Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau - 1927
Murnau uses some pretty distant framings at times. Most notably, putting the couple low down in the frame, and using the top. He creates some of the greatest images in the cinema with the somplexity of the lighting, and this tiered composition, in the dance hall sequence. He also uses variations for entirely different effects, for loomings and overhangings, of the vamp near the end, for example.
Pictorially, the off-centre hard backlight provides beyond beautiful images. Murnau won't cut on these too quickly. This allows for two of the greatest performances of the cinema; not overdone, full of nuance and depth (whatever that is...), but also clear and simple, of the country folk.
Their is really a plethora of effects here, that would be verging on ridiculous anywhere else, but are used so perfectly to work. Endless impositions, of a city, a dream, cinema across time. And of course the wonderful movement. We have slow tracks, so smooth, so sensual, that are, yes, erotic, in a more gentle than brutal way. The horizontals across the city, at once calm but wildly exciting.
This is what the city is; the place of beauty, coming from the tram window (simple, but sharp), surrounding with love, with hope. But often the place of predators, despair, the couple caight in the traffic, for all the beauty, across time and space, of their tracking walk through it. The city is at once the storm, but how can one live without it?
What is 'Sunrise'? It is the most beautiful day of our life. And with that I take a short break to these entries.

Akasen Chitai

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1956
Known as 'Street Of Shame'... Mizoguchi isn't quite so much for the closer views in here is very last. It is however pretty busy, often compartmentalised, as we go through the different prostitutes. There are some great shots of the street, always of course in long. Of course the singular use Mizoguchi makes of off-screen space, not only in still eyelines, but how characters come from somewhere, walk through, leave on the other end.
Mizoguchi's sheer sympathy is remarkable; there are more simple things to say than the obvious, the hatred of what they do. It is difficult to love them and not then defend what they do, but I felt the balance was struck. Perhaps partly due to the narrative strategy; slow unfoldings of pretty clear stories.

Yokihi

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1955
In colour? Whatever next. Pretty well lit, I rather liked the paleness in the whole situation; especially in the water, and the bathing pools, and the bathing robes.
Sacrifice is centered here. It is at once political, but really I felt more of the pull of the personal here; ideas of transformation, who one is really connected to, and the love that crosses all, across real time, across cuts of the cinema.

Chikamatsu Monogatari

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1954
This is one of the busier of Mizoguchi's works I have seen. The close views aren't too obvious, but the long takes are, in the enclosed rooms, and later the enclosed forests, that I'm coming to associate, with the twinkling lights that just creep around, with Mizoguchi. Again we have tragic love, the figure of the women as the noble survivor, the good natured by rather weak man, and the evil man.
Mizoguchi and Deleuze (did the latter write on the former?); there's a weird combination. Here's my thinking. Mizoguchi is known as taking a relation to emotion that is not direct sympathy. In earlier entries I have talked about swirling effects in Mizoguchi, the idea of the lack of specificity ('A' Emotion / 'A' Life) in this portrayal. Add to this what I keep coming across in Mizoguchi (but forgot to mention in earlier entires); the idea of excess. His females, looking for love generally, for cosy home life, are, frankly insane. They are insane masochists. In Oyu-Sama the younger sister originally basically commits herself to a life of misery for another, giving more than she has; excess. Look at the face of Zushio as he goes to the advisor in Sancho Dayu. The idea od mysticism in Mizoguchi, excess, love beyond the exchnage principle, the sacrifice of this, the end of 'Ugetsu Monogatari'. For all the decorum, his is a cinema of insanity. But portrayed quite calmly.

L'Annee Derniere A Marienbad

Alain Resnais - 1961
Let's mention the music before I start; very powerful, I liked it, almost absurd in the organs strength, matching the arch humour throughout the work.
Lights usually come from back and behind, to mention. We have a camera crawling along walls, strokes in both directions, camera stylo writing, also moving up and down. 'Marienbad' as the anatomy of the track (smooth); dissection of role of that move, of a camera, as desire (When the eventual move backwards comes, falls off the wall, we have its reverse, a dissection, the negation of desire; what is that?).
These erotic tracks are not actually too explicit, then huge orgasm on ironic Italian melo burst in, repetition of a track into the feathered arms, one of the most powerful moments I know in the cinema.
Also worth to say that there are quite a few close views- and why not. That is the feeling, it conveys it.
Marienbad won't be reduced, but let me talk of specificity and abstraction. If time doesn't matter, nor does place; says the man, abstraction. Yet also, there is specificity in eroticism, among the interchangeable walls we have the one moment, the walk I made for you through carpets so thick we had silence. This is all in the same way the voice (over)/ poetry (Robbe-Grillet, yet also the words of some kind of characters)/ acting (mannered, singular, general stand-ins) is specific and abstract.
Where to start on the shadows of the garden; not for blocks, but specific humans? Too easy. The location is at once so clear, big blocks referenced in the final words, yet among them I lose you.
For all, in a way this is quite simple; man meets women, she can't remember, montage cuts between then and now, some maybe true, some not, all indeterminate, maybe, or specific in erotic. The only confusion is deliberate, the need, perhaps, for mystification, the way life is clear, clear blocks, but I still can't find you, the mystery of a white wall, a gaudy stucco. One just needs to accept continuous time has collapsed in the montage.
Returning to the key question of specificity; does time matter between moral decisions? Does what is in between matter? If there was a decision now, and then, does time exist between? What is going on in the cut, in impossible spaces where space is clearly 'unreal'? Does this matter, for life?
Is there a lack of politics here? This is a film from a director of the mouvelle vague, in some way; one occassioanlly realises, in the deliberate humour often, this is after all people dressing up. The nouvelle vague was horribly apolitical in many ways; and like them, you have to say Resnais at least centers erotiticism as much, if not more, than engagement (fatalism?). I would call this, if I could name things, a film about eroticism, really. But eroticism and politics are intertwined; the film is about eroticism in a degraded world, how it can only exist as deliberately obscured, confused, not making sense. This is the fetish element, shoes and bondage.
How can the specificity of desire manage in the degraded world of this hotel/ spa? Marienbad, Fredericksbad, twists these confusions, which are necessary. Desire only possible through what looks like heavy formalism; the only way to save it, by intellectualising it?
For all, there are clear politics; the spa (I want!) is clearly the bourgeois/ aristocracy, the fading abstractions of the brutal walls that enclose, only one way, that turn my footsteps to silence in the carpet, yet can be heard in the gravel that may or may not be under your window.
O.K., Resnais is allowed one symbol, and the quite funny game is perfect for capitalism; he can lose, but never does. Is this my favourite symbol in cinema? Clear, beautfiul, beyond simple unpacking.
The greatest film ever? Never a good phrase- it is on that highest plateau, which isn't even a plateau, but the unsayable.... The most erotic film (Dreyer?), moments of losing control, the voiceover in crashes of specificity. The most visually pleasing? Maybe. Perfectly formed location, architecture geometric and mysterirous, tracks around corners. The most intelligent? Visually, in literature, it achieves greatness.

Cria Cuervos

Carlos Saura - 1976
I mean, it's not terrible, but I can't really think of anything nice to say about it. Quite a heavy camera creeps around a bit, in pretty long takes, slowly moving in and out (though there is what I would describe as pointless cutting, perhaps down to inadequacies of framing). There is a hell of a lot of Kuleshoving with the little girl, her blank expression I suppose intended to be charming or meaningful, which I didn't really find. Th washes out palette is pretty ugly, not in a very interesting way.
Childhood / children can be interesting when considered from an adult perspective, used to cast light on an adult world; in itself, it is idiotic and boring. Harsh but fair, I think...

Tartuffe

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau - 1925
The often referred to 'mobile camera' of Murnau, and Freund, has often confused me, for, for all the innovations in movement, as an aesthetic principle it is pretty minimal in a lot of shots. But here I felt great mobility in the camera, despite its stillness; precisely because their is mobility in the set up; Murnau, as Griffiths, introduces the idea of the camera as being able to shoot from any point, any angle, not constrained by stage constaints. His camera can be below, behind, through a window, wherever.
This surprised me for the pace of the edit, and for how close the framings are. And I mean really close; facial close-ups even, medium shots could be as far out as we get for a few sequences. This is not what one expects of silent cinema. There is also some long stuff, on that slightly abstract, deeply beautiful studio set look that Murnau has, with light expressionism (cinematic, German) infusing the air; a kind of slightly lighter one than, say, Murnau's 'Faust'.
I didn't find this his most distinctive work, we basically have a tale set out in front of us (or around us, as above). Of course the compositions are [refect, hang-up able. I watched a copy with a lot of yellow tints, high contrasts, and pretty scratchy, faded sides. Also note we have the Murnau-ish back of the leering man.
The obvious point of interest is the framing device; why? There is quite a shock here. Is it modernist (why categorize?)? Yes and no. Yes, in that we are told 'Tartuffe' and asked explictly to reflect on it, consider even the morality of telling a tale. No in that what it sets up is simply a very middle-ages esque tale, pure and simple; it is a morality play, modernist only if you are being difficult.
There are recurring elements of Murnau found even in Moliere's story. The odd attitude towards woman, showing their power, yet disgust with them is obvious; as is a kind of lust (the director's sexuality notwithstanding, perhaps). Also the fear of unemployment, and the need to communicate, say something. This moral part (not that I necessarilly agree..), with the tale like structure, put me in mind of the slightly more detailed, though admittedly less ornate and baroque, 'Master Of The House'.

Uwasa no Onna

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1954
Not concentrating hard enough. We have a very modern day, collision of people, in busy environments, quite loud people. Much of a sense of closeness, as the cuts, now almost portraiture, are a part of. This seems to gel with the overdetermined reasons for each sction, almost the cinfusion, the swirl of reasons, the tragic demeanours caught in this. Even within a struggling group we have internal conflict. ALso note the generally negative image of average man, though not all men; this examination is again and again found in the Mizoguchi I come across.

Gion Bayashi

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1953
The camera is getting closer with each one (which is silly, as this is before 'Sancho' in time, but anyway). Moving to quite a few at least mid shots; perhaps it is because it is modern day, less a tale, more a social analysis. It does keep the Mizoguchi looking and looked at, but it does some things differntly. This shift, when I think of my own reaction to it and something similar in Kurosawa, usually finds me an advocate of at least the equality of the modern day, against some critical opinion.
What I like, and I like this film very much, is how very specific it is. There is a kind of humour here, in the details; the lawyer, the legal codes given, the way the horror of the situation is reduced to these exact formulations (also congratulate the oppenness; anything better than Hollywood).
We have crushing fate again, which has cause, effect, solution, but is so built in as to be inevitable. It is pretty clear where Mizoguchi stands, hating the Geisha principles. One more thing; he can cut in, he does sometimes move in for tears. Just not always.

Der Letze Mann

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau - 1924
So incredibly beautful, but not without difficulty, not too smooth or shiny. This is like a great ancient classical work; perfect, but with that air of the primitive.
More sepcifically, many low angles for the very strong whites, like on fire. The money is even white. This all goes with the themes of smoke throughout, hell... Deleuze.
We have a mixture of long shots, but the film seems at once modern for its mediums, more than I can think certainly most black and whites, nevermind silents... The edit is precise, but never pnderous, very exact moves, often nintety or one eighty.
In a way, this is two different films; we have a real change from the hotel to the housing estate; there we have remarkable non-centering, the windows come alive across the frame in that great early stil shot. I don't know what to say but the ridiculous; neo realism? Cramped interiors, everyday washing, life, little moves, dirty faces. There is a slightly odd attitude to the woman gossips, sympathetic but cruel...
The hotel is shot more precise ly, with those wonderful singular (literally) moves towards or away from an action. Also note similar moves for travelling sound; into the ear. The earline match.
And the epilogue; at first quite a smart inversion, of excess, moving the film from parochialism of a single kind of consciousness one could say, for all the obvious absurdity. Once this exercise is clear through, it becomes downright odd
This film is still for me sensational; just Jannings against that wall. Perhaps my favourite silent film; or just film, long with a few incomparable others.

Sancho Dayu

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1954
In many ways this is a play of looking, seen in distance what is looked at, with the back turned to the camera, and the look, seen close up, where we don't see the other half of this double. This, as in the famous boat scene, is used in variations for the appropriate effect. In this sense, editing is key for all this; a deliberate edit, not always tied to narrative extrapolation.
We have that lovely dappled forest throughout, and many huge long shots; a finish again on the notion of work, the singular plowing the field, or beach here. I again felt, with the mysticism, the wide open islands, the idea of powers swirling, not settling.
I can't help but have to bring up fatalism; throughout this and other works of Mizoguchi, perhaps? A pile up of problems, what I dislike is the dramatic arc to them, which gives me a feeling of a sense of relish to them. To be fair, specific problems are dealt with (slavery, land rights), but really it seems more like the principle of misery is more at play than anything.

Ugetsu Monogatari

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1953
The play is of long takes, small people, high and low in that wonderful environment full of reeds, rivers, mist, busy busy markets (people as mist). Through these we are moved pretty quickly, along the top and/or the bottom of the screen.
This is a film about male hubris, about pride, about ethics, what one wants, what is good, about art and that vocation. Ultimately, work cannot just be dismissed, for all the problems; the high shot of the workers at the end, the return to pottery. Yet Mizoguchi is a tragedian, and this comes with the price of a kind of eternal suffering.
The infusion of ghosts, of memory, is at its best when the mis-en-scene corresponds with the boats, and best yet with pans that move to dissolves, along the earth, that cross time and space; of course the famous, restrained pan around the house. Of course, this is a terrific film.

Oyu - Sama

Kenji Mizoguchi - 1951
Mizoguchi's camera starts long, and can stay there. A mixture of stillness and movements, often those sideways movement that, along with zig zag compostions, non-geometrical framings (though he can do geometrical, perhaps because houses are so...) give that famous sense of a world beyond the frame (similar effect caused by entrances and exits). So he starts long, and tracks or pans along with the movements, usually. He does not though, ever seemingly, cut in for emphasis. If they are far away, they are far away, even if its an important plot point, they can be very far away, the camera not disturbing. The depth is very much a part, all in focus, using a wide stage. Ideas as to why later.
He can cut around sometimes, though this seems to follow a formal pattern (ninety degree moves, for example) before an emotional one, perhaps.
The film overexposes the light, but we only get the light dappled through trees, often at the tops of frames. Thus there is this hazy, mystical effect, through the leaves. It all seemed pretty soft to me. The framings don't give a sense of being exact, but I think they are; one movement can reveal the back of someone else's neck in a new light, or such things, a lot.
So how is the story told? An initial situation, not overmilked, then basically a pile-up of woe, never individually melodramatic but ultimately proving too much for tyhe charatcers. It can be surprisingly honest, or rather straightforward, about sex. There is also an ability to create awkwardness, discomfort, or simply the realistation of how someone else in the room is feeling. The time is passed with quite fast dissolves, often, sometimes in what are essentially silent montage sequences. There are also some lovely non-narrative bits, of empty rooms or flowers.
So what did this add up to for me? The reluctance to place or define an emotion. Not saying; 'this is tears, the emotion' but hiding any exact one for one. A world, a situation, is built, in which forces swirl. The moves off screen, the flow, the exits, are just one element where the emotion is not allowed to be singulaires (and neautralised), defined as one thing. It creates a very individual style.

The Roaring Twenties

Raoul Wlash - 1939
Wlash uses a pretty mobile camera, with some lovely flowing moves that establish the space then move closer into scenes, the cut only coming when the SRS starts. What I really liked about the look of the film was its architecure, and the chracters relation to it, often in longish shots. The actions are slightly stilited, and there is a wonderful sense of unreality about some of the sets, huge blank walls, at one point they seem to turn up on the set of 'The Trial', or maybe 'Metropolis'. There is something pleasing surrealist about a number of these scenes.
The story arc is generally of the classic gangster movie. In fact, one montage I'm pretty sure uses shots from 'Scarface'. I should talk about the montages. This is a self-conscious gangster movie, using all the epoch's trappings, and the montage of direct, superciliously grand narration flies us through impostions of scenes. Each element is way clearer, and probably a bit slower, than in, say, Russian montage. But, as with all these film, pleausre in the elegance.
Walsh, I have read, gets a lot of credit for little details; there are some nive touches here, little asides from one to another, but I largely found the studio setting too simple for a huge amount of this. Nevertheless, the psychologies are complex; some actions are not the obvious ones taken, all for the better.

Storm Over Asia

V.I. Pudovkin - 1928
Compared to your average work, this is a piece of the Soviet montage aesthetic. It frequently uses still, quite close shots, in fast excahnge, to convey its ideas. There is much evocation of place, here, largely the steppes. In many ways it reminded me of the great 'Earth', with these wide open spaces.
And like 'Earth', it is not exactly like one expects of the montage school. The takes are a bit longer, and here they are often not canted. There isn't much glorification of the human figure; even the capitalist is bad because we are told so, rather than from any paricular framing choise. There are some very long shots, and not short takes, of the steppes, along with just medium or full body stuff. The story, while not psychological, does have a main character, who conflicts with events (those he is buffeted aroumd rather than initially dcisive).
The end really is remaraklbe; incredibly quick cuts and effects, no sense of realistic space, powerful and stirring. There are some pretty noutceable effects throughout, either using gauzes or distorting angles, al combined with the classic Soviet lights from two sides approach. Half the film one might expect.

Gabbeh

Mohsen Makhmalbaf - 1996
Focus on colour, clearly. A mixture of very long shots, in pretty long takes, and some quite close moves, always still, between faces, to create the slightly magical continuity elements. The matches on action, where magic occurs, gives thought to one of the principle elements of this film, the idea of abundance; of image, of colour, of warmth, of people communicating.
Those great strong colours, centered in the frame and in the treatment, are the life against what is often a pretty arid looking background. They are the stuff of something called 'life'.
The plot is clearly a bit of magical realism, time colliding, a look back on a life by throwing past and future together to have a chat with each other. The plot functions very gently in the background, with the idea of the refrain being key, and the idea of narrative more than a logical working out. The film seems largely to want us to focus on colours, life, patience in this, people.

El Topo

Alejandro Jodorowsky - 1970
This, in mayn ways, looks a lot like a lot of films of its time, especially the American cinema, in Peckinpah ('The Wild Bunch' especially), and also in Leone and so on. This is the pretty flat canvas, zooming, or in this case perhaps more tracking, in and out with a wide angle lens. There are also, for all the pretty relaxed framings and sometimes not entirely smooth cameras, a penchant for central framing, very geometrical. Visually, we also have a lot of strong colours against the long horizontals, montomy of the sand.
Action here though is in what is being filmed. With pretty much a narrative, just surreal encounters reached. There is heavy use of symbolism, fetishism, often strong, comic book, quite deliberately unreal colours and images used. Sometimes people just start doing the darndest things. This is, in one sense, a little tiresome; rather like stripping Bunuel of what is actually Bunuel. But to be fair here there is a clear political accent, an attack, or rather a mockery of ways of life, practicies of racism and so on. This is counterculture. If rather too abstract to be really strong on this, well, it at least tries, rather more than can be said for some of what it has influenced.
Basically a melting plot of a kind of Christianity infued with Buddhist and Hindu leanings, this is really of its time; and not necessarilly too much the worse for that.

The Killing

Stanely Kubrick - 1956
Very early Kubrick; and very, very good Kubrick.
Clear influence of Welles, I would call it. Big deep spaces, often low angles. Overlapping dialogue, a 'Lady From Shanghai' level of speed between scenes, flying from one to another, cutting off. Also I detected a lot of Ophuls in the camera movements, and Hawks maybe also (also the pace with Hawks; 'Scarface', maybe?) in the horizontal tracks through rooms, through walls, starting scenes often (as in that great shot in 'La Signora Di Tutti'. From these openings, pretty long takes (as throughout), we often move to a quite deliberate SRS, a slightly weird one.
What Kubrick has added to these directors is certainly a great deal of precision; and this film is in many ways about precision. The famous narrative shattering is those pieces of a puzzle, helped of course by the quite funny narration. The film is partly about, and this could be a helpful key to Kubrick's work, the idea of the parts and the whole. If you add all the pieces of the puzzle (here), the actions of a romantic hero psychology (Lyndon), the psychological attributes of a human (2001), the causes of a society (Clockwork Orange... is this a bit desperate?), what do you get? Not the whole seemingly, because precision is... unreal? Impossible? How tightly can you plan?
Also, manipulation of time is key here. We have the return to one sequence, the horse race. The moves back, putting into place. It isn't actually too nuts, some suspense needs to be created, but there is some nice bits of seeing one seen from two angles, narrative wise. Also, it is remarkable in the final shooting scene how quickly it passes; he clearly extends time in some places, but here just flies through.
I loved the droleness here, partly in the very exact compositions, in the slight absurdities (nothing important in the bag!). Their is a weirdness here, again 'Lady From Shanghai' esque, unreal I suppose. It flies along, great fun. Some great individual scenes; I love all of them with the car park attendant.

Ashes And Diamonds

Andrzej Wajda - 1958
Very Wellesian, I felt. Constructing the space with huge fish-eye angles, very deep spaces. Often aggressively close to the camera, with surely on occassion projections to cope with some parts (the seperating of the frame, for example in the longer shot with the telephone, is presumably down to this). The setting to this is pretty mundane, and the better for that, showing a slightly grubby conference room, an average-ish day at a church at the start.
What happens in this film? Things aren't alright in Poland. No war heroes, no even clear villains, just a country with corruption and rather a lack of ideals. What kind of film can be made about this? This felt to me a pretty straightforward bit of art cinema, kind of worried ambiguous characters, a sort of story and psychology being told, very nice, a little dull.

Charlie Chaplin: Essanay Shorts

Charles Chaplin - 1915
His New Job, A Night Out, The Champion, The Tramp
Pretty early Chaplin. This is obviously in the earlier stages of the cinema, with the specific kind of oblong cinematic space, the (inaccurate) attempt to represent the theatre. Chaplin does use depth, but obviously the pinned against the wall horizontals are much more in place. Chaplin has mastered the continuity cut from space to spcae, as well as the match on action (I think); he can cut in in the middle of a scene, to get a better look, if on one angle. One interesting thing about the compositions is the Chaplin is not overly fussy, or perhaps even avoids, centered framings. Not that this is exactly 'Machorka-Muff', but it's just a little off-center in nearly all of them. The compositions are also very complex, with tiny actions, often a hand, not centered but revealing a gag, or even a 'plot' point all of their own.
To get to important matters; every location change, indeed every shot change, seems to reveal an entirely new location, even though the actions (i.e. direction of movement) can show it continous with the last. Moving to a road next to a forest, or a stage next to a dressing room, seems to give a new kind of way of living, a new way to approach life.
And approach life is what Chaplin's figure does, even before the Tramp is really developed. Using feet and hands, he intereacts with the world by striking against it. And he finds it difficult, he gets it wrong. Nearly everything in all these films relates to the difficulty in finding, keeping a job. Surviving employment. Everything else is rather secondary to this, which is revealed is difficult, extremely difficult. Obviously, the physical usages are not 'realistic' in one sense; yet that very physical idea of 'here I am, i am meant to do this, do that', is remarkable. It is the classic modernist position of defamiliaridation, in a way. And with this is combined some really subtle psychology; just a little look.

Hotel

Jessica Hausner - 2004
Alright, back to film, and not quite as exciting, but still the work of a master (ess?). The camera keeps a lot more still, apart from some looming horror film moves (and some crack-cuts, with sound) in, that, as in 'Lovely Rita', one feels Hausner is taking the piss out of more than anything. Still using a lot of eyeline matches, there is also a repeated move where we see watching a corridor, than go behind, so at first glance she seems to be watching hereself; a trick of SRS, and rather disquieting.
The again elliptical editing should also be noted. And also the fact that this is starting to really resemeble 'Lourdes'; thematically with religion, the use of nightclubs, conference rooms, people listening to music, but also on the vivid blocks of colours set against pale, uncluttered walls. The lighting here is very different from 'Lovely Rita', back, quite hard (and colourful), side stuff too; this is a film, shot in film. It is still utterly fascinating, gleeful, cock-eyed, deliberately obscure in its refusal of clear genre.

Lovely Rita

Jessica Hausner - 2001
This film could prove so important for me, for images that move across a screen.. it looks absolutely disgusting. Video is disgusting, it just looks crap, to modern eyes. Hausner doesn't seem to use artificial light, the colours of the wall make the faces, it just looks shit. It is quite remarkable. It is the anti-Murnau, this is at the moment my ground zero of illusion, the complete destruction of a cinema of poetry and illusion, of film stock in itself as artistic means. We have people in an ugly world, looking ugly. This is a film of pure destruction, almost Nietzschean, of glee, real twinkle-eyed wickedness in the destruction. I kept thinking of 'Filme Socialisme'. The actions are almost entirely stupid, pain inflicting; a brutal deconstruction of the everyday lie of this life, which is yet more positive than anything; for it posits, as a negative, a better world.
It is built largely, almost entirely, off quite close-ups and eyeline matches. Hitchcock yes, but I though more of Bresson (who would use video); no clear space, just physicality, the physicality of video, the feel of dirt, the blemishes on a face. Saying this, there are a few hints of the 'Lourdes' to come; a predeliction for slightly off-centered framing, and bright block colours on clear, nondescript backgrounds.
Hausner's editing is elliptical in the extreme; no shots to explain something, we just fly across. And each shot is so well judged. The nightclub scene; possibly the most disgusting sex scene ever, perfectly held for that duration.
I still can't quite cope with the zoom-ins here. But the idea is interesting. I agree with Pedro Costa that we have to tell Mr Panansonic to go fuck himself with the idea of throwing our digital cameras around, but pure stillness and artful playing with light is really just saying that you want to use film.
Video is the pure current of economics on art. Why does Hausner use video? Because she can't use film. But the video here is key to the art. Art as economics, real art I mean; and all real art is socialism; this is perfect.

Funny Games

Michael Haneke - 1997
This, probably, is formally not as interesting as the two Haneke I have seen before, 'Hidden' and 'The White Ribbon', at least on the level of the camera and so on. We have a lot of close-ups, with, compared to say 'Hidden', a pretty quick cut rate. The film is shot so that the inside is pretty dark, but not excessively so. There are signs of what Haneke will later develop, most noticeably in the pretty audacious huge lonbg take after the two boys leave for the first time; the long, long duration of the mother and father stumbling, unbroken for a good few minutes; this is pretty harrowing duration, which I remember well from 'Hidden'. As is famous, the violence is pretty much entirely offscreen.
The structure of this film is really a focus on the bourgeois family; our interrupters seem almost a formal point of divine violence. Haneke seems almost more interest in what happens after; perhaps due to discomfort showing the violence. This discomfort is most obvious when we are turned to and, three times if I remember, asked to confront the fact we are really taking quite a relish in the violence. This is way ahead of most films, but at the same time I felt a touch underdeveloped; Haneke seems more uncomfortable in a vague way with us seeing violence, but still chooses not to exise it.
We are asked what side we are on, and we have to ask what is really going on here? Is this a youth in revolt film? Destruction of the bourgeois? Anatomy of screen violence? All of the above. As in 'Hidden', there is an element here where I feel Haneke is taking us through a formal exercise, making his points like that, rather than investigating the image. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating investigation and, yes, riveting to watch.

Boiling Point

Takeshi Kitano - 1990
Kitano's aesthetic of simple, almost Bressonian actions, laconic editing with ellipses on violence, jumping from before and after the blood is spilt. He uses sound really to convey the strikes. As Bresson again, he often constrcuts the scene (actually, more like Hitchock) from initially closer eyeline stuff, then can move out.
A classic Kitano compostion is a face looking ever so slightly to the left or right. Yet one always has the sense of exact geometry, partly because of very careful seperations in the staging, and clear shapes of the (always very important) objects around. Lots of straight on, blank faces (used very well in some impressionist lightening fast montage, absurdism clearly also), often at the bottom of the frame, though also can be at the top. They also take up a relatively thin amount of his pretty wide frame. He uses mainly a still camera, though can move in a bit, smooth moves, especially near the car, for some reason.
What really is Kitano on about, I wonder? The violence of the social contract, surely, seething undertones to everyday life. Brutality is really deeply sad, one has to say. I didn't feel as strongly in support of this film as certainly 'Hana-Bi' and 'Dolls'- which I regard as masterpieces, especially the former. Why? Perhaps I felt Kitano didn't quite have the same handle on his violence; or more simply, that his mis-en-scene had less beauty, the counterpoint, in it, in here the rather nondescript locations. Still, in many ways an excellent picture, always intriguing. And also; why Kitano himself inflicting the violence?

I Don't Want To Sleep Alone

Ming-liang Tsai - 2006
The direction is a series of long takes with a still camera. The shots are long, covering a lot of space, large rooms or split with open doors to cover other rooms. There are also large shots of outside, people often small against big houses and so on. Space is divided up with a real sense of purpose, two shots of the same spcae are usually very much at a reverse, clearly following different purposes. This long take aesthetic, lots of plan scenes, and the small figures going about their business, called to mind 'Yi Yi' a lot for me.
As did the minimal use of dialogue; in many ways this is a series of warm, light portrayals of humans grooming each other. This can be beautiful in both its tenderness and the pure image. The sense of watching a place live, develop, is accentuated by the focus on sound, of human bodies, scrubbing skin and so on, as well as the sense of life passing, for example the remarkable long take with the struggling butterfly.
The colour palette is warm, greens and oranges throughout. It is like an urban jungle in the literal sense, the stone buildings seem tropical, almost sweating. I felt like I got a real sense of place, the heat, the amount of dirt, and principally the human body.
I didn't really keep up with the plot, perhaps the lack of dialogue, long take aesethetic which didn't really emphasise 'plot points', account for my silly lack of observance. What I got from this was really a series of lovely shots, decentered, complex and full if not bristling, of humans living together, flesh, in confined quarters, strongly but, and this is key, caring for each other. Impressed.

Still Life

Zhang Ke Jia - 2006
Shot on DV video, this is a film that challenged my expectations of cinema. For perhaps the first time, I understood how some people, intelligent and good, could, for example, reject early neo-realism. The type of film used, frankly the weirdness of it, what I would call a kind of ugliness, though I now disagree with myself here, can be tough. The video does make it look slightly like a TV soap, as does the lack of studio lights, furnishings. And yet, perhaps partly through these means, this film can do so much.
Using long takes, as before, with long shots where the camera almost always moves, often in very clean and clear horizontals, although it can move elsewhere too. It uses some sensational shots of place, of crumbling, of dirt, of building sites; this is primarily a document of that. Yet it saves up these shots, not overwhelming; there is a lot of more personal stuff, closer, in confined rooms or spaces, usually following the 'action' through these.
With the video, this is extremely contrasty, which really unnerved me. The director chooses to light people well, a rare choice for video and, frankly, much of the modern cinema I hold dear (I'm thinking chiefly of 'Eloge De L'Amour' as an example). This made me think 'ugly'- and yet. The place is something else, off centre compostions as people watch crumbling and falling, that change.
What is acted out in front of us is just that- acted out in front of us. We're basically here for the location, but the director (or at least so his statement says) is interested in the people; and the quiet respect, kinf of affection with distance, he reserves for them is extraordinary. Cinema finding people, showing people. Yes, they can be cruel, but well... It is also frequently very funny, mild absurdist bits and bobs. The spaceship, as well as strange and oddly beautiful (though, again, 'ugly'; in most cinema this would be something called 'crappy CGI').
This film is difficult, and I coulnd't quite stick with the whole thing, more the worse for me. I like to think that I can still say though that, if we still have a modern cinema, this is one of the fisrt examples of how to do it. Get a camera, any camera; you can probably 'only' afford digital. Find a place, find people there. Make it look like it should, it is.

Woman Of The Dunes

Hiroshi Teshigahara - 1964
Teshigahara essays claustrophobia with deep compositions with slightly differing shades that give us cramped passageways of space on the inside. Even outside, we meet walls of sand, real enclosed spaces. Their are many many close-ups. We move, or rather jump cut from one to another, sharp jarring ellipsis, cracking up the space into junks, often seemingly in time with the music, or playing off it. Their are near birds-eye shots, for example.
The sand can be so many different things, hard and soft, jagged and smooth, but it is nearly always smothering, drowning. It seemed more often dark than overexposed to me, though on a few occassions the feeling from outside could burn through.
Their are such a wealth of symbols here, though to be fair to Teshigahara he keeps them so clear that opaqueness isn't really a problem. It is hugely complex though, with ideas of entrapment and so on. The elephant in the room for me, and coming from Abe's source text presumably, is Kafka; so many resonances.
Not least of these are the slightly absurdist villagers, and more importantly the general feel of a kind of gritty realism to the piece; what would 'actually' happen were a man to be trapped in the dunes? How would he reason himself out?

Dong

Zhang Ke Jia - 2006
The camera here adopts a mixture of huge, long scrolling horizontal pans, on landscapes that often dwarf the figures, with closer, much more intimate shakier (though not too much) looks along bodies, paintings, people. The big long shots and takes, often with the person just in the bottom of the frame, looking away from us, at a spectacular, often misty, landscape of the dams is thus avoided from being impersonal, as the director does study people; he can use medium shots and even close-ups, can stay far away but still focus on a very particular person, their face.
As he quietly does this for the people of the dams, people one is not used (for me...) to seeing, to listening to, to let exist in front of all, the cinema opens a new path for me. Clearly a kind of development of neo-realism in its own way, at once heavily unstyled but deeply beautiful in that place, such a place.
Great colours of umbrellas and clothes, of lights. There is a certain amount of overexposing outside and underdoing in on the often unbalanced frames, but this isn't too extreme; he generally will light the insides as well.
There is very little dialogue here, generally preffering to look at the remarkable landscape, people, life. Of what there is I was rather unsure about the rather sharp and pessimistic artist. Yet, he shows kindness; it is though acts of kindness that save the world. At sixty six minutes, this is a masterwork of modern cinema, for all its slight meandering scratchiness.

He Who Gets Slapped

Victor Sjostrom - 1924
It is difficult not to think of 'The Blue Angel' here. Sjostrom certainly attacks the idea of alughter as a palliative, it rather seems an aspect of horror here; this is not on the surface a funny film at all. Keeping the nature of the plot nice and unspecific lets us project our own situation onto the film.
The whites of the face form a powerful view, quickly cut here with quite a lot of tight views. There is some great 180' degree switching of view, quite a few eyeline matches. Some of my favourite shots were the geometrical ones of the crowd, and how they morph into the clowns, the fade to that.
There is some harsh stuff as we move from face to face of, frankly, idiots; a curious sort of disgustingness, degradation. This is what this film is about; knowing you have degraded yourself, not knowing it, physical violence.

The Phantom Carriage

Victor Sjostrom - 1921
There are some scenes of beauty beyond beauty here; the whole thing is a masterwork. What struck me so was the incredible slowness, the remarkable ability of Sjostrom to stay on a slow movement, of a person turning their head, or of the coach trundling through. They are often framed just feet-up. Sjostrom doesn't mind cutting in quite a lot, one feels this is because he is worried for the chracter. The lighting, the images, are superb. Using usually a single frontlight, seemingly, even for the supposedly outside scenes. This light is harsh, horror stuff lighting, and the lack of fill....
He frames against sides of rooms often, and we have various yellow, blue, or otherwise filters, for night or different effects. His film is hard, deep, oh and the sea, the sea.
This film is at its most sensational when we have the carriage, the slow movement, framed from either long or diagonally. It's superimposed presence, the impostions and slowness scene to scene, put me in mind of Von Sternberg. Quiet, creeping, dread, yes, but also great beauty.
The family drama is perhaps a little less than the incredible deathly carriage scene, but is necessary, perhaps; Sjostrom is not making just another silly horror tale. Horror resides in realism, he seems almost to be saying. The remarkable beauty, the slow crawl, the film.

An Actor's Revenge

Kon Ichikawa - 1963
I mean, it flies from genre to genre, cut to cut, mucking about with expectations of space, never mind plot. The big TohoScope or whatever frame is used as a Kabuki set, with flagrantly unreal backgrounds, black or white, which the figures are played off against. All are utterly ridiculous, quite deliberately, slightly uneasily addressing the camera. One doesn't quite know whether or not to laugh at the lead, and whether or not they are in with the joke. The colours seem picked at random for each surface.

The Burmese Harp

Kon Ichikawa - 1956
With some aggressive deep focus photogrphy, big faces at the front, complex arrays on various levels of soldiers, nearly always still figures, in the background. The forest is made to seem huge, looming and suffocating, as are caves or other paraphenalia.
I have to say I found it a bit talky, long speeches that verged on the sentinemental. It clearly tried to at least get some view of the insanities of Japanese warfare, avoiding any clear charicatures.

Mon oncle d'Amerique

Alain Resnais - 1980
What an interesting, interesting film. Even if not every parts work, a bit of a lag for the third quarter, so much to go on here. Essayistic cinema, perhaps.
I almost want to call it a documentary; juxtaposition of factual study, then application; perhaps at its best when they are temporally together, rather than contiguous. We have the theory, then we have a kind of play, to prove it or not. What do we see? This is a fasinating question. At first, I felt the theory was disproved; far too neat, explains little to nothing, Resnais seemed to say. These actions are simpy not categorisable into the four, at best they are all of them combined, and their is a moral problem here.
As I went on, though, the film seemed more and more to confirm the findings, upon consideration. But Resnais proves it the hard way, the complicated way; theories are right, but that doesn't dispel other questions. It is the combining of humanism and the rat-like anti-humanism I felt in 'Coeurs' (by the way, I loved especially the montages of theory voiceover and application, of rats juxtaposed with humans, and the hillarious rat heads dress up- essayistic cinema. And the voiceovers at the beginning, though the amount of information is difficult). Again, we study the people running, and like rats they are, but we feel for them, see their reasons; as is said, just because we understand, it doesn't solve anything (the conclusion of the film addresses many of my moral qualms; just because it's like this doesn't mean it can't be changed, it suggests).
Applied to Resnais' cinema, we have those warm, often orangey colours. We have a willingness to shoot the quotidien, the motorway. Often long shots, sometime with humourous framings. And when he moves in for the SRS, I had a great feeling that what he really expressed was the very strangeness of the idea of SRS, isolating eaach one.
And, unlike the two later works I just watched, we had a few of the kind of tracks I would call 'Resnais'. This for me is desire, and it is something that is different but is mediated through and with- interrogation. As in 'Night and Fog', 'Marienbad', the tracking movement, ruthless, inevitable, sensually gratifying, interrogates (though doesn't invade) what is there, it wants to know more, more. Here we have that sense; Resnais wants to know more, the world. In the later works of his I have seen, he continues this preoccupation, but without tracks (interrogation without desire)? Not a perfect film, but I found some aspects stunning, and as a whole fasinating, perhaps great.

The State Of Things

Wim Wenders - 1982
Clearly less narrative based than 'The American Friend', pretty much a series of incidents; it is impressive that Wenders can put his film where his thoughts are, seeing that narrative, the Hollywoodian, in the cinema is compromised. There is that thread, but this is an 'open' film. It contains thoughts, philosophy, beauty, but is far from didactiv; it feels very cool. I'm not sure it's all succesful, indeed it can get lost, I felt (slightly abstract, apart from the film industry parts..), but respect.
Wenders' black and white uses deep contrasts, rich slick blacks. It may also have all been shot through a yellow filter (lots of self-referential fun here). The compositions don't seem organised around an abiding theme, but are thoughtful and often beautiful. I felt a tendency to backlight, often from the side. Wender's sense of place is also often horizontal, be he in the city or more, as here, outside of it.

Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend)

Wim Wenders - 1977
On the surface, I suppose Wenders' films look formally quite conservative. What I mean is that there's nothing particularly long or short about the takes, no shaky camera, nothing too grand. People filmed in rooms, panning and tracking about, quite a bit of shots and reverses. I suppose he has a tendency for some very long shots, landscapes, and that he also generally avoids too many singles, but nothing too much.
Yet he is formally very impressive, with an air of Hitchock in his manipulation of eyeline matches and expression in his little moves. His images are attractive in their slickness, with strong colours in often dark interiors.
What i enjoyed most about this film was the use of narrative, location, genre. It does have a clear narrative, but it is not always clear that this is so... at times one feels one is watching 'Detective', before it all comes together. Perhaps this is partly because their are individual sequences that suddenly we realise we are watching a thriller with Dana Andrews on a train, or a Wyler-ish bit of romance, more rarely (more the former). This is the love of Hollywood, or rather of movies, that we have here; the use of trains, references to masses, Keaton, appearances by Ray and Fuller.
The plot is technically a Highsmith novel, but there is really a hell of a lot going on here, that I'm not fully able to comment on, more the worse to me. The existentialist question of the coming death we face, heightened, the choice that confronts. Add to this the whoring to America, and at once the falsity of their art, but the friendship of the American. An excellent film.

Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick - 1975
Using very precise tracks in and out; even when the pace of them isn't always the same, the compositions are so precisely arranged, so exactly centered, that the impression is of great precision. These compositions are long, perhaps because they have a need to include the whole of something; a tree or a house, and certainly the requisite amount of a person/ One perhaps never sees half a face in Kubrick's pictures (not that I know him too well...)
The famed lens affects, that is, how it is shot in candlelight, and whatever he did to make the landscapes so full of that kind of burning feeling in not just sunsets but also the earth and sea, is without a doubt extremely distinctive. I'm not entirely sure what purpose it serves beyond that.
Kubrick's direction, for all its precision, actually seemed to me to be pretty classical; lots of SRS, not particulalry long takes, or short ones, lots of long shots perhaps.
So, the voicover, and this is perhpas more Thakeray than anything; takes an ironic view, surely. This is a deconstruction of the romantic, 18th Century libertine. Kubrick's faithfulness in his exact reconstructions succeeds in showing nerves at the duel, trembling, throbbing life, in the past age. We must start by saying Kubrick initially appears deeply contemptuous to his characters, though from there we can perhaps say he feels so more to their exploits, the endless betrayals and so on, rather than them. He doesn't often focus on the main 'action'; preferring tableaus of discussion to push on the piece. I can't wholeheartedly support this picture.

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow

Theodoros Angelopoulos - 2004
Very long takes, time passes. Yet there is ellpisis here; in a continuous, deep, long space and time, space and time are compressed into this (wide as possible) frame. As the camera moves, nearly always in a continous smooth direction throughout the shot (track, no zooms), we could be passing across more time and space than is 'realistic'. If cinema can't do this, then what is the point in cinema?
The shots are often long, but when necessary, in rooms or if someone approaches a camera, there's no real problem with getting close. It is really more a matter of respect, not intruding on someone's space, feeling the false need to 'intensify' emotions. As with the pretty much direct addresses to camera, storytelling, what is happening is that we are shown, allowed to see, witness to a history; it is our task, and perhaps responsibility, to choose whether to listen or not.
The use of a high angle is again near constant, but not in a formalist way; it just gives us the best look at the environment, those huge horizontals, smoke rising, we would usually call desolate; but they live there. In this mis-en-scene people move, pass each other, it is complex, but again, not 'deliberately' so. It is also very beautiful, in an ugly way. Often there are still figures in the centre; not statues, but people standing. These people are small, in sober clothes; yet they aren't ants, they shuffle, they look. Angelopoulos shows huge sympathy, but never emphasises. How?
Their is constant tragedy here, if that makes sense in this kind of world, but woven in with that wide history. An exciting cinema for me.

Il Fiore Delle Mille E Una Notte (Arabian Nights)

Pier Paolo Pasolini - 1974
Well, Pasolini goes from his close views on faces, moving out then to very long views, his reverse shots are actual reverses, a full 180'. The shaking camera, deliberately slightly school play ish, chaotic staging. And also the most Bresson-like acting I can remember in Pasolini. This is either to kill psychology, all is a story, only truth that way, or it forces us to focus on the psychology.
I really got nothing except a deep annoyance here. One story as not enough, all as true, we are told; fine. Yet the stories are all about sex, endlessly, namelessly, that seems to be in the entire world, no variety. And that hugely irritating play at some kind of 'simplicity', with endless laughter whenever anyone gets naked, it is hugely grating really.

Coeurs

Alain Resnais - 2006
Adaption of Ayckbourn play, 'private fears in public places'- apt title. Resnais' direction is consciously, surely, quiet direction, till at least the end, so I'll pay the respect of not giving moves more than their functional worth.
All the same huge colours of red and blue, those oranges also in 'On Connait...', all extremely warm, vare used. Clearly the reason for the Almodovar comparison (except Resnais uses them thematically in a clearer way, perhaps... though I shouldn't really comment). Either way, the direction of longer compositions, moving in on the wide format for emphasis, is always beautful, elegant.
What are the themes? An examination of the private sphere, hiddenness. The fear of the open space. Think about video; a private pleasure of something public, dare one share?
The great success of this film, on its surface is its build up and examination of fasinating characters. But we also have a double move, studying the idea of fascination; beyond Ayckbourn? Their is a sense of studying rats, of an examination from an outside context of these lives, more than just emotion in cinema (or a different kind of emotion). This is created by some vertical high camera, the unreal colours colours, the little pods people are framed through. The short scenes, the snow that comes between them as a transition, lets us know the artifice of the montage (though not of the lives?). In these ways, I was reminded more than anything of 'Tout La Memoire De La Monde'; study of things, knowledge, from above (there's even a track at one point!). Yet this film combines this format with humanism (not that 'Tout La...' may not as well), in the sympathetic look at these rats; life as serious, though it is tiny.
At the end, there is a move away from the classically realist, with expressive mis-en-scene as snow invades the living room, the camera starts making itself noticed with wild circling and jumpy editing, the light at the end is a series of spots. Is this Resnais trying not to deceive us; let us understand we have watched a study, not something called 'reality?' Or is he rather saying that this is what reality is? I must leave the habit of thing someone is 'saying' something. After all, this film is one of fasination, it is also 'heartfelt', contemplative, a sstudy- and a great modern one.

The End Of St Petersburg

Vsevolod Pudovkin - 1927
This is so perfectly, classically what one thinks Soviet montage cinema is. Clear, fast cuts, striking angles, harsh lights, still powerful figures. The gesture is very significant, pointing, outstretched arms. Also the statue, later arrayed in flowers.
Pudovkin's montage can be very fast, incredibly so, but one always feels he is in control of it- even the frenzy is controlled. Along with the hands, actions in the montage is a lot of food, nature. The sky is low. There is a real 'Earth' -esque sense of poetry here, a few lingers on those fields, and generally on the beauty of the photography. The face is also studied with a sense of beauty in the detail.
The stillness of the grand poses, the perfection of the offcentered compostions, the men photgraphed, with Kuleshov, against the factory owners from their high angles (actually, all are high angles) in their huge empty rooms, is deeply stirring, poetic, powerful, cinema. The actual attempt at personal story isn't the point here; this is a height on cinema just the way it is.

Othello

Orson Welles - 1952 ; I can't legislate for the restoration.
Maybe I preferred 'Mabeth' by Welles... I'd have to see both again. This is really extremely Russian; some very fast cutting, lots of still shots from a low angle of dramatically framed figures. Great shadows and decenterings. Typical Wellesian touches of overlapping dialogue, and in his historical mode the real earthiness, enthusiasm for the time.
Welles focusses on the beastly aspects; his Othello is still, flat faced, never blinking. Framed many times bursting through covers, there is the real 'La Belle et La Bete' feel. Deeply sexually repressed, the question of the lacivious is crucial. I also got the feeling of a strange kind of abstraction, taken away to Cyprus, a bizarre hothouse. The lack of ellipsis in the 'convincing' scene, Othello and Iago from stone room to stone from outside, with that long walking tracking shot outside. And the wonderful shadows, geometrical faces, huge rooms and focus of the final momologues. This, with the beating music, give that sense of fate and doom also there in the threat of invasion.

All About Eve

Joseph L. Mankiewicz - 1950
The interest is really in the structure more than the specific images. These images are generally SRS stuff, with some thought, nice ones of Davies buried in her furs. Indeed, there are a number of memorable medium shots. To be fair, there are also some touches, not really built in structurally but very apparent at times, where cinema is created; Thelma Ritter walks through the room, Eve is talked to by way of a shut door.
The interest, though, is in that script and its struture. There are discussions of the theatre Hollywood, reflective devices; if reflection is ending a scene by saying 'end of act'. No question, the script is smart, modern, intelligent.
The structure though, of multiple voiceovers, reflections on a past life, changes on point of view, is the excitment with Mankiewicz, as in 'The Barefoot Contessa'. These are well done, as they are part of the overall questioning of identity is crucial. Again, our central character is unkowable, enigmatic. Identity is but a characde for all; how can one know someone, even oneself?

L'Eclisse

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1962
Antonioni- about as good as it gets. Again, the sound, the busy street, the silence, the light hums and the metallic. Some of the great images of the cinema; a light area and a dark area, using the limits of the frame- Delon at Vitti's wondow. Tracking moves that follow about for little stretches. A lot of decentered stuff. Also, the most obvious uses of Vitti sinking into the background; when not animalistic, she wears the whites of the interiors. The cacophony of mid-shots in the stock market, space ripped up.
A slightly glib reading of this film is of the precise moment, fragile, where modernism was able to look at postmodernism. Emtpy containers, all is a frame, life dissappears. What is left is the last humans, the semblances of subjectivity; a thousand locations left, but why no romances in them? The only possbility, as Delon and Vitti show near the end, is imitation; but always fakery.
And of time. Time is destroyed, watches meanginless, I'm not sure the scenes at the end could be said to be linear. Without time, which is turned into space (Deleuze), space loses ontiguity, turns into a series, as at the end, of scenes of a crime, of the crime of the twentieth century, ripped apart, empty, humming with electricity.
For all these thoughts, this is the least abstract I know of Antonioni's films. The diversion into a critique of ethnography. The discussion of the stock market, which all I say above can be translated into, and nuclear warfare. I have no trouble saying that this, (and 'L'Aventurra'), is for me, at the moments, not surpassed in 'narrative' cinema.

On Connait La Chanson

Alain Resnais - 1997
A real joy of a film. With people's lives interweaving, responsibilities between them, compassion and understanding for every character. A modern film as well, simply and unpretentiously being set in its time. In all these ways, as well as in notions of theatricality, it approaches the brillaince of 'Va Savoir'.
Resnais' camera opts for pretty close views, and long takes. There are great moments, of complete virtuosity and very fun, involving cutting with jellyfish, various little jokes here and there like that.
Then of course the music, told as a homage to Dennis Potter. This is how emotions are well expressed, how people think. Extremely funny at times, but not in a mocking way, just in its power; Resnais has as much respect for the material as for his characters (Dussollier is a joy throughout- like the film).

Shi (Poetry)

Chang-Dong Lee - 2010
I can't get too excited about this, for all the nice things in it. The camera is long takes, pretty mobile camera, no tripods but not too much shaking. Formally, there doesn't seem a huge amount to write home about. Except, that is, for some foregrounding of the narration, our relationship, as it seems to turn documentary at one point, and then the camerman seemingly kickes a ball back that rolls towards us.
Thematically, it is compassionate and curious. A discussion of memory, the fading woman as the only one who can remember. It tackles a subject open to pretension, but is capable of undercutting moments when everything is getting a bit too nice. It menaders along pretty glacially, and is a mite predictable, but is, at the very least, a meaty slab of realism, with that edge of the violent.

La Notte

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1961
Maybe it's a touch more awkward than the two films on either side of it; only a masterpiece, not a flat out 'greatest film ever'. Here was the first time I strongly focussed on the sound; Antonioni uses great differences in dynamics, from crashinbg outsides to the remarkable quiet of the insides.
Has a later filmmaker had more to do with Lumiere? Antononioni uses a great depth of field, and as the frame diagonally slopes off he lets his characters come, walk, closer to the camera. There is really quite a lot of fish-eye stuff here, depth through stagings close to the camera.
Abd of course the edit; there's not a system, just always the most imaginative, disconserting, unpredictable, always perfect next shot; you expect one place, but then it's much longer, or just straightforward not 180' stuff. Often what is the supposed 'reverse' shot fails to include in it what the original was of; a ninety degree move, from frontals to sides.
The story of a relationship over one night, or perhaps a lifetime, little ellipsis. The arbitrary decisions with the weight of the world, but the ease to change. Situations, the backs of heads, the unknowability of the human mind and the concrete consequences of this.

Teorema

Pier Paolo Pasolini - 1968
I'm a real fn of Pasolini; but I can think of very few nice things to say about this. Using lots of long shots, it is all but silent, with lots of those long mving shots, long takes, then punching in for a few, but not very much, close work.
My problem here is that there was an unfortunate essence of Louis Malle seemingly at work. What I mean is that Pasolini falls victim to symbolism, endless symbolism, making the film a rather silly crossword. The silent images mixed in with the insanely abstract shots of the desert, and of the biblical texts that are contextless on their own.
The story is interesting, oft seen elsewhere, and we have some better classical Pasolini examinations of eroticism and degradation, even if its does get a bit silly and, dar I say, pretentious in some of the artisitic mysticism and naked screaming.

Orphee

Jean Cocteau - 1950
The wonderful thing here is how we see the fantastic in the everyday, and the everyday in the fantastic; Lumiere and Melies. Shooting in vivid fast black and white, usually focussing on one person at a time. It operates by something I am willing to call genuine dream logic, a move from one moment to another, the moves not questioned by more than a brief confusion.
A particularly wonderful thing is the level of detail here; the acting is very precise, with lots of little movements. There are thousands of nice little details, little comments that really bring it to the ground. Among the fantastic chase scenes, we have silly little comments from street vendors; and we also have a couple embracing, then from their sheer immobility it takes on a fantastic quality. The urban comedy of looking in the face is also part of this movement.

Entr'acte

Rene Clair - 1924
Short film; I would genuinely call it surrealist. This is because it deals with the everyday; not larger than life characters, or in costumes, but just part of life. The trick as that this life moves; from one thing to another, without one knowing or understanding the sequence. The speeded up procession, a camel (why not?), the pointless chase, the magician at the end. The exciting montage of the chase is cinema creating for the purpose of pushing on a narrative, though there isn’t a narrative; it is positively Rivette-esque.
Clair also uses various possibilities of the cinema, its capacity to make these ‘illogical’ moves. It’s capacity to evoke images, ideas that aren’t ‘really’ there; for creating an emotion through its ability to make people disappear, double the screen. This even extends to those extremely fast, though smooth, pans.
I’m not going to pretend the film discusses or uses these kind of possibilities with any of the same kind of intelligence, depth, or power as ‘Qui Sauve Peut’ (always stupid to compare to Godard). It rather shows them, and its historical in that sense.

a Nous la Liberte

Rene Clair - 1931
This is basically a silent film, with Auric music throughout and a few songs (though there is actually dialogue). We have long shots, chases, lots of physical gestures, cuts to emphasis, that is emphasis on action, things to move the plot forward
It has a very distinctive look; of clearly sets made for the piece, perhaps with paper mache, abstract, not really worn (though not gleaming either). The palette operates with one very harsh light, a very interesting look really, and the floods kept pretty light.
This isn’t really a great critique of industrial society, more a wish to focus on the ‘good’ bits of it; it is really very different from ‘Modern Times’. We have the tracks along the line, the difference of the final product and the work in it, a critique of conformism, certainly, but this isn’t really dwelled on. It is, ultimately, out to be a piece of good fun.

Death In Venice

Luchino Visconti - 1971
The adaption of Mann's novella.
Some huge long shots (though some headshots and super closes, i.e. on his lips), as though carrying the weight of the frame, of the hotel, of a panorama, in that massive 'scope. The camera, as well as zooming in, scanning the locale, often makes slow movements across these horizontal milleu, as though to savour it. This was effective in so far as, like the eyeline match, it established a connection, and also in that idea of slow movement; the best parts of this film are often people walking, either Auerbach himself with that limp, or others ambling across him.
Horizontals are key here, and at times, especially with the succesful stage of blue used (a kind of cold vividness), can succesfully convey the atmosphere. However, there is a lack of actual shots of Venice, and I found some of the shots oversaturated, which didn't bring much to me.
There are fundamental problems in what is really a very faithful adaption. Auerbach is far too pathetic here, his discourses on art and so on absent, except in some perfunctory voiceover, make him seem pathetic; this isn't the point, Auerbach should be the very best of us. Further, the character is overemphasised; Tadzio looks at him too soon, Auerbach is too obviously rude and pathetic. Making him a composer is perhaps more cinematic, as music allows us to understand on the screen, but it also takes away for me one of the most important aspects of Mann's work; how he sets up a (probably not quite 'true', but I can run with Mann) contrast, or play, of exterior and interior. This film doesn't really grapple with these diffences, with us only getting the pathetic outer. As a novelist, Mann's figure can play the written psychology, with the music it can't really come together; but within this form (this kind of film; what would Rivette do?), making him a novelist would just mean more bad voiceover.
There are moments in this film where it looks like it might be great. Certain looks, pictures of Bogarde's face. Those oans across the rooms, people walking, moments of truth that outstrip Mann in characterisation of person and place. I couldn't quite accept it as an equal of its source, overall, however, if made to compare (which I'm not).

The Sun's Burial

Nagisa Oshima - 1960
This is a really brutal film. Shot in a lot of 'scope, with some really jerky movements (much more than 'Night and Fog in Japan'). The takes are rarely extremely short, but it gives a sense of crashing about. The edit also is like this; nearly every cut seems to be a shot cut. Tone to tone, place to place, far to near. We expect one story to continue, another crashes in; it is unclear to what extent what we see is chronological. The sense of violent urgency is more explicit than are a cohesive, classical storytelling.
The images themselves are a mixture, often pretty long, but there are also some distinctive framings of just heads. The version I saw was a terrible transfer, but it seemed to be pretty incredible colours. Blood orange absolutely everywhere, sidelit for sweat, darkness on the faces. The locale is absolutely filthy. Also some incredibly dramatic deep blues.
This must have hit the screens with a crash, it portrays the end of a country, so far beyond redemption, better just to be annihilated, everyone is grim. The violence is horrible and explicitly shown; rape, other physical forms. Everyone is at once self-serving and masochistic, brutal in all. The sun is buried, we have to start again.

Ne Touchez Pas La Hache

Jacques Rivette - 2007
Rivette's camera takes in long tracks, moving in, free, autonomous, from far away to meet the action, and frame it in sometimes long shots, sometimes a bit closer, nearly always pretty long takes with this swooping camera.
An incredibly elliptical narrative, almost jump cuts. A Bressonian sense of an action being carried out, pushing the plot along with that look, that piece of dialogue. Pure plot, yet the ellipsis goes over much of what we would often see; pure narrative, except it is not quite a narrative, we have to piece it together.
The idea of cinema as narrative seems key here. Psychology is better represented by the novel, which is why we have the jumps to the white on black intertitles, still a shocking move. Film for narrative, for showing ettiquette (for showing more; it's just better, now, seems to be the reason this is a film with a bit of novel, not vice versa), for eyeline matches, for modern life, better than the novelist Balzac. The novel for psychological stuff; why not just tell us these things? And music enters too, in between. This is all a slightly reductive reading, but seems there.
The text and the play acting is also a key theme in the narrative. The man controls the text, wants to tell a story, make her a story, dominate her that way. She is a control freak, an idealist, who won't let him narrate, who wants to create her own mis-en-scene. This is an element to the constant play, back and forth, of domination between them. Rivette's world is that of intrigues, looks, all created despite the fact there are barely more than two characters here, and barely more than two or three rooms. These locations are what they are, but they are also entirely society; monadology.

L'Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1960
Huge expectations, exceeded.
The editing of Antonioni's Italian films is, for me, about as good as it gets. Each cut produces a surprise, then you expect to be surprised, and it surprised you with something different. This is what seeing the world afresh means. One never quite gets the geography of the island, or indeed pretty much any space. It just isn't quite contiguous, somebody comes from the 'wrong' place, though I'm always unsure what the 'right' one could be.
This is carried on by the frequent motif of people talking 'to' each other, yet not looking at each other. This notion pretty much destroys the ideas of classical SRS (hence we usually have both at once; that's how I know this), classical montage just won't work in the modern age.
Has anyone written a study of Antonioni and Hitchcock? I slightly prefer the former, maybe. In him I find a slight essence of Hitchock, also on the eyeline matches; I do though feel he is less idealistic, his world is less controlled than the vision of one man. The world is bigger than Antonioni, an ethically superior positon, to my thinking.
This notion of constant surprises is also a little Hitcockian, and what i really mean is that there is simply an unusual level of thought and, ultimately here, brilliance, in the mis-en-scene. A head or body part pops into the frame unexpectedly, a camera moves reveal someone or something unexpected; that is directing, because it creates something new in us, we can't be complacent, constant learning, art. The camera moves aren't really very baroque (well, compared to Visconti), but are pretty active, moving around corners as we move from image to image at a leisurely but not self-regarding pace.
Let's talk about Antonioni's compositions. With the off-centered stuff I know, he frequently divides his frame. The last shot, stone and, to be reductive, the 'modern' on one side, the mountain, old Europe, on the other. Often there are big differences half to half, outside to inside, one kind of shape or lighting to another. There are generally more verticals than horizontals, often a play with them, a move being made to highlight a dialogue or conflict between the shapes.
The framing often hides, a face, a thing, a person. We see so much of the back of Vitti's head. And then she turns around; this film can be read as a series of Vitti turning her head around, beautiful, childish, playful, old, that word 'enigmatic', bored, superior, intelligent. Is the turn a development, of greatest interest, than a simple (Stewart- 'Vertigo') eyeline match.
Antonioni is the master of the environment and architecture, we are told; I entirely agree. What we have here is more people sticking out from the environment; a different shade, popping slghtly in often pretty deep compositions; uneasiness. One often hears about Antonionians sinking in, and this does happen, even to Vitti here, but apart from the party scene near the end I didn't see this as a motif; usually agianst the sky or wall there is a contrast. It is just too simple to talk about 'sinking in'. The sticking out usually gives a sense of outline, but this seems to come more from a lack of frontlighting than any particular focus on backlighting.
The architecture is stunning; each Antonioni location is just invested with a look I haven't seen before, a surprise, a new way of looking at the world. At once abstract, but with clear, modern signs ('..BAC'). We have the old town hall, the ruins, churches, huge doors and walls. There is usually looming over. Yet also, for example in the waiting room, something different can be achieved. The disorientation of a place, abstract yet dirty, not empty.
And that famous narrative. It surprises us; we don't notice Anna goes missing either. It teases with half a dozen little nods at suggestions, nothing too much formed, just ideas that float away... like the themes. It discusses our expectations as well, aware of the difficulty of telling a story. It surprises by moving on. How can it make Vitti (her acting, partly the answer) just sitting on a bed beyond fascinating? This idea of seeing anew; I was constantly asking myself, as a situation overtakes the characters (always); 'what the hell are they meant to do now'? The most powerful is perhaps the fight, then the church and boys that go past.
Oh and, and.. the slow moves with their boats going past, with impressions of time, time going past. The story moves slowly, they walk slowly, but that's not the point with movement... Every shot is so beautiful, so precisely composed yet not anal or idealistic, dark on light, looking out and not seeing the face, an evocation of an enviroment before a person, but so much in the person, not really a difference.
This film is really incredible, as they say, the talking, the text can't quite explain, yet we talk.... this connects with the great films of modern life in my mind at the moment, even 'Filme Socialisme'.... wow.

Un Chant d'Amour

Jean Genet - 1950
Genet's only film, a bit under half an hour. We have a real focus on the body obviously, with many many close views, a great physicality. The taking of individual body parts in quite abstracted backdrops made me think of Cocteau, who is after all the obvious reference point. The skin, the licks, the saliva, even the smoke, is given great plasticity. This is perhaps due to the light spots on the bodies being just a touch overexposed, with satisfyingly grainy rest of the prison cells.
The real achievement I got from this film was the sense of their not being any reality / fantasy distinction; each of the different kinds of images functioned on an equal plain, to make an expression of at once a story and a feeling. Moves from one to another could be cued, but there is really no differnce. When a guard is with a prisoner, looking at him, why should the next shot not be of a flower failing to be grasped, or of some naked bodies? We know what Genet is saying, or rather expressing, even if it does not follow a strict deductive logic. This lack of embarrasement about showing the different images together was, for me, very impressive.

Ossessione

Luchino Visconti - 1943
Shot on clearly pretty filthy stock, in filthy locations. Air of unwashed laundty, dirt, portray the houses and dustbowls. This is all exacerbated by getting pretty close in, avoiding a lot of establishing shots, where we get a real sense of dirt, sweat, the dark parts of the human body, quite literally. The faces are shadowed, dark hair, stubble.
The camera moves are really very baroque, in this early piece of neo-realism as it is called. The camera does a lot of panning, perhaps proportionally more on the track / pan scale than later Visconti. It is fine to pan with someone moving very far away until they walk up pretty close to the camera; it doesn't always use the same length on people.
Nevertheless, their are early examples of Visconti's distinctive very long, grand shots, panoramas almost, dusty bowls and so on. And their are some extremely elaborate tracks, around corners, circling in not at all precise circles around people. What is Visconti doing? Trying to get a better look, trying to establish the space.
The lack of ellipsis in the montage is the most obvious neo-realistic, as is how we watch the people, with some almost Wellman-esque shuffling about, hanging around, doing a bit of work, eating and that sort of thing.
The plot is perhaps the modern Macbeth; 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'. Here it is filthy sexual tension, with the critics right about the broiling, seething. There is a sense of desire at once confused, with clear homoerotic undertones (constantly noticeable in Visconti).

Parade

Jacques Tati - 1974
Modernist but very much not in your face; full of fasination with what is going on, but not spectacular in any way. It is obvious this is a 'strange' film.
What makes this what it is is how we are not (only) watching the show, we are watching a show being performed. We are constantly on the auience, cutting back and reframing also (in a way less like Tati than usual). We are almost studying the audience more at times. What I found especially interesting about this is how Tati can show the audience as a little odd, even a little bored. Are we watching a failing show? No, not really, but it's not just 'here's our show; like it'.
The show is impressive, as circuses are, and very fun to watch, though not really stunning. What is interesting is how the crowd are so involved, the show spills to backstage, the decor doesn't quite tell us where the show ends or anything else begins. Everything is rehearsed, yet at the same time one feels that most of them would be being done anyway. O.K., we have a white backdrop and so on, but still.
As Tati gives us his show, casting an eye over his own impressive, of a different age perhaps, performance. He becomes more interested in watching the kids, not necessarilly 'doing' anything, but, well, doesn't make it less interesting to watch. Tati as sociologist, as performer, no gap, all in one.

Night And Fog In Japan

Nagisa Oshima - 1960
We have long takes in that 'scope ratio, with a camera panning, and sometimes tracking, in huge horizontals. These are huge long movements across the room, the faster the more urgent finding its target is. It is relatively smooth usually, but is happy while this to duck and dive in and out.
The lighting is also fasinating. Deeply 'theatrical', one could say, in that it can change in a scene so we only have spotlights on one or other individual people inside the room. The rest of the stage is blacked out. I got the same kind of idea from the use of contiguous spaces which are seperate in time and space; the themes of memory and so on are here, as is simply the exciting cinema.
This is really a fasincating discussion, and show, of tactics. Oshima isn't going to simplify down on one side, but there is generally a reaction against a kind of complacent, almost right wing Stalinism. He accusses, and here is the Resnais triangle, fogetfulness. Forgetfulness is inevitable, but it leads to complacency, the destruction of ideals. What has happened to these so called 'revolutionaries' now? What can they remember, do they try to remember? What does one choose to remember? I really found this film very, very fine ;an intelligent, in depth, exciting and at once engrossing.

Playtime

Jacques Tati - 1967
Tati uses Often high, very deep compostitions. There are no lines in these Fordian spaces (though Ford is low- and Tati can also be)meeting in distance. The camera moves from from one precise postion to another with often little tracks, very precise, moves in. Each carefully chosen positions allows the visual ephemera to appear, allows Tati's cinema.
Again, Tati is full of set-ups. We also have more than ever returning jokes, my favourite centering around the overseasoned Turbot. These don't have to conclude. One constantly goes 'ah, yes', as one recalls the strand.
Tati's fram employs multiple points of action. Each one is complex, in so far as people living lives, talking to each other, small gestures, small niceties, a world and in short, a life, to see. Yet at the same time the difficulty in fully training the eyes on any one of these points does not necessarilly mean one misses much; this is because the points are not 'actions', just people living, talking, usually presumably banalities (which are the most fasinating, and worthy of study, for the student of life). Each piece deserves study as a point of morality; each deserves to be concentrated on closely. This is what doesn't happen fully, yet to an extent. For this reason I wouldn't call Tati a humanist (not a criticism); he rather wants to create a milleu full of humans, wants to understand group behaviour before individual (that is the way his study goes).
And what an environment is Tati's city, light blue, grey colours, buildings so similar, the classic landmarks only reflections on those endless glass doors and tea towels. The compelling, yet montomous colour palette often uses darker colours, or rather shaed of navy, near its front. And one more thing about this world; you can
see the cardboard cut outs in the background!
This kind of conformity of dress, colour and behaviour is most interesting when we see it mirrored even in Hulot; as well as businessmen there are also multiple Tati's. There is no way to escape the group, the figure of Hulot himself can't be read fully as a romantic outsider.
So many wonderful sequences; T.V. watching, and of course that restaurant scene; really remarkable.

Les Vacances de M. Hulot

Jacques Tati - 1953
There are many long shots here, cars and hotels. There is a kind of diagonal shot, very very deep, that is distinctive to Tati, and used often here.
The bit that takes me a while to get used to woth Tati is the way there are long long periods without any jokes. There are endless set-ups, some blatantly calling for a 'gag', others just of situations, locations, spaces, but the pay-off is deliberately avoided. This enters into the disticntive Tati rhythm. This pattern in really the narrative of the film; Hulot could have a love affair, could cause complete chaos, but neither quite happens, life continues... (I'm uncomfortable calling Tati's time circular; it is more that time does not follow actions, but follows reactions).
What makes up most of the film is displays of social ettiquette, just observed. Tati is in many ways a sociologist, not making an obvious joke of, or indeed critiquing deeply beyond some light absurdism, but rather displaying the wares of human non-linguistic interaction (soundtrack for comedy, and to draw attention to pertinent points).
This film is quite clear; we have a less complex frame than I can remember in 'Mon Oncle' or 'Playtime' also. I wouldn't rank it with 'Playtime', but it's at times joyful to watch.

La Terra Trema

Luchino Visconti - 1948
Early Visconti, shot on scratchy film whose speed gi ves overexposure and makes that remarkable, heoic, sculpted face of Antonio. There is something distinctly Russian in much of this. High and low angles, aggressive framing, tableaus of the workers confronting the bosses. Yet unlike the early Soviets, the scenes continue’ the workers retreat into the deep compostion after their pose.
But we also have many aspects that speak of later Visconti. Those huge long shots, stately movements on landscape, with figures, here dark clad, framed against the sea. And then the move in from this. The family saga, deeply in a discussion with the novel.
O.K., this is pretty hardcore neo-realism, in that it is slow, close, crying calls of the placce (rather like 'La Pointe Courte', in a different tradition), and the focus on everyday lives of workers. As is the sense of tragedy, and push to melodrama, though the way this is handled is Visconti's own.
As a critique of capitalism it is heroic, perhaps a little self-regarding but ultimately a powerful message.

Werckmeister Harmonies

Bela Tarr - 2000
The takes are much longer than damnation, huge pieces. There is also a hell of a lot of movement, almost incredibly slow waltzes, as the camera in its staely manner pirrouhettes, circles as sometimes though tying the characters (this is all in that great first shot). There is a sense of following around rooms often, through the house, from one car to another. Also we track and walk here. This can be over the shoulder, or in one memorable shot quite close to faces, along the street.
This perhaps has more elan than ‘Damnation’, with the themes of violence, the apocalyptic and fantastic, more immediately striking, slimy, unearthly images.
Themes of the artist, compromise, the power of fantasy to dominate, condescend, and raise.

Damnation

Bela Tarr - 1988
Those long takes, stiller here. The big black and white contrasts. Similar images to later Tarr pop up, dancing and so on. The people can appear like ants, but incredibly heavy ones. There is a preference for deep framings, often with part of the frame obscured by a wall, or bars. There is often someone watching someone else, hidden. Also note how it can occasionally go very white, airy, ghostly.
Tarr’s slow camera movements are perhaps partly to do with making the camera as unobtrusive as possible. Fast tracks, as well as difficult, would draw attention, while the either imperceptible or very slow movements, slower than the action, gives the sense of slow withdrawals.
The themes are pretty existential; note this was in ’87. Perhaps a bit more abstract, and without the humour of 90’s Tarr, but most pieces in place.

Jour de Fete

Jacques Tati - 1949
Apart from a bit of extra dialogue, the narration figure, and maybe a slightly closer, faster cut mis-en-scene, all the Tati brilliance is in place. The use of far and near exploited in the sound track, animal (or record, memorably) noises used diagetically, but offscreen to set off the action for jokes and so on.
The frame is used pretty widely, not hugely so (there weren't hidden jokes I could see). Certainly far and near are used. The camera is happy to often pan and on occassion track, or move to a position where to best have a comical view on the action.
The colour version, which I saw here, uses huge contrasts; bottomless black clothes and bright, bright sunlight. It seems set to a high contrast, so a lot of the frame is burnt out, faces are very white. It may be the hard direct sunlight filled in. I don't want to say 'washed out', because it's too vivid, too hot for that.
Tati is of course marvellous, incredibly gawky on the bicycle, stiff-legged. The speed and mechanisation of man is here, as is the idea of a rural life that is loved but not averse to mockery. The narrative is pretty much incidents, often explained by the old hag, but a story does develop, or rather a pretext for five minute sequences with the postman. Tati is innovative, exciting, and deeply fun to watch.

Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock - 1946
I can only agree with all the nice things others have said about this film; it's terrific, executed perfectly, tight.
It is perhaps one of the more (early?) 'objective' Hitchcock mis-en-scene, that is , two shots, more space given to the characters and so on (Cary Grant). There are, as always, decisions in the staging, subtelties or rather creative decisions, that are suited to each scene; for example, remianing tight on the embrace for an incredibly long time (with that domestic dialogue!), keeping Grant sitting at certain times. There is often an SRS where we get the 'real' action, or rather suspense, of the scene, rather than the one the dialogue seems to think.
There are individually great moves here, often on the stairs. Their is a great theme of 'the greatest to the smallest'; the massive crane to the key is the perfect example. In fact, that whole sequence, with the checks, checker piece humans, on the floor is a compostional wonder (also notice the same hall's use in an extreme long shot for when Bergman collapses).
The suspense here is created incredibly economically, often by having two sets of people in supposed dialogue, but in fact at cross purposes. The fact that the great exciting finale is somebody being taken down a set of stairs. Also, we see some humour, though this isn't one of the masters' more obviously funny ones; the faintly ridiculous mushing about with sand.

Film Socialisme

Jean-Luc Godard - 2010
Godard doesn't really ram us with literary ideas; there is certainly a lot, a thousand more times thinking in languga than other films, but it isn't a complete overload, trying to confuse one at all. Much of it is simply looking at the image, recognising that the figure is listening to music.
The montage is, also, not non-sequiter; there is an associative train of thought, obviously very loose, prone to digressions (the wonderful little look at Egypt, in silence, for example, the Odessa Steps sequence), but it is often quite clearly there. Why do we follow the editor's train of thought? Or are we really following our own, making connections?
And one more technical point; Godard manipulates focus a lot, using it quite shallow at times (along with at others video's deep capacity) to imbue his images.
The first half here seemed to me less straightforward mocking, much more complicit in the hell it presents. Yeah, its hateful, but mockery isn't really the point; this is what we are. The second section may have given me the most this time around. Tender, absolutely full of ideas, shot in a coldly elegiac way, if that is possible. The final section, when we now know images are lost, texts but imitations, had the few single moments (not whole parts, which is alot) that really brought the house down. Godard is clearly uncomfortable with cinema's ability to have these great emotional, intellectual moments, but he gets away with one in particular- when I say 'get away' it usually means they haven't really, but here it does- where a smile destroys the universe, a smile not even seen. Montage, cinema, mis-en-scene. This is a film. Because it's not a thing. But it is a thing (Les Choses Comme Ca).

Grey Gardens

Maysles - 1975
A fascinating film simply by what it shows. formally there is an interesting move in the history of the documentary. As far as form, the Maysles are there, mentioned, seen in mirrors and so on, but provide no voiceover (there is great effort to use newspapers and so on). The camera moves in and out, actually pretty steady a lot of the time, generally making some comment by framing a particular person.
The subject does have moral problems; are we exploiting vulnerable people? There are great images, especially the racoons and the binoculars, but to what purpose? To show a characiatured life? The people are too complex to really allow reduction, and have a wonderful understanding with the filmmakers; their gnomic statements can be read as metaphysical, but I think it's better to analyse them as part of society.

Divine Intervention (Chronicle of Love and Pain)

Elia Suleiman - 2002
I don't know Tati well enough to compare, but what I mean by the Tati aspect is a still camera with long focus takes, and the use of the body in that machine-like way. The audience can see the whole picture, using as much depth for the space as horizontals, to create a kind of absurdist suspense as understanding. Without quite the industry of rats.
Suleiman uses his face as always on the verge of smiling, but never quite. This is maybe a little more self-conscious than 'The Time That Remains' (one, for me, of the finest films I have seen from recent times) in its use of expressionless acting, clearly Bressonian influenced in its functionality. Their is a high degreee of self-consciousness.
Suleiman is not afraid to cut in, for all the full compositions, also. His sound gags aren't unrealist in the Tati sense I know.
In a way, this is an explanation, though I wouldn't really call it an apology, for why one would be goaded to violence. It can occassionally get a little comic book, devices used to show the mentality of terrorism, generally, while at the same time recognizing a common humanity of all people. I found it a little stylised and unsure of that style, thus short of the later work ('The Time That Remains'), but still formally very noticeable.

Film socialisme

Jean-Luc Godard - 2010
The end of discourses, even challneging the supremacy of the text; of course whatever I say here is an imitation, that can be contradicted. Godard has a stunning appetite for destruction, anything that can be destroyed will be. But that doesn't mean its not beautiful.
The first part on the boat again uses that hard late Godardian lighting. Also some deep, deep blues and the still camera. People captured on it, maybe looking. Everyone has images, they are everywhere, which means cinema is dead. Images for the sake of images are dead. Tracking shots, creating emotion through images, goes. All we have left are those incredible movements across the sea, 'tracks' past the waves. This section is remarkably pessimistic. Tjis might just be hell; all images degraded. It is the floating shift of dead Europe, the different methods of filming mean a thousand views, but only one thing, that boat moving. All is incredibly ugly, as what was beautiful, the age of cinema, is now used for the most vile reasons. But Godard has created the first, maybe, film that is dialectical in its images, not just in the descriptions of its images. Crahing wind on the soundtrack, crappy images, it smashes against each other, and it is beautiful, deliriously so, never self-consciously so, as we realise the second we had of that was false. The beauty is truly in the montage; the Soviet's dream.
From this incredible pessimism we have, the move from the abstract vote of a dead Europe (always an abstract dream of some artist) to the personal (take THAT, Malick). Hard light, less visceral sound and image, contemplation. Yet it, of course, can't help but reflect the totality. Understanding each other. Tell television to piss off. Massive optimism, the children, the child in the red t-shirt finding himself able to conduct. We realise we have to listen to music again, though compromised, art is damn well there. Always the chance to move back to zero, but what is zero? Sublime moments with the Renoir painting. I want to learn more, so many words, return, learn how to read; this is optimism, the sheer enthusiasm and energy, but mediated by pessimism, to see the world. Ypu don't need to feel stupid; just ready, and willing.
And the essay of the end. Some clear political messages; common ground. Thinking in images. Godard pretty much gives a history of the twentieth century. The past as a collection of texts that are oddly unreal, modern attempts to read them are imitations. Images everywhere.
This is more intelligent, maximalist, truly beautiful, than pretty much anything else.