About Chocolate Parfaits

I must admit that I was completely unable to concentrate on this film. I have “Bicycle Thieves” and “Alexander Nevksy” on the list of Netflix streams I am considering watching, but I think trying to work and watching a movie at the same time is just not a good idea.

Apparently “Vampyr” got bad reviews back then when it was released. Honestly I somehow understand where that comes from. I have yet to see his highly-acclaimed “Joan of Arc” film, but my gut feeling tells me that this one definitely lacks something, except I don’t really know what it is exactly. One thing that does strike me is the lack of good actors here, and a very strong focus on background and atmosphere, where I expect “Joan of Arc” should be the exact opposite. In fact, the acting was fairly dreadful, and whenever the characters said something, I felt even more estranged to the film. Comparing it to another very silent-like German film from the same time, M, the difference becomes even more striking.

However, although it doesn’t compare to “Nosferatu”, “Vampyr” does have a very nice atmosphere. The composition of the picture, the style… all of it looks quite great, and I’m sure it would be impressive on a large screen. (Just look at the Criterion cover!) It is probably my own fault for getting distracted from the film so much – but perhaps I really just found it boring? I have no idea.

It was amusing to see that they spoke German in the film, the subtitles were in English and when the old man wrote something on a piece of paper, it was in Danish. (I assume.)

Again, I have a feeling that I will chase live performances of silent films for the rest of my life, because that’s the way I like watching them the most. Some of my nicest experiences with film theaters are related with silent films, namely “Metropolis” and “Nosferatu”. (Other memorable cinema experiences were “Brick”, “4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days” and “To be or not to be” in German, so there isn’t all that much.) Even a mediocre film such as “Fräulein Else” is so much incredibly better and more enjoyable. “Sinfonie einer Großstadt”, the old Lubitschs, the Pabst films, the Langs (Mabuse!) – There are so many of them that I actually want to see. But just like with Turandot, I am trying to wait for the time to come when I can see them.

Inglourious Basterds

> heilige mutter gottes, ich habe gesündigt
> ich habe angefangen, inglorious basterds zu gucken und bin trotz unendlicher müdigkeit total süchtig danach
> eine hassliebe ist das
> ich *liebe* diese szene, in der ihnen “emil jannings” vorgestellt wird
> ich liebe so viele szenen!
> ich liebe die tatsache, dass er den ganzen politisch korrekten ins gesicht spuckt, aber dann gibt es szenen wie die mit dem baseballschläger, in der ich merke, dass ich (bei aller perversität, die ich gesehen habe) auch eine schmerzensgrenze habe
> diese hassliebe zum film kulminiert in der letzten szene der lovestory auch
> und das ist auch eine szene, die ich fantastisch finde, weil sie sich selbst nicht ernst nimmt, aber mir ist selbst klar, dass ich – sonst – eine solche szene ernst genommen hätte

> also ich habe kill bill und pulp fiction gesehen, aber die sind “nur eine story”, und inglourious basterds (so komisch es auch klingen mag) vermenschlicht es alles
> es ist der uncanny valley des films
> die charaktere sind zu echt und wiederum nicht echt genug
> ich glaube, das ist das faszinierende daran – normalerweise trifft ein film diesen schmalen grat nicht mit so einer wucht, jedenfalls bei mir

> ach! und ich habe eine post-pubertäre phase erreicht (die ich in der teenagerzeit übrigens fast nie hatte), in der ich hin und weg von daniel brühls französisch bin
> also in realität habe ich mich trotz 8 jahren franzosen um mich herum noch nie in einen verliebt
> aber sein [Daniel Brühls] französisch ist eben so ganz ganz ganz leicht deutsch, oder eher, es ist immer noch seine stimme

The above, a chatlog with 6451, pretty much sums up my first impression of the film, and I feel like I want to say so much more about it. I haven’t had the urge to talk about a movie as much as this one, and it hasn’t stopped yet. It is THE movie of 2009 indeed, at least for me.

Of course, my main weakness for “Inglourious Basterds” comes from the references to other films. Oh God, the list is so long and I barely saw any of them, let alone a single Riefenstahl movie. (I might even hate them, who knows.) At the same time, I am also not exactly a huge fan of Tarantino’s tastes (what, “Blade”?), but I guess I understand his incredible love for film-making and films – not necessarily the ones that everybody loves.

“Inglourious Basterds” is not only amazing for being a cult film, it’s amazing for having followed two others, namely “Kill Bill” and “Pulp Fiction”. And right now, I would say it’s my favorite among the three.

PS. Uh yes, politics… I guess when it comes to that, I should leave it to the ones who are better at it. Jessen is certainly right and I get Rosenbaum’s “Tarantino is like Sarah Palin”, but all that cannot stop me from this love-hate-relationship with the film.

The Marriage Circle

I would have never seen this movie if it were not offered on Netflix, honestly. I don’t even like watching silent films, with some very few exceptions (which are mostly either slapstick like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton films). This film however just cries “I want dialogue!” to me. Of course dialogue is not suited for such a film, and the film definitely does its best to compensate it with some nice actors and a few great twists in the story.

But really, this is pretty much the first Lubitsch that did not make me laugh yet. It makes a lot of sense and a lot of it really is funny, but seriously I don’t quite find it as deep or enjoyable as I thought. The characters are fairly shallow, but without dialogue they are also missing the wit . You don’t quite learn anything about their attitude, their. Basically you just see them running into funny misunderstandings caused by one intrigant woman who would be a some silly plot device if it were not played by this very charming and wonderfully evil-looking actress.

I liked the story and I’m happy that it turned out so well, but I’m not such a big fan of this film. Maybe I just haven’t seen enough silent films? Or rather, I am too used to the luxury of seeing them live?

PS. I am totally in love with this round-ish hair ornament:

Les deux anglaises et le continent

I went a little risk and decided to watch this little piece of ménage à trois, only to realize that my fears were entirely obsolete. If there is a movie that did not touch me unnecessarily, it’s this one. I like period dramas for the way they look (and this one looks lovely!) but at the same time, I dislike them because the looks distract me from the characters, their somewhat weird acting and even their story.

The voice-over that I am so used to is a beautiful addition because it explains the characters some, and Muriel’s monologues are extremely annoying and feel quite unbelievable. Isn’t it weird that though, considering that I normally hate voice-overs whereas I love monologues?

This film is so much more than just a mirror of “Jules et Jim”, or perhaps I should hav said much less. The actors are somewhat less attractive, with the exception of Jean-Pierre Léaud, the love triangle is entirely different (two women are not openly in love all the time and Claude is not a womanizing free spirit). “Jules et Jim” is a film about jealousy whereas “Two English Girls” is a film about morals. For the majority of the film, jealousy between the girls is not even an issue, and for the whole film, morals are never an issue in “Jules et Jim”. Perhaps that is why I prefer it, I could feel with all my heart how every single character in “Jules et Jim” suffered through their own actions. It is much easier for me to take a liking to a film that emphasizes on the feelings themselves, not so much on they were right or not.

Seriously, Jean-Pierre Léaud looks exactly the same throughout the whole movie too. I love this face and I know that he was immensely brilliant as a little boy in “Les Quatre Cents Coups”, but something is very weird here, even though he was working with Truffaut again.

My favorite part of the whole film, which is the same for “Jules et Jim”, are the scenes where all three main characters are together. The very short scene showing their friendship at the beginning were quite nice and I would have loved to see that fleshed out some more.
My second favorite part is how Muriel pulls of a Tatiana on Claude, maybe that was the closest I got to feeling anything while watching this film. I also like the epilogue and the motif of the Musée Rodin very much, even the music fits perfectly into these wonderfully directed scenes.

“Two English Girls” definitely falls into the category of films with an engaging storyline that I liked and I enjoyed, and for some reason, it left me with a good and somewhat happy feeling at the end (why is that?). Yet, I cannot recommend it because I was entirely incapable of feeling anything. How can I recommend a film where every single kiss feels immensely fake to me, right?

La Jetée

It’s surprising enough that such a movie would be considered a movie, but it makes a lot of sense. I tend to like them after all, it’s a picture drama! (This one doesn’t have any of those very usual camera pannings though.)

My favorite shot of the whole movie is where the woman lifts her hair so you can see her neck. I like it in a very random way and realize that, but it’s partially these kinds of details that make the film wonderfully beautiful. With the voice-over, the black and white pictures and the slightly psychedelic background ‘music’, the film feels like a mix of “Alphaville” and “Nuit et Brouillard” to me… Or is it just this monotone French narration that makes me feel like that?

All in all, the story itself is simple, the execution absolutely briliant and for some reason, the film is haunting me a little. Its beauty, the short yet enticing storyline and especially its predictable yet striking ending has left quite an impression on me. Somehow I had to think about it. What made his love so beautiful? Is it because it was a childhood memory? Is it because of the contrast to the cold apocalyptic world?
There are a few weird things about the film too. The human experiments evoke the idea of concentration camps, evil-sounding German voices inclusive. And it’s weird that the guy never tries to look for this woman in the present (when she must be at most 30 years older than her), but lingers in the past. There is something romantically egoistic about wanting to meet the young woman instead of actually caring about what happened to her later. (Of course it’s not the point of the movie.)

I want to see 12 Monkeys very much now.

PS. I like the German arte version the best. Just as expected from arte, the translation is fairly good!

Smiles of a Summer Night

Somebody calls this movie a mix of Schnitzler and Strindberg (who I have never read anything from, but now I’m curious!), and I am not sure if I can agree. Schnitzler has always focused on very few characters in his dialogues and to me, the whole movie really looks like a re-interpretation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

There is something about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that is absolutely fascinating me, but I never knew what it was. “Smiles of a Summer Night” seems to explain one of the reasons: A love comedy with a large cast of different and amusing characters: Desirée is an intrigant woman, Egerman is completely powerless in front of what is happening about him, his son and wife are the innocent children and Malcolm – oh God, Malcolm – is what comes the closest to a Schnitzler-esque character, except that for Schnitzler, an overly jealous character like him is realistic where for Bergman, they are mostly ridiculous. Even comical side characters are present in the form of Petra and her future-to-be-husband.

I find it very amusing that every synopsis explains the plot differently from what I have seen: for example “Anne repulsed her husband” (I don’t think she did, he mostly was the one who thinks she is scared of him, but really we never actually see that) or “Frederik is still in love with Desirée” when he actually goes length explaining how much he loves his wife.

The best thing about this movie itself is that it touches many subjects in life, it’s mostly a movie about life and relationships, and as such it goes much deeper than the original “Midsummer Night’s Dream” story. There is the son who cares about religion, Malcolm who is mostly a military laughing stock and we see how all the characters love in their own way. Concerning the dialogues, the best characters are those who are more ‘evil’ (such as Desirée, Malcolm, Desirée’s mother, Petra and partially Charlotte), because they have more to say. Their witty comments on life and especially love life are splendid, and perhaps that is where the comparison with Schnitzler comes from. Of course I would prefer to believe that somebody’s feelings cannot be so easily swayed by some smart set-up as it happened in this movie, but it’s always very amusing to see that in a fictional story.

I noticed that I have not commented on Bergman at all – so the truth is that I find myself impossible to do so. First of all, I realize that I barely know anything about him, and with the exception of some details (religion, setting and certain characters), this is not exactly a movie that oozes Bergman-ness if I may say it that way. (Is it because Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson are missing in this movie? XD) But hey, it has enough of your usual Bergman brilliance that it inspired Woody Allen’s “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy”!

Laura

After seeing “Die Legende von Paul und Paula”, I must admit that “Laura” has become much less important to me now. With these two movies, however, I think I have officially entered a string of good movies yet again. Although “New York I love you” was pretty bad (but again, this was expected), I feel like everything has been incredibly great ever since “Yi Yi”. It makes it even more difficult to choose a new film now because it makes me wonder if it’ll live up to my expectations. There are several possibilities of course: 1. I don’t want a movie for awhile, 2. I always choose movies by directors I know so I’ll have a somewhat clear expectation, 3. I choose movies I have been wanting to see for a long time.

“Laura” is very difficult to compare to these other films, but it was at least as great. For some reason I am not a big fan of Gene Tierney and don’t actually find her to be that, but her acting was good and the character of Laura was a surprisingly likeable one. Unlike every other film noir I’ve seen, Laura is not an evil femme fatale, in fact, she is ‘merely’ a very attractive, strong woman and thus by far the most modern film noir character I have seen. In some ways, she is ‘really’ perfect: Smart and strong-willed yet good-natured and with a healthy love for men. Typically female characters in any sort of fiction are either the one or the other, and you can barely ever find an intellectual and somewhat pure woman who, by the way, also has a love life.

Apart from a very likeable main character, I was surprised how suspenseful the story was. I’m not really sure what to think about Preminger’s directing (I just can’t judge it at all!) but the cinematography definitely oozes of style. So either I really love film noirs or the ones I have seen (“Out of the Past” and “Angel Face”) are just the best ones out there. I hope this is not the case and look forward to seeing more. (What should I watch I wonder? XD)

Die Legende von Paul und Paula

Uh… oh God, how difficult. This movie cannot officially figure in my favorite movie list of all times, because I don’t like the characters and because ultimately this movie is not me. I came to Germany 1 month after the GDR ceased to exist, yet I grew up in a very Eastern German environment for quite a few years. (It is very Eastern German for little children to openly make fun of foreigners, by the way. So not so much Ostalgie from my side here.) Yet it’s fascinating in a similar way as North Korea is fascinating, and as somebody who has seen the Alexanderplatz changing over the years, I have a certain attachment to everything Eastern German.
(Honestly, however, I wonder if I would feel different if I went to the Heinrich Hertz Oberschule which is where my grade school teacher wanted to send me. I would most likely have preferred Schrödinger over Schnitzler and Hertz over Horváth today.)

I dislike Paul for obvious reasons – not because he considered his career more important than his love (if I had a choice, I’d say I despise men who prefer women much much more) – but because he changed his mind. And by his obsession he ended up killing her, isn’t that lovely. As much as this love story is beautiful, I cannot help but think that this supposedly very powerful scene was tainted by his irresponsibility. Finally, however, seeing Paul sleeping in this small bed with his three children is too lovely.

Paula on the other side is a little child who wants ‘everything’. There are indeed things in the world that you cannot have, but she wants them anyways. Then again, is it really too much to ask for? This thing she is asking for is ultimately coming out of an egoistic, yet very pure desire. I don’t think I have ever seen a more openly passionate character in film history. And for that to come from a German woman at that! It’s not this French, elegant and somewhat reserved charme, and completely different from the Latin hotness, no sophisticated, overly dramatic words; it’s just plain and simple but immensely strong embraces. An angry Emmanuelle Béart is nothing against that, really.
She must have suffered so much, but I am so happy for her! To have somebody to love so deeply! Not complex, but deep!

Visually, the movie has nothing special really. It’s just a good movie. Unlike the wonderfully photographed and at least as touching “Live of Others”, this movie is not in the 1000 movies of all times. I think about 99% of the greatness of this film comes from its GDR feeling, because of the way people dress, they think, what passion they display in contrast to their life. This movie is great in the same way the Ch’tis are great – and they had the same kind of impact. They open a world of dreams that we will never see in reality and we even accept it that way.

Paths of Glory

I’ve been trying to sort out my feelings (or rather: my non-feeling for that matter) about this movie. People on Netflix who gave this film a bad rating (there aren’t so many of them) do so for rather petty reasons in my book, which none of them I agree with: Bad acting, slow, Kubrick’s a a communist who wants to make ideals like patriotism and nationalism look bad (LOL)… This is all not what I’m thinking about. Perhaps my impression can be summed up with the last scene: I don’t buy it, because, unlike for the whole rest of the movie, it sounds extremely unbelievable that soldiers would start crying at a repetitive song by some German girl.

In the end, something always felt off to me: Somehow I expected something like “Full Metal Jacket”, but this movie is pretty much its exact opposite. You don’t learn very much about people’s character except for whether they are a coward or not, the main character is more a hero than a person and finally, the whole movie does not seem to attempt at making you feel. This is so unusual for a war movie, and it makes the film extremely great, yet offputt-ish for me. Weird, isn’t it?

The strength of the movie definitely lies in the story and the visual execution. The dialogue is absolutely brilliant and quite a few things that are being said there make you want to tear your hair out. Wonderful. “Full Metal Jacket” might be my favorite Kubrick movie, but most of his other films have greater visuals, “Paths of Glory” included – I love the contrast between the huge palaces displaying the absurdity of war and the very realistic looking trenches, where not so much blood is shown, but instead we see soldiers shivering while hearing the sounds of the fire. I am very much in love with the way “Paths of Glory” is made, I even love the fact that it leaves me very confused.

I am still one movie away from seeing all the relevant Kubrick movies (okay I am actually also interested in “The Killing”), but I already have a feeling that “Paths of Glory” will rank quite highly among them.