Continuing the "a week in Paris, get to see old movies on a big screen" theme...
Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
To think that, just a month ago or so, I had seen no Bergman films. This is my 8th, and he keeps surprising me. The first five minutes are like his remake of Un chien andalou, and nothing in those 7 other films had prepared me for that... I'm not entirely sure about the actual content of it (aside from the boy grasping at the woman's picture), but it certainly sets a tone. Liv Ullmann is the name I previously associated the most with Bergman, and she's great here but Bibi Andersson is at least as important, I wonder why she seems to get the short shrift. Anyway, this is a great, great film. It reminds me a lot of Solyaris in that I don't think I "get it", but I'm so fascinated that it doesn't matter. I do have a theory (Bibi Andersson doesn't exist / Liv Ullman is suffering from schizophrenia), which I'm sure is nothing new or original, but I like it.
Regardless of thematic interpretation, this seems like Bergman's most visually impressive film. He still uses dialogue to bluntly adress his themes (in a very play-like manner here, which is of course appropriate given Ullman's character), but a lot is communicated visually. The shot of the mixed face has to be one of the best shots in cinema history, and I'm still reeling from that... whatever that was, you know what I'm talking about right ? After Ullman steps on the glass and Bunuel comes back behind Bergman's camera for a minute or so. The film doesn't shift as much as I expected it to after that, but the way you watch it definitely does.
9/10
Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924)
It's pretty rare for me to get very emotionally invested in a film. I often care about the characters and their fates, and I'm often deeply immersed in the film, but I rarely tear up for example. This just hit me in the right spot. Emil Jannings, as an aging doorman, is displaying Chaplin-level of pathos here, to the points that I've rarely felt so deeply for a character. The epilogue is simply glorious, the most heartwarming punch in the gut I've ever seen.
I'm also left wondering why Sunrise gets talked up so much when this is right there. Three years before, too ! It's just as creative and bold visually (the fantasy sequence in the middle particularly), and the camera moves are even more seemingly ahead of their time here. It also only has two title cards, and none of them are really about plot... I'm just so impressed with this film.
The score was a very modern-sounding one, playing up the inherent other-worldliness of any silent film. It's a great score, very eerie and it elevates the simple, focused narrative to make it seem almost epic and grand, but it might have hampered the film's more comedic moments.
9/10
2017 discoveries list already in good shape.