dir. Eric Rohmer
France, 2002
See also: Claire’s knee, 1970
IMDB 6.8
Viewed at Carleton Cinemas July/Aug 2002, on a date, finally, with Stephanie Swatkow, first date after meeting at Jamie’s party. Drinks first at the Courtyard hotel and later on a lovely patio on Yonge St. Kissed by the trees outside subway station further north, sent her home by taxi.
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A period film about the French revolution. Over 2 hours, subtitles. Effective use of computer generated graphics in a way to make them tasteful and unrecognizable. Colored etchings from the time period are shown on screen and then begin to move, starting the scene. Long-distance “mise-en-scene” is established with these moving plates, interspersed between the regular scenes and dialogue.
As Stephanie said, “I’ve never seen the French revolution from the side of the aristocracy.”
And thank goodness that is the approach (i.e. no bleeding hearts). A young woman is being hidden by her friend from the revolutionists, who search the house daily and run madcap through the streets, in a terror. Hiding between mattresses, and a plot I cannot remember. Like the other Rohmer film I saw, too much relies on dialogue, and it is slow (and very long), but very good. Stephanie liked it which was impressive, with the subtitles, small theater and dry content.
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Having written all of the above a while ago, I’d like to say a little more about the film. First of all, it’s 2002. It could be from 1971. Or 1959. Except that it attempted, and succeeded marvously at, an integration of computer CGI graphics into a beautifully shot film – into a period historical film, no less. More wonderful, he did so by having ink and watercolor drawings open the scenes, and then ahving them ‘come to life’ and turn into moving, live actiors, in a quick transition. This means that the CGI was being used to fuse the ’scene-set-up’ – the mise-en-scene – with the regular flow of the film. We’re so used to seeing how CGI is over-extended, so that the ability to have an entirely synthetic (and impossible) camera angles ends up overwhelming any gain from the CGI. In addition, it makes the CGI so blindingly synthetic that it ruins continuity. So continuity with regular film is lost, and mise-en-scene is pretty much abolished through the use of absurd close-ups, impossible camera angles, and the general mayham of the ‘camera without a cameraman’.
But Rohmer – uses the CGI to bridge the ’scene set’ (the watercolour) to the flow of action. Therefore the CGI becomes the enabler of mise-en-scene. He’s not only used CGI well, and made it look nice, but also made it into the very device which enables that valuable artistic element which – apparently – CGI has been destroying for all these years. It turns out it was not the CGI, but the directors, or the lack thereof. One need only glance at Lucas’ digital additions to Star Wars to see how CGI can be used to utterly demolish established camera work procedured (particularly in the cantina band sequence). Then one can luxuriate back in the Rohmer film, marvel again that it was filmed in 2002, and go home happy.
****
BBC says “distilled from Grace Elliott’s autobiographical account ‘Ma Vie Sous La Révolution’.”
Lola Rennt
Germany
1998
Tom Tykwer, dir
IMDB 8.0
The magnetic girl – Franka Potente – who was later in Bourne films. But here she is best. The whole movie is a vehicle. It’s all about moving, about deadlines, and about desperation. It’s been some time since I saw the film, writting this review, so it’s only an impression.
The beauty of the film is the way it binds the fast-paced plot of ‘crime’ and ‘retribution’ into the desperate attraction and relationship of the two protagonists. It will all be alright, if they can make it on time, and if they can’t – there will be nothing, nothing at all. No money, no love, no freedom, no resolution. How many films out there try and create a ‘bound’ ending that wraps up all storylines, but have to do so artifically, with artificially combined plotlines,a nd artificial resolutions. Now, to be sure, the movie is a big convoluted storyline, but it works together with itself like a machine, and grinds it out in one motion, and finishes, cleanly. Therefore it is a perfect movuie of a type, of it’s own type – just as “The Elephant Man” is a perfect genre film, or the first Bourne firm.
dir Ron Howard
2008
IMDB 8.2
Frank Langelia – Richard Nixon
Michael Sheen – David Frost
also with Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon
Story of a popular interview (David Frost) who was granted ‘exit interviews” with the post-presidential Nixon. A hard nosed journalist might be difficult, as Nixon still refused to admit real wrongdoing in Watergate; and besides, Frost was willing to pay.
The film is both the production of the interviews and the interviews themselves. The plastic, commercial personality of Frost is contrasted both with the journalistic oeuvre and with the savvy presidential machine. It’s a good movie. Basically it is as much about approach as it is about the historical events. Snippets on utube of the actual interviews shows it to be less dramatic than the film portrays. It’s likely that the ‘admissions’ of Nixon were not so apparent as the film would like to allow; but in a way this is the not the linchpin of the film. It’s a flip-side film: the flip-side of Nixon, off camera, and outside of the regular press presented view, and the view allowed by the presidential machine itself. Frost is the vehicle to present that outside view; his popular journalism is the wild card in the regular high-end information steam.
So it’s not a documentary about a historical event; it’s a film about people; a series of psychological portraits, and an attempt to demonstrate a more ground-level human view of larger-than-life people and the important events at which they are at the centre.
Claire’s Knee
(Le Genou de Claire)
Eric Rohmer
France, 1970
Cinematheque, 2002, July 25
LOOK FOR: The girl at the Monceau Bakery, Suzanne’s Career, La Collectioneuse, My night at Maud’s, Chloe in the Afternoon.
Also saw: The Lady and the Duke, 2002
IMDB
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Man on vacation in French countryside falls for the companion of his friend’s daughter. Very young, very attractive in a bikini. The daughter herself is more thoughtful and has a crush on the bearded man; there is also conversational flirting between the man and his friend, the mother. It seems this man must be having a very pleasant vacation. He becomes fascinated with Claire’s knee (Claire is the young girl whom is the object of his affections).
He gives her a ride in his small motorboat and they are caught in a storm; they take shelter under the porch of a nearby cottage. He tells her of seeing her boyfriend with another girl downtown that day, and she cries. To console, he puts his hand on the coveted knee. It is a fatherly gesture with unfatherly intentions. And that’s all. She is too young, and it’s enough to touch the knee which had caught his attention.
One might suggest that his mind, to keep itself ‘on the level’, choose the most innocent object for its affections. The knee is sometimes hidden, is a promise of calf or thigh, and itself is nothing. What could be better in the attraction of a too young girl in the liberal French countryside.
A very nice movie, despite have too much talk. However it looks very nice, has good conversation and polite manners, and refreshing liberal values of comfortable, modern, good-looking French people who have not outgrown a raised eyebrow or pouting lip.
****
Filed under: 1960's, Bologini, Cardinale, Claudia, Italian, Mastroianni, M
Il Bell ‘ Antonio
Beautiful Antonio
Starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale
Dir -
Mauro Bologini
The beginning is overplayed, and the Italian references to the importance of sexual strength on the part of the man is entirely tedious, but as the film improves this serves fairly well as a backdrop for the developing plot. Mastroianni is the ‘Bell ‘ Antonio’ – the beautiful Antonio, 30 or so, returning home, the stuff of legend, for his apparent female conquests in Rome, the Capitol. It is set, I believe, in Sicily. Yes, all the women fall for him, but there is a catch, which we see developed in his subsequent marriage to Camille Claudelle.
With Plot Giveaways:
If his story is to be believed, the hero is impotent but only with women he truly cares for, at least at first, and than with all women. Yet he loves women, and they fall over him at first sight. He was convinced, he says, that Camille would cure him of this, but he is wrong, and after a year, and no consummation, the marriage is dissolved by her father and she is remarried. Antonio is devastated, and his father, in a fit of attempting to prove (to himself,a dn to anyone who would hear about it) that the family line was not afflicted in the way of the son, visits a whore, and at age 60, has a heart attack in her arms and dies. The Lovely, timid and somewhat hunched young housekeeper, who has looked upon Antonio with genuine affection through the film, is found to be pregnant. The mother, seeing as only Antonio was around, fixates on him as the only possible father, to which the girl (and even Antonio) concurs, although it is quite clear that the dead father is the father of unborn child as well. So Antonio is to be come the father to his own sibling. It is a tragedy with a false resolution – but a resolution nevertheless. The public necessity of proving the verity of the son is shown in the expanding belly of the housekeeper, and so his sorrow is transferred back to a private personal problem – now shared by his soon-to-be wife. Externally, resolution needs only an apparent result, whereas internally, something more is needed. For after all there was some psychological trauma identified (described) by the protagonist, associated with his lack of comfort with physical love (when connected with spiritual love – the very definition, according to the film and the Pope, of marriage). So there could be real resolution for our hero, beyond the false public exoneration, but we will not see it. It is ripe than for a sequel. It’s as if the film has a hinted at psychological depth, that would add much needed weight to the crass and shallow beginning of the film. Caudelle is wonderfully, and Mastrionni is very convincing, as is the housegirl. The cast is very good. The plot is sound, once it gets past all the blustering. A movie, surprisingly, to make one think. Perhaps the director should read Stendhal’s proposed solution to impotence, to see the wider range of feeling (and action) that could be taken in the face of private and very real difficulties.
Filed under: 1960's, Cinematheque, Demy, Deneuve, Catherine, French, Kelly, Gene, Varda
J Demy and A Varda
1966
France
Catherine Deneuve, Gene Kelly
And Francoise Dorleac – Catherine’s older sister, who died at age 25 when her car turned over.
Technicolor, subs
Cinematheque 2008 Feb
Sold out; waited at the desk, got in free on returned ticket
IMDB
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Sure it’s over the top and there is too much dancing and singing. But who can forget the song of the two twins, born under Gemini? It’s the ‘Twin Sister’s Song’ from Michel Legrand.
The Twin Sister’s song on UTube
La Baie des Anges
Bay of angels
Jacques Demy
(From the Cinematheque series ‘Jacques Demy’s Cinema of Joy’)
France, 1962, B&W
79 minutes Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Claude Mann
Cinematheque, 2002, Tues July 09
IMDB
Also by Demy (unseen):
Lola, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Le Sabotier du Val de Loire, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, Peau D’Ane, The Model Shop.
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A very beautiful movie. A young man works in an office in Paris. His co-worker gives him a ride home in his car; it is a new DB (Citroen). Where did he get the new car? They have the same salary. He won it gambling. And so the story begins� He begins gambling in the beautiful gambling houses, with dress codes and polite manners. He wins, he loses, he wins. His father disapproves. He gets locked out of the house, meets the ex-wife of a rich industrialist who is addicted to gambling and they run away together. Nice, other towns, money, no money, new cars, sell the new cars to pay for gambling debts. He says to his new mistress: “You must love money.” “Money?” she replies, “I can’t abide money. Look at the way I spend it.” In the end they are broke again, and broken up again. She is older then him, and addicted worse. Giving in, he writes his father, asking if he might return to Paris, and requests travel money. His father recants and sends the funds. He divides it in two, so he and the ex-industrialist’s wife can return to Paris together the next day. He wakes up in the morning and she is gone. He finds her in the casino, gambling. He asks her to come, she refuses. She tells him to choose a number. He does. it loses. She turns to him: “Get away from me! You are bad luck.”
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He leaves the casino, a shot from the casino doorway, as he slowly walks out and towards the sidewalk. She runs out, the music strikes up, she is in his arms, and the movie is over. ****, take a girl. What a shame! I saw it by myself, and not with a girl. One day, I’ll see it again, and the two of us can walk out into the warm summer air together, and get ice cream on College street.
