She Really Ran So Much Though (MEGABLOG 3000)

Tom Tykwer’s film Run Lola Run is phenomenally directed, and Mathilde Bonnefoy, in particular, did an outstanding job in the editing department, as the film is just fine filmed with a fast pace that is entertaining rather than tiring, and it is still beautifully energetic and riveting with very seamless transitions between the repeated scenarios. It’s still very well taken, with some great action scenes, and after being repeated twice, the main character’s running never gets old. It has some unforgettable imagery and strong dialogue. The characters scream excessively, but they are nevertheless portrayed realistically. Without a doubt, this is one of the most original and fascinating films of the 1990s. 

Lola is played by German actress Franka Potente, a young lady who runs the whole duration of the film without exhibiting any signs of exhaustion.

This demonstrates Potente’s outstanding physical condition before filming began. Potente does an excellent job of keeping Tykwer’s concept alive and well. Franka is a standout in this movie. Her overall screen appearance is as effervescent as ever, and it’s not just because of her fiery locks. She commands attention without saying anything.

She was already young and in the early stages of her acting career when this film was released, so Run Lola Run served as an excellent vehicle for her, propelling her to bigger roles in the future.

She gives a great performance and puts in a lot of effort in her role. With all of her contributions, and with Tykwer as director, she is the true star and the driving force behind the film “Run Lola Run.”  

The film never really discusses what is going on – how Lola is given a second chance on this particular day, and another chance to play it out – but that isn’t always a bad thing. It’s much more interesting to watch Lola try to achieve her goal, which is shot and handled with extreme precision.

super sexy sensuous color scheme

Another thing that struck me from the outset of the movie, whether it was the red hair or the red phone, was the film’s monotonous colour scheme. The team is called the Reds. Veggies. Yellows are a bright color. Over and over again, and right in front of your eyes. Tykwer wasn’t going for subtlety; he wanted to deliver a straightforward and unmistakable message–another connection to time. Yellow would work right in as a slowing of time or even a difficult choice that must be taken, so red simply means stop and green clearly means independence or go. 

Reflecting on this semester, I heavily regret the weeks that I didn’t write a blog. It’s a great allegory for how this semester has gone in that I wound up procrastinating things I actually enjoy, and it would consequently be painful. What can ya do. I wish I had written about The Fly in all its glorious grotesqueness, as it was one of the films that founded my interest in horror (horror movies were too scary but 80s horror? Just right for some reason) As well as Geena’s Davis’ ingenious acting. I also regret not writing about Ruggles of Red Gap because it was genuinely unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and incredibly hilarious. The comedic timing still resonates and I found myself wondering constantly about what being a part of the film industry in 1935 would have been like, especially for funny women. 

I quite loved L’avventura and told my parents to watch it immediately because they’re the type of Italy-lovers that love to point to the cathedrals and capes that they recognize.

Only such a beautiful scenery and tone could balance out the moody actors and actresses, sulking on the meditteranean. Grand Hotel was so classically beautiful, and an interesting comparison to how many times my sister has made me watch The Grand Budapest Hotel. Something about hotels, they’re so subliminal and dreamy. The concept of the big three Hollywood studios interests me so much, especially after watching Hail Caesar! By the Coen Brothers. So much drama, like 90210 but with pacific northwest accents. 

heavenly

My favorite week was definitely Bonnie and Clyde. It was such a beautiful film that encapsulated so much teenage angst, freedom and rock and roll with a gnarly shootout at the end. Some films hit you right in the heart, and this was definitely one of them.

Pauline Kael puts it perfectly, “puts the sting back in death” and I would say brought some sexiness to the Depression in which it was set. Weirdly it mimics the star-crossed but destructive lovers of Sid and Nancy which was also my favorite film of the course from cult movies, though both films were very differently gut-wrenching. 

Meeting Joe Dante was also a highlight of this class, and really felt super cool to have him tell me some films by name that I could watch from his era of inspiration. I’m always looking for new sources, and Gremlins weirdly pulled me out of a funk that I’d been in. It’s almost like the absurdity of it made me realize how absurd what we are dealing with right now. Like, just continuing on with classes and life as if it’s not a constant struggle. Reminds me of the scene where the girl is just going crazy trying to serve all the Gremlins in the bar, and trying to take their orders and give them drinks, like it’s gotten to a point where we don’t even notice how absurd this all is.

THIS. This is what this month has felt like. also 1:56 to see the coolest Gremlin alive

Not to be too abstract, but I am very grateful for these foundational films. I’m hungry to watch things out of the context of school for the summer, but only because I will have so much time to look back on what I’ve wanted to see this year. I feel like I’ve grown from my disappointments, and that my writing has persevered a bit. Thank you to everyone for reading and commenting on my blogs with their silly little titles. I get a lot of joy from putting this work out there, and it feels good to have it perceived. 

She’s Got Du Look

In the 1980s, the film movement Cinéma du Look began budding. This genre deviated from French culture, which emphasized high art or bourgeoisie. Cinéma du Look aimed to illustrate the lives of ordinary city people. Alienated urban adolescents, dysfunctional relationships, hostile relationships with the police, violent settings, and other topics are explored in these films. At the time, Bassan praised a trio of directors for their outstanding films and use of the genre. Jean-Jacques Beineix, Luc Besson, and Leos Carax made up the founding directors. The trio emphasized “style over substance” and “spectacle over plot.” Instead of focusing on the content and depth of the subject, they chose to focus on the beauty of the film’s physical appeal. Promoters of Cinema du Look formed a postmodern response to and rejection of the New Wave’s more politicized approach, emphasizing a sleek visual style. Despite critical criticism that dismissed pop videos as disposable ephemera, this trend aimed to use a powerful visual dynamic to ensure that spectacle remained a deciding factor in the creation of narrative forms.

Jean-Jacques Beineix was a central figure in the movement’s development. With a dramatic plot about an opera enthusiast being pursued by the police, Diva Beineix dazzled viewers and critics when it premiered in 1981.

The director was justly rewarded for such an audacious approach to the crime film at the César Award ceremony, where the film won four different categories, including Best Debut, for combining a deep sense of genre recognition with imaginative cinematography.

With a certain amount of self-awareness, Diva leans on the contrivances of the thriller genre as a plot. When this is combined with a wonderful verve, nothing comes off as forced, and the whole thing feels fresh. The pacing is slow and patient. Each aspect of the story is resolved with a quirky beauty that can only be achieved by meticulous plotting. The film’s subdued color palette is very powerful visually, producing a landscape of greens and blues against black and grey backgrounds at its most complex. A veritable riot of color also accompanies romantic or joyful scenes.

Jules is depicted as an eccentric burnout whose honesty and conscience eventually overcome his creepy fascination with Cynthia Hawkins and cause them to fall in love. Cynthia Hawkins’ portrayal of a successful artist struggling to stay true to her values as the world shifts around her is sympathetic and realistic. Diva explores the sometimes one-sided and anonymous affection that an especially devoted fan has for an artist or celebrity through Jules and Cynthia’s relationship.

We begin with Jules’ immature fascination with Cynthia in this case. For Jules, she is only partially real at first, like a distant star, unreachable yet casting her twinkling light into his life.

Jules gets to know the true Cynthia as their relationship progresses, and the illusion he has built up around her starts to crumble. Diva is indeed a stunning piece of filmmaking. It’s amusing, romantic, strange, and enthralling. If you can find a torrent, I strongly advise you to check it out, even if you aren’t a big fan of the French or artsy stuff in general. 

Dante’s Sharknado

It’s hard to put into words how much fun this film is. It’s sleazy, exploitative, and on a shoestring budget. It is not, however, too self aware to be entertaining. Sure, there’s some basic reasoning at work designed to give everybody the nice scare they paid for! That isn’t to say it isn’t enjoyable. Sure, Corman wanted to make a fast buck off a quickie cash-in, and Dante wanted to, well, make a movie for once, but in the end, both men were entertainers. They were looking for a fast buck and wanted to make a movie. They didn’t make a promise they couldn’t keep; instead, they worked hard (well, Dante mostly) to keep the promise they made to the audience. People will be eaten by piranhas, as per the promise. And, for the most part, it works. Most of this is due to the fact that Corman was working with a director who would later prove to be top-notch, and Dante is backed up by a surprising strong cast. McCarthy was no stranger to the horror genre, and Dillman and Menzies are excellent in their respective roles. And Dick Miller is just freaking hilarious. I’m not the keenest on quotes, but have this,

“No one makes any claims that this is not a Jaws knock-off. The entire plot lifted right from the Steven Spielberg classic, no matter how sloppy it may be. The highlight, the assault on a new beach resort run by Buck Gardner (Dick Miller, who will forever have work as long as Dante is around), doesn’t even come into view until the final 30-minutes.“ (Matt Paprocki, DoBlu)

This is about as succinct as it gets for me, minus the sloppy part and apparent negative connatation. It simply didn’t try to be what it wasn’t, and surprised everyone that it was so good and funny as what it was! This is the essence of a cult film to me, in that all the thousands of dollars of advertisements and intentions of the film are completely paled in comparison to how the audience receives it, which is a dice roll. I think Dante was the perfect person for a film that defies all rules. This mainly is because his films have always had a profound place in my brain as being totally INSANE. It’s no wonder you don’t see films like his, he’s actually a mad man when it comes to making a few his films almost 50% special effects oriented. He was placing all his bets on the SFX being up to par with the energy of well…Dick Miller! Even though the risk was too big for an Easy Rider, it paid off tenfold and gave Dante the badge of counterculture he deserved. 

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I personally find the magic of the special effects utilized by Dante to be the part that lives with you forever. He said himself during the Q&A that his inspirations were predominantly Cold-War-atomic-paranoia-era monster flicks such as Them! , which are famously horrifying for their giant, realistic creatures that terrorized audiences. This visual of a giant ant was something unlike anything else released at the time, which Dante clearly recreates in his creature-centric films for a new generation (which I would say is significantly harder considering they think they’ve seen it all). When me and my friends watched Gremlins, we couldn’t help but laugh incredibly hard at the off-color jokes and awkward acting, but the Gremlin scenes remain Rock and Roll. Something about that idea as well as the energetic execution, and characterization of each individual alien, you can tell everyone working on it had reverence for monsters of movie past. And Piranha is no different, in that. He bet right on the special effects of the piranhas and their energy was just as weird and manic as the whole film. Those piranhas will remain legendary, just like Jaws had achieved. I mean, have you seen how many Sharknados there are? Dante’s impact.

My Mother Does What?

I have known about The Exorcist since I’ve been able to name movies, because it scared the sh!t out of my parents and they had to make sure I didn’t wind up crawling in their bed every night like they had done after their first watch. Usually if you’re hearing about it from a baby boomer or gen X, it’s a pretty serious warning to NOT watch this film. Then again I DO look like I was born yesterday. It had a harrowing effect on those who remember seeing it young, and profoundly shaped their image of evil. The story is well-known, but for those who have avoided it, I’ll recap the highlights.

Chris MacNeil (Burstyn) is worried when her young daughter Regan begins to act strangely. She pees on the carpet, curses doctors, and starts playing with ouija boards.

Regan is introduced as such a likeable, idyllic little girl at the start of the movie that when she descends into her possessed state and speaks in a dark, disembodied voice, it’s all the more unsettling. Regan’s possessed entity was and still is the most frightening image of pure evil ever portrayed in a fictional film. William Friedkin excellently uses her vulnerability as a little girl to drive the point all the way home, there are simply no brakes to what evil can be and do to shock you. While the special effects do suffer “the Beatles effect” of having been an early work of an ever-evolving technology, it’s still extremely believable. Holes were cut into the wall for stage hands to literally shake the bed, and a whole contraption of light trickery and invisible string was basically invented to create the famous levitation scene. The actual exorcism scene is still disturbing, but it’s more disgusting than scary to your modern viewer. That’s one of the main reasons why re-watching “The Exorcist” now is so different: The way we as a society think of horror has shifted. The horror genre, even more than any other, excels at addressing current societal fears.

The Kent State massacre and Vietnam War had destroyed a bit of optimism in the 1970s while “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” depicted a gang of vicious cannibals preying on young people. “The Exorcist” depicted an innocent girl who becomes the target of a ruthless, unknown evil.

They approach storytelling in very different ways, but they all share a common cultural anxiety: young people experiencing trauma as a result of events beyond their control. 

Despite an 18 rating, the film was considered too frightening when it was released on video in the UK in the early 1980s, and fearing that it would be viewed by children in the safety of their own homes, it became a target of the “video nasties” movement and was censored. Yes, kids in the 1980s were often told what they could and couldn’t watch, and The Exorcist was one of them, along with Evil Dead, Cannibal Holocaust, and a slew of others too numerous to list.

ur girl looks at u like this, wyd?

It broke new ground in the horror genre in 1973, and it received critical acclaim for its direction, production values, special effects, sound, and cinematography. As a consequence, a high-budget, well-crafted story of demonic possession set in a (almost) ordinary suburban setting was both innovative and controversial.  It didn’t just have shockingly disturbing scenes that traumatized moviegoers; it also had a very deep story that confronted people’s religious and spiritual beliefs. The lore and rumors that still surrounds the film reflects the influence it has had on moviegoers. Tales of disaster and heartbreak that followed the cast and crew are well documented; reports of people fainting or fleeing the theatre crying are not unusual. On location, there were several fires, as well as the deaths of cast members and their families. Eileen Dietz, who was Blair’s stand-in for the violent scenes, is quoted in a Shudder series about unlucky productions called “Cursed” as saying, “Who did we have to f!ck to get off this movie?” Meanwhile the PR behind the film were milking all the hysteria to drive ticket sales and The Exorcist became a box office and critical success. It’s fair to say that The Exorcist was something that took the viewing public by storm.

To this day, my own catholic upbringing made this movie a total rollercoaster to watch. Some scenes are so shocking I couldn’t help but burst into terrified laughter, what’s that about? It truly made me uncomfortable even when I continuously reminded myself “it’s just a movie” because the fears it digs at are deep.  My dad saw the film when it was re-released a few years after 1973, and both he and his dad partook in the phenomenon of nightmares that occurred after watching the film. When I told him I was writing my blog on it this week, he actually got kind of dad-angry, but I could sense the tension in his voice over the phone. He wanted to know who in their right mind would assign this movie during Holy Week! Still….scared? This film stills lives as truth in my dad’s mind, and surely a whole generation of frightened kids.

Step On It, Velma!

While Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde caused controversy when it was released in 1967, critics were especially concerned about the violence’s “realism” and “historical inaccuracies,” the film cemented the reputation of two gun-toting nobodies who murdered people and robbed banks. The film struck a chord with the young moviegoers who had been conditioned by violent photographs from the Vietnam War broadcast on the evening news and splashed across the front pages of newspapers. Their tastes had shifted, and this film fit the bill perfectly, with its New Wave influences and indifference for Production Code conventions. Perhaps audiences were attracted to Bonnie and Clyde because, as Pauline Kauel concluded in her popular review for The New Yorker,‘…making us care about the robber lovers, has put the sting back into death’.

one of many smart ass shots

As characters, Bonnie and Clyde are a paradox. We want to live like them, to the fullest and with no regrets, but the final scene makes one think twice about following their footsteps. I understand why youths couldn’t help but root for them, as they very much embodied the idea of “live free or die trying”. They also reflected the despondent socioeconomic setting at the time, and a young, defiant attitude to the authorities. They attract admirers—especially impoverished people who applaud their taking on the banks who’ve foreclosed so many out of their homes and enemies, most notably Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), who’s outfoxed and humiliated by the gang, almost comically ensuring that he’ll stop at nothing to destroy the beautiful protagonists.  They’re celebrities, all right, even folk heroes but their lives are far from grand. Even from the start, the film contends with the difficulties of living up to an image. Consider the running theme of Clyde’s impotence, which he’s quite up-front about (“I’m not much of a lover boy”), which reflects the anxieties always percolating underneath his cool surface. Like Bonnie says, “Your advertising is just dandy. Nobody would guess you haven’t got a thing to sell.” But in fact, he does. He sells her a short, violent life together, coupled with a level of fame she could never have dreamed of. 

Bonnie and Clyde made Dunaway a star and cemented Beatty’s stardom, and rightly so. Dunaway is incredible in this film, layering emotion upon emotion from the remarkable first scene, in which she paces around her room nude, desperately frustrated by her aimless life, to her final loving glimpse at Clyde. 

She performs comedy scenes equally well, especially when she and Clyde first meet C.W. and she baits him with deadpan wit and sarcasm; later, when C.W. clashes with his father over a tattoo he has on his chest, he mumbles that Bonnie approves of it, and we know and understand how he’s eating out of her palm.

It’s a sexy, funny, shifting, and dangerously cool performance, and she was deservedly Oscar-nominated. 

Arthur Penn, Gene Hackman, and Warren Beatty discuss baking soda as a stain remover

Penn brought to the table a knowledge both of the Hollywood system and the new French style, and his slow-motion imagery and quick-cut editing were innovative, emphasizing the dramatic escapes and violent moments. The film is visually rich, shot on location in Texas and made in a dusty palette of faded yellows, greens, and blues; a romanticized and nostalgic homage to the 1930s and an effective device that grounds Bonnie and Clyde in the ‘real’ world. Watching the film now, the bleeding young heart of both Dunaway and Beatty resonates with me. It’s the freedom that is so attractive about these characters both now and before, and it’s ability to translate some fifty years later is astounding. 

Super Rich Bambini (submitted late with approval)

In May of 1960, Michelangelo Antonioni’s 143 minute L’Avventura was booed at the Cannes Film Festival (Criterion).  L’avventura defied existing and preconceived conceptions of just what narrative can and should do in terms of narrative structure at the time of its release, and it continues to do so today.

Michelangelo Antoinini and and Monica Vitti with the special jury prize for “L’Avventure” at the Cannes Film Festival, 1960

The film is set all over Italy, usually outside of ruins or other significant structures, but it starts and ends on that island. Since there aren’t many people around much of the time, most of the scenes seem like they’re taking place in a void between the two protagonists. The film is very deliberately paced, spending a lot of time on characters walking around looking for Anna, or having a conversation. Because the camera is almost always locked down, you sort of feel stuck when you’re watching the film. That you have to watch these characters in this scene because there’s nowhere else to go. It’s a very disconcerting feeling to get while watching a film. We learn about Anna through her disappearance and the brief time we have with her before she vanishes, but the characters she leaves behind are still a mystery. I’m not sure why Sandro decided to love Claudia, or why Claudia decided to love him back. That is still the source of the biggest confusion to me; I could appreciate why I was watching Antonioni’s work, but when it came to watching these two characters, I felt a loss similar to how the characters must have felt about their own lives.

The emptiness of their material wealth seems to have accelerated their subconscious assumption that physical control over their lives and environments is inevitable, and that the only way to experience control is to strike out at beauty whenever the opportunity occurs.

This is evidenced early on during the boating trip when the friends all go swimming and Anna creates a mass panic to return back to the boat after she pretends to spot a shark swimming nearby.  She revels in the pleasure of ruining the day of swimming, being so ill-content and dissatisfied with life and already having everything that she finds excitement in destruction. Their entitlement has made them jaded, and much of the emptiness of the relationships in the film reflect this. 

I noticed some light sexism running across the film. Not so much as a symbol of the film’s point of view, but as it is repeatedly shown in the film.

Being barely culturally Italian, I know there is a Mediterranean “Macho” and a female counterpart that is celebrated as strong but still inferior. Let it be known that Sandro is a dick. When Anna is there, he doesn’t seem to notice her, and when she leaves, he doesn’t seem to care. The movie doesn’t have a lot of extras, but there is one scene in particular that uses hundreds of extras, and it involves a group of men swarming around a popular prostitute. In that scene, there are no women at all. It doesn’t surprise me, as many italian artists and creations celebrate and often exploit the objectifiable beauty and sexuality of women, drawing reference as far back as Renaissance paintings of female nudes. I find there is a theme of violence evolving from the deeply internalized system of misogyny on artistic display like this, and it’s always made me feel a little gross about 20th century Italian films especially after seeing Last Tango in Paris. It didn’t add much to the film other than authenticity to time, and also an innate emotional shallowness that the characters reflected to me. They looked as though their eyes were glassed over, moving in the world with less feeling as the film continued.

I also found the Criterion trailer to be an amazing re-installment of weird feelings and disconcerting pacing as when the film was released! It’s hilarious to listen to the excited voice-over try to narrate these poor brats with an upbeat voice, almost likening the plot to a conventional drama. It adds just a layer of surreality to the already romantically realist film, and it unintentionally makes, even this film, funny! 

Wild Strawberries’ Subtleness of Death

As narrated by Isak “The day’s clear reality dissolved into the even clearer images of memory, that appeared before my eyes with the strength of a true stream of events.” In a ghost town, an avowed science-lover has no answers as he becomes ambushed by the reality of death. The film is made up of dreams and reveries interspersed with a lighthearted road trip, all of which Bergman weaves together with poetic deftness. Bergman said that the month of July (which also happened to be the month of his birth and death) was a source of distress for him. The juxtaposition of sweet summer memories and the inevitable fear of time catching up to him makes for a dream-like surreality in which the main character is drifting into. 

On the surface, the film’s journey story is delightful, and it has a delightfully fluffy, melodious rhythm that makes it a pleasure to watch. This film takes place over the course of a single day, which begins very early in the light Swedish evening of 4 a.m. Professor Borg intended to fly from Stockholm to Lund, but after having a terrifying dream, he decided to drive instead.

Victor Sjöström, a renowned Swedish film director, screenwriter, and actor, gives a quietly virtuosic depiction of Isak Borg in his final performance. With one of cinema’s most eerie nightmare scenes, Bergman beautifully establishes Isak’s troubled mental state, which is itself an homage to Victor Sjöström’s silent film “The Phantom Carriage.” (Pfeiffer, 2012)

This nightmare is our first introduction to the character and his subjective perspective, with Isak providing voice-over narration. It means that Bergman, like our protagonist, is facing the serious concepts of self-reflection, remorse, and death head on. Isak, too, is well conscious of what he’s doing as he plans to drive from Stockholm to Lund University, where he’ll be rewarded with an honorary degree. The dream is reasonably clear; his time is running out, and he’s beginning to wonder what he’s accomplished.

Marianne, Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin, is accompanying him on this intensely personal and private journey of deliberate self-discovery as Isak’s daughter-in-law. When asked for her opinion of the proud and arrogant doctor, an otherwise reserved and quiet beauty makes very frank yet totally truthful judgments.

Wild Strawberries is probably Ingmar Bergman’s most personal novel, as it reflects many of his own private thoughts and feelings on life — so much so that the protagonist shares the master of cinema’s initials. The tale may not be subtle, which is on purpose, but Gunnar Fischer’s camerawork and cinematography definitely are.

Characters in the foreground are slightly softer, while those in the background are transparent and in absolute deep focus, perfectly echoing Isak’s mood and state of mind regarding time’s ephemerality and the often punishing memories that torment us. I found it depressing in the way that watching others grow old is both bittersweet and sobering. Under Ingmar Bergman’s intricate construction of abstract central ideas, “Wild Strawberries” is a thematically rich film that fluidly condenses a lifetime’s worth of experience into concise, dreamlike cinematic moments.

Pfeiffer, Lee. “Wild Strawberries.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 12 Oct. 2012, http://www.britannica.com/topic/Wild-Strawberries#ref1104115. 

Build my Gallows High

This week we were tasked with watching a classic Noir film, which was an artistic post-WWII concept of genre that features many fun things like angsty grey tones and trifling women. Out of the Past has long held a position in film historians’ lectures on the best examples of film noir, seventy years after its publication. RKO, a company that specialized in the production of B-movies at the time, produced the film. The direction and photography are the best aspects of this convoluted whodunit film. Horror director Jacques Tourneur, who first became famous for atmospheric Hayes Code era (oppressive film censorship of the 1930s-60s) horror films Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and Nicholas Musuraca, who was responsible for the “look” of hundreds of films over a 40-year stretch, were behind the camera.

Jacques Tourneur and his cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca, maintain a sublime degree of visual detail, treating each picture as a naturalistic painting and using illumination and darkness as shading to represent nuances in personality and tone.

At a time when many features remain stilted, sound-stage bound exercises, we get remarkably fluid on-location work. What’s even more impressive two centuries later is how they captured small-town life on both sides of the US/Mexican border, as well as big-city life in LA and San Francisco. “From the past,” definitely.

The plot structure, which includes a series of past intrusions into the present, is a classic noir storytelling device. Out of the Past (1947) by Jacques Tourneur is a hard-boiled tale of betrayal with an exceptionally eerie quality in a genre full of desperate characters scrambling and planning to capture their slice of the American dream. Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) is the American cinema’s classic doomed not-so-innocent, a former private investigator whose life is forever changed when he falls in love with the wrong woman: Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), a gangster’s runaway mistress (Kirk Douglas, all shark-like smiles). He’s been hired to reclaim her as well as the small fortune she robbed. She has other plans and seduces him right away, leading him down a long path that leads to a fatal dead end. And, as the title suggests, the central theme is a classic noir message: the impossibility of avoiding past mistakes. 

Our fated hero Mitchum has a run-in with death and his own history in the form of Jane Greer in this definitive flashback film. This hypnotic journey has two more distinctions: it is the first film to feature both a deaf-mute garage hand and death by fishing rod, and it is one of the most perplexing and romantic films ever made. The mood of obsession was never more vividly suggestive in a historically doomed and perversely corrupt world: Mitchum waiting for Greer in a Mexican bar under a blinking neon sign sums it up: nothing happens, but all is said.

Out of the Past made a small $90,000 profit and earned no Academy Award nominations, but it rose in stature over time, with its previously underrated values gradually receiving the recognition they deserved. Out of the Past is generally regarded as one of the best film noirs of the 1940s and a definitive high-quality representative of the genre.

When Greta Garbo said “I’ve Never Been So Tired in My Life” I Felt That (posted late with permission)

“Don’t put more than two stars in a movie,” was the conventional wisdom at the movie studios in the 1930’s. Stretching from the introduction of sound to the beginning of the demise of the studio system, film stars didn’t nearly have the caliber and importance to cinemas success as they would when Hollywood began moving into the Golden Age. Movies such as Mars Attacks! would simply blow the virginal production-leaders of the 1930’s minds too hard, as it was considered sensational to have the cast of five headliners, or “star vehicle” of Grand Hotel Edmund Goulding was able to construct. 

Set in Berlin’s most luxurious four-star hotel, the film begins with a series of phone calls that give us an insight into the plots that we’re going to be juggling. Each has its own endgame for obtaining some measure of satisfaction from their stays with five main characters in five different hotel rooms.

  

The film is set in the Great Depression, and a year before the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. However, beyond the bored crooning of the hotel guests, there is little to suggest a particular time and place within the film. Like many hotels, it feels purgatorial, as though in a place suspended from time and reality. Such is the mindset that tells the story of the Grand Hotel. Guests check out each day as new ones arrive at Berlin’s Grand Hotel. They hold business meetings, meet friends, pursue their lovers, and live in a long-term residence. In this Best Picture winner, we get a peek into just one of the days at this hotel, but it’s not just another day for our characters.

Beautiful shot of Joan Crawford and John. Barrymore.

Grand Hotel still sucks viewers in, despite the challenges of watching almost 100 years after its release. With the great Garbo as the most exaggerated offender, they all follow the same dramatic performance style we are not used to. Director Edmund Goulding, who should have been nominated for Best Director for purely effectively handling his famous cast’s unmitigated egos, keeps his direction reasonably straightforward, but takes full advantage of the lavish set of the film. In complete 360 ° style, the spectacular lobby of the film is filmed, and is very glorious to behold. 

Here, Joan Crawford is fantastic, imbuing her role with a combination of sorrow and hope that the film’s strength relied on. Garbo on the other hand, while perfectly embodying the melodrama of the era, is somewhat difficult to understand in her thick swedish accent, save for the famous “I vant to be alone” that would soon become her mantra. I can see exactly where the typecast starts and the regenerated vamp-archetype caught her by the foot.

The Doctor famously observed at the beginning, “People coming, people going. Nothing ever happens,” which run parallel to our place in the universe. We check in, we stay, a bit, and then we depart for the unknown. It’s a bit of depressing realism that effectively opened the doors for many many beautiful films (The Shining, The Grand Budapest, Four Rooms, etc.) that play on this concept of a place of fleeting purpose but an ageless presence. 

Dissolve into the Sunrise

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, was the Hollywood debut of pioneer silent film director F.W. Murnau and might best be described as a story of rekindled love. It’s one of the first films with synchronized sound, making it an outlier at the intersection of silent and sound films.

Having already directed low-budget box-office hits The Last Laugh and Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau had come to Hollywood to change the standards of cinema, as Germans do. Murnau is one of the leading figures of German Expressionism, specifically Weimar Cinema which emerged in Germany in the 20s. They heavily utilized exaggerated mise-en-scene and atmosphere, as well as detailed set designs and experimental camera angles. Separating himself from his contemporaries with his keen sense of the possibilities of camera movement, the generic picture style of the early 20th century gave Murnau the perfect opportunity to break the rules of early cinema. Using superimpositions and tracking shots to great effect, Murnau offered a sense of space and place that few other filmmakers had ever previously achieved. 

Sunrise is a foundational example of realism and expressionism in film. The marsh scene in the beginning of the film uses long tracking shots to follow the murderous plotting between The Man and The Woman From the City, instilling a sense of eeriness as she walks through the dark.

The Woman from the City appears sophisticated and predatory, always dressed in the blacks of night. She is first introduced in the swamp area. A vamp in the dark, atmospheric and sensual area lit by a blinding white moon. Associatively, we come to identify her with evil, corruption, sin and the sensuality of darkness.

The farmer’s wife is presented in antagonistic opposition to the city woman. Bathed in pale colours and light, she invokes values ​​of purity, redemption and innocence. Her style is evoked by plain clothes which expressionistically represent the day, the sun and the luminous village and the space she inhabits; she is good. The dichotomy of the two women as figures of good vs evil, influences The Man’s conscience and thus his appearance in the film. He treats The Woman From the City with violence, acting out of lust and eventually rage. He is softer with The Wife, love being transcendent of the time and place.

The lighting of the scenes also closely reflects the struggle between lightness and dark with which the characters face internally, with The Man turning away into darkness upon deciding to kill his wife.

Tone and mood are emphasized through a number of production details, including the “look” of the scenes, the score and audio cues. Murnau’s technically brilliant use of the camera, superimposed images, and an american capitalist production budget made for an aesthetically-fixated nuance of filmmaking. The expressionistic elements of Murnau’s craft transform a simple story about love into something extraordinary. The use of light in particular, something ethereal and intangible, evokes feelings of love, loss and time. Through the use of gradient, geometry and superimposition ideas and emotions are evoked that can’t be expressed through words.