OTB#91: Un chien andalou

Un Chien Andalou. Luis Buñuel. 1929. ⚄

I have never seen this, but I’ve seen shots from every scene from this movie in various articles over the years. So I knew when to hold a pillow before my face, and I still haven’t seen That Scene.

This is Luis Buñuel’s famous exercise in épater la bourgeoisie, or course, but I’m surprised at how narrative it is. It’s fascinating.

I did not know that it was only just fifteen minutes long, so I barely had time to make a cocktail:

Slightly strange recipe: Sketcher’s Pet.

But it’s OK…

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

OTB#91: Chinatown

Chinatown. Roman Polanski. 1974. ⚄

I’ve seen this before, but I was like… twelve. The only thing I remember is the shocking ending.

This is like a proper mystery movie! With lots of detecting and conspiracies and stuff. I did not remember that at all. Very moody.

Nicholson is great, of course, as the somewhat embarrassing gum shoe. I’m amazed that Polanski spends virtually all the movie on the plot: This leaves very little time for “character development” (i.e., people sitting around moaning about their childhoods). Instead we get everything through the action… it’s so well done.

Love the expressive but almost unnoticeable cinematography.

Oh, the knife geek is Polanski himself? Well cast!

The movie is a bit gimmicky, I guess, but the ending still packs an incredible emotional wallop. The saddest ending in a movie ever in the history of movies. EVER!

Oops spoilers.

In the leftover booze series, we have the BBC. The Hennessy really isn’t very good, is it?

And… it tastes kinda harsh.

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

OTB#91: La Maman et la putain

*gasp* Shoes in bed!

La maman et la putain. Jean Eustache. 1973. ⚄

All the movies on the list of the best movies (officially) are readily available… except this one. The only legit source I could find it from was this $80 VHS tape, and since my VHS player i… somewhere… I bought a bootleg version of it instead. On DVD, but it looks like it’s been sourced from the VHS.

I mean, a DVD version has been released, at least twice, but it’s nowhere to be found for sale. Very odd, or my Google-fu is broken.

ANYWAY.

The main character where is played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who looks very familiar indeed. But I didn’t know that he’d been involved with Nouvelle Vague movies since, well, before there were any. He was in The 400 Blows in 1959, when he was only 15. And then in basically all the Godard movies, and the Truffaut ones, and even in some of Rivette’s movies.

I initially had a bit of trouble connecting to the characters here… or even paying attention to the movie at all. Perhaps because of the crappy video quality? It’s easier to be rapt when looking at beautiful mise en scene. But I’m slowly being drawn in; getting fascinated by these mundane conversations. Because that’s what it seems like it’s going to be: Three and a half hours of people dating.

[time passes]

And then somebody reminded me that torrents exist, so after two hours I switched to a “HDTV” (i.e., 1.4K) version of this movie, and suddenly everything looks a lot prettier. It’s untitled, but there’s Subscene for that.

What would we do without pirates? Watch Netflix?

It’s odd that it’s not currently legally available:

The Mother and the Whore is considered Eustache’s masterpiece, and was called the best film of the 1970s by Cahiers du cinéma. It won the Grand Prix of the Jury and the FIPRESCI prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. The film created a scandal at the Cannes Film Festival, as many critics saw the film as immoral and obscene or, in the words of the broadsheet Le Figaro, “an insult to the nation”, while Télé-7-Jours called it a “monument of boredom and a Himalaya of pretension”.

Or perhaps not.

I’m amazed that all the liqueurs for Widow’s Kiss hadn’t expired, but they tasted fine.

And so did this cocktail. Very boozy, though.

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

OTB#91: Beau Travail


Beau Travail. Claire Denis. 1999. ⚅

Somebody described Denis as “the best living director today” a few years back, and that’s what it takes to get on the Official The Best list if you’re a woman. (At #91.) There are no further female directors on the list.

I’ve seen this movie several times before, and it’s absolutely fascinating. It’s got a camera (courtesy of Agnès Godard) that’s a very specific gaze, further amplified by cutting away to the locals constantly looking at the soldiers in bewilderment. It’s a chamber drama, but Denis refuses to let it remain that way by showing us the life outside the camp all the time.

It’s relentlessly tense.

It’s got the best final scene of any film ever, but it’s more than that: The use of Britten’s music interspersed with songs popular in 1999 is hypnotic. And it seems like it’s going to be a movie where not much happens, but it’s got a lot going on, only… subtly.

It’s one of my favourite movies. I tried getting it in 2K for this re-watch, but (SCANDALO) nobody’s released it on Blu Ray yet? What’s up with that?

If that happens, I’ll re-watch it once more.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it’s loosely based on Billy Budd, and if you’re expecting a naturalistic drama: This is not that. It’s slightly like an opera with less shouting. Or perhaps a ballet with extra shouting.

Today’s leftover cocktail is Alexander The Great…

… and I finally got rid of a bottle. Then again, this means that I can’t do any further cocktails that has to have creme de cacao… Is the final cocktail for this series going to be vodka diluted with more vodka!?

Anyway, it’s delish.

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