Criticultura em Portugal

Macbeth Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Orson Welles (1948) Starring Orson Welles and Jeannette Nolan Directed by Roman Polanski (1971) Starring Jon Finch and Francesca Annis Directed by Rupert Goold (2010) Starring Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood Throne of Blood (1957) Directed by Akira Kurosawa Starring Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada Macbeth is my favorite Shakespearean tragedy, blessed by a vision of hellish darkness, an economical plot without too many sidetrips, and portrayal of complex characters, here the sociopathic couple Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Viewing several filmed versions this week, some by renowned directors (Kurosawa, Welles, Polanski) brought up some fascinating contrasts. The plot is straightforward. Macbeth driven by a. lust for power, b. his wife, and/or c. sociopathy, murders the King of Scotland, his best friend Banquo, and the wife and children of his rival Macduff. He himself is beheaded by Macduff, invadi...

Cries and Whispers  (1972) Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman Starring Harriet Andersson and Liv Ullmann A couple of years ago, I wrote about how some artists can divorce their personal lives from their art, while others entwine the two. For example, Alfred Hitchcock was obsessed with victimized, beautiful, distant, cold women, and portrayed them endlessly in his films ( Vertigo, The Birds ). Ditto Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), perhaps the greatest-ever director of actors (as opposed to spectacle, scenery, or crowds). He was famous for his abusiveness and complete domination on the movie set, and in fact became so entwined with his female actors that he had extramarital affairs with three (Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, and Liv Ulmann, with whom he had a child). He was married five times and had nine children, none of whom he paid much attention to, being consumed with his 45 films and multitude of directed plays.   Bergman’s modus operandi was to use his fi...

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) Directed by Steven Frears Starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke Maurice (1987) Directed by James Ivory Starring James Wilby and Rupert Graves Y tu Mam á Tambi é n (2001) Directed by Alfonso Cuar ó n Starring Gael Garcia Bernal Gay male coming out/coming of age movies have always drawn actors and directors beyond what you would expect of typical teen fare. Some of this may be a mix of gay directors and screenwriters portraying their life experience, but this not always so…a diverse mix of artists has tackled this genre. Why? Beyond the usual teen opportunities for angst, cute actors, nice bodies, and party scenes, there is an irresistible overlay here, in that one or more characters must hide who they are, from themselves, their family/friends, or both. Lesbian dramas do not seem to have as much of that, perhaps because of the historically greater tolerance for lesbians, as well as the paucity of opportunities for ...

Do the Right Thing (1989) Directed by Spike Lee Over the past year or two, Broadway and off-Broadway theater has been consumed by dramas by young black playwrights expressing what is often called an “authentic” voice in which the passions, anger, resentments, and continued oppression of US black people can be expressed without the cultural filters of non-black authors. The best or most innovative of these productions like The Slave Play , Scraps , and Fairview are so immediate because they show a mix of blacks’ resigned assimilation into the culture that enslaved them, their use of music, speech, and other cultural distinctions to maintain a separate culture, and their simmering, repressed rage always ready to break through. These plays have dispensed with comforting, liberal endings in which we all come together in unity, often ending in dramatic separation of the races as the only solution. While doubtless innovative, these plays were beaten to the punch by thirty years or s...

Metropolis (1927) Directed by Fritz Lang M (1932) Directed by Fritz Lang Starring Peter Lorre Germany between 1920 and 1932 was a grim place, even in the years before the depression. Saddled with enormous debt after WWI, inflation and unemployment were widespread, and income disparities were huge.   Corporations joined the big business boom of the 1920s while common people starved. This was fertile recruitment territory for all sorts of political radicals, and its important to remember that, right up until the Nazis were voted into power in 1932, they were in close competition with Communists, monarchists, and everything in between as part of a fractured political landscape. In film, Hollywood had become dominant as the producer of popular, high quality silent movies that were watched worldwide. In those years, the German film industry sought to carve out a niche that would distinguish it from US products. It did so with a number of films called “expressionist”....