First, the next Toerifc discussion will be a little earlier in the month than usual for the February selection because we want to get it in before the Film Preservation blogathon which begins on February 14th, hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren. After two months off Toerifc will return on Wednesday, February 10th at the usual time of 10 a.m E.S.T. with a discussion on Sam Fuller's White Dog (1982), hosted by Joseph Campanella at Cinema Fist. I'll have up promotional sidebar banners in a day or two. I look forward to seeing the movie and seeing you there for the discussion.
Second, some of you may have noticed the Cinema Styles Screening Room banner to the left in the sidebar. This is something I've been doing for a couple of months now and just started to advertise it. Basically, the software I have now makes it so easy to record and edit clips from movies that I find myself doing it whenever I watch them on my computer. If an ending is a favorite or a scene catches my eye I'll edit it and put it up, if only to return later to watch it again. And now you can too. As Cinema Styles pares down to reviews, essays and video posts (like The Land Before CGI and Opening Credits I Love), I'm putting up stills and video clips at Unexplained Cinema and Cinema Styles Screening Room (and the joke posts are now almost entirely reserved for Facebook). I hope you'll enjoy visiting them when you can.
Third, I watched The 400 Blows again the other day (and put up a post on it at Unexplained Cinema and a clip at The Screening Room) and was reminded how beautiful it is. It had been years since I'd seen it last and I think perhaps I'd forgotten too much about it. But mainly what struck me was the realization that I love, absolutely love, long takes. Not enough directors do it anymore. And I'm not necessarily talking about masterful long takes of complex scenes done without a single cut like the dynamite planting scene in Touch of Evil, although I love that too, but shots of someone going to a destination and the director having the patience, and guts, to simply show it in real time rather than cut it down to speed things up. There's something hypnotic about watching the banal unfold. Watch the clip to see what I mean. And now I must watch Stolen Kisses again immediately and you can be sure when I do you'll see a post or two, or three, up on it soon after. Cheers!
26 comments:
I love your point about long takes focusing on banal events. For some reason, the first film that popped into my mind when contemplating that description was one by Truffaut's New Wave contemporary Rivette: Secret Defense. It's practically built around shots like that, long observations of the kinds of mundane tasks and details that ordinarily would get cut out of a tightly plotted film: just a person going from one place to another, preparing for a trip, changing clothes, etc. You're right: it can be very hypnotic and, at its best, encourages the viewer to think, to let the mind wander into the image and the character.
Ed, I'll have to see Secret Defense now. I think the banal brings the viewer closer to reality better than anything else which is why with a movie like Big Night, while I remember many good things about it, what really sticks out for me is the morning after scene in the kitchen when Tucci makes eggs for them.
I think too many directors underestimate the power of the everyday on the screen.
Ed, I love your point about long takes, too. The most impressive use of the device I've seen recently was in the film TULPAN. Not sure if you saw it? But, as opposed to Hou Hsiao-hsien's use of the long take where the camera is fairly static, here it's remarkably mobile. For me, at least, it really created this unusually palpable fly on the wall effect.
Jeffrey, yes, the moving camera adds tremendously to the effect. In the end of The 400 Blows the camera tracks with Antoine the whole way, including a good three minutes before the clip I put up starts.
Tulpan I've not seen yet either though but will soon.
Another great long take is the opening of Aquirre: The Wrath of God as we watch the long line of people wind down the mountain until Herzog focuses on the water currents for a very long time, taking it all in.
Greg, yes I think these (THE 400 BLOWS and the beginning of AGUIRRE) are both wonderfully apt illustrations of your point.
Wow, I'd almost forgotten how powerful the ending of Truffaut's debut is. It's definitely one of my favorite final scenes of any in the history of film.
There's something hypnotic about watching the banal unfold.
True.
There's a shot in Hunger that shows an activity that is rather shocking to the audience but banal to the person doing it. Steve McQueen (the other one) films the whole thing with a fixed camera. A minute or so into the scene you think, "He's not going to show the whole thing, is he?" And he does. It seems over the top at the time, but it's only by showing the scene in full that we get past our horror to see the ordinariness of the activity -- and then we recoil in horror at that such a thing could ever be ordinary.
Sorry to be so vague, but I'm sure the scene is most effective if you can't spot it when it's starting. And it's a movie worth seeing.
Jeffrey, me too. I probably hadn't watched it in twenty years so when I watched it again the other day it was a real treat and even though I knew it was coming, especially given the fame of that final shot, I was still blown away by how well it works on the viewer emotionally.
Jason, I completely forgot about Hunger. I've wanted to see that for a long time now so thanks for the reminder. It's great to get so many wonderful recommendations for these kinds of long takes.
I think too many directors underestimate the power of the everyday on the screen.
They certainly do, especially as modern films seem faster and faster, more and more concerned with simply the plot, excising anything deemed "superfluous" like the kinds of quiet, simple moments we're talking about here. I like directors who are attuned to the supposedly superfluous. Certainly, with the death of Eric Rohmer, one more master of making the banal magical has left us. His best films are all concerned with small incidents, everyday details that for his characters form the biggest dramas and dilemmas of their lives.
Hi Greg this is a blast from your past. (I hope not an unwelcome ghost.) I just happen to stumble across your online empire today.
Any way your comment about patience and showing all the details made me think at once of the robbery scene in Rififi. I know it is not one take but considering where this post started, Rififi is almost on topic.
I'm a big fan of the long take in The Passenger in which "certain events" happen to the left of the frame as we watch statically out the window. It is enormously effective, allowing our imaginations to create the scene while mundane life goes on in front of us.
You know Ed, Eric Rohmer is a director I'm currently revisiting since his death recently. His films have such an extraordinary grasp of the meditative, the deliberate and the sound of the human voice in dialogue. I'm enjoying going through them again.
Andrew - Hmmm... I know a few Andrews. There's Andrew from college. There's Andrew the filmmaker (The Mysterious Adrian Betamax). There's Andrew who used to comment here. There's Andrew from my neighborhood growing up. Of course, whichever you are (and for goodness sakes let me know!) you are of course most certainly welcome.
And Rififi is a perfect example of the slow build which is also in short supply these days in film. A part of the greatness of Rififi is that, like the long take, the action is followed meticulously, building suspense and heightening tension throughout. It's a great example for what we're talking about here and a great movie.
Marilyn, The Passenger is a movie, like 400 Blows that I haven't seen in so long I've forgotten most of it. Lately with the availability of films online I've been reliving my ciniphilia teen years and watching one foreign film after another. And to be honest, any other film out there. I have to see L'Avventura again too, it's been far too long.
a movie like Big Night, while I remember many good things about it, what really sticks out for me is the morning after scene in the kitchen when Tucci makes eggs for them...
That shot is the reason it's one of my favorite movies of all time. Truly!
Also, I've never seen THE 400 BLOWS. There, I said it.
Bill, it makes the whole movie. Seriously, the characters build and complications arise and the big night goes off well (except the guest of honor never shows) but then comes that scene and, I don't know, their whole relationship as brothers just comes into focus for you. The connection, the loyalty to each other, the idea of being there after everyone's gone and of course, making your brother breakfast because he just spent the day before preparing the most extraordinary Italian feast in the history of Roma cuisine. It's a hell of a scene.
And you should watch 400 Blows when you can. It's very touching and entertaining. Truffaut had a kind of everyman touch with his films where the stories and character never feel alien or contrived.
Plus...I mean, everything you say about the ending of BIG NIGHT is true, but there's still just something oddly mesmerizing about watching Tucci actually make the eggs in real time. And then add hunks of bread to the plate. It casts a weird spell, that scene.
And I even own THE 400 BLOWS, so "when I can" is almost any time I'm going to be home. I just haven't yet.
Bill, watching someone, like Tucci, make the egg in real time of course indicates that you're actually watching it happen. All the food made before you know wasn't made by Tony Shalhoub but by God that egg was cooked by Tucci. Like I said earlier, simply observing a banal event unfold is much closer to reality than any "gritty realism" that a filmmaker attempts can possibly achieve and draws the viewer in in a way that they can't explain. Like you and I can't really explain the amazing appeal of that scene.
De Sica is another director whose attention to the commonplace makes you feel as though you are a visitor wherever he's shooting. I still remember a scene from Two Women where Sophia Loren goes to borrow some flour to make pasta. He shows her folding some paper into a cone and scooping the flour, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, to fill the cone. I was just fascinated by that.
Marilyn, that's another great example from a great movie. I remember that scene too, in a movie filled with some pretty memorable and hard to watch scenes the banality of that stands out.
The director that I always think of vis a vis the observation of the mundane is Bela Tarr. If you watch "Werckmeister Harmonies" you find out much about how life is/was on the Hungarian Plains just by the finely-observed detail. After the famous opening shot, the camera follows the hero around as he arrives to take care of his uncle, and it is stunning.
And I agree: "400 Blows" is gorgeous, and they say the blu-ray looks even better, though I haven't seen it.
(by-the-by, sorry I haven't been around in the comments much ... a lot of sh*t coming down around here)
Rick, don't apologize, I'm just glad to have your input whenever you can. Someone on facebook recommended Tarr and the very same movie when I posted this over there so I really must see that now. I have heard Tarr's name most associated with the long take (and Tarkosvky) but haven't seen his work yet which I shall amend this month.
With regards to Tarr, "Werckmeister" would be in my top ten, were I to make such lists. Some prefer the exhausting "Satantango," and it is very good (talk about your finely-observed detail), but at 450 minutes it is not for the faint of heart.
Unfortunately, Tarr's films are available only from Facets, and the transfers are horrible. Let me know what you think of Werckmeister.
That's too bad. I would've thought Criterion would've gotten a hold of his films by now given his reputation. Oh well. I'll definitely let you know.
For me Inglourious Basterds works as a pure exploitation film set in WWII (like the Italian movie it borrowed its title from or something like The Liberators with Kluas Kinski & George Hilton or Even Tinto Brass' Salon Kitty). I suppose it could also be considered a combat action flick in the style of The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape if you like but even those movies take themselves more seriously.
I can't take Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds seriously as a "war film" at all since it's pure fantasy and really funny as Flickhead mentioned. I've always found it amusing that critics are so eager to over analyze Tarantino's movies since I consider them all basically exploitation flicks that would have played in a grindhouse and been ignored by critics 30-40 years ago. Now? They gets Oscar nominations which is flat out amazing to me. I do think that with Death Proof and now Inglourious Basterds Tarantino is really getting into his groove. When he's 65 he'll probably make his masterpiece which most film critics will hate and the Academy will ignore.
As for the Hurt Locker... I wish I could appreciate it more but I've never really enjoyed Bigelow's films and The Hurt Locker is no exception.
So in a nutshell I think Tarantino accomplished what he set out to do which is make an great looking & entertaining exploitation flick set in WW2. I don't think Bigelow really accomplished all that much with The Hurt Locker (and I'm not all that sure what she was trying to do) except she made a lot of male critics go "Wow! A woman can make an action movie." I'd be much happier if Jane Campion got as much attention for her film Bright Star but it seems to be getting ignored because it's a romantic film (and gasp! one of those awful historic biopics) that simply tells a beautiful love story.
But I digress... I think the best war films (and by war films I mean purely war dramas - not action/combat flicks or exploitation films) tend to be dark, gritty and capture a bit of the madness or horror of war (at least as family members & friends who experienced combat have expressed it to me). Those films are titles like Hiroshima Mon Amour, Overlord, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, The Sand Pebbles, Empire of the Sun, Black Rain and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence right off the top of my head but I'm sure there are others.
The Great Escape is a personal favorite of mine and I love the movie but I've always considered it more of a prison film than a war film for one reason or another.
I suppose we all relate to movies differently and as others have said, it's hard for me to think of war films as merely Documentary-Style war films or Hollywood war films since there are so many subtle variations between every genre. Everyone defines movies differently based on their experience, etc.
Oops! I responded to the wrong post. Bad me. I'll correct my mistake and you can delete this.
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