Seen in March 2004
Submitted by slipkid71 on Mon, 03/08/2004 - 04:43
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- Amarcord (1973) : For a long time, I had a huge problem with Federico Fellini. Granted, he's made two of my favorite films, La Strada and 8 1/2. Then there was Fellini Satyricon. As far as I was concerned, Fellini should have been hung, drawn and quartered for this cinematic equivalent of masturbating in front of a mirror. So, for a long while, I avoided Fellini like the plague. I have since re-fallen in love with Fellini after watching Amarcord. This is perhaps Fellini's most personal work, a coming-of-age story and a bittersweet love letter to his hometown. Using a dreamlike focus, Amarcord tells the story of a seaside Italian village in the early days of Mussolini's rise to power. Brilliantly, Fellini allows several of the villagers to tear down that invisible fourth wall and address the audience, regalling us with colorful anecdotes. Eventually, the focus shifts on one particular family's trials and tribulations. The beauty of Amarcord is that the villagers make no apologies for who they are: bawdy, cranky, pathetic, very much warts and all. Fellini smartly never panders to cloying sentimentality, nor does he fall into the trap of portraying this sleepy town as a soon-to-be-dying relic from another age. He merely allows the anecdotal stories to flow one into another, in a combination of earthy drama and ethereal fantasy (the image of the peacock in the snow spreading its plummage is one of the most incredible images you'll ever see). This is such a wonderful, warm, ribald film that will leave you smiling, and might bring a little tear to your eye as well.
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971): As directors go, very few can tackle revisionist history with the daring and flair of Robert Altman. He's reworked the war film into an anti-war stance in MASH and turned Raymond Chandler's great detective Philip Marlowe on his ear in the wonderful The Long Goodbye. So why is that Altman's take on the western, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, fails miserably? Shot in a hallucinogetic haze, this film stars the imperious Warren Beatty (an actor I seriously dislike) as the frontier gambler McCabe, who presents himself as a rugged individualist full of brilliant ideas but is nothing more than a bumbling, fumbling opportunist. He meets Mrs. Miller (the always radiant Julie Christie, the film's saving grace), who runs a local brothel. Those she holds no punches regarding her distaste and distrust of McCabe, she agrees to finance a booming brother/casino business in their small mining town, which eventually catches the greedy little eyes of jealous businessmen and prospectors nearby. Altman's intent was to make his Western a parable for the corruption of corporate America in the 1970's, but by taking a genre like the Western, so simple and beloved, he's inadvertantly made an anti-Western film. And Beatty, no easy actor to ever work with, portrays McCabe, a character that on paper seems rich with seeming contradictions, with little or no brio and zest. He's merely going through the motions. Had Altman merely stuck to the genre without any revisionist intent, McCabe and Mrs. Miller might seem less lugubrious and slow-paced than what it really is. As much as I adore Altman, after watching McCabe and Mrs. Miller, I'm begining to wonder whether Robert Altman is perhaps the most over-praised director of our times.
- Stray Dog (1949) : Already having collaborated on two previous films, the legendary collaborative work of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune takes off in Stray Dog, a tightly-wound police procedural that features many of the hallmarks of a Kurosawa film: brilliant narrative, moody camerawork, rich symbolism. Mifune plays Murakami, a young Tokyo police detective who loses his gun to a pickpocket on a crowded bus on a hot summer day. He is prepared to face the consequence of losing his pistol, but instead is giving the opportunity by his commanding officer to track the gun down. Aided by a wiser, more street savvy detective named Sato, Murakami's search for his stolen gun leads him into a criminal underworld that both frightens and excites him. In one brilliant sequence, lasting more than fifteen minutes with absolutely no dialogue, Kurosawa places Murakami as a wandering drifter roaming the streets of Tokyo - this suggested to Murakami by a known female pickpocket who suggests the way to find his gun is to make himself look desperate in the eyes of the "pistol dealers," illegal gun brokers looking to make a quick score. In this sequence, Murakami's inexperience bewilders and exhilarates him; he's exposed to the seedy underbelly of life but cannot decide whether he's disgusted or attracted to it. Kurosawa also uses the hot summer weather as a metaphor for hell in Murakami's decent into the underground; steam rising, sweaty bodies. Ultimately, Murakami learnss his gun's been used in a series of murders, which makes his search all the more desperate, making him more and more obsessed not only with the killer but with the act of killing itself. As Murakami, Mifune's legendary physical acting is somewhat toned down here; much of his acting is inferred, but none the less riveting. Perhaps the first of Kurosawa's masterpieces, he and Mifune would follow Stray Dog with the monumental Rashomon
I am really loving your Seen In lists and look forward to reading more in the future!
Great work!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Thanks! Nice to know my little lists have earned me a small fan base!
YES! Thank you for disliking "McCabe and Mrs. Miller"!
I felt almost guilty for disliking McCabe, being that I'm a huge fan of MASH, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, The Player and Gosford Park, but it's occured to me that Altman's also director a bunch of crap films. Popeye, anyone?
Just in case you thought I didn't notice, I've been sorely missing new reviews from you. :-)
Thanks. I've noticed that some Listologists have also been missing my little missives. I'm been ridiculously busy the past six weeks with a freelance project, which has finally come to an end. I've been keeping a mental list of what few films I've gotten a chance to see lately, so I'll be posting my thoughts on them any day now.
Excellent, looking forward to it!