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Author Topic: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons  (Read 75795 times)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #440 on: February 14, 2017, 04:54:04 PM »
There are no Audrey Hepburn lookalikes. To even mention such a thing is unconscionable.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #441 on: February 17, 2017, 12:20:27 PM »
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)



Adam & Matty's takes (starts at 40:55)

This is really just a well-executed noir thriller, a film that moves at a crisp pace with a very solid performance by Sterling Hayden at its center, but is ultimately unremarkable. A genre exercise well-done and generally a good time, with some pretty bad acting, especially from the would-be femme fatale Marie Windsor... but it works, it takes the time to introduce the players and the stakes, and then unravels satisfyingly, with things of course not quite going as planned.

Aside from the long takes Adam mentions, Kubrick as we know him only manifests himself with the ending,. I suppose it's a fairly typical noir ending, but there's something about it that feels very Kubrick, the light touch of humour perhaps. I think Kubrick's comedic tendency is generally overlooked : of course there's Strangelove, but really all his films have this relatively bleak view of humanity... and you can feel Kubrick quietly laughing at the absurdity of it all. That shot in the airport holds for just long enough, and the situation is just absurd enough that it hits in that way, darkly funny.

As a whole though, it's a somewhat underwhelming film. It's good, but not as satisfying a genre exercise as something like The Asphalt Jungle, and certainly not as interesting as Kubrick's later work.

7/10
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #442 on: February 18, 2017, 06:14:08 AM »
I read the first paragraph and wonder « Well, what more do you need ? ». The movie is one of my favourite Kubricks, even if there is little to no subtext and substance to it. It's just so well done.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #443 on: February 18, 2017, 01:34:11 PM »
I read the first paragraph and wonder « Well, what more do you need ? ». The movie is one of my favourite Kubricks, even if there is little to no subtext and substance to it. It's just so well done.

Du rififi chez les hommes / Rififi (Jules Dassin)



Adam & Matty's takes (starts at 37:05)

This time I get to share Adam & Matty's enthusiasm. First of all, there is little that I enjoy more in cinema than watching competent people do a good job in a tense situation (see also : The Martian, High and Low, Le trou), and boy does this deliver on that. I also tend to enjoy long scenes eschewing dialogue and letting the action play out, so yeah, the heist scene itself was basically catnip to me. I think iot also works so well because the setup is very minimal : we see them discussing how the alarm works, and how to ultimately disable it, but we only discover the details as they happen : it reinforces the thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of a job well done.

That sequence is obviously the highlight of the film, but there's a lot more to love. The eponymous song (performed by the wonderful Magali Noël, I didn't know she even acted but it looks like she had quite the career in film) is such a great embodiment of the noir aesthetic, that seductive appeal of danger, even though everyone knows where it leads in the end. What makes the best noirs work is mood and Dassin nails that, in part through an excellent use of Montmartre as a setting. This must have been a strong influence on Godard for A bout de souffle, what with the American genre trappings and the great use of Paris exteriors (some reminding me of Sweet Smell of Success's uses of New York), especially during the denouement.

Jean Servais is pretty great as the main character... I'm not entirely sure what the movie wants us to think of him and the heinous act he commits early on. I have a suspicion the film is rather ambivalent about that when it probably shouldn't, but the characters around him are very likable (especially the Italian safe-breaker, played by Dassin himself) and the antagonists (including a young, unrecognizable Robert Hossein) are mean enough that I can root for them as a unit without having to like him, and then that ambivalence works very well in the second half of the film, in which everyone pays for his sins and he can only try to redeem himself in his final act.

To get back to what you were asking DH, this is what I mean when ask for more of The Killing. The heist there is good, but I've already forgotten it, and the ending is memorable but doesn't have the same tragic weight that this does.

8/10
« Last Edit: February 18, 2017, 01:36:22 PM by Teproc »
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #444 on: February 21, 2017, 06:44:35 AM »
The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969)



Adam & Matty's takes (starts at 39:45)

This is a dumb movie. I understand it's a comedy, but still, it's very dumb. For most of the running time, I was sitting there, dumbfounded that this would be in any way worth remembering or celebrating : Michael Caine is giving a nothing performance, the film is pretty seriously misogynistic throughout, and jingoistic in a way I'm not convinced is supposed to be ironic. The only thing there is to save in that first hour is Noel Coward as a patriotic, distinguished mob boss sitting in prison, there is a pretty funny contrast here, especially when he's put in contact with Caine who's just an incompetent sleazeball. Watching incompetent people can be funny... but not here, especially since Caine is so unlikable in a way that I don't think the film is aware of.

Of course, the reason this film is famous, even beloved perhaps, is the Mini Cooper chase scene. And yeah, it's pretty fun, it has some genuinely funny moments (like the three cars hiding in plain sight) and some relatively impressive stunts, as well a a song that's pretty fun the first time around (less so the other three)... but it's not that great. We're, what, a year before The French Connection here ? It all feels pretty weightless compared to that, relying a lot on editing to work... and it's certainly not enough to save the shapeless movie around it. Along with the clever ending, it makes it "mediocre/poor" as opposed to "awful", which is certainly a notable improvement, but let's not go crazy and forget the lack of anything worthwile outside of those two moments if you're not some sort of Michael Caine (or - God forbid - Benny Hill) fetishist.

4/10
« Last Edit: February 21, 2017, 06:47:07 AM by Teproc »
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #445 on: February 28, 2017, 02:36:01 PM »
Le cercle rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)



Adam & Matty's takes (starts at 41:10)

**Spoilery I suppose**

Melville is a filmmaker I want to love but can't quite, and this film is a perfect representation of why. I love the mood, the blue-grey colour palette, the attention to process... but he's so, so cold. I don't mind some deatchment, but Melville makes Kubrick feel as warm as Almodovar or something, that's how cold he is, and as a result I admire his films more than I love them. L'armée des ombres gets around that problem because, though it's very similar in style, its subject matter lends it some emotional attachment : Melville might think life is pointless, but the characters in that film don't.

Back to Le cercle rouge though, it is a deeply nihilistic film, through and through. Delon, more or less reprising his role from Le Samouraï, seems like a great fit for Melville, if only because his eyes are just the right colour, but to me it's like putting salt on codfish : it's overkill. When you have, say, a Lino Ventura, he gives you some humanity to grasp onto, not so much with Delon who is basically a living statue. Bourvil comes closest to that here, but he gets sidelined too much for that.

This all makes it sound like I'm down on this film, but I'm really not. I really do enjoy the style overall, and though the long, wordless heist here feels a bit like a replay of the one in Rififi, that doesn't make it any less fun or effective. More importantly, the ending is very strong : it might sound weird to say that when I criticize Melville for being too cold and nihilistic, but my problem isn't really with the nihilism, it's with the characters. I don't mind existential despair, but it works better when it happens to people I care about... but the ending is one of those moments that is grand enough to make me feel for humanity in general. I'm not sure why, to be honest, because there's nothing that special about it. Maybe the not caring is what makes it work : if I don't care, then maybe no one does, and that is a powerful thing for a film to communicate.

7/10
« Last Edit: February 28, 2017, 02:38:12 PM by Teproc »
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chardy999

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #446 on: March 01, 2017, 03:01:06 AM »
I wish I had more to comment besides - yeah, hard to care. Hard to remember too but I feel you've been kind. It was a lot less captivating than Army of Shadows.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #447 on: March 01, 2017, 03:16:52 AM »
I wish I had more to comment besides - yeah, hard to care. Hard to remember too but I feel you've been kind. It was a lot less captivating than Army of Shadows.

I think you found it completely unengaging (judging by your rating on LB), which was certainly not the case for me, hence the kindness. I found it distancing, but still enjoyed it a lot.
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chardy999

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #448 on: March 01, 2017, 03:38:31 AM »
I wish I had more to comment besides - yeah, hard to care. Hard to remember too but I feel you've been kind. It was a lot less captivating than Army of Shadows.

I think you found it completely unengaging (judging by your rating on LB), which was certainly not the case for me, hence the kindness. I found it distancing, but still enjoyed it a lot.

Ha, you must be right. That ain't a good score.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #449 on: March 08, 2017, 06:49:37 AM »
Cet obscur objet du désir / That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Bunuel, 1977)



Adam & Josh's takes

Bunuel's last film is a bit of a best-of album: you've got Fernando Rey being sexually repressed in some way and somewhat villainous but also sympathetic (especially without the sym- part), surrealist touches everywhere, socio-political instability and some awkward dubbing. There's even a call back to L'âge d'or, and probably others I missed. Ticking all the boxes, but resulting in what I found to be his most interesting film so far (bearing in mind that, outside of this marathon, I have only seen Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie).

While sex has been a dominant theme in the marathon, I don't think any of his other films are anywhere near as articulate when it comes to sex being an instrument of power. I think Adam & Josh gloss over how awful Conchita's character is, and that's a pretty important point. In Tristana, Deneuve is innocent and then corrupted by Rey, but here we have a man who is fascinated by this woman and wants to possess her, but she's not innocent at all. She is no better than him, similarly using sex to control him, by continually denying it to him but still stringing him along. Part of is out of material interest certainly, but I think it's more importantly an exact mirror (which there are a lot of in this film) of Rey's character : she's just better at it than him.

That's my reading anyway... the film is relatively ambiguous throughout, but I'm going to go ahead and count the whole Swan Lake thing as indicative of that. I spent a lot of the movie thinking about what Bunuel was doing with the two actresses playing the same character (complete with a winking nod to Swan Lake), and I was having a lot of trouble with it, because there's really no discernable pattern : the Madonna/Whore dichotomy doesn't really apply here, it's just tempting because the actresses look the respective parts. I think Bunuel might just mean it more generally as "there is more to this woman than appears", or at least that's all I can find.

I have no such reading for the terrorist angle. Adam & Josh suggest it's meant to be an indictment of Rey's character completely ignoring it because he's so obsessed... which I would then extend to her as well, but I guess in that case I don't find that particularly interesting, and it felt like a needless sprinkling of politics there to make the film seem more relevant, which seems completely unnecessary to me. Maybe Bunuel felt guilty for making all these films about sex instead of directly working against the Franco regime (though it's worth noting was in the process of imploding after the main man's death while this film was made). Maybe he's a mastermind and I don't get it, too.

Needless to say, I found this film to be very engaging, more than any of his other post 30's films so far... but I can't say I enjoyed it all that much either. I just think there's an inherent limit for me with Bunuel, I just find his style... unpleasant. He gets these great actors/actresses and they're generally giving very strong performances (certainly the case here for both Bouquet and Molina), but the supporting roles are generally pretty terrible, as is the case here with all the train passengers in the framing device... oh did I not mention the framing device ? Yeah, this film is a bit overstuffed. Nonetheless, it certainly feels like a culmination for his career, an astonishingly vital note to go out on.

7/10
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