1973: The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)

1973: The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
Seeing this was one of the high points of my cinephile experience so far. I can't remember the name of the theater, but it was right around the corner from the Pantheon, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.  In other words, the same exact neighborhood where all the action takes place in the film.   

The Mother and the Whore is one of these films that makes its own rules when it comes to time.  The movie is 217 minutes long.  You enter from one world and exit from another.  It manipulates the world that much.  

Aside from its unique temporal relationship, this Eustache film takes a very special approach to drama.  In fact, if the film weren't in black-and-white, it would feel more like a four hour documentary than a narrative film.  The film has no traditional structure and the scenes stubbornly, and somewhat arbitrarily, unfold with no regard for past precedent.

Eustache took his own life in 1981.  But he left us with this incredible achievement, one of the most personal films I have ever seen and my favorite French film, post Pierrot le fou.  Some of Eustache's other work is hard to find, but he has a major reputation in France, and if this one is any indication, I can't wait to fill in the gaps.

Other contenders for 1973: I still have some titles to see.  From this year, these include:  Federico Fellini's Amarcord, Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive, Jacques Rozier's Du cote d'Orouet, Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon, Jacques Tati's Parade, Roman Polanski's What?, and Marco Ferreri's La grande bouffe.  I need to revisit Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and George Roy Hill's The Sting.  It's been too long since I've seen either of them to know where they'd place on this list.  From this year, however, I really like Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, Woody Allen's Sleeper, Orson Welles' F for Fake, and William Friedkin's The Exorcist.  I love Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris.  And my closest runner-up is Hal Ashby's The Last Detail.

8/29/10 I watched Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon.  It's got tons of heart and is full of intelligence.  Ryan and Tatum have great chemistry on screen, and Tatum really delivers a strong performance.  Bogdanovich imbues it with a nice sense of Fordian nostalgia and melancholy, and the black-and-white imagery gives it all an added dimension.  A very strong outing from Bogdanovich.

1/30/11 I watched George Roy Hill's The Sting.  Smart and smooth storytelling from Hollywood in a way that we hardly ever see anymore.  Keeps you guessing, is fun, and never really overstays its welcome.  Artsy, not at all, but a good, entertaining ride. 

7/18/11 I watched Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive.  An elusive, yet lyrical look at childhood and the power of fantasy and the impressionable, young mind.  Beautiful to watch but never really felt for me.  

7/29/11 I watched Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle.  Some great, early seventies naturalism and Yates proves once again that he's really skillful at bringing a city to life (this time it's Boston).  But at times it's almost so subdued and cool as to feel a little lacking.  

7/31/11 I watched Marco Ferreri's La grande bouffe.  Death by decadence is the subject here.  And even though there is a droll spirit at work, there's also an aura of melancholy that surrounds everything.  Somewhat amusing but a bit tiresome.  

8/10/11 I watched 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, a western about not fitting in, that doesn't really fit into anything that's come before or since.  

10/16/11 I watched Abel Ferrara's Could This Be Love.  A pretty boring, messy early short from Ferrara, my least favorite of his three shorts.  

12/4/11 I watched Roberto Rossellini's The Age of the Medici.  The clearest and most penetrating expression I've seen of Rossellini's late period.  Difficult, cerebral cinema with a groping, yet elusive style. No one has ever quite made films like this, and Rossellini's late period certainly deserves much greater exposure and discussion, if nothing else for us to know these ramblings of a master into uncharted territories.

8/11/12 I watched Joe Boyd's Jimi Hendrix.  A fairly intimate look at Hendrix with some great performance footage.  I still wish one of these docs would go deeper on him as he was clearly something of a genius and something special.  

12/16/12 I watched Charles Burnett's The Horse.  An early short that feels like a workshop of quirks before Burnett would find the right vehicle in Killer of Sheep.  

4/27/13 I watched Jerry Schatzberg's Scarecrow.  Zsigmond gives it great space and brings a real strength to much of the framing.  Its assets - its looseness, authenticity, and the freewheeling nature Schatzberg is able to capture quite often - also sometimes leave the engine running a little cold.  But there's a depth and heaviness of feeling that put it comfortably in the group of great character studies that came out of the American cinema in the seventies.  

1/3/16 I watched Guy Hamilton's Live and Let Die.  Far from the best of Bond, this one embodies pretty much all that one who is not a fan of Bond would criticize.  

4/14/20 I watched Abbas Kiarostami's The Experience.  The first of Kiarostami's longer form works is already masterful and a great indication of the Iranian filmmaker's career in cinema.  As much documentary as narrative, Kiarostami keeps his camera attached to his main character, a boy in his early teens.  Kiarostami's touch is soft and sensitive, as he would become known to be, and his camera graceful in its pans, zooms, handhelds and tracking shots.  Made for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, I would consider it Kiarostami's first truly great work. 

6/24/20 I watched Charles Burnett's The Horse.  This early short that immediately precedes Killer of Sheep is striking.  It is the first time I can remember seeing so many white people onscreen in a Burnett work.  Whereas the other work of his I have seen captures African-American daily life in ways I have never seen rivaled, this work which shows African-Americans alongside white Americans is the first of his films I have seen overtly dealing with race.  While the most striking image might be a pocketknife lodged in a ceiling which somehow recalls the hanging of African-Americans, the entire mood of the short film is powerful.  

11/7/11 I watched Frederick Wiseman's Juvenile Court.  Because Wiseman likes to leave his films unadorned - long takes, zero non-diegetic music and mostly a static camera - one of the main factors determining a work's impact is the quality of speeches (or conversations) his subjects deliver.  In his works, these speeches tend to be long and his subjects range from being highly intellectual and articulate to having difficulty putting forward coherent sentences.  The interactions Wiseman captures in his exploration of the juvenile court system are powerful and emotionally affecting, and the "speeches" in this work rate alongside his most effective films.

3/9/22 I watched Don Siegel's Charley Varrick.  A couple of scenes have plot twists that surprise and are entertaining but Siegel's style overall is pretty tawdry.

11/12/22 I watched John Flynn's The Outfit.  A few interesting set pieces but overall a film that doesn't go too deep and where we really don't care all that much for any of the characters. 

5/7/24 I watched Neil Young's Journey Through the Past.  Pretty difficult to get through.  Only interesting for the live footage of Young with Buffalo Springfield and CSNY..

6/9/24 I watched John Milius' Dillinger.  I'm a big fan of Milius' film Big Wednesday but I never fully got into this one even if there were a few memorable scenes, such as the final minutes.