I’ve had a relatively slow film-watching week owing to lots of work, illness and a large march. Despite that I did get to see some well above average films in what time I had.
Fanny och Alexander (1982) aka Fanny and AlexanderBergman explores the plasticity and impressionability of young minds. To have this amount of control over a tale and its telling, you’d have to be someone like Bergman at the end of his career. It unfurls its themes slowly over the course of a Christmas party, a funeral, a wedding. A boy and his sister adrift in the world of adults where Jews and Christians different approaches to life clash, families heal after loss and what exactly may be real is as fluid as an unset jelly. Long but so nourishing of heart and mind.
Song of the Sea (2014) - Rewatch
Fairies live in the artwork of Tomm Moore. The Irish Miyazaki. Drawing a tale from Celtic mythology and bringing it heart-rendingly to life with such beautiful, filigreed, sinuous artwork takes a love that most of us don’t have. The arc that defines the shape of seals and their owlish nemeses, the curve of the father’s nose, the round helmet of the dog’s fur, is inherently melancholy. A teardrop and a stained glass window into the soul. By the end we have such a clear view into the nature of love it’s almost too much to bear.
Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)The legend of Rome is tested by three American women. A post-war fairytale about finding and winning a prince. More about Italy than it is about the three romantic stories that lie at its heart, it’s perhaps a tourist advertisement rather than a romance. The rest of the film is tepid and drab for such a colourful palate. Jean Negulesco cares more about what he can see through his viewfinder than he does about the plot or his characters, both of which get juggled to suit the film’s planned length.
Never Been Kissed (1999)A cutting indictment of the trials of a female journalist in the 1990s. Where to begin? Adults posing as kids to infiltrate a high school. Teacher-student romance. An office of male newspaper staff watching what a female colleague does via a camera attached to her as part of her job. It’s troubling to say the least. Whose mind did this spring from? Everything else is recycled or off-the-peg. Classroom embarrassment. High school film ends with a prom. Will he or won’t he? As appealing as a plastic knife and fork at the bottom of the cutlery drawer.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)Not even the first version of Stevenson’s story, in which top hats and scientific glassware replace the devil in the Faust legend. This all about effects and acting, notably make-up and transformation effects to turn Dr. Jekyll into the malevolent and desirous Dr. Hyde. And creepy they are, especially the one at the end when he’s menaced by the supernatural version of his darker self while in bed. John Barrymore has fun rolling his eyes in lust at any young dancer who might chance across his gaze.
The High Sign (1921)Buster Keaton gets jobs as both bodyguard and assassin. The second half of this certainly contains much of the physical slapstick Keaton is famed for. The conceit of a house filled with trapdoors, false walls and trick pictures, filmed in cross-section allows him to run jump and shut villain's heads in doors to outrageous effect. However, the first half of this consists of tongue-in-cheek sight gags, that aren’t slapsticky. The story is thin, incidental to the jokes. A lesser Keaton effort that’s overpacked with half-hearted chuckles.
Ingenium (2018)Another film, another time travel theory. This one isn’t even consistent. The best thing about this is the conceit that only women have the superpowers and they’re subjected to a regime tantamount to how hysteria was treated prior to the 19th century, in this case by a wannabe science Nazi. It’s a theme tragically underexplored in favour of chase and action and conspiracy. The soundtrack is terrible and annoying. It tries to look good, but no imagery stands out in any way. More than underwhelming.
Carnival of Souls (1962)The closest the film industry gets to outsider art. A group of men who make safety and instructional films for industrial plant, see an abandoned Mormon fun palace (yes, that’s right) and decide it’s ideal to shoot their first and only theatrical work. And it’s amazing. The cinematography is astonishingly crisp and mesmeric in its quality, the cast of unknowns aren’t perfect actors, but the unworldliness of their stilted words works. The organ-based soundtrack hangs heavy over it all. This is truly a one-off wonder.
Shorts of the Week煙り草物語 (1926) aka A Story of TobaccoSilly woman! A pompous old fart tries and fails to mansplain the history of tobacco to a flirtatious young woman who knows what the score is. A mix of animation and live action that feels well in advance of what I thought was possible in 1926. This may be the first time someone acted against an animated character who wasn’t there in real life. And it’s delightful. He’s odious and incompetent, she’s just trying to read a book, but is always in emasculating control, even at gunpoint. Hoping the other three minutes are found one day.
Doll Clothes (1975)Cindy Sherman starts as she means to go on, a photographer and film-maker commenting on the objectifying properties of a camera lens when pointed at a woman. In this case, the woman is herself and she’s photographed herself as a paper, dress-up doll. A simple short, with clarity of purpose and vision. Subversive, personal and outspoken. Disguise and exposure, external manipulation and self-definition fight with each other, concluding with one of the most inventive credit sequences in a short film.
Gus Visser and His Singing Duck (1925)A man and his duck herald a new era of film with a quack. Incongruous. Avant-Garde. Silly. This is test footage made by Theodore Case as he sought to improve his method for recording sound-on-film and thus the inventing the talkie. Two years prior to the Jazz Singer was released in theatres, Gus Visser’s vaudeville act was recorded to demonstrate the concept along with other variety acts of the day. Despite its importance, this is lovably foolish footage of a dying genre of performance recorded on the next big thing.