This film from 1974 by John Cassavetes is without doubt one of my all time favourites. Gena Rowlands immediately became my idol after seeing it. I really don’t want to say much more about it, I just hope this clip below encourages you to watch it!
The dying swan scene:
Archive for the 'Cinema' Category
Daisies was made in 1966 by the Czech filmmaker Věra Chytilová and was considered a key film of the Czech New Wave. It was banned in 1968 shortly after the “Prague Spring” by the Soviet Communist regime, as was Chytilová from making any new films in Czechoslovakia until 1975.
Věra Chytilová
The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact stopped the creative and social freedoms of “Prague Spring” when they decided to invade Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968. Therefore, many Czechoslovakian artists’ reactions were to employ metaphors, humour, and radical narrative play to express the dangers and hypocrisies of life under a repressive regime. In order to make subversive political statements, ambiguity was a necessity.
Daisies depicts the two female protagonists Marie and Marie, who are claiming that the world is “bad” and therefore they will be too.
The story is structured with a non-linear narrative, and via jump cuts we are thrown between incoherent scenes, never quite knowing what will come next. The film consists of montages of contradictory imagery, a baffling dialogue, asynchronous sound, colours that change from full to monochrome to psychedelic, anti-naturalistic optical effects and sudden accelerated motion.
The Maries want to go against the norms of society, and act out as they see fit. They do this when they date older men, get particularly drunk in a fancy nightclub and steal food, drinks or money from other people.
Many aspects of Daisies make it appear like a feminist film. The Maries are constantly sexually teasing older men, making them pay for expensive dinners only to send them away in trains afterwards. At one point the Maries cut up phallic-looking food with a pair of scissors and eat it. Many of the men they meet seem like symbols of the patriarchal society, and the Maries’ actions therefore become a symbol of how they “castrate” it.
The main thing the Maries like to do is to eat, and they do this in a manner that also goes against the norms of society. They eat almost all the time, and if not, they ask people for food or talk about it. They even seem to confuse the meaning of love with food, and they question why men do not simply say “egg” instead of “I love you”.
Daisies is a film with many possible interpretations, and Chytilová is concealing an important message underneath the veils of ambiguity. The veil Chytilová has chosen is highly Dadaist. With Daisies Chytilová challenges our conventional understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
In a nod to the Maries’ challenge of societal norms, the final title of the film reads: “This film is dedicated to those who only get upset over a “messed-up trifle””. It is a stab at the passivity of the bourgeoisie society, underlining Chytilová’s belief that instead of being provoked by a step outside of the rigid borders of etiquette, they should be provoked by much more pressing issues such as the Soviet occupation, the constant threat of violence that follows with the occupation, destructions of war and the lack of freedom of speech.
Watch it here:
Yvonne Marquis in Puce Moment
A lot have been said about Mr. Kenneth Anger. Over the years he’s been called many things, none of them particularly flattering: a satanist, a racist, a weirdo but whether he is one thing or another we can’t really tell. What we only know for sure is that he was, and still is, one of the most intriguing experimental directors ever. Demonic, provocative, way ahead of its time, Anger’s visual work is powerful and gentle at the same time, like suspended in time yet truly mesmerising.
“Puce Moment”, a short film by him from 1949, was meant to be a celebration of ladies of the silent screen (the original title was “Puce Women”). Puce is the name of a colour, the pale red-violet that permeate the six-minute filming of a lady in her boudoir, what is left of the original project, failed because of lack of funding.
Yvonne Marquis is the woman who plays the role of the “diva”, in real life she would later move to Mexico and become the lover to former Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas. Yvonne’s resemblance to old film stars such as Clara Bow and Barbara La Marr is striking and her whole action is a tribute to the rich, decadent life of the Roaring Twenties.
“Puce Women was my love affair with Hollywood…with all the great goddesses of the silent screen. They were to be filmed in their homes; I was, in effect, filming ghosts”
— Kenneth Anger
Puce Moment
Clara Bow & Barbara La Marr
Everything is perfect in this “puce” moment of pure visual pleasure…from the vivid colours of the sequinned gowns, that once belonged to Anger’s grand-mother, to the languid expressions of the silent Yvonne. Her alternate acts, slowed-down or speeded-up, are combined with beautiful and haunting psych-folk soundtrack (added in 1966) by mysterious musician Jonathan Halper. The power and immediacy of this unusual, dream-like film make it look so up to date after all those years. A post-modern celebration of the past, way before post-modernism really had a name.
Colleen Moore in her boudoir
Puce Moment
Enjoy the film…
Jean-Marie Straub was an extrovert and a visionary. The public face of the prolific filmic duo she and her husband Danièle Huillet formed, she is one of the cinematic legends of the twentieth century. Their career, which started when the couple were students in Paris in 1954, spanned four decades and includes over two-dozen films. Dividing their collaborative work equally, Straub’s focused her attention behind the camera lens. Her enigmatic camera-work, focussing on long takes their films ‘un-write’ the visible through the arrested movement of the camera. Most notably perhaps in their first full-length feature, Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, which appeared in 1968 as the couple’s second feature length film.
Jean-Marie Straub and her husband Danièle Huillet
Not Reconciled, 1965, their first feature length film, illustrates the proponents of minimalist cinematography that Straub experimented with in her cinema.
Straub and Huillet’s films have not, however, gained the deserved recognition for their contribution to cinema and cinema politics, critics have noted. In spite of their being the “darlings” of the Cahiers du Cinéma, numerous collaborations with legends such as Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Robert Bresson to name only a few, and occupying a substantial portion of Deleuze’s infamous book Cinema I their films have not made their way into the hearts of the revivalist film watchers of today.
Not Reconciled (Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, 1965)
Not for the faint-hearted
Many critics hastily concede of Straub’s minimalist style that it’s “inaudible” and “unintelligible” and even those admirers of her work dub the films as “dry and intellectual”. Their films are, however, part of a body of cinema, a body that pertinently probes a social and historical backdrop in France’s ideological past. Straub and Huillet’s films are notoriously imbued with Marxist ideology, this is something that manifests in the textually on screen, objects, figures and music all bear equal weight, and indeed make watching these films a sensory marathon.
Class Relations (Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, 1984)
“The films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet are best understood in the context of contemporary developments in radical, materialist cinema. They offer what many people see as a genuine alternative to both dominant narrative cinema and conventional art movies. Their work is formally austere and demands attentive, intellectual participation from audiences.” (Quote from The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson.)
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, 1968)
As with running a marathon, I can only imagine, great satisfaction follows from watching these films. Straub-Huillet’s films are challenging but they incite an obscure reward beyond the sensuous towards the ‘sensible’ in the image, something like the Idea. Objects on screen are extended beyond their formal, prescribed and allocated positions and allow new forms to come forth on screen. As the infamous philosopher of cinema writes..
…the Straubs, are probably the greatest political filmmakers in the West, in the modern cinema. But, bizarrely, this is not due to the presence of the people; on the contrary, it is because they know how to show how the people are, what is missing, what is not there.
— Deleuze
Straub and Huillet’s film The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach:
The innocent, sometimes naive childlike “baby-doll” character has always been a popular one in cinema, certainly amongst the male audience. With the 1956 film “And God Created Woman” that gave Brigitte Bardot her breakthrough, Roger Vadim invented a modern version of “the eternal female” and launched a new type of eroticism.
Simone de Beauvoir explained the interest in this new “child-woman” in her book “Brigitte Bardot and the lolita syndrome”:
The adult woman now inhibits the same world as the man, but the child-woman moves in a universe which he cannot enter. The age difference reestablishes between them the distance that seems necessary to desire.
— Simone de Beauvoir
Brigitte Bardot is a perfect example of the merging of the “green fruit” and “femme fatale” type in the film ”And God Created Women”. She is playing the 18-year old ophan, Juliette who is very sexual and attracts all men – young and old. Juliette knows that all men find her attractive and play along with them. But the only one she really loves doesn’t love her back, so she is never quite happy.
Brigitte Bardot is the most perfect specimen of these ambiguous nymphs. Seen from behind, her slender, muscular, dancer’s body is almost androgynous. Femininity triumphs in her delightful bosom. The long voluptuous tresses of Mélisande flow down to her shoulders, but her hair-do is that of a negligent waif. The line of her lips form a childish pout, and at the same time those lips are very kissable.
— Simone de Beauvoir
Photo by Kary Lasch
We see the popularity of “the lolita syndrome” in cinema many times for example with Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron and Francoise Arnoul amongst many others. Not to mention in the hugely popular book “Lolita” by Nabokov.
Audrey Hepburn
Leslie Caron
Francoise Arnoul
The video-distribution company Criterion Collection, a “continuing series of important classic and contemporary films” has since 1984 been dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in high quality. If you are interested in films, I definitely recommend you to have a look at their site and blog where they write critical film reviews, discuss the newest film theory and create lists of recommended films to see.
They also maintain a YouTube channel where I recently stumbled upon their “Three Reasons” videos. If you sometimes find it difficult to pursuade your partner to watch a black and white film or a film from before the 21st century with you, these videos are amazing. They often sell the films better than the original trailers. Of course I’m not forgetting that Criterion Collective is a company who are promoting the films they sell, but because I actually agree with them in their film choices, I find these videos very useful. Also, after looking through the videos, I have added many films to my “I need to watch this” list.
Anyway, here are five videos from their Three Reasons channel. I highly recommend all these films, so I hope these videos will inspire your next film choice.
Breathless (1960)
Belle de Jour (1967)
The Children of Paradise (1945)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
In the Mood for Love (2000)
See more of Criterion Collective’s Three Reason’s here.
It all started in 1896 when “The May Irwin Kiss” was not only one of the first films ever to be shown commercially to the public, but also the first ever “film kiss”. The film kiss is almost inevitable in Hollywood and a necessity in the Romance. “The May Irwin Kiss” caused a scandalized uproar and sometimes even calls for police action in many places where it was shown. It was simply considered inappropriate to view two physically-unattractive people magnified on the screen during an extended kiss. 
May Irwin and John Rice in The Kiss (1896)
Today, we are luckily not that sensitive anymore, and there are some pretty remarkable “film kisses” in the history of cinema. The film kiss can either be the satisfying “they finally got each other”-kiss or the heart-breaking “if they love each other they have to leave each other”-kiss, but it can also be a friendly “I’ll always be here”-kiss. Either way, they always leave us with some sort of emotion. Here are some emotional film kisses for you.
Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in À bout de souffle (1960)
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina in Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind (1939)
Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita (1960)
Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
Liv Ullmann and Bibi Anderson in Persona (1966)
Anne Wiazemsky and Balthazar in Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Matchpoint (2005)
Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Mathew Goode and Colin Firth in A Single Man (2009)
Diane Keaton and Woody Allen in Annie Hall (1977)
Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk in A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
James Stewart and Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954)
Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
This is one of the most beautiful things I have seen for a long time. It’s a hand-tinted film from the early start of cinema (1895), produced by Thomas Edison. It shows Broadway dancer Annabelle Whitford doing the “serpentine dance”, which was a popular form of burlesque dance in the 1890s. The film was banned, because you see short glimpses of Annabelle’s undergarments(!). The illusion of her dress changing colours looks magical.
