Eclipse 1932: Poil de Carotte

I was gonna watch a whole bunch of these Eclipse movies from Criterion, but I got caught up in a bunch of Emacs stuff.

Back on track: Movies! Movies!

Wow, that’s some close-up camera work. They camera has to be like five centimetres from his nose.

Duvivier is some kind of genius. I mean, on a shot to shot basis. Every shot is just fascinating. And I can’t recall ever seeing that name before starting to watch this box set.

I’m guessing the Cahiers crowd hates these movies so much? Hm… :

We have all read many times of how the young critics at Cahiers du Cinema have savaged Julien Duvivier.

I guessed right? But that’s all about his 50s movies.

There’s a bit of disconnect between how fabulous each shot it and … how choppy the storytelling is. I mean, it’s very stylised and not meant to be naturalistic or anything, but it’s still hard to pay much attention, because it doesn’t seem like the movie isn’t that interested either?

It’s in that uncanny valley between avant garde and … not quite getting it right?

Huh:

Julien Duvivier adapted it for movies twice: in 1925 as a silent film and again in 1932 with sound.

That’s some weird bokeh! What kinda lens could result in something like that…

I can totally understand this:

I saw this film at the unlikely venue of the Walter Reade Theatre in New York. The film was introduced by David Grossman, a retired exhibitor who dedicated the showing to film historian and enthusiast William K. Everson. Grossman was so full of love for the film that he could hardly express himself.

That is, I can understand people really loving this movie and being obsessed with it. But I think it’s a bit on the corny side.

It looks gorgeous though. So:

Poil de Carotte. Julien Duvivier. 1932.

This blog post is part of the Eclipse series.

Eclipse 1931: David Golder

What! Oh, right, I’ve been watching some really bad movies lately. I want to get back into watching, you know, actually good movies, and I think a way to force myself to do that is to… watch all the Eclipse movies from the Criterion Collection:

Because if I don’t, that stack is gonna topple! It’s like a couple meters high now! EEK!

So I’m starting at the top, with a Julien Duvivier movie, who I’ve never heard about at all before.

So this is gonna be a long blog series.

How come basically all good movies from the olden days were distributed by Janus? It’s so two-faced.

Criterion’s really into making these elaborate presentations of film, with a lot of extras and restorations and etc, but that shit’s expensive. So it means that they basically can’t release movies that don’t have a certain commercial appeal.

The Eclipse series is a response to that: It’s a series of box sets, dealing with a director or a theme, but without any extras, and with minimal restoration work being done. It’s like their underground series of stuff that they think won’t sell.

So I’m assuming that this is gonna bee all the best movies ever.

Oh my fucking g! This is insane! Is this really from 1931!? It’s got cinematography that looks like it might have been from Hollywood a decade later.

This is some kind of genius!

If somebody had said this was from the 50s, I would have totally believed it.

Except for the aspect ratio.

I have no idea what this movie is about, but I’m riveted by the performances and the cinematography.

It’s just amazingly gorgeous, with a roving camera.

But… I’m not sure this is actually a good movie? I mean, the plot is kinda… hard to care about?

This looks amazing, but I feel like I’m missing something? Is the point of his movie the anti-semitism or something? It just seems kinda impenetrable.

David Golder. Julien Duvivier. 1931.

November Music

Music I’ve bought in November.

What do we have here, then… Uhm… looks like a pretty normal mix of things. I finally scored a copy of DJ\Rupture’s Curiosity Slowdown, and there’s a new PC Music thing, and some old Shopping…

Oh, right!

Irreversible Entanglements - "Open The Gates" | Music Video

Open the gates
we arrive
energy time

The new album by Irreversible Entanglements is trey cool.