The first two movies in this box set looked pristine — sharp and restored. This looks like it’s been scanned from a very tired print and not fixed up at all.
So I’m guessing that this is a less historically important movie?
He’s eeeevil!!!!
This really hasn’t aged well.
It’s just kinda basic?
Looks great, though.
Oh that Maigret!
Wow. This scene is pure magic.
But the movie has kinda dissolved into … nothingness?
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?
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.
I’ve gotten various prints, paintings and bits and bobs created by the people I’ve been talking about in this blog series, so I posted some snaps of those things. Here’s links to them all; clickee on the images.
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.
