About Chocolate Parfaits

Fantastic Mr. Fox

I think Wes Anderson is a genius. He is funny, has a very distinctive style, and a very good way with characterization. Even the short film “Hotel Chevalier” seems to be oozing Wes-Anderson-ness.

In that respect, it came as quite a surprise how much I disliked “Fantastic Mr. Fox”. It’s not like the film was bad, by far not, but more like I expected more from a director whose films are acclaimed and who I know. It’s rare enough that a famous director suddenly decides to make an animated film, and when I saw this wonderfully subtly funny and well-crafted acceptance speech, I was incredibly hyped up for the film.

Little did I know how the film is going to turn out. I can’t even figure out what I precisely disliked about the film: The (relatively) unlikeable characters, the bland story or the fact that there didn’t seem to be much of a background to the story. The film failed to touch me emotionally, and didn’t have a style that I liked… All I can say is that I found the film to be solid, and rather suspenseful. Of course it’s also quite wonderful that a stop-motion film is still being made. So, perhaps somebody can enlighten me about what is actually great about the film?

Menschen am Sonntag
Germany 1929, Robert Siodmak, 74′

Originally, I was planning to go home to sleep after listening to Neil Brand’s “lecture”. He was talking about silent films in general, how he got to became a silent film pianist and what it means to him. It was an incredibly fun lecture, and a perfect advertisement for “Menschen am Sonntag”. He played a scene and started asking questions such as “Do you think they’re going to kiss now?” to give us a feeling how difficult it is to play to a film that you have never seen before. This guy’s quite a genius and I thoroughly enjoyed both his lecture and his music.

After “Menschen am Sonntag”, I am glad that I stilled my curiosity for this film, but I wouldn’t say that it’s that great. I see its merits and love how it’s even more “verismo” than everything British or Italian that I have seen so far, it was indeed what Neil Brand called the Ken Loach approach (I laughed when he mentioned that!), except that Ken Loach came after Italien realism and quite a few decades after “Menschen am Sonntag”. I don’t know much about the “Neue Sachlichkeit” and don’t know whether I would really like it or not. Something about the concept intrigues me as much as realism itself, but it depends on whether the execution would tend towards Russian realism (good) or French realism (bad).

As for the story in the film itself, I was mildly bored yet immensely intrigued by it. More than anything else, the relationships in the film are painfully realistic. It’s also interesting how the whole film is all about infidelity (since his girlfriend is not there, Erwin flirts with literally every girl around the globe; originally Wolfgang asks out girl no.1 and but ends up having a relationship with the girl no.2 plus he flirts with others), but the film never actually shows anybody committing ‘adultery’. Erwin doesn’t actually do anything in the end, and even though Wolfgang seems to plan to drop the girls right afterwards, he did not betray any of them in the first place. That’s the painful realism there, making the film both good and somewhat dreadful to watch at the same time. It was worse than “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc”.

Afterthoughts

For every film you see, there will be 5 more films you want to see. This is especially the case for me and silent films. Just like with operas, I am pampered with live music screenings, and seriously I cannot imagine anything else. Perhaps I will wait my whole life to be able to see these films, perhaps it’s never going to happen, perhaps I will build my own personal cinema and engage some people to play… I can dream, right?

Both Pixelmatsch and 6451 have been completely overwhelmed by this film and probably can’t stand it anymore. As for myself, I rather completely different. On the one hand, I still hate the Babylon and can’t stand seeing it from the inside anymore; on the other hand, I now want to see more and more films. After watching “His Girl Friday” yesterday, I started picking up “Up” and “Everyone says I love you”. Just like Paris made me want to travel even more, the festival makes me wish I could continue watching movies like this. About 20 films in a week might sound like a lot, but how much is it compared to the myriads of things out there?
I must admit that my desire to watch silent films has become smaller right now though. As I mentioned, after the luxury of watching so many of them with live music, anything without live feels incredibly bland.

Continue reading “Stummfilmfestival, Day 9 + Afterthoughts”

Everyone says I love you

Sometimes it’s curious why I would not watch a film. In this case, it is perhaps because I haven’t really heard that many good things about it – and because it’s a musical. I am only slowly coming to like the musical genre, although I am probably always going to dislike how silly and shallow they mostly are. In music class, I had to watch “West Side Story” and “Grease” and absolutely hated them. At that time, I knew nothing about modern musical films such as “Chicago” or “Dancer in the Dark” and I never saw any of the old Hollywood musicals. As for Woody Allen’s musical, I should have known that it won’t lack depth too much.

Of course this is an ensemble film, which is probably its biggest problem. None of the characters are fleshed out, not even Woody Allen’s own, although of course he always plays a very similar type of character, the neurotic character trait overwhelming everything else. “I can’t believe it!” – “I don’t understand you anymore!” – “What are you doing?” It’s so incredibly weird when somebody else says Woody Allen’s trademark sentences, especially when it’s Edward Norton. I mean, wow, Edward Norton as the boring, sweet beau. He’s not even good-looking enough for that!

Indeed, the weirdest part about this film (besides the fact that it looks surprisingly modern and by far not as 90’s as it should for a 1996 film) are the actors. Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore, Natalie Portman (!!!) – I was so surprised and somewhat happy to see them in a Woody Allen movie. It’s very unusual for him after all. All in all, I think they are absolutely wonderful together. The story has a nice flow, it touches many typical Woody Allen topics in life such as life in New York, people telling their shrinks about their lives, the death of a family member and finally Woody Allen’s all-time favorite, the difficulty to be in a relationship when you haven’t actually gotten over somebody else. Oh yeah, sex, well there isn’t so much of it in this film, but that’s acceptable; Woody Allen is just as funny without the sex.

Now the big question is: What’s so bad about the film except that the characters in the ensemble didn’t really go into depth? Personally I had a lot of fun and even enjoyed the dancing scenes, because they were so well-made and outright funny. There is no doubt that any Woody Allen could be comparable to “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan”, but for me, it’s definitely a great film that I would definitely enjoy to see again, and if it’s just to see Julia Roberts and Woody Allen in a relationship.

Up

Some critic said that you must be heartless if your heart is not moved by “Up”. This is just so true. Tears were streaming down my face during the scene that showed Carl and Ellie aging together. It was just that beautiful and honestly I doubt that children would not be able to understand it – or would feel it to be too sad. This is how normal life is, and personally I think it’s a rather sweet way for a child to learn about the world. In fact, the sadness in “Up” that comes with the grief for a beloved person’s death is not so much of a depressing one but feels natural and acceptable because death is unavoidable. There is something extraordinarily beautiful to the grief of this old man, and refreshing to see how he deals with it. It’s a Disney movie after all, and perhaps the best ever.

Grieving over the death of a beloved person, making a child’s dream come true – all these issues in “Up” don’t sound all that complex, but it hits us to the core. Its depth lies in how incredibly human the film is, how much it tells us about ourselves. Most people are going to grow old, and “Up” gives us quite a good picture of how we see ourselves as old people. Of course “Up” was made by hip Pixar employees who probably use iPhones and barely look like 30. But most likely they also have grandparents and some of us younger people might even have seen how crushed old people are when somebody important passes away, and this makes us reflect upon ourselves. After all, it’s not that Ellie died that we feel sad, it’s because we were shown what a great relationship Carl and Ellie had together. Just from how they were sitting together in harmony in their respective chairs, we get a feeling how close they were to each other. That was what I found truly touching.

As for myself, I do not have any children’s dreams except for the Nobel prize, but I also do not have any regrets about it. This brings us to the perhaps most beautiful part of the story, when Carl read Ellie’s adventure book full of pictures of the two of together which says at the end: “Thank you for the adventure. Now go and have a new one!” She wanted him to go on and didn’t regret that her adventures in life turned out to be different from what she dreamt of. It sounds so simple yet feels so meaningful, and it was at that point that Carl was able to let go and finally open himself up to Russell.

Personally I found “Up” to be greater than “Wall-E”. Sure, “Wall-E” had a cute, happy love story and was, in general, very cute. Apart from the superficial cuteness factor though, “Up” is my perfect Disney movie. It has an engaging story, an adventure filled with drama and action, and finally characters who became friends and are absolutely hilarious and lovely in their interaction. Even more than “Wall-E” with its Japanese style cuteness and shady environmental message, I think “Up” is the kind of film that everybody would like, and by that, I include everybody I could possibly know. Or rather, let me know if there is anything that one could potentially not like about “Up”!

His Girl Friday

At first I thought I was going to die. I have to admit that I am a little bit afraid of watching screwball comedies without subtitles, and perhaps it would indeed be a great idea to re-watch the film sometimes soon. I was able to understand most of it though, and so did Loris.

In fact, we had great difficulty to find a film to watch. Mainly this is because we haven’t seen many films together yet despite knowing each other for a long time. If we watchsomething, it’d better be something good. So we were close to choosing “Dr. Strangelove” which I love and felt he would like it too, but then we would yet again see a film that one of us has watched before (the first time was “Fight Club”, the second was “Some like it hot”). I really would have wanted to re-watch “Dr. Strangelove”, but in retrospect, I am glad we decided for “His Girl Friday”: It was brilliant.

I have known the title of “His Girl Friday” for quite a long while, because it’s one of the more famous old screwball comedies. Apart from that, I had no idea what it all was about. If I had to compare it to the other Hawks film I have seen, “Bringing Up Baby”, I’d say that I like the main couple in “His Girl Friday” much more. In “Bringing Up Baby” the couple consists of a stiff man and a rebellious, crazy woman who chases the guy (the Nodame combination), whereas here, we have two people that are practically made for each other. Both very sharp and funny, with a little bit of maliciousness, they share a perverse love for their (admittedly quite shitty) job and you could see their attraction to each other in the eyes. Of course the great acting helps, plus Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell have absolutely great chemistry.

Besides wonderful storytelling and perfect characters, I admit that I especially like Hildy because she has exceptional potential for a modern woman to identify with. Hawks loves his strong women, and Hildy is even more lovely than Susan from “Bringing Up Baby”. This whole topic of a woman who cannot get away from her job, no matter how badly she talks about it, is just too intriguing. Loris thinks that marrying and having children does not suit Hildy. As for myself, I find it very understandable that a woman in a 1930’s film would want to have a family, and doubt it’ll be so different today. I cannot imagine a single film (think “All about Eve” or even “Sunset Boulevard”) in which the final happiness of a woman does not lie in a relationship with a man. Without a man, you are bound to be unhappy. It’s like an industry rule. I approve of the idea that maybe everybody’s secret dream to settle down. But I like it even more when in Hildy’s case, she ends up deciding for the excitement of life on the side of a more charismatic man.

For all these many reasons, I think “His Girl Friday” is a movie that definitely needs a re-watch, perhaps today in one year. I imagine this to be the kind of movie that I would enjoy at least as much at the second time, and am looking forward to it. At that point, it will become clear whether this could be a contender to “The Shop Around the Corner”, my current favorite screwball comedy.

I missed my train and had to wait 20 minutes. At that point, I was way too late for “Pandora’s Box”, but I have managed to come in right when “Berlin” started, so I decided to go for that one.

Berlin, Sinfonie einer Großstadt
Germany 1927, Walther Ruttmann, 65′

Neil Brand is quite a genius. I got a seat very close to where he was playing, from an angle where I could easily see both hands. Some of his maneuvers were quite dramatic, and from how he was massaging his fingers before the performance and how he was sweating after only an hour-long film, I felt confirmed that he was putting an incredible energy into this.

Sadly (or luckily?) I was fairly tired. Despite that, I saw the whole film, but the movie has such an incredible speed that it’s difficult to see whole richness of the many details. Furthermore, I was moved to tears by the weirdest scenes. There was a train entering the nowadays completely irrelevant Anhalter Bahnhof, old trams going for Marienfelde, a bird view of the Berliner Dom full of houses that do not exist anymore…
In fact, I spent quite a bit of effort to try to recognize places, haha. It’s completely futile. The Berlin of this movie is not my Berlin, yet it is. Maybe this is the most beautiful of all.

Objectively, without any story whatsoever, the movie might not really have so much of a merit. It doesn’t give much of a society portrait (I could barely figure out how much the Weimarer Republik differed from the Kaiserzeit except for people’s clothing style) and there are not so many politics. It also barely shows any touristic attraction. Basically, the film sees Berlin a little bit like a normal person like us would see it, making it especially interesting for me. Considering the immense popularity of the screenings – they were always full although they showed it 6 times over the week – I can definitely see how people in Berlin found the same appeal in the film. Apart from that, if you do not have a special relation to Berlin or Germany, what other merit does the film have, I wonder? Personally I was too busy to notice any of it.

A Page of Madness
Japan 1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 60′

I hate the Babylon. We had an incredibly horrible copy, worse than a 640×320 video where the picture was practically completely blurry. You could barely make out any facial expressions, and I was heavily annoyed by that.

Apart from that, I must admit that I was inexplicably drawn to the movie. I found the very Japanese depiction of madness very artistic, and since nobody could understand what actually happened in the film, I concentrated all my power on telling my eyes to ignore the bad image quality and on the intriguing aesthetics of the film. I must admit that loved it. There is something haunting yet beautiful especially about the dancing woman, and it didn’t surprise me at all that they brought out No masks in the end. In a nutshell, I find this film to be extremely interesting and precious, and hope to one day see a better, decent version of this. If it had a more comprehensive story, I have a feeling that the movie could have become something great.

After getting home yesterday from drinking with Pixelmatsch and 6451, I had to sleep until 11, but even then I wasn’t really able to get over my tiredness. I cooked and saw Loris, who is rather difficult to talk to (at least for me), because I feel like I should be witty and smart and interesting and considerate all at the same time. It takes a significant amount of brain muscles and subsequently physical effort to be funny on a speed level of your average screwball comedy. (Ok, I am not that good even if I tried.)

The Unknown
USA 1927, Tod Browning, 63′

I knew that I wanted to see this film because I find Lon Chanley to be a great actor (which he was in this film no doubt). All in all, the movie itself wasn’t too interesting, at least not interesting enough to keep me awake. I have missed some of the more suspenseful parts of the film. I saw the exposition that introduced the characters (Alonzo who is in love with the woman who is afraid of men’s hands) and then I woke up when Alonzo got his arm operation and came back. What I saw was okay. I liked the character of Alonzo – of course Chanley helped with his believable acting – and found the story rather interesting. But the execution was okay at best, and after just having seen the energetic “His Girl Friday”, it was difficult to get back into the mood of a ‘drama’ like this.

All in all, I have not seen much about this film, but at this point, I am not too sad about this fact.

The General
USA 1926, Buster Keaton, 75′

This is my first re-watch of a film in quite awhile, and definitely the first time where the second watch was so much more impressive than the first. I have previously mentioned how a movie theater can destroy you when it’s a bad film (see “J’accuse”), because you cannot skip over stupid parts or stop watching the film altogether, but the risk of seeing something bad is so incredibly worth it when a film turns out to be great. Especially for comedies, the laughter of other people is the most beautiful music to the film. It was the first time when I found it a little sad that the music played was overwhelming the laughter.

“The General” is the perfect film for a situation like this. The movie theater was full, and we had Neil Brand, perhaps the best pianist in the whole festival. With suitable music, the film becomes just amazingly funny. There were so many details I didn’t even notice at the first watch, but became subtly amusing when everybody else started laughing. With his nonchalant face, Buster Keaton is just amazing when it comes to subtly funny scenes, just a single look of his can make the audience roar with laughter. Even if “The General” is his best film, it’s an absolute masterpiece solely for its potential to be that funny on screen.

Intolerance
USA 1916, David W. Griffith, 192′

“Intolerance” has broken my heart a little bit. After spending 3 hours on it, I realized that movies are a little bit like lectures: I am used to 1.5 hour lectures, and that year when I had 3 hour lectures, I had a hard time not falling asleep (in fact I felt asleep no matter what). There is one single movie in this world that I absolutely loved throughout its whole run, the four-hour long “Ai no Mukidashi”. Apart from that, I typically suffer through a long movie, and “Intolerance” was no exception.

The problem with “Intolerance” is that it is very similar to “Metropolis” in that the story is rather silly. A movie of this scope and length, with the title “Intolerance”, is expected not only to be beautiful, but also do justice to its complex and tragic topic. Unfortunately, “Intolerance” can only do the beauty part. The mass scenes are absolutely epic, the historical costumes absolutely beautiful and worth their while to sit through it for 3 hours, finally cinematography and direction are wonderfully crafted.

But we are dealing with D.W. Griffith, a man who managed to do “The Birth of a Nation” after all. Either he pretends to be political or apolitical (he’s a little contradictoyr when it comes to that), and “Intolerance”, ironically, is another example of his political naivety. “Intolerance” has four parts, and has exactly four messages: Puritan society is wrong, treason and genocide out of religious reasons is wrong and, of course, the crucification of Jesus was wrong.

Especially because the film looks so luxurious, a lot of it seems cheap. Griffith uses beautifully sounding words to make up for lack of depth of content; some dramatic ‘running after the governor’ scenes to save the main character’s life compensate the lack of actual suspense; four stories instead of one because each one of them doesn’t carry all that far.

“Intolerance” definitely is a film worth to see, especially from a film historic standpoint. I’m also convinced that I would rather prefer positive political naivety over “The Birth of a Nation’s” racism, but ultimately you cannot get me with a few beautiful words and brilliant pictures alone.

We had a great time drinking after this relatively short day, but there is something extremely tragic about getting home really late, and I wish I had money for a taxi. Somehow I like cabs, and that is definitely not only because of “Night on Earth”.

J’accuse
France 1919, Abel Gance, 144’

Something in me wants to puke. There is some backstory about the film that really makes me feel emotional, one of them is the fact that some of the scenes were shot in actual, real trenches. That is just amazing. On top of that, they ‘return of the dead’ was with actual soldiers of whom most actually died shortly after. It made me feel quite a glomp in your throat when I read that. The music was brilliant and the cinematography of the film is quite wonderful, perhaps even one the most beautiful I have seen (surely it is filled with pathos, but hey that can be beautiful too). I assume that the beauty of the film made it so popular with the critics now. But let’s not forget the content of the film.

Of course I understand an accusation in general. But the film is doing everything completely wrong. A real accusation to war would mention the chemin des dames, a sad period in history when the French military sent in people simply to die. Instead of glorifying the dead, a real anti-war movie would condemn the fact that they had to die. Maybe I should list what I hated about the film:
– First of all, the movie was completely anti-german. A true anti-war movie should not participate in the war-mongering and stir up the hatred against Germans. It doesn’t help that the Germans are portrayed as the evil guys who raped the female protagonist. It’s not surprising that the director released an even more anti-german version of the film to show in the US. It’s so hypocritical that it’s disgusting.
– Obviously there is one old guy who fought in 1870 – and upon hearing about his daughter being raped, of course he goes into war and then dies. I think this type of revenge story is extremely typical for pseudo-anti-war stories, which we are seeing way too many of.
– The little girl who was born out of that rape incident was to be “educated as a French”. We see her learning about French history and the first words she learns to write is “J’accuse”. Ugh.
– Instead of actually showing the cruelty of war, they are happy with showing a few dead bodies and lamenting the dead. It’s really nothing more than patriotic “Look at what the Germans did to us” lamenting.
– “J’accuse” is being displayed in many forms all over the film, and at the worst places. It is especially sad when one thinks about when it was used in the first place: Émile Zola used the title to accusing the French government (!) of anti-semitism in their affair Dreyfus. This movie is the most government-loving film I have seen in a while, and in such an “anti-war” disguise at that.

I am sure this is not all, but these are the worst points. Of course I understand where this is coming from. Having had the WWI in school for quite awhile (which is also where I got my knowledge about the chemin des dames), I know that France was absolutely devastated after the war, and such a movie is the best thing to soothe their wounds. But what came out of it? They ripped the Germans of everything they had (see the traité de Versailles), which I see as one of the reasons why the Weimar Republic was so weak, and by extension giving way to WWII.

After Germany and France have put so many efforts into developing something like a friendship, I cannot quite believe how such a film can still be shown nowadays. I doubt it will have a huge impact (and I am glad about it), but as long as there is a museum in Paris glorifying the French army in the two world wars, I think that we still have work to do when it comes to creating a unified Europe and a peaceful world, and this type of movie is one step into the wrong direction.

Blackmail
USA 1929, Alfred Hitchcock, 84’

A Hitchcock with a blonde, what more can you say about it? I preferred “The Lodger” for its more suspenseful story, and because “Blackmail” was ultimately quite predictable. It was somewhat less enjoyable for that reason.

But, and I think this is a very important point, the female main character actually acts (instead of only looking nice). She is a delightful Raskolnikov character who commits a crime instead of just reacting to what everybody does. On top of that, the actress portraying her is surprisingly good for one who works for Hitchcock, she is very multi-faceted and shows her distress and the different degrees of shock in a very believable way. I think that she was the best thing about the film, in my book she was greater than Grace Kelly (who really can only play herself).

To me, “Blackmail” is a more mature film, playing around with psychology much more than “The Lodger” that mainly relies upon suspense and horror. I can understand why it became a popular film, and I am actually somewhat interested in the sound version too.