index | Colin’s home page | DVDs viewed | DVDs to view
Star wars
Naive storytelling, but an engaging spectacle if you’re in an uncritical frame of mind... and haven’t seen Dambusters.
CJC
Rebecca
The suspense holds your attention once you’re reconciled to the unsympathetic... characters and upper-class mannerisms.
CJC
The garden of theFinzi-Contini
Falls below the seriousness of its subject matter: the parallel storylines confuse... the viewer without adding to each other, and the wet tee-shirt scene is one of the silliest things in cinema.
CJC
La femme en bleu
Like Raphaël, a film which sets music to images; like Raphaël, a story in which... love is thwarted by the fickleness of the male heart.
A delight for ear and eye, and full of gentle humour (though it might be said that the music is a little over-exposed).
CJC
Raphaël ou le débauché
A love sorry whose sadness is veiled by enchanting visuals and music. Superbly acted.
As with Ariane Mnouchkine’s Molière, I find the outdoor scenes unconvincing: the town and country seem unlived-in, as if the National Trust have hurriedly taken their signs down.
Nina Companeez was both screenwriter and editor, so it would be hard to say that the overall vision of the film was less hers than Deville’s.
CJC
Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai de Commerce
The first 3 hours are mesmerisingly banal; the violent ending perfectly believable.
The despair could be anyone’s. A challenging role for Delphine Seyrig, who has to play an unselfconscious solitary life. I felt she conveyed her silent emotional state powerfully. She did’t hum, sigh, scratch etc., the way anyone on her own surely would – presumably the director’s decision, and right because such gestures would distract; and adding to the effect because in keeping with the character’s repressed image of respectability.
Strikingly objective cinematography.
I score the film 7 for impact and memorability, but most viewers must be bored rigid; and perhaps I would have been too in a different frame of mind.
CJC
Pyaasa
Begins slowly; thereafter effective as a musical, a love story, and social comment... though a trifle melodramatic. The lack of realism (the song, the character whose role is that of the fool) cast back to the drama of Shakespeare’s day.
CJC
At the height of summer
Tracey found it enchanting.
Saint Germain ou la négotiation
An attractive unfaithful realisation which adds a heart to a rather arid novel... but it drags a little.
It leaves me in search of the auteur. The novel has little personal interest except the rather gothic cousin who swoops in and departs; the narrator is just a camera. The cousin is missing from the film: instead, with the contrivance that Malassise lives next door to St. Germain, he has a family life; his coldness recalls Un coeur en hiver; but he is partially redeemed at the end by his adoption of the reformed faith. The novel views the religious dispute as external; the film sees honesty on the side of the reformers.
It seems to have been the screenwriter Alain Moreau who added meaning to a barren tract on negotiating tactics.
CJC
India song
A tantalising mixture of tangoes, blues, mirrors and voices off; a convincing vision... of how cinema might work; a profession of love for Delphine Seyrig; slow; beautiful.
The film would be nothing without the music. It has much in common with ballet; and that is how I like films, with words and images as accompaniments. The actors aren’t allowed to walk in the normal gangling way, nor to talk. Their impassivity brings to mind formalistic rather than naturalistic drama.
CJC
Capote
Creepily gripping: Capote himself (brilliantly portrayed) at first repulsive... then ambivalent.
CJC
Complex and grown up: it doesn’t tell you what to think.
TCM
Les Templiers
A riveting first half hour, with Phillip the Bel a Shakespearian monster... after that: torture, chicanery, retractions, retractions of retractions... all squalid and lacking dramatic intensity. Phillip very well acted.
CJC
The Return
Stunning, strange, unforgettable.
TCM
Barry Lyndon
Initially too slow, it becomes uncomfortable during Barry’s extended abuse... of the Lyndon family: but then the last hour, driven forwards by the solemn pulse of the music, unfolds with irresistable intensity. In the end it’s a tableau which doesn’t mean very much.
(I believe the music to be a concerto arrangement by d’Indy and Paul Bazelaire of Vivaldi’s E minor cello sonata. In fact the film sent me to the sonatas whose slow movements I found generally rather beautiful, and belying Vivaldi’s reputation for composing in his sleep.)
CJC
The opening scene is very much what the whole film is like: a beautiful landscape framed by the branches of a tree; a duel picturesquely going on in the distance. I must admit I was quite baffled as to why they kept going to Stourhead via Hay-on-Wye.
TCM
Memento
A marvellously constructed and gripping mystery. The plot structure is astonishing and thought-provoking; the truth of events gets revealed backwards, reflecting the protagonist’s ignorance of what has happened; some of the plot twists are breathtaking.
Not much more is made of the philosophical implications of this sort of amnesia than what serves to drive the plot, and while the main story was tightly structured, some of the contextual situations were inconsistent and unconvincing.
TCM
El
I suppose I, being the time-triallist and more used to enduring pain for spells of several hours, was prepared to sit through to the end; Colin wasn’t, so we DNFed. I didn’t complain too much.
It did provoke some discussion as to whether it was a “savage indictment” of Mexican bourgeois attitudes. I argued it was: because people saw that the chap was a fine member of society, he was judged by that and assumed to be decent all the way through, and people were blind to what he was inflicting on his wife. I suppose it’s probably a good thing that Bunuel portrayed this in a film; I just didn’t exactly get a lot of enjoyment out of watching it.
I tried to follow the dialogue but couldn’t avoid looking at the subtitles. Sorry.
TCM
L’affaire du collier de la reine
The exact opposite of auteur cinema – a self-effacingly accurate rendering... But how often does a screenplay tell a story as interesting as history? The impact of fiction is always weakened because it needs the reader or viewer to collude by suspending disbelief: history gets his unrestrained acceptance.
The film certainly doesn’t occupy the highest level of cinematic art, but its shortfalls are compensated by the interest of its subject matter. The converse is also true. As history the film is limited by a certain myopia (because it can show specifics but not generalities) and by a lack of nuance (because it cannot represent the gradations of uncertainty). Funck-Brentano’s role as co-screenwriter, though, guarantees honesty in the presentation.
It’s a good film for French learners, with lots of clearly spoken dialogue.
CJC
Water
Ravishingly beautiful; perhaps too overwhelmingly beautiful.
TCM
The African Queen
Entertaining but superficial, and I found it too old fashioned to really engage with. I did not like the bit with the leeches at all.
TCM
La chasse aux papillons
Like Adieu plancher des vaches a kaleidoscope of eccentric personages and attractive ... images all suffused with nostalgia and a benign view of life, but slow moving and slight of plot.
CJC
Chungking Express
A crazy whirlwind, it has the buzz and mayhem of international cities, the glittery lights and the tattiness. I loved the Arab bus music in the first part. The change of plot from gritty drug smuggling intrigue to romantic comedy is audacious.
TCM
Where angels fear to tread
The irony is, that it’s about how people get stuck by their culture and upbringing, and the film itself can’t escape being very much a standard British Heritage Films product. I did find it funny all the same.
TCM
The year of living dangerously
A very memorable and deep performance by Linda Hunt as Billy; in comparison, the main characters are unengaging and consequently irritating.
TCM
Adieu, plancher des vaches
I like the way the film unfolds like a piece of music: images and themes repeated with variants. Some images are absolutely stunning and unforgettable.
TCM
Adaptation
I enjoyed it at the time but it has not made a lasting impression.
TCM
Il s’agit de quoi, le guépard?
A sumptuous, perhaps rather directionless, evocation. I’ve read the novel twice. The first time was as a student on a recommendation. I was reasonably interested, but didn’t engage all that deeply with Don Fabrizio and his pessimistic (and slightly self-serving) politics. I can almost imagine that if I was Sicilian his account of the futility of progress might grab me by the entrails – but not quite, because it is all seen through the eyes of an aristocrat (and indeed, an aristocrat styled as a monarch), and to understand and believe the hopelessness of a society, it’s not enough to see a Prince’s view of it.
On the second reading I saw Don Fabrizio as a side-character: the true story was Concetta’s, a story of loss and regret. I suspect that this says more about me than about the novel, but the story is satisfying and complete from this viewpoint.
The film, I suppose, comes closer to my first reading, but its focus is never clear and eventually diverges to a quite different theme: Don Fabrizio’s fear of growing old. I found it hard to empathise much with this: although he shows mild signs of ill health, he looks robust, and is asked to dance by a beautiful young woman – is this really so tragic? I think the film truncates the novel, leaving Concetta’s story hanging in the air.
I wasn’t convinced by Burt Lancaster. Firstly, he looked like he’d just strolled off the set of a western, hastily pocketing his sheriff’s badge. Secondly I found him too physical. A Sicilian in my eyes is half Arab, half mafioso: possibly tall, but certainly lean, cunning, hook-nosed, and maybe balding at the temples.
CJC
I very much liked the party scene at the end.
TCM
Rififi
The long heist scene with its the late night and early morning scenes in the Paris streets is a thrilling and evocative through-the-night adventure; the scenes in the ordinary cafés really seem to capture the atmosphere of the old city.
TCM
Céline and Julie go boating
Like Alice in Wonderland, utterly barmy. I liked the way it unfolds – you are never sure what is going on and where it is going. It has the same thrill as being in a lucid dream state.
TCM
Danton
A cracking tale that has you on the edge of your seat. Dépardieu plays Danton playing Dépardieu, but very watchably so.
TCM
Cave of the Yellow Dog
Casts a spell through its innocent beauty, but in some respects unsatisfying... because of its cuteness and facile plot. The scene of children playing with an ornament on the mantlepiece is just that: a view of cute children. The plot, unfortunately, is cliché number 4: outsider seeks admission, is initially rejected, earns his acceptance by a generous action. Telegraphed from the beginning.
But this sounds unappreciative. The scenery, the insight into the lives, the gentleness of it all leave their mark.
CJC
I liked the uneventful normality of it, and the beauties of that normality, such as the image of the ger at twilight.
TCM
Chocolat
Elusive, ambiguous, poetical. Highlights: the scene of three wise men in a tent; the subdued ending.
CJC
The double life of Véronique
The parallel stories didn’t seem to connect much, and the film seemed less interesting than it could have been.
TCM
And there again, suppose the stories had been more similar – so what?
CJC
Madame Bovary
I didn’t find the portrayal of the Emma Bovary character at all sympathetic.
TCM
Le beau mariage
Enjoyably true to the prosaic details of life; the party scene is memorably toe-curling.
TCM
The portrait of a lady
I couldn’t work out what was going on because it was all in the dark. One does feel that actresses should spot John Malkovich characters a mile off, and know to avoid them. Perhaps Ms Kidman couldn’t quite see him properly in all that darkness.
TCM