Some notes, and a possible hiatus.

Hey all. Remember that feature I mentioned in the last post? Well, things have changed in the past week and a half and I just might be shooting it in July. Since I'm going to be spending the next month(s) prepping for it, in addition to summer coursework and an internship, there's no feasible way I can regularly manage this thing, but considering how infrequently updated it has been anyway, maybe things won't especially change. I don't know. I probably won't have time to watch much except perhaps, say, the occasional first-tier Rohmer, because I can't think of a better way to flex my filmmaking intuition. I'm approaching the busiest summer of my life, no doubt, and it'd be nice to just get everything I've written recently out there.

PRO:

La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer, 1967)

The Champ (King Vidor, 1931)
I’m beginning to get the hang of Vidor’s various good points: pulling the camera back from a group or even having a character turn away from the camera when things get emotional; flat delivery of dialogue written to indicate trust, used here to create one of cinema’s most ambiguous father-son relationships; a character (Linda here, Dora in The Wedding Night) whose affection is undesirable only so far as it’s out of sync with the beloved’s conflicted nature.

The Threepenny Opera (G.W. Pabst, 1931)
One envies the rich set design and array of extras, which allow Pabst to delicately emphasize shadowy peripheral business over the menace of the story. There’s heavily wrought satire about, rendered in really interesting ways: witness, for instance, how Polly sounds most sinister when she talks about transcending petty crime, or when she’s being victimized by her family.

pro:

Gift From Above (Dover Koshashvili, 2003)
An ensemble piece, steeped in cultural traditions I don’t entirely understand, but vibrant, funny and fearless enough to rival Late Marriage. Actually, Koshashvili’s implementation of nudity can feel borderline gratuitous: there’s no special reason, for example, to show budding perv Zaza’s genitalia sightings. But the film is blessedly casual about it.

The Scout’s Exploit (Boris Barnet, 1947)

Platinum Blonde (Frank Capra, 1931)
See entry on The Wedding Night: this device sticks out like a sore thumb when you’re exposed to it multiple times within the course of a week. Romance with Gallagher goes from tenderly repressed to tediously obvious; same with disdain for rich lifestyle. Stew’s self-aggrandizing speech foretells of a later, less restrained Capra. But the elite, armed with both dignity and snappy one-liners, occasionally show Stew up for the cruelty of his wit.

Kameradschaft (G.W. Pabst, 1931)
This looks like propaganda in retrospect, but without turning a blind eye to the dangerous appeal of sentiment. A precursor to today’s correctives (cf. Lost) to war-time xenophobia: Germans come off worse, unduly resenting the French, who are either beautiful or pitiable, and at worst sentimental. Ideologically tedious but very well constructed, often enough that the construction interferes with the tedium.

Bountiful Summer (Boris Barnet, 1950)
Not major Barnet, but never less than pleasant, this musical comedy offers ample drama without once straying from its socialist leanings.

Girls About Town (George Cukor, 1931)
Joel McCrea’s Jim skirts the line between complexity and having it both ways: he’s boring and shy, but also clever and charming. Somehow, although the film never beats you over the head with one quality or the other, the mixture is more muddled than penetrating. Likewise, the Wanda-Marie friendship bears some liking to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—materialism vs. romance = codependence—but in execution, it’s a tad blandly agreeable.

mixed:

Boat People (Ann Hui, 1982)
Utterly conventional, except that Akutagawa is a brutal, sleazy hero, and Hui (just barely) gets some mileage out of emphasizing this when the script doesn’t exactly call for it. The To Minh subplot, on the other hand, is hopeless sensationalism.

Literature:

pro:

The Last Post (Ford Madox Ford, 1928)
Sheer collapse, of Tietjen’s propriety, Sylvia’s mania, Mark’s arrogance. Everyone must concede to Fate. But things feel anything but thematically blunt. Why does Ford turn his back on the core of the series? Audacious but puzzling. It’s hard not to genuflect before Ford’s erudite, tightly woven prose, even when it puzzles me.

Divisadero (Michael Ondaatje, 2007)

No One Belongs Here More Than You (Miranda July, 2007)