Ehsan Khoshbakht's Forum Posts

Jazz Anyone? about 2 years ago

The essence of film, YES!

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The General Line (1927-29) about 2 years ago

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وای از آن صبح ِگرم ِ اسفند! جنوب، بی وقت، وزید، که بیدار شود خاطره های ِ فقر ِ پوچ ما، فلاکتِ جوان ما. (رمبو/الهی/اشراق‌ها/کارگران)

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La Terra Trema (1948) about 2 years ago

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La Terra Trema (1948) about 2 years ago

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Giacomelli/Grémillon/Rossellini about 2 years ago

One & three – photos by Mario Giacomelli (1925 – 2000)
Two – a shot from Le ciel est à vous (Jean Grémillon, 1944)
Four – a shot from Francesco, giullare di Dio (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

*

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Thérèse Raquin (1953) about 2 years ago

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Alice's Restaurant (1969) about 2 years ago

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Gueule d'amour (1937) about 2 years ago

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The General Line (1927-29) about 2 years ago

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Thérèse Raquin (1953) about 2 years ago

Don’t worry. There is enough room for everyone.
Have you seen ALL 23 Carné films?

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Thérèse Raquin (1953) about 2 years ago

quite agree with you, Angel. As long as complex mise-en-scene and deep understanding of human condition is concerned, Carné is one of the true giants of cinema. If today we celebrate film noir, we must not forget the influence of Carné (via Gabin/Prévert collabration, or let’s say “Poetic Realism”) on the philosophy and pictorial appearance of noir. He was a poet, an architect of images and the most intellectually cynic filmmaker of french talking cinema.

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Alice's Restaurant (1969) about 2 years ago

For Dzimas: On Deathbed of Woody Guthrie

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Luchino Visconti about 2 years ago

Revisiting some of Visconti’s early films, it was very interesting how in the idiom of neorealism he is implying a very personal view (and style). How he is escaping from the limitations of Italian cinema and goes beyond the warm-hearted depiction of everyday life of ordinary people:

His compositions have deep roots in the last century’s art, especially painting and opera.

Powerful elements of queer subjectivity from his very first picture, and discussing this theme, directly in his latter works.

Sexual conflict and the image of the destructive woman. Reappears in his later films as “fascism and sexual perversion.”

Quasi-documentary realism; the exoticism intrinsic to the subject matter; the underlying “human geography.”

Extensive use of close-ups.

Dialectical confrontation between high and low, ancient and new, aristocracy and proletarian as depicted in contradiction between architecture and man, or people and their surroundings.

Unreconciled tension between a Marxian vision of society and an operatic conception of character.

Depicting the dissolution of the aristocracy with sympathy and understanding for the aesthetic and intellectual qualities that Visconti, as an aristocrat himself, so deeply appreciated. One can call all his best films, the stories of decadence of his class. Meanwhile notice how Visconti use mirrors as a object of reflecting the inner state of the main character , or to show passing of time and coming to age (especially in Leopard case), when Burt Lancaster is standing in front of a mirror, and it’s reflecting Alain Delon’s image.

I find these two shots from La Terra trema, one of Visconti’s most crucial shot/reverse shots among his early films.

Men leave for sea. Women farewell them. As they close the shabby house’s door. Two shot, from two different angle picture this severance and shows how Visconti substitutes neorealist subjectivity with a pure pictorial aesthetics, based on opera.
See the emphasis on architecture, the sense of space that goes beyond daily reality. And also look how a bared tree turns into a aesthetic element of the shot. The unusual angle between two shots is nothing like common reaction shots that we used to see in the films of that particular period. In a sense, it’s an unnecessary shot, but it works perfectly and we can extend this idea to Visconti’s way of building his sequences, too.
That’s also the way Visconti create his unique cinematic rhythm. Pacing in his early films anticipated the 1960s art cinema style with less emphasis on action and more emphasis on character development and creating a special sense of time and space. His films have many long sequences that may at first viewing seem “unnecessary” for the development of the plot, but that are actually crucial to Visconti’s study of the mood and psychological aspects of the film.

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Luchino Visconti about 2 years ago

Thanks Kenji. I’m going to continue this kind of analyzing pictorial elements of great directors works on my blog. Recently I wrote an article for Iranian “Film Monthly” about how one should pick right frames and how systematically discuss them in the context of a particular film or the oeuvre of a director. My next project will be John Ford.

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Luchino Visconti about 2 years ago

Joks; that’s true, for sure. When everybody (including masters like De Sica and Rossellini) was trying to expand his cinematic language within the boundaries of neorealism, he was a real fearless freelancer (see La Tera Trema) from both ‘social commitment’ and ‘style’ point of view. In the second modern wave of Italian cinema (talking about Fellini, Antonioni) he was already a giant figure as far as complex rhythms and new narrative techniques were concerned. But maybe he was too arty, too aristocrat and two drowned in the past for the critics and audiences who excepted something quiet opposite from Italian cinema, due to all those cliches established from Fascist period to even Fellini age. Please go back and dig his early days and also his English biography book by Gala Servadio.

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Luchino Visconti about 2 years ago

Ali; I have seen all Visconti films (including his partially made films with other Italian directors). I love Bellisima and the sexual subtext in the second one (that I know as Sandra - US title) is very interesting for me. it’s a meeting between Antonioni and Freud in extreme points. Some stills from Sandra for you:

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Post a song you are currently listening to about 2 years ago

Vodka:
John Coltrane with Paul Quinchette (from “Cattin’ with Coltrane and Quinichette,” 1957)

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Why did we change our name to MUBI? about 2 years ago

You know when a totalitarian regime, in a third-world country. gains power, what he do first?
Changes the publicly accepted names of the streets and districts to strange and abstract ones! This new thing in auteur reminds me of that phenomenon! and I still can’t understand why.