Author Topic: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons  (Read 75800 times)

Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #180 on: June 15, 2016, 12:51:54 PM »
Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (Werner Herzog, 1999)



Adam & Sam's take (starts at 40:55)

A nice end point to their relationship, but not much more. Well, I say "nice", but really Herzog comes off pretty badly here, trying to hide his own self-aggrandizing tendencies while mocking Kinski's.... clearly Kinski was insane in a way that Herzog isn't, but when the former call the latter a megalomaniac and Herzog more or less answers "look who's talking", I can't help but agree with Kinski. Anything Herzog says is to be taken with a grain of salt : it's telling that the more fantastical stories are related to Aguirre, since we have no behind-the-scenes footage for that one. Sam notes that Herzog's myth-making tendencies are his limit, I'd argue they're his greatest strength (and his films suffer most when he fails at reaching that high, c.f. Cobra Verde), but they are somewhat problematic when he's mythifying himself through Kinski, especially because we don't really get the latter's point of view. I suppose it all goes along with the "ecstatic truth" idea, which makes for entertaining storytelling but slightly awkward eulogies.

All that being said, it is quite fun to try and decipher the web of myths Herzog created around the relationship, and the truth that does transpire is that their relationship was a creative boon for both, a maelstrom which destroyed most things around them but gave us some of the most striking images in cinema, including a new one here of Kinski goofing around with a butterfly. We see here how Kinski was "on" all the time, and I think Herzog's amused detachment is just as much of an affection as Kinski's "erotic nature" posing. Speaking of eroticism and Kinski, we learn that he was much nicer to women, as Cardinale and his Woyzeck co-star have mostly nice things to say about him. I'm sure there's something to be said about how anger and general over-the-topness is a primitive way to assert dominance over other males in an almost animalistic way, but Herzog doesn't really go into that. He's very proud of his own calmness and even says the natives in Fitzcarraldo were more scared of him than Kinski because of it, which... yeah, as I said, he just doesn't come off very well.

This documentary also has the monologue (taken from Burden of Dreams I assume) at the source of Herzog's "nature is unstoppable and evil" (paraphrasing here, obviously), which seems to have perdured as a short-hand for his worldview... and I don't think that's as much of a focus in his films as many seem to think. In his Kinski collaborations at least, nature is not really that big of a focus : only in Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo really. And even then, Herzog is much more interested in humanity than anything else, and I think there's been a tendency to reduce him to that speech, given in the middle of an incredibly tough shoot in one of the least hospitable places on Earth, when it really has only been a small part of his films, from what I've seen in this marathon.

6/10
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MartinTeller

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #181 on: June 15, 2016, 01:04:26 PM »
Speaking of eroticism and Kinski, we learn that he was much nicer to women

no

Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #182 on: June 15, 2016, 01:08:19 PM »
Speaking of eroticism and Kinski, we learn that he was much nicer to women

no

Oh.

Well I'm glad I didn't know that before watching those films. That's really horrible.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2016, 01:09:57 PM by Teproc »
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #183 on: June 15, 2016, 02:24:15 PM »
My Best Fiends (Herzog/Kinski Awards)

I tweaked the categories a bit because I felt some were too restrictive on the podcast (starts at 50:39)

Also : Fitzcarraldo spoilers.

Best Musical Interlude : Monk Choir (Cobra Verde) (NSFW)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmTHLEX_-3M

Best Use Of A Hostile Environment : Pongo de Mainique (Fitzcarraldo)



Best Non-Kinski Performance : Isabelle Adjani (Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht)



Best Klaus Kinski Performance : Aguirre (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes)



Best "Herzog Moment" (whatever that means) : Going over the mountain*



Best Picture: Fitzcarraldo



*Specifically when it enters the water but I couldn't find a screenshot.

Summary/ranking

Fitzcarraldo
Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes
Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski

Cobra Verde
Woyzeck


Keep going back and forth between Nosferatu and Aguirre : looking for Isabelle Adjani screenshots was enough to sway me that way this time.

On to Screwball Comedies !


« Last Edit: June 15, 2016, 03:31:27 PM by Teproc »
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pixote

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #184 on: June 15, 2016, 02:32:24 PM »
Really enjoying this marathon, Teproc! And that last gif is amazing.

Please be right about Bringing Up Baby! lmao

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MartinTeller

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #185 on: June 15, 2016, 02:42:46 PM »
Best Musical Interlude : Monk Choir (Cobra Verde) (NSFW)

I'm glad you highlighted this, even though you didn't like the film as a whole. It's one of my favorite Herzog scenes, just mesmerizing.

Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #186 on: June 15, 2016, 02:54:50 PM »
Really enjoying this marathon, Teproc! And that last gif is amazing.

Please be right about Bringing Up Baby! lmao

pixote

Thanks !

I suspect that means liking it ? I'm really looking forward to those, the only screwball comedy I've seen is His Girl Friday, liked it a lot.

Best Musical Interlude : Monk Choir (Cobra Verde) (NSFW)

I'm glad you highlighted this, even though you didn't like the film as a whole. It's one of my favorite Herzog scenes, just mesmerizing.

Yeah, the main singer in particular is incredible. I saw you rated Cobra Verde pretty highly, what gives/what did I miss ?
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MartinTeller

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #187 on: June 15, 2016, 03:08:35 PM »
My enthusiasm for it has lessened with more viewings, but it still has enough of that Herzog strangeness to do it for me. My most recent review

Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #188 on: June 15, 2016, 03:27:47 PM »
Right, I forgot about your blog, bookmarked it now.

Popol Vuh's score barely registered with me for this one, but I agree about the snow scene at the start. Mostly it looks like you got that take-off in the second half that I kept waiting for.
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Teproc

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Re: A Filmspotter's Marathon of Filmspotting Marathons
« Reply #189 on: June 17, 2016, 05:51:21 AM »
The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)



Adam & Sam's take (starts at 37:48)

Delightful. Watching The Thin Man, I was at first puzzled about its inclusion in a Screwball Comedy Marathon, as it seemed to be more of a murder mystery with some comedic elements, quite different from something like His Girl Friday. That's because the film's main draw, the William Powell/Myrna Loy couple, only comes in about 20 minutes in. Their chemistry is incredibly endearing, and pretty much any scene involving both of them is comedy gold, though Powell is also very funny on his own. Any doubt that this was primarily was gone once it got to a dinner party with vaudevillesque rythms, featuring various characters coming in and being shuffled around to various rooms by our investigative power couple.

Where I would disagree with Adam & Sam is on the mystery front : they see it as largely forgettable backdrop, whereas I found myself quite engaged in it. I grew up reading Agatha Christie novels, and this hit a lot of similar notes, except we get a witty, hard-drinking* American as our Poirot. This is most notable in the last sequence of the film, in which he "invites" all the suspects to a dinner and gives a speech about the case to unmask the killer : slightly broader and comedic than Christie's typical denouements perhaps, but not lacking in investigative cleverness either. There even is some visual inventivity going on : in the middle of a typical "newspapers whirling around" montage, there's a shot of a map of the United States with ink/blood bursting out of New York when a new body is discovered.

* And I do mean hard-drinking, as in "makes Don Draper look like a temperance advocate" hard. Alcohol is omnipresent in the film's humour and tone, which is particularly notable given that this must have been one of the last pre-Code films : the thought of Hollywood losing that decadent allure is making me slightly less enthusiastic for the rest of the marathon, but we shall cope.

8/10
« Last Edit: June 17, 2016, 01:11:42 PM by Teproc »
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