently, though, I was struck by how infrequently the close-ups occur: much of the movie is filmed in long shots which emphasize the oppressive architecture of the school and the smallness of the students. The film opens with shot of statues and columns, with a downward tilt on the latter followed by an upward tilt in the next shot, emphasizing the overbearing height of the school. The girls are then introduced with a shot of their marching feet—accompanied by the militaristic soundtrack—followed a long shot of a column of girls being marched into the school. The opening moments of the film thus establish an opposition between the girls and the school based explicitly on their physical size within the film frame. When the girls enter the school’s structure, the shadowy entrance of the structure suggests they are being eaten by it. Later long shots emphasize Manuela and the other girl’s smallness compared to the cavernous interior structure of the hallways and stairwell.

The prison-like striped uniforms in the opening scene also introduce an ambiguity between jail and school running throughout the film. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scene in which Manuela is confronted by the headmistress in the infirmary after her drunken proclamation of love. The extreme upward angle with which the headmistress is filmed—mirroring Manuela’s point of view—suggest the columns at the beginning of the film. In the establishing shot, shadows cross Manuela like bars as she cowers in bed. Manuela is thus not only trapped by the school’s chief representative, but it as if the school itself has ensnared her.

If the relative emptiness of the frame in comparison to the school’s pupils denotes entrapment, moments of liberation are figured by the filling up of the frame. One example is during the party: there are long shots, but the frame is entirely filled with the girls dancing. The chaotic nature of the collective dance—they are switching partners and changing dance styles—forms a radical contrast with their rigid mechanical marching in the film’s opening or the regimented placement of their bodies in the classrooms and dormitories.

The close-ups perform a similar function, only instead of releasing the chaotic energy of the girls as a collective, these shots allow for a release of Manuela’s pent-up libidinal energy through her emotional outbursts. Both the dance scenes and the close-ups are moments in which desire—in a broad, all-encompassing sense—is allowed to flourish; throughout the rest of the film, desire is ruthlessly crushed or denied by the institutional apparatus of the school. These moments of desire fill the frame, as if they are bursting free of the school’s containment.

[matrixschmatrix]

I just watched Canyon Passage and afterwards searched the board for why people had fallen in love with it- oddly, I came across this post of Domino's:

Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur 1946) I know for a fact that there are people on this very board and elsewhere who consider this one of the greatest westerns ever made. Had I not known that going in, I would never have guessed any such reaction while watching. This is a competently crafted film, with a couple briefly interesting moral queries, but it wasn't even the best film on the disc it shared with the previous bit of western marshmallow.

I have yet to watch the other movie on the disc, but apart from that, this expresses my sentiments almost exactly. Outside the interesting-ish moral shading (and a somewhat cast-against-type Ward Bond), there are a few graceful moments in it, but the most striking- the raising of the cabin- seemed to echo a similar scene in Drums Along the Mohawk, which is a movie I didn't adore but which I still found more memorable than this one.

edit: it says something that I managed to misremember the name of the movie despite writing it up the night I watched it. Why on Earth is it called Canyon Passage, anyway?

[knives]

Yeah, I have to echo that exactly (to the point where a few years later I hardly remember the movie mistaking it for Stranger on Horseback at first). It's a nice film, but nothing terribly exciting.

[matrixschmatrix]

I've seen two Lubitsches I hadn't seen before for the purposes of this list thus far- Die Puppe and The Love Parade- and weirdly, they have almost perfectly opposite arcs in terms of how well they were working for me. Die Puppe starts out pretty slow, fitfully entertaining but with a lot of very broad bits that don't really land, and an apparent lead who is a deeply strange type (he is terrified of... sex? responsibility? adulthood? hard to say.) The second half, though, when Ossi shows up, is astonishing; Ossi is a physical comedian to match Chaplin at the same period, and the quick changes between doll-mode and human-mode never stop being killer- particularly when the charade turns into a lot of convoluted levels of who thinks she's fake and who thinks she's real. It's a great joke that just keeps developing for the rest of the movie, and everything that seemed overly broad earlier suddenly becomes razor sharp when she's there to animate it. It's hard to recommend this one enough.

The Love Parade, on the other hand, dies like a slowly deflating balloon. It starts off great- I'm not a Chevalier fan, but the opening bit with his tryst, the great song where the dog eventually is implied to be as much a playboy as his master and the servant (with, amusingly, at least one of his conquests appearing visibly male) and the gorgeous, somewhat femme-domme flavored initial flirtation between Chevalier and the queen are all marvelous, totally overcoming the static camera with all the sly humor and quick-snap takes that make something like Trouble in Paradise one of the all time greats. Once the wedding happens, though- well, there are still some particularly good parts, like anything that cuts back to the servant and the maid, but most of the rest of the movie is spent with Chevalier pouting childishly and Macdonald suddenly changing her character almost entirely, to one who doesn't seem capable of any kind of flirtation. The movie hustles to make you empathize with how put upon Chevalier is, and at one point I thought the bit might be mockery-by-reversal of the idea that women would be cooped up that way- but the end seems to indicate that, no, the idea is just that it's wrong for women to have power over men. Which, even apart from how obviously disagreeable it is politically, just seems to lack the wit and sophistication that I come to Lubitsch for; it's clever to have Macdonald's capitulation mirror Chevalier's earlier flirtation, but it doesn't overcome the sour taste that the reversion to the mean leaves behind.

[matrixschmatrix]

Body Double is frustrating, because there are parts I really like- the shooting of the porn set to 'Relax' ranks with the best sequences in De Palma's work- but the central murder in it is staged so nauseatingly that it actually made me like De Palma less overall, even beyond this movie. He's always on a knife's edge of pushing violence and sexuality into places that make one uncomfortable- Angie Dickenson's death in Dressed to Kill, Philip's at the beginning of Sisters, the tragic ending of Blow Out- but generally speaking, the deaths are staged in a way that the extreme violence is meant to be almost unbearable, a horrific thing to witness no matter how everything else plays out. This one, though, ups the sexuality in a really repellent way- the phallic imagery of the drill is obvious, and very gross- and also plays out the 'she barely gets away' thing so many times before having her die, horribly, dripping blood on to the protagonist, that for whatever reason it landed way on the other side of the line. It's hard to put into words why this one felt like a violation and others don't- which, indeed, is part of why I'm now worried I'll like the other movies less, since I've lost trust in De Palma's choices- but I nearly just turned the movie off, and my girlfriend just left and didn't watch the rest.

It's not even really a moralistic issue, since within the terms of the movie, the murder and the motivation for the murder aren't far different from Vertigo (for obvious reasons)- it's just the game being played with it.

[domino harvey]

That moment is cheeky and outre compared to most slashers by the time this film was made and released (not to mention all those giallos), the conventions of which De Palma is playing around with in that sequence (and Slumber Party Massacre already did the overtly phallic drill killing thing to the hilt years prior). I hated the movie and don't relish defending it, but I think your outrage is more than a bit Mary Whitehead-y on this one. The "game" is being played on the audience by toying with the trope of convenient rescue before relishing the ironic upending of it, not sure why that's so objectionable

[Murdoch]

I figured I'd wax poetic a little on my favorites to kick off my participation.

Du côté d'Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1973) - Domino already wrote about this but it's one of my favorites as well after buying the lovely Rozier set from Potemkine. It's been a few years since I last watched it - something that seriously needs correcting, but this movie takes everything I love about Rohmer and raises the bar. The listless scenes unfold in a very natural way, making it feel more like Rozier is a fly-on-the-wall to a group of average French twentysomethings out on a beach vacation.
It's one of those films I have a hard time describing to people why I love it, I think it's a personal adoration for this kind of day-in-the-life cinema where nothing particularly exciting happens but the characters and their mannerisms toward each other captures something from the everyday lacking from so many films. It's also its effectiveness at capturing the highs and lows of vacations, where blissful expectancy gives way to mundane reality. It's three hours long but feels far less and by the end I just want another three hours, and then another and another.

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994) - This was really my introduction to international cinema. I watched it on a tiny CRT TV for a college film class and I was enamored. I think Stendhal Syndrome is the proper term for it, because during the final scene I was reeling. Wong's dreamlike camerawork and stream-of-consciousness narration was just the breath of fresh air I needed as a late teen. While it does conform pretty heavily to the manic pixie dream girl trope, Leung's apartment hits the room porn section of my brain and Faye Wong is so adorable that I'm caught up in it as easily as any cheesy 80s romcom can rope me in. Add in Faye Wong's "dreams" cover and the visuals that bleed into one another during Kaneshiro chasing suspects in the street and I'm hooked.

Le Rayon Vert (Eric Rohmer, 1986) - I feel a deep connection to Delphine. I'm not an uncomfortable mess of nerves, but watching Marie Rivière's amazing performance makes me feel like I could be given the right amount of stress. Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs era was a lot about the uneasiness that comes with socializing with anybody, from desired lovers to close friends. Each person approaches their relationships with a feeling of inferiority or discomfort in one's own skin. Delphine exemplifies this, breaking down into tears from the slightest of interactions and finding herself overwhelmed to the point where she has to leave. It's Rohmer's most successful film of this period, everything building toward a final chance encounter where the stars align. And it's a testament to Rohmer's skill as a director that nothing ever feels forced. I've been using a the word "natural" a few times, but that is really the sense I get from Rohmer's cinema of this era. He seems to be in a comfortable place with his direction of actors and writing that it unfolds in a manner that doesn't feel forced or trite. The brilliance of Rohmer is how he portrays the world without any filter, and this film makes me appreciate that more with each successive viewing.

In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) - I can't remember if I saw this early on in my discovery of noir or later, but it's stuck with me nonetheless. As much as the genre/movement/era/whatever was such a unique thing, it has those genre beats like anything. I think at the time I saw this I was so used to the "crime doesn't pay" mantra running through many of the genre pics I saw that I had a sort of expectancy when it came to how things would unfold. But Bogart's nonchalant murder suspect is so aloof to what he's accused of that I found it fascinating. I can't really think of any film before or since in which a character is so unconcerned about being arrested for murder. What would have been a horrible failure in any lesser director's hands, is handled with the emotional skill that only Ray could capture. Putting Bogart's and Grahame's romance before the underlying murder is something that would normally irk me to no end, but Bogart plays Dixon with such skill that I was much more interested in exploring more of this troubled character's underlying rage than going through a pat murder mystery plot. As I said, only Ray could accomplish something like that. It's a testament to the brilliance of the film that the ending works as it does, highlighting Dixon's self-destructive spiral while the resolution of the murder plot is brushed aside to the point it elicits little more than a shrug.

Spotlight Title---> The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933) - I am not much of a Capra fan. I liked American Madness and The Miracle Woman well enough, but his most popular films didn't grab me. This though is a fever dream, something so against type (or at least a far cry from what I've seen) that I couldn't help but take notice. It's such a darker film than what I'm used to, and it eschews Capra's usual simple morality tales for a muddy tale of race relations in which the upstanding Christian is left questioning her motivation for coming to China altogether. I also love that dream sequence in how it presents Stanwyck's view of the General as this exaggerated racist stereotype juxtaposed with the suave man she's intrigued by. This close-minded woman's confused view of the world is broadened by her encounter, something rather nice to see in a world that feels like it's getting me close-minded by the day. The film is just as resonant today as it was then, and it's a beautiful one too. Looking back on it now, I'm just more motivated to spread the word (although I'm sure quite a few here have seen this), so I'd like to make it my spotlight for this project. It can be found in this boxset from the UK or in the TCM Archives' Frank Capra: The Early Collection (warning MOD).

[swo17]

Great contribution, but several of those films aren't eligible for this project. Please review the rules in the first post.

[Murdoch]

Yikes, my bad, will edit out the ineligible ones!

[Murdoch]

To Sleep With Anger (Charles Burnett, 1990) - This has already been discussed in this thread, but it really deserves all the praise it gets. Burnett's film does something I rarely see in American cinema - it invokes the past without overly relying on exposition and context. Images of older times don't hang around like a lengthy flashback, but rather appear and evaporate leaving the characters to their ruminations over older times. It's a film in which each of the characters can't escape the past, but not in a simple way that many movies do in which there's a single event that haunts them. No, in Burnett's film it's an inescapable aspect of American history that lingers, embodied by Glover's menacing Harry as he appears from nowhere and makes his home with them like an unwanted poltergeist.

What's more is the film is informed by race, but not bound by the restraints that seem to tie up other films that attempt to tackle such a subject. I think this is another thing American cinema kind of falters at - tackling a subject as large as race without making the whole film about that subject. But Burnett does it in a way that feels incredibly natural, placing in small events that are part of his characters' overall experience and letting those shape the film around them.

Spoiler

I'm thinking mainly of the Bunuel-esque wait for an ambulance to arrive, in which Harry's body lies on the floor decaying while his reluctant hosts carry on as usual. It's a darkly funny moment, but also a great indictment of the way emergency services neglect black neighborhoods. This really stems from my time working in a public defender's office in a medium sized city, and it's a moment that makes me both laugh at the surrealness of it and cringe at its accuracy.

Knives also brought up the hospital scene in a post that's far more eloquent than mine, and that's another one I admire greatly. Burnett uses the nurse's throwaway line as a bonding experience, bringing together two brothers in a moment that is to me one of the most masterful ten or so seconds of cinema. This is a film I have to restrain myself from speaking in hyperbole because I find so much about it both fascinating to think about and captivating to watch. Normally I'm an advocate of the show, don't tell approach to filmmaking, but Burnett just letting Glover sit back and grin while he describes a run-in with the Klan shows a confidence in the material that I love. This will be placing high on my list, fighting with a few others for the top spot. These films really are the greatest if they can inspire me to find thirty of them on the master list that could easily make my number one.

[knives]

The Earrings of Madame de...
This is a pleasant film, though I would never dare to call it one of Ophuls better ones. The main issue for me is that the film never shakes the feeling that this is a poorer man's Lubitsch spectacle played with ever so slightly less farce (though by the same token especially with these leads one could call this a rich man's Anatole Litvak feature). Everything is beautiful and well acted with a classical story told as well as needed. It just doesn't add up to a great experience and seems odd to highlight against La Ronde for example. I realize that we haven't done that here (I think all of his later films are on the masterlist) so it is more of a curiosity to those who voted as such.

Holiday
This is a brilliant piece of screwball though there's not terribly much to talk about on its own with the most interesting elements being an auteurist one and a comparison within the genre to the two films most obviously connectable to this one. Given that Bringing Up Baby gives cause to discuss the former element I suppose I should start with that. The dynamic between Hepburn and Grant here is very similar with Hepburn as a whirlwind of personality forcing Grant to grow of his own. Cukor allows the film to be much more relaxed and based in a mutual empathy which works better for me (though I can see why for some this gentle hand might not be as attractive as Hawks'). Cukor seems an odd fit for the genre if you think about it too long as he is into languid emotions and even laughs building here as elsewhere the scenario based on the emotional reality of the characters rather then any particular jokes. Hell after the ball the film entirely drops the tone of a comedy playing more like a light drama with jokes every few minutes. Despite this primary engagement with the slow aspects of drama this still feels very speedy though not exhaustively so.

That's highlighted, slightly, by the exchange in temperaments between the two with Grant being much more the speedy enigma while Hepburn sits as the closed in heroine who he loosens up. This leads into the other obvious comparison: My Man Godfrey. Full disclosure that was the first screwball I fell for after many not working for me. It's still one of my favorites and in terms of dealing with the depression and a political critique of those who managed to survive with more money it's better than this film. The difference in casting of the male lead is no small part of that. Grant is really brilliant here, but William Powell's sarcastic and disgusted approach is just more effective for satire then Grant's cute naivety. Since, though, I suspect most aren't coming into this expecting Bunuel the more important thing to consider is how much better Holiday sticks its landing. There's a real connection between Hepburn and Grant, which one should expect after three films together, that makes their inevitable conclusion the only logical option while Godfrey always seemed to have gone with the wrong sister. Part of this is the wise move to minimize Julia who if just because of screen time can't compete (I think even Lew Ayres in what must be his best performance gets more time with Grant). But also in terms of temperaments Grant and Hepburn is a more logical pairing as they seem like equals with similar life goals and a mutual way of defeating their own neuroses. In a sense I suppose that's the goal of screwball, or at least the three pictures I'm working with, and since that it is the most successful on that element it is unquestionably the best example of the genre if not necessarily the best film though arguments for it should be made.

[bdsweeney]

So, I've taken the plunge and decided to take part of one of the forum's lists. Initially feeling constrained by the master list (where is Clueless, for example), I've since found it a godsend in providing some sort of guidance.

And so far it's been one outstanding film after another: The Sinking of the Lusitania, Ménilmontant , Gold Diggers of 1933, The Roaring Twenties , The Curse of the Cat People, Le silence de la mer, Modern Romance and the particularly terrific Man of the West have all been first-time watches in the last three weeks ... plus a greatly needed re-watch of Margaret.

Yet I hadn't yet felt brave enough to sit and write my thoughts on anything. (Sometimes I find the forum a little intimidating.)

But now I've finished Werckmeister Harmonies about a half-hour ago and feel compelled to put some thoughts down. I can't help but view it in relation to the news events of the past few days and see it as some sort absurdist comedy about how people's legitimate anger and disenfranchisement can be too easily swayed and used by "those" (whoever "those" may be) for their own purposes.

I have to admit I'm finding it very difficult to be certain of the concrete meaning of much that I saw in the film.

Spoiler

Does the alliance between the aunt and police/military represent totalitarianism (left or right)? What does the whale stand for? Unattainable hope by those who aren't even sure of what they hope for except that they need to lash out at something ... anything so that they aren't left behind by larger, more powerful, forces? Am I looking for allegory where none exists or was intended?

Edit: I'm completely wrong according to Rosenbaum: it's ethnic cleansing occurring in the town square ... not long after the events in Serbia.

All I can say is isn't it the mark of a great film to let the mind wander while in awe of image after image? And is much written of how funny this film is? The scene with the police chief's two boys is laugh-out-loud hilarious. And I also felt there were science fiction elements, kitchen-sink drama, political thriller ...

I found it to be an enormously rich and rewarding viewing experience ... and can't wait for the next few months' worth of viewing. And I've already got Some Came Running lined up next.

[Mr Sausage]

So, I've taken the plunge and decided to take part of one of the forum's lists. Initially feeling constrained by the master list (where is Clueless, for example), I've since found it a godsend it providing some sort of guidance.

And so far it's been one outstanding film after another: The Sinking of the Lusitania, Ménilmontant , Gold Diggers of 1933, The Roaring Twenties , The Curse of the Cat People, Le silence de la mer, Modern Romance and the particularly terrific Man of the West have all been first-time watches in the last three weeks ... plus a greatly needed re-watch of Margaret.

Yet I hadn't yet felt brave enough to sit and write my thoughts on anything. (Sometimes I find the forum a little intimidating.)

But now I've finished Werckmeister Harmonies about a half-hour ago and feel compelled to put some thoughts down. I can't help but view it in relation to the news events of the past few days and see it as some sort absurdist comedy about how people's legitimate anger and disenfranchisement can be too easily swayed and used by "those" (whoever "those" may be) for their own purposes.

I have to admit I'm finding it very difficult to be certain of the concrete meaning of much that I saw in the film.

Spoiler

Does the alliance between the aunt and police/military represent totalitarianism (left or right)? What does the whale stand for? Unattainable hope by those who aren't even sure of what they hope for except that they need to lash out at something ... anything so that they aren't left behind by larger, more powerful, forces? Am I looking for allegory where none exists or was intended?

Edit: I'm completely wrong according to Rosenbaum: it's ethnic cleansing occurring in the town square ... not long after the events in Serbia.

All I can say is isn't it the mark of a great film to let the mind wander while in awe of image after image? And is much written of how funny this film is? The scene with the police chief's two boys is laugh-out-loud hilarious. And I also felt there were science fiction elements, kitchen-sink drama, political thriller ...

I found it to be an enormously rich and rewarding viewing experience ... and can't wait for the next few months' worth of viewing. And I've already got Some Came Running lined up next.

The political dimension of the movie is a lot more fleshed out in the novel, The Melancholy of Resistance. Mrs. Eszter really does represent fascism and totalitarianism, and we see her and her party exploit the chaos that descends on the town to consolidate their own power.

But neither the novel nor the movie are about this one particular system of order (nor, I think, about ethnic cleansing either). They're about systems of order and disorder colliding, and not just political ones. The title of the movie is a key to what it's doing: Werckmeister's harmonies are a notable instance of a necessary system on which considerable meaning, beauty, and value depend that is, at its core, arbitrary. There is nothing in nature, the world, the universe--no music of the spheres--that gives us these harmonies. Werckmeister merely invented them because they sounded good and beause a tuning was necessary. But they are only an invention. This is what drives Mr. Eszter to despair and death, their arbitrariness, that all the systems to which we give meaning and value are arbitrary human constructions resting atop a void, papering over looming chaos. And this binary of order and chaos is played out on a larger scale with the arrival of the whale and the total upheaval brought by its followers. Order is supplanted by chaos very easily, but of course another order simply moves in the fill the gap. What is terrifying is not just that this second order might be horrifying (the fascism of Mrs. Eszter); what's terrifying is that all of these forms of order are themselves tiny little human contingencies against the nihilism of chaos. If one looks too closely at any of these forms of order, as Mr. Eszter did with Werckmeister's harmonies, their baseline fragility becomes unavoidable. We're all Wile E. Coyote running through the air, sustained only by our own obliviousness.

The political dimensions of all this are interesting, but not the ultimate point. This is even more apparent in the movie given that Krasznahorkai and Tarr removed most of it from the film but moved the crucial phrase 'Werckmeister Harmonies' from being the title of a chapter to the title of the whole thing. Political order is there to prove a larger point about order in general. How totalitarian forces manipulate chaos to gain political control is an interesting and necessary point, but a sub-point considering what's at stake in general. I think Rosenbaum, perplexed, leaned heavily on what he already knew and fixed the movie with a meaning already available to him. The movie (and even the book) is too general to take such a specific political context like the Serbian atrocities. The motivations of the large crowd don't really matter in the end. They aren't meant to bring any structure to the world of the film--they empty it of structure and lay bare all the arbitrary, impersonal chaos of existence that had tormented Mr. Eszter and left Valuska, the visionary or knowing compliment to Mr. Eszter's intellectualism, adrift and empty, without the beautiful, mathematical order of the planets to anchor him.

As for the whale, I'm not sure what it represents either. Perhaps leviathan, an elemental force of destruction; or maybe the uncanny, or the irrational, or the vastness of the unknowable, or maybe nothing at all. I have no idea. It's a hell of an image, tho'.

[knives]

Damnit, I just had a huge thing written up about Paris is Burning that got lost with no way of me writing it up as well again. Still, this is such a great continuation of the weird historical quirk that though cinematic fiction is about the most white bread male queers documentary has been a great haven for minority stories that I want to just bring it up.

[Lemmy Caution]

The whale = the EU.
Or maybe the UK.
Take your pick ...

[knives]

Honestly that joke isn't too far from the reality of what the characters see.

I'm in the middle of Melancholy of the Resistance at the moment actually and for me besides the dense montage style of the writing the difference that is surprising to me is how much strongly Tarr keeps to Valuska's point of view cutting out almost completely, though effectively, Mr. Estzer and Mrs. Palauf leaving pretty much only his scenes with Mrs. Eszter and the prince more or less intact with an emphasis on 'with him'. While this takes away from some great visuals like the scene with the hammer keeping to this specific and in a certain way incidental character really helps with the cosmic metaphysics Mr Sausage rightly cites as Tarr's larger focus not just for his filmic introduction, but more because of how aloof and passive a character he is. Valuska serves as a great way to see Mrs. Eszter and the town through Tarr as Valuska really absorbs this information in terms of how it relates to a macro scale where petty small town prejudices become a world ending apocalypse. Which I suppose makes this Tarr's smallest of his later films (I'm ignoring TheMan from London) since it is the one where the political reality can still be sniffed out.

[matrixschmatrix]

The Bitter Tea of General Yen

One of the immediate issues this movie seems to raise, within the first few minutes, is how much one is supposed to be able to recognize the shitty white man's burden attitude of the missionaries, and their indifference (or very selective concern) with the horrors around them- particularly given how much of those horrors were, if this movie is taking place in like actual real-world 1930s China, pretty much 100% because of endless Western interference. This parallels the discussion that came up around Story of the Last Chrysanthemums but it's almost always an issue in greater or lesser degree- it's honestly hard to tell if the movie is intending all this to be kind of gross, or if I'm supposed to be on the white people's side by default.

There are some hints, even early on, that this isn't the case- the way the actual Asian actors are shot while in the home where the wedding reception was to be, peering out at the tourists from the shadows, has a certain implicit 'look at this idiots' quality, and Yen- though visually a fairly embarrassing presence (the yellowface makeup with the super fakey looking eyebrows just makes him look like a Martian, and the charade is all the more unconvincing when he's surrounded by people who are actually Chinese)- presents what could otherwise feel like the sort of civilized barbarian character the general in Shanghai Express represented with a certain arch sarcasm, a sense that he's mocking Stanwyck and her betrothed for their half-assed concerns.

The movie never entirely loses the Heart of Darkness vibe, where it's not entirely clear if it recognizes where the ugliness is ultimately rooted, but it's easy enough to take it as deeply cutting and satirizing the faux humanism of the white people- Stanwyck is horrified by the site of prisoners being executed, but doesn't seem to have any particular alternatives in mind. Her own racism is certainly made more than manifest, both by an outright racist comment and (more interestingly) by her Nosferatuesque imagining of Yen, knocked out by a (perhaps equally imaginary?) picture of him as a screen Lothario, and a key moment later on when Stanwyck's Christian sentimentality is undercut by her revulsion (mixed with fascination) at his touch. It's a shame that we get less insight into Yen's interest in Stanwyck, except perhaps as a sort of dominance-by-proxy that doesn't entirely seem to fit him, but it's ultimately more about her than about him. It's worth noting too that the two least redeemable characters- Jones and Mah-Li- are an American and a woman taught in a missionary school, respectively. And Stanwyck, of course, is too patronizing and willing to see Mah-Li as a child ever to recognize how easily she's being played.

Normally I would worry that I was getting distracted by political concerns that were beside the point of the movie, but here I think they might actually be the point- and it's worked out interestingly enough in the plot that it's possible to take it seriously, despite the general Mikado (yes, I know that's Japan) vibe a lot of the China-via-Hollywood sets and designs give it. The logic of political power has an almost Game of Thrones quality, too, and a similar sense that to hold power is to be ruthless and manipulative by turns. It's certainly a departure from literally everything else I've seen from Capra, and an odd role for Stanwyck, as well. I honestly don't know how I'm going to feel about it after it's had the chance to settle in, but I'm glad to have seen it, at any rate.

[knives]

This is drunk me talking, but the film is absolutely taken in a political way, but unlike Mr. Smith the knowledge of what the politics are aiming for makes it if anything more pleasing to modern sensibilities rather than grosser. Perhaps if it had been made five years later it would be more clear, but I find that Capra is trying to reconcile normative western perceptions with a basic personhood and complexity of social situation for the Chinese individual at least of the upper class in a way akin to a lot of the Merchant/Ivory films actually especially The White Countess. The dream is key to this. In both parts the General is exoticized, but the film is clearly saying rather than the yellow peril a care for the Chinese is needed. I'm not saying this isn't problematic also. It definitely is, but in the context of '33 politics, which is the only fair way to judge the film, Capra is asking us to deal with a Chinese person in primarily positive terms which (and this is the important part that wouldn't really be heeded until many decades later) don't relate to him having to be saved in christian ideals.

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, that's more or less what I came around to. It's undercut a bit by the sort of general way of doing things of the 30s- the yellowface in particular- and it's occasionally hard to tell where the one ends and the other begins, but I had rejected the idea that they were parodying the self important missionaries at first, only to have the movie make it fairly clear that was indeed what it was doing. I think one could reasonably watch it and come to the conclusion that not only were the Christian ideals put forward in the movie naive at best and hypocritical at worst, they were potentially the ultimate cause (alongside the capitalism Jones represents) of a lot of the misery that forms the basic action of the movie. Which, of course, is historically fairly apt analysis.

[knives]

I agree. So as to prevent my initial post from being a redundancy though I think this is important to consider as a lead up to the reconciliation and general change in attitude toward mainland Asians after WWII. I think this is still forward to a lot of the end results from films of that era even though the intentions are fairly aligned (e.g. Love is a Many Splendored Thing). And certainly compared to contemporary films Capra seems to be at least struggling toward a reshaping of relations. Look at LeRoy's Oil for the Lamps of China from two years later for example. It's a good movie overall, but it is also very typical of the ideas of the age where the Chinese are nearly erased from the idea of China and when they are included they're practically indistinguishable from the machinery.

As to the yellow face stuff, sure it is unfortunate. No denying that, but I think that A. Nils Asther plays him fairly straight like you'd play any other sort of suave antihero only leaning on the Fu Manchu stuff when it is the character acting for the Europeans. It really is a Richard Barthelmess level performance. Which gets to the second point that while it would be awesome to have hired one of the many great Asian actors working in Hollywood at the time not everyone can be Josef von Sternberg in bucking convention and the film already was having enough trouble finding an audience with that (if memory serves it was a massive bomb at the time). So, and I'm sure you already know this, it's important to remember that in '33 they were only about a decade out from when even black actors had to wear black face let alone allowing white actors to wear it (though Jolson had made it a metatextual detail at least by that point). More importantly yellow face was the norm to an extreme for about three more decades even in smaller parts (need I mention Mickey Rooney) and so it seems a necessary compromise for modern viewers to accept it and judge it in terms of the humanity of the performance. In terms of that Asther (along with Barthelmess and Peter Lorre in the Mr Moto series) are to my knowledge the best of the yellow face performances as the actors allow it to be treated as an incidental aspect of the performance for the most part, but very knowing on the part of the character when the story demands it. That's a tremendous level of empathy. I have to admit I also have as a guilty pleasure Myrna Loy and Boris Karloff's performances in that precode Fu Manchu movie where they decide to go all the way in terms of over the top villainy bringing a Jew of Malta type glee to their performances.

More soberly talking about the dream the switch to him being some Tuxedo Mask fetish is sort of the next step in the recovery process of a society in Racists Anonymous. The film is basically a Beauty and the Beast one where the transformation into the handsome prince is cause by a mere shift in perception (duh) with the dream as catalyst. Pushing so thoroughly the conventions of a story onto her frees him a lot. This still leaves the potentially problematic Asian enigma stereotype of course, but it seems acceptable in light of how it is used to highlight how prejudices are formed and changed. The film as far as I know is the first to allow some degree of consummation in the relationship of a white woman and an Asian man (probably another reason to have not cast an actual Chinese actor) with Stanwyck's sexuality being very open on that point. Even nowadays American cinema is very squeamish about female sexuality so ignoring the race element and to what degree it is acceptable from a modern perspective it needs to be applauded for that at least.

[matrixschmatrix]

Some shorts:

The Land Beyond the Sunset (1912)

This is quite the charmer- it's easy to forget how early this one is, as not only does the acting style feel quite filmic, with the performers giving real and individualized performances instead of the sort of frantic pantomime I tend to expect from the pre-Birth of a Nation era, it even has some nice and nicely subtle little camera tricks, particularly the superimposed memory of the boy's grandmother abusing him over the picnic scene. It does a lot with a little, getting you to feel for the kid, giving you his home life, and getting across what a relief some time away the home life is each with just tiny little vignettes, leaving time for some of the more Méliès fantasy touches of the fairy story. Having read about this beforehand, I was expecting something more in the ending, though- it neither quite feels like it's meant to be read as the kid literally sailed into fairyland nor as the kid essentially killing himself in a romantic fashion, as it feels like both might have been hit a little harder. As is, it feels like a bit of an anti climax. Still, though, the piece as a whole is pretty remarkable.

Suspense (1913)

Everything I said about feeling like it was made later about Sunset applies double here- it's the most basic Hitchcockian scenario imaginable, but this thing is purely about the filmmaking, and the filmmaking is marvelous. I really enjoyed the triangle split screen phone conversation shots, with the tramp's doings in the third part- an interesting departure from a convention that might not even have existed yet, in that only two of the three shown are part of the conversation- but it all really crackles, with an excellent car chase, some well executed three way suspense intercutting, and a general vibe of excitement that isn't lessened by being an utterly stock narrative. It's hard to know what to say about this one, because it feels like its virtues are almost all in craft and editing (though the performances aren't bad either) but it's well worth the ten minutes it takes to watch.

Frankenstein (1910)

I don't know if it's the couple of years' distance or just the nature of the filmmakers involved, but the difference between this one and the other two is amazing- this and Sunset are even both Edison Studios productions, but while Sunset feels like a film, and quite a poetic one, this feels like a presentation of a couple scenes from a book. The Méliès vibe here is much stronger, as not only does it lean a lot on trick photography- and admittedly, the sequence of the monster's creation (they seem to have been reversing the footage of a burning dummy?) is marvelous- but it is absolutely in the frantic pantomime mode throughout, with no-one involved showing any particular notice of where the camera is or interest in playing to it. I think my favorite part of this is the amusingly expository intertitles; one of the first few is something like "Frankenstein creates the monster but it turns out it's evil because of the evil within him", and one would absolutely never have gathered that from what one actually sees on screen (there's essentially no room for Frankenstein to show any particular characteristics of any kind.)