Sight and Sound 2022 Round 7: 121-140

too little information

Trouble in Paradise, with Fanny and Alexander and Pulp Fiction being other contenders.

A Day in the Country -- watched it recently. The P-A Renoir look I didn't care much of, but that ending is a gut-punch. Criterion special features indicate that it was always intended as a short film.

Only Angels Have Wings -- sorry, cary grant's character is just a conservative prick, letting employees die to make a little more money.

That's a reductive reading of what his character suffers when Thomas Mitchell dies or earlier when Joe dies (the "Where's Joe?" sequence is masterful in nailing a certain American attitude toward death), not to mention that he's not sympathetic at all. The film's on Jean Arthur's side.

compassionate conservative, then -- he cares, but does nothing

I want to say that I don't really get how someone could love Taxi Driver and hate Raging Bull--there's such a continuum there for me--but Kael felt exactly the same.

― clemenza, Tuesday, April 4, 2023 10:57 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Late to the party, but Taxi Driver is easily a top ten film for me and I don't even put Raging Bull in my top ten Scorsese films. As much as I really really like it, I think it's beautiful and well-done and acted in ways that take me out of it, it's kinda of a cold movie for a movie with such hot blooded emotions running thru the characters. I also probably find Travis' slow hazily outlined descent more compelling, the way DeNiro manages to create such a multifaceted character who is at war with himself and everyone else, who is in some scenes such a good guy and in others a nightmarish stalker figure, and he seems like a "walking contradiction" but like many irl reporting later, he's just a quiet nice guy a lot of the time who keeps to himself. It's just that no one knows what he's thinking or planning.

It does help that it's beautiful to look at, w/a really remarkable soundtrack (frighteningly off-kilter when it's not achingly beautiful), and mesmerizing in the way an insomniac might see the world at 3am. Idk the cinematic intelligence it took to create this is just sky high.

So yeah to sum up TD is immersive and I could watch it once per week for life, RB is I think largely brilliant but in a way that keeps me on the outside looking in, which is not the case w/my preferred Scorsese jams. Also should add in TD I feel like I'm watching Travis Bickle, in RB I feel like I'm watching what is genuinely an amazing DeNiro performance.

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Fanny and Alexander is an incredibly beautiful and very dark Christmas film, with resonant scenes of childhood in relationship to ritual, family secrets, religion, and the theater.

I mentioned elsewhere that I read that maybe Bergman neglected focusing on Fanny in the film because of his fraught relationship with his sister, but that is just speculation

Nice of him to give her first billing, in any case

I can't embrace it totally because Franny interests him not at all

it is a movie like all other movies with completely arbitrary characters and titles that sometimes don't make sense

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I’ll take it

Nice. I expected to be the only Children of Paradise voter, glad I'm not! This is stacked list, though, so many great movies.

I’ll take it too.

Johnny Guitar deserved a vote, tho

Thought the same.

it is a great film

Nobody warned me about the ridiculous fart gags in Fanny And Alexander.

Maybe you should have expected it after reading the directorial credit.

what if fanny & alexander fought the farting kids from Ozu's Ohayu

Loool!