the man made a number of good documentaries
he cemented a friendship with Bukowski thanks to the wonderful Bukowski on tape.
He fought to get a bukowski script produced, barfly.
I disagree with yr opinion of Kiss of Death ( a well written thriller that should have made Caruso a star and proves that Cage is best at playing villians).
All in all, I would say he hits more than he misses. I don’t know that he is an auteur but he certainly has gone the personal route through most of his career and took a lot of chances along the way
Barfly and Single White Female were tremendous films. Can’t say I’ve seen many others of his although I vaguely remember Maitresse.
Murder by numbers any good?
Two unlikely high school friends execute a ‘flawless’ murder with the hopes of using the established forensic rules to help them get away with it. A female detective with a history begins to see through their veil of misdirection.
plz, no faux love….
Huh? Who’s giving any faux love to Murder by Numbers, Peabody? But Kiss of Death is equally indefensible. It would be a bad enough straight to cable thriller featuring another laughably bad overwrought Nic Cage performance if it weren’t for the fact that it shits on the original of the same name. And, please, Caruso? The combined one-two punch of that and Jade rightfully sent his career into the gutter.
ari I love Jade as well it was written for warren beatty and is the perfect robert towne production.
Yes kiss of death isn’t as good as the classic original but it has its share of exciting scenes good supporting roles (Jackson, Tucci, Hunt) and terrific action movie dialogue:
“Maybe the next time you lay your hands on me it won’t be such a one way beating.”
“You dont like the taste of metal in your mouth, huh”
" Cars, Drugs, Guns, he’s buying whatever he can get his hands on, looks like Little Juniors moving up in the world: Big Junior. That’s one of those expressions like jumbo shrimp."
So it aint good was all I wanted to know.
Check out this F. Scott Fitzgerald quote – no faux love from him !
Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
Oh, it certainly ain’t good although Gosling and Michael Pitt are both very good in it as the Leopold and Loeb killers. The film itself is an inept and by-the-books serial killer film with an awful and miscast Sandra Bullock in the lead.
Den, I’ll grant you Jade is a film I have a certain fondness for but Kiss of Death is not bad enough to be fun.
I’ll hang on to Barfly, SWF and Our Lady of the Assassins, and his early work, certainly. Kiss of Death, what can be said? Schroeder as always known how to capture the specificity of a milieu. The world of these knuckleheads, their chop shops and pussy parlors seemed authentic. The leads though weren’t so compelling. Which is odd because he’s always had the ability to shape performances. Then there’s Desperate Measures and Murder by Numbers…I can’t recommend either.
…awful and miscast Sandra Bullock in the lead.
She was why I asked.
Sandy Bullock, not a good choice at all.
I do like Luciano Tavoli’s cinematography in these later Schroeder’s. Working with Dario Argento prepared him well to capture Schroeder’s high-strung realism.
See
The Valley (obscured by Clouds)
Barfly
More
Idii Amin Dada
Terror’s Advocate
Our Lady of the Assassins
and
Reversal of Fortune
Barbet is a unique figure in film history. An important producer (LesFilms du Losange is his) an impressive sometime actor (Gare du Nord, Celine and Julie Go Boating, Out 1, L’Amour par terre, Don’t Touch the Axe.) and then there are his films — both fiction and documentary.
Plus he directed the second-to-last episode of last season’s “Mad Men” (the one dealign with the Kennedy assassination.)
I like More and, with due reservations, Our Lady of the Assassins and Barfly, and even, to a certain extent, Reversal of Fortune (it’s certainly a better film that *Dances With Wolves). The rest of his Hollywood films are . . . not good. He never developed into a particularly strong stylist, to my recollection. One is left to wonder how his career might have gone differently stayed and worked soley in Europe.
I had forgotten he directed More. That’s a very good movie. Grim and depressing and not very typical of other 60’s, counter-culture films of similar nature.
His work is both versatile and inconsistent. Ergo, he is not an auteur by strict definition, but he wasn’t just lucky either.
—PolarisDiB
-I had forgotten he directed More-
It’s not available to watch, nor even listed on Schroeder’s Auteurs page here last time I checked, but it’s a pretty good film. The score by the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd is more widely known than the film itself (they did another Schroeder film La Vallée titled Obscured by Clouds, a few years later), but it’s an interesting film.
His work is both versatile and inconsistent. Ergo, he is not an auteur by strict definition,
Jesus wept.
he was the only good part of Darjeeling limited
Only good for MORE (1969) & THE VALLEY (OBSCURED BY CLOUDS) (1972)…..
The Bukowski Tapes it the best film I have ever seen so I am biased
Ari
I watched Tricheurs recently, a 1984 gambling/conmen film directed by Barbet Schroeder and starring Jacques Dutronc, Bulle Ogier and Kurt Raab. The film was good but unspectacular, probably most memorable for the performances. Anyway, it got me thinking about Schroeder’s career. It’s really spotty and all over the place. Given his pedigree of having worked with Rivette, Godard and Rohmer, his career seems to be a disappointment. Was he just a not-particularly-talented dilettante who happened to be at the right place at the right time?
The counter-culture kitsch of More dates badly (and not in a good bad way like Zabriskie Point). His documentaries are good but more memorable for their subject material than their treatment (Idi Amin, Jacques Vergès and Koko). I like Barfly quite a bit but that’s more for the performance than for the film itself. His more mainstream Hollywood films feature one competent genre film (Single White Female), one performance-led but mediocre Oscar bait (Reversal of Fortune) to the outright atrocious (Murder by Numbers, Kiss of Death and Extreme Measures). I know their are defenders of Our Lady of the Assassins but I didn’t like the film at all. I guess it does highlight what Schroeder does well (as he also does well in Tricheurs): film on location in interesting locales. While I haven’t seen all of his films (including Maitresse), I’m tempted to say my favorite work by him is the episode of Mad Men he directed.