Random Thoughts

Nice Technicolor.

This is a fascinating mix of shots that look almost real and shots that look so unreal you think they’re aiming for a kind of hyper-reality. Was is all shot in a back lot in Putney?

So evil!

Sabu!

This is very entertaining and beautifully shot (with no regards for naturalism). But I wish I were watching this in a better restoration: It could be positively stunning, I think, in a better transfer. This is very dark and with very high contrast, and I don’t think it was meant to look like this.

Ah, that explains it:

Unfortunately, however, there doesn’t really seem a single DVD edition of the film that presents the film in its full 1942 glory. JUNGLE BOOK is among a number of famous films that has fallen into public domain–and the result is a host of incredibly dire releases to the home market. I have seen, either in full or in part, at least a half-dozen DVD releases of the film, and in each instance the colors are extremely muddy and the picture very fuzzy, often to a point at which the movie is virtually unwatchable.

But it’s understandable that nobody would want to spend the money to do a proper restoration of this: There’s neither commercial nor cultural interest that would entire something that, like, the BFI to foot the bill.

Wow, that’s some set design. Or matte painting?

OK, it’s still very pretty, but it’s getting less thrilling by the minute.

OK, I lost interest. It’s a very pretty movie, with accomplished cinematography, with some good actors and amazing set design, it doesn’t quite work as a movie. It consists of several shorter stories (five?) that are weaved into one movie, and it still feels oddly padded. Where it should zip it sags.

Jungle Book. Zoltan Korda. 1942.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

It’s been so long since I watched an Eclipse movie! This is another film from the Malle box set — a documentary about Calcutta?

So these are just random things you might see if you’re in Calcutta and have a movie camera? Malle used a purely observant camera in Humain, Trop Humain to great success, but it doesn’t feel the same at all here. The camera there seemed very sympathetic, but it’s more exoticising here — kinda revelling in the squalor?

OK, I changed my mind: This is kinda great.

Reading the liner notes on the DVD, Malle was shooting material for what would become Phantom India, but decided that the Calcutta material would be edited down into its own movie, and that’s what we have here. I haven’t seen Phantom India yet, but it’s in this box set, too, so look forward to snaps from it any day now. (It’s a six hour TV series, so I have to get really drunk before viewing it.)

Pollution… have you heard of the concept? (They’re tipping all these statues into the river.)

Ah, here’s the contrast: The upper class twits.

(I couldn’t watch this sequence — it’s a street cremation.)

Apparently some people from Kolkata didn’t like this movie:

Best of its own-the Great Grand Kolkata lives & breathes in full life in its very own wonderful World today!!!There are many a things that does NOT meets the eye & to find that hidden beauty there,give yourself a visit to “Kolkata”.

This is pretty great, but I’m really annoyed at how they’re not translating what the people on the streets are saying. There’s an intermittent commentary (in French, subtitled in English on this DVD), but often when people are talking, it’s basically nothing.

I mean, that’s Malle’s choice, and Criterion is respecting it, but…

You can almost smell this movie.

Disposable tea cups made from dried clay. That just seems so… weirdly wasteful.

But this is a fascinating movie, anyway, so:

Calcutta. Louis Malle. 1969.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.