Edna Sweetlove
23Feb12
It's actually about the First World War and was a "quota quickie" made and released before Britain declared war on Germany. Also, what on earth have "Tories" got to do with it?
Jerry Johnson: Filmography
Hyper-intelligent mess
Kurt Walker likes this
The first 30 minutes are up there with the best Ford. Then it descends into incomprehensible madness.
"The best relationship I ever had with my mom was when I was born." -Samoan gang banger.
A curious murder plot thriller filmed by then-blacklisted Hollywood Dmytryk in England. Interesting for its mix of cool British wit and American-angst existentialism (an upper-class Englishman plots murder against an American expatriot).
A perfectly-rendered analysis of warriors-past-by. Orwell's Homage to Catalonia in past tense celluloid. And a cockfight!
Roughly 10 years before Godard got there and 50 years before the birth of the Super PAC, Tourneur (hidden away in a B-studio back lot) documents sound + image as political oppressor.
Imagine the five seasons of The Wire condensed to 80 minutes and set in rural Kansas in the 1870s. Tourneur is the king of elliptical filmmaking, maybe even more so than Rossellini. And the cherry on top: there's the coolest thing you've ever seen in cinema...and then there's the two younger Earps' entrance into Wichita.
There was once a great director named Bruno Dumont...the first 30 minutes or so are about the best thing Dumont has ever done: incommunicable fucking in farm country...and then he slides off into territory he knows nothing about and films it badly: in L'Humante, it was the police procedural; in Twenty-nine Palms, it was the USA; and this time the war genre.
Spain filmed by a tourist. Nice bullfighting scenes, though.
Tommy and Kurt Walker like this
Only The Archers could be so perverse as to make a WW2 propaganda film where we root for the Nazi. My favorite Tories!
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Jerry Johnson
23Feb12
Yes, that it was about WWI is fairly obvious. Should we call it a "leading-up-to-WW2 propaganda film"? And P&P had Tory sensibilities.
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Edna Sweetlove
23Feb12
I don't see it as any sort of propaganda film. Again, what do you mean by "Tory sensibilities"?
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Jerry Johnson
24Feb12
Tory sensibilities: the general belief in the soundness of British traditions and institutions (although they frequently offered scathing criticisms of said). I'm not sure how you can deny it was a propaganda film; when it was made at a time when Germany posed an existential threat to GB. Of course, it doesn't "feel" like a propaganda film, as P&P were such great artists.
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Edna Sweetlove
24Feb12
"Tory" today just refers to the ghastly Conservative Party, so I think it's misleading as well as inaccurate to refer to P&P as "Tories". I dislike P&P's official propaganda films (1940-1946) with all their faux-stereotypes and middle-European sentimentalism. P&P's best films together were brisk adventures like SPY or their 1950s stuff (RIVER PLATE, ILL MET, etc). Powell was a very good technical director (PEEPING TOM and the ballet sequence in RED SHOES are great) but for me the dreary Pressburger was his downfall. I don't feel it's a big deal to "deny" that SPY is propaganda - it simply never occurred to me. What possible propaganda value did it have?
A Bonnie & Clyde update...the dumb poetry of violent teens set against the sweetest Spanish pop. Only Godard shoehorns better music videos into his narratives.
A delightfully sexy teenage comedy engendered in degenerate Soviet socialist infrastructure, where every woman who appears on screen is begging to be made love to in her own special way. The appeals to Bresson and Tarr in the comments are completely off the mark: this is one part Bunuel and one part Nicholas Ray.
Smidegons.
The precursor to Wagon Master. This is the only surviving film of 11 that Ford made with Carey in 1917.
Charming for its on-location, French-village setting, but I'm still mystified by the recent critical reassessment of Gremillon's reputation.
"Karine Vanasse gives a glowing performance as Hanna, a teenager with a lively imagination and an infatuation for Anna Karina in Godard’s Vivre sa vie. A Karina-lookalike school teacher fills the void left by her exhausted and overworked mother; her best friend awakens her to a new world of sensual possibilities." Yes, I fell for the summary. Have only myself to blame for actually watching it.
Plays like a brief glimpse of an ancient and eternal ritual that repeats the same story over and over.
True story: Sam Fuller (yes, that Sam Fuller) wanted to make the sequel to Dazed and Confused.
Kurt Walker and 4 others like this
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Jerry Johnson
22Dec11
He pitched it to Linklater as a feature-length extrapolation of the paddling scenes.
Perfectly-rendered genre melodrama that glimpses the cracks of time-period socio-sexual politics. Plus, the post-war leftist Italian critics hated it, which pretty much guarantees it's a masterpiece. The lead is a dead ringer for an old flame and falls on her sword just as beautifully.
A shell game in search of a little round ball.
"There is no Mizoguchi. There is no Ozu. There is only Naruse." A cheap paraphrasal sentiment, yes, but as I grow older, I'm only interested in the cold, hard facts of cinema. Characters are always entering and exiting a scene in Mizo and Ozu. Not in Naruse: his cinema is a trap. He never gave an actor direction- he cornered them and watched them squirm for our benefit.
Tourneur does Ford. Or rather, Freud does Will Rogers. What's psychological in Tourneur is sociological in Ford. Which is why Tourneur's racists don white hoods while Ford's are out in open flesh. Watch this and Ford's Steamboat Around the Bend together.
As usual, the Cohens have zero insight into human relationships and a minimal grasp of what makes a genre tick. However, they cast this movie beautifully, which is its saving grace.
Kurt Walker likes this
Upgrading this to five stars after seeing it again for the first time in 15 years. I regularly encountered Eagle in Austin and even awarded him a grant, which he probably drank away. An extremely painful movie-watching experience.
Judicial Joe and Aflwydd like this
I didn't get it but I only have about 12 Facebook friends. All I saw was a courtroom drama coupled with a fraternity film and on those two accounts, the film is decidedly average.
Tarantino's favorite Hollywood studio comedy. Go figure.
Now I know where Kubrick got everything. There are only three colors in this film" gray, green, and Maureen's red hair.
House of Leaves likes this
There is an unrepentant blackness to this film that is both startling and frightening. It's a war movie without an act of heroism or even an attempt at heroism. Nobody goes home because home isn't worth it.
If Bela Tarr knew how to edit a film and work with actors, and was willing to make a Western, it would probably come out something like this. A strange brew.
Probably the low point of Aldrich's career. His brilliant energy can't overcome the screenplay, two producers, and bizarre mismatch of the actors.
