Climbing Mount Criterion XXI
Catching up...
Sandrine Bonnaire is both a feral and sympathetic character in Agnes Varda's Vagabond (#74), a sort of precursor to Varda's excellent documentary on homelessness, The Gleaners & I. The trick is to make homelessness a subject you want to care about without devolving into easy plays for sympathy; Varda, impressively, has pulled it off twice. I've written at length about the film here.
I caught Chasing Amy (#75) in the theater when it was released in 1997 and have no interest in seeing it again; I've never been much of a Kevin Smith fan, and this film is the main reason. Ben Affleck falls for a lesbian; hamfistedness ensues.
Brief Encounter (#76) is David Lean working on a small scale--a man and a woman, married to others, who improbably fall for one another. But you have to buy the premise that she falls hard for Trevor Howard because she's attracted to his boyish qualities. Tough sledding: Howard doesn't have much boy in him. It's a British version of the whirlwind romance fantasy--which is to say it's a bit stiff--but it doesn't pile on the guilt the way Lean's Summertime later would.
And God Created Woman (#77): A perversely overwrought expression of the notion that a pretty lady in a curve-hugging dress has the power to make the world stop cold. But Brigitte Bardot is remarkably game to argue that ridiculous point.
Unlike most of his contemporaries--even the Marx Brothers--W.C. Fields's humor came not from what he did but from what he said. Not that The Bank Dick (#78) or the shorts in W.C. Fields: Six Short Films don't have their share of physical comedy; the constant whacks and club-snaps and pratfalls in The Golf Specialist are proof enough of that. But I still think of Fields as the first insult comic--he's forever condescending to his wife or whacking his daughter upside the head or giving some petulant child what-for. That makes his humor dated enough, now. But his vaudevillean humor asks for a different sort of suspension of disbelief than comedy today does; The Barber Shop closes with a dopey gag arguing that two cellos, placed next to one another, will eventually spawn a pile of tiny violins.
Sandrine Bonnaire is both a feral and sympathetic character in Agnes Varda's Vagabond (#74), a sort of precursor to Varda's excellent documentary on homelessness, The Gleaners & I. The trick is to make homelessness a subject you want to care about without devolving into easy plays for sympathy; Varda, impressively, has pulled it off twice. I've written at length about the film here.
I caught Chasing Amy (#75) in the theater when it was released in 1997 and have no interest in seeing it again; I've never been much of a Kevin Smith fan, and this film is the main reason. Ben Affleck falls for a lesbian; hamfistedness ensues.
Brief Encounter (#76) is David Lean working on a small scale--a man and a woman, married to others, who improbably fall for one another. But you have to buy the premise that she falls hard for Trevor Howard because she's attracted to his boyish qualities. Tough sledding: Howard doesn't have much boy in him. It's a British version of the whirlwind romance fantasy--which is to say it's a bit stiff--but it doesn't pile on the guilt the way Lean's Summertime later would.
And God Created Woman (#77): A perversely overwrought expression of the notion that a pretty lady in a curve-hugging dress has the power to make the world stop cold. But Brigitte Bardot is remarkably game to argue that ridiculous point.
Unlike most of his contemporaries--even the Marx Brothers--W.C. Fields's humor came not from what he did but from what he said. Not that The Bank Dick (#78) or the shorts in W.C. Fields: Six Short Films don't have their share of physical comedy; the constant whacks and club-snaps and pratfalls in The Golf Specialist are proof enough of that. But I still think of Fields as the first insult comic--he's forever condescending to his wife or whacking his daughter upside the head or giving some petulant child what-for. That makes his humor dated enough, now. But his vaudevillean humor asks for a different sort of suspension of disbelief than comedy today does; The Barber Shop closes with a dopey gag arguing that two cellos, placed next to one another, will eventually spawn a pile of tiny violins.
1 Comments:
While I generally have zero patience for Kevin Smith movies, I actually like Chasing Amy. I've never met anyone else who felt the same way. I guess positive feelings about Chasing Amy is basically equivalent to Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the male-friendly lesbian.
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