watching...

Vivre se vie - great film by Jean-Luc Godard. Here's the orginal trailer:

three, two, one, zero...

film diary

3-6 July 09

L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961)

Alain Resnais, Director

Alain Robbe-Grillet, Writer

... a film to live by ...

A: Who are you?
X: You know.
A: What's your name?
X: It doesn't matter.

*

After four days with Last Year at Marienbad, I'm a bit dizzy. This film is in itself an experience. And most likely different for each viewer. A writer's film - in every sense. Powerful performances by Delphine Seyrig - as A, Giorgio Albertazzi - as X, and Sacha Pitoëff - as M.

Empty salons. Corridors. Salons. Doors. Doors. Salons. Empty chairs, deep armchairs, thick carpets. Heavy hangings. Stairs, steps. Steps, one after the other. Glass objects, objects still intact, empty glasses. A glass that falls, three, two, one, zero. Glass partition, letters.

*

that’s all it comes down to...

film diary

9 April 09



Krotki Film O Milosci (1988)

(A Short Film about Love)

Krzysztof Kieslowski, Dir.


[This film is an expanded theatrical release version of Dekalog, part VI.]

*

Kieslowski’s film gets at the heart of voyeurism as a natural human phenomenon or condition. It’s found in many of his works, in fact, underscoring the filmmaker’s personal approach to his art. Call it curiosity, call it desire, call it force – but it is pervasive and rich territory for storytelling.

power, ambition, despair...

film diary

23 March 09




Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)

R. W. Fassbinder, Dir.

Karin: It’s all so complicated.

Petra: No… Nothing is simple. Nothing at all. You have to understand what humility is.

Karin: Humility?

Petra: You see… everyone has his own theory of the world. I believe you have to have humility to be able to bear what you know. I have humility in my work or in respect of the money I can earn or the many things that are stronger than myself.

Karin: I think ‘humility’ is a strange word. It reminds me of kneeling and praying.

*

A devastating film. The cinematography by Michael Ballhaus is a marvel. Making so much out of so little. Each performance, each frame, each sound … is perfect for Fassbinder’s vision of a confined world. I’ve seen the film fifteen, twenty times, but I’ve never found the bottom of its well.

what is he doing...

film diary

5 March 09



The Perfect Human (1967)
[a version]

Jørgen Leth, Dir.


At times, the best way to find any understanding of life is through the mundane. Repetition becomes maniacal becomes truth. For me, that is what Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth sets out to show in his brief, hypnotic, experimental work Det Perfekte menneske (The Perfect Human, 1967). The human being – the perfect man, the perfect woman – as landscape.

Again today I experienced something I hope to understand in a day or two.

~


There is a mystery in Leth’s film that has haunted Lars von Trier, another filmmaker – who forces Leth out of his obscure and depressed life in Haiti to revisit The Perfect Human. De Fem benspænd (The Five Obstructions, 2003) is an ingenious concept and production, directed by Leth and von Trier. Amazing.

Leth, based on von Trier’s project, must rethink the intervening thirty-five years and recreate, in the present, his “Perfect Human”. Leth accepts the challenge. But there are rules. He must make five new films, using the theme and script of the original, but with obstructions, designed to make Leth fail. Von Trier does this because he believes Leth’s original film to be, in fact, a perfect work.

Each film will have a different set of obstructions. Leth likes cigars from Havana, so the setting of the first “Obstruction” must be Cuba. After that, Leth decides he will not help or give away his weaknesses to von Trier. That doesn’t matter since von Trier is convinced he understands Leth more completely than Leth understands himself.

The retooling of the original idea is a fascinating possibility. Leth succeeds – no matter the setting or obstacle. With The Five Obstructions the viewer must experience the individual pieces but must also find the sum of those pieces.

The film is part joke, part journey, part fiction, part documentary – but total art. The ultimate truth? ... art cannot be duplicated – only imitated.

The major barrier for #1 is that no scene could be more than 12 frames – or ½ second – in length. Leth initially assumes this rule to be a monster, but later surrenders to it, calling it “a paper tiger”.

Obstruction #1 – The Perfect Human: Cuba (Leth, Dir. / 2003):



... films to live by ...

here's to the marvelous evening...

film diary

16 February 09

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Luis Buñuel, Dir.

... films to live by ...
















Greatness can never be explained - only witnessed. Greatness can never be explained... Wait. Didn't I just say that?

if the truth annoys you...

film diary

8 February 09

La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

Jacques Rivette, Dir.

... a film to live by ...

~

In Rivette’s film, an artist, Frenhofer, visits his studio – he had given up painting ten years earlier.

Frenhofer: I don’t want to stay here. It was difficult even to come. When I see a recent painting… the suffering here is unbearable.

Nicolas: At least it’s cool here. There’s silence.

Frenhofer: Silence? Can’t you hear the forest? The sound, the murmuring, all the time. It’s like the sea. Just like the sea. It’s the fossil sound of the universe. It’s the sound of the origins. The forest and the sea mixed together. That’s what painting is. Don’t you think?


Nicolas: No, I don’t For me it’s not that. For me painting is the stroke. A colour that stands out. A cadmium yellow, a flashing red. Something sharp, finished.

Frenhofer: Really? Every time I felt I’d finished a painting, completed it… I always said to myself I should have gone further, try a bit harder. Take the risk.

*

Later, Frenhofer speaks to Marianne, his model:

I’ll get to know what’s inside… under your thin surface…
I want the invisible. No, it’s not that! I want…
It’s not me who wants…



It’s the line…


the stroke…


Nobody knows what a stroke is.

And I’m after it.

*

La Belle Noiseuse is a brilliantly stunning film. I’m not certain that silence has ever been more effective in cinema. The emotional tension in the artistic process is strong and palpable.

When the artist was at work – and I should add that half way into the film, the model takes over and leads the artist – I became absorbed by those scenes, watching the film as though I were inside it.

This is one of the most important films – on both an artistic and a personal level – that I have ever seen. A major work.

overrun with spiders...

film diary

1 February 09



Magnificent Obsession (1954)

Douglas Sirk, Dir.





2 February 09





Viridiana (1961)

Luis Buñuel, Dir.


*

Great film sources for worlds in conflict - flesh & spirit, sight & unseen, guilt & ideals, reason & the absurd, cause, fetish, fate, choice, the vile, the beautiful...

good evening...

film diary

Three by Alfred Hitchcock...


12 October 08




Rear Window (1954)












             17 September 08

Vertigo (1958)






19 October 08






Psycho (1960)







*

Betrayal. Obsession. Out of balance.

A major artist, working at the top of his form, creating very personal films at the end of a dying studio system with its rigid and conventional limits.

dreams aren't enough...

film diary

25 September 08




The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)

Max Ophuls, Dir.







27 September 08




Three Colors: White (1994)

Krzysztof Kieslowski, Dir.




29 September 08



Le Mépris (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard, Dir.


*

Following the theme of obsession and betrayal ... The three directors are meticulous in their attention to the smallest detail. The camera movement in these films – while differing in terms of technique – is effective and absolutely essential to the narrative structure of their separate stories.

the music is all that matters...

film diary

10 August 08




Three Colors: Blue (1993)

Krzysztof Kieslowski, Dir.






11 August 08



The Red Shoes (1948)

Written and Directed by
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger



*

Two films – stunning in their presentations – that focus on what frees us, what binds us ... two views of obsession, the nature of art, betrayal, and loss.

tales of the strange...

film diary

1 August 08




Vampyr (1932)

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Dir.






3 August 08





The Double Life of Veronique (1991)

Krzysztof Kieslowski, Dir.








*

Two extraordinary films that question the nature of reality and our perception of it, demonstrating, without explanation, alternate versions of reality.