Oh, I’ve got this both on DVD from Artificial Eye and bluray from Criterion…
I’m watching the Criterion release.
OH MY EMACS! Bresson is straight from the screen into my pretentious mind. Those affectless deliveries! The moral quandaries! Those French hairstyles! It’s just pure fabulousness. I’m there from the first frame to the last.
It’s 230% riveting. This movie is PURE EXCITEMENT! MY HEART IS POUNDING IS IT THE COVID NO IT”S THE MOVIE.
[…]
THIS IS A LIE.
It’s the most thrillerey thriller ever.
Bresson is still hyper-modern; i.e., his style hasn’t arrived yet, but it must some day.
OK, the last fourth is a bit of letdown.
Oh, this one has a lot of leftover liqueurs. It’s all liqueurs! I B Damm’d.
Hm… I had expected something super-flavourful, but the liqueurs weirdly cancel each other out.
There aren’t a lot of movies on this list from outside the US/Europe/Japan/Hong Kong axis. Is this the only one? Haven’t made a survey, but it kinda looks like it? Uhm… Oh! It’s got Close-Up by Abbas Kiarostami, too. (From Iran.) That one’s really good. My guess is that the next survey (scheduled for 2022, if the world hasn’t ended by then) will include a lot more, like, for instance, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.
This is Indian, by the way, and is in Bengali.
I am not a conne… conos… connersue… I don’t know much from Indian movies. I watched a bunch of them last year for my Netflix blog series, and… I guess they weren’t any worse than the American movies, really? I mean, not much.
This is not a Netflix movie. (Note: Insightful comment.)
I really like this. I mean, on a scene by scene basis: I really love the pacing; it’s languorous and slippery, and every scene of picaresque poverty is exquisitely framed. The actors are great; not exactly naturalistic, but every look speaks volumes. It’s not that far from contemporaneous Italian cinema, I guess?
But…
I have to admit growing distracted after an hour or so. There’s some excellent, heartbreaking scenes here, but there’s a bit too much time spent on stuff that is less interesting than the movie assumes it would be. There’s like no… tension? In those scenes?
It is a lovely movie, though. I laughed, I cried.
The scenes with the cats feel quite 2020, I’m sure.
This leftover recipe (Bikini Martini) depletes both my stock of Peachtree and blue curacao, but not by much.
It’s OK? But it’s very alcohol-forward. After diluting it a bit more, it’s nicer.
I think… when English translators are translating from certain languages… they always end up with “scenario” being “SCENARIO” instead of “script”, which is what it means… At least that’s my impression after reading a book about movies translated from French to English the other month. And this just reinforces that impression.
ANYWAY.
This is an experimental silent movie from 1929 (when the silent era is almost over), and as usual with silent movies of this era, I loathe the music. The music does underscore the action (as it is), but it’s just not very good.
There aren’t a lot of experimental movies in this “best of” list. I think it Un chien andalou? And this? Which intrigues me, because this was voted the 8th best film ever by the critics.
And it is, of course, a subject beloved of people in movies: It’s about film, really. But it’s also about everything else… I mean, everything. It’s not a narrative movie exactly, but we get to see scenes from everybody’s lives, and things sorta interconnect. Slightly.
The thing that surprised me was that they hadn’t slowed the movie down. Everything happens 10% faster than natural, which I imagined was an artefact of how they used to transfer old movies. But they’d certainly fixed that for the 2K version of Potemkin I watched the other month. Here everybody’s moving around way too fast. I find it hard to believe that it was originally shown at this speed. But perhaps it was? It’s all about the bustle of modern life.
OK, I had to get rid of the music on the bluray, and I’m now listening to Boris in concert instead. That makes a whole lot more sense for this movie.
Right; I get it now. It’s just an exuberant, meta, nerdy movie enthusiast thing: Every shot is either funny or charming. Or both. There’s trick photography; there’s backwards photography; there’s moving-the-camera-around-a-lot photography (I’m sure there’s a term for that), there’s slo-mo athlete photography (“thirsty”, I think the technical term is)…
It’s just inexplicably fun. At least it is when you get rid of the annoying violins.
Ooops! There’s a teensy teensy hint at they end that the music’s by Michael Nyman! Well, OK. I’m not a fan of his, but I had no idea that he’d made something this bad ever.
I saw this movie just the other year (I think… on a plane?), but now I’ve got it in 2K, so I’m rewatching it.
The movie is kinda perfect, but this 2K transfer isn’t. Or perhaps it was just this soft on the celluloid (or er whatever the young whippersnappers were using in the 50s): Every single shot looks like it’s just a bit out of focus.
But otherwise, it’s still a perfect movie. You’ve seen it: It’s a movie about watching things, and nothing could be more apt.
I love everything about this movie, but particularly the way the nurse becomes a part of it all. She’s perfect.
Hm… did I do this leftover cocktail before? Cunningham tastes kinda familiar…
