Criticultura em Portugal

The Ascension (aka The Ascent)  (1977) Directed by Larisa Efimovna Shepitko Starring Boris Plotnikov and Vladimir Gostyukhin The 1970’s have featured prominently in my film reviews. It was a golden era, tapping on responses to 1960’s turmoil to make films that explored human rebellion and the very role of mankind. And I have not yet even gotten to Deliverance, Taxi Driver, and The Godfather. Amidst the Cold War and all these great US films, I was totally unaware of a thriving film industry in the Soviet Union. Many of these films were shown only in the Eastern Bloc and at film festivals.  But they are now more available on the Criterion Channel and elsewhere. The titans of Soviet film remain the great innovators Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948, The Battleship Potemkin, Boris Gudunov ) and Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986, Solaris, Mirror ). Interestingly, while the Soviet dictators often repressed music, opera, and theater, they often left filmmakers alone, and a whole group of ...

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Directed by Peter Weir Starring Rachel Roberts   Gallipoli (1981) Directed by Peter Weir Starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee Prior to the mid-70s, Australian film was a real backwater, with few films ever seen outside the country, and what there was mostly limited to brainless comedies. But starting with the films of Peter Weir (b. 1944), things changed. First his films got acclaim at the Cannes festival, then the European art film market, then finally the US. This opened things up for stylish money-makers like Mad Max (1979). Weir later broke into the US market with Witness (1985), The Dead Poet’s Society (1989), then The Truman Show (1998). All these films combine an arty, unique style with popular filmmaking and big stars like Jim Carey, Robin Williams and Mel Gibson. Yet the film I like best is his second, Picnic at Hanging Rock , a gorgeous, haunting film not easily classified as either romance, mystery, or horror. It’s about a group...

Something Wild (1961) Directed by Jack Gerfein Starring Carroll Baker and Ralph Meeker   The early 1960s were an odd period in US film. The conservatism of the 1950's was still rampant, but the Kennedy election gave more of a view of the future to the public. While the big studios still dominated things, and there was very little “independent cinema”, even the big studios would sometimes experiment with some socially disruptive films like Rebel without a Cause (Warner Brothers 1955) or On the Waterfront (Columbia, 1954). These were edgy, but were made easier to sell by featuring young hunks like Marlon Brando and James Dean (more on them later). That any films  with any social protest at all were made is remarkable, given McCarthyism and the blacklisting of the most creative Hollywood talent. This conservatism was still pretty much the status quo by 1960-1, where the big grossing films were studio spectaculars like Ben Hur and Spartacus . So what to make of Somethi...

Fight without Hate (1948) Directed by Andre Michel The Games of the V Olympiad Stockholm, 1912 Directed by Adrian Wood Olympia (1938) Directed by Leni Riefenstahl The excellent Criterion Channel, my go-to source for excellent films during this endless marooning plague, now has posted a fascinating set of over 100 years of films about the Olympic games, ranging from predictable teary-eyed personal triumph stories to very artsy, idiosyncratic studies. What I have found fascinating about them is how one can evaluate the societal mores of an era by both watching the panorama and listening to the commentary. Sportscasters tend to speak with far more improvisation than do most actors or other newscasters. So they let slip all sorts of interesting things. During commentary on the London games of 1948 we here lots of talk from the British commentators about the “American negro team” (perhaps as distinct from the actual American team). The racial remarks about “burly negros...

Boxing Helena (1993) Directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch Starring Julian Sands and Sherilyn Fenn The Head that Wouldn’t Die (1962) Directed by Joseph Green Starring Jason Evers and Virginia Leath Last week’s review of Dogtooth , the movie about entrapped, isolated children of controlling parents, got me thinking about other dramas of control. Of course, Shaw’s Pygmalion (then My Fair Lady ) is a famous example, as Henry Higgins seeks to remake a poor girl into a society lady. Ditto Vertigo, Hitchcock’s classic drama of a man’s obsession with the idea of a woman, rather than a real woman. These excellent dramas give rise to some uncomfortable truths about how some men would rather have a fantasy partner than work with a real one. I then remembered two films that take this concept to excess. Boxing Helena is a not-so-great movie that makes you pretty uncomfortable about sex roles, rather like Dogtooth makes you about parenting. The excellent British actor Jul...