ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

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Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943

Morbsies #96
Sight & Sound Critics #16
Sight & Sound Directors #62

Silent version is on youtube here
Version with music by Teiji Ito (1959) is on vimeo here

Meshes of the Afternoon is a one-and-done deal for me.

It's obvious you're not a woman

unfuckwithable

“The ritualistic form treats the human being not as the source of the dramatic action, but as a somewhat depersonalised element in a dramatic whole. The intent of such depersonalisation is not the destruction of the individual; on the contrary, it enlarges him beyond the personal dimension and frees him from the specialisations and confines of personality. He becomes part of a dynamic whole which, like all such creative relationships, in turn, endow its parts with a measure of its larger meaning.”

she didn't say that about meshes, but it's something i think about a lot

Flashback to a terrific late-2000s Spectrum gig at the Echoplex which used Meshes… as a backdrop and source for some very good video effects.

I liked this, but just as much as a load of other experimental short films I've seen. Mirror-face was the best character. Reminded me of Jan Švankmajer's Alice, a very formative film for me.

Might watch it again tomorrow, it is only 13 minutes after all.

CASABLANCA and MESHES are both perfect

yes, agree

Love Meshes of the Afternoon for its economy (in terms of setting, cast, budget, running time) in creating a world.

I first saw Meshes in a college film class and it BLEW MY MIND. (One of those moments when college really is everything it's supposed to be.) It still pretty much does.

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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943

Morbsies #69
Sight & Sound Critics #196

This on is on youtube in its entirety!

tried to get into this could not do it, i should try again maybe. scorsese talks about it in these reverential terms

I interviewed Jyoti from White Town for my radio show and he said it was his favourite film, and I promised to watch it. That was a couple of years ago and only getting around to it now, sorry Jyoti!

I'll, ahem, rescreen this one. Loved it but it's been decades.

l like this, very much

Great film

I like it a lot but it's not my favorite Archers.

I've yet to see a truly bad Archers.

BFI season coming up so I still might!

fantastic film! my Archers rankings change all the time, but I definitely wouldn't start with this one at the very least

Just finished Colonel Blimp, excellent of course but I'll have a sleep on it to think about what I really thought, etc. And then on to the next one.

So yes, a very enjoyable watch, not sure what I was expecting, but certainly not something so lush and cinematic. The characters were full of surprises, and all felt very human and also of their time - it's an annoyance to see historical fiction with people acting as they would today, so this isn't the mild praise it may seem.
The problem I have is that I've just spent a year immersed in the second world war and have come away from it with a desire to avoid all WWII-related materials for the foreseeable future, especially slightly jingoistic (as much it needed to be!) British WWII takes. The film does take a critical line on British culture, but it obviously was no time to rock the boat, and right now I want to see that boat rocked, and rocked hard. No fault of The Archers, of course, and I'm looking forward to seeing their other films.

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Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder, 1944

Morbsies #107

The film does take a critical line on British culture, but it obviously was no time to rock the boat

But it very much did rock the boat! As the Criterion website puts it:

No less than Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself tried to prevent Colonel Blimp from being made; he and his administration objected to what they considered to be slurs on the British military, to the friendship between Candy and the German officer and to the implication in the final scenes that unless the British fought dirty, they would lose the war.

oh I know! it balances things well enough that it was able to be released, even if it was not received well by certain people.
But I'm just a bit burnt out on the war.

Found Double Indemnity on archive.org

https://archive.org/details/double-indemnity-1944-restored-movie-720p-hd

Finished Double Indemnity, really peak film noir for me, not the slightest hint of a sly wink to the camera through the whole film, ironic for a director who would later be best known for comedies. Really very gripping, especially during the murder, and amazing how much they got away with considering the Hays Code was in full effect. Only slight gripe is the ending, which was not nearly as exciting or inventive as the rest of the film.

Anyway, we are quite behind schedule now, will put up the next one shortly!

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Les Enfants du paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945

Morbsies #448

It's on archive.org here - https://archive.org/details/les-enfants-du-paradis-1945 - but kind of a big file and no subtitles.

Getting a bit behind on the schedule as it took me a week to watch this, sorry.

I liked it, of course, but some reservations which were once again swept away by a brilliant last 20 minutes. It reminded me of a couple of Zola novels, loved he way it worked in cycles, with the parade at the end mirroring the parade at the start, the playful reflections on how everyone performs the roles of their own lives, it was never dull for a moment. All the same, at nearly 200 minutes long, I do have to wonder whether it couldn't lose an hour or so somewhere.

Also to note - this is the second French film in a row about a group of young men in pursuit of a woman who is clearly in her 40s, was every vieille vague film like this? Fantastic if so.

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A Matter of Life and Death, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946

Morbsies #716

Whole thing is on YouTube this time.

All of the great P&P movies take wilder swings than you’ve ever seen in a quote-unquote mainstream movie, and this movie probably has the wildest of them all

Gotta give a shout to Les Enfants — one of my favorite movies, a great 19th-century romp. Like Hugo or Dickens. Just totally delightful, romantic, sad. (And the circumstances of its production are something else.)

Never seen it in a theater.

Me either, but I would love to.

Big P&P retro at the bfi right now, wonder if this one will be playing this week.

23rd December at the IMAX apparently

> A Matter of Life and Death,

bbc2 Saturday lunchtime

Just heard about that from this article which I posted earlier on The Archers thread: https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/cutting-edge-thelma-schoonmaker-on-powell-and-pressburger-scene-by-scene

Finished this yesterday, just some of the greatest cinematography I've ever seen, a bizarre story, but one that worked perfectly, some very memorable performances, some incredible scenes, so not sure why I liked it (a lot) rather than loved it.

Also to note - it somewhat blows my mind that June is Zira in Planet of the Apes two decades later.

Les Enfants du paradis, Marcel Carné, 1945

Morbsies #448

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 28 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Cine Lumiere in London usually screens this around Xmas. Maybe I will watch this year

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The Big Sleep, Howard Hawks, 1946

Morbsies #542
Sight & Sound Critics #133

The DVD featurette on the differences between the versions is worth watching too.

As I probably also said about Maltese Falcon (can't remember), I can't be objective about these Bogart movies, my dad showed them to me when I was a kid and it was some real father-son bonding stuff. A third generation was also involved: we saw them dubbed into German on VHS tapes that my grandfather would send to us in Portugal. Grampa was an enthusiastic but none-too-capable techie, so he'd program the VCR for stuff to send to us and inevitably it would show up with the beginning or end cut off - which is to say I was in my early 20's before I saw the ending, and frankly between the jolly spousal abuse musical moment and the ending not being Bogart looking defeatedly into the darkness like a noir should be, I could leave it. The plot doesn't matter to such an extent that the truncated VHS version I knew as a child was a fully satisfying experience anyway.

its the sexiest movie ever made i think