Favorite (four), part thirteen

Just like in my other twelve posts thus far in this series, I want to take a second to single out the highlights of my recent film viewing.  I'm trying right now to take in almost a film a day.  Most have been first-time viewings, and most I have been glad to finally see.  But only very few have stayed with me.  This series is my filter for those (and hopefully one or two of these will be good to someone else, too).

Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger

Antonioni's incredible talents are all over -- his meticulous framing, his daring yet languid camerawork, and his feel for spaces that the medium has yet to capture.  Still very slow and cerebral like almost all his work, but The Passenger gains some warmth from its summer exteriors and more rustic locations.  One of the cinema's great road movies, and in the same family as Wenders' Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road. 

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life

Malick is looking at different ways for cinema to work.  Although his connection to nature may not jump off the screen like it did in The Thin Red Line, his incredibly specific memories of childhood allow him to wash connections over us.  He does it in very short brush strokes, and as he swims through his own fleeting images, we see so much of ourselves. His work with the children is extraordinary.  And I think his style really gains, with many of the jump cuts remaining in the tool box. Full of narrative courage and exploration (the first time the animated sequences break the narrative it seems as though a new prototype for story is being offered), and a work of tremendous ambition.  I think there are flaws.  Sometimes his elliptical wanderings go too far and end up feeling more elusive than illuminating.  And after seeing the film twice, I'm still not convinced he wouldn't have benefitted from a stronger actress than Chastain.  But it's a dense film, inviting discussion and multiple visits.  

Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid   

A loose, mournful western from one of the late masters.  Peckinpah meanders, ponders loyalty and lost ideals, and delivers what might be the most personal of all his works.  The loss of a lifestyle, the onset of civilization, and a western about not fitting in, that doesn't really fit into anything that's come before or since.  


Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs 

An incredibly ambitious venture that is acutely observed and warmly rendered.  Ambles and captures the countryside in ways that remind of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, sans Altman's quirky stylings.  Never have I seen the rural parts of Italy look so alive.  Olmi asks for patience, but his eye is as natural and unobtrusive as the glory days of Kiarostami in Iran.  

1970: The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)

1970: The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci)
I really can't say I fully understand the story of the movie.  Nor can I really say that I fully care.  If someone forced me to choose the color film that I think is the most beautiful in the history of the medium, this would be my choice.

It seems that this movie, more than any other, influenced the great look of The Godfather.  And the way that Bertolucci and Vittorio Storaro film murder - slowly, carefully, and with rapt attention - certainly recalls Coppola's approach a couple years later.

A complete filmmaking marvel, and one of cinema's most staggering, hallucinatory achievements.

Other contenders for 1970:  There are a good number of titles I still need to see.  These are: Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock, Franklin J Schaffner's Patton, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin's Gimme Shelter, Gilbert Cates' I Never Sang for My Father, Vittorio De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Claude Chabrol's La rupture, Jean Eustache and Jean-Michel Barjol's Le Cochon, Francois Truffaut's L'enfant sauvage, Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana, Luis Bunuel's Tristana, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Spider's Stratagem, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's Performance, and Jean Renoir's Le petit theatre de Jean Renoir.  From this year, I really like Robert Altman's MASH and Eric Rohmer's Claire's Knee.  I love Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le cercle rouge.  And my closest runner-up is Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue.  

10/23/11 I watched Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point.  Hints at some fairly large ideas but never quite coheres into anything memorable.  Seems to be a lazy and hazy A.  Far from his great works.  

9/22/13 I watched Luis Bunuel's Tristana.  Of the 20 or so proclaimed masters of cinema, I probably continue to struggle the most with Bunuel.  I have yet to find a real entry point into his work and although I have liked a couple of his films - Los Olividados and Land Without Bread - I struggle more often than connect deeply with his work.  I like some of the unusual camerawork in this one, the re-focusing and the sometimes quirky zooms, and I thought the final montage at the end was interesting.  Overall, however, the story left me pretty cold.  

12/14/13 I watched Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland.  Somewhat interesting as a capsule of LA in the late sixties and early seventies but far too self-absorbed and derivative to be affecting.   I grew weary after about a half hour.  

10/19/14 I watched Gilbert Cates' I Never Sang for My Father.  It is at times a very touching film particularly when Hackman and Douglas share the screen.  But Cates does not seem to have much of an aesthetic grasp of cinema and as a film it somewhat goes through the motions.  

1/4/16 I watched Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin.  Demy proves yet again that he is almost without rival when it comes to using color.  He also shows that Cherbourg/Rochefort were no fluke, that he is an absolute master at creating cinematic moments that float, light and delicate in their deep belief in love and an exalted beauty.  It did not move me to the level of Cherbourg but I enjoyed seeing it as further proof of Demy's unique skills and sensibility. 

11/4/17 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's The Bread and Alley.  I watched what is reportedly Kiarostami's first short.  It does not add up to all that much, but early on it is already clear where his main themes and interests will fall.

5/17/18 I watched Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud.  This has to be one of my least favorite films to come from a favorite filmmaker.  It just all feels such a mess and lacks any kind of emotional connection for me.  

9/27/19 I watched Hal Ashby's The Landlord.  There are a lot of interesting ideas being hinted at and thrown around in Ashby's debut and it feels like it might be as close to an experience as we have to what it must have been like to spend some time with him.  It's a bit prickly, poetic, provocative, undisciplined and independent.  I don't think it rises to the level of Shampoo or The Last Detail but it gives us some pure Ashby moments that are priceless.

10/13/19 I watched Joseph Mankiewicz's There Was a Crooked Man...  It might not be a great film but it is one of those films that show an older director able to keep pace with the changing spirit and style of the times.  It has a nice looseness to it and both Douglas and Fonda seem to be enjoying themselves.  

5/3/20 I watched Roberto Guerra and Eila Hershon's Langlois.  Not very good at all but nice to see footage of Henri all the same.

12/19/22 I watched Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End.  I can't recall sexual awakening ever being treated by the cinema with as much hormonal neurosis.  Skolimowski once again proves he is able to unlock's cinema's ability to be poetic but also dangerous.  He is able to find extraordinary set pieces, like the pool in the final scenes, and elongate time so that his films occupy a logic that defies most narrative progressions and rhythms.  There is also a confidence in Skolimowski that enables him to go too far and to push past our level of comfort to deliver something that has that Lynchian charge that is both disturbing and powerful.    

2/16/24 I watched Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest.  Felt a bit like a Rossellini film like Stromboli or Europa 51, even if I struggled to find the same emotional connection to it.  

1969: The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)

1969: The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
I'll never forget when I first saw this.  It was 1995 in St. Louis at the Tivoli Theatre.  I must have gone to something like the 8:00 showing.  I remember going alone, and when it was over, seriously considering staying for the 10:40 show.  I was that blown away.  


The desire to see something immediately for a second time had never happened to me before nor has it happened since.  I guess it's safe to say that the action sequences, particularly the first and the last, were the most exciting pieces of action filmmaking I had ever seen.  They literally showed me another way of doing things.  Peckinpah's combination of different film speeds and offbeat, elliptical editing style were a revelation.  Of course, John Woo, and even Takeshi Kitano and Wong Kar-Wai, have gone on to reference Peckinpah's inventions here, but the original still packs the greatest punch for me.


I also think its syncopated opening is one of the strongest in the history of the medium.  I find myself moved by its themes of friendship.  And the movie looks so real, I feel like I can almost smell it.  


And what can I say about Robert Ryan and William Holden?  The movie almost serves as an argument to cast more of our legends at later stages in their career.  There's simply a depth and effect that come from their presence that the younger guys can never provide.  


Other contenders for 1969: I still have quite a number of titles to see.  These include:  Costa-Gavras' Z, Frederick Wiseman's High School, Robert Bresson's Une femme douce, Frank Perry's Last Summer, Ken Russell's Women in Love, David Lynch's The Grandmother, Nagisa Oshima's Boy, Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates, Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest, Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Budd Boetticher's A Time for Dying, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Katzelmacher, Robert Kramer's Ice, Claude Chabrol's La femme infidele, Andy Warhol's Blue Movie, Richard Lester's The Bed Sitting Room, and Jacques Rivette's L'amour fou.  I need to revisit John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy and George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  It's been too long since I've seen either to know where they'd place on this list.  I really like Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.  I love Eric Rohmer's Ma nuit chez Maud and Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows.  And my closest runner-up is Ken Loach's Kes.

7/15/12 I watched Andre De Toth's Play Dirty.  There have been many movies depicting the absurdity of war.  But few ring as truthful as this late film by De Toth.  It's gritty, bleak, and one of these films coming at the end of the Hays Code, where you can smell the feeling of liberation.  A cerebral "man on a mission" with some very intelligent direction from De Toth.

9/26/13 I watched Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz.  In my opinion a highly underrated film by the master.  It's of interest first off to see what Hitch can do with the Hays code no longer around.  There's a brutality at work and a graphic punch that feels like new territory for the director.  It also features some fantastic set pieces, including most of what's set in Cuba, some typically expressive Hitch camerawork that De Palma had to have seen, and yet another complex and emotive Hitch score.  The ending admittedly lets the film down a little but that's only because much of what comes before is so entertaining.  Like Marnie, this Hitch film deserves far more eyes on it and far more people talking about it.

11/16/13 I watched Mark Cousins' The Story of Film: An Odyssey: New Waves - Sweep Around the World.  Some fairly new territory for me, I particularly enjoyed his handling of Tarkovsky, Imamura, Ghatak, Psycho, and Wajda.  

11/30/15 I watched Peter R Hunt's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Lazenby made and would have continued to make one of the very best Bonds and Savalas was a wonderful, menacing Bond villain.  I am not as big a fan of the direction as Soderbergh or Nolan.  But the hard-hitting ending was unexpected and memorable.  

1/7/16 I watched Costa-Gavras' Z.  It is easy to see its influence on the American New Wave whether it's the sound of the typewriter in All the President's Men, the casting of Marcel Bozzuffi in The French Connection or the zooms in Altman's cinema.  It is not very emotionally involving but as a piece of filmmaking, it carries great interest for its energy and inventiveness. 

7/16/17 I watched Michael Ritchie's Downhill Racer.  Rithchie is definitely a filmmaker that I am now far more curious about, having seen Smile (with him in person), The Bad News Bears and now this.  He has an auteur's deep feel for character and the freewheeling sensibility of Altman and Demme.  The soft shape of scenes and the way he slows down time during some of the races are what most affected me with this one.  I look forward to continuing to investigate more of his work, particularly The Candidate and Prime Cut.

8/13/17 I watched Claude Chabrol's Que La Bete Meure.  Chabrol's work does not have the playfulness of Godard, Truffaut, or even Rohmer, so I am not quite drawn to it in the same way.  But I like the way he uses his camera, moving through frames, capturing details, gestures, expressions gracefully and silently.  The locations and nature bring a warmth that balances out the cold, calculating nature of Chabrol's filmmaking approach.  

11/25/17 I watched Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.  Certainly to be commended for its uniqueness and loyalty to its vision as claustrophobic and uncommercial as it may be.  Amazing to think this is from the same filmmaker that gave us Tootsie.  The performances are great and the ending brings a certain amount of satisfaction, but the theatricality of its approach is not my thing.

6/7/18 I watched Frederick Wiseman's Law and Order.  Aside from Wiseman's complete formal discipline, what might be most impressive about his work are the moments he is able to capture.  Whether it is the angry father at the end or the belligerent juvenile early on, the characters he finds in the scenes he shows us feel so raw, so real, and so rich it is like we have never seen humans going through real emotions on film before.  It is such pure cinema, Wiseman's work, and such a successful approach.  For anyone that wants to see moments deflected exactly as the artist found them, without any fluff and without any fear that the sheer moment would have enough heft or interest on its own, these are hours full of reward.     

4/21/20  I watched Robert Bresson's Une femme douce.  Not my favorite of Bresson's work.  It just does not have the lift or payoff at the end that his more successful films do.  But the restraint and authority are again impressive and as always certain moments of poetry shine through.  

6/24/20 I watched Charles Burnett's Several Friends.  Burnett's first short already signals a major talent.  His films feel unusually lived-in, so real and honest that you can almost smell and taste everything on screen.  The sound was not great in this one, which took away from the experience a little, but the locations, the acting and the feel Burnett creates all add up to something uniquely poetic and true.

10/17/20 I watched Robert Downey Senior's Putney Swope.  It is amazing how boundary pushing it still feels more than fifty years later.  I am not sure race relations have improved at all in this country since it first came out.  As a film, it feels a bit unfocused at times, messy, but it is all probably due to the fact that it felt it needed to speak in that way to be heard.  

3/29/22 I watched Paul Morrison's 24 Hours: The World of John and Yoko.  Pretty bland, uneventful short doc but mildly interesting to see a day in the life of John and Yoko.  

7/8/22 I watched Budd Boetticher's A Time for Dying.  An abstract, stripped down western that stylistically got me thinking of late sixty works like Hellman's The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind.  From an emotional and thematic standpoint, it certainly seemed to suggest an endangered state for the future and morals and ethics of the western.  Good no longer prevails over bad and the sense of community that Ford evangelized no longer exists. 

7/9/22 I watched Claude Chabrol's The Unfaithful Wife.  Chabrol, as much as any French filmmaker I can recall, seems driven to remake the same kind of film over and over again.  Hitchcock's influence can be felt, film noir looms large and there doesn't seem to be much optimism or trust in the sacred institutions of marriage and family.  Chabrol's films also possess much of Lang's cynical feelings toward human beings and life itself.