Edward G. Robinson, tremendous, claimed the role that made him a star in Little Caesar, Mervyn LeRoy’s ultimately brilliant meditation on the unnaturalness and perniciousness of the American ethos of “rugged individualism,” which, to say the least, wars with humanity’s quest for sociability. LeRoy’s film, based on an unpublished novel by W. R. Burnett, also […]
Monthly Archives: July 2011
“Hope is the worst evil, for it prolongs the torment of man.” — Nietzsche Directed by Svetozar Ristovski from a script by him and Grace Lea Troje, Iluzija is a sober, serious although largely predictable and dull film from Macedonia despite flashes of deadpan humor. Its protagonist is a pre-teen boy, Marko, who is bullied […]
This monumental film by anthropological documentarian Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, Chronique d’un été (Paris 1960), marks the invention of cinéma vérité, the name given it by Rouch. An unconcealed “living camera,” “a highly portable lightweight camera connected to a synchronized sound recorder” (Sadoul), was used by the cameraman accompanying an interviewer who asked […]
Paul Laverty took aim at globalization, comparing it to European conquests of the New World, in his partially successful script for También la lluvia, from Spain, Mexico and France; but Icíar Bollaín’s labored, unimaginative direction added nothing to this, resulting in a sour, schematic film. There are so many valuable anti-globalization films available for viewing—and, […]
Given the title, the enrobing irony is that Lumière d’été is so dark. Much of it unfolds at night, including two major passages outdoors, and the electric light doesn’t work in her room at the mountain resort hotel, The Guardian Angel, where Michèle has just arrived. Initially, this is comical. Michèle is expecting to be […]
In his early twenties, Brazil’s Mário Peixoto wrote, produced, directed and edited Limite, which would remain his one film. It became legendary once Sergei Eisenstein praised it. Actually, he did no such thing; the Portuguese translation of Eisenstein’s remarks was a hoax: Peixoto’s own invention. Combining moody languorousness and feverishly dazzling experimentalism, Limite is mostly […]
Moussa Sene Absa’s videographed And So Angels Die, about a man whose life is out-of-focus, is trenchant and clear-eyed. Born Senegalese, but with a white wife and their children in his adopted home outside Paris (a poet, he has disappointed wife, himself and marriage by ending up a supermarket janitor), Mory—played by Absa himself—doesn’t know […]
