My Night at Maud’s isn’t ready to deliver firm answers to its philosophical quandaries, and yet in this narrative built on a series of unlikely happenstances and cerebral discussions, Eric Rohmer also crafts an absorbing examination of fate, romance, and hypocritical egos as they fall under theological and secular perspectives.
With a playfully postmodern approach to classical conventions of both mise-en-scène and Greek mythology in Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard aims his incisive wit towards the gods of storytelling themselves, while critiquing those who degrade history with visions of crude, dishonest entertainment.
An inconsistent artistic paradox like Blood and Black Lace is hard to reckon with, but for all the flaws in its pulpy writing there are a thousand more strengths in Mario Bava’s audaciously stylistic direction, turning an Italian fashion house into a Technicolor fever dream where horrific murders explode with vibrantly expressionistic sensibilities.
The raw grit of Ken Loach’s 1960s South Yorkshire working class community bleeds through his dedication to cinematic realism in Kes, its soul-sucking structures of school and labour sapping the youthful idealism of one disillusioned teenage boy, and setting up his falcon as the sole symbol of independent freedom in this painfully oppressive world.
There is a biting dissonance at play in A Woman is a Woman, giving the impression that its characters are always on the verge of breaking out into song without ever reaching that climactic emotional outpouring, thereby turning Jean-Luc Godard’s postmodern movie-musical pastiche into a playfully formal experiment of non-sequiturs and fourth wall breaks.
Alfred Hitchcock’s flawed but fascinating unravelling of one of his greatest characters in Marnie weaves a suspenseful mystery of powerful visual motifs through her erratically compulsive behaviour, leading us deeper into her mind to discover what sort of repressed trauma is at the source of it all.
In the small city of Rochefort seven hours outside of Paris, the entwining paths of young and old lovers alike wind these dreamy idealists up in some remarkable force of fated romance, joyously orchestrated through artistic expressions of dance, music, and outrageously beautiful colours by French auteur and musical devotee Jacques Demy.
Once Upon a Time in the West’s epic narrative is more a legendary tale than anything else, as Sergio Leone stages remarkably orchestrated, suspenseful face-offs in dry, open deserts, turning outlaws, lawmen, and pioneers into mythical figures of American history.
In straddling a line between pulpy violence and sophisticated visual artistry, Point Blank astonishingly transcends all genre trappings, as John Boorman’s confounding, non-linear narrative extracts a dizzying fever dream from the vengeful quest of a wronged man across formidable urban landscapes.
The relative lack of songs in Lola should not be taken to mean that the film unfolds with any less panache, vigour, or sensitivity than a traditional movie-musical, as Jacques Demy’s brisk tracking shots and delicate editing brings a rhythmic sensibility to his musings over long-lost lovers.
