PlexNex

Bean's First Film

"Breyer Horses"

"Control" Today

A.O. Scott in The New York Times, reviews "Control" ...

... the film about the band, Joy Division, directed by the Dutch photog / cinematog, Anton Corbijn, written by Matt Greenhalgh based on the book, Touching from a Distance by Deborah Curtis (Ian Curtis' wife).

Perhaps Joy Division's most easily recognized song is "Love Will Tear Us Apart" ...

 

In the late-1970's the Macclesfield/Salford band's Mancunian sound pre-suggested A Flock of Seagulls, Echo & the Bunnymen and the later neo-cardigans, The Smiths and Housemartins.

Filmmakers on Filmmakers

Today's Sunday Times (New York) has a feast of articles on the great filmmakers who died last week.

On Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen writes "The Man Who Asked Hard Questions".

On Michelangelo Antonioni, Martin Scorsese writes "The Man Who Set Film Free".

Both articles of course are more about Allen & Scorsese; however, Scorsese's writing here on his compulsive multiple viewings of "L'Avventura" while he was a film student explain better how Antonioni's work was expanding the scope of what film can achieve.

For me, it's Antonioni's "Blowup" that I can't seem to stop watching: it captures the swinging King's Road, London of my youth (1966) in a dark, compelling & sexy mystery. (Rent this movie to see both Sarah Miles and Vanessa Redgrave in their Royal Shakespeare Co. primes and also for a snippet of the Yardbirds playing live during the short few weeks when all three greats of the London blues guitar axis -- Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck & Jimmy Page -- were in the band at the same time.)

Adding a lagniappe today is the A.O. Scott piece on how Warren Beatty's "Bonnie & Clyde" (1967, with Faye Dunaway) changed the portrayal of violence in film: "Two Outlaws Blasting Holes in the Screen".

A Long Day's Journey into a Midsummer Night

Ingmar Bergman, the best & most accomplished film-maker of the 20th -- and so far the 21st -- Century, has died at 89.

The New York Times Page A1 obituary by Mervyn Rothstein today will give you a nearly-complete view of why the catalog of Bergman's films (all of it...even the less incisive ones) should be taught along with Freshman English as part of the required humanities core for all college students.

The Bergman oeuvre, such as it is, represents along with the Dutch Painters a high example of a medium bursting out of its limitations.

A medieval knight plays chess with Death for all the Marbles (The Seventh Seal, 1957).

Rothstein quotes all the right people, including Woody Allen (who would be a comedian on the Chitlin' Circuit without inspiration from, and opportunity to parody, Bergman's films) and he quotes Bergman himself. Rothstein helpfully addresses the important question of where Bergman's unique, fable-istic work comes from...

The ideas for his films came to him in many ways, he said, "Persona," the study of two women in neurotic intimacy, came to life one day when he saw two women sitting together comparing hands...

Other films were suggested by essays, novels or pieces of music. In every case, he said, some outside event had turned the key on some deep-seated memory: each film was a projection of some past experience.

Rothstein's admirable comprehensiveness is undone on one account: he never asks what the ladies think. He has not consulted any women on their opinion of Bergman's films and his characters nor on their treatment. Women I know -- who love, like and dislike Bergman alike -- are struck, baffled and otherwise infuriated by his misogynistic portrayal of women and relationships (mapping closely to his five marriages, nine children and the difficulty his family(ies) had in living with Bergman). My response to this: go get a woman film-maker to do what Bergman has done and we'll get the other side of the story.

For the more succinct, intellectual view also today in The New York Times, see Stephen Holden's gloss on the meaning of Bergman, "In Art's Old Sanctuary, A High Priest of Film"...

Mr. Bergman's ruthlessly honest investigation of his demons is what lends such images [as the one above] their crushing weight. However fictional, they are undeniably truthful expressions of one artist's personal torment, redeemed by fleeting glimpses of eternity and redemption in a long, dark night of the soul.

The excellent coverage at NPR is not to be missed, with audio interviews like this one from Liv Ullman: "It wasn't like living with Bob Hope."

What I like about Bergman is his honesty in confronting the big questions in artful ways.

The Bergman palette is all about the indelible emotional imprints of early childhood: all Strindberg, Ibsen & Shakespeare with a confident license to admix his own emotional notes & tones from growing up adoring his warm yet cold mother, Karin (a name recurring in the film work), and suffering the sharp lash of his strict Lutheran pastor father.

Bergman is an open book -- in Shakespeare's class -- from which we learn about ourselves as well as the creative process.

Widescreen v. 35mm

Yes, I occasionally read the Amazon reviews.

Film buffs will be interested in this old comment from David M. Kusumoto of San Diego who is clearly a classic film maniac.

This is why this film (and you'll be surprised to hear), many, many classic films will never be produced in widescreen. They don't exist. You should buy this DVD because of the video quality and the extra "goodies." Gone with the Wind in widescreen? Nope, never was, even though it was blown up to 70mm and cropped horribly in the 1968 re-issue. What's out there on DVD on Gone with the Wind is standard 35mm "TV semi-square" framing, because that's the way it was shot. Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Citizen Kane? Nope, never shot in anything greater than 35mm. It's a Wonderful Life? No again.

Read the whole comment here where it was originally given in year 2000 for the Hitchcock film, Strangers on a Train.