The 1965 Mini-List

[domino harvey]

So Saturday, perfect

[swo17]

I...don't think that's how time zones work. But if there's something you want to be able to vote for that you can't fit in a viewing for tonight, you can still tell me the title and I can add it now. It's just kinda dicey to add to the poll once it goes live. I tried doing it last month and it messed up someone's ballot which I had to fix manually

[domino harvey]

This is what’s still on my docket (which if they were added, I could get to before the 15th). I understand if it’s too many movies, though

Spoiler

Angel’s Flight
Brainstorm
the Fool Killer
Jakten
Journal d’une femme en blanc
King Rat
La Bugiarda
La metamorphose des Cloportes
La 317eme section
Le bambole
Les copains
L’heure de la verite
Nattmara
Oggi, domani, dopodomani
Once a Thief
Une fille et des fusils

[swo17]

Tell ya what, I'll add those all at the bottom of the list so you'll be able to vote for them if you want, but they won't clutter up the rest of the list of eligible titles

[domino harvey]

Works for me, these yearly projects have been far too lax on my usual persona of King of the Orphans anyways. Thanks swo, I only even ask because for once there’s a non-zero chance that I could actually see all of my To Watch pile for a list before submission time, but I’d likely just back burner these (for…ever?) otherwise

[knives]

King Rat will probably be a top ten for me.

[domino harvey]

It wasn’t on swo’s list until now, so you may want to make sure nothing else you’re voting for is absent before it’s too late!

[Rayon Vert]

I've never heard of a single one of those titles!

(Which is a good reminder of how my cinephilia is not anywhere in the vicinity of some of you guys/gals!)

[swo17]

I hadn't heard of King Rat but since it's Forbes I'll give it a try

[Altair]

King Rat, if I remember rightly, is breathtakingly cynical, beautifully shot, and unusually for a British war film made during this period, shows war as a matter of survival, not of honour or nobility. Certainly worth viewing.

[Rayon Vert]

A ranking of 7.5. on IMDB is pretty high!

[swo17]

VOTE HERE UNTIL SEPTEMBER 18

[domino harvey]

I'm in the midst of a mad dash to work my way through the thirty titles remaining on my To Watch List for this year, but I have to skip ahead of my writeups to implore anyone who hasn't seen Walkower yet to push it to the top of your queues. I've been thinking a lot lately about how different watching movies is now for me than 10-15 years ago, as so rarely do I encounter new-to-me masterpieces (as opposed to the days when I was just diving in and could realistically see dozens of the greatest films of all time in a span of just a month or two). This film belongs to that category though, and I still feel invigorated for having seen it. I wasn't impressed with the other Jerzy Skolimowski films I've seen, but this is something else, a film that is somehow simultaneously wildly ambitious stylistically and yet small-scale and small-stakes in narrative. This autobiographical tale of approximately 36 hours in the life of a former boxer (Played by the director, though I did not learn that until the end credits) is a study in forward momentum-- everything moves here, often in layers (so the foreground moves as does the background, but not always in intersecting ways)-- and astoundingly complex single-take shots. The film is almost a low-budget Soy Cuba when it comes to these longtakes, particularly one incredible shot involving a motorcycle that inspires the same sense of "How in the world did they get the timing for something like this right?" awe that Soy Cuba inspires-- and Skolimowski had to figure all this out while never being behind the camera for any of it as it played out! Cahiers naming this the second best film of the year (of 1966-- French release dates!) seems far saner now that I've seen it!

[swo17]

A few not to be missed:

Dom Juan ou Le Festin de pierre (Marcel Bluwal)
This would be good enough if it were just Piccoli being a cad for two hours but then the film veers into the surreal and is all the better for it.

Long Live the Republic (Karel Kachyňa)
There was a clip from this film included in the CzechMate documentary that prompted me to immediately seek it out. Anyone who's enjoyed Second Run's Kachyňa releases should run not walk to this visually arresting children-in-war film which occasionally veers into the realm of fantasy, as a respite for the children I think.

The Restless Ones (Dick Ross)
Almost shockingly frank and well-rounded characterizations for what is ostensibly a ministering tool produced by Billy Graham.

A Spring for the Thirsty (Yuri Ilyenko)
I very much lucked out several years ago and scored a copy of this director's films from the Dovzhenko Centre in Ukraine, but unfortunately they're still otherwise unavailable. For the uninitiated, Ilyenko was the cinematographer for Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and he certainly deserves to be at the front of the line of some discerning label's priority list along with Deville, Ruiz, and the like (plus, he has a much more manageable body of work). This was his already fully-formed debut feature. Most any of this would fit seamlessly into the Parajanov film, but for the fact that it was shot in gorgeous black & white.

Sunday at 6 (Lucian Pintilie)
This is another fully-formed debut feature that significantly elevates interest in its story (which is not exactly small stakes to begin with) through masterful use of the form, particularly editing, cinematography, and score.

Song 14
Two: Creeley/McClure (Stan Brakhage)
Not much talked about but these are surely worth six collective minutes of your time. Two is on the first disc of Criterion's second Brakhage set and gets some good mileage out of inverted and superimposed images. Song 14 is not available on DVD (despite IMDb's image for it being the Criterion set) but is a standout among the Song series and a really lively example of Brakhage's signature frame-by-frame compositions. A lot of it has a degraded quality to it that almost makes it look more like a Bill Morrison film.

[knives]

I'm in the midst of a mad dash to work my way through the thirty titles remaining on my To Watch List for this year, but I have to skip ahead of my writeups to implore anyone who hasn't seen Walkower yet to push it to the top of your queues. I've been thinking a lot lately about how different watching movies is now for me than 10-15 years ago, as so rarely do I encounter new-to-me masterpieces (as opposed to the days when I was just diving in and could realistically see dozens of the greatest films of all time in a span of just a month or two). This film belongs to that category though, and I still feel invigorated for having seen it. I wasn't impressed with the other Jerzy Skolimowski films I've seen, but this is something else, a film that is somehow simultaneously wildly ambitious stylistically and yet small-scale and small-stakes in narrative. This autobiographical tale of approximately 36 hours in the life of a former boxer (Played by the director, though I did not learn that until the end credits) is a study in forward momentum-- everything moves here, often in layers (so the foreground moves as does the background, but not always in intersecting ways)-- and astoundingly complex single-take shots. The film is almost a low-budget Soy Cuba when it comes to these longtakes, particularly one incredible shot involving a motorcycle that inspires the same sense of "How in the world did they get the timing for something like this right?" awe that Soy Cuba inspires-- and Skolimowski had to figure all this out while never being behind the camera for any of it as it played out! Cahiers naming this the second best film of the year (of 1966-- French release dates!) seems far saner now that I've seen it!

This is in one of those Milestone sets, correct?

[swo17]

All I know is it's in an old Polish Skolimowski set and also in one of those Scorsese Presents BD boxes (briefly distributed by Milestone, if that's what you mean)

[domino harvey]

Yes, it's in Vol 2 of the Scorsese Polish Blu-ray set (the white one)

[therewillbeblus]

Two is on the first disc of Criterion's second Brakhage set and gets some good mileage out of inverted and superimposed images.

I wasn't with this one until the last 45 seconds or so when it becomes what feels like the primary inspiration for all of Lynch's most chaotic horror moments in the second half of his career (the grungy brutalism of Lost Highway on)

[swo17]

That sounds about right

[domino harvey]

Angel’s Flight (Raymond Nassour and Kenneth W Richardson)
Ropey and exceedingly rough around the edges, this out of time gasp from the noir era features a lot of incredible period footage of Bunker Hill and the titular transportation device in its tale of Indus Arthur’s rape victim luring PUAs to their death in public places. This movie is a mess, and yet I cannot deny its odd charms, particularly Arthur, who looks so out of step with the era that it gives her presence a beguiling ethereal quality. This is a bargain basement noir made by independent filmmakers who don’t realize the genre is effectively dead thanks to television, but like the neighborhood depicted, there are even elegiac qualities in that aspect of its existence. [P]

Les fêtes galantes (Rene Clair)
Oh how the mighty do fall. Clair’s last film belongs to the group of auteurs who left us with one of their worst works. An exhaustively unfunny Jean-Pierre Cassel (between this and the De Broca films, it is astonishing that his career pivoted enough to not be considered one of the worst comic actors of all time— but as Deville showed, give him good material and he could rise to the occasion) flits between two sides of warring factions in this facile costume comedy with no laughs, no wit, and seemingly no end. I assume Clair needed the money and was just a warm body in the chair while some production assistant directed this.

the Loved One (Tony Richardson)
One grotesque and unamusing “wacky” event after another in what is most certainly a film written by Terry Southern. If you can make it past the disgusting and pointless eccentricities of Rod Steiger’s homelife about halfway through this, you will probably survive the rest, though it’s an incredible parade of bad ideas and pointless cameos throughout. I haven’t read the Waugh novel, which I suspect forms only a loose inspiration for this movie’s indignities, but while I imagine it had some of the cynicism of this adaptation present, I doubt it was as dehumanizing and exhausting there as it is here. Some occasional aesthetic charms are present thanks to Haskell Wexler and Anjanette Comer, but so what if they contribute nothing more than fleeting distractions from mean-spirited and obvious idiocy?

Une fille et des fusils (Claude Lelouch)
A quartet of movie-loving factory workers decide to enter a life of crime, reasoning that they’ve seen enough gangster movies to train themselves for the role. One of the quartet also has a deaf mute girlfriend who hangs around during their shenanigans, who seems to exist solely to react in pantomime to their stupidity. This entire film is a feature-length pathetic plea by Lelouch to be waved into the Nouvelle Vague, and I grew tired of the “Notice me Senpai Godard” antics immediately. Lelouch has zero good instincts with his material here— the film is too long and the goings-on are not fun or lightweight, with zero charm present to sugarcoat the rough edges. This is a film where we get a clear cameo role written for Brigitte Bardot and when Lelouch of course cannot secure her participation, he just casts a nobody in the role and it works even less than it would have. But the greatest misstep here is the final ten minutes. None of you are going to watch this, but I’ll spoiler it anyways

Spoiler

It’s shocking to watch this and try to fathom why Lelouch believed the film had in any way earned a turn towards seriousness, given the jovial stupidity that drove the rest of the film. I could actually see a different movie pull this ending off, as there’s no doubt giving anxious amateurs automatic weapons would result in the accidental carnage they enact in the ransom sequence, but that turn doesn’t belong to a film with this tone. It’s not deep to pivot like this, it’s a gross misreading of the situation and complete misunderstanding of how films work.

It's incredible to realize that only one year after this garbage came out, Lelouch would be nominated for Best Director before all his idols.

[therewillbeblus]

the Loved One (Tony Richardson)
One grotesque and unamusing “wacky” event after another in what is most certainly a film written by Terry Southern. If you can make it past the disgusting and pointless eccentricities of Rod Steiger’s homelife about halfway through this, you will probably survive the rest, though it’s an incredible parade of bad ideas and pointless cameos throughout. I haven’t read the Waugh novel, which I suspect forms only a loose inspiration for this movie’s indignities, but while I imagine it had some of the cynicism of this adaptation present, I doubt it was as dehumanizing and exhausting there as it is here. Some occasional aesthetic charms are present thanks to Haskell Wexler and Anjanette Comer, but so what if they contribute nothing more than fleeting distractions from mean-spirited and obvious idiocy?

This was on my shortlist of revisits since I remembered next to nothing about it yet rated it favorably, but in hindsight I have no idea why. Almost nothing about this film is charming or particularly funny, but I left my viewing with the exact same takeaways: It can look beautiful (the scene in the loft following the Steiger dinner bit is breathtaking, like something out of a dream), and Comer's performance was versatile enough to waver towards enigmatic captivation at times (though sometimes she's merely presented as a unidimensional vehicle for zany reactivity). I'm not sure what it says about me that I felt the Steiger home scene was the best part of the movie, but it felt like the moment where the film finally met itself where it's at, committing to vulgar ludicrousness turned up to 11 and admitting it's no more than a regurgitation of insanity. The rest seems to posture at wacky ideas but remains reserved enough for the 'jokes' to fall flat (in general I'm not sure I find much British comedy to transcend these limitations), so while I didn't laugh out loud at the Steiger mom chicken stuff, it at least felt like a confident move toward the film's ethos of insolence.

[knives]

This convo had me look up my original comments on this and here you have it.

When Liberace is your least campy element you've either made a great comedy or the worst. Fortunately Richardson works it all to perfect stupidity.

[therewillbeblus]

I decided to rewatch The Family Jewels at some point today as a comedic palette cleanser, which is probably my highest ranking pure comedy of the decade

[therewillbeblus]

Gare du nord only gets better (you can find it online with english subs), a 16-min short that moves from a domestic chamber piece -suffocating us with the devolution of intimacy when time shatters mystery- into an open world where opportunity exists but our own myopic barriers of self-constructed conformity toward non-risk complacency reinforces the fatalism we seek to escape from. Jarring, honest, depressing, vivacious- it's a piercing look at what emotionally and existentially rots us and why without offering a cure, and there's something profoundly unnerving yet sickly validating about that raw exposure of our layered trappings.

[swo17]

It's also available on DVD, as part of the film Six in Paris