ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

the kiln aspect was interesting as well - there was a bbc4 japanese traditional arts programme on just before i saw Ugetsu for the first time and the same kilns are still in use (although not universally)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Madamedeposter.jpg

Madame de..., Max Ophuls, 1953
Morbsies #499
Sight & Sound Critics #90

Sometimes the greatest film ever made.

Another cracking film.

I love Earrings... because it's a film whose editing and camera movements convey a passage of time as subtle as any novel. When I read Balzac and Trollope, the marriage between Boyer and Darrieux is how I imagine the day-to-day functionalities of a patrician 19th century marriage. The beauty of Boyer's performance is how he's perfectly willing to go along with it but with the quiet half-grins that Ophuls catches it's clear he also loves Louise enough to have given a more erotic marriage a shot if she wasn't so bent on escaping within her confines. Few films convey how possessions delineate the confines of one's own entrapment.

Modern Times also on YouTube now too
Really enjoyed that, especially the automatic food layer bit

Only started watching films by Ophuls six months ago. Forgive me, God

Om watching Earrings.... as I type and my god

I finally got around to Earrings a few years ago and boy does it deliver. 19th century novels are a good reference point, it has that richness of detail and emotional specificity.

Boyer is the key: aware of everything, ready to play along, but ignore him and he'll put a bullet in your throat.

19th century novels are a good reference point, it has that richness of detail and emotional specificity.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, April 30, 2024 5:28 PM (one hour ago)

otm Alfred and tipsy. I already had that association, and when I started reading Anna Karenina the other day I immediately thought of Earrings

there's a Chaplin season on sky arts in the UK and Modern Times (78 in the S&S list) and City Lights (36) will be two of those (i think MT is next Saturday and Sunday). so far there's been The Kid, Gold Rush, The Circus. Criterion logo in all the credits.

Finished watching Madame De..., you are all dead-on with the novel comparisons, reminded me of Zola's "La Curée", though without the politics, such a dance the three do with each-other, and the fact that they spent so much time actually dancing did not seem like a blunt metaphor. I did find it a little difficult to connect with on an emotional level, as I always do with the Belle Époque upper class, not sure why this is.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Tokyo-story-20201121.jpg

Tokyo Story, Yasujirō Ozu, 1953

Morbsies #141
Sight & Sound Critics #4
Sight & Sound Directors #4

Heartbreaking.

yeah, didn't even make the top 100

I finished Tokyo Story a little while ago and have been slowly digesting it - while I liked it quite a lot I still haven't worked out why it's a masterpiece, maybe this is just something not worth worrying about, but it just reminds me of a lot of other low-key studies of family life - that's something I generally love anyway, maybe it's that I've seen so many of its successors that it just doesn't seem novel? I am also a little confused by Chishū Ryū's acting, it is so low-key that I find myself questioning whether he's actually doing anything. (Also cannot believe that he's 49 years old in this and lived until 1993! And Kyōko Kagawa is still alive!)

is so low-key that I find myself questioning whether he's actually doing anything.

best kind of acting imo

I am undecided between "best" and "not best" - certainly he would be at home in a Roy Andersson film, so that sounds like I should come down on the side of "best"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/La_Strada.jpg

La Strada, Federico Fellini, 1954

Morbsies #648
Sight & Sound Directors #38

This one is on youtube in its entirety with English subtitles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPefZ8cZCl0

brilliant film

I liked it but I suspect Fellini thought it was about how sex is evil and makes you subhuman

So Gelsomina is supposed to be autistic, right?

Just finished this, quite a bleak ending and I'm not sure what to take away - but the world conjured up on the way was certainly worth it.

I do find it a little hard to get over what a complete dick Zampano is though, just not really interested in his internal life, he's so despicable.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Rear_Window_film_poster.jpg

Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock, 1954

Morbsies #22
Sight & Sound Critics #38

This was always by least-favourite of the a-tier Hitchcocks, however my exposure to it was on my Film Studies degree while being introduced to "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" so the heavy-handedness I remember may just be the lecturers.

Obviously this isn't freely available on Youtube - anyone know where it is streaming?

I know it's tempting to hold the movie's easy pedagogical meta elements against it. But I wouldn't, it's maybe the most sheerly entertaining movie he made between The 39 Steps and Psycho.

I feel fortunate to have seen all those classic Hitchcock movies like Psycho and Rear Window on tv when I was a kid and have my appreciation further deepen for them as I get older.

The 1998 remake starring Christopher Reeve is apparently free to stream on youtube. Probably not going to bother with it.

Obviously this isn't freely available on Youtube - anyone know where it is streaming?

It's on Bezos-Prime

If you don't mind hard-coded subs: https://archive.org/details/rear-window-1954_202007
gear icon -> HD

Eric otm. When Stewart, Kelly, and Ritter plot together, it'direction. point of Hitch's ensemble directing.

Yeah, Rear Window rocks. Has overtaken North By Northwest as my fave Hitch.

some of the early relationship scenes drag
otherwise it's great

i find that "heavily foregrounded meta but glommed onto pure story-telling thrills" is the core of Hitchcock's attraction tbh

Whoa -- I apologize for my phone-posted post. I meant: "best Hitchhock-directed ensemble."

Forget Vertigo -- Stewart never played a better Pure Acting moment than when he watches Thorwald assault Lisa.

Forget Vertigo

I will not

Just rewatched RW for the first time in ages because of this thread. Agree, hugely entertaining and well conceived and executed. It’s also so perverse of Hitchcock to cast Stewart in two different parables of impotence. (Tho he let him have TMWKTM in between I guess.)

Something there obviously about the WWII generation of men becoming redomesticated and incorporated into bland American life.

Yeah, they give a little more shading to the conventional wisdom about ‘50s America

The domestication of the American male was fodder for thinkpieces in the 50's - a lot of talk about "a crisis in masculinity". Pretty funny when now you hear mra types say we need to get back to that era.

Grace Kelly cooing about seeing him in a grey flannel suit a couple years before the infamous short story.

I love the shot at the end where she puts down her Himalayas travel book and picks back up Harper's Bazaar. She's not going anywhere, and neither is he.

My memory is so terrible. I spent this whole rewatch convinced thorwald didn't do it.

Poor miss lonely heart! What a damning indictment on Jeff and Stella, ignoring the potential suicide happening in front of them multiple times for the simple thrill of the chase.

Think I might be in love with Grace Kelly. Hope to get a date when I meet her up in the stars one day

Sorry, very slow right here. Yes, this was much better than I remembered, love the construction of a particular space and a time, just so vividly conjured. And the story is so self-contained, doesn't feel like it's just under two hours at all. Parallels with Vertigo are spot on, when he falls at the end, that's basically the start of Vertigo, isn't it? The exploration of viewer as voyeur is fine, but it was good not to think about it too much.

Still prefer Vertigo though

Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa, 1954

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Seven_Samurai_poster.jpg

Morbsies #97
Sight & Sound Critics #20
Sight & Sound Directors #14

Another biggie! For context here are the next five in the list

Johnny Guitar
Journey to Italy
Sansho the Bailiff
Ordet
The Night of the Hunter

LOL, perfect timing: Male weepies: Pick the "best," I guess