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Pan Wolodyjowski (1969)
A Polish Epic
This is the last film in a trilogy made up of With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Colonel Wolodyjovski, based on the novels of the same name by Henryk Sienkiewicz published between 1884 and 1887, which are historically located in the second half 17th century, as part of the war between Poles and Turks.
Michal Wolodyjowski is thus a fictional national hero, partially inspired by a historical character, a Polish nobleman from the Korczak clan, called Jerzy Wolodyjowski.
This film adaptation of the third volume of the trilogy is a super production, reminiscent of the great historical productions of the 50s, produced by Hollywood, but also by the Soviets and even the Italians, these with smaller budget versions, intended only to take advantage of the fashion of historical films.
As in all these productions, historical accuracy is scarce, compensated by the grandeur of the sets, the multitude of extras, Technicolor (or its Soviet and Italian versions) and CinemaScope, that is, the panoramic screen.
The plot is romanticized and focused on the romantic plot rather than the political-military one, the color and wardrobe are excessive, taking away the credibility of the reenactment (as if someone were going to war in a ball gown at court). There is, however, an attempt at rigor in the weaponry used, in some real scenarios and in battle techniques, although sometimes giving in to the temptation to use everything at the same time, without logic, to increase the spectacularity of the battle scenes.
I cannot resist citing an absurd example, as it is clearly ideological. The nobleman who headed the city about to be besieged, in the face of the imminent Turkish invasion, insists on collective leadership, from the council of nobles, instead of appointing a general to head the defense. A collectivist anachronism introduced in a plot that takes place in the 17th century.
The pomp with which the Turks advance against the castle walls, to the beat of large drums, reminiscent of those of Roman galleys, carrying bunches of straw, which the besieged will purposely set on fire, causing the besiegers to flee, is also ridiculous.
Today it is essentially a curiosity for anyone interested in the history of epic cinema, especially because it is an example from communist Poland, and therefore little known in the West.
Hector (1987)
Nonsense
A Belgian farce trying to launch a truant character, Hector, played by the actor Urbanus.
This Hector is an adult child, an orphan raised among children, in a convent school, until adulthood, to suddenly appear in the lives of his baker uncles and completely turn the whole family upside down.
If there are moments when he almost anticipates a Mr. Bean, this Hector ends up falling into banality, on most occasions, embarking on a physical and even childish comedy, albeit with a touch of nonsense that gives it some humor.
The script doesn't help, with an absurd plot and grotesque characters.
In short, a popular comedy, which could have been the beginning of an interesting and tragicomic character, but which fails miserably, allowing itself to fall into easy and silly populism.
Calamari Union (1985)
In Search of Eira
This film, from the beginning of Kaurismäki's career, reminded me, to a certain extent, of another iconic film about the lost illusions of the 60s and 70s generations, The Wretches Are Still Singing, by the Greek Nikos Nikolaidis.
Of course, Nikolaidis's cinematic language is much more caustic and corrosive. Kaurismäki is faithful to his minimalist principles, as a poet of the absurd. But the essential theme is the same: a lost generation, overtaken by events, that searches, in vain, for a meaning in life in the technocracy that emerged from the rubble of the revolution (real or imaginary).
If Nikolaidis is destructive (and he would be even more so in 1983's Sweet Bunch, in which he practically defends urban guerrilla warfare) Kaurismäki is poetic, transforming disillusionment into a chimerical search for the mythical Eira, Holy Grail of aimless knights, survivors of punk nihilism.
An interesting and original work, even for those who already know Kaurismäki's minimal cinematographic language.
1941 (1979)
Slapstick Spielberg
Forty-five years later, this 1941 remains a controversial film among cinephiles, who label it both as a masterpiece and the biggest failure of Steven Spielberg's hugely successful career.
In fact, the film is none of those things. It's pure entertainment, with a megalomaniac budget and visual effects, with many quality actors, from several generations, and it's certainly a frankly fun comedy, although more in the slapstick style, which never really pleased critics.
It's not a work of art, but it's far from the failure that some point out. It was not a box office success, which went against Spielberg's trend (which he would quickly resume, as his next films would be Raiders of the Lost Ark and E. T., so something important Spielberg learned, with this 1941), and perhaps, for that very reason, been so criticized.
So many years later, the film maintains its freshness, the diabolical rhythm, the boldness and spectacularity of the visual effects and the comedy, featuring some iconic actors of the time, such as the late John Belushi.
It's certainly worth seeing and revisiting with new generations.
Palatak (1963)
Escape Forward
Palatak is another Indian musical melodrama, in the old style of Bollywood. Based on a story by Manoje Basu, adapted by Tarun Majumdar, who also directs, together with Dilip and Sachin Mukherjee, under the collective pseudonymous of Yatrik. The film had a significant success, receiving awards for best actor, Anup Kumar, and best actor second, Ruma Guha Thakurta.
Spoken in Bengali, constitutes today a classic of the cinema of the region.
It deals with the story of a second son, rich and beloved, from a Brahmin family, who does not want to assume the responsibilities of his social position and decides to wander the world, almost like a vagabond, in search of experiences and knowledge. I say, almost like a vagabond, because, although he has no shame in sleeping under a tree, in a stable, or of joining a troupe of musicians and fairground ballerinas, he is not only always well provided with money, for any need, as he does not hesitate to use his caste and family name to be accepted, wherever he passes, even showing arrogance, frequently, with the ones that help him, and he treats as "inferior".
Palatak, which could be translated as a fugitive errant, is precisely a kind of anti-hero, who exchanged wealth for freedom, only to discover, at last, that what he always sought was within reach, almost without leaving his home. It was just the comfort and love of establishing one's own family.
The story is moralistic, but the character is complex and well-interpreted by Anup Kumar, giving the film a picturesque and socially colorful (despite being a black and white movie) vision of a remote and traditionalist India, strongly marked by social divisions, caused by the system of castes.
Konsul (1989)
Life Between the Lines
A Polish comedy from 1989, a period of profound political changes in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, which took the forefront in the reformist process of the Soviet bloc, in which a coup plotter takes advantage of the ineffectiveness of the communist bureaucratic apparatus and the parallel economy that rages in the country, to carry out his coups.
Although situated temporally in the current time in which it was shot, the argument was based on a real story, which took place at the beginning of the 60s, so, strictly speaking, the criticism is not even made of the evident decadence of the regime, in 1989, but of the system itself, inherited from Stalinism.
However, the most ironic thing is that the reality presented, although located in Polish society at the end of the 80s, could be transposed, with the necessary adaptations, to any country or regime in the world.
There has never been a shortage of scammers and there is no system immune to them. If even Stalinist totalitarianism was unable to prevent fraud, the liberalism and capitalism that followed the fall of communism in Europe, gave it a wide field of action, transforming these eastern countries, which were strongly hierarchical and accustomed to living in a parallel economy, in new authoritarian capitalist regimes, where corruption and nepotism are the rule.
But the West is not far behind, because the discredit of liberal political institutions, motivated precisely by nepotism and corruption, is giving rise to authoritarian populism, which differs little, from the oligarchic models of Eastern Europe.
There is no system that can instill honesty in human beings. Everyone has it, until they lose it at the first worthwhile opportunity. It's all a matter of price.
Ensayo de un crimen (1955)
Bunuel makes a thriller
An uncharacteristic film by Bunuel. There is a critique of bourgeois and Catholic morals, but the story plays out mainly like a thriller.
The idea is original and curious. A young man, overly spoiled by women, who hides in the closet with his mother's clothes, creates the illusion of having the power of life and death over the women around him, through a music box that his mother offers him, with a ballerina, in a misogyny that accompanies him into adulthood.
Whether this power is real or imaginary is a cruel game, not only for the protagonist, who thinks he is guilty of crimes, which he did not commit, but desired and even planned, and for the spectator, who is deliberately cast into the doubt of how much of what he sees is real, or simply the protagonist's imagination.
In fact, all crimes are strange and surreal. The nanny is shot dead by a revolutionary, while she was at the window of the house, peacefully watching an attack by revolutionaries, she and the child remaining strangely serene, undaunted, in the middle of the shooting. But the narrator is clear in mentioning that the civil war spared his small town and family, right at the beginning of the film. An inconsistency? I don't believe it.
The daring young woman who uses him to make her rich lover jealous commits suicide by cutting her own neck with a razor, following an argument with that same lover, who she so despised and lived with out of pure interest. Nothing could be more unlikely, mainly because cutting women's throats was the protagonist's favorite fantasy.
The bride, who he plans to kill on her wedding day, having discovered the day before, through an anonymous note, that she had a previous relationship with an architect, dies shot, not by him, but by the architect, who was deceived, exchanged, by the bride, by an older and richer man. Who would have sent the note? The architect himself, with the unfulfilled hope of breaking up the marriage out of jealousy of the groom? Did the failure of the plan, since the wedding was celebrated anyway, motivate the fatal revenge? Or did the groom give up on the wedding, after beeing revealed it's real motivations?
The young tour guide, who he tries to strangle, during that strange encounter with a woman and her replica, in the form of a mannequin, another surreal game so much to the director's taste, does not die. On the contrary, it is the mannequin who suffers the suitor's misogynistic revenge, disappearing melted in the oven, to finally give way to a normal romantic relationship, after being cleared by the police, after having thrown the music box, the symbol of his misogyny, into the lake, and lying down the cane he used, a symbol of rejuvenation or even a psychological rebirth of the character.
A surreal thriller, made up of the protagonist's misogynistic illusions, finally cured by the sincere and disinterested love of a free and unprejudiced woman.
Megáll az idö (1982)
The Children of the Revolution
In 1982 things were indeed beginning to change in Eastern Europe. Solidarity was founded in Poland in 1980 and began to gather support around the world at the same time that a Polish pope arrived at the Vatican. For the first time, the Soviet Union was hesitant to repress reformists, similar to what it had done in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Reformism proliferated throughout Eastern Europe as the Soviet regime weakened. Leonid Brezhnev would die in 1982 and with him, the future of Soviet communism would also die.
This film is part of this reformist phase. A critical view of the repression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, from the perspective of those who remained. Not because they approved the authoritarian regime, that was established there, but because they did not lose hope of reforming it, and carrying out the revolution, within the system itself.
This hope was transferred to the generation of children of the revolution. This is the essential message of the film. A call to new generations, to look at the example of those who fought and, even when defeated, never stopped believing in the revolution and the construction of a freer and more just society.
Kevade (1969)
Spring Nostalgia
Successively occupied by Russians and Germans, Estonia had a brief period of independence between 1920 and 1940, reestablished after the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991.
Entirely filmed in Estonia and spoken in Estonian, this film, apparently a simple reminiscence of youth, in the times of the German presence (the permanent tension between the Estonian and German student communities is symptomatic), evokes Estonian culture and history, which persist despite the successive occupations, of which, the Soviet one, was still ongoing in 1969.
Beneath the innocence of the vicissitudes of youth, hides an affirmation of Estonia's autonomy, as a nation, culture, language and one day, eventually (it would be in 1991, but that was unpredictable in 1969), as an independent state.
Aru koroshi ya (1967)
A Modern Ronin
This "A Certain Killer" is a transposition, for the time, of the myth of the murderous and solitary samurai, also very popular in French cinema of the sixties, as in Jean-Pierre Melville's detective stories, "Le Samourai", from the same year (the title clearly reveals the source of inspiration) is a good example.
Basically, the mythology is ancient and comes from the old ronin of feudal Japan, lost samurai, without a master, the Daimyo, and therefore prevented from living an honorable life according to the Bushido, the samurai code of honor. Nor could they even take their own lives through seppuku (honor-restoring action), being condemned to a dishonorable life.
This myth inspired Kurosawa, it inspired Leone and many westerns, it inspired Melville, it inspired Tarantino, it even inspired Jarmusch, and it also inspired some new wave Japanese cinema, which transposed the myth to contemporary times.
These killers are modern samurai, subject to their own code of honor, but without prejudice in placing themselves at the service of any mafia boss, to commit criminal acts from which, invariably, only they or their friends benefit. They only punish those who deserve it, but generally include in the punishment those who use them, even paying generously, for dishonorable acts.
If the myth is old and has already given rise to many memorable works, and not just in cinema, this film is certainly not one of the best examples. It's not that it's bad, but it's banal, with nothing to distinguish it.
This samurai did not make a school or leave any disciples. It's pure entertainment, in the style of the period.
Hijôsen no onna (1933)
Propaganda?
I confess that, if the film's technical specifications didn't assure me that it was an Ozu film, I would never say so.
It's a replica of an American gangster film. The actors dress in a Western style, drive American cars, drink, smoke and dance in an American style, they dedicate themselves to boxing and gambling, they have criminal gangs, imitating those from the Prohibition era in America. The workshops and bars have signboards in English, the posters on the walls have Jack Dempsey and "All Quiet on the Western Front" (curiously in French). Anyway, it's all so American that I went to check whether the film had been shot in the USA. But no, it was in a studio in Tokyo.
However, it is evident that all this American decadence is presented as a world of vice, perdition, and immorality. The only innocent and ethically elevated character, in the entire film, is a young cashier, who, not surprisingly, wears a kimono and traditional wooden clogs. She is the only character who represents traditional, upright, honorable Japan. Everything else is imported from the West and is morally perverse, decadent, criminal.
Interestingly, the honest simplicity of this young woman, a unique example, in a lost society, is enough to cause a crisis of conscience in the protagonists and lead them to the redemption of their sinful lives.
This moral vision, appeal to good traditional values, is the only typical characteristic of Ozu, which emerges from the film.
The rest, more than an imitation of Hollywood, is a demonization of the Western and particularly the American way of life. In the historical context in which the film appears - 1933 was the year of the Japanese invasion of China, but hostilities had already begun in 1931, with the invasion of Manchuria and the progressive internationalization of the conflict, with the intervention of the allied powers, British, Russians and Americans, which would last until the end of the Second World War - I cannot help but see this very vehement criticism of Western society as an act of propaganda, of support for the Japanese imperial military campaign and of demonization and discrediting of Western enemies of Japan, extolling the virtues of Japanese tradition, against American and Western vices.
Surely the weakest work I've seen, by the renowned Japanese director.
Incompreso (Vita col figlio) (1966)
Melodramatic
With a script based on a novel by Florence Montgomery, this is a tragic story, of a family torn apart by the premature death of the mother and the attempt by the husband and two young children to overcome this irreparable loss.
The father, believing that his eldest son would be more mature and better prepared to face the tragedy, seeks his complicity, to avoid further suffering for the youngest. But this decision turns out to be tragically wrong.
It's a well-made film (although the Italian dubbing, by British actors Anthony Quayle and John Sharpe, takes away some of the authenticity of the adaptation), centered on a child's perspective on family tragedy.
But the adapted work lacks the British spirit, that coldness that gives a certain nobility to the tragedy. Dubbed in Italian and centered on two mischievous children, with a clearly Latin spirit, the work is excessively melodramatic. A Latin fatalism, which does not fit well with the haughtiness of Anglo Saxon suffering.
I think the work loses strength in this Italian adaptation. A more formal and British treatment of these young orphans, with the rebelliousness and wit that should characterize them, would give more meaning and depth to the final outcome.
Why Be Good? (1929)
Love and Foxtrot
I confess that I find it delightful to see these movies, almost a century old, perfectly restored and presented to the contemporary public, with the freshness with which they were seen, for the first time, by our ancestors.
It is an authentic journey through time, customs, costumes, behaviors and mentalities. An experience that allows a much deeper and more knowledgeable look at the past. Cinema as a historical source, even though we know that everything was staged, in some now-disappeared studio.
Here we have a banal script, for a romantic comedy, not particularly fun, in fact. A poor girl meets a rich boy, they fall in love, but he wants to make sure that she loves him and is not just interested in his money. Nothing new, not even in 1929.
The film, however, features a wonderful actress, Colleen Moore, who gives life and a very special charm to this banal story. She is the one who makes the film and it is only because of her that it is worth taking that leap, back to 1929, and dancing the foxtrot in the city's nightclubs.
Beautiful, charismatic, expressive, an authentic force of nature, this Colleen Moore.
Trading Places (1983)
Yuppie Values
Of all the comedies produced by Hollywood, based on characters or successful actors from the television program Saturday Night Live, and there were hundreds, this is certainly one of the most successful and entertaining.
Eddie Murphy has one of the biggest hits of his career here, as do Dan Aykroyd and director John Landis, not to mention that the film features two old Hollywood glories, reborn from the ashes, in important roles, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy. It also features the inevitable Jamie Lee Curtis who, in the 80s, was at the peak of her popularity, to which the success of this film was also not unrelated. The story is very well constructed, the contrast between Murphy's street smartness and Aykroyd's Harvard education plays perfectly, to increase the film's hilarity and even a moral lesson can be drawn from this volatility of fortune and dirty play, in North American capitalist society, of which the yuppies of the Regan era, portrayed in the film, are an excellent example.
One of the best North American comedies of the 80s, which is always a pleasure to watch again.
The Mark (1961)
Prejudice
The Mark is, on many levels, a remarkable film. Because it demonstrates an unshakable faith in man's ability to learn from his mistakes, because it criticizes society for prejudice, even in matters as sensitive as pedophilia, because it defends a penal system aimed at the reintegration of prisoners into society, instead of a system retributive, oriented towards punishment and social revenge, exercised against the offender.
But the most notable thing about this 1961 film is the demonstration of courage in approaching the problem, that few would have today. Nowadays, there are countries with public lists of pedophiles, which prevent them from living near schools, which allow their exclusion from certain neighborhoods or condominiums or jobs. The psychosis of pedophilia has surpassed the right to justice, privacy and social reintegration.
A film that demonstrates, after all, that in this regard, humanity has gone a lot backwards, since 1961.
Der junge Törless (1966)
A Finger in the Wound
Young Törless is a pertinent reflection on good and evil and the way an individual behaves, given the lack of values in others.
In comparison with the moral and ethical values required by institutions, human behavior seems to follow an errant, amoral path, simply determined by chance, or the current of events. Especially when manifested in a group, human beings lose any values and act according to the tide. They practice excesses and suffer humiliations instinctively, as if they were a fatality of life.
The few who show the courage to remain faithful to fundamental values are marginalized, seen as outsiders, labeled as dreamers.
Being a German film from 1966, it is impossible not to relate this criticism to the rise and fall of Nazism, just 21 years earlier.
A film in which Volker Schlöndorff puts a finger on the wound of Nazism, still open in German society, and forces his compatriots to reflect on the mistakes of the past.
The Rain People (1969)
Dead End
Still without the fame that would come with his next film, The Godfather, The Rain People is already a work by a mature Francis Ford Coppola, with clear ideas about how to make a film.
At first glance, this road movie can be interpreted as a metaphor about absence, which always hovers in our lives, lived by instinct, without direction or meaning, no matter how much we want to convince ourselves otherwise.
But if we consider that, in the 60s, a woman was still subject to her husband's guardianship (both here and in the USA) and not even a bank account could open, without his authorization, Natalie's escape from the life of a wife and mother, acquires a new meaning, and the film becomes a manifesto of revolt, against the abuse of women and their subordination, in a patriarchal and morally vicious society.
Number Seventeen (1932)
Looking for a style
Theoretically, this number seventeen could be a successful Hitchcock superproduction. It has an elaborate plot, in which no one is what they seem to be, there is plenty of action, and it even has unusually daring special effects for the time. However, it doesn't work, mainly due to the fragility and imbalance of the script.
We have a film divided into two opposite parts. At first it is a play, confined to a single setting, where the characters appear mysteriously, but in a slow and uninteresting way. From just over halfway through the film, the action begins at a breakneck pace, never to stop, until the final climax.
This imbalance clearly harms the narrative, which in addition to being scarce, is tedious at the beginning and hasty in the second part.
But the script itself is basic, artificial, the characters have the density of a sheet of paper and you never truly understand the story behind the events.
It's a detective game, in which the spectator is deceived with false clues and subtracted information, so that, in the end, everything ends well, contrary to the appearances, successively created.
I would say it's Hitchcock learning how to make a Hitchcock film. But the test doesn't go particularly well, despite the many means involved.
Il sorpasso (1962)
A Fulfilled Life
Il Surpasso is one of the most interesting titles in Dino Risi's work. With his own script, written together with Etttore Scola and Ruggero Maccari, is an impressive metaphor of life, which lasts just two days, in the lives of two complete strangers, whose lives intersect, by mere chance.
There are people who are born fortunate and those who owe nothing to fortune. There are those who work hard to die of hunger and those who do nothing and live in abundance. There are those who are born old and those who die young. There are those who live and those who see others live.
The two days he spent with Bruno were the best of Roberto's entire life. What more could he ask from life?
As Dostoevsky wrote, isn't a moment of happiness enough to fill a life?
High Noon (1952)
Duel at Noon
High Noon is one of the most iconic westerns in North American cinema. To a large extent because it combines the classic elements of the Western with the psychological thriller, which was beginning to gain expression in the 1950s, after film noir had reigned in the previous decade.
It is a tense film, from beginning to end, where the spectator, as well as Marshall Kane and the other residents of the city, anxiously wait for a fatal outcome, while waiting for the midday train to arrive, and see Kane's expectations dashed, in gathering support to face the fearsome and vengeful Miller's band, who awaits him, also impatiently, at the station.
Everyone runs away or hides, except Kane and also, at the last moment, his young wife Amy, who ends up playing an essential role, in the final outcome of the duel.
A stellar cast stands out, starting with Gary Cooper (already in his fifties, but imposing in the lead role), Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, the beautiful Mexican star Katy Jurado, even the future spaghetti western star, Lee Van Cleef.
A simple story, even elementary, but from which a cinematic myth was built.
In the future, Sergio Leone's heroes, like Clint Eastwood or Van Cleef himself, would have no difficulty getting rid of four fugitives, no matter how good gunmen they were. The myth was already installed. Clint Eastwood is not Will Kane, who has to face real villains and suffer the consequences of his bravery. He is a true superhero, who, with cunning and infallible aim, takes on dozens of opponents, without suffering a scratch.
In High Noon the fear is real, the tension tremendous, danger lurks around every corner and every bullet takes death with it.
It's the clay that made the western heroes. Others would use them to build the myth.
Nijûshi no hitomi (1954)
On the Island of Little Beans
On the small island of Shodoshima (literally Island of Little Beans), in the Inland Sea of Japan, a young teacher begins her career with a class of twelve first-year students in a fishing village in the late 1920s.
From the relationship she establishes with the children, we see the history of Japan unfold, during the difficult years of poverty, the war in Manchuria and finally, the Second World War.
An epic limited to a small fishing village, spanning twenty years, which represents the suffering of a people, devastated by war and the isolation of the islanders.
But it is also a film of hope, in the new generation, the children of those killed in the wars, who, handed over to the same teacher, ensure the continuity of life, the Japanese nation and culture.
Melodramatic, but with very beautiful moments. Highlight for the protagonist, Hideko Takamine, one of the most beautiful and charismatic Japanese actresses of all time.
Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens (2022)
Now They're All Rich!
Being one of the oldest techniques used in animation cinema, stop motion has been reborn, in recent decades, as a privileged vehicle for many authors (who doesn't remember Tim Burton's famous animations in the 90s), after a period of of relative oblivion.
The vintage effect seems to attract new authors, who complement it with digital techniques and artistic daring, such as mixing real and animated images, as an integral part of the narrative. Here, the director himself, through his voice and a hand, interferes in the story, like a true character.
Technique aside, the film is a tribute to the director's grandparents' generation, to the time of migrants, who fled from hunger, on their mountain villages, in search of work abroad. Where they endured, with a smile on their lips and recognized patriotism, the racist humiliations of their hosts, because you should not bite the hand that feeds you.
A work for future memory, of a time of misery, war and survival, which contrasts, so much, with the comfort and pride of subsequent generations.
As my grandmother used to say, they are all rich now!
Sziget a szárazföldön (1969)
The Island
A product of the new wave of Hungarian cinema, this debut work by director Judit Elek is an almost enigmatic film.
An elderly woman lives alone, in a two-bedroom apartment in Budapest, full of family memories of an opulent past. But she lives surrounded by neighbors, crowded in decrepit apartments, rented by the room, where old people die, forgotten by everyone, and are buried on the roofs of the buildings (in a funeral scene, totally surreal).
She then goes on an epic adventure, through the city, looking for a smaller apartment, where she can be quiet, comfortable and above all, away from the chaos that surrounds her, from the memories of the past, to the nightmares of the present.
The most famous scene in the film, in which a crowd of people accumulates, visiting the apartment, until chaos ensues, at a party, which lasts for hours, which many compare to Tati, but, for me, it evokes Fellini, for the surrealist absurdity of the situation, the dialogues, the variety of characters that visit the house, the absolute chaos that ensues, to the point that the hostess abandons it, until things finally calm down and she can return, restoring order to the apartment, now almost empty.
It's a film with beautiful moments, but a little hermetic. It could be summarized in the story of an elderly woman, in search of peace, escaping the chaotic urban hustle and bustle of Budapest in the 60s.
Is it enough, as a movie script? Judit Elek seems to believe so.
Is this epic journey an allegory, of the decadence of Hungarian society, at the time, when compared to the luxurious harmony of the old days, before the war?
Perhaps. For me it would give much more sense to the film.
Middle of the Night (1959)
Ageless Love
A psychological drama, perhaps daring, for its time, but which became trivial with age.
Firstly, because there is a totally different perception of what a 56-year-old man was like in 1959 (in fact, Fredric March would have been over 63 when he made the film, and he can't even hide it), and a 24-year-old woman (Kim Novak would already be close to 26 years old).
He was an old man, trying to enjoy the last years of his life, and she was a divorcee, after three years of marriage, incidentally childless, but most women her age would already have two or three children. A radical change in the average standard of living, in just 65 years.
Today a 56-year-old man is still more than ten years away from retirement and has a life expectancy of another 25 years, while a 24-year-old girl is probably still studying at college and a long way from thinking about getting married or having children.
But the topic remains current. The age difference and the social, and personal, acceptance of romantic relationships, between individuals with more than 30 years of age difference.
He seeks pride in the company of a young wife and she seeks emotional and financial security, which she did not find with her young ex-husband. Does it work?
Society condemns, they themselves doubt and in the end, the only legitimate conclusion, both now and in 1959, is one: Whatever Works, to paraphrase Woody Allen.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
A Classic
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a horror and fantasy classic. Of course, to understand why, we have to go back to the 1950s and look at this film through the eyes of a young man, who reads books about aliens, who begins to be interested in the space race, who hears about the terror of the atomic bomb and the effects of radiation.
For this young man, this film is the equivalent of a Star Wars, an Indiana Jones or a Spider-Man, for subsequent generations. It is a film in which the fantasy of comic books really appears on the screen, in a crescendo that makes us fear a real invasion of extraterrestrial seeds, which will dominate humanity, transforming each of us into a vegetable, with a human appearance.
If I wanted to be ironic, I would say that this happened soon after, with the invasion of television. But this movie isn't for philosophers, it's really for teenagers hungry for a good, scary alien invasion.
Of course the argument is weak. It doesn't convince anyone born after the forties. Of course, the horror is practically non-existent, by the standards of post-70s horror films, where blood and gratuitous violence abound.
It still has the charm of the pioneers. A fossil of fantastic cinema, for nostalgia fans and historians of the seventh art.