8 1/2 (1963) dir. Federico Fellini, starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale. The story of a film director who, with an entire crew and cast awaiting, realizes that he has no idea what to do next. While dodging the everyone’s demands of him and managing his complicated love life, he daydreams about his childhood and imagines scenes for his floundering film.
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Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), dir. Ingmar Bergman, starring Ulla Jacobsson, Eva Dahlbeck, Gunnar Björnstrand, Harriet Andersson, Jarl Kulle, Margit Carlqvist.
I had planned to watch Bergman’s Persona tonight, but the times being what they are, I decided I needed something more lighthearted and so watched instead a Bergman comedy. Also, the story is set around midsummer’s eve, which is this week, so it seemed like the perfect choice.
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Seven Samurai (1954) dir. Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and many more! This is an astonishingly epic action movie that set the standard for the genre for decades to come. It is hard to fully appreciate how innovative it was when it came out, as so many aspects of it (plot points, characters, structure, camera and editing techniques) have since been borrowed and reused many, many times. The entire genre of the ‘spaghetti western’ is pretty much just a retread of this film.
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Pather Panchali (1955), dir. Satyajit Ray, starring Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Uma das Gupta, Subir Bannerjee, Chunibala Devi. Music by Ravi Shankar.
This was independent India’s first big film success. It was also the debut of Satyajit Ray, who had never directed a film before and cinematographer Subrata Mitra, a stills photographer who had never operated a film camera before the first day of the shoot. On a shoestring budget and with a novice crew, production proceeded in fits and starts over a three year period. The end result is astonishingly mature in its pacing and storytelling, and the cinematography is stunning. Both Ray and Mitra went on to lengthy successful careers because of the international acclaim the film received.
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Threepenny Opera (1931), dir. George Pabst, starring Rudolf Forster, Carola Neher, Lotte Lenya, Reinhold Schünzel, Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert, Ernst Busch. Adapted from the hit stage musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
I have to admit I was fully prepared to love this movie before it even began, which makes this review a little suspect. Oh well. The fact is I’ve been watching an awful lot of German films from between the wars, both silent and sound, and I am familiar enough with some of the actors that when they pop up in small roles I feel like I’m seeing an old friend. (“Oh look! The minister is Hermann Thimig!”)
That disclaimer aside, here’s my take on the movie.
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Les Enfants du Paradis / Children of Paradise (1945) dir. Marcel Carné, starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur. Another film shot in wartime, with a fascinating backstory. During the occupation of France, German authorities decided to keep the French film industry going, as a kind of public relations move, and many French films were produced during this period, under Nazi supervision. The Germans restricted subject matter and put limits on film length, which is why this three-hour epic is ostensibly broken into two parts – it was shot as two films, but has always been shown as one.
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Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, starring Nikolay Cherkasov. I thought I’d pick another film made as WWII was still raging. As the Axis forces were approaching Moscow, Sergei Eisenstein and many other Soviet filmmakers were evacuated to Alma Ata in the Kazakh Republic, where he came up with the plan to make a three-part film about the 16th century tsar who united Russia. With Stalin’s enthusiastic approval, the project launched into production at the Mosfilm studio in Alma Ata.
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Last night I watched this epic, directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, backed up by a cast of thousands. This lavish production was made while Britain was still at war, in fact it was partly financed by the British government as a morale booster, and Churchill himself had input in the script revisions. (Besides shortening the play for time, several instances were cut in which the King does some extremely not-nice things. Apparently they wanted to keep the film as uplifting as possible.) Henry V was a good choice for a rousing, patriotic picture, with Henry’s memorable pre-battle speeches (“Once more unto the breach! Dear friends, once more…” and “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…”), not to mention a plucky British army beating all the odds to win a decisive victory over a foreign foe.
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Directed by Howard Hawks, starring Garry Cooper. I knew this was a very highly regarded film, and despite a little patriotic hokum, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s the true story of Alvin C. York, the Tennessee farmer and sharp shooter who applied for conscientious objector status during WWI, was denied, and then went on to become one of the most highly decorated heroes of the conflict.
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More cheerful fare for your isolating days. These three comedies are currently showing on the Criterion Channel but you should be able to find them elsewhere.
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