I just watched A Hero by the great Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi. An excellent film, the story of a man who tries to do the right thing and is of course punished by Society. I have seen almost all of his films, they are all great, wonderfully written, acted and directed. Moral puzzles, all worth watching. I was lucky enough to see him speak at a screening of The Salesman, a truly great film, that posed some very complicated questions and did not give you the answers. Something I like in a film. Farhadi himself said he did not know the answer to these questions, he had a feeling what had happened but he the filmmaker did not know for sure. Amazing! He left it up to the audience to decide! On the way down to the parking garage, a man in the elevator expressed his view vehemently! “He definitely raped her!” He proclaimed. This is great Cinema, it has the power to create dialogs that last long after the film has been projected. Filmmaking through time. Also, we are at odds with Iran, our governments are almost at war, yet Cinema has the power to show the humanity of the people living in the Forbidden Country, what a great gift.
A Hero is also in my opinion a homage to the great Luis Bunuel Film, Nazarin. A film where a simple country priest(in Mexico) tries to live according to the true teachings of Christ. And of course is spurned and eventually arrested. In A Hero the daughter of the Creditor that our hero owes money to is named Nazarin, also at the end of Bunuel’s film, a peasant woman taking pity on Nazarin, who she assumes is a criminal because he’s being led to jail in chains, gives him a pineapple. At the end of A Hero, he gets a box of baklava.
Here on You tube you can watch the whole Let’s Get Lost, a beautiful documentary on the late great musician Chet Baker. Made by the great photographer Bruce Weber, this film is a minor masterpiece. Edited beautifully by Angelo Corrao, it is a real pleasure to watch. When I lived in NYC I was friends with a wonderful guy named Leo Mitchell, a jazz drummer, he always wanted to play Rock and Roll music with me because he had grown up as a Jazz musician and never played straight ahead Rock. What a great guy. He toured with Chet Baker in Europe several times. Years later I asked my friend Jack Nitzsche about an album he had done with Chet Baker called A Taste Of Tequila” or something like that. He said “Don’t listen to that album. It’s horrible. Chet and I both needed the money.”
Here is a cool documentary, shot on the set of the seminal film Silent Running. I saw this in the theater when it came out and really enjoyed it. Ahead of it’s time, the environmental message that’s even more relevant today. Bruce Dern is great and the double amputees that play the robots are really cool. They’re all teenagers, who knew. I later worked with two key players from this film, Michael Cimino, who was one of the writers and John Dykstra a VFX supervisor. Anyway check it out and see the film!
I justwatchedAgnesVarda’s great documentary Black Panthers and was surprised to see the name Michel Hugo in the credits as one of the cameramen. I took a course in Cinematography he taught at the Hollywood Film School back in about 1977. He was a great guy. He shot a lot of cool movies including Jaques Demy’s Model Shop, a movie I love. I didn’t know this until today! Check out his credits! A lot of great films!
The great DP, Michel Hugo
Anyway here’s a clip from Black Panthers.
Andas an added bonus a sequencefrom Lions, Love, (Lies) Agnes Varda’s LA film. Some of the street signsare very close to my house. I love the way these French filmmakrers show Los Angeles, so dreamlike and so real.
Here is a silent serial that was a big hit with the Surrealists back in the day. One look at the imagery in this trailer and you’ll see why. Elements of Grand Guignol A French Theater of Shock and Horror popular at the time) and a newspaperman/Detective hero give it a contemporary relevance, but especially the wonderful, Irma Vep, a female super villian. Ahead of it’s time! Check out the trailer and watch the whole thing on the Criterion Channel. This is excellent silent film making, location shooting, death defying stunts, headless corpses, the list goes on. It is sort of a film version of a comic book, but in my opinion much better than these CGI laden bloated monstroisities from Marvel that are ruining the Film Industry. So Check it out and Enjoy!
Here is a beautifully shot low budget film, made in NYC in 1961. What amazing locations, check out Penn Station, an architectural marvel, before it was torn down to put the box of Madison Squarer Garden in it’s place. A real crime against humanity. This movie featurtes a ton of voice over by the great gravel throated Lionel Stander, who was in Once Upon A Time In The West and other cool films, like Unfaithfully Yours by Preston Sturis, and Cul de Sac by that perverted dwarf Roman Polanski.I think the VO was added later to help the film, I don’t think it was in the original script, there is a seperate credit for voice over writing. The Ending of this film is a classic, you have to see it, kind of reminiscent of the end of Truffaut’s Shoot The Piano Player.The director and Star of this film made another film after this called Pie In The Sky or Terror in the City. I havent seen it but I will be on the lookout for it. Then he went onto direct TV shows. Too Bad. The guy has real talent, he should have stayed in the Cinema. But we all have to make a living. So too bad.
I think there is a re-release of this film happening. I went to see it at Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly on a double bill with Nighty Of The Hunter. First time I’ve been in a movie theater since the pandemic! Two great prints! They looked amazing! See it in 35mm if you are able. From the opening Out Of The Tunnel Birth sequence to the terrific ending, it’s worth it!
I just found out that a 4k restoration of this film is being shown in theaters. I think it’s one of Dennis Hoppers best films. I hear tell it started as an after school special, then Hopper took over and turned it into a crazy Art film. But it really is cool, great characters and acting, totally unexpected things happen in it, Check it out!
I read that they were re-releasing this film in a limited release,stating in NYC. So I figured I’dcheck it out. It is directed by Fransesco Rosi ,a very creative,political filmmaker. I’ve seen a few of his other films, Salvatore Giuliano, Hands Over The City, The Swindlers. All very good and all shot by the great camerman Gianni DeVenanzo. This one however was not.Gianni died unexpectedly at age 46,but his operator Pasqualino DeSantis did shoot this film.And he did a great job,beautiful. (In my opinion no one comes close to Gianni when it comes to moving the camera around moving protagonists,the sense of space you get is magical. )
Illustrious Corpses stars the great acor Lino Ventura,a real presence on the screen. He is a real movie star. He didn’t want to act,he had to be talked into it by his friend Jaques Becker for Touchez Pas La Grisbi. And it paid off very well for him and for us,the film watchers! So thanks Jaques Becker! Also on hand are Max Von Sydow and Fernando Rey, icons of Bergman and Bunuel. The great Piero Piccione provides the score and the editing is by Ruggerio Mastroianni, brother of Marcello! Anyway the entire movie is on Youtube. The only problem I had was with the sound level, it keeps changing, quiet for dialog, loud for musical sequences. But watch it! It is a great movie! I think my favorite of Rosi’s so far. I still have a lot of his films to see, a thought I find very reassuring.
Here’s a CBS news piece from 1965, a veritable treasure trove of underground film/Art subjects! All crammed into uder 6 minutes. You get to see the early Velvet Underground, Barbara Rubin dressed as a nun in Piero Helcizer’s film as it’s being shot. Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol with his borrowed Norelco Video rig, Edie Sedgwick. It’s amazing. So travel back in time to NYC at the height of the Underground Film movement thanks to Youtube.
Everyone equates Nosferatu with F.W. Murnau, one of the all time great directors, and they should. He brought the film to life in such a powerful way that it still lives today. 90% of films made back then are either gone or forgotten, probably more. But let’s give credit where it’s due, Albin Grau ,who produced the film through his short lived company Prana Films also thought up the concept and designed the film. Here are some amazing images he created.
Albin Grau
F.W.Murnau
Pretty Damn Cool! You can see he was a huge part ofthe stylization,imagecreation,atmosphere,everything.Murnau ,being the supreme film artist that he was, created the celluloid realizations of these images, plus he shot on location which gave the film more reality, making it scarier.
Bram Stoker’s widow sued and won a copyright infringement lawsuit, she tried to have every copy of the film destroyed. And she almost succeded! Luckily for us a few prints and a negative escaped destruction. But Prana films was kaput! Albin Grau was forced to declare bankruptcy even though the film was a hit. The curse of Nosferatu continued with the tragic early death of Murnau in a car crash in California on the deadly Pacific Coast Highway. Years later his skull was stolen from his grave, presumably by some Satanists. Berg moved to Switzerland and worked as a graphic artist. Here’s a trailer from the restored version, so you can appreciate the beauty of Fritz Arno Wagner’s cinematography.
Kubrick a few years after appearing in Richters Film.
Dreams that Money Can Buy is a 1947 film by Hans Richter. I just found out that a young Stanley Kubrick appears in iyt. This was before Kubrick made any films himself. He was working as a photographer for LOOK magazine and taking night classes at a school in NYC. Richter was teaching there, he need extras for his latest production and Kubrick voluntered. I think it’s very cool that future director Kubrick appeared in an exprimental film. To help out a filmmaker! Check it out.
Andy Warhol was givren an early video recorder made by Norelco and he shot a lot of video with it. Yu can’t watch any of it now because there are no Norelco video decks left! The curse of Rapidly Evolving Technology. He played the video in the background on a monitor and filmed SuperStar Edie in front of the monitor with a 16mm sound on film Auricon Camera. Then he distorted the video intentionally as it plkayed back, this was before Nam Jun Paik got his first video recorder. He was ahead of his time in his own weird way. Check it out .But First see her Screen Test!
