ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

Swanson, surely?

"i saw this film at the bfi once and immediately after it ended someone turned around and said 'cracking film, absolute classic' and unfortunately i hate it now"

Me after watching:

To be or Not to be (Lubitsch, 1942)

--

Also watched:

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Greaves, 1967)
Paris is Burning (Livingston, 1990)

Muttering 'this is fine' to the docs I am catching up on in the S&S top 250

https://i.imgur.com/negLbxY.png

Víctimas del Pecado (Victims of Sin), Emilio Fernández, 1951

Morbsies #381

Great film. Saw this @ the bfi two years ago and it got to be the most surprising randomish thing I saw there.

Never heard of this one.

Victims of Sin just announced for the Criterion Collection, I see.

Hope they can get it out in the next couple of days. it is on youtube but with no subtitles.

Almost eerily timed

Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985). Watched part two, many years after part one.

Who could argue with this? It's unforgettable and moving. There is a problem to Lanzmann's interviewing technique. Maybe it's just the notorious scene with the barber where he turns the screws on someone who... wasn't brave enough to say no? But then he probably wouldn't be alive to make it to be interviewed like this. But it's also a once seen never forgotten scene.

I have hacked together a way of watching this film - downloaded from youtube and found some subtitles to add. Not ideal but it's working, will report back tomorrow.

Here's Richard Brody's response to Pauline Kael's infamous dismissal.

xp are you talking about Shoah? I watched it on YT. The subtitles were fine?

I will Google that piece, Alfred. Your link is taking you to something about Kurosawa?

lol sorry, I didn't clear my ctrl-p. Here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/shoah-at-twenty-five

Camaraderie is talking about Victimas del Pecado

Lol OK yes, it's been a long day

(thx Alfred, weird piece that turns into a Kael rant)

Her negative review was a massive discussion point in 1985, I've read.

There was another, contemporary, review that replied to her Shoah review, by J. Hoberman.

I’ve never read that one in full but probably should

He ends by quoting her: "Lanzmann could find anti-semitism anywhere", adding "maybe even at the New Yorker".

So, Víctimas del Pecado, what a wild ride this was. Like a hays code free film noir, but also a musical (the musical numbers are just fucking incredible, mambo, son, mariachi and more - and actually performed by some of the characters as much of the action takes place in a night club) and I dunno a soap opera? The plot follows no structure I've ever seen, if I wrote a description (don't want to spoil, so won't) then 50% would be crammed into the last 15 minutes. It's a deeply moral film but really not scared to show characters doing awful things, within five minutes of the start you have a live baby put into a trash can for example, and it's not really giving anything away to say the woman doing this suffers no consequences besides a brief flash of guilt. The characters are all very broadly-drawn, but also have a good deal of depth and nuance when you look at them closely. Not sure if I actually love this or if it's just a window into a different world of film-making, but absolutely sure that the musical numbers are all-timers. Thanks whoever voted for this as their favourite film of all time, I will look into getting the Criterion DVD when it comes out.

Whole thing is here, without subtitles, and with an annoying popup thing on the screen every five minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5mRVW66ebI

man brody bodies kael in that essay. salute

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Singin%27_in_the_Rain_%281952_poster%29.jpg

Singin' in the Rain, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952

Morbsies #38
Sight & Sound Critics #10
Sight & Sound Directors #53

Seen this around ten times already, you all probably have too. These are the next five if you don't want to see it again:

Ikiru
Ugetsu Monogatari
Madame de...
Tokyo Story
La Strada

Ikuru (better known as Singin' in the Snow

That list reminds me that a lot of the World Cinema Classics of the 50s are films I respect rather than love.

xp Not forgetting the British remake, Grumblin' in the Miserable Pissy Rain

Ikiru
Ugetsu Monogatari
Madame de...
Tokyo Story
La Strada

5 of my fave films

The Earrings of Madame de... has resided in my top ten for almost thirty years.

I've never watched Ikiru, maybe now is the time.

I have also seen Singin' in the Rain many times, but I'm always happy to watch it again. When I first saw it I got antsy and bored during the long dance sequence, but I've come to look forward to it. It used to feel out of sync conceptually with the movie, but it eventually clicked with me that it is a celebration of how far the medium had advanced and evolved in just a few decades of color and sound.

(plus also obviously it was a massive Gene Kelly flex at the height of his powers as a movie star and director, he could do what he wanted)

Don and Cosmo are one of the truly great gay couples of the Hollywood golden era

I've watched SITR many times at home and shown it in class, but the silent sequence still strikes me as long and boring.

just learned that the "famous zip girl of the screen" Zelda (very jazz age) was played by rita moreno. although her introduction scene gets stolen by a shouting extra.

https://www.tcm.com/video/1525509/singin-in-the-rain-1951-movie-clip-that-famous-zip-girl

also little thing i missed: she's clearly dating the old guy for his money, but the announcer says "zelda's had so much unhappiness, i hope this time it's really love"

I find gene Kelly very off-putting and have seen this way too many times

Watched this yesterday and as always it's a complete joy. Remember when I was a kid my dad saying Donald O'Connor was the best, and being more familiar with silent comedy now I feel like I can really appreciate this. The energy Gene Kelly puts into the Broadway Melody section is also kind of astounding though. As a depiction of the birth of sound film there's a load this gets wrong, but as it was still fairly recent memory I suppose they probably knew but didn't care. It's probably been said a thousand times before but having these in chronological order really underlines how much this most famous example of a big studio musical also marks the end of big studio musicals - those Busby Berkeley dance spectaculars were already history, and this was Kelly's last major hit. I guess this is also the start of Hollywood looking back with nostalgia at its golden age, which it has been doing intermittently ever since. The timescale is bizarre though, the equivalent today would be a film set in the year 2000.

I don't mind Kelly's constant mugging to the camera, but I can understand anyone who finds it off-putting. I'm afraid I find Jean Hagen may be the weak link personally - her comedy performance is of course wonderful, but I just don't buy her as a silent movie star, she doesn't have that theatricality to her face. Kelly isn't 100% convincing either, but he seems to at least be trying.

If you want to see a spot-on parody of the problems with early sound film I can heartily recommend this short from 1930

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH7XlG9j0xs

Kelly's mugging helps his character, an insecu.re mediocrity

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Ikiru_poster.jpg

Ikiru, Akira Kurosawa, 1952

Morbsies #230
Sight & Sound Critics #157
Sight & Sound Directors 72

I'm at a loss: the one Kurosawa masterpiece I can't like. I can watch any number of Ozu films from this period about aging/dying men, though.

Great film

I’m with Alfred aside from the “only Kurosawa I don’t like” part. It’s no secret he’s not at the top of my list of Japanese masters (tho I do quite like his later ones), and in IKIRU’s case I just don’t think I ever get on the same wavelength of its tone. I had higher hopes for this one going in though, so the falloff might have been partially expectation-based

He's still the top of mine so that evens it out!

Love Ikiru, it's all about that long final scene with the dudes at the funeral getting drunk and angry and wondering how to Fix Things.

Yup, it is an amazing thing when the funeral comes on.

Kurosawa is a curious one. I liked to loved pretty the three or four I've seen but I never went onto obsessively track the other half a dozen or so down.

Kurosawa has like 30 films still available. and of those i think only one is out of print and hard to find (The Idiot)

First saw Ikiru as part of a Sociology Of Death college class in the late 80s. Not my favorite Kurosawa, but easily one of my fave watching experiences.