Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread IV

[hangman005]

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Movies: - The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread III

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[kihei]

Previous Movies of the Week--Volume I movie list

Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger)
World on a Wire (Fassbinder)
Women in the Dunes (Teshigahara)
Lacombe, Lucien (Malle)
The Conformist (Bertolucci)
High and Low (Kurosawa)
Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul)--all of above on "Last Movie You Watched" threads
Blow Up (Antonioni)
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi)
The Strait of Hunger (Uchida)
Nosferatu the Vampire (Herzog)
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)
Suicide Club (Sion)
The Celebration (Vinterberg)
The Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel)
Breaking the Waves (Von Trier)
Red Desert (Antonioni)
Cafe de Flore (Vallee)
The Right Stuff (P. Kaufman)
Spirit of the Beehive (Erice)
A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) (Powell/Pressburger)
Children of Paradise (Carne)
Hoop Dreams (James)
Ordet (Dreyer)
Still Life (Zhang-Ke)
Funny Games (Haneke)
Touch of Evil (Welles)
The Music Room (S. Ray)
Our Hospitality (Keaton)
The Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov)
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai)
Nashville (Altman)
The Mirror (Panahi)
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut)
Secrets and Lies (Leigh)
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi)
Z (Costa-Gavras)
Walkabout (Roeg)
La Ronde (Max Ophuls)
Winter Light (Bergman)
Vivre Sa Vie (Godard)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes)
Pather Panchali (S. Ray)
The Secret in Their Eyes (Campanella)
Volver (Almodovar)
Survive Style 5+ (Sekiguchi)
The Mirror (Tarkovsky)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson)
The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz)
Paris, Texas (Wenders)
Army of Shadows (Melville)
Life Is Beautiful (Benigni)
Fat City (Huston)
13 Tzameti (Babluani)
The Five Obstructions (Leth/Von Trier)
Das Boot (Petersen)
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch)
Babette's Feast (Axel)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
The Virgin Suicides (S. Coppola)
L'Atalante (Vigo)
The Killer (Woo)
Alexandra (Sokurov)
Purple Noon (Clement)
Chungking Express (Kar-Wai)
Synecdoche, New York (C. Kaufman)
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci)
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Soderbergh)
Providence (Resnais)
Amores Perros (Inarritu)
Revanche (Spielmann)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
The Wild Child (Truffaut)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
The Third Man (Reed)
Take Shelter (Nichols)
Before the Rain (Mančevski)
Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul)
The Art of Crying (Fog)
The Human Condition Trilogy (Kobayashi)
Dillinger Is Dead (Ferreri)
Once Upon a Time in Anatollia (Ceylan)
Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo)
Beyond the Mat (Blaustein)
A Man and a Woman (Lelouch)
Grand Illusion (Renoir)
Kicking and Screaming (Baumbach)
Persona (Bergman)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks)
My Dinner with Andre (Malle)
After Life (Koreeda)
Departures (Takita)
Like Father, Like Son (Koreeda)
Contempt (Jean Luc Godard)
The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan)
The Great Escape (Sturges)
A Simple Life (Hui)
The King of Comedy (Scorsese)
Mon Oncle Antoine (Jutra)
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Puiu)
People on Sunday (Siodmak brothers, et al)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman)
Jules and Jim (Truffaut)
PTU (To)
Norwegian Wood (Tran)
The Great Dictator (Chaplin)
The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel)
M (Lang)
My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
In the Mood for Love (Kar-Wai)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
Somewhere (S. Coppola)
Cafe Lumiere (Hsiao-Hsien)
Aquirre, Wrath of God (Herzog)
Le Samourai (Melville)
Les Diaboliques (Clouzot)
Alice in the Cities (Wenders)
Rome, Open City (Rossellini)
Mother (Bong)
Lilya 4-Ever (Moodysson)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock)
Upstream Color (Carruth)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard)
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Mungiu)
Infernal Affairs (Lau and Mak)
Amour (Haneke)
All about Eve (Mankiewicz)
Before Sunrise (Linklater)
The Consequences of Love (Sorrentino)
Charulata (S. Ray)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar)
Jaws (Spielberg)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr)​

 

[kihei]

Volume II Movie List

Previous Movies of the Week, part two

Casablanca (Curtiz)
Days of Being Wild (Kar-wai)
Tokyo Godfathers (Kon/Furuya)
L'enfant (Dardenne brothers)
The Thin Red Line (Malick)
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Audiard)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene)
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down (Almodovar)
Cache (Haneke)
The Official Story (Puenzo)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Hill)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
L'eclisse (Antonioni)
Vampyr (Dreyer)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang)
Je t'aime, je t'aime (Resnais)
Star Wars (Lucas)
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Petri)
Missing (Costa-Gavras)
Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein)
All That Jazz (Fosse)
Chinatown (Polanski)
Love Exposure (Sion)
Rebel without a Cause (N. Ray)
The General (Keaton/Bruckman)
The Wizard of Oz (Fleming)
Harakiri (Kobayashi)
Shame (Bergman)
Mad Max (Miller)
Man of Flowers (Cox)
Hunger (McQueen)
Breathless (Godard)
The Thin Blue Line (Morris)
The Rules of the Game (Renoir)
Kes (Loach)
Solaris (Tarkovsky)
Eden (Hansen-Love)
Mona LIsa (Jordan)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
The Big Sleep (Hawks)
Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda)
Wings of Desire (Wenders)
The Cranes Are Flying (Kalatozov)
The Wages of Fear (Clouzot)
You, the Living (Andersson)
Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Resnais)
Mystery Train (Jarmusch)
Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang)
The Fireman's Ball (Forman)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir)
Fireworks (Takeshi)
Certified Copy (Kiarostami)
The Draughtsman's Contract (Greenaway)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford)
Tokyo Drifter (Suzuki)
The Wild Bunch (Peckenpah)
Chinese Take-Out (Borensztein)
The Gospel according to St. Mathew (Pasolini)
The Thin Man (Van Dyke)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
Don't Look Now (Roeg)
Devil (Zulawski)
Memories of Murder (Bong)
Close-Up (Kiarostami)
L. A. Confidential (Hansen)
Divorce, Italian Style (Germi)
Touki Bouki (Mambety)
The Big Snit (Condie)
Mean Streets (Scorsese)
If....(Anderson)
Blood of the Beasts (Franju)
A Child's Christmas in Wales (McBrearty)
What's Opera, Doc? (Jones)
The Return of Martin Guerre (Vigne)
Police, Adjective (Porumboiu)
Menilmontant (Kirsanoff)
Haider (Bardwaj)
Armadillo (Pedersen)
Elephant (Clarke)
The Chaser (Na)
A Man Escaped (Bresson)
Pinky (Kazan)
Fantasia (various)
MASH (Altman)
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Haynes)
Nosferatu (Murneau)
Talk to Her (Almodovar)
Killer of Sheep (Burnett)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut)
Letters from Iwo Jima (Eastwood)
Sorcerer (Friedkin)
The Last Emperor (Bertolucci)
The Big City (S. Ray)
Farewell My Concubine (Chen)
This Is Spinal Tap (Reiner)
Les Ordres (Brault)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Suspiria (Argento)
The Earrings of Madam de.... (Max Ophuls)
Beau Travail (Denis)
Ivan, the Terrible, parts I and II (Eisenstein)
Fargo (Coen brothers)
Charade (Donen)
Silence and Cry (Jancso)
Love Me or Leave Me (Vidor)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
Battles without Honor and Humanity (Fukasaku)
Roger and Me (Moore)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Schnabel)
In Bruges (McDonagh}
Cronos (del Toro)
Hausu (Obayashi)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls)
The Man without a Past (Kaurismaki)
Dead Ringers (Cronenberg)
Salvador (Stone)
Orpheus (Cocteau)
Daisies (Chytilova)
Night in the City (Dassin)
The Lion in Winter (Harvey)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)
Vive le Tour (Malle)
Ed Wood (Burton)
Cameraperson (Johnson)
Repulsion (Polanski)
Holy Motors (Carax)
Punch Drunk Love (Anderson)
The Last Picture Show (Bogdonavich)
Truly, Madly, Deeply (Minghella)
Limelight (Chaplin)
Amadeus (Forman)
The Killers (Siegel)
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch)
Floating Clouds (Naruse)
Tokyo Olympiad (Ichikawa)
The Gleaners and I (Varda)
Four Lions (Morris)
A Sunday in Hell (Leth)
Network (Lumet)
The Saga of Anatahan (von Sternberg)
Last Men in Aleppo (Fayad)
The Story of Oharu (Mizoguchi)
Empire of the Sun (Kubrick)
The Apartment (Wilder)
Seven Beauties (Wertmuller)
Haxan (Christensen)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader)
It's Such a Beautiful Day (Hertzfeldt)
Death in Venice (Visconti)
Scarface (Hawks)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes)
Gregory's Girl (Forsyth)
The Night Porter (Cavani)
Hero (Zhang)
The Nun's Story (Zinnemann)
Band of Outsiders (Godard)
On the Beach Alone at Night (Hong)
Las Hurdes (Bunuel)
The Vanishing (1988) (Sluizer)
Gun Crazy (Lewis)​

 

[kihei]

Volume III movie of the week

Previous Movies of the Week

November (Sarnet)
Unforgiven (Eastwood)
The Innocents (Clayton)
Harlan County USA (Kopple)
The Day of the Jackal (Zinnemann)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell and Pressburger)
Hollywood Shuffle (Townsend)
The Magic Flute (Bergman)
Maidentrip (Schlesinger)
Asphalt Jungle (Huston)
Performrance (Roeg)
La Cienaga (Martel)
Enemy (Villeneuve)
The Cremator (Herz)
Floating Weeds (Ozu)
3 Women (Altman)
A Prophet (Audiard)
La Libertad (Alonso)
House of Games (Mamet)
Little Fugitive (Ashley, Engel, Orkin)
Valley of Shadows (Gulbrandsen)
Black Dynamite (Maurer and Sanders)
What's Up, Tiger Lily? {Allen}
The Assassin (Hou)
Dreams (Kurosawa)
Lolita (Kubrick)
The Scarlet Empress (Von Sternberg)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles)
Morel's Invention (Greco)
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy)
The Sunset Limited (Jones)
The Good Shepherd (De Niro)
Dragon Fly Eyes (Xu)
The Image Book (Godard)
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (Ruiz)
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel)
Tetro (FF Coppola)
The Thing (Carpenter)
The Devils (Russell)
Three Colors: Blue (Kieslowski)
The Adventures of Prince Ackmed (Reiniger)
Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
The Story of a Cheat (Guidry)
Winchester (Blake)
The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock)
Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt)
Friday (Gray)
Blow Out (De Palma)
Blue Velvet (Lynch)
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini)
Pan's Labyrinth (del Toro}
Come and See (Klimov)
Flame and Citron (Madsen)
No (Larrain)
My Night at Maud's (Rohmer)
Loveless (Zvyagintsev)
The Love Witch (Biller)
Heat (Mann)
The Phantom Carriage (Sjostrom)
Nocturnal Animals (Ford)
Stop Making Sense (Demme)
Murmur of the Heart (Malle)
Pandora's Box (Pabst)
In Cold Blood (Brooks)
Kung Fu Hustle (Chow)
The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer)
Gomorrah (Garrone)
The Lunchbox (Batra)
The Exorcist (Friedkin)
Body and Soul (Micheaux)
Life of Pi (Lee)
Le Cercle Rouge (Melville)
Point Blank (Boorman)
Paan Singh Tomar (Dhulia)
Onibaba (Shindo)
Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor/Paravel)
45 Years (Haigh)
A Short Film about Love (Kieslowski)
The Searchers (Ford)
The Passsenger (Antonioni)
Tokyo Tribe (Sono)
Lost in America (Brooks)
The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
Cria Cuervos (Saura)
Peeping Tom (Powell)
Black Orpheus (Camus)
Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (Takenouchi)
The Candidate (Ritchie)
Windows on Monday (Kohler)
The Last Wave (Roeg)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (Greenaway)
My Brilliant Career (Armstrong)
Wicked, Wicked (Bare)
Heima (DeBlois)
Jeremiah Johnson (Pollock)
Welcome II the Terrordome (Unwurah)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Reisz)
Mommy (Dolan)
La Jetee (Marker)
Babyteeth (Murphy)
Bob le Flambeur (Melville)
Faust (Murnau)
The Clockmaker of St. Paul (Tavernier)
Mr. Turner (Leigh)
Blue Valentine (Cianfrance)
Captain Blood (Curtiz)
The Mission (Joffe)
Devi (S. Ray)
Her (Jonze)
It Happened One Night (Capra)
Night Moves (Penn)
An Elephant Sitting Still (Bo)
Imitation of Life (Sirk)
Port of Shadows (Carne)
American Movie (Smith)
The Forbidden Room (Madden)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Brothers)
The Birds (Hitchcock)
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Lang)
Vitalina Varela (Costa)
Dawson City: Frozen in Time (Morrison)
La Strada (Fellini)
Putney Swope (Downey)
24 Frames (Kiarostami)
The Long Goodbye (Altman)
Sunset Boulevard ( Wilder)
George Washington (Green)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau)

 

[kihei]

Volume IV movie of the week

Ponyo (Jevo)

Coming Attractions

Lessons of Darkness (Pink Mist)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (KallioWeHardlyKnewYe)
Daddy Nostalgia (kihei)
Jevo's pick

Previous movies of the week

Johnny Guitar (N Ray)
F for Fake (Welles)
A Cop Movie (Ruizpalacios)
House of Flying Daggers (Zhang)
Leviathan (Zvyagintsev)
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Varda)
The Harder They Come (Henzell)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciamma)
All About My Mother (Almodovar)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold)
Irma Vep (Assayas)
Blue Is the Warmest Color (Kechiche)
Ex Machina (Garber)
Stagecoach (Ford)
10 (Edwards)
Antichrist (von Trier)
Bamako (Sissako)
The Servant (Losey)
The English Patient (Minghella)
One-Eyed Jacks (Brando)
The Handmaiden (Park)
Gladiator (Scott}
Eyes without a Face (Franju)
L'avventura (Antonioni)
Black Girl (Sembene)
Black God, White Devil (Rocha)
Pumping Iron (Butler and Fiore)
Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
A White, White Day (Palmason)
The Big Gundown (Sollima}
Blazing Saddles (Brooks)
Memoria (Weerasethakul)
Tabu (Gomes)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
What a Way to Go (Thompson)
The Goalie's Anxiety of the Penalty Kick (Wenders)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? ( Zemeckis)
Loves of a Blonde (Forman)
Fearless (Weir)
Triumph of the Will 《Riefenstahl)
Rashomon (Kurosawa)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Fassbinder)
One Week (Keaton)
Heaven's Gate (Cimino)
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant)
Decision to Leave (Park)
Gosford Park (Altman)
Paper Moon (Bogdonovich)
Matewan (Sayles)
Irreversible (Noe)
Victoria (Schipper)
Wake in Fright (Kotcheff)
Morvern Callar (Ramsey)
Away from Her (Polley)

 

[kihei]

Jevo's review from previous thread:

Johnny Guitar (1954) dir. Nicholas Ray

Vienna (Joan Crawford) has set up a saloon in a desolate place in the west. A railroad is coming right past the saloon, and she's going to build a new town there. However townfolks in the nearest town aren't too happy about her being there. Especially McIvers, the local leading cattleman, the Emma Small, the owner of the bank, are against her. She has invited Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) to come play guitar in her saloon. When a stagecoach is held up and Emma's brother killed, blame is quickly put on the Dancin' Kid and his group, a somewhat innocent local outcast group who frequents Vienna's saloon, and by extention Vienna, although neither were involved. The stand-off in Vienna's saloon ends with the townfolks giving both the Dancin' kid and his group, and Vienna, 24 hours to leave the valley. Vienna intends to stay out of things and wait for the railroad in her saloon, while the Dancin' Kid and his group decide, that if they are blamed for a crime, a crime they shall commit, and plans a robbery of the bank in town.

Johnny Guitar is undoubtedly a western, but it's unlike most other westerns from that time. First of all Johnny Guitar isn't actually the lead, that's Vienna. Vienna is a woman, quite unlike most western leads, but she's a very masculine woman, undoutedly something that's needed if you want to survive in the situation she has put her self in. But her masculine behaviour is contrasted by her clothing, which particularly in the latter part of the film, is very colourful, and even downright feminine at times. She also displays some very motherly qualities towards her staff, and particularly towards the young Turkey, who she even allows to write her own death sentence, in an attempt to save his life. Joan Crawfords portrayal is great, and shows her as both strong willed and tender. The film is also quite aware of wetern tropes, and finds some of them a bit silly, with names like Johnny Guitar and the Dancin' kid for major characters, and the weird kind of dancing introduction that the Dancin' kid makes. But mostly Johnny Guitar is about a group of outsiders, who attract the wrath of the establishment, and who without evidence or trial, gets judged, and unfairly at that. The mob only wants blood and doesn't how it is produced. Some want it to a sense of justice, others for pure self serving means. Real life parallels to this are not hard to find. With lynchings in the American south or McCarthyism in Hollywood being some obvious ones.

Nicholas Ray always brings his own style to his films. He does it narratively, but mostly he does it in terms of visuals. Most strikingly in his bold use of colour. Not many in the west probably had a wardrobe like Viennas, but I doubt Ray cared one bit about that. For him all that mattered is what colours means, and what they can be made to represent, and how it can be used to contrast characters. The best use is undoubtedly when Vienna dressed in an all white evening gown faces an angry mob dressed in all black. But also Vienna's many costume changes in the last 45 minutes of the film, changing from one brightly coloured outfit to the next, while still being opposed by an angry mob in all black.

I like Johnny Guitar quite a lot. I like Ray in general and his style, and I think in Johnny Guitar is one of the films where his style is presented best. There's also a great set of performances lead by Joan Crawford, but also Mercedes McCambridge as Emma is great in a role you love to hate.

 

[kihei]

Johnny Guitar (1954) Directed by Nicolas Ray

Johnny Guitar is one of the great outliers in the history of the Western genre. It is a movie in which its subtexts are so varied and, for the time, so subversive, that Johnny Guitar has to be seen multiple times to work out all of its political, gender and psychosexual dynamics. If you give a skeletal description of the movie—a woman who owns a bar calls on an old lover to help protect her from disapproving townspeople—it doesn’t sound like much out of the ordinary. As they did in High Noon, Cary Cooper and Grace Kelly could star in that story in conventional roles and do nothing to turn the genre on its ear. But Nicolas Ray, Joan Crawford and Philip Yordan, their principle scriptwriter, make incredible choices that end up producing a Western like no other…not until Andy Warhol started making movies anyway.

What makes Johnny Guitar so interesting is how risky it was for its time. The men—the good gunslinger Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), the good/bad/just confused gunslinger the Dancin’ Kid (Scott Brady) and the Greek chorus of gang members and outraged townspeople, all men—are mere window dressing for the central rivalry on the movie which is between Vienna (Crawford) and the psychotically moralistic Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge). Their rivalry is as fierce and angry as any male rivalry in the Western canon—in fact, both are virtual stand-ins for men. The movie goes out of its way to make a point about how Vienna is like a man, and Emma is even more so, actually controlling and ordering around the male pack of “good” citizens who she twists to do her bidding. There are definite bisexual/lesbian overtones to the relationship, and their appearance fits the lesbian stereotype of the time, both initially wearing black with Crawford’s introductory outfit a fetishized version of dominance attire. Both have dark close-cropped hair. Both are hard as nails. It is clear their personal rivalry is much more intense than whatever feelings they might have for the males around them.

That being said there are some overheated, very melodramatic "romantic" moments between ex-lovers Vienna and Johnny. Here the language is often a little over-the-top but in an almost artful way. “How many men have you forgotten?” “As many as the number of women you have remembered,” goes one memorable exchange. The Dancin’ Kid’s dialogue is all over the place—he is a good guy one moment, a bad guy the next, confident than insecure, and back and forth again. The only hint of an ingénue in the movie is male, a baby-faced teenager named Turkey (Ben Cooper) who is weak and comes to a bad end. Later, Vienna will wear his clothes (jeans, bright yellow top with a red bandana). Seriously, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.

On another level, Johnny Guitar can be seen as a provocation aimed directly at the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, where Senator Joseph McCarthy ran a paranoid witch hunt for supposed Communist sympathisers. The movie makes pretty clear what it thinks of popular hysteria and mob justice. Emma’s crowd knows full well who is innocent but they allow themselves to be led like sheep, captive to Emma’s power of persuasion. If you want to draw parallels to today, it’s not much of a stretch. And then all ends with one of the least likely passionate kisses in Hollywood history and cue uber-sultry singer Peggy Lee to sing the haunting theme song. The last thirty seconds are the only conventional thing in the entire movie....and they feel completely false.

 

[Pink Mist]

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)

Johnny Guitar is a guitar player in the wild west of Arizona who has been hired to play guitar at a saloon in a desolate town by a planned railway. The saloon, Vienna’s, is run by its namesake, Vienna, who is a beautiful but hard woman trying to survive in the masculine West. Upon Johnny’s arrival, he witnesses a stagecoach robbery, which gets blamed on a gang on local outcasts run by the Dancin’ Kid who frequent Vienna’s. Due to her connection to the Dancin’ Kid, a witch hunt against Vienna begins to drive her out of town.

Despite its name, Johnny Guitar is not about Johnny Guitar; the main character is actually Vienna played by Joan Crawford. Crawford puts in an excellent performance as this bad ass woman in the wild west who is harder than most of the men, but still retains many feminine instincts and is a surrogate mother to her bar staff and the Dancin’ Kids gang. This is a very different kind of western, as both the protagonist and the antagonist are women, you could call it the first feminist western as it subverts and pokes at a lot of the masculine tropes of the typical western film, not to mention the theme of the witch hunt which could reference both literal witch hunts against women as well as the witch hunt against suspected communists that was going on in Hollywood in the 1950s when this was released. Despite its often silly premises and characters, this is a thinkin’ man’s western.

Johnny Guitar is also distinct because its production design and colour palate of the film. The film has some creative sets that are used, most notably the cave like tavern that is used for Vienna’s which is unlike any bar I have seen in a western. As well, the ultra colourful costumes that Vienna wears that are bright solid colours that stand out against the black and brown colours of the other characters. The film is just full of colour and doesn’t look like your typical western film. Ray really injects his style into this film and it adds a lot of personality to it.

I really enjoyed Johnny Guitar, I loved its subversive themes and metaphors and its style. Its easy to see why its considered one of the greatest westerns made. Though despite the name of the film, outside of one scene there is a lack of guitar playin’ in Johnny Guitar.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Johnny Guitar
Ray (1954)
“I wanted to run her out before she ever got it.”

Johnny walks into a saloon on the outskirts of town and runs into Vienna, an old flame. As if she didn’t have enough trouble on her hands. She has a potential other lover who is a wanted outlaw who may or may not be creating more trouble for everyone. Meanwhile the town itself, spearheaded by Emma who seems to hold a much deeper grudge than even she lets on, is trying to run her out. Johnny, himself a “retired” gunfighter in recover (so to speak), team up to try to ward off the encroaching menace and, possibly, make a new life for themselves.

Johnny Guitar is the rare Western where it’s the women who are not only stronger than the men, but also far more fascinating. Hell, they dress like ‘em too. Director Nichoals Ray, the man behind Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger than Life, among others is no stranger to sexual subtext and its hard not view what goes on here (circa 1954) as borderline radical. Traditional male-female relationships exist here and are given the requisite lip service, but the real fireworks are between Vienna and Emma. You don’t have to squint to see Emma’s far more threatened by Vienna the person than Vienna’s business, despite the comments to the contrary. Pearl clutching Emma perhaps doth protest too much.

The poor men do not stand a chance. There is plenty of chatter about Vienna and Johnny but you never really buy it. I typically like Sterling Hayden but he feels off here. Not sure if that’s him or just the nature of the role as it plays here. His name’s on the marquee but it’s far from his movie. Are the men being duds the feature or the flaw? Depends on what decade you saw it I suppose.

You could probably interpret Emma’s moral panic and drive to push Vienna out as any number of things, but it’s hard not to impose a sexual reading on the whole affair. That’s undeniably trenchant for that time, but sadly still relevant today (just look at what’s happening in Florida literally this instant).

The timing of this pick also dovetails nicely with The Power of the Dog, another western about people who cloak themselves in tough frontier trappings to hide who they really are.

Though what’s below the surface is infinitely intriguing, what’s on the surface is equally worthy of praise. Rich colors — reds and yellows in particular. Whereas classic Westerns are often expansive, this is a small and sparse movie, a claustrophobic film with only a few sets (after a brief intro the action doesn’t leave Vienna’s business for nearly the first 40 minutes). But the handful of locations are used to maximum effect. Vienna’s joint, with its subterranean mines and its canyon-rock backed stage is a memorable locale (not to mention really driving those reds home). Dancin’ Kid’s hideaway isn’t much, but its secret waterfall entrance is a visually loaded flourish.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick will be Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

My next pick will be Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan.

Once someone picks this we'll have completed a Leviathan trilogy!

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

F for Fake
Welles (1973)
“Why not? I’m a charlatan.”

Art forger Elmyr de Hory, writer Clifford Irving and the maestro Orson Welles himself — a trio of men who made illusion and deception their hobby, if not outright vocation. F for Fake is a mostly documentary that’s light on motivation but heavy on genuine entertainment. It’s questions without answers. Sizzle without much steak but — in perhaps its greatest trick of all! — still manages to be a pretty fulfilling meal.

Three core stories, two of which are true, mixed with side stories and coincidences and tangential anecdotes that may or may not be true. This is the sorta fun and games you wouldn’t really be able to have a few decades later because the internet would ruin it. What’s true and what’s not? Welles confesses the biggest lie. I could probably look up some of the smaller stuff (I am skeptical, for instance that the original conception of Citizen Kane was about Howard Hughes) but where’s the fun in that. The stuff with Elmyr is the most interesting on the surface, particularly the revelation that it’s in everyone’s best interest for forgeries to NOT be identified. Though Welles himself is ultimately the most compelling character, as he often is.

F for Fake is a lively, manic film. Constant jump cuts and freeze frames. Traditional documentary interviews intermingled with acted scenes. Welles is a cat batting around a toy. This is by far his most “fun” film. He’s clearly having a blast throughout. I don’t know if he and co-star Oja Kodar were together yet (I believe they were, but looking that up again defeats the spirit). Whether they were active lovers or soon-to-be, his lustiness is certainly present, especially with one particularly cheeky cut. The foggy two-hander between them in the final third where they’re recounting a story but both playing other characters comes right to the edge of wearing out its welcome, but stops just in time.

I’ve seen this a few times now and I always enjoy it, but if I have a consistent (albeit minor) complaint it’s that Welles really really overdoes his “aren’t I a little stinker” act. But then again given the playfulness of the film, is that perhaps the bit? Is his greatest illusion the fact that he actually ISN’T the charlatan he keeps claiming to be? He is, after all, an artist so committed to his visions that nearly every project he ever touched was wracked with money troubles and fights and controversies.

Who really is lying and what is the lie?

That said, this does nicely underline something that’s been a regular talking point of mine over the years, which is that documentary does not equate to truth. Documentary can be every bit as biased, slanted and dishonest as fiction. (The context for this is almost always someone defending the dishonesty of a crappy biopic with “if you want truth, watch a documentary …”)

I need to point more folks to F for Fake.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

am I crazy or were there other F for Fake reviews here before?

 

[Pink Mist]

am I crazy or were there other F for Fake reviews here before?

Yeah @kihei and mine were deleted in the migration to the new server. I'll repost mine

 

[Pink Mist]

F For Fake (Orson Welles, 1973)

"I started at the top and have been working my way down ever since."

F For Fake is one of those films that defies simple explanation. In one sense it is a documentary about infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory, and his biographer Clifford Irving, who was later found to be a forger himself and an examination of the artfulness of forgery. But it is much more than that. Welles throws everything at the wall – Elmyr and Irving, his girlfriend Oja Kotar’s ass, magic tricks, Welles’ career and his War of the World’s radio show – to examine notions of authenticity and truthfulness in art.

The film is a film essay that feels very much ahead of its time but also a product of the 1970s, not unlike something Chris Marker was doing then or Godardian film essay. It stitches together different sources of materials and references, such as archival footage, other films, Welles’ radio shows, and jumps between them and different editing styles. The editing and jump cuts in this film are frantic and dizzying as Welles leads you through this complex world of art forgery. Welles’ personality is larger than life and magnetic, and even with his digressions in his story of this forgery you are also engaged. I could listen to Welles talk or tell a story all day. Like a good liar he lures you in and makes you believe every word he says, even forgetting that he told you he was going to lie to you by the end.

Is the film chaotic and incoherent at times? Absolutely. Self-indulgent? For sure. But it is also tremendously fun and a great send off for Welles’ career.

 

[Pink Mist]

My next pick is Cléo from 5 to 7 by Agnès Varda

 

[Jevo]

F For Fake (1973) dir. Orson Welles

A documentary about forgery and fraud. Orson Welles follows proficient art forger Elmyr de Hory, who had such an ability to copy other painters style, that he could create fake paintings by various masters in short time. Although his forgeries had sold for millions of dollars, Elmyr claimed he saw very little of that money, and he was often scammed by his supposed partners, making him perhaps the biggest victim of his forgery business. The film also features Clifford Irving, author of a supposedly genuine autobiography about Elmyr, as long as you trust Elmyr to say the truth, and a less than genuine autobiography about Howard Hughes. While what comes out of the mouthes of these two subjects is always open to question whether they are telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Welles himself also plays with the subject of truth, and by the end you question whether or not anything you've seen and heard in the last hour and a half is true or not.

Orson Welles is just as much a character in this film as he is the director, which isn't unusual. Directors like Michael Moore and Werner Herzog are also often just as much characters in their films as they are the director. One could however even say that Welles is a subject in the film as well, considering how he himself lies and deceives throughout the film, sometimes more obvious than others, and he is a subject, he's probably also the main subject. Normally a director making himself the main subject a documentary would be considered self-indulgent, and Welles is without a doubt self-indulgent here. But that's not the feeling you have while watching the film. It's only once you sit down afterwards and start thinking about the film that you realise how self-indulgent Welles is being with the film. By then, it's quite impressive what Welles has pulled off, so you end up admiring his self-indulgence. Just in general I admire Welles a great deal for this film. Coming into a documentary you are usually mostly ready to believe what you are being presented. Welles then tells you not to believe anything that you see in the art world, don't trust paintings in galleries and museums, they are probably fake. Don't trust what you are reading in books, the author probably made it all up. And you believe him, because it's a docomentary. But at the same time Welles is trying to lie and deceive as much as he can, and it takes quite a while before you catch on to it. He even spends the last 15 minutes telling a fake story, which he in the dying moments of the film admit was a big lie. It's admirable just how bold Welles is being with the structure of the movie.

Orson Welles genius didn't come to the big screen every year, at times more like once a decade. But once he got a project right, and it didn't fall apart fro whatever reason halfway through and unfinished, it's magnificent. F For Fake is probably the last of those moments of genius that he managed to get done. There's so much fun to be had while watching F For Fake. Elmyr, and to a lesser extent Clifford Irving, are charming and interesting characters that are fun to watch, and try to figure out where they are pulling your leg, and when or if they are ever telling something true. But there's also a lot to think about after the film as you contemplate whether anything you heard at all from Welles was even true, and if you can trust anything you heard or saw at all. F For Fake is a concept that could easily have fallen flat, but Welles manages to make it work, and that is mightily impressive.

 

[kihei]

am I crazy or were there other F for Fake reviews here before?

They didn't make the transition from the old format. Or you are in an alternate universe, which these days weirdly makes just about as much sense,

 

[kihei]

F for Fake (1973) Directed by Orson Welles

F for Fake is what, decades later, would become known as a hybrid documentary in which legendary director Orson Welles muses about fakery, deception and forgery in the world of art. The film has almost a stream of consciousness feel as Welles, a protean intellect, flits from one focal point to the next, seemingly going wherever his imagination takes him almost on a whim. First, we have Welles the magician, the harmless trickster, entertaining children. And then he shifts to more serious forms of deception: Elmyr de Hory, a famous and exceptionally prolific art forger; Clifford Irving, a disgraced author who faked an autobiography of Howard Hughes; and a made-up story about a beautiful woman and the 22 masterpieces that Picasso painted for her. Art and its curators come in for some close scrutiny and much disrespect along the way. Chartres Cathedral even gets a mention because it is “unsigned,” bringing up questions of authorship and authenticity in its wake.

I saw F for Fake when it opened. I could have sworn that I saw it in the States in ’68 but it seems I saw it in Toronto in 1973—not a literal deception, but a good example of how easy it can be to fool yourself. The movie seemed like a silf-indulgent mess at the time and bored me silly.

At the time, if one was interested in film, a new Orson Welles movie was a rare treasure to be savoured. By the early ‘60s he had become an almost mythic figure whose stature was absolutely immense. He also had become a very public personality, a sort of made-for-show persona, the bon vivant Orson Welles. Once established, the persona never changed much. He was hugely overweight, usually wore a black cape and matching stylish hat, and visible enjoyed being the epitome of the droll, ever slightly-amused story teller who dominated any room or table that he happened to inhabit. He never fell to the depths of the jolly uncle as he was too urbane, too sophisticated and too intelligent for that—rather he seemed a man of epicurean appetites who loved an audience paying rapt attention to his every word and arched eyebrow.

This is pretty much the character we see throughout F for Fake— he sets up his punch lines, directs traffic, adds witty and often insightful commentary—discussing serious matters but in an insouciant sort of way. First time around, all this was lost on me. I went in expecting something approximating a conventional narrative, and that was the one thing that I wasn’t going to get. I was expecting another Chimes at Midnight (Welles’ tour de force take on Shakespeare’s Falstaff). What I got instead is what I would now call an Agnes Varda movie (she later perfected the essay documentary form with The Gleaners and I; The Beaches of Agnes; and Faces Places; Varda by Agnes).

So I wasn’t exactly looking forward to revisiting this film; that is, until I finally got around to watching it again and it was like seeing it for the first time. Now I could relax and just take the movie for what it was and this time the dazzling editing seemed to jump right off the screen. The movie, like most of Welles’ movies from the ‘60s on, was made on a shoe-string budge. By this point in his career, Welles was known as the director who still wanted to make movies but who no longer could get them financed because his subject matter was so unconventional and his personal track record was so spotty. F for Fake seems to use a lot of archival material that was shot by somebody else, but that doesn’t prevent Orson from making it is own. His whole movie making process in this case is an exercise in fakery. But, of course, that is part of the extended joke of the movie.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

A Cop Movie
Ruizpalacios (2021)
“What do you think?”

Teresa is the latest police officer in a family of police officers working in Mexico City. Despite her father’s opposition due to the challenges and sexism she would face, she did it anyway and has carved out a bit of a life, which we see some anecdotes from. She’s a good person. Then we meet Montoya and learn his personal background which is a bit rougher. Personal struggles. It eventually is revealed that he and Teresa are actually a couple nicknamed “The Love Patrol.” We cruise along with them, seeing the small triumphs and frequent struggles of their job, but then the real “twist” arrives. The fourth wall breaks and our reenactment actors suddenly become the subjects themselves as they, in preparation for their roles, subject themselves both to the training academy and the dark realities of how that organization functions from poor training to sub-par equipment.

A Cop Movie could be confined simply to its trick. But there’s real purpose here. It’s a formally clever move that allows the documentary to both have its cake and eat it too as it both humanizes the people who do the job while also showing how deteriorated the overall system is. The pull toward bribery and corruption is clearly strong — both of our subjects participate — in a system where you have to pay your own coworkers for better guns and body armor and you’re SOL with your life on the line when you can’t afford that price. And that’s on the inside. These are the “good guys.”

The role of and operations of police in society is a powder keg topic that A Cop Movie handles deftly. Different country here (Mexico) from where I’m at (U.S.) but some universal issues. It has clear condemnations but it’s also not painting the entire endeavor or idea as a faulty one. It’s not exactly a #NotAllCops apology but it does direct its biggest ire at the system itself and not those within it. There are absolutely bad cops, like the ones depicted here with minimal weapons training, but it’s the system that helps create and empower them, not to mention drive out (in this case) the better ones. I don’t know that it’s a message everyone who watches this will like, but it feels like a fair one.

Though the action in the first half of the movie, we eventually learn, is staged. The access still should be applauded. I can’t believe it was easy or even smart for Teresa and Montoya (and other real people who appear) to share their struggles, while there also is undeniable risk for the actors who were surreptitiously taking videos throughout their training.

The filmmaking itself deserves praise too. The heightened reenactments of the first half show Ruizpalacios has digested his fair share of cop films and TV (evocative of moody Michael Mann flicks in particular, but others as well) and knows the visual tropes. It’s purposely disorienting before the back half gives way to more traditional documentary. A clever flip – the real people’s stories are acted out, the fake people’s stories are lived.

I honestly had this pick in mind prior to F for Fake popping up on our schedule, but it really makes for an intriguing double feature from directors willing to openly toy with form to better tell their stories.

 

[Pink Mist]

A Cop Movie / Una película de policías (Alonso Ruizpalacios, 2021)

Cops have been heavily mythologized in films and television, especially in America where their image has rightfully received significant pushback in recent year. A Cop Movie starts off feeling like a lot of those cop movies or tv shows you catch at the 9pm slot on cable tv. We’re welcomed to the sounds of sirens and flashing lights, a voice on a walkie talkie reporting in details, and a cop car navigating the streets of Mexico City. Heavily stylized like a Michael Mann film we quickly learn that this isn’t a Mexican cop thriller, this is actually a documentary. Well, sort of. We’re introduced to two cops in the city’s police department: Theresa, a 17-year veteran of the force whose father also was in the police; and Montoya, who came from a rough neighbourhood and decided to become a cop instead of a dealer like many of the kids he grew up with. The two form a relationship as partners in policing and in their personal life and are dubbed “The Love Patrol” by their colleagues. We follow them as they cruise through the city and they tell us their stories of what policing is like and how they became cops, documenting the inadequacy of the police and the corruption of the city and the police department – including the petty bribes they themselves take.

Except here is where the twist comes in if you hadn’t yet questioned how they filmed or re-enacted their cruises: Teresa and Montoya are actually actors named Mónica Del Carmen and Raúl Briones not cops. The film quickly transitions to the two actors training for their role in the film which involved them going to police training and shadowing cops on ridealongs, and it is filmed primarily in cell phone video diaries by the two actors as they talk about their feelings “becoming” cops and the inadequacies of the 6-month police training.

But wait, one more twist! Teresa and Montoya are actually real people who we then get to hear directly from their mouths some of their story as the film closes. Director Ruizpalacios is clearly experimenting with form in his documentary of policing, delving into meta-narrative to tell his story and engaging also with many of the typical tropes of police films and television. Stylistically it is a really engaging way to tell the documentary, cleverly blurring the line between reality and fiction. This is by no means a “copaganda” film though, it is quite critical of the police themselves and the system that they operate in, but it does humanize the cops as flawed beings. Take from that what you will, though I think it is fair to say that police in Mexico have a different relationship to the public and public perception than cops in Canada or the US; although at times it does come off as justifying their petty acts of corruption.

 

[Tasty Biscuits]

am I crazy or were there other F for Fake reviews here before?

I had also posted one that's lost -- think the final grade was solid B.

Anyway, back to lurking...

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Next pick is The Harder They Come. (1972 Henzell)

 

[kihei]

Next pick is The Harder They Come. (1972 Henzell)

And guess what was next on my list.,

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

And guess what was next on my list.,

You remain a man of exceptional interests and tastes.