OTB#37: Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut

A Man Escaped. Robert Bresson. 1956. ⚄

There’s four films by Bresson on this “officially the best” list, which is a lot? I don’t think there’s anybody with five movies, but Bresson is tied for the coveted Most Movies On The List prize with Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes. Hm… In total, there’s 63 directors represented on the list…

[some time passes]

Wow, even for a Bresson movie, this is pretty stark. The acting is pared down to an absolute minimum (that is, everybody’s got their resting bitch faces on, I mean, er, engage none of their facial muscles), and the milieu is as simple as it gets (a prison), and the protagonist does a voice-over that states, in the plainest way possible what he’s doing:

It’s fascinating that something as tense and gripping could result from something this simple.

[more time passes]

But, OK, most of this movie is watching a guy do crafts (making a rope from wire, hooks to get over a wall, etc). It’s… I have to admit to zoning out on some of the scenes. Whenever there’s some, like, action happening, it’s studiously kept out of the frame.

[even more time passes]

The final sequence is marvellous, though.

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.

OTB#37: Some Like It Hot

Some Like It Hot. Billy Wilder. 1959. ⚄

I’ve blogged about this movie before, but we’re in a pretty serious grouping of movies on this list, so I want to re-watch it. Here’s a second look at the screenshots from that movie. You’re welcome.

The last time I watched this, it was on an interlaced DVD, which means that the effective resolution was ca. zero times zilch. I hadn’t planned on re-watching this now, so I haven’t re-bought it on 2K, so I (“oops”) accidentally downloaded a 2K version from der interwebs.

Unfortunately, the bitrate is shitty, so the 2K version doesn’t really look much better than the DVD version I watched earlier.

*sigh*

I guess crime really doesn’t pay.

[time passes]

It’s a very fleet-footed movie, but it’s fascinating that they spend this much time setting up the premise of the movie. I mean, it’s Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in women’s clothes, and, of course, Marilyn Monroe (also in women’s clothes). But there’s like a deep, in-plot reason for all this to happen. Which I respect enormously.

As comedies go, it’s not really “ha ha” funny a lot, but it’s so consistently charming that it’s impossible not to sit here on the couch with a sheepish grin on my face.

[more time passes]

There’s so many scenes here that could have gone super-creepy, but Wilder short-circuits them every time.

[the end]

It’s such a charming movie. The final line in the movie is just perfect.

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.

My New Exnovations in Packaging Blog

Oh boy oh boy! I braved the throngs of shuffling zombies I mean panting jogging sportspeople to go to the post office to collect a biiig package from Staples:

(Orange for scale.)

What could it be!?

It was… some Post-It index flags (the primary and vital tool for my comics blog).

Thanks, Staples! Your packing methodology is so thoughtful and helpful!

(But I guess Staples doesn’t have access to a wide range of packing material.)

OTB#37: La dolce vita

La dolce vita. Federico Fellini. 1960. ⚅

I must have seen this before? Right? But I can’t really recall it… This is the one with the fountain scene? I must have seen it… or perhaps I’ve just seen that scene, which is included in every documentary about Italian cinema.

Oh, yeah! Here’s the opening shot with the Christ statue! OK, I’ve seen this before. Sometime. Perhaps as a child?

[an hour passes]

Man, this is a gorgeous movie. It’s been beautifully restored:

Everything is so… Fellini. It’s like… my very conception of how a gorgeous, arty movie should be is based on Fellini, because I probably saw a couple of these movies as a child? They’re sort of dreamlike, and sort of heavy on symbolism, and very meta, and… just very, very pretty.

I love all the performers here, but Mastroianni in particular is something to behold. And Ekberg, of course, as the original manic pixie dream girl is irresistible.

[another hour passes]

This movie is delightfully vague. It sort of segues from one sitch to the next without any discernible plan, and I love that. I mean, I’m two hours in on this movie, and if you’d ask me to tell you what this movie was about I’d say… “er… Rome?”

I love the scenes with Mastroianni’s father out on the town. It’s so on point.

[the final hour passes]

Wow. That’s… a lot. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I did kind of expect that it would just go on in the same way until the end, and then everything got… intense and tragic.

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.