Category: 1930s Cinema
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French Film: Texts and Contexts – Hayward and Vincendeau, 1990
Michele Lagny, “The feeling gaze: Jean Renoir’s La Bête humaine (1938)” – The essay traces some of the context of the film’s release, particularly the way it was somewhat ordained to be a “three-star” film, what with it being an adaptation of a Zola novel, directed by Renoir (hot off of La Grande Illusion), and starring Jean…
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Viewing Log: August 2013, Vol. II
The Rules of the Game (dir. Jean Renoir, 1939) – It was time to revisit the great work. Christopher Faulkner makes a great analysis of the film through an ethnographic mode. Instead of considering Renoir as the great auteur, the transcendent author of timeless films divorced from their social contexts, Faulkner historically, culturally, and socially situates…
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Viewing Log: August 2013, Vol. I
Pépé le Moko (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1937) – A masterpiece of setting and staging. It’s in Algiers, within the Casbah, and it treats its environs and those native to it as simply mise-en-scene, but this is to be expected from 1930s poetic realism. Everything about this is “classic,” exactly what defines the “golden age” of…
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Viewing Log: July 2013
Thérèse Raquin (dir. Marcel Carné, 1953) – A step back from the poetic realism of Carné’s big-budget, big production Children of Paradise and lower-budget Port of Shadows, this is a melodrama that zooms in on French domestic life during the postwar economic boom of the early 50s. Of course, these folks don’t see a lot of money in…
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Viewing Log, Week of 8/12/2012 (Vol. I)
Elevator to the Gallows (dir. Louis Malle, 1958) – Am going to need to read up on this one, on account of its excellence. Am also going to need to check out more mid-late 50s French films that aren’t from Cahiers/nouvelle vague folks. If Malle qualifies as “new wave,” it’s not because his style is…
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Viewing Log, Week of 8/5/2012 (Vol. II)
Les Enfants Terribles (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950) – Started watching this one thinking it was a 1929 film directed by Jean Cocteau, only to find out this is the 1950 film adaptation of Cocteau’s 1929 novel. Hate to talk influence, but it’s so hard to watch this without constantly thinking about Jules et Jim, The…
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Viewing Log, Week of 7/15/2012
Play Time (dir. Jacques Tati, 1967) – This was goofy but not only that, maybe something approaching a Chesterton comedy, Father Brown or something. A clear critique of all things Modern and a substantive study of spaces, Play Time highlights form over narrative, sounds over dialogue, human over mechanistic, curves over straight lines, and colors…
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Viewing Log, Week of 7/8/2012
Sometimes you just need, like, a year-long break, you know? Drive (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) – It has the kind of pacing that rewards patience, and even assumes it from its viewer, which is nice. Someone called it 2011’s The American, and one can see why. It’s one of those “art-house” films that prioritizes…
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Quickies, Vol. XXV: Catch-up
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (dir. Blake Edwards, 1961) – Been way too long since this one. It’s hard to watch it “objectively,” largely on account of its status as the origin of Audrey Hepburn’s ultimate and most everlasting image. This is interesting, considering how different her character here is from those in Roman Holiday, Sabrina, My…
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Quickies, Vol. XXIII: In which Tony Curtis goes downhill
Sex and the Single Girl (dir. Richard Quine, 1964) – A Tony Curtis marathon was obviously in order, following the old fella’s death recently at the ripe old age of 85. (Held off on Some Like It Hot for now on account of a relatively recent viewing.) This one is, well, very sexy indeed. One…
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Platinum Blonde: The Unattainable Ideal
A most fascinating, most worthwhile viewing. In this one, Harlow is about as objectified as they come, as the title more than indicates. Early shots in the film (presumably before the director and co. realized just how useful she was) shoot Harlow from the back, on one hand an oddity but on the other all…
Precious Bodily Fluids 