the blood of a poet, orpheus, testament of orpheus

The Blood of a Poet
d. Jean Cocteau, 1930

Cocteau's first film, The Blood of a Poet, could be seen as the birth of the cinematic avant-garde movement. Other notable films of this period include Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un chien andalou and the work of Dziga Vertov. Cocteau's film, a 50-minute exploration of what it means to be an artist, may the most radical and beautiful of them all. As a series of striking unforgettable images, The Blood of a Poet is quite astonishing. But I prefer the more artful reading of the film, in which Cocteau (not only a filmmaker, but a poet, writer, painter, and boxing promoter) laid out the simple outline of the perils of being an artist. To my eyes and my ears The Blood of a Poet registers like a poem.

Orpheus
d. Jean Cocteau, 1949

The most linear of the three, Orpheus is to many Cocteau's best work. It takes the old Orphic myth in which a Greek musician recedes to the land of the dead to find his lover. There, Hades agreed to let her back to the world of the living on the condition that he not look at her. Cocteau's adaptation keeps the basic structure, but he brilliantly adds his own personal touch. There is a love triangle between Orpheus, his wife, and Death. It's also a beautiful portrayal of the culture of the time.

Testament of Orpheus
d. Jean Cocteau, 1960

Cocteau's final film is also the most free-form narrative of these three films, as it features Cocteau revisiting several stages of his career. Closer in its theme to The Blood of a Poet, Testament of Orpheus serves a final goodbye to one of cinema's greatest figures, and a final poignant examination on the relationship between the director and his films. The film has appearances by Cocteau's friend, Pablo Picasso, the cast of Orpheus, and French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Leud.

pickpocket

Pickpocket
d. Robert Bresson, 1959

Pickpocket, one of Bresson's very best, may very well the definitive Bressonian film. His technique, which many have tried to imitate, is in top form here; everything from his framing, editing rhythms, meticulous sound design (which includes the sparse use of music), right down to the final heartbreaking moment of true emotion.

Michel (Martin La Salle) is a pickpocket who is caught right at the beginning of the film. The police let him go - for they have no evidence - and he goes on with his activities without the slightest hint of guilt. Being a thief for Michel is not only a way for him to survive without having to get an actual job, one look at his eyes and the audience knows that he is looking for a true human connection. Bresson makes this very clear in the last few sequences, with Michel basically asking to be caught.

Over the course of Pickpocket, Michel also falls in love with Jeanne (Marika Green), who took care of his mother before she died. Jeanne constantly tried to convince Michel to go see her, but his arrogance (or maybe his guilt) kept him from ever actually speaking to her. Though it is obvious that Michel loves Jeanne from the first time they meet, the same insecurities that drove him to being a thief keep him from being able to connect with people. It isn't until the last shot that the audience, and Michel himself, can feel that there is hope for human connection even the most detached of enviornments. Pickpocket, along with Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (which also incorporates elements of Kafka and Sartre), may be the closest thing we have to Camus on the screen.

breathless to weekend

Breathless
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960

Godard's first film and to many his best. Quite revolutionary and could be seen as the starting point for modern cinema. Belmondo and Seberg make up one of the best couples in the history of cinema. Fast-paced storytelling and post-modern existential crime story.

A Woman is a Woman
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1961

Very enjoyable musical beautifully shot in 'Scope. Anna Karina's performance is reason alone to seek out this film. But if you really want to see a brilliant French musical, seek out either Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort.

My Life to Live
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

Once again, Karina's performance is the highlight here. My Life to Live could very well be Godard's most poetic film, the editing rhythms are quite entrancing. The scene with Karina crying after watching Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc is heartbreaking.

Contempt
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1963

One of Godard's very best. A brilliant examination on why movies are important in the first place. Godard may be going to far by saying that cinema is more important than everything else, but it's still a brilliantly constructed movie. Fritz Lang playing himself, Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli playing a detached couple, and beautiful color cinematography. One of the great movies about making movies.

Band of Outsiders
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1964

In my opinion the best thing Godard's ever done. Odile (Anna Karina), Sami Frey (Franz), and Claude Brasseur (Arthur) make up one of the great love triangles in the movies. On the surface a post-modern exercise and reworking of Hollywood B-movies, on a deeper level a beautiful life-affirming statement about the world we live in.

Alphaville
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

Never really understood this one and I definitely should watch it again. From what I remember, it seemed like a pretty interesting take on the sci-fi genre. Karina, once again, was great.

Pierrot le fou
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

Perhaps the most captivating couple in all of Godard's movies, Karina and Belmondo drive the movie. The movie is a series of misadventures, and I remember most of them being quite amusing. As this is one of Godard's most revered films, it certainly warrants a second viewing.

Masculine-Feminine
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1966

Another one of my personal favorites. Chantal Goya plays a pop-star and the iconic Jean-Pierre Leud plays the intellectual young man, the epitome what I imagine someone from the 60s to be. One of Godard's most playful films, it's the best film ever made about "the kids of Marx and Coca-Cola."

Two or Three Things I Know About Her
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1967

The first Godard film I ever saw, and I didn't particularly respond to it immediately. Upon some thinking, however, a very visual satire on the American way of living. One of Godard's most complicated films, and perhaps it wasn't the best choice for me to be introduced to him. I urgently need to re-watch it.

Weekend
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1967

This film, which closed off Godard's New Wave period, is perhaps his most anarchistic. Weekend is closer to the late work of Buñuel (particularly The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty) than to Godard's earlier stuff. There's a wonderfully long tracking shot that spans about ten minutes and chronicles a long line of traffic. As far as Godard's work goes, this rigorous shot is only matched by 1972's Tout va bien.

stranger than paradise

Stranger Than Paradise
d. Jim Jarmusch, 1984

Perhaps more than any film of the 1980s, Jim Jarmusch's breakthrough film Stranger Than Paradise has everything that I instinctively love about movies. It has grainy, black-and-white compositions, all of the scenes are made up of one shot, there aren't a lot of characters in the film, and, above all, the story takes a back seat to character.

Stranger Than Paradise, Jarmusch's first non-student film, pretty much laid down the basic formula for his next couple of projects. It wasn't until 1995's Dead Man that he would depart from the Cassavetes meets Warhol New York hipster type of mentality (which I love). And this is the definitive film of that period in his career.

It tells the "story" of hipster Willie (John Lurie, who did the music for the film), who spends most of his time in his apartment watching tv or making money gambling or at the tracks with his friend Eddie (Richard Edson). At the beginning of the film, Willie receives the news that his Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) will be visiting him for a week before she leaves for Ohio. At first, they don't really get along, and Jarmusch shoots their distant relationship in unforgettable single-shot scenes in which, for the most part, the camera doesn't move.

When it finally comes time for Eva to leave, Willie has become attached to her but is too cool to admit it. A couple of days later, after winning a lot of money from a game of cards, Willie and Eddie decide to take a roadtrip to Ohio and visit Eva and Willie's aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark). The scenes set in Ohio are just as captivating as the ones in New York, and the key line of the film comes when Eddie looks around the snow in Ohio and says, "you know, it's funny, you come someplace new, and everything looks the same."

Soon enough they get tired of Ohio and, for some reason or another, decided to go to Florida. They take Eva with them, and this concluding passage of the film is at once the best and most problematic (mostly due to story contrivances which don't really matter). Though the conclusion of Stranger Than Paradise is quite depressing, there was no better way for Jarmusch to end his beautifully melancholy film.

dogville

Dogville
d. Lars von Trier, 2003

Lars von Trier's Dogville, one of the key films of the past few years, was deemed anti-American upon its release back in 2004. Though the arguements are not completely unfounded, to say that the film is only against America is to have missed the point. Making a movie that criticizes the U.S. is too simple, and von Trier, perhaps more than anyone, knows that. Dogville, instead, comes as an attack on a lot of widely accepted values, and in the end becomes a statement about the arrogance of mankind. And even if you don't take any of the different layers the film has to offer into consideration, Dogville still offers an exhilirating experience. The performances are all around amazing, the visual style is quite innovating, and the running time of 3 hours feels like 90 minutes.

Briefly, the film follows Grace (Nicole Kidman) as she arrives to the township of Dogville. She is runing away from gangsters and finds refuge in this small town. A young man named Thomas Edison (Paul Bettany) encourages her to stay in the town. Being the believer of democracy that he is, Tom calls a meeting in which the entire town (roughly 20 people) will decide whether or not to give Grace a chance. They decide to let her stay for two weeks and then, based on her behavior, form their final decision. As it happens, Grace's generosity and desire to be helpful gets taken advantage of, and true colors of the town begin to show up.

Von Trier's visual style in Dogville is unlike anything he's done before. Filmed on a bare soundstage with very few props (albeit chalk lines that say things like "goosebery bushes"), the film has a very theatric feel that calls to mind the work of Brecht, as well as that of filmmaker Sirk and Fassbinder. Though the latter two directors used melodramatic conventions both as irony and as plot devices, von Trier tries to elimate all of that in Dogville by giving us the presence of a narrator who oversees everything, the wonderful William Hurt. Whenenver the audience finds themselves relating to Grace, Hurt is there to keep us at a distance.

The tonal shifts in the last section of the film feels, much like everything else in the film, as a masterstroke on the part of von Trier. Though I don't plan to give these surprises away, anyone who plans to watch Dogville should be ready for a subtly disturbing experience. Ultimately, though, Dogville is a visionary work by one of the great working directors, as well as a brilliant meditation on human nature as a whole.

manhattan

Manhattan
d. Woody Allen, 1979

Manhattan has always been my favorite Woody Allen movie. Most people would, I believe, go for his earlier Annie Hall, which is arguably funnier and more accesible (it even won the Oscar for Best Picture). However, Manhattan shows Allen at the height of his power, his direction is obviously in top form here, the black-and-white compositions are just as good as those by his European heros Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman. Manhattan's script, though not as consistently funny as Annie Hall's, is a very dense work. And, finally, Allen's acting is also the best he's ever done, the final scene alone has been copied countless of times, and it's never better than it is here.

Allen plays Isaac, a writer who is dating Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a 17-year old high school student. In an early scene, Isaac talks to his friend Yale (Michael Murphy) about how he wants to break up with her. In fact, he spends most of his time with her trying to get out of the relationship. And, as is to be expected, he regrets it once it finally happens. Meanwhile, Yale is having an affair with Mary (the unforgettable Diane Keaton), and is also trying to break it off with her. He even goes as far as trying to set her and Isaac up, without realizing that he may still love her.

As with all of Allen's films, there is an undercurrent about the way morality fits in the contemporary world. In an early scene in Manhattan, Isaac quits his job writing for a comedy TV show because he finds it unsatisfying and an utter waste of his talent. Afterwards, he finds himself worrying over how he will get by without his income.

All of these different threads come together effortlessly into one of the key American works of the 1970s. As an examination on relationships in the modern world, Manhattan is as poignant, and far more entertaining, than the best of Antonioni. That it is beautiful to look at and has George Gershwin's music is just the icing on the cake.

last days

Last Days
d. Gus Van Sant, 2005

As a fan of both Gerry and Elephant, I had some pretty big expectations for Gus Van Sant's Last Days. And though I found plenty to admire in the film (particularly Harris Savide's photography), I felt I was also kind of let down. On one hand, the images are not as striking as they were in Gerry, and the time-lapse shots are not as exquisitely composed as they were in Elephant; on the other, Last Days is supposed to be setting its own aesthetic boundaries and perhaps I shouldn't be comparing it so harshly to those previous films, but it's rather hard not to when a lot of all of the three films is structured in the same way.

As you may or may not know, Last Days is/isn't a portrayal of the last days (though no time is actually pointed out) of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain. Not being much of a Nirvana fan myself, I had no problems with the movie regarding an inaccurate portrayal of Cobain, because it's Van Sant's movie and he should be able to do whatever he wants with these characters. With that said, maybe Van Sant himself did not take this into consideration, because he does seem to be holding back and playing it safe by and large. This is most evident when one compares his treatment of Blake, the protagonist of this film, and that of the Gerrys.

Though I'm sure there aren't many people who will find Last Days particularly engaging (I was the only one at the theatre when I saw it), for someone who is used to this kind of rigorous filmmaking, I would strongly recommend it. The sound design is quite striking, the aforementioned fullscreen cinematography of Savides was breathtaking to see in theatres, and Van Sant gives us a couple of blatant Michael Snow and Chantal Akerman, which I found interesting if a little too obvious (particularly the shot of Blake pouring cereal, a la Jeanne Dielman).

Some scenes in Last Days actually achieve the hypnotic effect Van Sant wanted present through the entire film, most notably Michael Pitt's acoustic performance of "From Death to Birth," and the back to back playing of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs," in which some of Blake's band members sing along with the part everyone sings along to when listening to the song, "I am tired, I am weary..."