“Cinema is the ultimate pervert art.” – Slavoj Zizek
Any of the following are evident in my cinematic fanaticism: comedies with a tinge of dark humor and absurdity, NOIR and true crimes, dysfunctional family relations because they are awesome, twisted love and obsessions, anything about food, jazzy soundtracks, dreamy atmospheres, lovers on the run, experimental cinema that messes with my psyche, and etc.
No problem, Mimzilla. Online friendships have a way of being interrupted from time to time by "real" life. Looks like you haven't been on this site for some months. ///// Try to not be too hard on the people you know who have not "seen the light" and are unable to share the cinematic and musical joys that mean so much to you and me. I was very lucky to have been married for many years to a woman who was and is a devoted cinephile, but I just heard from a Mubi pal in Ireland of a friend of his whose marriage broke up largely because of his obsession with film. So, it's a good thing there are sites like this where we can share our thoughts with others who know what we're talking about. ///// Since we last talked, I have discovered two more previously unheard of, at least by me, directors from the past I like a lot. One is the Finn Teuvo Tulio who from the thirties through the fifties made very intense melodramas usually centered on a woman. I am expecting another set of his films in the mail from Finland any day. ///// The other is a Czech named Frantisek Vlacil whose peak period seems to have been the late sixties, a time when we got a lot of films from Czechoslovakia in the US, but I guess his work was not charming enough for the art house audience. Several Mubi people were really knocked out by Marketa Lazarova, a powerful 13th century story of great scope, but I prefer one called Adelheid, about a Czech man and a German woman during the aftermath of WWII. ///// Don't think I have abandoned American movies. I still think that when we are good, we are the best. I just try to fill in some of the blank spaces and weak areas in my film experience. And what have you been seeing and listening to lately? //// Stay well. Bob
Hello Mimzilla. Sweet Smell of Success is a knockout. The only weak point is the casting of the two young people. Even allowing for the unmatchable power of Lancaster and Curtis, they are both so dull as to make it difficult to sympathize with them. Otherwise, the film is superbly acted, beautifully shot, well-written, and well scored. Not much to complain about. I'm glad to see films like this and The Night of the Hunter that were neglected or ignored in the fifties getting some recognition, but you know, it was kind of special when hardly anybody had even heard of them. So, now it's like sharing them with everyone else but, on the other hand, they are a lot easier to see than they used to be. An interesting thing they both have in common is a leading man who at the time was usually not taken very seriously as an actor. ///// Yes, Chabrol is difficult to keep up with here in the US. I had to get a couple from the UK. Haven't seen Dirty Hands or Bonnes Femmes for a long time, and it is time to revisit them. La Ceremonie is certainly one of his best. I am amazed by how he can adapt a book by a favorite writer like Ruth Rendell or Patricia Highsmith and make a Real Chabrol Film without betraying the source. Another one from around the same time that I keep going back to is The Story of Women, and of course there's Merci pour le chocolate and Fleur de mal. What a great legacy he left us! ///// Stay well. Bob
