[Der Letzte Mann]
1924 - Germany
Director
FW Murnau
Starring
Emil Jannings
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Staggeringly brilliant. Bleak yet humane; oozes style yet is painfully real. This is also the first authentically silent film I have seen, in that it doesn’t rely on intertitles at all to convey meaning. And it still conveys more to the viewer than the most heavily textual silents I have seen!
(Spoilers for end!)
Man, I felt so betrayed by the ending! I thought, how stupidly cynical, how unaccountably self-reflexive. What a pointless undermining of all that went before it. Murnau’s ‘unlikely’ happy ending changes the tone dramatically and amounts to nothing, I thought. Then I read that the filmmakers had been told to tack on a happy ending so the film would sell better, and I would instead applaud their thumbing their noses at those idiots. Still, I wish modern prints disowned the ending completely, because it is pretty stupid.
So, my rating is for the rest of the film, not taking the ending into account at all.
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I can’t really get into slapstick comedy. Maybe I have an underdeveloped sense of humor, but when our cute little hero is getting beaten up or is in physical danger, I worry about him; I don’t laugh. I didn’t get Tom & Jerry or Wile E Coyote & Roadrunner as a kid, either. So I usually wouldn’t go for this sort of thing, but this really is a superlative slapsticker. Harold Lloyd is a brilliant actor, actually, and sort of… completely gorgeous.
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1927 - Germany
Director
Fritz Lang
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Stunningly creative film, not at all hampered by its simple narrative or political naivete. Deserves at least half a star higher if I cared to rate it objectively, but it does sort of enter into “how much can Lauren really love a biblically-themed dystopia?” territory. Still, it confirms what I suspected after Caligari, that German Expressionism will prove to be one of my favorite silent styles, and its reputation as one of the masterpieces of its era is absolutely deserved.
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“It’s not music. It’s SLIIIME!”
-Helmut
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1974 - Germany
Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring
Margit Carstensen, Karlheinz Bohm
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Fassbinder’s political horror-comedy is one of his very best films I’ve seen yet, hitting all the right notes in a bizarre melding of genres, resulting in a deliciously over-the-top, sinister film. The truly terrifying is mitigated by — and at the same time, heightened by — the comic absurdity of the situation: Bohm’s sadist is dangerous and deranged, but I couldn’t help but bust out laughing when his anger is invoked by Martha’s taste in popular music (”It’s SLIIIIME!!!”) and his sexual urge aroused by killing her cat. Margit Carstensen (a personal favorite) is sublime as the naive, indulgent heretofore spinster librarian whose personality is so deeply buried first under her controlling parents, then under her monstrous husband, that she is filmed in abstraction for most of her screen time, through mirrors or over her shoulder. Masterful film from Fassbinder, as deeply depressing and wickedly entertaining as I’ve come to expect him to be.
(If this is meant to be a cautionary tale at all, then I will remain a spinster librarian, thank you very much!)
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[La Maman et la putain]
1973 - France
Director
Jean Eustache
Starring
Jean-Pierre Leaud
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This may not be apparent to everyone, but I have a big bug up my ass about sex in the movies. Not in a prudish way, not that I can’t take watching sex and nudity, but the role sex plays almost always irks or infuriates me. Sex should not be a plot point, or a major turning point in a character’s life or characters’ relationships (blame Hollywood for this angle). And if it is not a plot point, why are we showing it — does the filmmaker have a concrete, meaningful reason? I’m tired of seeing sex portrayed as an animal, even unconscious instinct – so characters can later say “I couldn’t help myself; I was lost in the moment!” Pathetic. I have been searching for a film which portrays sex in an unsentimental, unglorified, de-animalized (?) way, where characters are in full knowledge of the situation, the choice, the consequences.
This is the film I have been searching for!! That is absolutely the kind of examination of sexual culture I was hoping existed somewhere. It’s an incredibly important film for me, in that sense. And it’s a great film besides — its daring uncinematicality, its honest characters. If I knew Alexandre in real life I’m sure I would loathe him and his silly, pretentious finger wiggles, but on film it’s fun to watch the bastard play out his little “scenes.”
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[Rien ne va plus]
1997 - France
Director
Claude Chabrol
Starring
Isabelle Huppert, Michel Serrault, François Cluzet
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Light comedy with random lapses into suspense-thriller territory — Huppert & Serrault are lovable as small-time con artists attempting a swindle “out of their league;” I guess they are meant to be a father/daughter team but, er… this is (rather delightfully) ambiguous. Frivolous enjoyable thing.
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Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven
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[Mutter Küsters' Fahrt zum Himmel]
1975 - Germany
Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring
Brigitte Mira, Ingrid Caven, Margit Carstensen, Karlheinz Bohm, Irm Hermann, Kurt Raab
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This is an excellent film marred only by its ending — the European ending, which jumps suddenly into text-screenplay form for I have no idea what reason, and especially the American ending, which takes all the umph out of his political critique and ends on an uncharacteristically farcical note of optimism. The two hours leading up to either ending are an engaging and scathing attack on all sides of the German political landscape — one of few films in my experience that makes such subject matter fun to watch, and Mother Küsters remains entirely human and genuinely sympathetic in the thick of it.
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The Marriage of Maria Braun
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[Die Ehe der Maria Braun]
1979 - Germany
Director
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Starring
Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Löwitsch, Günter Lamprecht
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Maria Braun is one of the great, originial characters in cinema, perfectly embodied by Hanna Schygulla who conveys volumes both broadly and with great subtlety. Maria Braun is a good example of a character who owns her sexuality and her power. And she’s not just self-consciously manipulative, but also honest, sincere, and putting it to what at least she considers to be moral ends. There is a compelling female character. It’s also a good example of what I mean when I say I don’t really care what the director’s motivations are. Fassbinder seems to be labeled a misogynist all over the place, but that’s so not what I get out of his films. Some argue that because the film ended as it did, he’s saying Maria was not really liberated — could not have gone on any longer freely — and that she was a puppet of the men in her life all along after all. That’s not my interpretation. Women can fail gloriously, too! What an ending, though, in any case!
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[Bande à part]
1964 - France
Director
Jean-Luc Godard
Starring
Anna Karina, Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur
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Which one of you recently said some director was brilliant by scenes — and which director did you say it about? …Anyway, that’s how I feel about Godard, most of the time. Here’s another that I love, fragmentarily. It had me at line dancing. It had me for long stretches at a time, even. It works out to be quite a great film, all these moments strung together. But it did not have me whole & entire.
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1955 - India
Director
Satayajit Ray
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This didn’t fully win me over until the last half hour. Until that point I viewed it as a rather straightforward realist-sentimental family drama, with some coming-of-age tale elements mixed in — as far as those themes go it was exceptional, but there’s probably a threshhold beyond which I cannot love a film of that type. Just not something that interests me deeply, unless it veers off into unusually appealing territory. It does so in the last half hour, becomes something profoundly moving and humane. In light of the ending the hour and a half that preceded it feels more clearly focused, perfectly laid out — I suspect on second viewing I will only love this film more.
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About TLC
Films: All reviewed | Favorites
Actors: Profiles | Favorites
Directors: Profiles | Favorites
All films by year
2008 Viewing log
The Woman Accused 1933, Paul Sloane
So Big! 1932, William A Wellman
The Awful Truth 1937, Leo McCarey
Conquest 1937, Clarence Brown
It’s Love I’m After 1937, Archie Mayo
The Mad Miss Manton 1938, Leigh Jason
Algiers 1938, John Cromwell
The Gay Divorcee 1934, Mark Sandrich
All This, & Heaven Too 1940, Anatole Litvak
Mannequin 1937, Frank Borzage
A short digression on Charles Boyer…
Yes, I am endeared. I am, in fact, ensorceled. His inhumanly arched eyebrows, his little winks and half-smiles, and that ability to at once maintain full control of his material while shining the spotlight on his costar: yes, that is talent; yes, this is love. And no, Cluny Brown, it’s not just the cocktails giving you that persian cat feeling… I think we both know too well it has a bit to do with Mr Charles Boyer. Rawr.
Pre-Code Hollywood
» The Woman Accused 1933 Paul Sloane
» So Big! 1932 William A Wellman
» Pre-Code Icons Gallery #1: Barbara Stanwyck
» A Month of Pre-Code Hollywood
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30s Cinema
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Nothing better suited to Hollywood romance than three weeks out of time, away from life, falling in love with a stranger, spending days idly and nights actively.
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If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger...
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