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Historias extraordinarias -- Llinás (2008)
Historias extraordinarias -- Mariano Llinás (2008)
Historias extraordinarias tells the adventures of three men known only as H (Agustin Mendilaharzu, doubling as cinematographer), X (director Mariano Llinás) and Z (Walter Jakob). These adventures come across as self-conscious constructions and journeys happening in the here and now. But though the strongest literary influences on Llinás' fascinating screenplay are fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges and disciple Adolfo Bioy-Casares, it would be wrong to label Historias extraordinarias as literary per se: Instead, a viewer would have to stretch back to the grand serial silents of Louis Feuillade for something as ambitious as Llinás' detailed telling of the three separate, intertwined tales, all involving men on quests in situations that force them to question who they really are. Llinás jumps between the storylines over 18 episodes, usually devoting no more than about 15 minutes at a time to any single one. The governing concept uniting the tales is how each man begins with a specific task, and then veers away from the straight-and-narrow, bringing the job's purpose into question.
While the film was made on a low budget even by Argentine standards, the final impact is one of a big movie nearly bursting at the seams. This film also issues a riposte to recent Argentine minimalism, and specifically Carlos Sorin's three-tale film set in Patagonia, Historias mínimas (2002). (Robert Koehler)
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Simon of the Desert -- Buñuel (1965)
Simón del desierto -- Luis Buñuel (1965)
"Simon of the Desert is Luis Buñuel's wicked and wild take on the life of devoted ascetic Saint Simeon Stylites, who waited atop a pillar surrounded by a barren landscape for six years, six months, and six days, in order to prove his devotion to God. Yet the devil, in the figure of the beautiful Silvia Pinal, huddles below, trying to tempt him down. A skeptic's vision of human conviction, Buñuel's short and sweet satire is one of the master filmmaker's most renowned works of surrealism.
....Forty-three minutes of perfect filmmaking (1965). Luis Buñuel tells the story of San Simeon Stylites, the desert martyr who stood for 25 years atop a pillar, and the efforts of the devil to coax him down. Since the devil is played by Mexican musical star Silvia Pinal, her temptations aren't the usual ones. Buñuel's wit is piercingly sharp, his timing impeccable, and his visual style superbly unobtrusive and naturalistic--proving again how much realism is required in surrealism." Chicago Reader
Damned If You Do . . . BY MICHAEL WOOD
"A good friend of Luis Buñuel's suggested in conversation that the director was likely to be damned twice: once for being an atheist, and once for joking about it on his deathbed. The friend, a priest, certainly knew what he was talking about, but I don't believe he really thought Buñuel would be damned. God can't ultimately condemn serious atheists. They pay far more attention to him than halfhearted believers do, and they help to keep him in business. On the soundtrack of Buñuel's film Nazarín (1959), we hear a barrel organ playing an old song called "Dios nunca muere" (God Never Dies). The song in itself is a bit of popular piety, an assertion of enduring faith. In Buñuel's movie, it is an ironic tribute to the director's everlasting antagonist, a correction of Nietzsche's premature announcement of God's death. And when Buñuel says, as he frequently and famously did, "Thank God I'm still an atheist," the remark is not only a witty paradox, it is a form of courtesy. Why wouldn't an atheist want to show gratitude to the nonexistent deity who never lets him down?
"Simon of the Desert (1965) was the last film Buñuel made in Mexico, the last one in which he used Mexican actors, and most significantly the last one on which he worked with the great Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Buñuel got all kinds of sharp, ironic effects from glossy color photography in the six films, five French and one Spanish, he went on to direct before he died, but there is a purity and grace in Figueroa's images that is unequaled in Buñuel's body of work. Writing enthusiastically of Simon of the Desert, Pauline Kael suggests Buñuel's movies "have a thinner texture that begins to become a new kind of integrity, and they affect us as fables." She is thinking of his indifference to the large emotions directors usually want their actors to go for, but we could also consider Figueroa's contribution to this effect. His images are as much about the desert as about Simon, and we can almost see the thinness of the air...."
Read the rest of the essay here: http://www.criterion.com/curre<wbr>nt/posts/1013
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I Even Met Happy Gypsies -- Petrovic (1967)
Skupljači perja - Aleksandar Petrovic (1967)
"In 1967, when Skupljači perja was released, it attracted international acclaim and elevated the director, Aleksandar Petrović, to the first rank of European directors. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign film—actually won that year by Jiří Menzel's Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Observed Trains)—and the same year it won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The following year it was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Mature master
Even before he achieved international success, Petrović was already considered to be one of the pre-eminent directors in Yugoslavia and was recognised as one of the founders of and a leading light in the Novi Film (New Film) movement that dominated Yugoslav cinema in the 1960s. His 1961 film Dvoje (Two) had paved the way for Novi Film, while Tri (Three, 1965) was widely seen as one of the most mature and accomplished films of the whole movement.
In fact, Petrović was one of three directors who effectively dominated Novi Film tendencies throughout the 1960s, the others being Živojin Pavlović and the much more well-known Dušan Makavejev, later to achieve international fame and some measure of lasting notoriety with his film WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1970).
The Novi Film movement did not have a specific program but can perhaps best be seen as one aspect of the major changes taking place in Yugoslav society during the 1960s. As society moved towards a greater level of democratisation and decentralisation, filmmakers too began to demand the right to greater individual artistic expression and more freedom from bureaucratic control.
They also wanted more leeway for experimentation with the form of film and in particular they wanted to be able to address the more negative aspects of their society and of human existence in general. Nevertheless, these goals were still to be realised within the context of a Socialist state, and not in opposition to it. One might look at this as an early expression of the famous "Socialism with a human face" that the Czechs were to make their own in 1968.
Roma romp
Skupljači perja (literally "The Feather Buyer" but more usually—and with far less elegance—translated into English as I Even Met Happy Gypsies, a reference to a line one line from a Romany song, "Djelem djelem," that we hear several times during the film) is set in the Vojvodina region of Northern Serbia—an area of great ethnic diversity. Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians and others all live alongside each other, and on the margins of all these communities live the Roma, who are the real subject of the film.
The central character, Bora, (played by 'the Yugoslav heart-throb' Bekim Fehmiu) is the feather buyer of the title. Bora, a Rom, lives in the town of Sombor (northeast of Novi Sad, close to the border with Hungary) and trades in goose feathers. He has divided up the territory with his main rival Mirta (Velimir Živojinović) . Bora is married, with a small posse of children, but spends most of his free time drinking, making love to other women (notably the Romany singer Lenka, played by Olivera Vučo) gambling and generally leading a virile and macho lifestyle.
Petrović's films do seem to have been largely forgotten now, and this seems to me to be a great tragedy. There is little information available about him and what there is needs to be taken with a whole handful of salt. A case in point is the description of the film given on the All Movie Guide website and reproduced in several other locations. The author of the piece, Hal Erickson, has misunderstood the movie so completely that his review cannot go unchallenged:
The Yugoslavian leading man Bekim Fehmiu plays a charismatic but mean-spirited gypsy, married to the submissive woman. The gypsy couple's various escapades end up in a desperate flight from the law... The film was shot in a near-extinct Gypsy language called Romany, requiring the film to carry subtitles even when released in Yugoslavia.
In Skupljači perja, Petrović shows us the real lives of Yugoslav Roma without idealising them in any way or showing the tiniest trace of romanticism. This is a grim and brutal life, but it also has its moments of passion and music, and the people themselves have a dignity and presence that we cannot help but respect, even if it is often difficult for an outsider to admire or comprehend. Perhaps, this is one of the best films about the Roma ever made, and, in my judgement, it is a true masterpiece of cinema." -- James Partridge, 27 November 2000
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Trails -- Monteiro (1978)
Veredas -- João César Monteiro (1978)
"For his feature debut Monteiro creatively borrowed from traditional Portuguese legends to craft a series of echoing, parallel tales of young couples desperately escaping cruel false fathers, each couple on the run across different regions of the country and during increasingly contemporary time periods. A lyrical and profoundly cinematographic allegory with a glisteningly sharp political edge, Veredas traces a pattern of cruelly repressive authority across Portuguese history while also pointing, with cautious optimism, towards the steady presence of youthful resistance. With its stunning choreography of landscape and use of a poetic, associative structure to evoke the longue durée of mythical time, Veredas anticipates Monteiro's mid-career masterpiece Silvestre." —BAM
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Recollections of the Yellow House -- Monteiro (1989)
Recordações da Casa Amarela -- João César Monteiro (1989)
"This quirky Portuguese comedy won a silver lion at the 1989 Venice Film Festival. The story concerns the irrepressible Joao de Deus (played by the director, Joao Cesar Monteiro), an ill-kempt, lusty and none-too-honest resident of Violeta's boarding house, which happens to have yellow walls. Joao, who has no visible means of support, is in his fifties, and is not above cadging money from his 70 year old mother, who still works as a cleaning lady. He has a wistful sort of lust for the young ladies in the boarding house, and gets a kind of thrill when he is permitted to take a bath in their used water. He strikes up a friendship with a slightly stupid girl who is a mite promiscuous, and even has a brief sexual encounter with her himself. Many slightly "off" encounters occur during the remainder of the film, but despite Joao's potentially defeating setback near the end, it appears that it won't be long before he's back in action."
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The Devil's Trap -- Vlacil (1962)
Dablova past - Frantisek Vlacil (1962)
Set in the 18h century when the Inquistion was still in force. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
One of the earliest films of the Czech New Wave with typically ingenious music by Zdenek Liska, great camera and other elements typical for the CNW.
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Dacii -- Nicolaescu (1966)
Dacii - Sergiu Nicolaescu (1966)
"With "Dacii", Sergiu Nicolaescu has had his debut as a movie director. The result is an impressive movie with an astonishing distribution and figuration, representative for all his historical movies.
Decebal is disposed to supreme sacrifice for keeping the integrity of his people. His son, Cotyso, is offered to the gods, despite Decebal's and his daughter, Meda's despair. Septimius Severus, a young Roman devoted to his adopted country, will have to choose between his blood origins and what he was told by his father."
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The Tree of Wooden Clogs -- Olmi (1978)
L'Albero Degli Zoccoli -- Ermanno Olmi (1978)
"Renowned director Ermanno Olmi's award-winning drama is a poignant look at rural peasant life in Northern Italy at the turn of the century. This moving story brings to life the hardships and adversity facing a family struggling to survive under oppressive rule.
At a great sacrifice, a family sends their young son to school to learn in lieu of having him work on the farm. Relying on his precious pair of clogs, the little boy must walk the long distance to school every day. When they break, his father sneaks into a prized grove in their village to obtain the wood for a new pair. The callous, wealthy landlord catches him and he is punished severely for his infraction. Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Olmi's breakthrough film is considered by many to be a masterpiece -- a revealing, serious piece of filmmaking that exemplifies his mastery of movement, color and imagery and above all, depicting the humanity of his subjects."
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Cuadecuc, vampir - Portabella (1970)
Cuadecuc, vampir -- Pere Portabella (1970)
Vampir-Cuadecuc (1970, 35mm) is a dreamlike combination of documentary, narrative, experimental, and essay film styles and is one of the key films of contemporary Spanish cinema. Shot on the set of Jesus Franco's Italian horror film Count Dracula, and featuring the star of that film, Christopher Lee, Vampir is both a sly political allegory about generalissimo Francisco Franco, a gentle homage to early films about the vampire legend, particularly Dreyer's Vampyr and Murnau's Nosferatu, and a work of subtle beauty and great richness.
Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum:
The first word in the title of Pere Portabella's ravishing 1970 underground masterpiece, made in Spain while General Francisco Franco was still in power and shown clandestinely, means both "worm's tail" and the unexposed footage at the end of film reels. The film is a silent black-and-white documentary about the shooting of Jesus Franco's Count Dracula, with Christopher Lee, that becomes much more: the lush, high-contrast cinematography evokes deteriorating prints of Nosferatu and Vampyr, and the extraordinary soundtrack by composer Carles Santos intersperses the sounds of jet planes, drills, syrupy Muzak, and sinister electronic music, all of which ingeniously locate Dracula and our perceptions of him in the contemporary world. Moving back and forth between Franco's film (with Dracula as an implicit stand-in for the generalissimo) and poetic production details, Portabella offers witty reflections on the powerful monopolies of both dictators and commercial cinema. The only words heard are in English, spoken by Lee and written by Bram Stoker.
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