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| From God's County by Louis Malle |
Assuming you noted the title of this blog post you know what’s coming. Yes indeed I did watch four movies yesterday which at the very least ties a personal record. (What, you think I keep track of these things?). Two of the films were just over an hour long and of the other two, one was just a tad over an hour and half and the other a tad under. So I totaled about five and a quarter hours of movie viewing. That’s not outrageous when you consider I watched neither any sports nor TV shows all day. I also managed to read the Sunday Times, start a book I was given as a Father’s Day gift, eat two hearty meals, snack and washes the dishes — twice.
All four films I watched were courtesy of the Criterion Channel which is one of the greatest innovations in human history ranking just behind the wheel, electricity and donuts. For most of the time the channel has existed (fourteen and a half months) I’ve had a long list of movies on it to watch. Perhaps this is reflective of my mental state (a state almost as poorly off as Mississippi) but having all these films waiting to be watched had started feeling like a burden. So a few weeks ago I decided to focus on winnowing down the list to a manageable number and to accomplish this before more films were added at the beginning of July when they put up their latest releases. Knocking off four in one day was a huge step towards that, plus all the films were ones I’ve been dying to watch. The Criterion Channel has to compete for my time with the two DVDs I get each week from Netflix, the movies I record from Turner Classic Movies and my own extensive DVD collection of nearly 250 titles.
Obviously you are by now dying to know what I watched yesterday. Since I’m going to list them I’ll also offer a brief review. Here goes.
First up was Luis Bunel’s L'Age d’Or (1930). This completed my tour of the great Spanish director’s films which I began a few months ago. I have either liked or loved every one of his movies that I’ve seen. So I can say it was my least favorite of his films and at the same time aver that I thoroughly enjoyed it. L'Age d’Or has the surrealism that so typed Bunuel’s work, though at times it felt a bit overdone and less a way of telling the story and more a way of showing off. That said it is a splendid film and an enjoyable way to begin my movie marathon. I'd give a capsulize summary but it's not a film that lends itself to one. Suffice to say that if you like Salvador Dali (who was involved in pre-production of the film) and Bunuel, this is a film for you.
Next up was a Louis Malle documentary called God’s Country (1985) which was my favorite offering of the day. In 1979 Malle went to the small Minnesota town of Glencoe and interviewed some of its residents. What a wonderful slice of Americana he created out of it. We meet farmers, an octogenarian with a large garden, the assistant police chief, a banker, a lawyer whose son was a draft resister, a very young couple on their wedding day (she was seventeen) and a surprisingly liberated and open woman (for the time and place) of twenty-six. The interview with her was the highlight of the film for me. God’s Country is not at all surprising yet it is revelatory and fascinating. It is a small town America that us citified folks often get limited exposure to. We tend to mock such people and their values which is a poor reflection on us. There is an honesty and earnestness in many small town folks that is admirable. But at the same time it’s sad to hear one resident talk about how Blacks aren’t well-liked by many residents and another state that gays are stuck in the closet this community. God's Country is the type of movies that I wanted much, much more of.
Film number three was the only of the day I’d seen before, The Two of Us (1967) directed by Claude Berri. In Nazi-occupied France a young Jewish boy is sent to live in the country with an older couple neither of whom know the lad’s a Jew. The grandfather is an anti-semite but he loves his new boarder and they get along famously and have a series of adventures. The Three of Us is touching without being cloying. It is sentimental but with edges. Mostly its a delight highlighted as it is by a bravura performance by Michel Simon as the old man.
Rounding out the day’s programming was Cynara (1932) directed by King Vidor (King was his first name, he was not a monarch — but you knew that). Vidor was better known for two silent classics, The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928), two of the greatest films of the 1920s. Cynara is very much a pre-code film centering as it does around an extra marital affair and it’s consequences. The husband is played by Ronald Coleman. He is his usual debonair self, the quintessence of charm and sophistication. But he “makes a mistake” and falls for a younger woman while his wife is out of the country. Disaster ensues. Kay Francis is the missus and she gives a her usual solid if unspectacular performance. I’m always glad to see Ms. Francis in a film though I don’t think she had terribly great range (not that Colman did). The two are serviceable in their roles as is the young woman in question ably played by Phyillis Barry, an actress who never attained stardom. That Cynara succeeds is a credit to its screenwriter Francis Marion, one of the few female writers working in Hollywood at the time — or for that matter anytime. There are certain destinations that you know the film is going to get to but you’re never sure how. Cynara was very much a film that relied on how it ended and Marion's screenplay did not disappoint. I liked and believed in the ending and in the movie as a whole. Vidor, so successful with "big stories" proved more than capable of telling a more intimate one.
So there you have it, I was four-for-four making for a most rewarding and enjoyable day and my queue on the Channel is down to a handful, thus easing my troubled mind. Of course now I’ve got a backlog of films I’ve recorded on TCM to get to and there are a number of films in my collection that are overdue for a viewing. A cinephile’s work is never done.
All four films I watched were courtesy of the Criterion Channel which is one of the greatest innovations in human history ranking just behind the wheel, electricity and donuts. For most of the time the channel has existed (fourteen and a half months) I’ve had a long list of movies on it to watch. Perhaps this is reflective of my mental state (a state almost as poorly off as Mississippi) but having all these films waiting to be watched had started feeling like a burden. So a few weeks ago I decided to focus on winnowing down the list to a manageable number and to accomplish this before more films were added at the beginning of July when they put up their latest releases. Knocking off four in one day was a huge step towards that, plus all the films were ones I’ve been dying to watch. The Criterion Channel has to compete for my time with the two DVDs I get each week from Netflix, the movies I record from Turner Classic Movies and my own extensive DVD collection of nearly 250 titles.
Obviously you are by now dying to know what I watched yesterday. Since I’m going to list them I’ll also offer a brief review. Here goes.
First up was Luis Bunel’s L'Age d’Or (1930). This completed my tour of the great Spanish director’s films which I began a few months ago. I have either liked or loved every one of his movies that I’ve seen. So I can say it was my least favorite of his films and at the same time aver that I thoroughly enjoyed it. L'Age d’Or has the surrealism that so typed Bunuel’s work, though at times it felt a bit overdone and less a way of telling the story and more a way of showing off. That said it is a splendid film and an enjoyable way to begin my movie marathon. I'd give a capsulize summary but it's not a film that lends itself to one. Suffice to say that if you like Salvador Dali (who was involved in pre-production of the film) and Bunuel, this is a film for you.
Next up was a Louis Malle documentary called God’s Country (1985) which was my favorite offering of the day. In 1979 Malle went to the small Minnesota town of Glencoe and interviewed some of its residents. What a wonderful slice of Americana he created out of it. We meet farmers, an octogenarian with a large garden, the assistant police chief, a banker, a lawyer whose son was a draft resister, a very young couple on their wedding day (she was seventeen) and a surprisingly liberated and open woman (for the time and place) of twenty-six. The interview with her was the highlight of the film for me. God’s Country is not at all surprising yet it is revelatory and fascinating. It is a small town America that us citified folks often get limited exposure to. We tend to mock such people and their values which is a poor reflection on us. There is an honesty and earnestness in many small town folks that is admirable. But at the same time it’s sad to hear one resident talk about how Blacks aren’t well-liked by many residents and another state that gays are stuck in the closet this community. God's Country is the type of movies that I wanted much, much more of.
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| From Claude Berri's The Two of Us |
Rounding out the day’s programming was Cynara (1932) directed by King Vidor (King was his first name, he was not a monarch — but you knew that). Vidor was better known for two silent classics, The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928), two of the greatest films of the 1920s. Cynara is very much a pre-code film centering as it does around an extra marital affair and it’s consequences. The husband is played by Ronald Coleman. He is his usual debonair self, the quintessence of charm and sophistication. But he “makes a mistake” and falls for a younger woman while his wife is out of the country. Disaster ensues. Kay Francis is the missus and she gives a her usual solid if unspectacular performance. I’m always glad to see Ms. Francis in a film though I don’t think she had terribly great range (not that Colman did). The two are serviceable in their roles as is the young woman in question ably played by Phyillis Barry, an actress who never attained stardom. That Cynara succeeds is a credit to its screenwriter Francis Marion, one of the few female writers working in Hollywood at the time — or for that matter anytime. There are certain destinations that you know the film is going to get to but you’re never sure how. Cynara was very much a film that relied on how it ended and Marion's screenplay did not disappoint. I liked and believed in the ending and in the movie as a whole. Vidor, so successful with "big stories" proved more than capable of telling a more intimate one.
So there you have it, I was four-for-four making for a most rewarding and enjoyable day and my queue on the Channel is down to a handful, thus easing my troubled mind. Of course now I’ve got a backlog of films I’ve recorded on TCM to get to and there are a number of films in my collection that are overdue for a viewing. A cinephile’s work is never done.
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