Gotham, 1988.
Category Archives: Movies
MORE YVONNE
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WALT
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ON THE SET
The Godfather, 1972.
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BARRYMORE
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A SILENT MOVIE POSTER FOR TODAY
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THE COSMOPOLITANS
If you’re a fan of Whit Stillman’s movies, or just a fan of quirky, original, amusing TV, take a look at Stillman’s pilot for an Amazon Originals series:
It’s a short, funny, intriguing introduction to a circle of young ex-pats living in Paris — they’re sophisticated, up to a point, clueless, up to a point, and generally bewildered about love and sex, which is what they’re mostly interested in.
If you like it, vote for the series to continue — which is the only way we’re going to get more of this delectable treat.
A MOVIE POSTER FOR TODAY
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ON THE SET
The Night Of the Hunter, 1955.
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MORE MILEY
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A MOVIE POSTER FOR TODAY
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COOL
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LOLA
Jacques Demy’s films are odd combinations of whimsey, melancholia, fantasy, grace and bittersweet transcendence. They are always sincerely humane but sometimes, for me, a bit thin, a bit precious.
Lola, his first feature film, from 1961, has its moments of genuine magic, and one wrenching dramatic confrontation, but it has an anodyne quality overall. Demy loves to set up situations that threaten disaster but end up o. k., or even magically well. This can start to seem a little too pat and cute at times.
Of course, at other times Demy deals with genuine emotional disasters that are only redeemed by resignation, acceptance and charity, and his films can be deeply moving when he ventures into that sort of psychic territory. Essentially, Demy’s work is melodrama, inflected in quirky ways — sometimes a bit too fecklessly, sometimes in ways that are surprising and amusing, sometimes in ways that touch the heart memorably.
There’s never been another film artist quite like him. At his best he’s eccentrically brilliant, and even when he’s not at his best he reveals a spirit that’s sweetly endearing. Lola is not, to my mind, Demy at his best, but it’s entertaining and charming enough in its own modest terms. Raoul Coutard’s wonderful black-and-white cinematography, all done on location in Nantes, is alone worth the price of admission.
KEEP A MOVIN’
FOLLOW THAT DREAM
A case might be made that a cinema without conventional artistic ambitions would be the purest form of cinema possible. Its visual aspect would aspire to delight and interest without convincing anyone that its images were aesthetically valuable in themselves. Its narrative aspect would aspire to engage without convincing anyone that the drama it served was profound or important. It would reduce every aspect of cinema to the absolute essence of cinema’s appeal — moving pictures of interesting places and people that tell a coherent and involving story just for its own sake.
From this viewpoint, many of the movies starring Elvis Presley would rank as the purest sort of cinema. They consist of images crafted by highly competent technicians which are pleasing to look at and often very interesting as photographic records. Their narratives have no pretensions to dramatic profundity but are diverting and amusing. They are set in interesting places, a mix of actual locations and studio sets that meticulously recreate actual locations with daring artificiality. They are all organized around a personality with a riveting screen presence and a spectacular talent — singing — who is fascinating to watch quite apart from his skills as an actor impersonating a character.
Many Elvis movies fail to deliver any of the elements we normally expect cinematic “art” to deliver, yet they are exhilarating phenomena all the same. They reduce commercial narrative cinema to its essence, and remind us that the essence of commercial narrative cinema has a high value in its own right. They are great and admirable because they are intensely fun and fascinating and pleasing without pretending to be anything other than intensely fun and fascinating and pleasing.
Check out Twilight Time’s new Blu-ray edition of the Elvis movie Follow That Dream. It is intensely fun and fascinating and pleasing. It is pure cinema.