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Totally. I hadn't sussed things out entirely last night, but I think in terms of it being noir what's really wonderful is how tone upends a lot of it. The first half and even well into the climax the film is fairly straightforward in terms of genre, but the winking tone it takes does much to show off how absurd the genre is (really the crime genre on the whole) and leaves an organic opportunity for the ending to avoid the genre entirely where the money doesn't matter, the sense of fatality is gone, and everyone gets a good laugh. I'd have thought it impossible to do the genre proper and still be uplifting, but the film clearly does just that. Truly a nice breath of fresh air.

I don't think I've seen any discussion of Polish cinema from this era yet, correct me if I'm mistaken. I just watched Eroica and Night Train from the Polish Cinema Classics box set recently put out by Second Run DVD. Both were quite good and have potential to make my list, though I'm not sure if I have enough context to give a decent write-up of either of them. I also plan on visiting/re-visiting the 3 Wadja films that Criterion put out. Just wondering what other major Polish films from the 1950s are worth tracking down?

There are some great experimental shorts from Poland in the '50s available in the PWA Animation sets. I'd particularly recommend:

Cinéforms and Here and There (Andrzej Pawłowski, 1957)
Somnambulists (Mieczysław Waśkowski, 1958)

And there are excellent documentaries (and docu-dramas) on the PWA / NINA documentary sets. The two big 50s sets are the ones dedicated to Andrzej Munk and The Black Series, though there are some 50s films featured on the Kazimierz Karabasz and Wladyslaw Slesicki sets as well. If you know absolutely nothing about Polish documentary filmmaking in the 50s, The Black Series is the perfect place to start.

Need to revisit some of that Polish material.

My most recent 50s viewings were two Minnelli melodramas (don't think we've had Domino's run-down yet), both of which impressed:

The Cobweb (1955) has a great cast including Lilian Gish, Gloria Grahame, Richard Widmark and Lauren Bacall, all caught up in a tumultuous squabble over some new curtains (or should I say drapes) for a psychiatric hospital. This seemed, by turns, enjoyably soapy (Grahame's performance in particular), ridiculous, vulgar (in its unsubtle treatment of 'big issues') and sublime, all shot through with the aesthetic sumptuousness that makes Minnelli so watchable. A classic of sorts, if unlikely to be list material.

Even better, to my mind, was Tea and Sympathy (1956), which seems to have been written off by many at the time as a toothless adaptation of a Broadway play. John Kerr (also the disturbed young artist in The Cobweb) is a sensitive, reticent youth whose effeminate interests (flowers, sewing, even, god forbid, music) provoke suspicion and contempt from his jock schoolmates and his distant father. Deborah Kerr, his housemaster's wife, is on hand to provide the titular sympathy.

A common criticism of this film (conceded by Minnelli himself) is that it dodges the issue of homosexuality: while Tom, the protagonist, is codified by the men around him as a sissy, he is still drawn towards a sort of redemption in the possibility of heterosexual romance. However, even within the constraints of the Production Code (pushed slightly further a few years later with Suddenly, Last Summer), this does not necessarily come across as disingenuous: what is important is that Tom is uncomfortable with the gender norms and expectations of the conservative culture in which he finds himself; it is as much a film about gender identity as sexuality. One of the obvious ironies of the picture is that the virile behaviour of the 'real men' (hands-on physical bonding, avoiding the company of women) is incredibly homoerotic, while their neurotic policing of acceptable masculinity is revealed as the real social pathology.

Things do get a little sentimental in the latter half (and some will find a mismatch between the performances of the two Kerrs: his subdued, hers theatrical), but overall I think I enjoyed this as much as any Minnelli I've seen, even if it isn't structurally up there with The Bad and the Beautiful.

Is the UK release of Clouzot's The Spies a reliable one?

It's nothing special, but perfectly adequate and very cheap.

Adequate was all I expected, thanks.

zedz wrote:And there are excellent documentaries (and docu-dramas) on the PWA / NINA documentary sets. The two big 50s sets are the ones dedicated to Andrzej Munk and The Black Series, though there are some 50s films featured on the Kazimierz Karabasz and Wladyslaw Slesicki sets as well. If you know absolutely nothing about Polish documentary filmmaking in the 50s, The Black Series is the perfect place to start.

I'd say, 'Czarna seria' is a very beautiful box set, but go for the marvellous Munk set, too! The Rashomon-like Man on the Tracks is my favourite Munk at the moment, though I'll have to revisit Eroica, as I've only seen the old Polish DVD, but Gwiazdy musza plonac /Stars must shine (1954) as well as the partisan-themed Men of the Blue Cross /Blekitny kryz (1955) linger on the lower ranks of my list at the moment, too. And both of them are also to be found there.

SPAIN

Realism in the Spanish Cinema (1951-1963) by the Instituto Cervantes

Recommended viewing:
Apartado de correos 1001 (Julio Salvador, 1950)
El último caballo (Edgar Neville, 1950)
Cielo negro (Manuel Mur Oti, 1951)
Los ojos dejan huellas (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1952)
Carne de horca (Ladislao Vajda, 1953)
Esa pareja feliz (Luis García Berlanga & Juan Antonio Bardem, 1953)
Segundo López, aventurero urbano (Ana Mariscal, 1953)
Cómicos (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1954)
Novio a la vista (Luis García Berlanga, 1954)
Historias de la radio (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1955)
Marcelino pan y vino (Ladislao Vajda, 1955)
Orgullo (Manuel Mur Oti, 1955)
Los peces rojos (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1955)
Sierra maldita (Antonio del Amo, 1955)
Calabuch (Luis García Berlanga, 1956)
Calle Mayor (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1956)
Mi tío Jacinto (Ladislao Vajda, 1956)
Amanecer en Puerta Oscura (José María Forqué, 1957)
Los jueves, milagro (Luis García Berlanga, 1957)
La vida por delante (Fernando Fernán Gómez, 1958)
El baile (Edgar Neville, 1959)
El pisito (Marco Ferreri & Isidoro M. Ferry, 1959)
Los tramposos (Pedro Lazaga, 1959)

Essential viewing:
Surcos / Furrows (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1951)
The Pérez family, consisting of a couple in their sixties and their three kids, dream of improving their quality of life by moving to the capital. They attempt to put their grueling country life behind them at an extremely difficult moment in Spanish History. The family are quite hard-up but they manage to find a place to stay in Madrid thanks to Pili (an old friend of their eldest son), who takes them into her house for a fixed rate. Every day they spend in Madrid becomes a failed attempt in survival. The characters have to face an internal struggle that will contribute to extinguishing the idea of well-being and abundance that they had associated with life in the big city without an empirical basis; an idea based on the rumors that reached the village. Consequently, their attempt to prosper honestly is reduced to a failed project that toys with the characters’ psychology and, in a way, ends us corrupting them. The reality of Madrid in the Fifties was nothing like what they expected: blue-collar neighborhoods packed with workers, with insufficient resources, where the black market and delinquency became the staples of everyday life, which everyone inevitably turned to sooner or later to survive.

Bienvenido Mister Marshall / Welcome Mister Marshall! (Luis García Berlanga, 1953)
Villar del Río is a peaceful, poor and forgotten town, where nothing new ever happens and the routine is the same day in and day out. Now the arrival of singer Carmen Vargas and her manager and agent have shaken up the town’s boring life. That same morning, a government representative suddenly shows up to announce the imminent arrival of a commission from the Marshall Plan. On hearing of the news, the town mayor, a good-natured albeit a slightly deaf man, decides to dress all the denizens in the purest Andalusian style to welcome the visitors. Juan Antonio Bardem and Luis García Berlanga, assisted by Miguel Mihura, wrote this corrosive story based on the unease Spain felt at being left out of the distribution of US aid (aka the Marshall Plan), which aimed to reconstruct a Europe ravaged by the World War.

Muerte de un ciclista / Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)
María José and Juan are on their way from a date when they run a cyclist over and kill him. They’d been going steady years before, but then María José had married Miguel, and Juan had become her lover. Obsessed by the shadow of the dead cyclist –who they abandoned on the road side–, they are afraid of everything and of everyone; afraid of their relationship being revealed and of losing their social position. The situation becomes more complicated until it comes to a tragic end.

Spanish cinema flourished during Franco's regime (1939–75) despite the dictatorship and censorship. Provoked by the system they lived under, Spanish directors told stories about the people's hopes and troubles by using humor (Welcome Mister Marshall!) and parables (Death of a Cyclist) that reached their audiences and sidestepped the censors.
Do you want me to name a spotlight? This is, no doubt, Furrows. Nieves Conde's best-known work set the precedent for Spanish Neorealist filmmaking... and more, much more than this: rural immigration into the cities, poverty, prostitution, unemployment, class conflicts, bad housing, and black marketeering! A masterpiece.

preacher -- Are these films available on subbed DVD?

Kerpan, you know Spanish DVDs usually have no subtitles (not even in Spanish). Aparently "El pisito" is available only with Spanish subs, "Miracle of Marcelino" (Spanish biggest hit ever) and "Welcome Mister Marshall" are both available with English subs, there is a Criterion disc for "Death of a Cyclist" and English fansubs for "Calle mayor" (Bardem's most critically acclaimed film), and perhaps some more fansubs (Furrows?).

I thought Pan y Vino was Mexican, not Spanish?

"Marcelino pan y vino" is a Spanish film but it was a great success in all Latin American countries. The well-known actor Fernando Rey is the narrator who tell the story. Hungarian-born Ladislado Vajda directed. Vajda was adopted by Spanish film industry and worked mainly in Spain, but his best film was shot in Switzerland in a German-Spanish double version: "It Happened in Broad Daylight" (later poorly remade as "The Pledge").

Hmm, that comes as a surprise since it seems so Mexican (I supposed some of the off moments were because of the European director). All the same glad to see it talked about here. Very excellent film and one I'm considering for the big list.

I picked up the Hilary Harris DVD that was mentioned when I tried to collate all the experimental films that were available on DVD, and really enjoyed it. There are three films on there which are eligible for this project.

Longhorn - A very simple and quite hypnotic play with shapes. Two horns, basically, twirling and shot in such a way that they appear uncannily alive. It doesn't sound like much on paper, but it's got a great mood, and it's on my shortlist.

Highway - Abstracted highway shots. Nicely done, but Pennebaker's Daybreak Express does a similar thing better.

Harris only made one other film in the 50s, as far as I can tell, and it's not officially included on the DVD, but it sneaks in through the backdoor nevertheless, since the 1965-ish television interview that's included as an extra includes excerpts from several of his films, including the entirety of Highway and the missing film, Generation. The quality is 60s TV broadcast, obviously, but you still get to see the film.

Generation - A three-minute abstract film from 1956, seemingly shot through a kaleidoscope. Rather lovely and in consideration for my long shortlist.

Until I watched the interview I had no idea that Harris was the director of the magnificent COI film Seawards the Great Ships, which is a must-see for the 1960s list. It's included on the BFI's Shipbuilding collection.

I was the Pawlowski shorts that impressed me far more than the Borowczyks. Cineforms should be somewhere on my overall list.

swo17 wrote:There are some great experimental shorts from Poland in the '50s available in the PWA Animation sets. I'd particularly recommend:

Cinéforms and Here and There (Andrzej Pawłowski, 1957)
Somnambulists (Mieczysław Waśkowski, 1958)

Some brief thoughts on a few 50s films I've seen this month -

Antonioni's Le amiche is, like the rest of his 50s work, an interesting artifact that doesn't quite succeed as a film, or a nihilistic 'experience' in the vein of his Alienation Trilogy. He is already beginning to form the 'total system of meaning' that typifies his later works but the film is so cerebral as to be dry - gaining nothing from his attempt at introducing a human interest factor with the train station ending. Thankfully he realised later that he didn't need to include this kind of subplot to make a film involving.

I've always understood the charges of misogyny, or at least exploitation, put on Mizoguchi - but usually my problem with his films is not necessarily the sexual politics but the fact that, for all their visual eloquence and detail, they are generally quite simplistic and dull, and ham-fisted in their messages. Now we have The Life of Oharu which I find, for a change, quite involving despite its length, but incredibly disturbing in its treatment of its heroine. Its attack on patriarchy is still drawn in primary colours, and it is hypocritical, too, taking the demeaning aspects of 'women's pictures' to gruesome, fetishistic extremes. I've read criticism that lends Oharu some agency and strength of identity - this is in some ways true, she does refuse to change on many occasions to fit in to the ideals of the social system - but her agency is punished in more and more hideous ways until by the 'end' of her story Mizoguchi seems to be taking quite a lot of pleasure in his picture of the 'ruined' female. I think there are interesting ideas here but they contradict themselves - the heavy use of longshot does give Oharu an 'every[Japanese]woman' quality but also denies her the character detail that would make her something other than faceless animal prey for a faceless animal predator (just look at the gravitas Tanaka lends her characterisation in the bookending segments where she is given the relative freedom of closeup). And giving the narrative momentum through a progression of ellipses is a unique and creative way to advance a plot, but the effect here is of seeing the same abusive ritual repeated over and over. The unadorned soundscape and settings isolate these images of degradation - the result could have lent weight to a feminist statement, but the result here is almost pornographic.

Naruse's Sound of the Mountain is gorgeous and superbly modulated, but somehow it moves me less than some other Naruse dramas in a similar vein - I think the emotions here are just a pinch too open, too accessible. This never approaches the melodramatic but I think it robs the film of a bit of mystery for me. Perhaps I'm not used to seeing actors like Yamamura and Hara this unrestrained. They are both excellent (especially Hara) but this represents something new from both of them for me. I'd like to single out Teruko Nagaoka's perceptive work as Yamamura's wife, too - constantly active but never exactly 'mannered', and always in a way that reveals character.

puxzkkx wrote:Some brief thoughts on a few 50s films I've seen this month -

Antonioni's Le amiche is, like the rest of his 50s work, an interesting artifact that doesn't quite succeed as a film, or a nihilistic 'experience' in the vein of his Alienation Trilogy. He is already beginning to form the 'total system of meaning' that typifies his later works but the film is so cerebral as to be dry - gaining nothing from his attempt at introducing a human interest factor with the train station ending. Thankfully he realised later that he didn't need to include this kind of subplot to make a film involving.

Hmm, the funny thing for me is that his '50s work is the superior section (than again amongst his later work the only one to interest me even if I didn't finding it touching either emotionally or intellectually is Identification of a Woman). Part of it I'm sure is a lack of interest in the themes of his later work versus the more typically Italian early pictures, but also I think largely he lost his sense of humour which is rather fatal when for symbolism's sake he sets up rather humourous situations (the ending to Blowup). In these early pictures even if it were just mimicry (I'll give him more credit than that though) he seems to show more complexity of character if not cinema.

puxzkkx wrote:Antonioni's Le amiche is, like the rest of his 50s work, an interesting artifact that doesn't quite succeed as a film, or a nihilistic 'experience' in the vein of his Alienation Trilogy. He is already beginning to form the 'total system of meaning' that typifies his later works but the film is so cerebral as to be dry - gaining nothing from his attempt at introducing a human interest factor with the train station ending. Thankfully he realised later that he didn't need to include this kind of subplot to make a film involving.

Clelia's relationship with Carlo may seem like a 'subplot' here, but it became the main plot in the later films, most obviously in Monica Vitti's (attempted) relationships with Ferzetti (L'Avventura), Delon (L'Eclisse) and Harris (Red Desert). The 'girlfriends' of the title represent that seductive but alienating world Clelia tries tentatively to find her place in, and Carlo represents a possible escape from that world, or perhaps just a possible way of coping with it.

The fact that the class gap between them is such an issue here separates this version of the story from what we see in the '60s films. I suppose ultimately the point is that Clelia is inextricably a part of that privileged bourgeois set, and at the end Carlo's actions seem to insist that this factor makes any kind of real communication between them impossible.

In any case, you only have to compare this ending to that of L'Eclisse to see that it's much more than a strained attempt at human interest; and I'd also say that this part of the story seems to interest Antonioni more than the 'main plot', even though it doesn't get much screen time. For me, what brings the film down a notch is the shouty melodrama of the later scenes, especially when Clelia confronts Momina (may have the name wrong) in the salon. It's an exhilarating moment, but these kind of over-egged histrionics are not what Antonioni does best. In real life, we pretty much never get to say these things to our friends, and I think it would have been far more authentic if Clelia had kept her mouth shut.

Knives, I guess I can understand where you're coming from but I think the later films are full of humour, and the ending of Blowup is one of the moments I would single out in that regard. It's anything but deadly serious symbolism.

puxzkkx wrote:I've always understood the charges of misogyny, or at least exploitation, put on Mizoguchi - but usually my problem with his films is not necessarily the sexual politics but the fact that, for all their visual eloquence and detail, they are generally quite simplistic and dull, and ham-fisted in their messages. Now we have The Life of Oharu which I find, for a change, quite involving despite its length, but incredibly disturbing in its treatment of its heroine. Its attack on patriarchy is still drawn in primary colours, and it is hypocritical, too, taking the demeaning aspects of 'women's pictures' to gruesome, fetishistic extremes. I've read criticism that lends Oharu some agency and strength of identity - this is in some ways true, she does refuse to change on many occasions to fit in to the ideals of the social system - but her agency is punished in more and more hideous ways until by the 'end' of her story Mizoguchi seems to be taking quite a lot of pleasure in his picture of the 'ruined' female. I think there are interesting ideas here but they contradict themselves - the heavy use of longshot does give Oharu an 'every[Japanese]woman' quality but also denies her the character detail that would make her something other than faceless animal prey for a faceless animal predator (just look at the gravitas Tanaka lends her characterisation in the bookending segments where she is given the relative freedom of closeup). And giving the narrative momentum through a progression of ellipses is a unique and creative way to advance a plot, but the effect here is of seeing the same abusive ritual repeated over and over. The unadorned soundscape and settings isolate these images of degradation - the result could have lent weight to a feminist statement, but the result here is almost pornographic.

This was pretty much how I felt about the film after a first viewing, especially the part I've put in bold. Second and third viewings have completely transformed it for me, though. I think it's a big mistake to look for, or hope for, a 'feminist' message as such in Mizoguchi's films, or to pigeon-hole them as 'misogynistic'. You'll find elements of feminist attacks on patriarchy, as well as the fetishising of the objectified woman's suffering that you point to here, but what survives is an incredibly powerful sense of identification with the central character.

The sparse close-ups are indeed marvellous, especially the first one (which I assume is what you're referring to) when Oharu is staring at the Buddha in the temple and slowly pulls the veil off her head. We see Oharu's face so rarely, but when we do see it it is so intensely expressive, not just of pain but also of this incredibly passionate, defiant love. That's what defines this character throughout the film - her unflagging commitment to sincerity and love. All the time we're seeing her in long shots, or when her face is obscured, she doesn't just turn into an 'everywoman' - if anything the fact that we have to deduce her emotional state from her posture and body language makes us identify and sympathise even more strongly with her. Look at that first shot, repeated later in the film, when she's walking along the street (after being horribly exposed and exploited for the 'education' of some young men), reacting to and flinching from everything she sees. We watch her from behind, but Tanaka's performance tells us so much.

And the film is more than an attack on patriarchy. You might want to lay some blame even on the Mifune character and the two subsequent men who seem to want to do right by Oharu, but there's never any sense that she regrets that first passionate affair - quite the opposite, it seems to define her whole approach to life, and she pursues these principles of sincerity and love uncompromisingly, whatever the cost to her personal happiness. Mifune might easily have been her co-protagonist here, along the lines of Chikamatsu Monogatari; instead, the film focuses on the loneliness, not of the 'woman-screwed-over-by-patriarchy', but of the human being who tries to live by principle and truth in a world populated almost (but not quite) entirely by men and women who neither understand nor care about such things. When she encounters someone exceptional, they are quickly snatched away. It isn't that this suffering makes her stronger, because I don't think it does, but rather she remains intact, fully herself, without ever being infected by the hypocrisy and callousness of others. Perhaps my point is that this just doesn't feel like a story about women, or 'Woman' as such, in the way that Sisters of the Gion, Osaka Elegy and Women of the Night do.

Spoiler

Incidentally, and at the risk of appearing stupid, I'd be grateful if anyone could tell me precisely what Oharu is bowing to in the final scene, after she's gone door-to-door asking for money. Is that tall building in the distance the Matsudaira household, and is she therefore obeying the command placed upon her in the previous scene - that is, showing her gratitude for having been permitted to bear the child of Lord Matsudaira? If that is the case, then given her behaviour just a few minutes earlier, there's a wonderful mixture of humility and defiance in that last gesture. Again, the scene would be so much less effective if we had a big close-up on Tanaka here - but it also makes me think that I've over-emphasised the importance of 'identifying' with Oharu. After all, to identify with someone is to impose your self on them in some ways (I think Ken Loach talks about the objectifying power of the classical Hollywood close-up), and there is something magnificently self-contained about Oharu. She's not only sincere and passionate in her emotions, she's also very protective of them, almost as if there were a 'no trespassing' sign on her back, if you know what I mean.

I did appreciate how Clelia's relationship with Carlo represented the sort of "trickle-down" class awareness that is touched upon in the Trilogy (e.g. the scene in the train in L'avventura) - she is different from "le amiche" by having worked her way out of poverty and, while still a facilitator of a society-swallowing consumerism, she is the one behind the counter instead of in front of it, so she is still 'a worker' - yet she destroys her one possible escape into a sort of emotional truth by weighing it against an imaginary conception of class (a class system that has destroyed her attempts to settle in Turin) despite Carlo being from a near-identical background. I respect what the final scene says, but I think it tries to have it both ways by being symbolic and introducing an emotional element that Antonioni seems to have worked very hard all film to dispel. When asked to suddenly care about Clelia and Carlo's relationship I was a bit nonplussed. Whereas I think the ending of L'avventura is emotional mostly because what it represents is so devastating rather than because it asks us, out of the blue, to form an emotional attachment to characters that have so far operated in a narrative system that actively refuses audience identification.

While I appreciate what you say about Oharu and, like many other Mizoguchi films, despite being a bit cool on issues of characterisation or pacing I'm actually quite seen to see it again at some point - but I did get a grisly exploitative feel from some of the scenes, especially the one where the lord's page scans the 'meat market' of Kyoto women for the perfect mistress, rejecting each one in turn. This could have been a powerful statement or even just a powerful image but the scene is almost played for laughs. It left a bad taste in my head.

puxzkkx wrote:I respect what the final scene says, but I think it tries to have it both ways by being symbolic and introducing an emotional element that Antonioni seems to have worked very hard all film to dispel. When asked to suddenly care about Clelia and Carlo's relationship I was a bit nonplussed.

Nice comments on the class issue in the film; regarding the ending, I don't see what you mean. In what way are we being asked to care about this relationship? It seems like a very cold, wry ending to me, as reflected in the faces of the protagonists, and in Giovanni Fusco's music (slightly too playful, I feel - it makes the film sound more 'fun' than it actually is - but it's certainly not emotive).

puxzkkx wrote:I did get a grisly exploitative feel from some of the scenes, especially the one where the lord's page scans the 'meat market' of Kyoto women for the perfect mistress, rejecting each one in turn. This could have been a powerful statement or even just a powerful image but the scene is almost played for laughs. It left a bad taste in my head.

There's a grim humour there, but the film isn't mocking the women on display. The joke is at the expense of the mindset that defines 'the perfect woman' in such superficial terms: Oharu is selected for these superficial reasons, and then accordingly discarded when she has served her purpose. How tedious that whole sequence would be if it were played as a deadly serious critique of the objectifying male gaze.

It occurs to me that there is a strong connection, with regard to tone as well as subject matter, between this film, Antonioni's La Signora Senza Camelie and Ophuls' La Signora di Tutti. They're all tragic stories of women whose beauty is exploited and whose individuality is stifled and ignored, and I think they would all be far more morally problematic if they took a more weepy, emotive approach to this topic. You never want to reach out and give these women a hug, or weep over their misfortunes (big distinction here between Oharu and the mother in Sansho). They're not just instruments for an artist's feminist outrage, or conduits for the audience's pity and terror - when you see the heroine smile through her tears at the end of La Signora Senza Camelie, it sends a chill right through you, because you know just what is going through her mind. In other words, it's a clear-eyed and objective approach, which allows for wry humour of the kind Oharu herself indulges in - is it problematic when she plays a scene for laughs? - but it isn't cold or clinical. (Or maybe the Ophuls film is, I'd have to watch it again.)

The literary source for Life of Oharu has quite a large element of satire (and raciness), Mizoguchi has mostly discarded this in his film. Chikamatsu monogatari (which I like even better) retains some of the (black) humor of its sources (Chikamatsu and Saikaku, who also provided the story for Oharu).

Sloper wrote: Knives, I guess I can understand where you're coming from but I think the later films are full of humour, and the ending of Blowup is one of the moments I would single out in that regard. It's anything but deadly serious symbolism.

That's actually the moment I was primarily thinking of (though of course there's others).

I'm a deadly serious viewer so I don't usually have a problem with films that are 'deadly serious'... L'avventura is my favourite film of all time and its intellectual rigour has a lot do with that. There are some funny scenes in it but I think they represent quite tragic things.

That being said, I'm a fan of comedy, I'm a fan of 'dramedy'... but I'm not like some who believe that a 'serious' film needs to be tempered with humour to avoid becoming stale.