Guess That Screenshot #1

Okay, it counts this time. Shoot. The more you guess, the more clues I'll drop.

Classic Rewind: Vivre sa vie (1962)

The esteemed general of la nouvelle vague, Jean-Luc Godard made a slew of the most discussed and debated films of the 60's, spearheading an iconoclastic cinema movement that sent shockwaves throughout Europe and made a profound impact on the crowded international filmmaking scene.

In what is perhaps the most definable and atypical of his earliest (and greatest) works, Vivre sa vie, the story of an aspiring actress who falls into a life of prostitution, could also be his most reverent - as a tearful trip to the cinema to see Carl Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc would indicate.

It's still very much a Godard film however, as his twelve-part novelistic storytelling structure and experimental camerawork makes evident, including some unique, backside bar-stool conversations between Nana (Anna Karina) and the many men whom she engage in businesslike chit-chat.

Nevertheless, Vivre sa vie feels as minimal and as Bressonian as anything Godard has ever done. The jump-cuts, the esoteric cameos, references and endless philosophizing are there (as is Raoul Cotard's stunning black-and-white cinematography), but it appears that the French auteur is coming from a more sympathetic place this time around in depicting the tragic existence of his alienated subject and doing it with a studious, existential eye.

But the question of whether or not Nana is responsible for her imminent outcome, as she states, or if she is simply a victim of cruel fate (free will vs. fatalism) is a bit nebulous, complicated by her endless philosophy discussions over the final few "tableaux," including a rough table-chat with the real-life philosopher Brice Parain in which Godard threatens to garble the proceedings.

On the other hand, a reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait" (in Godard's own voice, no less) provides an apt discussion of art imitating - and in fact surpassing - life itself. Substituting the woman in Poe's short story for Nana (and thus Karina, Godard's then-wife), the allusion to the couple's inevitable demise five years and four films later, becomes sufficiently clearer. [B+]

Forbidden Planet Blu-ray

I will certainly buy the 9.7 Blu-ray release of Fred M. Wilcox's Forbidden Planet ('56), a space-travel reworking of William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

It's certainly one of the seminal Hollywood science-fiction productions made during the 50's and indisputably the most glamorous and seductive - the CinemaScope pinwheel colors trying to contain the sexual tension between Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis at all times.

I love the opening credits (below), with that Louis and Bebe Brown all-electronic score that marks a first not only for film, but for music. Forbidden Planet was the ultimate marriage of mid-20th century science-fiction hysteria and Hollywood spectacle, and the results are goofily wonderful.

Stanley Kubrick: Director's Chair (June 6-8)

For the first time as a member of LAMB, I'll be participating in the Director's Chair coming up. I'm usually too stubborn in my viewing schedule to alter it, but having already seen every Stanley Kubrick film, I'm looking forward to getting involved this time around.

Posts will be coming likely over the next week or so, and seeing how I've never really written about any of Kubrick's films, so I'm anticipating the challenge.

Classic Rewind: The Lovers (aka Les Amants) (1958)

A firecracker of controversy upon its release, Louis Malle's The Lovers ('58) would appear tamely suggestive as viewed by modern audiences, but its stark and explicit depiction of a woman's liberation amidst bourgeois tedium and alienation sent more than few ruffles around markets both foreign and domestic.

Though not necessarily associated with the heavyweight Cashiers du cinéma of the French New Wave or the movement in general, certainly Malle and his sophomore effort, The Lovers, has the fingerprints of a seminal work in subject matter and visual composition, if not in form and structure.

Henri Decaë, a renowned cinematographer who frequently worked with Jean-Pierre Melville (Les enfants terribles, Le samourai) and René Clément (Purple Noon), brings a lush, dreamy quality to his black-and-white widescreen images, alluding to the soon-to-be visual masterstrokes of Francois Truffaut's Jules and Jim ('62), shot by Raoul Coutard.

Both on the verge of stardom and on becoming the female face and voice of this new cinematic movement, Jeanne Moreau (who had just worked with Malle on his debut, Elevator to the Gallows) takes this portrait of a neglected and imprisoned bourgeois housewife caught between two loveless relationships and runs with it, leaving a mess of admirers behind here both on and off the screen.

In her character's newly rediscovered passion that erupts in the final act like an erotic fantasy, the film swells with passion and social emancipation as the strings of Brahms refuse to cease in the background.

The fact that her new object of desire is an adamantly iconoclastic romancer who recites poetry and admires the moonlight (in direct contrast to her husband) clearly establishes the revolution at play, both within and around the world of The Lovers. [A-]

Cannes: Round-Up #6

Olivier Assayas delivers 319 minutes of revolution in Carlos.

Only a couple of these things left, but we seem to be getting bigger (and longer) films demanding all of the attention on the red carpet of the Grand Lumiere as the festival winds down.

First up is Olivier Assayas' Carlos, the 319-minute epic charting the rise-and-fall of real-life revolutionary Carlos the Jackal, and the reception has been overwhelming to this point. Reactions:

Anthony Breznican, USA Today: Review (positive)
Geoff Andrew, Time Out London: Review (mixed)
Justin Chang, Variety: Review (positive)
Jonathan Romney, ScreenDaily: Review (positive)
Todd McCarthy, IndieWire: Review (positive)
Jeff Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere: Review (positive)
Kevin Jagernauth, The Playlist: Review (mixed)

Meanwhile, today's screening of Doug Liman's Fair Game, the only American film screening in competition this year starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, is being met warmly. Reactions:

Eric Kohn, IndieWire: Review (mixed)
Brad Brevet, Rope of Silicon: Review (positive)
Kevin Jagernauth, The Playlist: Review (mixed)
Dave Calhoun, Time Out London: Review (positive)
Jeff Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere: Review (positive)
Anthony Breznican, USA Today: Review (positive)
Mark Adams, ScreenDaily: Review (mixed)
Justin Chang, Variety: Review (mixed)

Classic Rewind: Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)

Throughout the 1940's, America's favorite action hero John Wayne starred in a slew of predictably propagandist WWII films, most notably John Ford's They Were Expendable ('45), Edward Dmytryk's Back to Bataan ('45) and lastly, Allan Dwan's Sands of Iwo Jima ('49).

In contrast to the selfless Colonel who stays behind to train a group of Filipino resistance fighters against the Japanese in Back to Bataan ('45), Wayne's Sgt. Stryker in Sands of Iwo Jima is a much rougher and intermittently antagonistic character - a testy, curt and heavy-drinking squad leader whose demand for perfection leads to mild unrest among the troops.

Beginning with the invasion of Tarawa and ending with the infamous flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi in the titular battle, the film is at it's best when the bullets aren't flying. When focusing on the father-son dynamic of the unrelated Sgt. Stryker (Wayne) and the young newlywed Private Conway (John Agar), Sands of Iwo Jima flickers with vitality - the kind that coursed through Wayne and a young Mongtomery Clift in Howards Hawks' Red River ('48).

Though to the film's detriment, it never quite takes that plunge, settling in as a slight war effort that doesn't even skirt the isolation and squad dynamics of say, William Wellman's Battleground ('49). Instead, it settles for easy stock footage and nebulous geography on the battlefield that lacks the verisimilitude of its genre brethren. [B-]