Peeping Tom is creepy and interesting and just a little bit unhinged. The fact that Michael Powell directed this X-rated picture in 1960 (without Emeric Pressburger) is sort of nuts to me. This is a really important movie.
Showing posts with label powell/pressburger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label powell/pressburger. Show all posts
14 April 2021
Peeping Tom (1960)
Peeping Tom is creepy and interesting and just a little bit unhinged. The fact that Michael Powell directed this X-rated picture in 1960 (without Emeric Pressburger) is sort of nuts to me. This is a really important movie.
02 August 2020
......One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)
I'm not sure why I'm so interested in WWII movies right now, but I am, especially ones about flying and ones made during the war. This one is great.
......One of Our Aircraft Is Missing was written and directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. It's absolutely great! The script is excellent, and Ronald Neame's photography is absolute genius. There are so many shots that are jaw dropping. It's really a superb bit of work. The special effects in this movie are great, too, and then there is the acting. The men aren't much to write home about, but Joyce Redman and Googie Withers both give stellar performances. This is a really good one.
19 May 2020
Black Narcissus
Black Narcissus seems like it's going to do something akin to The Inn of the Sixth Happiness or Come to the Stable but the film takes a deliciously, sickly weird turn, and that makes it very enjoyable.
And while we're talking about very weird turns this movie takes, normally Sabu would be the chief sexual force in a film like this, but instead it is David Farrar who appears as a sexual object throughout the movie. He shows up with a shirt half opened about mid-way through the picture, and then he shows up completely shirtless for an extended period of time. He's even shirtless on the poster! This is a very steamy Powell/Pressburger movie.
09 July 2008
God Bless Criterion
Yesterday I sat down and watched The Thief of Bagdad: an Arabian Fantasy from 1940. Now, I don't know how I would feel about this movie if I saw a bad print of it or saw it in a dimly lit theatre (like the crap Talla-classy theatre in which I saw Tarsem's The Fall), but thankfully, Criterion has come along and saved the day for this movie.
The new DVD of The Thief of Bagdad is gorgeous. The movie is from 1940, but the colors are extraordinarily clear and the beautiful cinematography shines through almost seventy years later. It's lovely.
Mentioning Tarsem's The Fall is actually quite appropriate to The Thief of Bagdad: they'd make a nice double feature.
Thief is short on themes and short on good acting (most of the performances are downright awful, really), but it's eye-popping and fun with some special effects that look nowhere near realistic now, but must have been exciting in 1940. What's really amazing about the whole thing is how truly enjoyable the film is all these years later and despite all of the drawbacks I've listed. Thief is a true pleasure to watch, filled with suspense and magic and shady morals. And the central performance by Sabu, while I wouldn't say it is realistic or believable has an excited, infectious quality that makes it clear why the young man became such a big star.
The new DVD of The Thief of Bagdad is gorgeous. The movie is from 1940, but the colors are extraordinarily clear and the beautiful cinematography shines through almost seventy years later. It's lovely.
Mentioning Tarsem's The Fall is actually quite appropriate to The Thief of Bagdad: they'd make a nice double feature.
Thief is short on themes and short on good acting (most of the performances are downright awful, really), but it's eye-popping and fun with some special effects that look nowhere near realistic now, but must have been exciting in 1940. What's really amazing about the whole thing is how truly enjoyable the film is all these years later and despite all of the drawbacks I've listed. Thief is a true pleasure to watch, filled with suspense and magic and shady morals. And the central performance by Sabu, while I wouldn't say it is realistic or believable has an excited, infectious quality that makes it clear why the young man became such a big star.
01 August 2007
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a quintessentially Japanese film. It's also quintessentially of the 1960s and yet strikingly cosmopolitan. I watched this movie as part of my ongoing project of exploring the Japanese masters. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a beautiful, subtle film that's also a melodrama and a bittersweet homage to Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.
The film is actually a kind of Japanese remake of Cabiria, a connection I might not have even noticed had not director Naruse explicitly referenced Cabiria in the first ten minutes of the film. (Naruse also references Pressburger & Powell's Black Narcissus.)
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is about a woman working as a hostess in a bar (a kind of lower-rent geisha) who is trying to make ends meet and support her louse of a brother back home. It's an old story about the prostitute with a heart of gold, but Naruse's film has the ability to transcend the melodramatic plot and really take both a feminist stance and criticize the dominant political system in Japan. It becomes a film with relevant social commentary as well as a serious drama.
The film is actually a kind of Japanese remake of Cabiria, a connection I might not have even noticed had not director Naruse explicitly referenced Cabiria in the first ten minutes of the film. (Naruse also references Pressburger & Powell's Black Narcissus.)
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is about a woman working as a hostess in a bar (a kind of lower-rent geisha) who is trying to make ends meet and support her louse of a brother back home. It's an old story about the prostitute with a heart of gold, but Naruse's film has the ability to transcend the melodramatic plot and really take both a feminist stance and criticize the dominant political system in Japan. It becomes a film with relevant social commentary as well as a serious drama.
26 February 2007
A Review or Two
The first movie (for me) of 2007 was Billy Ray's Breach, starring Chris Cooper, the beautiful Ryan Phillippe and, in boring I-wear-a-suit-and-deal-with-very-sensitive-CIA-FBI-DOD-information roles: Dennis Haysbert and Laura Linney. The movie is an okay thriller without much of a plot. It's sold as a thriller, but it's actually more of a character study (not unlike Ray's last movie, Shattered Glass).
Breach starts at its own end, like so many movies these days, so the suspense that the film might hold is greatly alleviated by the fact that we already know how the movie ends. Still, there are great moments of tension and Chris Cooper is riveting. He gives a tortured, fascinating performance as a pervert/spy/devout acolyte of Catholicism. Phillippe, while pretty to look at, mostly pouts through his role and we experience none of the alleged ingenuity the character is supposed to be displaying. Instead, Phillippe makes all of his character's very difficult decisions seem easy and all of the character's moments of brilliance seem like he had them planned out for years ahead of time. Here, perhaps is the real flaw in the film. Pillippe doesn't at all play the tension. The nicest moment in the whole film is Bruce Davison's single scene as Phillippe's father. Davison is perfectly cast (he even sort of looks like Chris Cooper, for a little more of a father-son parallel) and his scene is masterful: filled with history, longing, impulse and regret and yet restrained and measured. It's the best part of the whole thing.
This morning I also finally saw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes. This classic film from 1948 deserves its status as a cinematic icon. The score is phenomenal, and the film uses ballet in all the ways it ought to (a method much more restrained than Minelli's in An American in Paris). Anyone who works in the theatre should get a kick out of The Red Shoes. It's a film about how much we need art and the sacrifices we make for it. It's also about the family of other artists we create in the theatre and the way artists play and speak with one another. It's gorgeously shot, as well, and the story is so well-told that even the shoe metaphor sneaked up on me. If you haven't seen it...
Breach starts at its own end, like so many movies these days, so the suspense that the film might hold is greatly alleviated by the fact that we already know how the movie ends. Still, there are great moments of tension and Chris Cooper is riveting. He gives a tortured, fascinating performance as a pervert/spy/devout acolyte of Catholicism. Phillippe, while pretty to look at, mostly pouts through his role and we experience none of the alleged ingenuity the character is supposed to be displaying. Instead, Phillippe makes all of his character's very difficult decisions seem easy and all of the character's moments of brilliance seem like he had them planned out for years ahead of time. Here, perhaps is the real flaw in the film. Pillippe doesn't at all play the tension. The nicest moment in the whole film is Bruce Davison's single scene as Phillippe's father. Davison is perfectly cast (he even sort of looks like Chris Cooper, for a little more of a father-son parallel) and his scene is masterful: filled with history, longing, impulse and regret and yet restrained and measured. It's the best part of the whole thing.
This morning I also finally saw Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes. This classic film from 1948 deserves its status as a cinematic icon. The score is phenomenal, and the film uses ballet in all the ways it ought to (a method much more restrained than Minelli's in An American in Paris). Anyone who works in the theatre should get a kick out of The Red Shoes. It's a film about how much we need art and the sacrifices we make for it. It's also about the family of other artists we create in the theatre and the way artists play and speak with one another. It's gorgeously shot, as well, and the story is so well-told that even the shoe metaphor sneaked up on me. If you haven't seen it...
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