8/7/24 (Wed)
I had heard of Antonioni’s 1967 Blow-Up and figured it was about time I got around to it. Its reputation precedes it, of course, and it’s supposed to have been highly influential in its nihilistic cool. It seems a movie made more for critics rather than audiences – it was a big commercial success back in its day, but I suspect that had more to do with the brouhaha over the boobs and pubic hair.
8/3/24 (Sat)
A goofy political satire of 1940 by Preston Sturges, who apparently sold his Oscar-winning script to Paramount for $10 in exchange for letting him direct. Its relative success paved the way for the great Sturges films to come.
The city’s sleazy Boss offers money to a bum named McGinty to vote for the incumbent mayor. When the brazen McG manages to vote 37 times, the Boss is impressed and hires him as a debt collector. McG’s ability to squeeze the money out of people with a mix of sweet talk and threats leads to further promotion to alderman, mayor and ultimately, after a marriage of convenience, to governor, but all under the sway of the big Boss. When the bum-cum-governor pushes things too far, he discovers that the system is bigger than he is.
8/26/24 (Sun)
Youssef Chahine attempts to make an Egyptian version of Amarcord to mixed results in this autobiographical 1979 film. Set in Alexandria during the war, the film portrays the determination of the teenaged Yahia, a stand-in for Chahine, to become a film actor and director. Continue reading
8/25/24 (Sat)
Egyptian director Youssef Chahine’s 1958 neorealist work is hailed as a landmark in Arabic cinema. The Arabic title translates to “The Iron Door”, but I think the English title is quite good given the dynamics of the setting with its raucous mix of rich and poor, the old guard and the new, and a number of overlapping stories among characters with their various aims. The story focuses on the poor workers scrambling to make a living in the station, though the poverty is less the point here than just background information. Amid the constant traffic of unknown people to unknown spots, they have formed something of a community offering mutual support.
8/31/24 (Sun)
Naruse’s 1934 drama, set in contemporary Tokyo, was his final silent film. Sugiko is a waitress in a pancake shop in Ginza. (Pancakes must have been the latest thing; patrons seem to have trouble figuring out what to do with the spot of butter on top.) She receives a marriage proposal from her poor but kind boyfriend, who is under pressure from his family to marry a girl arranged for him back home. Sugiko, pressed to make a decision, wanders carelessly into the path of a chauffer-driven car. That car belongs to Hiroshi, the handsome heir to an upper-class family, who takes her immediately to the hospital. Her boyfriend sees them together and, assuming she has rejected him, leaves town.
Hiroshi eventually falls in love with Sugiko and begs her to marry him in a romantic setting backed by Mt. Fuji. She is uncertain given the difference in their class, especially with the disparaging attitude of his mother and sister, who make no effort to hide their disdain. Still, the thought of a life of financial security and Hiroshi’s undeniable sincerity prompt her to give in to his persistence. The family has no choice but to agree.
As feared, however, the gulf between her and the family proves deep despite her best efforts. Continue reading
8/10/24 (Fri)
Naruse’s 1933 melodrama, one of his final silent films, already picks up on his much-visited theme of a woman forced to support herself due to weak or duplicitous men. Here, it is the former. Continue reading
8/1/24 (Thurs)
John Boulton’s 1948 British film is clearly modeled on American gangster flicks; I almost expected the lead to break into a Cagney-like “You dirty rat.” A local gang of hoodlums in the beach town hunt down a reporter whose exposé brought their activities to light, killing him on a haunted house ride. One of the gang members is spotted by a waitress, Rose, as he is attempting a cover-up. That unnerves the gang leader Pinkie (what’s with the pink and rose?), who becomes intimate with Rose in an attempt to eliminate the potential threat. The waitress, not even aware of what she has witnessed, unwisely falls in love with him.
They have neglected another witness, however. A loud and often drunk entertainer named Ida who met the reporter just before his death is convinced that there has been foul play. She gets no help from the police, who have determined that the man died of a heart attack – despite the fact that he never reemerged from the haunted house. She decides to solve the mystery on her own.
7/26/24 (Fri)
Billy Wilder’s film of the long-running French musical, stripped of its music, about a happy hooker and a clumsy admirer who wants to keep her to himself. It reunites Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine from The Apartment (after Marilyn Monroe, the original choice and Lemmon’s Some Like It Hot collaborator, passed away). The stage musical, which also had a healthy run on Broadway, was scored by one of Edith Piaf’s collaborators and has some great tunes, but Wilder kept them only as underscoring other than a brief snatch of “Dis-Donc”. The film had some impressive musical talent, including MacLaine and Bruce Yarnell (a terrific foil for Ethel Merman in the subsequent revival of Annie Get Your Gun), and some musical numbers were supposedly filmed. But Wilder evidently felt the songs slowed down the action and canned all the footage. Still, André Previn did a more-than-capable job of offsetting this. Wilder should have cut some of the protracted would-be comedy instead, especially involving the faux British guy. The film could easily lose half an hour from its 140-minute running time.
7/3/24 (Wed), home
A would-be screwball comedy from 1936 that stretches its thin premise way too far. Continue reading
6/28/24 (Fri), home, 8:00-9:45p
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950 “social issue” film deals with racial discrimination in a public hospital, giving Sydney Poitier his breakout role. Continue reading
6/26/24 (Wed)
Friedkin’s exhilarating 1977 adaptation of the novel The Wages of Fear, which had already served as the source for a highly regarded French film back in 1953. I had assumed from the (terrible) English title that it must have some kind of supernatural element like the director’s The Exorcist, but that was happily not the case. For the record, it’s the name of one of the trucks used to transport the dynamite, but the name has absolutely nothing to do otherwise with this realistic suspense film.
6/12/24 (Wed)
Otto Preminger’s 1950 noir has a great premise but fairly standard execution. Continue reading
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