: "Performance (1970)" & "The Servant (1963)" clips

Performance (1970)   Nic Roeg & Donald Cammell A diametrically opposed act from Tony of 'The Servant', James Fox delivers a terrifying, but equally confused London gangster.

Joseph Losey superbly directs Pinter's restrained script, and Douglas Solcombe's cinematography is formidably good.  It's exquisitely sexy without every being explicit (except for the shot of the tap, perhaps). © 2009 YouTube, LLC 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, CA 94066

The Servant

'The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant'

'Celine and Julie go boating'

This is a terrible film. Having looked forward for many months to watching this film, which makes so many top ten lists and has stills reproduced everywhere, I am disappointed. It is self-indulgent and then some not just from the revoltingly flaccid direction but also the performance of the women themselves. Constantly giggling and self-consciously gawping in cute wonder at the camera they prance and preen through the film with fay and unendearing mannerisms that are enough to make you want to wash your hands of the seventies for good. 

Asta Nielsen

is my new favourite actress. Famous for her performance in the silent film of Hamlet (1921), directed by Svend Gade. She has style and talent, a combination that is still as refreshing as it is rare. 

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Barry Lyndon

Authentic Bicycle Thieves

Charles Burnett described the story of Bicycle Thieves as "diabolically simple". I think you'd be hard pressed to elaborate on "Man gets bike. Man looses bike. Will man ever find bike again." Simplicity is what make this film so ethically complex and dramatically heartbreaking, although it explicit about neither. The images we see are just a guy and his son trying to find a bike. 

It the viewer who connect these images with radical social commentary. We are plunged into a moral grey zone, in much the same way as a Graham Green novel, where we identify the criminal a victim, the right as wrong, and the bad as necessary: our moral absolutes fail to stand the test. The workers in this film are forced to the thieving trade because they live in a state that fails to provide for the poor. In order to survive they have to renounce social duty for individual gain. 

Again, it is the simplicity of this film which makes it such a sophisticated interrogation of post-war Italy. The documentary style (although highly manufactured) is what Godfrey Cheshire describes as an 'ethical stance' which 'continues to represent a struggle for authenticity'. Here is where I think the film becomes involved with contemporary America. The entire nation is gasping for any last grain of authenticity they can believe in politics. McCain's slogan 'The Original Maverick', implies the Republican ticket provide some kind of root source, a primary, unfettered, unfiltered character, to it's voters. 

Obama's campaign is centred around 'change', which is the clearest demand of 'Bicycle Thieves'. After watching that film it's impossible to think that the status quo of its characters should be permitted to continue. The Democratic ticket's compact slogan – one verb 'to change', seems in complete alignment with the socialist principals of Italian neorealist emerging from fascist rule with a fractured cultural identity and complicit guilt in the atrocities committed by the Nazis, being unearthed at the time the film was made in 1948. 

Yet the Obama slogan is still extraordinarily vague. It doesn't pin down precisely what is going to change, in the way that the Republican ticket identifies 'original' expressly with 'Maverick'. This American election seems more like political theatre than ever before. Yet we seem to be sliding further and further away from the 'total cinema' of the neorealist social conscious message for change, to a vague and non-committal rallying cry. It's function is to rouse rather than deliver. 

'Le Plaisir', Max Ophuls, (1952).

'There is no joy in happiness', is the closing phrase of Max Ophuls's 'Le Plaisir'.  It is the parting words of a story which while sad, promises a marriage. This sugar lump cliche is served up as a cold comfort, by the time the story has come to its end. Such simply phrased, cruelly delivered pearls typify the atmosphere of this film. It is a world of illicit joy, pathetic failure, and uncomfortable delight brought to you by a narrator who prefers the dark to guide us through these Guy de Maupassant stories because it provides both intimacy and anonymity. Such a paradox typifies the voyeuristic pleasure in watching the three episodes of the film. Peeping through the window pains, back doors and open shutters, each segment is exquisitely told, with plenty of french lace, and ominous shadows. You are danced through the stories at a whurlwind pace,  yet can't leave the ball without feeling more than a slight chill at the company you've seen. The characters are portrayed as  over-ripe fruit: poised between a nutritious delicacy and fecund rubbish. There is nothing in here that a mature child couldn't understand, yet the love-play between pleasure, innocence and death has an eloquence which I find unmatched.

The small town gag: screwball vs. Palin

It was a stroke of broadcasting genius to have  G.W.Bush 'bail out' speech of yesterday followed by a showing of 'The Great McGinty ' (1940). Preston Sturges screwball cum political satire is a fantastic election themed flick.  I remember watching it during my revision and it did not disappoint upon second viewing. In the opening scene, where he's a bartender in Mexico, McGinty says 'I was the governor of a state, baby'. Hannah came in with the quip 'Just like Sara Palin' which couldn't have been more spot on. Watch the scene from 'McGinty', and then read this quotation from Palin's vice-president nomination speech, because the vibe is so unwittingly similar: 

"I have had the privilege of living most of my live in a small town. I was just your average hocky mum, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better. When I ran for city council I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown." 

 Sometimes, the face of a corrupt and morally bankrupt organization is an anyone who hasn't got a clear (or any real) clue as to 'what-is-going-on'. 

It's a brilliant film, and doesn't seem like an awkward first attempt, despite the fact that it was Sturges's first big motion picture. Yesterday my parcel of Max Ophuls DVDs arrived, which has only lead to my endless longing to spend the day in bed watching them. Dad Amazon Primed them over, after I'd made an unsubtle hint with a 'New Yorker' review of them, which was so nice of him. The covers are exquisite. As Ophuls was Sturges favorite director I feel the segway is far neater then I could ever have contrived. 'What to watch in Manhattan' is another must do list.