Criticultura em Portugal

All the President’s Men (1976) Directed by Alan J. Pakula Starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford All the President’s Men , the account of how two Washington Post reporters brought down Richard Nixon, is an endlessly gripping film. It is one of those rare birds like Titanic that, even though you know the ending, you get wrapped up in the process and caught up in the tension each time you watch it. It is only the occasional film that can do that, and is a testament to the tense, relentless pace of director Pakula and the performances of the two contrasting stars. We should recall that in 1976 Richard Nixon was still only two years into his unprecedented retirement, Vietnam still was a scar on society, and the Reagan/conservative/business oriented 80’s were still in the future. And I was entering college, missing the revolutionary student era of the 60’s but also the business-monetary fixations of the 80’s. The 70’s was a golden era of US cinema, liberated by 60’s activism...

Zero for Conduct (Zero de Conduite) (1933) Directed by Jean Vigo if…. . (1968) Directed by Lindsay Anderson Starring Malcolm McDowell Taps (1981) Directed by Harold Becker Starring Timothy Hutton, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, and George C. Scott Here are three films, made almost a half century apart, all making the same points, and all influenced by the earlier films on the list. If you add Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies to this mix, you have a nice bundled metaphor declaiming that when adolescent boys get together, they can create their own mini-society of cruelty, brutality, and outraged sense of being wronged by the world, a society reflective of our societal ills in general. All of these films end in riots flying in the face of societal conformity, and all nicely protest societal injustices of their own era and country. Zero for Conduct is a wild and remarkable autobiographical film from 1933, just a few years into the sound era. It depicts a French boys’ boarding sc...

The Promised Land (1975) Directed by Andrzej Wajda Starring Daniel Olbrychski Every once in a while, you stumble across and unknown masterwork. This is most often the case in movies and books, since newness is a primary virtue in each, (unlike, say, classical music), and works are often forgotten after their premieres. This week I watched The Promised Land , a searing 1975 critique of capitalism and income inequality by the fine Polish director Andrej Wajda, who I mentioned last week as the director of Siberian Lady Macbeth . I have never seen a film that so ruthlessly depicts the generations of people abused by the industrial revolution, and how the attitudes of the ruling/monied classes differ so strongly from those of the workers. This film won prizes at the Moscow Film Festival (then under Soviet control) and was a nominee for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, a rare double that indicates how well the film transcended political rivalries to depict the human condition. One rec...

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , op. 29 (1934) Composed by Dmitri Shostakovitch Siberian Lady Macbeth (1962) Directed by Andrzej Wajda Starring Olivera Marković Lady Macbeth (2016) Directed by William Oldroyd Starring Florence Pugh Last week I talked quite a bit about Lady Macbeth as the co-protagonist of Shakespeare’s famed tragedy. But she actually has stirred up a bit of an entertainment industry of her own. In 1865 the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov wrote a novella called A Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District . It was far ahead of its time in exploring issues of adultery and the subjugation of women. His works were generally banned, ignored or reviled then as far too wicked and corrupting for the time. But Dostoyevsky was an admirer, and published his novella in his literary magazine. The fame of this work was such that Dmitri Shostakovich made it into an opera in 1934 (it was again banned as corrupting and got the composer in big trouble), then was later made into films in 1962 a...

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...