Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Starring Sterling Hayden, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor The camera follows people from below, through walls and rooms, through shelves and bookcases. The people – mostly men – are obscured. The camera cannot pierce everything, but we see just enough setting and just enough of people’s faces to get the point. The… Read More The Killing (1956)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Max von Sydow, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta Valberg Sometimes, when I like to think modern literature or music or art is edgy, I remind myself of late medieval verse and gain some perspective. An example I’ve done some research on is the history of blood libels, expressed succinctly in “The Prioress’ Tale” from The… Read More The Virgin Spring (1960)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook (I definitely reserve the right to fix this one up later.) It’s interesting that Elisabet chooses silence as her escape rather than blindness. Her letter proves that she is not shy about communicating, necessarily, but more importantly it is her sight which terrifies her, forces… Read More Persona (1966)
Dir. Giuseppe De Santis. Starring Silvana Mangano, Doris Dowling, Vittorio Gassman The radio announcer in the beginning of the film tells us why the rice fields of northern Italy are manned entirely by women; they have faster, smaller hands. And so we are thrust into a world full of women, where men are interlopers, flinging chaos… Read More Bitter Rice (1949)
Dir. Richard Attenborough. Starring Ben Kingsley, Roshan Seth, Saeed Jaffrey Two scenes in Gandhi – a movie which, at just over three hours, is less lengthy than its reputation – have always stood out to me as terribly impressive and, more importantly, as filmic blueprints for fighting back against stronger powers. One of them is in… Read More Gandhi (1982)
Dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Roger Livesey, David Niven, Kim Hunter The second scene of the film, the one where Peter Carter (Niven, who will always be the guy who got off the best burn in Oscar history) descends about as slowly as possible in a crashing airplane, is surprisingly moving. The surprise… Read More A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Halvar Bjork Bergman is still Bergman in this movie, and I have no doubt that someone else has used that line to describe Autumn Sonata before and I don’t care. Ingmar Bergman is still addicted to close-ups, still putting our cheeks to the hot stove of emotional upheaval for… Read More Autumn Sonata (1978)
Dir. Milos Forman. Starring Hana Brejchova, Vladimir Pucholt, Milada Jezkova Watch enough movies or TV, especially the recent stuff, and you start to get used to the idea of young people being played by…other young people, I guess, but people who aren’t anything like the age group they’re portraying. Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield were… Read More Loves of a Blonde (1965)
Dir. Robert Altman. Starring Maggie Smith, Kelly Macdonald, Ryan Philippe In retrospect, it was a mistake to make Gosford Park a murder mystery. What makes Nashville and Short Cuts effective is the unbelievably patient burn among small pockets of people which culminates in an event which no person can ignore. In Short Cuts, it’s the earthquake that no one can escape from;… Read More Gosford Park (2001)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Starring Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin We are forced to confront ourselves and our pasts only when they are placed directly in front of us and we are told, “Look!” More than anything, I find this message at the heart of Wild Strawberries, and it is a heart that is alternately warm… Read More Wild Strawberries (1957)
Seeing Things Secondhand 