273 - The Third Man, 1949, United Kingdom. Dir. Carol Reed.

Saturday, September 30, 2017

273 - The Third Man, 1949, United Kingdom.  Dir. Carol Reed.

Sometimes all the pieces just fall into place.

It happened for Casablanca.  It happened for Chinatown.

It happened for The Third Man.

The writer.  The producers.  The director.  The cinematographer.  The art director.  The composer and musician.  The actors.  All the actors.  Everything.  Sometimes it all just comes together.

Vienna.

After the War.

The Zither.  Played by Anton Karas.

Alexander Korda.  David  O. Selznick.  Two top producers putting together the pieces.

Orson Welles.  Young and handsome.  Mysterious and charming.  Athletic and relatively thin.  Hyper intelligent.

Joseph Cotten.  All-American.  Elegant.  Gallant.  The man you always love.

Alida Valli.  Beautiful.  Strong.  Fiercely in love.

Trevor Howard as Maj. Calloway.  The 1st Elder from Superman (1978).  Judge Broomfield from Gandhi (1982).

Bernard Lee as Sgt. Paine.  You know him as M from James Bond.  Eleven James Bonds, from Dr. No (1962) to Moonraker (1979).  Plus, a 12th, a spoof, From Hong Kong with Love (1975).  Seriously.  And as Patmore from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965).  And many other movies.

Ernst Deutsch in a delicious role.  With his black hat and suspicious eyes.  Cradling his little dog three decades before Paris Hilton was born.

The cinematography.  More Dutch angles than they have in Amsterdam.  More shadows than they have in The Shadow.

And miles and miles of gorgeously choreographed sewer tunnels.

Yes.

Gorgeously choreographed sewer tunnels.

Graham Greene.  One of the great literary writers of the 20th century.  Also a popular writer.  Also a screenwriter.  Brighton Rock (1938).  The Confidential Agent (1939).  The Power and the Glory (1940).  The Heart of the Matter (1948).  The Third Man (1949).  The Quiet American (1955).  Our Man in Havana (1958).  The Comedians (1966).  Screenplays for The Fallen Idol (1948) and Saint Joan (1957), in addition to adaptations of the novels above.

He was also a real spy.

Carol Reed.  Working at the top of his game.  A director of cities.

We have seen Night Train to Munich, set in Munich, and Odd Man Out, set in Belfast.  The Fallen Idol was set in London.  Now we are in Vienna.

Vienna.  London.  Belfast.  Munich.  Everybody's talking about, mmm, Pop Muzik.

Consider this:  Carol Reed is directing a quintessentially European film using a quintessentially American style--film noir--and he is using as his stars the stars from the films that gave us that style.

By now Orson Welles has already made Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Stranger (1946), and The Lady from Shanghai (1947).  Joseph Cotten has starred in the first two of those.  Joseph Cotten has also written Journey Into Fear (1942), which they have both starred in.

With these films Orson Welles has launched a new visual style that immediately becomes popular throughout the 1940s.

Now Carol Reed is directing him, as well as Joseph Cotten, using that style.  Welles is here only as an actor, and he is quoted as showing Reed tremendous respect, trusting Reed to do the heavy lifting as a director.  And Reed comes through in spades.

Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins.  He grew up with and was close friends with Harry Lime.  Now he has come to Vienna to visit Lime.  But he is told right away that Lime has recently died.

Martins goes to the burial service and begins asking questions.  His quest will lead him into the adventures of the movie.

He meets Maj. Calloway, who gives him a ride.  And he sees a mysterious woman, who will turn out to be Anna Schmidt.

Martins is a popular American pulp Western novelist.  The lone writer of The Lone Rider of Santa Fe.  Death at Double-Edge Ranch.  Oklahoma Kid.

Literary buffs have never heard of him, but the common man loves his books.  He is invited to speak to a literary club, and his talk as well as his Q&A session will prove to be a disaster, as he and his audience know none of the same writers and none of the same terms.

Lime died when he was hit by a car, and there were two men at the scene.  They tried to help him.  They gave him aid.  They called for an ambulance.  But they could not save him in time.

A medical orderly, Joseph Harbin, has gone missing.

Martins persists in asking questions, sticking his nose where it does not belong, and in the process he will discover things that the police did not even learn in their inquest, one of them being that there was a third man at the scene of the crime.

The man who tells him about the third man will die.

There are people who want Martins to be quiet.

There are people who want him to go home.

There are people who want Martins . . . well . . .

Vienna has a certain personality, a black market--everyone has a racket--and it would not do to upset things.

In Chinatown the racket is water.  In The Third Man it will prove to be penicillin.  Stealing it from military hospitals.  Diluting it to make it go farther.  And turning a blind eye when people lose their legs to gangrene, lose their babies in childbirth, lose their minds, or die of meningitis.

Don't be so gloomy.

There are four zones--American, British, Russian, French--and an international center.  Jurisdictions overlap.  Things are complicated.

"All (are) strangers to the place and none of them (can) speak the same language."

But as with all good film noir protagonists, Martins does not know how to leave well enough alone.

He is warned.

"Death's at the bottom of everything, Mr. Martins.  Leave death to the professionals."

But he will march headlong into trouble.

He will learn more than he wanted to know.

Can you imagine knowingly allowing people to die so that you can make money?

Can you imagine finding out the one you love is doing it and then loving him anyway?

Can you imagine killing your best friend?

Someone is going to pay for all of this.

A high price.

A very high price.

Peter Bogdanovich asserts that Carol Reed's The Third Man may be the greatest non-auteur movie ever made.

It is certainly one of the most beautiful.

Orson Welles said "Black and white is the actor's friend."  It is here.  It is Vienna's friend as well.

A major star appears after an hour into the movie.  And is introduced by a cat.  And his feet.

One of the great scenes in film history occurs at the top of a Ferris wheel.

And at the bottom.

And one of the great chase scenes occurs in those miles and miles of sewers.

On foot.

In the tunnels.

Now if only we can find out who that third man is.

And why he matters.

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Victims?  Don't be so melodramatic.  Look down there.  Tell me, would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?  If I offered you 20,000 pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?

Don't be so gloomy.  After all, it's not that awful.  You know what the fellow said.  In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland they had brotherly love--they had five hundred years of democracy and peace--and what did they produce?  The cuckoo clock.

You used to believe in God.
I still do.  I believe in God and mercy and all that.  But the dead are happier dead.  They don't miss much here, poor devils.

If you want to sell your services, I'm not willing to be the price.  I loved him.  You loved him.  What good have we done him?  Love!  Look at yourself.  They have a name for faces like that.

You'll fall in love again. / Can't you see, I don't want to.  I don't ever want to.

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Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton wrote an essay in 1955 that began the definition of film noir, citing 1946--after the war was over--as the year that French film fans discovered this new style--or what they call a "series"--because that was the year after the War when American films became available to them again.  These are the films they cited as representative:

Phase one (Summer of 1946).  The Maltese Falcon, John Huston (10/3/1941); Laura, Otto Preminger (1944); Murder, My Sweet, Edward Dmytryk (1944); Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder (1944); The Woman in the Window, Fritz Lang (1944).

Phase two (Fall of 1946).  This Gun for Hire, Frank Tuttle (1942); The Killers, Robert Siodmak (1946); Lady in the Lake, Robert Montgomery (1947); Gilda, Charles Vidor (1946); The Big Sleep, Howard Hawks (1946).

In the essay, Borde and Chaumeton group films together according to their thematic elements, including dreams, nightmares, strangeness, eroticism, sadism, cruelty, ambivalence, crime (blackmail, accusation, theft, drug trafficking), murder, violence, corruption, decadence, and determinism.

But what else causes us to group films together and call them film noir?  Style.  Harsh lighting.  High key lighting.  Dark shadows.  Wide-angle lenses.  Deep focus.  Single vanishing point perspective.  Urban landscapes.  Wet streets.

And who brought that style to the fore before all the films listed above?

Orson Welles.

Stylistically, Citizen Kane (5/1/1941) is the prototype of film noir.  Were there others before him?  Absolutely.  Welles himself would credit John Ford!  Film critics often cite Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor (8/16/1940) as the first film noir (starring none other than Peter Lorre).  I would argue that the last portion of Raoul Walsh's They Drive By Night (7/26/1940) contains elements even earlier.

But all of this finds root in German expressionism, and one of its own directors is listed above, the last one in Phase One, Fritz Lang.  His (and others') 1930s German films influenced everything that came afterwards.


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http://observer.com/2000/01/thriller-of-the-century-the-third-man/

272 - Odd Man Out, 1947, United Kingdom. Dir. Carol Reed.

Friday, September 29, 2017

272 - Odd Man Out, 1947, United Kingdom.  Dir. Carol Reed.

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child.  But when I became a man, I put away childish things."

So says Johnny, quoting Paul, speaking to Father Tom in a hallucination.

Johnny is sitting in the loft apartment of the painter Lukey, having his portrait painted but not by his choice.  He has been dragged here, wounded, shot in the left upper-arm, having lost blood, dehydrated, exhausted, a fugitive from justice.

Johnny is the leader of a gang of rebels in a political movement in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  He was sentenced to 17 years in prison but escaped after 8 months and has been in hiding for 6 months.  He went into hiding with his gang--Dennis, Pat, Nolan, and Murphy--at the home of the girl who loves him, Kathleen Sullivan, and her Grannie.

While in prison, he had time to think about his deeds.  He has begun to question the effectiveness of violence.  He has begun to wonder if perhaps political persuasion would produce better results than bombing.  He shares his thoughts with the gang.

But they have not been sitting in prison reflecting.  They have been out on the front lines fighting.  Working.  Planning.  They do not listen to his new ideas.

They have a mill to rob and they had best get on with it.

Johnny is the leader, so he must go.  Dennis offers to go in his place.  He says Johnny is not fit for it, that he should stay back and rest.  Kathleen concurs with this appeal.  She wants him to be safe.  To stay with her.  To let her minister to him.

But Johnny is the leader, so he must go.  And when they rob the mill and make their escape, a man accosts Johnny on his way to the getaway car.  The others are in.  Pat is driving.  Nolan and Murphy are in the back seat.  Johnny hesitates when his eyes go blurry and he cannot set where to step down the steps.  And when the man catches him, they tussle.  They wrestle on the ground.  The man shoots at Johnny and misses.  Johnny shoots at the man and does not miss.  Then he jumps in the back of the car.

And Pat speeds off before the other two can reel him in off the running board.  Against their appeals, Pat drives fast.  He sideswipes a horse and buggy, on Johnny's side of the car, and knocks Johnny off into the street.  He drives, according to them, another hundred yards before stopping to check on Johnny.  They beg him to go back.  He hesitates.  They hesitate.  Everybody hesitates.  They look back.  Johnny jumps up on his limping leg with his bleeding shoulder and scuttles off to a side street.

Pat rationalizes that he had better go forward, and that he will catch Johnny around the block.

They never find him.

They return to Kathleen's place.  As one might imagine, she becomes quite upset with the news of their blunder.  His life is at stake!

Meanwhile, Johnny has holed up in an air raid bunker.  The War is recently over, but the Irish war is continuing as always.  And Belfast has bunkers in neighborhoods throughout the town in which people might take shelter from bombing.

Johnny takes shelter.

He dreams he has awakened from a dream.  That he is really still in prison and that the escape was a dream.  He tells everything to the prison guard.  Then he really wakes up.  The prison guard is a little girl come to fetch a runaway ball.  She turns and runs away.

A couple take shelter in the shelter to canoodle.  At least he tries.  She has changed her mind.  She is nervous.  She does not like the location.  It feels unsafe.  She thinks she sees a man in the corner shadows.  He lights a match.  They approach.  They do see a man in the corner shadows.  Immediately, they recognize him as Johnny.

Everyone will recognize Johnny.  His face is known to the town.  He cannot go anywhere without being spotted.

For the next near-hour Carol Reed will take the viewer on a chase through the dark streets and alleys, yards and houses, as the police play cat and mouse.

Reed borrows from German expressionism, French neo-realism, and American film noir, as he uses hard high key lighting, wide angle lenses, deep focus, and dark shadows to enhance the fast paced drama.

Until he shifts gears.  Switches channels.  Changes pace.  And stops to reflect on the meaning of life.

With a menagerie of character actors who parade about as Johnny goes missing.

The buggy gin Jimmy.  The priest Father Tom.  The derelict Shell.  The painter Lukey.  The med school dropout Tober.  The bar owner Fencie.

Shell keeps birds, and he talks doubly to Kathleen and Father Tom while holding one of his cages, using it as a metaphor for prison and for the lack of freedom in life.  He knows where Johnny is and offers to sell that knowledge for a price.  He overshoots at one thousand pounds.

Father Tom appeals to Shell, tries to persuade him to turn to faith rather than profit.  Tells him that money will not buy him happiness.  Shell asks if faith will feed his belly.  The answer is Yes.

Lukey is in search of the perfect eyes to use in painting portraits.  All of his models have been lacking in that special quality he seeks.  He himself is lacking in confidence.  He refers to his works as failures.

Tober quit medical school and now does botch jobs for the underworld.  He works on Johnny's shoulder.  Finally, after hours have passed.

Kathleen herself has long talks with Father Tom about her desire for a double mercy killing.  What?  Well, it was in the novel so Carol Reed felt obligated to include it.  But it comes out of nowhere.  It seems to be included to give the film seriousness.  Importance.  Thoughtfulness.  Reflection.

Or a bad choice by the screenwriter.

We have lost our narrative tautness.  We are floundering in philosophizing.  Cut to the chase!

Literally.

And finally, we do.  Shell finds Johnny.  Shell loses Johnny.  Shell finds Johnny again.  And somehow we are up here in Lukey's loft painting Johnny's picture as Johnny slips into a hallucinatory vision.

All the paintings move off the walls and arrange themselves in rows upon the floor, as soldiers, ready to march at Johnny.  They spin around him.  Father Tom appears.  He appeals to Johnny.

This surrealist moment could have been created by Salvador Dali, as Dali did in films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound and Archie Mayo's Moontide.  But it was not.

And Johnny remembers the words of his childhood.

He apologizes to Father Tom.

"We've always drowned your voice with our shouting, haven't we, Father?  We never really listened to you.  We repeated the words without thinking what they meant.  But I remember . . . when I was a boy.  I remember."

Johnny stands.  He continues.  Dramatically.

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.  Though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing."

This is at least the third film we have watched this year where 1 Corinthians 13 has formed the theme.

The first one we saw was 017 - Three Colors: Blue, 1993, by Krzysztof Kieslowski.  The chorale that was being written throughout the film is sung in the end, using 1 Corinthians 13 as the lyrics.

The second one we saw was 054 - Andrei Rublev, 1966, by Andrei Tarkovsky.  1 Corinthians 13 is spoken in voice-over as Andrei Rublev plays with a little girl in the church.  The girl interrupts it by splashing milk on him.  And he laughs.  And he loves.

Love never fails.

Johnny is played by British film star James Mason, who is great for this role.  We saw him in 029 - Bigger Than Life, 1956, by Nicholas Ray, and we commented on his thick voice, like maple syrup spiked with bourbon.

We then referred to this film in 40 - Tess, 1979, by Roman Polanski.  Polanski has cited Odd Man Out as one of his favorite films, and he watched it more than thirty times.

Meanwhile, the character actors are drawn largely from the local Abbey Theatre, including one of the founders of the theatre, W. G. Fay as Father Tom.

Kathleen Ryan powerfully underplays her role as Kathleen Sullivan.  She keeps her feelings beneath the surface and delivers her lines straightly, with the depth of her heart coming through her eyes.

There is a brief moment in a dance hall where the joint is hopping and the jukers are jiving, and the camera looks at a sign reading, "No jitterbugging."  No jitterbugging!  In the midst of the drama, Reed inserted his humor.

The action follows the classical unities.  One event happens in one city in one day.  In this case 8 hours.

And rather than moving with ever-increasing tension towards High Noon, we move, with repeated references to clocks, ever closer to Low Midnight.

When the clock strikes 12:00.

And our lovers will escape.

Or be separated.

Or die.

Let us hope they can get to the ship in time.

271 - Night Train to Munich, 1940, United Kingdom. Dir. Carol Reed.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

271 - Night Train to Munich, 1940, United Kingdom.  Dir. Carol Reed.

Europe is on the brink of war.

Germany begins to occupy Czechoslovakia.

A scientist is wanted for his new technology in armor plating.

He and his daughter seek to escape by plane.

She is arrested by the NAZIs and sent to a concentration camp.

Her father goes into hiding.

A German pretends to be a Czechoslovakian.

An Englishman pretends to be a German.

The woman loves each of them.  At different times.  In different countries.

Constant games of intrigue shift the plot back and forth.

Caldicott and Charters, from yesterday's The Lady Vanishes, appear.

War.  Intrigue.  Romance.  Drama.  Adventure.  Suspense.  Comic Relief.

A teleferic.  An aerial tramway.  A cable car.

And a train.

A night train.

To Munich.

If only they can make it to Switzerland.

Before they are caught.

270 - The Lady Vanishes, 1938, United Kingdom,

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

270 - The Lady Vanishes, 1938, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Bandrika is one of Europe's few undiscovered corners.

One should visit sometime.  If you do, you might get stuck there.  They have avalanches.  The trains cannot run.  One must find a room.

Unfortunately, however, the inn is overcrowded.  They have no rooms.

Good luck to you.

Credits.  The score plays.  Remember the score.  It may just be a clue to the entire movie.

A matte painting.  A miniature model.  A real building.  The inn.

A crowd sits in the lobby.

The Lady appears.  Enters.  Walks down the stairs.  Miss Froy.  An English governess.  She stops.  Places an envelope on the counter.  Digs in her purse for a coin.  Boris, the hotel manager, gives her a stamp.  She pays.  She exits to post her letter.

The wind blows through the open door.

Caldicott and Charters sit by the door.  They will keep trying to close it.  It continually opens.  A recurring sight gag.

"Mrs. Todhunter" sits next to them.  We will later discover that "Mrs. Todhunter" is not Mrs. Todhunter.  She is "Mrs. Todhunter."

The door opens again.

Two men come blustering in with luggage and skis.

A cuckoo clock.  How many cuckoo clocks have you seen in Hitchcock films?  The character that appears in the clock's door is not a cuckoo bird but a soldier.  Blowing a bugle.  Sounding the alarm.

Iris Henderson enters.  With her two girlfriends.  They have rooms.  They know Boris.  Iris seems to hold him in the palm of hands.

Boris speaks Bandrieken.  A language pigeoned together by Hitchcock's screenwriters.  Boris translates his own announcement into Italian, French, German, and English.

There has been an avalanche.  The trains cannot run.  You will have to stay the night.

Too bad for Caldicott and Charters.  They must get home.  England is on the brink.  On the brink of losing a match, anyway.  The men must arrive in time for the Manchester cricket Test Match.

Consider this exchange of dialogue.

Caldicott - I supposed we have to wait here.  If only we hadn't missed that train at Budapest.
Charters - I don't want to rub it in, but if you hadn't insisted on standing up until they finished their national anthem . . .
Caldicott - Yes, but you must show respect, Caldicott.

Standing up.  For the national anthem.  In 1938.

But it goes on.

Caldicott - If I'd known it was going to last 20 minutes--
Charters - Well, it's always been my contention that The Hungarian Rhapsody is not their national anthem.

Charters - In any case, we were the only two standing.
Caldicott - That's true.

These two characters, played by Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, will provide comic relief throughout the movie.

Mr. and "Mrs." Todhunter request a room.  They could get a double.  He requests two singles.  She is annoyed.  We will discover that he is trying to avoid scandal.  He is a judge.  He will be running for office later.  No one can find out.

Later she will accuse him of being paranoid.  Of thinking that everyone is a an official looking to turn him in.  "You even thought that beggar in Damascus was a barrister in disguise. . . ."  He says he merely mentioned he looked like a judge.  She says he ran the other direction.  He says, "I was looking for a street called 'Straight.'"

Caldicott and Charters request a luxurious suite.  A private suite.  With a bath.  And a shower.  Hot and cold.  Facing the mountain.

The only thing available is the maid's room.  You will have to let her change, but then we will kick her out.  This scenario sets up a series of jokes.

(The incongruity between there being no rooms in the inn and Mr. and "Mrs." Todhunter's having their choice of a double or two singles, is the kind of continuity lapse with which Hitch sometimes does not bother.  We have one joke followed by another joke.  The audience overlooks it.)

The various couples find their places and get settled in.

Caldicott and Charters attempt to have dinner with Miss Froy.  But the kitchen is out of food.

Miss Froy goes to her room.  She opens the French doors to the balcony and listens to a man playing a guitar and singing on the terrace below.  She enjoys the moment.  The night air is warm and cool.  The music rises lovingly to her ears.  She counts out the rhythm.  Begins to hum along.

Suddenly, a raucous noise comes down from above.  A clarinet and foot stomping drown out the guitar.  Folk dancing.

Iris makes a phone call.  Boris is at her service.  He attempts to quiet the noisemakers, but to no avail.

Gilbert, later to be our hero, refuses to relent.  He is writing a book.  Or in his words, he is "putting on record for the benefit of mankind one of the lost dances of Central Europe."

Gilbert insults Boris.

When Boris complains, "You are making too much noise," Gilbert replies, "You dare to call it a noise?  The ancient music with which your peasant ancestors celebrated every wedding for countless generations.  The dance they danced when your father married your mother, always supposing you were born in wedlock, which I doubt."

Gilbert is played by Michael Redgrave.  He got the role when Robert Donat, from The 39 Steps, turned down Hitchcock for the second of four film roles.  Really?

Robert Donat starred in yesterday's film, The 39 Steps, and Hitchcock liked him.  He offered him roles in four more movies, but Donat turned down all of them.  He turned down The Secret Agent so as not to get typecast in thrillers, Sabotage and The Lady Vanishes both for chronic asthma, and Rebecca.  Donat turned down Rebecca?  Yes, he did go on to win the Oscar for playing Mr. Chips in Goodbye Mr. Chips, but he worked in only ten more movies over the next eighteen years.

Iris bribes Boris to work on Gilbert again, and this gives Boris the courage to return and kick Gilbert out of his room.

So Gilbert moves into Iris' room.  She protests.  He insists.  He replaces her clothing with his.  He climbs over her in the bed.  He enters the bathroom to brush his teeth.  The scene is playfully mischievous without being dangerous.  It fits the quick-witted and physical banter of screwball comedy, which was currently in its heyday.

An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a toothbrush, as Gilbert says.

With the silencing of the noisemakers, Miss Froy is able to stand at her balcony and listen to the troubadour again.  She listens closely.  She hums along.

She does not see the two hands that reach in, with shadows against the back wall, choking the singer to his death.  Miss Froy appreciatively tosses a coin tip down to the pavement below.

The next morning the players board the train.

Miss Froy leans over to pick up her luggage.  A hand pushes on a flower pot in the windowsill above.  Iris runs over to return Miss Froy's dropped glasses.  The flower pot lands on Iris' head.  As she boards the train, she grows woozy.  She passes out.

Miss Froy takes care of Iris.  Takes her to lunch in the dining car.  Writes her name with her finger in the mist on the window.

Sits with her.

And disappears.

The Lady vanishes.

And no one remembers having seen her on the train.

Perhaps Iris dreamed about her.

Perhaps Iris had a hallucination.

Perhaps Iris saw another passenger and mistook her for Miss Froy.

Iris insists Miss Froy was on the train with her.

No one believes Iris.

Until she runs into Gilbert again.

And they spend the rest of the film trying to uncover this perplexing mystery.

The Lady Vanishes is as suspenseful and thrilling as the best of Hitchcock's American films made one and two decades later.  And it is funny.

Everyone has a motive.  Some of them are noble.  Some of them are sinister.  Some of them are innocent.

Watch for the various nationalities.

Including the English.

Including the made-up one.

And see if you can hum along.

269 - The 39 Steps, 1935, United Kingdom. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

269 - The 39 Steps, 1935, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

We open on a Music Hall.

First shot:  "MUSIC HALL"  The sign scrolls across the screen from right to left, each letter a capital, each lit with lightbulbs, each letter dark when it enters frame, each lighting up when it reaches the center.  Think of a less grand version of the opening title of Gone with the Wind done four years later.  Think of Tarantino's "MISSISSIPPI" homage in Django Unchained.

Second shot:  Dutch angle.  A high angle looking down.  Tilted.  Crooked.  Looking down at the ticket window.  "Stalls, Including Tax, Weekdays 1', Saturdays & Holidays 1'6.  First a shadow appears, then the back of a body.  A portion of the back and arm of a man in an overcoat.  We never see him.  He buys a ticket.  "Stall, please."

Third shot:  A high angle looking down.  At a doorway.  We see only the legs and feet of a woman walking towards us from the other room, the hands of the usher reaching out in our room, and the hand of our man holding the ticket, passing it to the usher.  He passes through the door.  The woman stays in the other room and goes the other way.

Fourth shot:  A high angle looking down.  The dirty floor of the music hall.  A wrought-iron framed wooden bench.  A dusty, tattered rug down the aisle.  Debris in the floor.  A seated man's shoe.  Our man's feet pass by.  He enters the row of the wrought-iron, wooden bench.  He shimmies down the row.  Suddenly, we tilt up and dolly left down the row two rows behind him, watching his back as he moves to his seat.  He sits.  His collar is turned up.  Yet we catch a glimpse of the back profile of his face and his outstretched arm.

This is our hero.  Introduced as a shadow.  As the back of an overcoat.  As a hand with a ticket.  As shoes walking.  As the back of a head and an outstretched arm.

We cut to the band and move on.  The band plays.  We still have not seen our hero's face.

In fact, a few moments later when we first see a view of the audience from the stage, we still do not see our hero.  His body double is sitting in his seat.  But we do not think about that because we do not yet know where in the room he is sitting.

This is Alfred Hitchcock.

One cannot help but watch his movies this way.  He is a master technician.  And the technical mastery excites the viewer as much as the emotional impact.

And when you read him, you discover that he was concerned only with the emotional impact of the film, that the technical mastery functioned only to serve the emotions.  He did not think in terms of technique in order to show off technique or to impress.  He thought of technique as a means to make people feel.  He wanted movies to entertain.

And how many people now believe he was the best at doing that.

The music is playing.  The lights are flashing.  The standing-room-only audience is raucous.  Men are buying drinks at the bar at the back of the room.  People are getting tipsy.  Let's get this show started.

The emcee introduces Mr. Memory.

Mr. Memory commits fifty new facts to memory every day.  He now knows millions and millions of facts.

Did the screenwriters not do their math?  Millions and millions?  From fifty a day?  As it turns out, one could memorize over one million facts in 55 years if one did 50 a day.  The actor playing Mr. Memory, Wylie Watson, was 46 when this movie came out.

Ah, but forget about the math.  This is a show!  This man is SMART!  He knows everything!  Ask him a question.  He knows millions and millions of facts.

People ask phony questions for a laugh.  A few ask real questions.  Mr. Memory answers all of them, followed by, "Am I right, Sir?" (even when a woman asks).  A farmer repeatedly tries to ask, "What causes pip in poultry?"  His wife berates him.  He persists anyway.  Their own fowl have it.  He needs to know.  He will never get his question answered.

Our hero tries to get in a question, but a boy behind him beats him to it.  He is patient.  After a few more, he asks again, and finally we see his face, straight on, lit separately from the rest of the crowd, framed dead center.

"How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?"  We discover he is from Canada.  Mr. Memory answers correctly.

A fight breaks out.

A woman's gloved hand enters frame right, holding a small handgun.  She squeezes.  The gun goes off.  People turn.  People scream.  People run out of the hall.  But no one knows who fired the gun.

Chaos reigns.

The band plays to try to keep the show going.  The emcee tries to keep the people from leaving.  But they leave in droves.

We look down from above.  High angle.  Our hero somehow bumps into a woman.  They find themselves pressed together in the press.  Embracing.  They walk out.

The high angle signals fate.  Or providence.  We see them come together from God's perspective.  Their lives are now intertwined.

She asks if she may come home with him.

He answers, "It's your funeral."

It will be.

They take a bus.  He takes her home.  Portland Place.  His name is newly added to the list of tenants.  Richard Hannay.  He is recently arrived from Canada.  His furniture is covered in sheets.  He has windows not yet covered in curtains.  She hides from the windows.  She fears something.  She does not wish to be seen.

He will discover that she is an international spy.  A spy for hire.  A woman without a country.

She fired the shots in the music hall.  In order to escape.  She was following two men.  They recognized her.  Beware of the man missing a segment of his pinky finger.

The men on the street below are after her.  Do not answer the ringing telephone.  It is they who are calling from the public phone booth below.

She tells him of a secret called The 39 Steps and that she must meet a man in Scotland to pass along information.

She will enter his room the next morning.  With a knife in her.  Clutching a map of Scotland.

He takes the map.  He sees the circled farm.  Alt-na-Shellach.  Up the road from Killin.

Killin.

Killing.

Hannay decides to complete her task for her.  To go to Scotland.  To go to Alt-na-Shellach.  To tell them about the 39 steps.  To warn about the man with the shortened pinky finger.

First, he must escape his own apartment building.  The two men await him outside the front door.  He will work it out with the milkman to borrow his coat and hat and milk pony to exit in disguise.  The milkman does not believe Hannay's story of international intrigue, but he buys into the idea that he must escape from his lover's husband.  And he is happy to help.

We now embark on our journey.

A train ride on the Flying Scotsman and across the Firth of Forth over the Forth Bridge.  Across the moors.  With stops at a farmhouse.  And the house at Al-na-Shellach.  He will be chased, helped, double-crossed, shot at, arrested, escaped, picked-up, handcuffed, and helped again.  He will jump the train, run across the moors, climb hills, change coats, hide under bridges, jump through windows, blend in parades, hide in a Assembly Hall, give an impromptu speech as another man, and be handcuffed to a woman who does not believe him.

Somehow in all the excitement he will find his way to the London Palladium.

Where Mr. Memory is performing again.

And it will all come together.

In the final showdown.

Which may end well, or may end badly.

Or both.

Depending on who you are.

And Hannay and Annabella and John and Margaret and Jordan and Pamela will have experienced a whirlwind of adventure.

And Hitchcock, with his twenty-second film and his second international success, will have established himself once and for all as a director on his way to making history.

268 - The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934, United Kingdom. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Monday, September 25, 2017

268 - The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

The Man Who Knew Too Much opens on a stack of travel brochures.  Someone's hands, perhaps our travel agent, lifts up one at a time and shows us.  Just think of all the places we could go!

The hands settle on a brochure of St. Moritz.  In Switzerland.  How wonderful!  Let's go there.  We can bring our dog.  Just think of all the wonderful things we could do. Snow skiing.  Ski jumping.  Sharp-shooting.  Ballroom dancing.  Watching as our new friend gets assassinated.  Having our daughter kidnapped.  Being held hostage.  Getting caught up in an underground spy ring engaged in international espionage.

Is it all-inclusive?

Let's go!

Jill Lawrence is a sharp-shooter.  She engages in a friendly competition with fellow shooter Ramon Levine.  Louis Bernard is a ski jumper.  He is mid-jump when Jill's daughter Betty's dog runs out in front of him.  There is a collision.  Yet everyone is OK.  A man named Abbott shows Betty a pocket watch.  It makes a chiming noise as Jill shoots her skeet.  It interrupts her.  She misses.  Everyone is there.  Jill's husband Bob.  Abbott's nurse Agnes.  Life is good on holiday.

They go dancing.  Jill brings her knitting.  She dances with Louis.  She teases her husband.  Acts as though she is flirting with Louis.  Bob plays along.  He and Betty taking the knitting and tie the open end to the back of Louis' suit.  He unravels it as he dances.  The yarn creates a maze which entangles everyone on the dance floor.

A hole appears in the window where a silent bullet has pierced the pane.

A red circle appears on Louis' chest, where the silent bullet has pierced a vein.

He clutches.  He looks.  He apologizes.  "I'm sorry," he says, and then gives instructions to Jill.  A piece of paper is hidden inside a shaving brush in the medicine cabinet of his hotel room.  Please get the information contained on it to the British consul.

Jill tells Bob.  Bob sneaks into Louis' room.  Bob finds the paper.  Abbott and company kidnap Betty.

The vacation ends on a down note.

Back home the Lawrences receive a phone call.  If you want to see your daughter alive again, you will not relay this information to anyone.

The detective is already standing there with them.  They refuse to give him the information.  They want to see their daughter again.  However, the detective does have the call traced, and they learn it came from Wapping.

Bob and his friend Clive go to see.

They find the dentist's office.

They find the temple of Sun Worshippers.

Jill finds Royal Albert Hall.

There is a climactic moment during the concert, and later a shoot-out.

I wonder if Jill will use her sharp-shooter skills.

While Hitchcock referred to The Lodger (1927) as the first Hitchcock film, this is the one that fully realizes the suspense genre that he would employ for the rest of his career.

Peter Lorre plays Abbott.  The German actor who stunned the world in Fritz Lang's 1931 crime drama M, made fifteen films in his home country before escaping to England.

He would move on to America and become a star for Fox as Mr. Moto (in 8 films); play the lead villain in what some identify as the first film noir, RKO's Stranger on the Third Floor (1940); become a long-time staple for Warner Bros, including supporting Humphrey Bogart in films such as The Maltese Falcon, All Through the Night, Passage to Marseilles, and Casablanca, as well as supporting Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace; appear in adventure films (and even musicals) in the 1950s, and horror movies in the 1960s.  He is one of the great character actors.

Peter Lorre learned English to make this film!  And he made this film even before he fully knew how to speak it.  He memorized lines that were not yet a part of his vocabulary.

And yet he delivers them with the ease of a native speaker, and his performance is nuanced and riveting.  Through gentility he conveys menace.

The film is funny, with sight gags and verbal jokes, and it is suspenseful, with characters not knowing what they are getting into.  It contains memorable set pieces, physical action, and human emotion.

Both Alfred Hitchcock and Peter Lorre are on their way to beautiful careers.

267 - Downhill, 1927, United Kingdom. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

267 - Downhill, 1927, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

. . . ad tuam gloriam utamur, per Deum Christum, Dominum nostrum.

Use this to your glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So says the dean of the British boarding school at the end of his prayer before the meal.  He prays in Latin.  He expects the young men to understand him.  They do.

The school is attended by two fine young lads who have everything going for them.

Roddy Berwick plays rugby.  He scores a touchdown.  Or properly, a Try.  He wins the game.  He is a hero.  He goes on to become the School Captain.

Tim Wakely, Roddy's friend, is vying for a scholarship to Oxford.

Tim starts seeing a girl named Mabel.  She works at a confectionery.  She writes him a note inviting her to come see her sometime.

Tim sees her.

She gets pregnant.

She meets with the dean to make her accusation.

She accuses Roddy.

Why?

Roddy is kicked out of school.  He goes home.  His father is rich and important.  His son has great expectations.  People have great expectations for him.

When his father finds Roddy at home from school early, he finds out why and kicks him out of the house.  Roddy is on his own.

It is all downhill from there.

Downhill (When Boys Leave Home) is the story of the Prodigal Son, if it had happened to him against his will.

The film can be broken into four sections.

The first section features Roddy prospering at school.  Then he gets expelled after being falsely accused of getting a girl pregnant.

He goes down an escalator.

Downhill.

The second section features Roddy working at a popular theatre.  He inherits 30,000 pounds from his godmother.  The star actress now likes him.  He marries her.  She funnels the money to her boyfriend.

Roddy finds out and confronts her.  He tries to kick her out of the apartment, the nice apartment.  She informs him that it is in her name.  She kicks him out.

He goes down an elevator.

Downhill.

The third section features Roddy working in a basement music hall, paid 50 pence to dance with old women.

When morning comes the sun shines through the windows, shining light on his condition, shining light on his life.  He realizes how low he has come.  He leaves.

He goes down into the bowels of a ship.

Downhill.

The sailors talk about him as he sleeps.  What should they do with this sad sack of a man.  They know that his father has money.  They decide to take him home.  Maybe his father will reward them.  Maybe they can get some money.

They take him home.

Uphill.

His father comes running.  His father embraces him.  His father loves him.

He knows now that Roddy was falsely accused.  He has been searching for him every day, longing to see him again.

Roddy returns to the rugby team.  He scores a touchdown.  Or properly, a Try.  He wins the game.  He is a hero.

266 - The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, 1927, United Kingdom. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

266 - The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, 1927, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

1927.

Hitchcock.

The Master of Suspense has directed his third feature film--or his fifth--which he considers his first film.  His first Hitchcock film, anyway.

He first tried in 1922, with Number 13, but he never finished it.

Have you tried to write or film a movie but did not, or could not, finish?  Try again.  Hitchcock did.  It worked out for him.

Three years later he directed what people know as his first film, The Pleasure Garden (1925).  Then: The Mountain Eagle (1926), When Boys Leave Home (1927), The Ring (1927), and our film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927).

In 1888 the people of London were terrorized by a brutal serial killer known to officials as the Whitechapel Murderer and sensationalized by the press as Jack the Ripper.

Five women were killed that year and six more which may have been related, over the next two years.

In 1911 Marie Belloc Lowndes published a short story in McClure's Magazine, and in 1913 she published a novel, both based on Jack the Ripper, and both titled The Lodger.

In the novel, a man rents a room and is then suspected of being the serial killer.  By the novel's end it is uncertain whether or not he is.  In this movie, it is clear.

The novel has been made into at least five feature films, five radio plays, and one opera.

Alfred Hitchcock directed the first of the feature films.

And he made a choice.  By the end of this film, you will know whether or not The Lodger is also The Avenger.

If you already know and love Hitchcock, you will be amazed by how much of his technical mastery is already present in this film.

So are his cameo appearances.

In The Lodger, he appears twice: first while sitting at a desk, with his back to us, directing the action in the newsroom, and in the second, as a member of the mob, taking the law into their own hands while chasing the Lodger and trying to exact street justice.

The Lodger is introduced as a shadow approaching the door.  The shadow transforms into the back of the man.  Later, the Lodger appears at the top of the stairs, with the same architecture and staging later used in Psycho, again as a shadow transforming into the back of his body, filling the screen.

The citizens of the community are afraid.  The seventh dead body has been found, with a triangle drawn on a piece of paper, and the words, "The Avenger."  Someone saw a man flee the scene.  He was tall.  He wore a scarf on the lower-half of his face.  All seven of the girls have been blondes.

A man shows up at the Bunting House.  He has come to rent a room.  He is tall.  He wears a scarf on the lower-half of his face.  The Bunting daughter is a blonde.

Daisy.  She is called a "mannequin."  This means she is a fashion model.  She is dating Joe, who just happens to be a detective for the police department.  They have been reading about the crime spree.  The models at the fashion show hide under brunette wigs when they go home.

The Lodger settles in his new room upstairs.  Pictures of blondes hang on the wall.  He turns them around to face the wall.  Mrs. Bunting, the Landlady, sees him doing it.  She asks.  He says they bother him.  He knows it makes the room look ugly, but . . . he just cannot look at them.

Mrs. Bunting grows suspicious of The Lodger.

Daisy does not.

She finds him charming.

He makes her laugh.  They play chess.  He goes to the fashion show.  Surprises her.  Buys her a slinky outfit.  He approaches the door as she is taking a bath.

Wait.  He only wants to talk to her through the door.  He has been threatened.  Told to leave her alone.  Told that she cannot keep the outfit.  He appeals to her.  He likes her.

A love triangle ensues.

Joe catches The Lodger with his hands on Daisy.  Up around her neck.  In some menacing fashion.  He challenges him.  The men confront each other.

Later Daisy goes on a date with The Lodger.  Against her mother's best wishes.  She heard him sneaking out at night.  Trying to be quiet.  Coming home late.  He is up to something.

They can all hear him walking on the ceiling.  They stand and listen.  As the gaslight chandelier swings to the vibrating.

We can see him walking on the ceiling!  We see the bottom of his shoes pacing on his glass floor, from below looking up through our glass ceiling.  He is up to something.

On their date, The Lodger and Daisy sit at the gas lamp on the city street.

Joe arrives.

He confronts The Lodger.

Take your hands off my girl.

Daisy surprises Joe.  Earlier in the film Joe had flirted with her.  He had taken a heart-shaped cookie cutter and cut out a heart-shaped cookie, given it to her, and smiled.  When she had demurred, he had taken the unbaked cookie and torn the heart-shape in half, while still smiling.  His efforts had worked enough to induce her to let him kiss her, and by the time The Lodger appeared they did indeed seem like a couple.

But now in the lamplight she reveals to Joe that her original response was the true one, and that she wishes to be with The Lodger.  She and The Lodger leave, leaving Joe to sulk in his sorrow.

He looks down at street at his feet, and sees a footprint.  And in the footprint he puts it all together.

Hitch in his 26-year old genius places a screen inside the footprint so that we see in the screen Joe's thoughts, and in that moment Joe puts it all together.

His personal problem, the other man, and his professional problem, the man on the lam, is the same man!  Now he knows what to do.  He will solve both problems in one step: a warrant.  And he will win Daisy's heart again by saving her life.

Things progress.  And the truth is revealed.  And something big happens.

Hitchcock employs mirrors, lamps, birds, handbags, jewelry, keys, handcuffs, paintings, architecture, doors, staircase railings, circles, triangles, frames.

And suspense.

And people who suspect one another.

In other words, Hitchcock employs Hitchcock.

In 1941, Orson Welles did something in Citizen Kane that had never done before.  He made the camera appear to go through solid objects, namely, furniture.  Well, at least it had never been done before if one does not consider that Hitchcock had done it 14 years before, in this film.  When we cut to a dance, thinking we are indoors, we slowly zoom out, passing as if magically through the grillwork of a window, until we realize we are outside looking in, having moved through a solid object.

In one shot we see a series of faces listening to the radio on headphones, and they change from one to another in a similar manner to that later used in the music video for Michael Jackson's song "Black or White," lacking only the digital transitions available to a future generation.

In another shot we watch The Lodger with his back to a painting of a beautiful blonde woman, only to discover as he walks forward that he is facing the painting and that we see it in a mirror behind him.

Some of the film predicts elements of M, the classic German crime thriller directed by Fritz Lang four years later in 1931, featuring future Hitchcock staple Peter Lorre.

And The Lodger does to us what the newspaper, The Evening Standard, does to the people who live in its universe.  It sensationalizes crime as it purports to expose it.  It awakens the desire to watch what it ostensibly stands against.  It induces desire alongside compassion.  It uses fear to titillate.

That is the history of suspense.

And it thrives to this day.

As so much of what made Hitchcock great over the next half century is already on display here.

In a silent film.

That begins with a scream.

And ends with a kiss.

265 - La Cienega, 2001, Argentina. Dir. Lucrecia Martel.

Friday, September 22, 2017

265 - La Cienega, 2001, Argentina.  Dir. Lucrecia Martel.

Sound is the tactile and three-dimensional component of cinema. - Lucrecia Martel.

Think of yourself as being at the bottom of an ocean of air.

Salta, her hometown.  "The capital city of faith."

She received a telescope at 15.  Then a microscope.  Then a movie camera.  She made a short film as a child called Three Cowboys.  It featured her siblings.

She smokes cigars.

A Modigliani print.  A Van Gogh painting.  Drawings like musical scores.  Brushstrokes marking out a rhythm.  Being submerged.'

It's very hard to get a scene to work if you don't have an intense desire for something unexpected to happen. - Lucrecia Martel.

These are some of her thoughts.  Some of her creative ideas.

This is her first feature film.

The Swamp.

It is Summer.  Let us go to La Mandragora.

Mecha and her husband Grigorio sit by the swimming pool.  He dyes his hair.  It stains the pillow. The swimming pool is murky.  The water opaque.  It has not been cleaned in years.

They drag the steel chairs across the cement tile.  The scratching blares into the woods like a rusty trumpet.  Off key.

Her son is in the woods.  With a gun.  The boys play at hunting.  A cow is stuck in the mud river. Drowning.  It drowns.

The adults drink.

And sit.

In this hot and languid Summer.

Yes, the humid air is as thick as the gellous water.  They swim in it.  Or sit suspended at the bottom. Submerged.

Mecha gets up and walks.  She falls.  The glass breaks.  She lands on it.  She cuts her chest.

Grigorio sends their fourteen-year-old daughter, Momi, to drive her to the doctor.  Momi runs over the hydrangeas.  She says she does not have a license.  He says go anyway.  The roads are deserted. No one will stop her.

Mecha's cousin, or almost cousin, Tali comes to call.  She lives in La Cienega.  She and her husband Rafael and their younger children come to La Mandragora.  The mandrake.

The place is packed.  The house is full.  The cousins lie around.  The children find something to do.

Jose entertains his female cousins.  Dances with them.  Dances with his mother.  Makes them laugh.

He goes out.  Gets into a fight.  Gets injured.

The kids swim at the dam.  Swing their machetes.  Run from the spraying water.

The plot is like the pool water.  It sits.  It bubbles.  It contains things lurking beneath the surface.  A dead leaf floats on top.

The viewer joins the stupor.

As the hours pass.

In this day in the country.

264 - Close-Up, 1990, Iran. Dir. Abbas Kiarostami.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

264 - Close-Up, 1990, Iran.  Dir. Abbas Kiarostami.

Mahrokh Ahankhah is a housewife living in Tehran.  She has a husband and two sons.  They lead comfortable lives.

One day on a city bus she finds herself sitting next to the famous Iranian film director Mohsen Makmalbaf.  He is reading a published copy of the script of his most recent film, The Cyclist.

She mentions that her sons are interested in the arts, and that one of them in particular, Mehrdad, is interested in film.  Mr. Makmalbaf autographs his script and gives it to her.  Then he offers to meet her sons and encourage them.

He will.  And he will cast them in his upcoming film and give the boys their own private acting lessons.  The family will enjoy the pleasure of having the great Makmalbaf shine his favor upon them and bring new and exciting opportunities into their lives.

They cannot believe their good fortune.

It turns out they should not believe it.

Because it does not exist.

Mohsen Makmalbaf is not Mohsen Makmalbaf but Hossain Sabzian, a divorced, jobless cinema fan who dreams of working in the film industry.

He regards Makmalbaf's film The Cyclist as a prophetic masterpiece that compassionately depicts the suffering that men like Sabzian experience on a daily basis.

His wife has left him, taking one of their two children and leaving the other with him, for his mother to raise.  He lives with his mother.  He works at a print shop, but work is sporadic and scarce, and he spends his time dreaming of another life.

When a strange woman speaks to him on the bus, he responds impulsively with the claim that he is the director, and the feeling that follows when she affords him respect is one that he cannot shake. He becomes addicted to it.  He longs for the treatment he receives when the family believes him to be an important man.

Sabzian is not the only one with ambition.

Hossain Farazmand has it as well.

Farazmand is a struggling journalist who longs for the scoop to a story that will give him his big break.  When he discovers that Mr. Ahankhah has alerted the authorities that he believes he has an impostor staying in his home, Farazmand races in a taxi with the two officers who go over to arrest him, running up a large tab and paying for the police to travel with him.

Our director, Abbas Kiarostami also has ambition.

And he uses this story to expand his career and secure his legacy.

Kiarostami has been working in film for 17 years, starting as a title designer and writing and directing his own shorts.  By this time he has made around eight features, and he is working on a feature now.

But when he reads Farazmand's article, published in a prominent magazine, he drops everything and races with a camera to document it.

He includes footage of himself asking police officers for information on the case, meeting with Sabzian in prison, and negotiating with the local judge to allow him to film the trial while moving the trial date forward to fit his own shooting schedule!

Kiarostami will set up two cameras in court: a wide lens facing the judge and a close-up on Sabzian. It is this close-up that gives our film its title, as he focuses on the kind of man who would willingly deceive a family for the mere purpose of feeling the emotion of his own experienced fantasy.

The plaintiffs, the Ahankhah family, and the defendant, Sabzian, both represent themselves without council, but Kiarostami is allowed to ask questions from behind the camera!

Sabzian presents himself as a sad sack who just wants a little mercy for his pitiful life.

The judge, Haj Ali Reza Ahmadi, comes across as the most interesting character in the film, showing himself to be empathetic, thoughtful, insightful, and wise.

Every person in the film plays himself.

No one is an actor.  Everyone is the real person who experienced these real events, including both film directors--the one with the stolen identity, Mohsen Makmalbaf, and the one making the film, Abbas Kiarostami, albeit from off camera.

However, this film is not properly a documentary.

While the trial is filmed in real time, Kiarostami has affected the outcome by asserting himself into the proceedings.

And the story leading up to the trial is done through reenactments, with both the duper and the duped, the reporter and the police, and even the taxi driver, going back in front of the camera and reliving the events for Kiarostami's film.

Kiarostami even gets Makmalbaf to meet Sabzian when he is released on parole, to carry him on his motorcycle to buy flowers and visit the Ahankhah family to ask them personally for forgiveness.

The film made a stir when it was released, and it introduced Kiarostami to the international cinema audience.  Both he and Mohsen Makmalbaf continued steadily to make movies--Makmalbaf, now 60, to this day, and Kiarostami, until his death last year at age 76.

Hossain Sabzian, however, did not fare so well.  According to Coco Ferguson, he spent his inheritance on a camera, made experimental wedding videos, was spurned by his own family, and died seventeen years later selling DVDs at a bus terminal.  He never appeared in a movie outside of this one.

In a documentary included on the Criterion edition, Sabzian's neighbors state that he behaved oddly as he continued to live inside his fantasy world.

When one neighbor is asked if he would say such a thing to Sabzian's face, he does.  Sabzian, still alive, listens to his neighbor and agrees with him.

He is a dreamer.

And he will always be one until his dreams come true.

263 - Making of Dreams, 1990, Japan. Dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

263 - Making of Dreams: A Conversation between Akira Kurosawa and Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1990, Japan.  Dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi.

The imagination is rooted in memory.  Memory is the foothold.

So says Akira Kurosawa in an open-hearted interview with Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of this delicious two-and-a-half hour long documentary of the making of Dreams.  It is drawn from 190 hours of raw footage.

Obayashi himself is a celebrated film director, beginning with short films in 1960, his first feature in 1968, and working as a writer, producer, director, cinematographer, and composer through to this day, with his most recent film being 2017's Hanagatami, where he served as writer, director, and editor. His 1977 feature House is included in the Criterion Collection.

Obayashi had open access to the locations and sets of Dreams, which was filmed over the course of several months--and several seasons, from cold to warm to hot--in 1989.  His camera enables the viewer to watch the master at work.  And consequently, the viewer can see what makes Kurosawa a master.

Kurosawa refers to the novels he reads.  Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and so on.  First, he reads the Russian novelists.  Yes.  They are at the top.  Second, what we would give to know all that is contained in the "so on."

He is calm and focused.  At age 80 his mind and body are both as supple and lithe as a young man. He seems to remember everything.  He can draw beautifully rendered storyboards on the spot while sitting in his director's chair.  His prepared storyboards are works of art in themselves.  He knows what he wants.  He speaks gently and confidently to others, encouraging and empowering them.

Obayashi filmed the documentary in real time, chronologically, but he presents it to us in the order of the scenes in the movie.  This is a good, strong choice, as we are able to simulate the watching of the movie as if it were being made in the order of the final edit, the only difference being that the filming dates jump around.

Kurosawa openly reveals to us that these eight stories were inspired by real dreams he had, and that much of the supporting material was taken from his childhood.  Thus, the first house bears the name Kurosawa on the address plate, and it was patterned after the first house in which he lived.  Another house in the film was patterned after another house where he lived.  The girl who dies in the episode "The Peach Orchard" was patterned after his sister who had died when he was a boy.

Kurosawa appears to have plenty of resources on this film.

The sound stages, grip trucks, rain jackets, and hats seen in the documentary bear the name "Kurosawa Studios."  From the beginning, in "Sunshine and Rain," he employs three cranes, artificial rain, and movable giant redwoods.  He builds houses, paints water, installs grass, thatches roofs, installs water wheels, hires hundreds of extras, uses gelled reflectors in vibrant colors, and adds special effects.

He rehearses rigorously.  He describes how for Ran (1985) he rehearsed one important long take for one scene with the actors every single day for three months.  Every day for three months!  On the day they shot one take in 15 minutes.  He does not like to piece together an actor's performance in the edit.  He wants to allow the actor to act.  That is an actor's dream.  An actor's dream made real in Kurosawa's dream.  If only we got some rehearsal from our directors--at least more than the token blocking rehearsal done moments before filming.

For a scene with soldiers he places lights on their backpacks to light up the eyes of the soldiers behind them.

Obayashi asks Kurosawa about the need for the director to have patience.  Kurosawa demurs that he is too impatient.  Obayashi informs him that he has a great reputation among his cast and crew for having great patience.  One of the many things they love about him is that he gives them time to do their work, and to do it well.

Kurosawa--

"What are films?  What makes them beautiful and powerful?

There's something you're trying to capture in any given film, and here and there it comes together, but the film as a whole isn't there yet.  So you just keep groping, and some shots just click. . . . . I just feel that chill down my spine when a shot works completely.  That's the feeling I'm trying to capture."

We see George Lucas arrive on set.

We see Martin Scorsese arrive and then sit in hair and make-up to be transformed into Vincent Van Gogh.  He talks about how hard he worked on his role, even while shooting his own film up to the day before flying, because he was honored and wanted to do a good job.

We see the attention to detail that Kurosawa invests in every extra, even when there will be dozens of them in the frame in a long shot.  He looks at them up close and makes decisions about the minutiae of their appearance.

He watches.  He studies.  He thinks.  He gives orders quietly.  Kindly.

They film at a place called Gotenba.  Kurosawa mentions offhandedly that he has been filming at Gotenba since he was 26.

26.  That would have been since 1936.  It is now 1990.  He is 80.  He has been filming at that location for 54 years.

Similarly, he mentions Abel Gance's 1923 silent drama The Wheel as an inspiration.  When was the last time you heard a director refer to The Wheel?  People know of Napoleon (1927) if they know of Abel Gance at all, but Kurosawa saw The Wheel in the theater when he was 18 years old.  He says the title was translated into Japanese as White Rose of the Railway.  Now that is lovely, isn't it?  He says the locomotive and its wheels symbolized the man and his fate, and that Gance used Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude (No. 15 in D-flat Major) to underscore it.  Kurosawa remembered that all those years later and uses it in his film here.

He mentions that bullhorns have made Assistant Directors voices grow weak, that before their invention ADs had to have well-developed voices to communicate with the crew at great distances. He suggests that other kinds of technology has weakened filmmakers in other areas as well.

Obayashi shows Kurosawa working alongside Ishiro Honda.  Honda, known to westerners for directing giant monster movies and originating the character of Godzilla, worked with Kurosawa at least as far back as 1949's Stray Dog.  The two men were great friends and worked well together. Kurosawa here states that most male friends argue at some point no matter how close they are. However, he and Honda, friends for forty-plus years, have never argued, due largely to Honda's great demeanor.

He refers to Honda as "god of the wood grain," as Honda joins the crew on his hands and knees to polish the wood.

We see Kurosawa dealing with children, and stating that they should not be spoken down to but rather treated as equals, and we see him dealing with extras, sometimes hundreds of extras, always with respect and comaraderie.

Obayashi talks to Kurosawa about artists who live past 80, and how often they do their best work then, after a lifetime of experience.  They cite several great Japanese painters who produced their most brilliant paintings after they turned 80.

This documentary is technically educational and emotionally inspirational.

It rewards the viewer generously with a front-seat view of Kurosawa at work.

And in reflection.

262 - Dreams, 1990, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

262 - Dreams, 1990, Japan.  Dir. Akira Kurosawa.

What do Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Industrial Light and Magic, Dolby, and Warner Bros. have to do with Akira Kurosawa?

They helped make this movie.

The master, who had been breathtakingly prolific from 1936 to 1965, had found it increasingly difficult to procure financing and had made four films in the past twenty years.

So when Spielberg and Lucas got Warner to commit to international distribution, he was back in business, and he made three more films in quick succession before passing away in 1998.

Lucas had ILM contribute special effects; Dolby provided digital noise reduction; and Scorsese performed in it.

Kurosawa is 80 now, and his work is more reflective, meditative, and personal.

It is also explosive with vibrant color.  Beautiful, lavish, rich, lush, vital color.

The man who had given the world some of the finest black-and-white cinematographic images over the years is now demonstrating his mastery in chromatic hues.

He also exhibits his virtuosity of composition and camera work.  He revels in wide shots, perspective, foreshortening, long lenses, and masterful tilts and pans.

We will not see samurai, and we will not encounter Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, or Tatsuya Nakadai--members of Kurosawa's lifelong company of stars.

Rather we will see three actors, a child, a boy, and a man, each portraying the character of I.

And we will see contrasts between traditional and modern, nature and urban, death and striving for survival.

The film is a collection of eight (8) short stories ostensibly taken from Kurosawa's dreams.  Each one is self-contained, and each features a boy or man who might represent a fictionalized Kurosawa.

This is a different kind of Kurosawa film.  It induces one to want more--and wish that he had been able to continue his abundant output in the latter quarter of his life.

It is the third film in the last four that we have reviewed--from Italy, Italy, and now from Japan--which provides the viewer with a sumptuous visual feast.

In one of the episodes, "Crows," I, an aspiring artist, visits an art museum and observes Van Gogh paintings.  Then he enters them Gumby-like in a search for the painter.  He finds him and talks to him.

Look for Martin Scorsese playing Vincent Van Gogh.

Enjoy.

261 - Blow-Up, 1966, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.

Monday, September 18, 2017

261 - Blow-Up, 1966, Italy.  Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.

SPOILERS

This blog will look at the intrigue section of the film and what may have happened.

Do not read it if you do not want to spoil the film.

Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up is his most famous film and the one that created the greatest sensation worldwide.

His 1960 film l'Avventura put him on the international cinema map, but Blow-Up made him a household name.

Blow-Up is many things and can be viewed in multiple ways.  It is one day in the life of a swinging fashion photographer in 1960s London.

One of the things that happens during the day is that the photographer, Thomas, played by David Hemmings, while photographing a couple in the park, later believes he has captured on film a potential murder, and later still believes he has captured an actual murder.

He enlarges his pictures, or blows them up, in order to study them, which gives the film its title.

Various theories have been put forth as to what he photographed in the park.  Here is mine.

I believe Jane, played by Vanessa Redgrave, plotted to murder her lover, played by Ronan O'Casey. We first catch a glimpse of Jane and her lover not in the upper section of the park where the photographs are taken but down in the open field next to the tennis court, where Thomas himself will disappear at the end of the film.  At the moment, Thomas is photographing birds, perhaps pigeons, while standing not far from Jane and her lover, with his back to them.  We tilt and pan up and to the left, just passing by their torsos.  She is leading him.

Later, Thomas sees Jane pulling on her lover, guiding him up a path to the upper lever, which is what will lead Thomas to go around and up the steps, where he skips carefree joy, in order to shoot them. Jane is always leading her lover, as if guiding him to a predetermined spot.  When they appear to be holding hands and leaning back together, she is actually pulling him, trying to get him into position.

When Thomas goes back and looks at the blown-up photographs, this is even more apparent.

As they move into the center of the upper field, she looks around.  She does not appear worried or concerned--as is implied later in the photographs--but she is casing the area, as if to see if they are in position and as if to ensure that no one is watching.  When she sees Thomas with his camera, then she appears worried and begins to chase him.

For the rest of the film, Jane's driving relationship with Thomas is to get the film back.  It could be that she does not want the scandal, either for her lover or herself or both.  Or it could be that she merely wants privacy, as she asserts.  However, I believe she wants to eliminate evidence.  She not only grabs the camera but also goes as far as biting his hand.  She does not merely want those pictures.  She really wants them.

When Jane finally relents--for the moment--and runs away from Thomas, she approaches the lover's supine body at the tree, which is not where she left him, and only stops for a brief moment to glance at him before running away.

This is not a woman in love.  At least not with him.

Nor is it a woman in any way shocked, startled, or even surprised to see a dead body, let alone the body of the man with whom she was just canoodling.

She does not kneel over the body to see if he is alive or in distress.  She does not even bend down a little bit.  She merely stops, sees him, and gets herself out of there as quickly as possible.

When she mysteriously appears at Thomas's apartment, he asks her, "How did you find me?" and she changes the subject.  She does not want to answer.  The only logical answer is that she has been following him ever since.

She goes upstairs and is willing to do whatever it takes to get that film, from playing along with his efforts to make her a model, to chitchatting about trivial matters, to smoking and listening to music, to trying to run away with it, and when that does not work, to removing her top and trying seduce him.  Once she gets what she thinks is the film, she does remain for a moment to kiss him, but her heart is not in that.  She is merely completing the transaction.  She gives him a fake name and number.  She hopes never to see him again.

Later his place is ransacked and all the film and prints are taken--except for the two they missed.  It is evident that she and her accomplice had the film developed and discovered that Thomas tricked her. Thus, her accomplice or someone they hired went back and burglarized Thomas in order to retrieve it.

Jane might have gone in with her new, real lover to kill her husband, or she may have seduced the lover we see at the park for the purpose of murdering him.  But she was not surprised by the killing. She was responsible for it.

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Michelangelo Antonioni launched his career by making someone disappear.  In l'Avventura, the presumed main character Anna, played by Lea Massari, suddenly goes missing while on a yacht trip on the Mediterranean.  It was rare, and still is, for a director to have his protagonist leave a film so soon.

In Blow-Up three characters disappear.  The body of the lover remains lying at the park when Thomas returns that evening, but it is gone by the next morning.  Thomas famously disappears at the end of the film, while standing on the same spot where he had photographed the birds earlier, just a few yards from Jane and her lover.  And Jane magically disappears while in front of the Ricky-Tick club. Watch that moment a few times and see if you can figure it out.  It was most likely done in post.  Antonioni ingenuously has people walk past her in just the right way to obscure what happens to her, and she seems to transform into the woman in the gray skirt who was standing to the left just a few seconds before.

Antonioni said he made his other films with his gut but this one with his head.  He says he was more detached with Blow-Up and reflected more on what he was doing.

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Thomas's purchase of the large propeller from the antique shop may appear at first to be a prop for his photography business, but he states rather that he just likes it.  (Note that he has porcelain busts in his studio that resemble the ones for sale at the antique shop, suggesting that these purchases are a hobby of commitment for him.)

When the delivery man delivers the propeller, he asks, "What's it for?"

Thomas answers, "Nothing.  It was beautiful."

And we suspect that Antonioni might, playfully, give us the same answer about some of his own choices.

260 - Fellini's Roma, 1972, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

260 - Fellini's Roma, 1972, Italy.  Dir. Federico Fellini.

Caesar crosses the Rubicon.

Or in this case, the bandaged, barefooted Headmaster hobbles across the pebbled creek, leading his assistant and the uniformed boys behind him.

A statue of Caesar stands in the falling snow, its head and right arm partially missing, as a drunken homeless man hurls sexual insults at him in a poetic performance.

The headmaster brings the boys to see the statue.  They look up at Caesar.

Or possibly they are looking at the bottom of the large woman in the window above, singing in the window.

An amateur theatre group performs Julius Caesar.  "Et tu, Brute?"  Brutus kills Caesar.

The school students listen as the headmaster tells the story of the geese.  Or, they do not listen.  Some of them have bandaged heads.  The headmaster bops them on the heads.  Is he responsible for the bandages?

His assistant points to the geese outside the windows.  The boys run to the windows.  Little Fellini, a fictional character, runs to the window.

A couple years later the headmaster calls the now older boys from the cafeteria to the classroom where he will show a slideshow.  He shows slides celebrating Rome, the she-wolf, Catholic and Fascist images, a thonged woman.  What?  How did that slide get in there?  The boys sit in silence. Little Fellini smiles, stands, and claps.  The other boys follow.  The befuddled headmaster and his assistant attempt to tame the children.  They kneel and pray.  They stand and sing.  Change the subject.  Drown out the image.

A teen Fellini, another fictional character, moves into a boarding house.  He walks through the hallways and rooms, meeting the unusual people, old and young, large and small, who inhabit it.

He has dinner at a piazza.

Modern day.  Adult Fellini makes a film.  He passes through a tollbooth and drives down the modern Italian highway as rain begins to pour.  Fellini images bombard the road.  A white horse trotting riderless among the cars.  A man pushing a cart.  Hippies.  Whores.  Tanks.  Construction.  Fires. A protest.  Police in riot gear.  Traffic jam at the Coliseum.  Chaos.  Ever-increasing darkness and rain.

Nature.

A tall tree among trees.  A girl chasing a ball down a hill.  A tour bus arriving.

A smoky Vaudeville-like theatre.  Dancers.  An impressionist.  Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin in a trio.  The audience is restless.  Raucous.  Men shout for performers to leave the stage.  Performers argue with them from the stage.  A mother lets her toddler pee in the aisle.  A young man throws a wet rag onto a sleeping man's face.

This is Fellini.  The world is bawdy.  Carnal.  Ribald.  Irreverent.

Men enter tunnels to work.  They bring a cutter.  It cuts through the underground mud wall.  They penetrate into the other tunnel.  A catacomb.  They crawl through.  Ancient frescoes!  As clear as new. The fresh air immediately begins to corrode them.

A cheap underground whorehouse.  The men sit and watch as the women parade by, barking insults at them, shouting at them to come upstairs.  Like Ed Debevic's in a basement.  The men appear passive. Do they know what to do?  Do they even know why they are there?  The women have Fellini faces--long and narrow, excessively round, large eyes, large teeth.  Putting on a freak show.

A high-class escort service.  Like Christie's upstairs.  The men sit on luxurious chaise lounges in an art-filled room.  Exquisite decor.  Tasteful behavior.  The matron might be auctioning off a Ming vase.  The women come down and insult the men just as before.  The environment is different.  The behavior is the same.

A Catholic fashion show featuring priests and nuns.  A Woody Allen comedy.  A Saturday Night Live skit.

Fellini's Roma is a hodgepodge of short stories and travelogue.  Parts of it feel like a television documentary.  Parts feel like Fellini sketches.  It rambles.  It wanders.  It borrows from La Dolce Vita and 8-1/2.  It precedes Amarcord, which came out the next year.

Roger Ebert wrote, "Fellini's Roma was attacked in some circles as an example of Fellini coasting on his genius.  I find this point of view completely incomprehensible."

One might disagree with that point of view, but it is not incomprehensible--it is quite comprehensible; it is even obvious--nor is it an attack.  It is an observation.

The film lacks strongly defined characters and a cohesive narrative structure.  At first glance, Fellini merely rambles around Rome.  Is more going on?  Maybe.

Frank Burke provides a well-written commentary, asserting that this is his favorite Fellini film, and he makes a compelling case for its quality.

However, as vignettes go, the next year's Amarcord was an improvement.  This film seems like the seed that gave birth to that one.  Nor does Roma surpass the masterpieces, La Strada, La Dolce Vita, and 8-1/2.

It is Fellini, though.  And it is Rome.  At least his Rome.

259 - Fellini Satyricon, 1969, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

259 - Fellini Satyricon, 1969, Italy.  Dir. Federico Fellini.

Sometime between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in A.D. 33 and the Siege of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Flavian Vespasian and his son Titus, a man named Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical work.

Petronius called his satirical work Satyricon.

He was a courtier under the patronage of Nero.

Nero was 16 when he began ruling Rome.  He ruled 14 years and died at age 30.  He ruled from A.D. 54 to A.D. 68.  He was a young man.

Politically, Nero is known for brutality and intrigue.  He killed his own mother to secure power.  He spent widely on public works projects and entitlements, to the detriment of the treasury.  He persecuted and killed Christians, and was said to have crucified Peter upside down.  He watched--though probably did not fiddle--as Rome burned.  He plunged Rome into civil war.  And he finally ordered his secretary to kill him when he did not possess the temerity to commit suicide.

And yet, as with many princes, he was raised in refinement and had a great taste for culture.  He was an Olympic champion (possibly due to suppressed competition), a musician and singer, an actor, a poet, a horseman, and a chariot racer.

It was under his protection that Petronius wrote.  And through his taste for refinement and love of pleasure, Petronius became known as the "Arbiter of Elegance."

Nineteen centuries later, the great Italian master Federico Fellini has inherited the Roman tradition. He takes this story, or series of vignettes, and reshapes it to his own purposes.  Thus, his name in the title.  This is the Fellini Satyricon as opposed to the Petronius Satyricon.

The Fellini Satyricon is a series of vignettes.  In fact, critics have compared it to a wall containing nine frescoes, each one showing a scene, as frescoes do.  Roger Ebert also compares it to John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the urn, like a fresco, capturing a moment in time, featuring characters with no history and no future, but only the captured moment.

There is also the ostensible theme, that it is a film about a time of hedonism.  Ebert further describes the effect the film had on his generation after the Summer of Love, when people believed they could enjoy sex freely without consequence, before the onslaught of "viruses, guilt or psychological collapse."  And in fact, the actors were contemporary hippies, one of them having just performed in the American production of Hair, another one living intentionally on the streets of London in order to pursue his own desires.

When I first saw this movie, about fifteen years ago, I saw it more in those terms.  Not so much in the terms of the 1960s--How could I know about that?  By the time I came along we had the viruses, guilt, and psychological collapse--but in terms of the cultural indulgences we learned about in our Western Civilization and Humanities classes.  It was a contemporary Italian film rooted in Roman history wherein Fellini was making some points about decadence.

Watching it today is different.  I am not so much thinking about any plot or even any theme.  I am having the full-on experience of watching a Fellini film.  A pure Fellini film.

On one level it is like watching a Greek play--yes, Greek, as opposed to Roman, despite even Rome's having repurposed the Greek mythologies.  We see, for example, a Labyrinth and a Minotaur.  They even refer to Homer in the movie rather than Virgil.  The set design and the acting style lead us to imagine other contemporary performances of ancient Greek plays we may have seen.  But then, if you have seen a contemporary performance of an ancient play, you have probably seen Greek and not Roman.  You may have seen a performance of Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, or Sophocles.  I myself have performed in an Aristophanes comedy.  But have you ever seen a performance of Plautus, Terrence, or Seneca?  Probably not.  The closest thing to a Roman play we know is William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Perhaps Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, or Titus Andronicus.  But those plays are actually British.

But on another level, I am not even thinking about that.  I am thinking about pure Fellini.  Alfred Hitchcock had a concept he called pure cinema, where he aspired to make cinema as an art that only cinema could make, i.e., not a filmed play, but something that only cinema could make, using camera angles and sound and music and cutting in ways that no other art form could do.  This is not that. This is clearly the assembling of the other arts--set design, make-up, wardrobe, highly stylized acting.  But this is pure Fellini.  It is not really the adaptation of an ancient Roman play.  It is also not the contemporary staging of an ancient Greek play.  It is not even a film about a time of hedonism.  It is not erotic.

It is a series of images.

It is a coffee table book.

A great big one.  One that needs a great big coffee table to sit on.  With full color pictures and no text.

From cover to cover.

And it moves.

Moving pictures.

This is what this picture is.  A series of images moving one after the other.

All year I have been talking about the concept of "Every frame a Rembrandt"--where the viewer can pause a film at any moment and find a still picture suitable for hanging on the wall.

All year I have been identifying moments when films approach this goal, if they seem to have it, and citing the apparently associated artist.

This film may come the closest to achieving that ideal.

Why?

What allows each frame to be a still shot suitable for framing?

Because the film does not have to conform to narrative structure.  Since the plot does not matter, the film does not need transitional shots to connect one scene to another in a logical fashion.  Each shot can stand alone.

It is just a series of images to watch, one after the other.

And because we are in the hands of Fellini the master.  He is all about the image.

A picture followed by a picture followed by a picture.

Every frame a Fellini.


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I went back and found the blogs where I referred to this concept--"Every frame a Rembrandt"--and listed them.  It turns out that I used it twice of Fellini already.  Apparently, I felt it before.

Here is a summary--

January 2 - 02, Revanche, 2008, Gotz Speilmann - Every frame a Rembrandt
January 3 - 03, La Belle et la Bete, 1946, Jean Cocteau - Every frame a Vermeer.  Every frame a Dore.
February 8 - 39, Days of Heaven, 1978, Terrence Malick - Every frame a Vermeer.  Every frame an Edward Hopper.
February 9 - 40, Tess, 1979, Roman Polanski - Every frame a Van Eyck.
February 15 - 46, The Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant, 1972, Rainer Werner Fassbinder - A Poussin in every frame.
February 23 - 54, Andrei Rublev, 1966, Andrei Tarkovsky - Every frame a Rublev.
February 24 - 55, Solaris, 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky - Every frame a Bruegal.  The Elder.
February 25 - 56, La Chienne, 1931, Jean Renoir - Every frame a Renoir!
March 7 - 66, French Cancan, 1955, Jean Renoir - Every frame a Degas, Every frame a Seurat, Every frame a Toulouse-Lautrec, Every frame a Renoir.
June 5 - 156, La Dolce Vita, 1960, Federico Fellini - Every frame a Fellini.
June 7 - 158, Juliet of the Spirits, 1965, Federico Fellini - Every frame a Fellini.
June 22 - 173, The Decameron, 1971, Pier Paolo Pasolini - Every frame a Giotto.
June 27 - 178, The Great Beauty, 2013, Paolo Sorrentino - Every frame a National Geographic picture book.
July 4 - 185, The Ballad of Narayama, 1958, Keisuke Kinoshita - Every frame a Kabuki.
September 16 - 259, Fellini Satyricon, 1969, Federico Fellini - Every frame a Fellini.