By Jennifer Baldwin. Forget the French New Wave. Yes, OK, I just got finished writing here at LFM about the greatness of Godard and VIVRE SA VIE, and I dig Truffaut and the rest of the Cahiers crowd as much as the next girl – but if I were stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life (or maybe stuck forever in a reeducation camp for Obama regime dissidents … just kidding), there is only one European “new wave” film movement I’d want to spend the rest of my days watching and it actually ain’t the French.
It’s the Czechoslovak New Wave, a film movement that received a lot of international recognition and acclaim back in the mid-to-late 1960s (e.g., winning Best Foreign Film Academy Awards in 1965 and 1967). This movement was a big deal back in the day.
But the Czech New Wave is somewhat forgotten these days, much to my disappointment. I wouldn’t really know much about it myself if it hadn’t been for the fact that I took a class back in my college days called “Central and Eastern European Cinema” taught by the genius Herb Eagle. (Admittedly, I needed to get the required “Race and Ethnicity” credits and it was the only class that satisfied those requirements that semester.)
Thanks to the tutelage of Professor Eagle I was soon hooked on Miloš Forman and Vera Chytilová films, like Chytilová’s Daisies featuring the two Maries.
Sadly, I don’t think the Czech New Wave gets enough love these days from film buff types. Everybody tosses around names like Godard and Truffaut and Rohmer and Rivette, but does anybody ever mention Chytilová or Jireš or Kádar and Klos or Menzel or Němec? (Miloš Forman doesn’t count because he’s become a well-known and award-winning director of Hollywood movies since emigrating here some 40 years ago.)
The Czech New Wave deserves better than to be some half-remembered footnote to the cinema of the 1960s. Frankly, I think the films that came out of Czechoslovakia in that era are not only fascinating examples of 1960s New Wave cinema, but they’re also still highly relevant for right now. These movies still have the power to speak to us on a political level as well as on a purely human level. If anybody wants to see what truly vibrant, brilliant, political (and personal) filmmaking is all about, they should take a look at the Czech New Wave. Continue reading The Czech New Wave: Political Cinema with a Human Face
By Jason Apuzzo. • The biggest classic movie news by far this week was the discovery in New Zealand of a treasure trove of silent films thought previously lost, including a print of John Ford’s film, Upstream. LFM contributor Jennifer Baldwin covered this story yesterday, including the fundraising efforts of the movie-blogging community toward film preservation. Check Jennifer’s post for full details on these efforts, as well as links if you wish to contribute. You can also read more about the New Zealand discovery and ongoing preservation efforts in The New York Times or in The LA Times.
• The New York Times also did a joint review of the new autobiographies out by Raquel Welch and Pam Grier – Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage and Pam’s Foxy: My Life in Three Acts. These two extraordinary ladies were the top cult movie heroines of their era, although Raquel’s career also crossed over into big mainstream faire. Raquel recently had some electrifying appearances on Fox News (especially her hilarious interview with Neil Cavuto), and also guest hosted on Turner Classic Movies a few months ago. Both of these ladies are still going strong, looking fabulous, and are dispensing a lot of good advice to the young women of today. And can we all agree that Beyond the Cleavage is easily the greatest title ever? (Surpassing even Russ Meyer’s 3-volume autobiography, A Clean Breast.) You can buy both Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage and Foxy: My Life in Three Acts in the LFM Store below, along with some of Raquel and Pam’s best films.
• A new Charlie Chan box set is out from Turner Classic Movies. Pick up a copy in the LFM Store below.
• Can it be 35 years since Jaws came out? Apparently it is. Next week marks the 35th anniversary of Jaws’ release! I still remember seeing the film with my grandmother when it came out … and I still think it’s the best non-Indiana Jones film Spielberg’s ever made, with really nothing surpassing it as a thriller except maybe Hitchcock’s Psycho. Jaws and Star Wars together are probably the greatest summer movies of all time, films that really defined the moviegoing era of the 1970’s. There’s a documentary that’s been making the rounds the last few years called The Shark is Still Working about the making of Jaws and the film’s impact on our culture, and the doc just had a screening yesterday at the Portland Underground Film Festival. Best wishes to the filmmakers on that, and Happy 35th to Jaws. You can buy a copy of Jaws in the LFM Store above.
By Jennifer Baldwin. For classic movie cinephiles, the discovery of old films once thought to be lost is one of the more thrilling aspects of our fandom. There are so many silent-era films that have been lost to the twin scourges of time and neglect that when a new discovery is made — such as the case with the recently discovered print of METROPOLIS containing footage previously thought lost — it’s the cinema equivalent of an archeologist discovering artifacts from a forgotten civilization.
Back in the day — before film preservation was finally acknowledged as a worthwhile historical enterprise — silent films and other older movies that were past their “sell date” were deemed to have no commercial value by the film studios (and were often dangerous to store, since the nitrate film stock used in the silent era is so highly flammable), and so these films were often left alone to deteriorate and die or were even melted down on purpose in order to extract the silver from the emulsion. Thousands of films are believed to be lost to history thanks to the ravages of time and neglect.
If you love old movies as well as history, this is awesome news. But I’m not just writing about this because it’s awesome news. I’m writing about this because I want conservative movie lovers to get involved. Actually, I’m sure there are plenty of conservative movie lovers already involved but I just wanted to see if I could get even more conservatives involved because I believe it’s a cause that we on the Right should and need to be involved in.
Why film preservation? What’s so conservative about that? Well, the most obvious answer is actually the best one: since conservatives are usually pretty keen on preserving and respecting our cultural heritage they should also be pretty keen on helping to restore and keep alive historical artifacts like old films. It’s as simple as that. These films are part of our history and as conservatives we claim to respect history and want to preserve American culture – well, here’s our chance.
Part of our mission here at LFM is to celebrate and promote cinema and the arts – and what better way for those of us on the Right to do this than by contributing to film preservation?
But conservative movie lovers should get involved in preservation efforts not only because it’s a good thing to do, but also as a way to show that conservatives are interested in culture in a positive way and not just as a means to score political points. I might be a little unfair in this critique of conservatives – because there ARE conservatives out there writing and commenting on film and culture that do it intelligently and with great love and enthusiasm – but there has also been a tendency for conservatives on the internet and elsewhere to simply bash Hollywood and retreat from the mainstream culture.
Standing up for our cultural past means more than just wistfully saying “I wish they still made movies like that today!” It means actually supporting and championing those cultural objects from days gone by. It means putting your money where your wistful heart is. There are opportunities now for ordinary film lovers to help save and preserve older films. Continue reading Island of Lost Films
By David Ross. The sight of pelicans trudging through the black crud of the gulf may particularly resonate with parents. This is rather what it’s like to raise a kid these days. You try to fly above the mess, but you wind up covered in muck and drowning in sludge. The difference, of course, is that BP’s gulf catastrophe was accidental, while the engineers of the kiddy culture execute a conscious and cynical plan. With all of this in mind, let me – vigilant father of a four year old – share a few of our happier experiments in what my daughter calls “watching.”
The live-action children’s films and TV of the last thirty years are largely moronic and corrosive. They militate against the values and mores of the adult world (discipline, delayed gratification, respect for legitimate authority, etc.), and acclimate kids to a norm of cliché. I wonder how many of the missing kids on the back of milk cartons we can attribute to the cliché of would-be adventurers sneaking out the window and climbing down the vine trellis? The best bet is simply to write off this swathe of cinematic history, the manipulative cultural politics of E.T. and Sesame Street included (see Kay Hymowitz’s classic essay in City Journal.)
My chief counter-recommendations are Lassie Come Home (1943) and National Velvet (1944), both starring Elizabeth Taylor and a roster of outstanding British character actors. I’m tempted to call these the best live-action children’s movies ever made. Both films are morally sophisticated without crossing the line into adult difficulty, and there is enough suspense at enough different levels to rivet the whole family. Other live-action gems are Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), starring the eternally charming Myrna Loy, and The Trouble with Angels (1966), starring Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills.
From "The Trouble With Angels."
The Trouble with Angels – which may be my very favorite kid’s movie – tells the story of a teenage troublemaker (Mills) who is sent to a convent school run by a formidable mother superior (Russell). Mills engages in various subversive high jinks – powdered soap in the sugar bowls, etc. – but gradually comes to respect the nuns’ example of quiet dignity and selflessness and in the end decides to join the order herself. What’s striking about the film from our twenty-first century perspective is how firmly and confidently it’s on the side of adult authority rather than teenage rebellion. The film takes for granted that Mills and her fellow students are ignorant and immature and that they require adult guidance; so too the film takes for granted that adults have something to teach.
The Trouble with Angels is no masterpiece, but it reminds us how radically the culture has changed. Far from teaching what it means to be an adult, today’s kiddy fare ceaselessly sounds the trumpet of revolt against parent and school, commitment and discipline, anything that thwarts the impulse of the moment. Practically, such films do the bidding of a trillion-dollar advertising-entertainment nexus that sees in every emancipated, impulsive child an emancipated, impulsive consumer. The contemporary American adult, meanwhile, submissively accepts the dismantling of his own authority, having absorbed over a lifetime the Baby-Boomer doctrine that the stern adult is always the bad guy. It occurs to me that an entire counterrevolutionary parenting philosophy is contained in the simple injunction to behave more like Rosalind Russell in The Trouble with Angels and less like Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame. Continue reading Discovering Good Kids’ Movies
By Jason Apuzzo. • The original King Kong is coming to Blu-ray. The ‘Heat Vision’ blog at Hollywood Reporter says that Kong will make its Blu-ray debut Sept. 28th. Warner Brothers is releasing the disk, and it will essentially be a re-issue of the two-disc DVD special edition put out in 2005 that coincided with Peter Jackson’s remake. This new Blu-ray edition will come with a 32-page booklet written by film historian Rudy Behlmer that will also feature rare photographs. Behlmer himself actually interviewed Kong‘s director, the great Merian C. Cooper, back in the day. I thought that two-disc edition from 2005 was extraordinary – especially the very detailed documentaries done on the making of this landmark film. Kong was an entirely revolutionary film that changed not only motion picture visual effects, but also the development of motion picture sound. I’m very much looking forward to this disk. You can buy King Kong on DVD in the LFM Store below, and you can also pre-order the Blu-ray.
• Capone over at Aint It Cool News as seen the new, restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (currently billed as ‘The Complete Metropolis’). You can see what he has to say about it here. The film will be embarking on a nationwide tour before hitting DVD in November. Some years back I wrote an article about Metropolis for the journal Neurosurgery, which you can read here. Metropolis is easily one of the most important films in the history of cinema, and its influence can be felt all the way down to the cinema of today. [Even projects like the recent indie feature Metropia – about a near-future urban dystopia – are impossible to imagine without Lang’s earlier film.] Of all the forthcoming DVDs for this year, Metropolis ranks right at the top of my ‘to buy’ list …
• Turner Classic Movies will be showing several Dennis Hopper films this Tuesday June 8th, in honor of the late actor-director. The selections will include: The Sons of Katie Elder, True Grit, Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider and Night Tide. Visit the TCM website for further details. If you miss the screenings, we’ve got these films available in the LFM Store above.
From "Easy Rider."
• In related news, there’s a rumor circulating (see here at The Criterion Cast) that Criterion may be putting out a special ‘New Hollywood’ DVD box set, to include Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, among other classics from that period. Follow the link for more about that rumor. Antonioni’s Red Desert also just came out on Blu-ray from Criterion this week. It’s available in the LFM Store above.
• Kimberly Lindbergs over at TCM’s Movie Morlocks blog has a great review up right now of the Ishiro Honda classic, Dogora (1964) – a film which features a giant jellyfish from space with an appetite for diamonds, a giant tentacle attack on Tokyo, and a sexy Japanese femme fatale. How could you ask for more? Dagora is available (in ‘Tohoscope’!) in the LFM Store above.
• Excerpts from the forthcoming book on the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton romance, Furious Love, will soon be appearing in the July issue of Vanity Fair. For more details, click on the link. Liz and Dick probably are the all-time screen couple, and were personal favorites of mine growing up. As a side note, I’ve grown tired over the years of hearing what a ‘disaster’ Cleopatra was – their work on that film being, of course, the catalyst for their relationship. Cleopatra is actually a magnificent and literate film, arguably the last large-scale epic (other than perhaps Titanic) Hollywood has ever done centered around a woman. If Liz is a bit strident in the film, one never gets the sense that the role is to big for her – arguably it was too small. In any case, rumors of Cleopatra being a ‘financial disaster’ are as ridiculous now as they were back in 1963. In today’s dollars, Cleopatra would’ve grossed $534 million at the domestic box office (i.e., roughly what The Dark Knight made), making it a strong hit for Fox – even when factoring in costs. In any case, if you’re a fan of Liz Taylor or Richard Burton, feel free to pre-order Furious Love in the LFM Store above.
From "Double Take."
• Finally, one classic film related project to avoid is a new pseudo-documentary on Alfred Hitchcock called Double Take. Double Take, directed by Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, essentially treats Alfred Hitchcock and his films as hieroglyphs of the Cold War era, an era ostensibly marked by paranoia and an existential uncanniness echoed in Hitchcock’s thematics of ‘doubling’ (one thinks here of Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, Vertigo, etc.). The film intersperses clips of Hitchcock from his television series with archival Cold War footage and staged interviews with Hitchcock impersonator Ron Burrage.
But as film critic and LFM contributor Joe Bendel writes in his review of the film, “[w]hile there is an ostensible storyline involving Hitchcock’s encounter with his doppelganger, the film is more concerned with scoring revisionist points against easy targets from American Cold War history, like Richard Nixon.” Apparently the film glibly ‘samples’ or ‘remixes’ footage of a body falling from a building in a manner highly evocative of the 9-11 attacks. Do we really need this sort of thing, just to understand Hitchcock? You can read more about this film in The New York Times, but even more recommended is LFM contributor Joe Bendel’s review.
[Editor’s Note: A restored version of Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie has just been released by Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray, and is now available at the LFM Store below at the end of this post.]
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JENNI COMES IN LATE — THE FACE OF MARIA FALCONETTI –CONVERTED — PEOPLE WALK OUT EARLY
I was late to the screening. It was French New Wave Week in World Cinema 340 and we were watching Godard’s MY LIFE TO LIVE (a.k.a. VIVRE SA VIE). It was my first Godard. I was a lazy undergrad. I came in about 15 minutes late, an intruder bringing a squeaky door and too much light into the darkened, cavernous auditorium. I felt hot and embarrassed at my intrusion. I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the back, hiding from all my fellow students. The first thing I saw was a face. It made me cry. It always makes me cry.
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC is one of my favorite films. Seeing it for the first time, I had a (re)conversion to Catholicism/cinema. Seeing it every time since, I am continually reconverted. And always crying at the face of Maria Falconetti.
I am Nana. She sees the face of Maria-as-Jeanne D’Arc and she cries too.
We are all crying, we three faces. I have a feeling no one else in the auditorium is crying. Before the screening is over, half the students have walked out. Perhaps they were disappointed at the lack of sex and the one bit of sterile nudity in a picture about prostitution. Perhaps they couldn’t feel anything when they looked at Anna Karina’s face. Perhaps they didn’t like lengthy philosophical discussions about the meaning of language and speech. Perhaps they thought the French New Wave weird and pretentious and Godard’s film most of all.
But not me. I was converted that night while watching VIVRE SA VIE. I was converted to Godard. He was my first New Wave love (Truffaut would come later, but Godard was always stronger).
It’s been almost eight years since I watched VIVRE SA VIE in college, but I have never forgotten the images or the effect the film had on me. I have never forgotten it. I recently watched the new Criterion Collection remastered DVD of VIVRE SA VIE — now my second time seeing the film. I still can’t explain my thoughts on it. It is a religious experience in that way. It is a spiritual/emotional thing, not an intellectual one. I have thoughts and feelings, but I cannot put them into words. If words were enough, I wouldn’t need the pictures.
