Sunday 24 January 2010
Friday 22 January 2010
Les Bas Fonds-1936
It is one of the curiosities in the history of cinema that Jean Renoir who has been busy making Une Partie de Campagne left it for directing a film, theme of which was apparently against his grain. Une Partie is like a painting of his father come to life where nature takes hand in determining the life of a nubile girl in the flush of her adolescence and her first love. The lovers surrender to nature and to their emotions, and go on to live naturally miserable lives apart. If we look at his father’s paintings we see similar tableaux of lovers with certain poses, foliage, sun and shade. But he left it for filming The Lower Depths in 1936.
Whereas The Lower Depths is a closed- in world bearing the superscription as in Dante’s Hell. (Despair is the key that is etched on the souls of its denizens.) What had the Gorky’s gutter play to wean him from the Maupassant story?
In 1936 the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France created within the French Left a new sense of solidarity with the Soviet Union. In that context the Russian immigrant producer Alexander Kamenka asked Jean Renoir to direct a film of Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths. Renoir accepted the offer and before agreeing to take on the project, Renoir insisted that the film be set in France (not Russia), and that some drastic changes be made to the plot. The most significant change was the ending; the tragic denouement in Gorki’s play was replaced with a happier ending, in keeping with the mood of the time.
Trivia: Renoir was obliged to write to Gorki to receive permission for these alterations to the story, which was duly given (although Gorki died a few months before the film was released).
Plot
The story revolves around two characters that represent two ends of the society. One is titled and the other a common thief. The baron (Jouvet ) has stolen 30,000 rubles from the ministry and lost it gambling. Pépel (Gabin) has come to rob the baron’s luxurious house and finds nothing worth stealing there. The baron, returning home in a suicidal mood, interrupts Pépel’s theft. Here in their first encounter, each opens the eyes of the other to the possibility of change. Each glimpses a new possibility, the baron, a life without things; Pépel a life without thefts.
Soon the baron appears at the flophouse. The baron soon finds himself in the swim of things there. If thousand- ruble game in the casino had turned his world upside down he finds life there: he can still indulge his passion in the three-kopek game in the flophouse. If he has lost his class he has found his life. He sheds luxury and prestige without regret. When Pépel finds life in the lower depths unbearable and proposes to leave the flophouse, he asks the baron what he will do. The baron replies without hesitation, “I’ll stay here.” He has no desire to go. Unlike Gorky’s baron, his descent from aristocracy has not been degrading but liberating.
After Pépel leaves the baron’s carrying the bronze horses he steals some apples, then gives them to a child and tells him, “And if someday someone tells you Pépel is a thief, you’ll set them straight.” The film ends with homage to Chaplin's Modern Times as the lovers walk off down the road of life.
Acting:
The film is apart from its dark theme is carried by the acting of the two main characters. The Gabin-Jouvet pairing is a masterstroke, with both actors providing fine performances that are charged with conviction and humanity. Despite their different backgrounds and approaches to their art, the two actors complement each other perfectly, the down-trodden and passionate proletarian played by Gabin making a poignant contrast with Jouvet’s ruined but nonchalant aristocrat. The scene where the two characters meet and, realising the absurdity of the barriers which separate them, become friends is one of the enduring moments of the film, and is certainly in keeping with the ethos of the Popular Front. The large supporting cast gives the film its richness and colour, with notable performances from Suzy Prim, Robert Le Vigan.
Junie Astor as Natasha
While Gabin and Jouvet were excellent there was much to be desired in the acting of Natasha. Dramatically she plays a prominent role in the film, necessary for both the death of Kostylyov and Pépel’s escape from the lower depths. But her performance destroys almost every scene she is in. Renoir said of this, “She’s terrible, isn’t she? She was a friend of the producer. He asked me as a special favor to give her the part. I worked hard with her but it didn’t do much good.
“Some faces are beautiful, made for the camera. Some faces are not beautiful but interesting. But Junie Astor had a face that showed nothing to the camera. It is empty.”Renoir
“…the wonderful opening shot of the film: Jouvet stands upright, the only figure on screen, in the centre of the frame, silent but with an occasional superior smirk escaping him as his unseen superior rebukes him for embezzling ministry funds to pay off his gambling debts; and the camera swings round him first to the left and then further and further to the right finally to reveal his superior reflected in a mirror.
This single opening shot keys us to all the important features of the film: the priority given to star persona and performance; the degree to which the narrative differs from (adds to, opens out) Gorky's original play; and the significance of Renoir's camera style of this time, characterised by deep-focus depth-of-field, the moving camera, and the revelation of off-screen space, the world extending beyond the limits of the frame”(brightlights films.com- Ian Johnston)
Renoir and Kurosawa
Donald Richie calls Akira Kurosawa’s film of The Lower Depths a miracle of ensemble playing. In contrast Renoir makes of the play a vehicle for two fine actors, Louis Jouvet and Jean Gabin. The action of Kurosawa’s film occurs completely within the flophouse, as does the play, but less than half of Renoir’s Lower Depths takes place there. Still the flophouse remains, visually, the most interesting locale in the film, with its chiaroscuro lighting and dramatic shadows, its rough bricks, rude stairways, and old wooden posts that often divide the screen vertically or project diagonally across the frame and its length that lends itself so well to deep focus cinematography.
When Akira Kurosawa made his version of The Lower Depths in 1957 he had seen Renoir’s film. It was perhaps that which led him to try it himself. Unlike Renoir, Kurosawa follows Gorky almost scene for scene. In a style that resembles Renoir’s in its long takes and deep focus cinematography Kurosawa creates his flophouse as the locus of a world. But by the sheer vitality of the life in his film manages to overthrow the despair and pathos that permeate the play.
Kurosawa greatly admired Jean Renoir, thought him one of the greatest masters of cinema. The two met once in the 1970s, late in Renoir’s life when Kurosawa was in Los Angeles to receive an Academy Award and was invited to have dinner with the Renoirs. Kurosawa has written that his own decision to write an autobiography was prompted by reading Renoir’s My Life and My Films “and by the terrific impression Renoir left on me when I met him—the feeling that I would like to grow old in the same way he did.”
Kurosawa’s Lower Depths shows the power that could be achieved in cinema by staying close to the text and setting of Gorky’s work. Renoir did not see Kurosawa’s film until 1977. He watched it with great interest, then remarked, “That is a much more important film than mine.”
Although overshadowed by Renoir’s subsequent masterpieces (La Grande Illusion was made straight after this film), Les Bas-fonds is an impressive work, which, through its very evident humanity, remains a surprisingly modern film. Its wry comic touches have an ironic edge to them, a suggestion perhaps that Renoir might have preferred this to be a much darker work, in the vein of the poetic realists. This is also hinted at by the location filming which uses an almost neo-realist style to convey the grim reality of poverty. Noticeable also in this film is Renoir’s admiration for his two heroes of the silent era, Eric Von Stroheim and Chaplin.
A variant of the Lower Depths was made later where some of the Russian elements of the play were introduced that seems to have prevented the film from being a popular success. The film was well received by the critics, however, and was awarded the first Prix Louis Delluc in 1937.
Cast
* Jean Gabin - Wasska Pepel
* Louis Jouvet - The Baron
* Suzy Prim - Vassilissa
* Junie Astor - Natacha
* Jany Holt - Nastia
* Vladimir Sokoloff - Kostileff
Robert Le Vigan - L'Acteur; Camille Bert - Le Comte; René Génin - Le Vieillard; Paul Temps - Satine; Robert Ozanne - Jabot; Léon Larive - Felix, le domestique; Alex Allin; Maurice Baquet - Accordeoniste; André Gabriello - Le Commissaire; Lucien Mancini - Patron de la guinguette; Sylvain
Credit
Jacques Becker - First Assistant Director, Jean Renoir - Director, Marguerite Renoir - Editor, Jean Wiener - Composer (Music Score), Jean Bachelet - Cinematographer, F. Bourgas - Cinematographer, Arthur Mayer - Producer, Eugène Lourié - Set Designer, Jacques Companeez - Screenwriter, Jean Renoir - Screenwriter, Charles Spaak - Screenwriter, Maxim Gorky - Play Author
Similar Movies
Dodes'ka-Den; Die Freudlose Gasse; Austeria; The L-Shaped Room
(Ack: James Travers,2002, Alexander Sesonske-criterion collection-30Dec,2003)
benny
Whereas The Lower Depths is a closed- in world bearing the superscription as in Dante’s Hell. (Despair is the key that is etched on the souls of its denizens.) What had the Gorky’s gutter play to wean him from the Maupassant story?
In 1936 the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France created within the French Left a new sense of solidarity with the Soviet Union. In that context the Russian immigrant producer Alexander Kamenka asked Jean Renoir to direct a film of Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths. Renoir accepted the offer and before agreeing to take on the project, Renoir insisted that the film be set in France (not Russia), and that some drastic changes be made to the plot. The most significant change was the ending; the tragic denouement in Gorki’s play was replaced with a happier ending, in keeping with the mood of the time.
Trivia: Renoir was obliged to write to Gorki to receive permission for these alterations to the story, which was duly given (although Gorki died a few months before the film was released).
Plot
The story revolves around two characters that represent two ends of the society. One is titled and the other a common thief. The baron (Jouvet ) has stolen 30,000 rubles from the ministry and lost it gambling. Pépel (Gabin) has come to rob the baron’s luxurious house and finds nothing worth stealing there. The baron, returning home in a suicidal mood, interrupts Pépel’s theft. Here in their first encounter, each opens the eyes of the other to the possibility of change. Each glimpses a new possibility, the baron, a life without things; Pépel a life without thefts.
Soon the baron appears at the flophouse. The baron soon finds himself in the swim of things there. If thousand- ruble game in the casino had turned his world upside down he finds life there: he can still indulge his passion in the three-kopek game in the flophouse. If he has lost his class he has found his life. He sheds luxury and prestige without regret. When Pépel finds life in the lower depths unbearable and proposes to leave the flophouse, he asks the baron what he will do. The baron replies without hesitation, “I’ll stay here.” He has no desire to go. Unlike Gorky’s baron, his descent from aristocracy has not been degrading but liberating.
After Pépel leaves the baron’s carrying the bronze horses he steals some apples, then gives them to a child and tells him, “And if someday someone tells you Pépel is a thief, you’ll set them straight.” The film ends with homage to Chaplin's Modern Times as the lovers walk off down the road of life.
Acting:
The film is apart from its dark theme is carried by the acting of the two main characters. The Gabin-Jouvet pairing is a masterstroke, with both actors providing fine performances that are charged with conviction and humanity. Despite their different backgrounds and approaches to their art, the two actors complement each other perfectly, the down-trodden and passionate proletarian played by Gabin making a poignant contrast with Jouvet’s ruined but nonchalant aristocrat. The scene where the two characters meet and, realising the absurdity of the barriers which separate them, become friends is one of the enduring moments of the film, and is certainly in keeping with the ethos of the Popular Front. The large supporting cast gives the film its richness and colour, with notable performances from Suzy Prim, Robert Le Vigan.
Junie Astor as Natasha
While Gabin and Jouvet were excellent there was much to be desired in the acting of Natasha. Dramatically she plays a prominent role in the film, necessary for both the death of Kostylyov and Pépel’s escape from the lower depths. But her performance destroys almost every scene she is in. Renoir said of this, “She’s terrible, isn’t she? She was a friend of the producer. He asked me as a special favor to give her the part. I worked hard with her but it didn’t do much good.
“Some faces are beautiful, made for the camera. Some faces are not beautiful but interesting. But Junie Astor had a face that showed nothing to the camera. It is empty.”Renoir
“…the wonderful opening shot of the film: Jouvet stands upright, the only figure on screen, in the centre of the frame, silent but with an occasional superior smirk escaping him as his unseen superior rebukes him for embezzling ministry funds to pay off his gambling debts; and the camera swings round him first to the left and then further and further to the right finally to reveal his superior reflected in a mirror.
This single opening shot keys us to all the important features of the film: the priority given to star persona and performance; the degree to which the narrative differs from (adds to, opens out) Gorky's original play; and the significance of Renoir's camera style of this time, characterised by deep-focus depth-of-field, the moving camera, and the revelation of off-screen space, the world extending beyond the limits of the frame”(brightlights films.com- Ian Johnston)
Renoir and Kurosawa
Donald Richie calls Akira Kurosawa’s film of The Lower Depths a miracle of ensemble playing. In contrast Renoir makes of the play a vehicle for two fine actors, Louis Jouvet and Jean Gabin. The action of Kurosawa’s film occurs completely within the flophouse, as does the play, but less than half of Renoir’s Lower Depths takes place there. Still the flophouse remains, visually, the most interesting locale in the film, with its chiaroscuro lighting and dramatic shadows, its rough bricks, rude stairways, and old wooden posts that often divide the screen vertically or project diagonally across the frame and its length that lends itself so well to deep focus cinematography.
When Akira Kurosawa made his version of The Lower Depths in 1957 he had seen Renoir’s film. It was perhaps that which led him to try it himself. Unlike Renoir, Kurosawa follows Gorky almost scene for scene. In a style that resembles Renoir’s in its long takes and deep focus cinematography Kurosawa creates his flophouse as the locus of a world. But by the sheer vitality of the life in his film manages to overthrow the despair and pathos that permeate the play.
Kurosawa greatly admired Jean Renoir, thought him one of the greatest masters of cinema. The two met once in the 1970s, late in Renoir’s life when Kurosawa was in Los Angeles to receive an Academy Award and was invited to have dinner with the Renoirs. Kurosawa has written that his own decision to write an autobiography was prompted by reading Renoir’s My Life and My Films “and by the terrific impression Renoir left on me when I met him—the feeling that I would like to grow old in the same way he did.”
Kurosawa’s Lower Depths shows the power that could be achieved in cinema by staying close to the text and setting of Gorky’s work. Renoir did not see Kurosawa’s film until 1977. He watched it with great interest, then remarked, “That is a much more important film than mine.”
Although overshadowed by Renoir’s subsequent masterpieces (La Grande Illusion was made straight after this film), Les Bas-fonds is an impressive work, which, through its very evident humanity, remains a surprisingly modern film. Its wry comic touches have an ironic edge to them, a suggestion perhaps that Renoir might have preferred this to be a much darker work, in the vein of the poetic realists. This is also hinted at by the location filming which uses an almost neo-realist style to convey the grim reality of poverty. Noticeable also in this film is Renoir’s admiration for his two heroes of the silent era, Eric Von Stroheim and Chaplin.
A variant of the Lower Depths was made later where some of the Russian elements of the play were introduced that seems to have prevented the film from being a popular success. The film was well received by the critics, however, and was awarded the first Prix Louis Delluc in 1937.
Cast
* Jean Gabin - Wasska Pepel
* Louis Jouvet - The Baron
* Suzy Prim - Vassilissa
* Junie Astor - Natacha
* Jany Holt - Nastia
* Vladimir Sokoloff - Kostileff
Robert Le Vigan - L'Acteur; Camille Bert - Le Comte; René Génin - Le Vieillard; Paul Temps - Satine; Robert Ozanne - Jabot; Léon Larive - Felix, le domestique; Alex Allin; Maurice Baquet - Accordeoniste; André Gabriello - Le Commissaire; Lucien Mancini - Patron de la guinguette; Sylvain
Credit
Jacques Becker - First Assistant Director, Jean Renoir - Director, Marguerite Renoir - Editor, Jean Wiener - Composer (Music Score), Jean Bachelet - Cinematographer, F. Bourgas - Cinematographer, Arthur Mayer - Producer, Eugène Lourié - Set Designer, Jacques Companeez - Screenwriter, Jean Renoir - Screenwriter, Charles Spaak - Screenwriter, Maxim Gorky - Play Author
Similar Movies
Dodes'ka-Den; Die Freudlose Gasse; Austeria; The L-Shaped Room
(Ack: James Travers,2002, Alexander Sesonske-criterion collection-30Dec,2003)
benny
Thursday 21 January 2010
Ashes and Diamonds-1958
Based on Jerzy Andrzejewski’s 1948 novel of the same name, Ashes and Diamonds is the Wajda’s last in the war trilogy, following A Generation and Kanal. Adapted for the screen by Andrzej Wajda and the author time and space have been condensed to less than twenty-four hours in and around a single location—the hotel Monopol. The title comes from a 19th Century poem by Cyprian Norwid ‘…Or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike diamond/
The Morning Star of everlasting triumph.
Synopsis
The film takes place in an unnamed small Polish town on the day Germany officially surrendered ending World War II. Maciek and Andrzej have been assigned to liquidate communist Commissar Szczuka but fail in their first attempt, killing instead two civilian cement plant workers. They are given a second chance in the town's leading hotel and banquet hall, Monopol.
Meanwhile, a grand fête is being organized at the hall for a newly appointed minor minister by his assistant, Drewnowski (Bogumil Kobiela) who is in fact a double agent. Maciek manages to get an entry into a room with the desk clerk, who is also a fellow Warsaw native. They sadly reminisce about the past and over the chestnut trees in particular, which were lost when the Germans destroyed most of the city in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising. While Maciek and Andrzej bide their time to strike Szczuka, Maciek becomes infatuated with the hotel's barmaid, Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska).
Meanwhile, Szczuka is attempting to locate his long lost son, Marek who had served along with Maciek and was recently captured by the Red Army.
Maciek goes for a walk with Krystyna and ends up in a bombed-out church. Maciek realizes what he had been missing in life. He could have had an education or settle down to a regular family life every day warmed by love. Strange how love throws a diehard rebel’s train of thoughts askew? Awakened by his brief lovemaking with the barmaid the aridity of his past, a life of the mind is brought to surface. Contrast this with the reality of his guntoting days: two innocents felled down a mistake. This comes to him with a sledge-hammer force by the two victims he sees in the crypt. A mistake. It was all he had to show for his life as a sewer rat during the aborted Warsaw uprising and the present mission.
Maciek's crush on Krystyna grows perhaps as an antidote to the awful realization of his mission: shortly he must assassinate Szczuka.
When he does and as Szczuka falls, it is a dramatic moment and the built up tension in the viewer literally explodes: fireworks celebrating the end of the war fill the sky.
The next morning, Maciek goes to where Andrzej awaits in a truck. From concealment he watches as the other accomplice Drewnowski is exposed. Andrzej throws him to the ground and drives off. When Drewnowski sees Maciek, he calls out to him and Maciek flees only to run into a patrol of Polish soldiers. He is shot. It is pure cinematic moment where the clothesline fluttering in a light breeze a kind of peace, the sweat and bad humor of illtempered men and woman all washed clean. The camera pans slowly to a landscape strewn with trash.
Afterword:No empire or old order however feeble passes away quietly but makes quiet a din. We have in our time seen in the Balkans and it was so when the Ottoman Empire came crashing at the end of WWI. What a trash the new emerging nations make of the fine ‘ideals’ of the old order!
Directed by
Andrzej Wajda
Written by
Jerzy Andrzejewski
Starring
Zbigniew Cybulski,
Ewa Krzyzewska,
Waclaw Zastrzezynski
Running time
110 min.
Language
Polish
Trivia:
The entire film takes place over two days, May 8th and 9th 1945.
One of Martin Scorsese's favorite movies. He showed it to Leonardo DiCaprio while making The Departed (2006), as main characters of these two movies have to deal with the same dilemmas.
The title comes from a 19th century poem by Cyprian Kamil Norwid and references the manner in which diamonds are formed from heat and pressure acting upon coal.
Director 'Andzrej Wajda' realized that his leading man Zbigniew Cybulski would be constrained by period costume so he allowed him to wear clothes that felt more natural to him.
After the film's release, sales of sunglasses shot up because Zbigniew Cybulski wore them consistently throughout the film.
Wajda was particularly influenced by The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
Because of the film's nihilistic tone, the Polish authorities were not keen on it being exhibited outside of the country. Until a low-level official had a print shipped out to the Venice Film Festival where it played to great acclaim.
René Clair was a particular fan of the film.
(ack: imdb,wikipedia,criterion)
Similar Works
Nikto Ne Khotel Umirat (1966, Vytautas Zalakevicius)
A Generation (1954, Andrzej Wajda)
Do Posledney Minuty (1973, Valeriy Isakov)
Human Condition, Part 1: No Greater Love (1958, Masaki Kobayashi)
Vysoky Pereval (1982, Vladimir Denisenko)
Other Related Works
Is related to: Everything for Sale (1968, Andrzej Wajda)
Kanal (1957, Andrzej Wajda)
Foreign Actors (2006, Matthew Noel-Tod)
Andrzej Wajda - a Portrait
Trzecia Czesc Nocy (1971, Andrzej Zulawski)
benny
The Morning Star of everlasting triumph.
Synopsis
The film takes place in an unnamed small Polish town on the day Germany officially surrendered ending World War II. Maciek and Andrzej have been assigned to liquidate communist Commissar Szczuka but fail in their first attempt, killing instead two civilian cement plant workers. They are given a second chance in the town's leading hotel and banquet hall, Monopol.
Meanwhile, a grand fête is being organized at the hall for a newly appointed minor minister by his assistant, Drewnowski (Bogumil Kobiela) who is in fact a double agent. Maciek manages to get an entry into a room with the desk clerk, who is also a fellow Warsaw native. They sadly reminisce about the past and over the chestnut trees in particular, which were lost when the Germans destroyed most of the city in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising. While Maciek and Andrzej bide their time to strike Szczuka, Maciek becomes infatuated with the hotel's barmaid, Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska).
Meanwhile, Szczuka is attempting to locate his long lost son, Marek who had served along with Maciek and was recently captured by the Red Army.
Maciek goes for a walk with Krystyna and ends up in a bombed-out church. Maciek realizes what he had been missing in life. He could have had an education or settle down to a regular family life every day warmed by love. Strange how love throws a diehard rebel’s train of thoughts askew? Awakened by his brief lovemaking with the barmaid the aridity of his past, a life of the mind is brought to surface. Contrast this with the reality of his guntoting days: two innocents felled down a mistake. This comes to him with a sledge-hammer force by the two victims he sees in the crypt. A mistake. It was all he had to show for his life as a sewer rat during the aborted Warsaw uprising and the present mission.
Maciek's crush on Krystyna grows perhaps as an antidote to the awful realization of his mission: shortly he must assassinate Szczuka.
When he does and as Szczuka falls, it is a dramatic moment and the built up tension in the viewer literally explodes: fireworks celebrating the end of the war fill the sky.
The next morning, Maciek goes to where Andrzej awaits in a truck. From concealment he watches as the other accomplice Drewnowski is exposed. Andrzej throws him to the ground and drives off. When Drewnowski sees Maciek, he calls out to him and Maciek flees only to run into a patrol of Polish soldiers. He is shot. It is pure cinematic moment where the clothesline fluttering in a light breeze a kind of peace, the sweat and bad humor of illtempered men and woman all washed clean. The camera pans slowly to a landscape strewn with trash.
Afterword:No empire or old order however feeble passes away quietly but makes quiet a din. We have in our time seen in the Balkans and it was so when the Ottoman Empire came crashing at the end of WWI. What a trash the new emerging nations make of the fine ‘ideals’ of the old order!
Directed by
Andrzej Wajda
Written by
Jerzy Andrzejewski
Starring
Zbigniew Cybulski,
Ewa Krzyzewska,
Waclaw Zastrzezynski
Running time
110 min.
Language
Polish
Trivia:
The entire film takes place over two days, May 8th and 9th 1945.
One of Martin Scorsese's favorite movies. He showed it to Leonardo DiCaprio while making The Departed (2006), as main characters of these two movies have to deal with the same dilemmas.
The title comes from a 19th century poem by Cyprian Kamil Norwid and references the manner in which diamonds are formed from heat and pressure acting upon coal.
Director 'Andzrej Wajda' realized that his leading man Zbigniew Cybulski would be constrained by period costume so he allowed him to wear clothes that felt more natural to him.
After the film's release, sales of sunglasses shot up because Zbigniew Cybulski wore them consistently throughout the film.
Wajda was particularly influenced by The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
Because of the film's nihilistic tone, the Polish authorities were not keen on it being exhibited outside of the country. Until a low-level official had a print shipped out to the Venice Film Festival where it played to great acclaim.
René Clair was a particular fan of the film.
(ack: imdb,wikipedia,criterion)
Similar Works
Nikto Ne Khotel Umirat (1966, Vytautas Zalakevicius)
A Generation (1954, Andrzej Wajda)
Do Posledney Minuty (1973, Valeriy Isakov)
Human Condition, Part 1: No Greater Love (1958, Masaki Kobayashi)
Vysoky Pereval (1982, Vladimir Denisenko)
Other Related Works
Is related to: Everything for Sale (1968, Andrzej Wajda)
Kanal (1957, Andrzej Wajda)
Foreign Actors (2006, Matthew Noel-Tod)
Andrzej Wajda - a Portrait
Trzecia Czesc Nocy (1971, Andrzej Zulawski)
benny
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Films of Ritwik Ghatak
In Nagarik (The Citizen-1952) we have the contemporary existence for Bengali refugees in post-Partition Calcutta. Ramu (Satindra Bhattacharya) is the citizen whom we see early on. On seeing the young man dutifully helping an elder stranger cross the street one might think he is of affluent circumstances. But nothing could be more farther from the truth. His suit and shoes are borrowed for a job interview. It has been dusted and straightened out since these belong to his father (Kali Bannerjee) who has shed them long ago. He is now blind and ailing and it is a matter of extreme importance he finds a job to support his family including his sister whose future has been long ago splintered to secure his.
In the above we have the predicament of one citizen representing the woes of a subcontinent. We shall see how pertinent is this in the sad case of his sister. She is undereducated since the scant fortunes of the school teacher has been invested on the boy than on her. Such gender discrimination is perpetuated as a matter of course in a society where Sita the wife of Lord Ram is worshiped as a sacred symbol of motherhood. Mother India or Sita may be for public consumption held up as a revered image by those who in practice humiliate her at every turn. It is what the conduct of those suitors tells us. Her parents have little hope for a better life for her except to marry her off to anyone who is able to provide for her. Ritwik Ghatak in exposing this hypocrisy must have touched a nerve of the powers that be. Herein lies a clue to the failure of a man who was second to none as a filmmaker.
Satyajit Ray seems to have once said of his contemprorary Ritwik Ghatak thus: Had Nagarik been released before his Pather Panchali, Nagarik would have been accepted as the first film of the alternative form of Bengali cinema. Nagarik (The Citizen), the first film Ghatak ever made, was completed in 1953 but in fact released posthumously in 1977. In this simple fact we may conclude why one got praises while the other was neglected with more than unjustified criticism. In this contrast of two, both first rate filmmakers undoubtedly we have the persona of Ritwik, whose ant-establishment attitude made him unacceptable while Ray was presentable for the powers that be. Yes he was difficult –edgy, uncouth and insulting and he made them uncomfortable. He was the product of his times and his cultural awakenings were a bruise, which he came to terms in his own way. In a film like Nagarik he narrates the slender fortunes of a Bengali family and much of it is invested on Ramu and his finding a job has a bearing on the future of his sister. Chronicling Ramu’s attempts to find a job and his family's disillusioning may be economic necessity but a family marginalized and dislocated must fend for itself as a mongrel that has found in the territory of others. Much of Ramu’s woes owe to dislocation. No single cause other than partition of Bengal of 1905 and of 1947 could be explained as the pulse that beat underneath his artistic vision. Dynamics of so many works derive from it but for his cinematic idiom of course we need to look elsewhere.
The bugbear of commercial cinema Ritwik Ghatak( b. 4 November, 1925, Jindabazar, Dhaka, East Bengal now Bangladesh) remains despite of himself an icon whose influence we see in many younger film makers of India. There is a scene in Ajantrik in which two taxi drivers sit atop their car bonnets and belting away in a contrapuntal cacophony. What has this scene to do with the narration of the film? For that I can ask what has the chatter of grave diggers before the grave of Ophelia to do with the story of Hamlet? Does it not serve as a coda to the soliloquy of the prince holding the skull of poor Yorick? Films must visually lead us beyond the surface to put ourselves with the gusto of living which makes the two taxi drivers giving vent to their existence as the prince of Denmark must give his own life a context in terms of death confronting him at every turn. ‘Lalitha Gopalan's book on action genres in contemporary Indian cinema, Cinema of Interruptions, I came across a reference to the influence of a group of directors… in line with this account, we could say that Ghatak's legacy has been a kind of cinema that invites us …to contemplate “deeply of the universe” – to “focus more intently” rather than be “entertained.”(quoted from: archive.sensesofcinema.com- Megan Carrigy, October 2003)
The last film Ghatak completed was Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974) in which Ghatak played the lead role himself. Ghatak passed away on 6 February, 1976, at the early age of fifty, leaving many unfinished projects.
Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960 [The Cloud-Capped Star]
Meghe Dhaka Tara is the first in a trilogy (the other two being Komal Ghandhar or E -flat -1961 and Subarnarekha-1965) and belongs to the genre of melodrama and has a parallel in poetic realism of the French cinema in the late 30s. Roots of melodrama in Indian context go further and has had played a vital role in rural Indian theatre and folk dramatic forms. In Bollywood films we have drama in real life ‘sexed up’ if we were to judge the way hero and heroine cavort around trees and melodrama is almost to the point of bathos. While Bengali filmmakers approach melodrama through the prism of their political standpoints art is an elusive element. It is true that Ritwik in Meghe Dhaka Tara had no use for such crudities found in Commercial films but in presenting the story extract as much pathos cinematically from the predicament of Neetu the film’s protagonist. Reality of characters and their circumstances helped to a great degree by cinematic techniques has become poetry of images. Sexed up, nevertheless, in a manner of speaking. This film is the best example of his genius. To quote Kumar Shahani ‘The three principal women characters embody the traditional aspects of feminine power. The heroine, Neeta, has the preserving and nurturing quality; her sister, Gita, is the sensual woman; their mother represents the cruel aspect. The incapacity of Nita to combine and contain all these qualities... is the source of her tragedy. This split is also reflected in Indian society's inability to combine responsibility with necessary violence to build for itself a real future. The middle-class is also seen in triangular formation, at the unsteady apex of the inverted form."
Synopsis
Neeta (Supriya Chowdhury) is the breadwinner in a refugee family of five. Her elder brother, Shankar (Anil Chatterjee) aspires to be a classical singer. Neeta postpones her marriage to the scientist Sanat (Niranjan Roy) to support the family and pay for her younger brother's and sister's studies. The father and younger brother both suffer accidents forcing Neeta to remain the sole breadwinner of the family in spite of her worsening tuberculosis. Her mother encourages Sanat to marry the younger sister Gita (Gita Ghatak). Finally, Shankar having realized his ambition , takes her to the hills for treatment. There terminally ill, having sacrificed her best years, Neeta cries out into the silence of the mountains her desire to live....
In Meghe Dhaka Tara, Ghatak tries to delve deep into our roots and traditions and discover a universal dimension within it. And for the first time, he says he experimented with the techniques of overtones. In the film, Ghatak succeeds in achieving a grand totality through an intricate but harmonious blending of each part with the whole in the inner fabric of the film. Meghe Dhaka Tara transcends into a great work of art that enriches and transforms the visual images into metamorphical significations...
The music in the film perfectly intermingles with the visuals, none dislodging the other be it a remarkable orchestration of a hill motif with a female moaning or a staccato cough with a surging song.
Lastly, the film is greatly helped by an absolutely stunning performance by Bengali Filmstar Supriya Choudhury as Neeta. Meghe Dhaka Tara is one of the rare instances when she was successfully able to break her star image and cover new ground as a performer. In the end as she cries out "I want to live", one cannot helped but be totally overcome by emotion. It is one of the greatest and most unforgettable moments in the history of Indian Cinema...
As with his other films we can see the socio-economic consequences of Partition.
benny
In the above we have the predicament of one citizen representing the woes of a subcontinent. We shall see how pertinent is this in the sad case of his sister. She is undereducated since the scant fortunes of the school teacher has been invested on the boy than on her. Such gender discrimination is perpetuated as a matter of course in a society where Sita the wife of Lord Ram is worshiped as a sacred symbol of motherhood. Mother India or Sita may be for public consumption held up as a revered image by those who in practice humiliate her at every turn. It is what the conduct of those suitors tells us. Her parents have little hope for a better life for her except to marry her off to anyone who is able to provide for her. Ritwik Ghatak in exposing this hypocrisy must have touched a nerve of the powers that be. Herein lies a clue to the failure of a man who was second to none as a filmmaker.
Satyajit Ray seems to have once said of his contemprorary Ritwik Ghatak thus: Had Nagarik been released before his Pather Panchali, Nagarik would have been accepted as the first film of the alternative form of Bengali cinema. Nagarik (The Citizen), the first film Ghatak ever made, was completed in 1953 but in fact released posthumously in 1977. In this simple fact we may conclude why one got praises while the other was neglected with more than unjustified criticism. In this contrast of two, both first rate filmmakers undoubtedly we have the persona of Ritwik, whose ant-establishment attitude made him unacceptable while Ray was presentable for the powers that be. Yes he was difficult –edgy, uncouth and insulting and he made them uncomfortable. He was the product of his times and his cultural awakenings were a bruise, which he came to terms in his own way. In a film like Nagarik he narrates the slender fortunes of a Bengali family and much of it is invested on Ramu and his finding a job has a bearing on the future of his sister. Chronicling Ramu’s attempts to find a job and his family's disillusioning may be economic necessity but a family marginalized and dislocated must fend for itself as a mongrel that has found in the territory of others. Much of Ramu’s woes owe to dislocation. No single cause other than partition of Bengal of 1905 and of 1947 could be explained as the pulse that beat underneath his artistic vision. Dynamics of so many works derive from it but for his cinematic idiom of course we need to look elsewhere.
The bugbear of commercial cinema Ritwik Ghatak( b. 4 November, 1925, Jindabazar, Dhaka, East Bengal now Bangladesh) remains despite of himself an icon whose influence we see in many younger film makers of India. There is a scene in Ajantrik in which two taxi drivers sit atop their car bonnets and belting away in a contrapuntal cacophony. What has this scene to do with the narration of the film? For that I can ask what has the chatter of grave diggers before the grave of Ophelia to do with the story of Hamlet? Does it not serve as a coda to the soliloquy of the prince holding the skull of poor Yorick? Films must visually lead us beyond the surface to put ourselves with the gusto of living which makes the two taxi drivers giving vent to their existence as the prince of Denmark must give his own life a context in terms of death confronting him at every turn. ‘Lalitha Gopalan's book on action genres in contemporary Indian cinema, Cinema of Interruptions, I came across a reference to the influence of a group of directors… in line with this account, we could say that Ghatak's legacy has been a kind of cinema that invites us …to contemplate “deeply of the universe” – to “focus more intently” rather than be “entertained.”(quoted from: archive.sensesofcinema.com- Megan Carrigy, October 2003)
The last film Ghatak completed was Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974) in which Ghatak played the lead role himself. Ghatak passed away on 6 February, 1976, at the early age of fifty, leaving many unfinished projects.
Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960 [The Cloud-Capped Star]
Meghe Dhaka Tara is the first in a trilogy (the other two being Komal Ghandhar or E -flat -1961 and Subarnarekha-1965) and belongs to the genre of melodrama and has a parallel in poetic realism of the French cinema in the late 30s. Roots of melodrama in Indian context go further and has had played a vital role in rural Indian theatre and folk dramatic forms. In Bollywood films we have drama in real life ‘sexed up’ if we were to judge the way hero and heroine cavort around trees and melodrama is almost to the point of bathos. While Bengali filmmakers approach melodrama through the prism of their political standpoints art is an elusive element. It is true that Ritwik in Meghe Dhaka Tara had no use for such crudities found in Commercial films but in presenting the story extract as much pathos cinematically from the predicament of Neetu the film’s protagonist. Reality of characters and their circumstances helped to a great degree by cinematic techniques has become poetry of images. Sexed up, nevertheless, in a manner of speaking. This film is the best example of his genius. To quote Kumar Shahani ‘The three principal women characters embody the traditional aspects of feminine power. The heroine, Neeta, has the preserving and nurturing quality; her sister, Gita, is the sensual woman; their mother represents the cruel aspect. The incapacity of Nita to combine and contain all these qualities... is the source of her tragedy. This split is also reflected in Indian society's inability to combine responsibility with necessary violence to build for itself a real future. The middle-class is also seen in triangular formation, at the unsteady apex of the inverted form."
Synopsis
Neeta (Supriya Chowdhury) is the breadwinner in a refugee family of five. Her elder brother, Shankar (Anil Chatterjee) aspires to be a classical singer. Neeta postpones her marriage to the scientist Sanat (Niranjan Roy) to support the family and pay for her younger brother's and sister's studies. The father and younger brother both suffer accidents forcing Neeta to remain the sole breadwinner of the family in spite of her worsening tuberculosis. Her mother encourages Sanat to marry the younger sister Gita (Gita Ghatak). Finally, Shankar having realized his ambition , takes her to the hills for treatment. There terminally ill, having sacrificed her best years, Neeta cries out into the silence of the mountains her desire to live....
In Meghe Dhaka Tara, Ghatak tries to delve deep into our roots and traditions and discover a universal dimension within it. And for the first time, he says he experimented with the techniques of overtones. In the film, Ghatak succeeds in achieving a grand totality through an intricate but harmonious blending of each part with the whole in the inner fabric of the film. Meghe Dhaka Tara transcends into a great work of art that enriches and transforms the visual images into metamorphical significations...
The music in the film perfectly intermingles with the visuals, none dislodging the other be it a remarkable orchestration of a hill motif with a female moaning or a staccato cough with a surging song.
Lastly, the film is greatly helped by an absolutely stunning performance by Bengali Filmstar Supriya Choudhury as Neeta. Meghe Dhaka Tara is one of the rare instances when she was successfully able to break her star image and cover new ground as a performer. In the end as she cries out "I want to live", one cannot helped but be totally overcome by emotion. It is one of the greatest and most unforgettable moments in the history of Indian Cinema...
As with his other films we can see the socio-economic consequences of Partition.
benny
Tuesday 19 January 2010
Drôle de Drame-1937
In an age of anxiety leading to WWII filmmakers in France coped as best as they could. Judging from Drôle de Drame it would seem Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert looked past their everyday milieu and set in another era and clime. They set their sights across the Channel and show how silly the Edwardian London was.
A botanist who moonlights as a writer of lurid whodunits , having to cope with a nosy bishop and a psychopath on the loose, is bizarre even by today’s standards. A silly premise it may be as far as the story and ‘types’ are but it is a near classic. No mistake of that.
Carné -Prévert would go on to make a few enduring classics like le quai des brumes(1938), les visiteurs du soir(1942), and les enfants du paradis(1945). A threat of another world war is gone and age old anxiety is still around but we manage nevertheless to move on. Cinema has ceased to be as forceful or creative medium that touched our lives as before. The aforementioned films are a precious record of history of our world reinvented for celluloid.
These films are as tragic as drôle de drame is a black comedy.
The film is strong with such fine actors like Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet and Jean-Louis Barrault. The story by minute descends into a calculated chaos and the viewer’s all attempts to predict the direction it takes are foiled by the deranged view of life each character seem to display in response to situations. We can sympathize with a bishop who denounces the prurient interest of his flock in penny novels serializing detective dramas. But if he were to suspect the worst in his cousin and ready to use an impossible subterfuge to visit his home, his sanity may be called to question. Similarly we have a respected botanist whose passion in lucid moments is for his mimosa and it is understandable if he would require an outlet for creative congestion of his brain. He has an alter ego and he is Felix Chapel, who is the subject of the Bishop of Bedford’s wrath. Dr. Molyneux merely has found a way to buy himself some peace from his wife and his neighborhood. This sedate creature who passes his life quietly in harmony with his mimosa nevertheless revels in blood and gore, albeit written by his double Felix Chapel.
It turns out, Molyneux gets the stories from his adopted daughter Eva, who in turn gets them from the milkman, who's madly in love with her. If he has his wife killed off as an excuse to explain a domestic inconvenience we may say for sure there are some loose cannons around and things go from bad to worse. Eventually Scotland Yard is called in to clear things up. How these square off their combined derangement is what makes the film memorable.
Summary
England, the early 1900s. Irvin Molyneux is a quiet botanist who secretly writes pulp fiction under the pseudonym Felix Chapel. His books raise the ire of Archibald Soper, the Bishop of Bedford. Soper invites himself to dinner at the Molyneux’s home one evening, at a time most inconvenient to him. His servants have walked out on him forcing his wife to double as the cook. Molyneux's clumsy attempt to account for the absence of his wife arouses the bishop's suspicions. When he sees Molyneux mysteriously leave the house that evening, he contacts Scotland Yard, convinced that his cousin has murdered his wife. Later, when the Molyneux couple are away from home and the scrutiny of the press, Irvin Molyneux, as Felix Chapel, is invited to write an account of the mysterious Molyneux affair on the scene of the presumed murder. Disguised as Chapel, Molyneux returns to his house, which has been taken over by the police who are still investigating the alleged crime. He does not realize that the psychopath William Kramps, the notorious butcher killer, is in the area, determined to kill Felix Chapel. Meanwhile, the Bishop of Bedford realizes he must return to the houe of Molyneux in disguise...
The film bears affinity to the films of René Clair or Marx brothers as far as to include it as genre of comedy but it is vitriolic all through.
Cast
Michel Simon as Irwin Molyneux alias Felix Chapel
Françoise Rosay as Margaret, his wife
Louis Jouvet as Archibald Soper
Jean-Louis Barrault- William Kramps
and Jean-Pierre Aumont as Billy
Directed by
Marcel Carné
Produced by
Edouard Corniglion-Molinier
Written by
J. Storer Clouston (novel)
Jacques Prévert (adaptation)
Music by
Maurice Jaubert
Cinematography
Eugen Schüfftan
Running time
94 min
benny
A botanist who moonlights as a writer of lurid whodunits , having to cope with a nosy bishop and a psychopath on the loose, is bizarre even by today’s standards. A silly premise it may be as far as the story and ‘types’ are but it is a near classic. No mistake of that.
Carné -Prévert would go on to make a few enduring classics like le quai des brumes(1938), les visiteurs du soir(1942), and les enfants du paradis(1945). A threat of another world war is gone and age old anxiety is still around but we manage nevertheless to move on. Cinema has ceased to be as forceful or creative medium that touched our lives as before. The aforementioned films are a precious record of history of our world reinvented for celluloid.
These films are as tragic as drôle de drame is a black comedy.
The film is strong with such fine actors like Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet and Jean-Louis Barrault. The story by minute descends into a calculated chaos and the viewer’s all attempts to predict the direction it takes are foiled by the deranged view of life each character seem to display in response to situations. We can sympathize with a bishop who denounces the prurient interest of his flock in penny novels serializing detective dramas. But if he were to suspect the worst in his cousin and ready to use an impossible subterfuge to visit his home, his sanity may be called to question. Similarly we have a respected botanist whose passion in lucid moments is for his mimosa and it is understandable if he would require an outlet for creative congestion of his brain. He has an alter ego and he is Felix Chapel, who is the subject of the Bishop of Bedford’s wrath. Dr. Molyneux merely has found a way to buy himself some peace from his wife and his neighborhood. This sedate creature who passes his life quietly in harmony with his mimosa nevertheless revels in blood and gore, albeit written by his double Felix Chapel.
It turns out, Molyneux gets the stories from his adopted daughter Eva, who in turn gets them from the milkman, who's madly in love with her. If he has his wife killed off as an excuse to explain a domestic inconvenience we may say for sure there are some loose cannons around and things go from bad to worse. Eventually Scotland Yard is called in to clear things up. How these square off their combined derangement is what makes the film memorable.
Summary
England, the early 1900s. Irvin Molyneux is a quiet botanist who secretly writes pulp fiction under the pseudonym Felix Chapel. His books raise the ire of Archibald Soper, the Bishop of Bedford. Soper invites himself to dinner at the Molyneux’s home one evening, at a time most inconvenient to him. His servants have walked out on him forcing his wife to double as the cook. Molyneux's clumsy attempt to account for the absence of his wife arouses the bishop's suspicions. When he sees Molyneux mysteriously leave the house that evening, he contacts Scotland Yard, convinced that his cousin has murdered his wife. Later, when the Molyneux couple are away from home and the scrutiny of the press, Irvin Molyneux, as Felix Chapel, is invited to write an account of the mysterious Molyneux affair on the scene of the presumed murder. Disguised as Chapel, Molyneux returns to his house, which has been taken over by the police who are still investigating the alleged crime. He does not realize that the psychopath William Kramps, the notorious butcher killer, is in the area, determined to kill Felix Chapel. Meanwhile, the Bishop of Bedford realizes he must return to the houe of Molyneux in disguise...
The film bears affinity to the films of René Clair or Marx brothers as far as to include it as genre of comedy but it is vitriolic all through.
Cast
Michel Simon as Irwin Molyneux alias Felix Chapel
Françoise Rosay as Margaret, his wife
Louis Jouvet as Archibald Soper
Jean-Louis Barrault- William Kramps
and Jean-Pierre Aumont as Billy
Directed by
Marcel Carné
Produced by
Edouard Corniglion-Molinier
Written by
J. Storer Clouston (novel)
Jacques Prévert (adaptation)
Music by
Maurice Jaubert
Cinematography
Eugen Schüfftan
Running time
94 min
benny
Monday 18 January 2010
Last Holiday-1950
Last Holiday is a 1950 British film featuring Alec Guinness in his sixth starring role. An alternative title could be, beg your pardon, ‘A Man Doomed to Die’ lifted straight from the Bosley Crowther review of 1950.
Unlike his previous film Kind Hearts and Coronets, Alec Guinness plays only one part and he modestly carries it to perfection. He takes the role of George Bird an agricultural implement salesman, who as the film opens is told by his physician the awful truth: he has not much time left to live. He suffers from Lampington’s Disease, a rare form of disease for which there is no cure and the doctor who has found it in him therefore may indulge in a bit of smugness and advise him to spend all his savings on his last holiday. It is precisely what Mr. Bird intends to do. The film has much to do with his meeting certain specimens, the kind Charles Dickens had in another era made famous in print. The haberdasher who fits out the doomed man knows that his moustache is wrong for the apparel he just got at a bargain price of 65 pounds. Mild mannered that Gorge Best is we see him sans his moustache from then on and he goes to Pinebourne, a holiday resort. Checking into the hotel we have more personages that could only be bred on the British Isles on tea with cucumber sandwiches and tea cakes talking rather strange. Having read nothing beyond Debrett’s Peerage and the Times, these are for tracing the lineage of Mr. Bird who has the manners of a nob.
George Bird the one who, at the beginning, confesses to his physician that he has no relatives or friends soon falls in love and is offered a fruitful business opportunity, but these events only serve to make him reflect on what he had not achieved in life.
Finally, Bird speaks to a hotel guest who is the namesake of the disease he was diagnosed with. The physician assures him there must be a mistake and that Bird does not have the disease. After a trip back to the city, Bird confirms the mistake, and is ready to begin life anew with his sweetheart and his business opportunity. The twist is that he never makes it back to the hotel. He ends up in a car accident on the way and is killed. The hotel guests, having learned the truth, have moved on to their humdrum pastime of ‘ counting titled heads’. Kay Walsh, in the role of an embittered housekeeper of the baronial Torquay hotel and Beatrice Campbell as the beautiful wife of a young adventurer who is helped in her distress by the doomed man carry their parts well and with ease. Sidney James, as an out-of-place tourist, and Muriel George, as a dowdy nouveau-riche, stand out among the several assorted and significant British types. Of course Alec Guinness makes the film memorable and to the ranks of the best to come from the British studios.
Last Holiday was loosely remade in 2006, starring Queen Latifah as Georgia Byrd, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, and Alicia Witt.
Let me end this appreciation quoting from Bosley Crowther,’… it is Mr. Guinness who carries the main role in this film, which Mr. Priestley has not only written but has also helped produce. And it is Mr. Guinness' facility at suggesting intense emotional moods through his perfect command of stoicism that lifts the poignant story to its peaks. His doomed man is pitiable in his misery, he is funny in his bourgeois attempts at fun, but, above all, he is touchingly noble in his serene and wistful despair’.(-NY times November 14, 1950)
Directed by
Henry Cass
Produced by
Stephen Mitchell, A. D. Peters, J.B. Priestley
Written by
J. B. Priestley
Starring
Alec Guinness
Beatrice Campbell
Kay Walsh
Gregoire Aslan
Jean Colin
Muriel George
Release date(s)
1950
Running time
88 minutes
Country
UK
benny
Unlike his previous film Kind Hearts and Coronets, Alec Guinness plays only one part and he modestly carries it to perfection. He takes the role of George Bird an agricultural implement salesman, who as the film opens is told by his physician the awful truth: he has not much time left to live. He suffers from Lampington’s Disease, a rare form of disease for which there is no cure and the doctor who has found it in him therefore may indulge in a bit of smugness and advise him to spend all his savings on his last holiday. It is precisely what Mr. Bird intends to do. The film has much to do with his meeting certain specimens, the kind Charles Dickens had in another era made famous in print. The haberdasher who fits out the doomed man knows that his moustache is wrong for the apparel he just got at a bargain price of 65 pounds. Mild mannered that Gorge Best is we see him sans his moustache from then on and he goes to Pinebourne, a holiday resort. Checking into the hotel we have more personages that could only be bred on the British Isles on tea with cucumber sandwiches and tea cakes talking rather strange. Having read nothing beyond Debrett’s Peerage and the Times, these are for tracing the lineage of Mr. Bird who has the manners of a nob.
George Bird the one who, at the beginning, confesses to his physician that he has no relatives or friends soon falls in love and is offered a fruitful business opportunity, but these events only serve to make him reflect on what he had not achieved in life.
Finally, Bird speaks to a hotel guest who is the namesake of the disease he was diagnosed with. The physician assures him there must be a mistake and that Bird does not have the disease. After a trip back to the city, Bird confirms the mistake, and is ready to begin life anew with his sweetheart and his business opportunity. The twist is that he never makes it back to the hotel. He ends up in a car accident on the way and is killed. The hotel guests, having learned the truth, have moved on to their humdrum pastime of ‘ counting titled heads’. Kay Walsh, in the role of an embittered housekeeper of the baronial Torquay hotel and Beatrice Campbell as the beautiful wife of a young adventurer who is helped in her distress by the doomed man carry their parts well and with ease. Sidney James, as an out-of-place tourist, and Muriel George, as a dowdy nouveau-riche, stand out among the several assorted and significant British types. Of course Alec Guinness makes the film memorable and to the ranks of the best to come from the British studios.
Last Holiday was loosely remade in 2006, starring Queen Latifah as Georgia Byrd, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, and Alicia Witt.
Let me end this appreciation quoting from Bosley Crowther,’… it is Mr. Guinness who carries the main role in this film, which Mr. Priestley has not only written but has also helped produce. And it is Mr. Guinness' facility at suggesting intense emotional moods through his perfect command of stoicism that lifts the poignant story to its peaks. His doomed man is pitiable in his misery, he is funny in his bourgeois attempts at fun, but, above all, he is touchingly noble in his serene and wistful despair’.(-NY times November 14, 1950)
Directed by
Henry Cass
Produced by
Stephen Mitchell, A. D. Peters, J.B. Priestley
Written by
J. B. Priestley
Starring
Alec Guinness
Beatrice Campbell
Kay Walsh
Gregoire Aslan
Jean Colin
Muriel George
Release date(s)
1950
Running time
88 minutes
Country
UK
benny
Sunday 17 January 2010
Loves of a Blonde-1965
Is the first film that brought Miloš Forman international fame and he followed it with such classics as One flew over a cuckoo’s nest(1975) and Amadeus(1984). Forman’s early movies are still very popular among Czechs. Many of the situations and phrases are now in common usage: for example, the Czech term zhasnout (to switch lights off) from The Firemen’s Ball, associated with petty theft in the movie, has been used to describe the large-scale asset stripping happening in the country during the 1990s. Having introduced the director let me now get on with my appreciation of the movie.
Loves of a Blonde (Czech: Lásky jedné plavovlásky) is a 1965 Czech film and it works at different layers. On the surface it is a simple story of Andula, a young factory girl falling head over heels with a traveling musician for whom it is a one night stand. Whereas the girl her whole life she shas invested ,-for its emotional depth I can only cite Renoir’s une partie de campagne(1936) for comparison, and must salvage it from falling to pieces. Unlike Henriette the Czech girl dares to follow it up.
The film begins with the general (’my hooligan love’ a pseudo Beatle number) to the particular musically represented by ‘Ave Maria’ at the end. The bach-gounod number in this case is meant to be a paen to the blonde working girl who in her elemental goodness stands as a modern Maria.
It is also a social satire.
The film takes place in the provincial Czech town of Zruc, which Forman sketches in a few shots: a train station, a housing block, a shoe factory that could have been lifted from any of the East European films of the communist era. Andula, the blond protagonist of the film is a worker in the shoe factory, one among some 2000 who outnumbers male population by 16 to one. The film opens with the benign manager of the factory asking army officials to place a regiment in Zruc, as a way of redressing the local imbalance of available males and yearning females. “They need what we needed when we were young,” the manager says to an avuncular Major who can well understand the manager’s predicament. ‘Sex liberates woman from their drudgery and social isolation’ seems to be the watchword and how the government tries to meet the expectations of the female workforce touches the very flaw of party manifesto as written and in practice.
Froman always had a felicity in casting the right actors for the parts. Just as he made the roles of Baron von Sweiten, Count Rosenburg and the valet in Amadeus memorable the three ‘old farts’ of army reservists who try to date the three workers are unforgettable.
In honor of the army reservists brought to the town a party is organized where girls in all sizes and expectations take part. The age old mating game played in the pub has plenty of room for comedy, which the director uses to lead the viewer to the heart of the film. Andula catches the eye of the comparatively dashing young pianist, Milda (Vladimir Pucholt). The next morning, the traveling musician assures her repeatedly, “I do not have a girlfriend in Prague.” Milda leaves town, as expected, but Andula has fallen in love with him, and decides to journey to Prague to track him down. A low-key black-and-white ensemble comedy, Loves of a Blonde was cast predominantly with non-professional actors.
In Prague Andula meets the dysfunctional family of Milda and it is clear that in his parents we have the duplicate the blonde and her feckless groom on the making. Forman’s dark comedy must be seen to be enjoyed. His comical sense reaches its best in the part where the parents try to cope with a strange girl who has intruded upon their private space though it is for one night. From that point the director tickles the funnybone, as it were with a scalpel, and only later we realize that whatever future happiness Andula may have with Milda shall only be a downer, an anti-climax to the trite line we are so familiar with, ‘and they lived happily everafter’.
‘Over the course of the three acts, the film’s context evolves from social satire (set in a public space) to emotional intimacy (confined to the private space of a single room and a single bed) to domestic drama (set in the awkward private-public space of a family apartment). The thematic shifts reflect the shifts in setting: the first section is centered on youth and infinite possibility; the second on young adulthood and romantic fulfillment; the third on maturity and inevitable disappointment.’ (Dave Kehr Feb 12, 2002-criterion collection)
Similar Works
Dolgaya Schastlivaya Zhizn (1966, Gennadiy Shpalikov)
The Pornographers (1966, Shohei Imamura)
Kitchen Stories (2003, Bent Hamer)
The Firemen’s Ball (1967, Milos Forman)
Noa at 17 (1982, Isaac Yeshurun)
Adoption (1975, Márta Mészáros)
( ack: wikipedia,criterion collection, Allmovie)
It was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967. It is also known under an alternate title of A Blonde in Love.
Directed by
Miloš Forman
Produced by
Doro Vlado Hreljanović
Rudolf Hájek
Written by
Miloš Forman
Jaroslav Papoušek
Starring
Hana Brejchová
Vladimír Pucholt
Vladimír Menšík
Music by
Evžen Illín
Running time
90 min.
Language
Czech
benny
Loves of a Blonde (Czech: Lásky jedné plavovlásky) is a 1965 Czech film and it works at different layers. On the surface it is a simple story of Andula, a young factory girl falling head over heels with a traveling musician for whom it is a one night stand. Whereas the girl her whole life she shas invested ,-for its emotional depth I can only cite Renoir’s une partie de campagne(1936) for comparison, and must salvage it from falling to pieces. Unlike Henriette the Czech girl dares to follow it up.
The film begins with the general (’my hooligan love’ a pseudo Beatle number) to the particular musically represented by ‘Ave Maria’ at the end. The bach-gounod number in this case is meant to be a paen to the blonde working girl who in her elemental goodness stands as a modern Maria.
It is also a social satire.
The film takes place in the provincial Czech town of Zruc, which Forman sketches in a few shots: a train station, a housing block, a shoe factory that could have been lifted from any of the East European films of the communist era. Andula, the blond protagonist of the film is a worker in the shoe factory, one among some 2000 who outnumbers male population by 16 to one. The film opens with the benign manager of the factory asking army officials to place a regiment in Zruc, as a way of redressing the local imbalance of available males and yearning females. “They need what we needed when we were young,” the manager says to an avuncular Major who can well understand the manager’s predicament. ‘Sex liberates woman from their drudgery and social isolation’ seems to be the watchword and how the government tries to meet the expectations of the female workforce touches the very flaw of party manifesto as written and in practice.
Froman always had a felicity in casting the right actors for the parts. Just as he made the roles of Baron von Sweiten, Count Rosenburg and the valet in Amadeus memorable the three ‘old farts’ of army reservists who try to date the three workers are unforgettable.
In honor of the army reservists brought to the town a party is organized where girls in all sizes and expectations take part. The age old mating game played in the pub has plenty of room for comedy, which the director uses to lead the viewer to the heart of the film. Andula catches the eye of the comparatively dashing young pianist, Milda (Vladimir Pucholt). The next morning, the traveling musician assures her repeatedly, “I do not have a girlfriend in Prague.” Milda leaves town, as expected, but Andula has fallen in love with him, and decides to journey to Prague to track him down. A low-key black-and-white ensemble comedy, Loves of a Blonde was cast predominantly with non-professional actors.
In Prague Andula meets the dysfunctional family of Milda and it is clear that in his parents we have the duplicate the blonde and her feckless groom on the making. Forman’s dark comedy must be seen to be enjoyed. His comical sense reaches its best in the part where the parents try to cope with a strange girl who has intruded upon their private space though it is for one night. From that point the director tickles the funnybone, as it were with a scalpel, and only later we realize that whatever future happiness Andula may have with Milda shall only be a downer, an anti-climax to the trite line we are so familiar with, ‘and they lived happily everafter’.
‘Over the course of the three acts, the film’s context evolves from social satire (set in a public space) to emotional intimacy (confined to the private space of a single room and a single bed) to domestic drama (set in the awkward private-public space of a family apartment). The thematic shifts reflect the shifts in setting: the first section is centered on youth and infinite possibility; the second on young adulthood and romantic fulfillment; the third on maturity and inevitable disappointment.’ (Dave Kehr Feb 12, 2002-criterion collection)
Similar Works
Dolgaya Schastlivaya Zhizn (1966, Gennadiy Shpalikov)
The Pornographers (1966, Shohei Imamura)
Kitchen Stories (2003, Bent Hamer)
The Firemen’s Ball (1967, Milos Forman)
Noa at 17 (1982, Isaac Yeshurun)
Adoption (1975, Márta Mészáros)
( ack: wikipedia,criterion collection, Allmovie)
It was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967. It is also known under an alternate title of A Blonde in Love.
Directed by
Miloš Forman
Produced by
Doro Vlado Hreljanović
Rudolf Hájek
Written by
Miloš Forman
Jaroslav Papoušek
Starring
Hana Brejchová
Vladimír Pucholt
Vladimír Menšík
Music by
Evžen Illín
Running time
90 min.
Language
Czech
benny
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