1980: Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme)
Heart. One of my cinephile buddies in Los Angeles often uses this word when he likes a film. He'll say, "I really liked it. It had a lot of heart." When we first started going to movies together, I really wasn't sure what to make of it. Heart, I'm a damn formalist. Heart, who cares? Heart, heart?
But I've slowly come around. I think part of it is I've started to realize how few humanists actually work in the medium. In the past, we had Renoir, De Sica, arguably Rossellini, and arguably John Ford. Now we have Kiarostami, ...Kiarostami, and ...Kiarostami. No, but honestly there aren't many. Yet I would have to put Jonathan Demme in the small group of humanists that do exist. And although I also really love Something Wild, I would have to say that Melvin and Howard is Demme's most humanist film.
Like much of Demme's work, this one is a little messy and rough around the edges. It also has that special zing and energy that characterizes much of Demme's work from this period. Demme has always been too casual, and probably a little too inconsistent, to be mentioned among the greats. But when he's on, he's as good as anyone. God does he make me feel for Melvin Dummar here!
This one does have a lot of heart, a tremendous amount of it in fact. And coming out of one of the darkest periods of American film, it seems a most apt way to begin the next decade.
Other contenders for 1980: I still have some titles to see from this year. These include: Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha, Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing, Eric Rohmer's The Aviator's Wife, John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday, Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin-Alexanderplatz, Mike Leigh's Grown-ups, Alain Resnais' Mon oncle d'Amerique, and Daniel Petrie's Resurrection. I need to revisit Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull as it's one I've struggled with a little in the past. But from this year, I really like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Paul Schrader's American Gigolo, and John Cassavetes' Gloria. I love Louis Malle's Atlantic City, William Friedkin's Cruising, Maurice Pialat's Loulou, David Lynch's The Elephant Man, and Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill. And my closest runner-up is Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One.
3/21/16 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie). Godard returns after a twelve or so year departure from "traditional" narrative cinema with this absolute scorcher of a film. I was surprised, although I do not know why since Godard remains perhaps my favorite of all, by its beauty, its playfulness, its ability yet again to tap into the zeitgeist of its time. It is Godard as post-punk and it is up there with his extraordinary work from the sixties. If anyone thinks Godard's importance ended with Week End, have a look.
7/23/16 I watched Woody Allen's Stardust Memories. I have never been a huge fan of Fellini so when Woody starts doing his 8 1/2 I find myself struggling as well.
10/29/18 I watched Frederick Wiseman's Model. Not as enthralling as some of Wiseman's other work. It just does not seem to pulse like some of his greatest films. But there are plenty of remarkable moments to be had, of course.
Heart. One of my cinephile buddies in Los Angeles often uses this word when he likes a film. He'll say, "I really liked it. It had a lot of heart." When we first started going to movies together, I really wasn't sure what to make of it. Heart, I'm a damn formalist. Heart, who cares? Heart, heart?
But I've slowly come around. I think part of it is I've started to realize how few humanists actually work in the medium. In the past, we had Renoir, De Sica, arguably Rossellini, and arguably John Ford. Now we have Kiarostami, ...Kiarostami, and ...Kiarostami. No, but honestly there aren't many. Yet I would have to put Jonathan Demme in the small group of humanists that do exist. And although I also really love Something Wild, I would have to say that Melvin and Howard is Demme's most humanist film.
Like much of Demme's work, this one is a little messy and rough around the edges. It also has that special zing and energy that characterizes much of Demme's work from this period. Demme has always been too casual, and probably a little too inconsistent, to be mentioned among the greats. But when he's on, he's as good as anyone. God does he make me feel for Melvin Dummar here!
This one does have a lot of heart, a tremendous amount of it in fact. And coming out of one of the darkest periods of American film, it seems a most apt way to begin the next decade.
Other contenders for 1980: I still have some titles to see from this year. These include: Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha, Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing, Eric Rohmer's The Aviator's Wife, John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday, Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin-Alexanderplatz, Mike Leigh's Grown-ups, Alain Resnais' Mon oncle d'Amerique, and Daniel Petrie's Resurrection. I need to revisit Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull as it's one I've struggled with a little in the past. But from this year, I really like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Paul Schrader's American Gigolo, and John Cassavetes' Gloria. I love Louis Malle's Atlantic City, William Friedkin's Cruising, Maurice Pialat's Loulou, David Lynch's The Elephant Man, and Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill. And my closest runner-up is Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One.
3/21/16 I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie). Godard returns after a twelve or so year departure from "traditional" narrative cinema with this absolute scorcher of a film. I was surprised, although I do not know why since Godard remains perhaps my favorite of all, by its beauty, its playfulness, its ability yet again to tap into the zeitgeist of its time. It is Godard as post-punk and it is up there with his extraordinary work from the sixties. If anyone thinks Godard's importance ended with Week End, have a look.
7/23/16 I watched Woody Allen's Stardust Memories. I have never been a huge fan of Fellini so when Woody starts doing his 8 1/2 I find myself struggling as well.
10/29/18 I watched Frederick Wiseman's Model. Not as enthralling as some of Wiseman's other work. It just does not seem to pulse like some of his greatest films. But there are plenty of remarkable moments to be had, of course.
9/30/20 I watched Marie-Claude Treilhou's Simone Barbes or Virtue. One of the most remarkable aspects of it is how unique it feels among French films. It feels like this unusual concoction of part Jeanne Dielman, part Michael Mann's Thief, part Boy Meets Girl and what a filmic version of Tricky's Maxinquaye might look like. It's not always a terribly entertaining watch but it is a completely fascinating film.
11/28/21 I watched William Klein's The Little Richard Story. Klein takes an interesting stylistic approach for giving us a feel for Little Richard but I never was engaged as much as I wanted to be.
12/5/21 I watched Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue. I should have seen this way before now. It is a key film in the American New Wave and makes a case for being the final film of the cycle as much as any. I never thought of Easy Rider, Hopper's first feature as director, as being much from an aesthetic point of view. But this film possesses an incredible style - specifically its location work, its graceful movements of the camera, its complex editing rhythms, and its sensitive use of sound. Dark and disturbing like a David Lynch film but also with echoes of some of the seventies' stronger character work like Five Easy Pieces.
12/12/21 I watched King Vidor's The Metaphor. It is a warm encounter as two artists meet for the first time and discuss process and Vidor's influence on Wyeth.
1/26/22 I watched Alain Resnais' Mon oncle d'Amerique. Resnais' films are difficult. They have a similar density to the work of Godard but without the same level of lyricism or sense of playfulness. Although I feel like there were many things I failed to comprehend, from best I gathered Resnais was exploring the fine line in our lives between reality and fiction and actual memories and imagination. In this work, he also seems quite interested in not only the human animal but in our relation to all of the other animals that surround us.
