Category: 1970s

Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 1hr 33min

According to Emmi’s new lover, Ali, there is an old Arabic saying that warns against insecurity as the enemy of love, and which gives Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film its name. “Fear no good. Fear eat the soul up,” he warns her when she expresses anxiety around their blossoming relationship. This fear attacks from the inside, dissolving convictions which might have already weathered the worst of the world’s pressures, and yet which eventually crumble to pieces and turn lovers against each other. Then again, perhaps it is equally the result of a social prejudice which has become so normalised around them. Douglas Sirk’s 1950s American melodramas may be the primary source of Fassbinder’s influence, but Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is just as much a product of cultural tensions in 1970s Germany, pushing the transgressive love between a middle-aged woman and young man in All That Heaven Allows even further with an interracial romance.

When Emmi and Ali first meet, they are living in the shadow of the 1972 Munich Massacre, where eight Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and kill several members of the Israeli Olympic team. On top of this, Emmi acknowledges her own family’s involvement in the Nazi party, with her late father being particularly xenophobic. This nation’s shameful history lives on in recent memory for many citizens, becoming such a part of everyday life that its true horror is easily trivialised. When Emmi takes Ali out to a fancy restaurant she has always wanted to try, the fact that it used to be Hitler’s favourite restaurant is given no more than a passing mention, and it is also no odd occurrence for racial slurs to be casually thrown at those with skin tones similar to those of the Olympic terrorists.

In Fassbinder’s visuals as well, modernity hems his characters into tight corners, doorframes, archways, and narrow corridors. Many of these are as drably unadorned as the architecture lining Munich’s streets, bearing the discoloured marks of erosion and suffusing his aesthetic with an element of realism that was never present in Sirk’s highly stylised studio sets. At the same time though, Fassbinder does not resist injecting his mise-en-scène with warm bursts of blazing colour when a scene calls for it, painting the walls of Emmi’s home canary yellow and framing her between crimson drapes. In the bar where she first meets and dances with Ali right at the start of the film too, Fassbinder sheds a vibrant red light over them, saturating them in the passion of their mutual attraction and separating them from the dreariness of the outside world.

The greatest visual motif of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul though comes in Fassbinder’s constant return to the worn-out, winding stairwell of Emmi’s apartment building, where she sits with her neighbours and listens to their petty gossip. With Fassbinder using its uneven levels, cramped space, and wooden banister to visually isolate her, she doesn’t appear to be particularly comfortable here, and it certainly doesn’t help that these women are some of the most racist critics of her relationship with Ali. Within these uncomfortable conversations and behind these railings, she is completely trapped, confined to a liminal space between domestic and public life that refuses to separate one from the other.

In the movements of Fassbinder’s camera too, we often find a sharp elegance to its tracking shots, often choosing to shift into new compositions rather than cut, as we observe in the slow pan across the disgusted faces of Emmi’s children when they meet her new partner for the first time. This also ties into the larger tension at play between his melodrama and social realism, intoxicating us with his lush visual style, and then breaking it up with prickly reminders of 1970s Germany’s horrific racial intolerance.

That Emmi begins to adopt elements of that prejudice is all the more tragic, as Fassbinder pushes the All That Heaven Allows-inspired romance another step further with both lovers subconsciously internalising their harshest criticisms. From Emmi’s desire to return to a quieter, more traditional life comes her demand for Ali to stop eating couscous, while her objectification of his body in front of her friends exposes a racial fetishism even more insidiously ingrained in her social conditioning. Both look smaller than ever in Fassbinder’s narrowed frames as distances between them grow wider, leaving Ali to seek comfort outside the bonds of marriage with an old girlfriend.

At least while these lovers were at their most devoted, they would fight back against unwelcome insults, so it is entirely heartbreaking now to see them let such comments slide by with little resistance. A genuine attempt to reconcile their misgivings as they dance together in the bar where they met tragically comes far too late – Ali suddenly collapses without warning as Emmi holds him in her arms, and is promptly diagnosed with a type of burst stomach ulcer that often comes about from undue stress among immigrants.

It might be unlikely that Emmi was a direct cause of Ali’s illness, but the possibility also can’t be written off, and thus his earlier warning of fear eating the soul is reframed as a devastating prophecy. With this symbolic turn of fate, both the melodrama and realism of Fassbinder’s interracial romance finally merge into something even grander that transcends the sum of both – an ineffable moral fable of love’s greatest weakness and persistent strength.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

David Lynch | 1hr 29min

The wild shock of hair that leaps up off Henry Spencer’s head in Eraserhead has become somewhat of an icon for David Lynch’s debut film, exploding from his dazed expression like an electric current illuminated in harsh black-and-white light. Like Charlie Chaplin, our main character is a man of few words who waddles around industrial urban landscapes, though unlike the silent comedian there is no spring in his step. His existence in Lynch’s dystopian modern city is joyless even before he meets the malformed product of his intercourse with Mary X, but as he takes on the daunting task of fathering a child, he is only confined further by his anxious nightmares. Suddenly, his entire purpose is dedicated to a tiny, wailing creature, and his claustrophobic apartment has become his entire world.

Within Lynch’s disturbing creation, Henry is not a vivid character filled with a rich inner life, but an empty vessel of melancholic frustration, absorbing whatever fears we imprint upon him. Even more archetypal all those secondary characters who are given titles such as the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall and the Man in the Planet in place of real names, which might incidentally imbue them with depth. As far as we are concerned, they do not exist outside of Henry’s solipsistic prison.

Neither does Lynch offer much explanation for what they represent, leaving us to question whether the puffy-cheeked Girl in the Radiator might be a symbol of death’s welcome relief, or Henry’s ideal woman. That she sweetly sings the haunting seduction “In heaven, everything is fine” to him and crushes large, sperm-like creatures beneath her feet could suggest either, or perhaps both. All that we know is that is that within this existential dream of mutant babies and urban isolation, it is the raw impression of Eraserhead’s surreal imagery which carries far more impact than any attempts to derive its literal meaning.

When measured up against a young Lynch at the start of his career, there are so few filmmakers who can craft cinematic surrealism as provocative as this. The evidence of this being his first feature is apparent in the meagre $100,000 budget he had to work with, though not even this is a hindrance to the incredible imagination on display, much of which is poured into grotesque practical effects. Clear parallels can be drawn to contemporary David Cronenberg who would also begin working around the same time at the peak of the American New Wave, and though one would veer more into body horror and the other into surrealism, there is a relatively even intersection of both here.

Also integral to this anxiety-ridden slow burn is the low-level hum of machinery and crying, constantly droning through its sound design. It is often as if Lynch has filtered the incidental noises of a near-deserted city through several layers of consciousness, until the faint creaking of factories, the hissing of a radiator, and the muffled patter of rain combine in muted distortions of reality. Considered with his bleak monochrome photography which mesmerises in its offbeat framing, Lynch effectively crafts entire dream worlds branching off from Henry’s singular fear of fatherhood, often with barely more than a few lines of dialogue.

Most of all though, it is Lynch’s design of the deformed baby that stirs up a primal disgust in Eraserhead, and which in turn induces Henry’s self-loathing recognition that he is capable of producing something so incredibly vile. It is also a vaguely humanoid extension of those giant sperm creatures that frequent Henry’s nightmares, appearing under his bedsheet and writhing around in stop-motion animation. This child is utterly dehumanised in his eyes, no more than a low-level organism that can barely support its own existence.

The stress that comes with caring for this monster is a whole other ordeal too – it only takes a second while Henry is looking away from it to suddenly develop measles and catch some respiratory virus that leaves it wheezing. Even worse are those sleepless nights spent listening to its incessant mewling, driving Mary to pick up and leave, and pushing Henry to harbour an even deeper resentment of his repulsive offspring.

On a sociological level too, there is a deep fear embedded in Eraserhead of what Henry’s future might look like should he fully adopt the mantle of patriarch and begin his own family, illustrated in Mary’s uncomfortable home life. The disjointed rhythms and vague non-sequiturs of their conversations paint out lives of total banality, wilfully oblivious to the peculiarities seeping in – the half-alive roast chicken for example, or the direct sexual advances of Mary’s mother. The psychosexual depths of modern American families would later become even more central to Lynch’s interrogations a decade later in Blue Velvet, but they also mark the point in Eraserhead where its dialogue is densest.

Elsewhere the influence of silent films is tangible; specifically the 1929 surrealist short Un Chien Andalou, where Luis Buñuel innovated a cinematic language of dream logic that Lynch would develop even further in his foggy, discontinuous editing. Every bit of his visual storytelling measures up against the greatest films of that era, drawing visual connections between Henry and his child in one horrific nightmare that sees the baby grow out of the neck stump where his head has fallen off. The fear of one’s self-image being consumed by parenthood is conveyed in a series of sinister images far more evocative than any passage of dialogue Lynch might have written instead, and when the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall later sees this same mutated hybrid in Henry’s place, these terrors continue to reverberate through the film’s formal structure.

When his decapitated head is taken to a factory and manufactured into erasers, there is no harm in pondering whether this scene implies the erasure of Henry’s identity or his desire to rub out his own mistakes, but it would be foolish to dwell too much on the specifics of Eraserhead’s meaning. Lynch is a master of provoking those ugly, primal impulses which we shy away from, and that often can’t be captured in words alone. The jarring shift from Henry gruesomely killing his baby to the heavenly comfort he finds in the arms of the Girl in the Radiator produces an unsettling peace in the film’s final minutes, and one that cannot be easily reconciled within traditional narrative conventions which might position him as our hero. Instead, Lynch would much rather let us consider Henry as a vision of humanity at its weakest, falling prey to psychological influences that have taken terrifying physical form in his world. From this dark, tortured perspective pushed far beyond the limits of mental forbearance, there is no nightmare more profoundly frightening than young parenthood.

Eraserhead is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Robert Altman | 2hr 4min

For a long time in 3 Women, there are only two women taking up the majority of Robert Altman’s story. It isn’t until the final act that the significance of the third woman emerges – a figure whose appearance has been subtly laced all through the film. While Millie and Pinky have been engaged in a covert battle of identities, the middle-aged Willie has lingered in the empty swimming pool of the apartment block where they reside, painting freakish murals of mythical, reptilian creatures. Many of them seem to be locked in one-on-one duels with equally grotesque clones of themselves, their tongues lashing out and sharp teeth bared in anger. Rendered in light pastel hues, these two-dimensional frescoes form unsettling backdrops to several scenes of conflict between Millie and Pinky, but Altman also often weaves them in with simple camera movements and cutaways, dissolving close-ups of our characters over their grotesque features.

The formal connections he is drawing are abstract but powerful. These are the monsters who live in Millie and Pinky’s minds, fighting for the right to inhabit a singular, unique identity in a culture where individuality is everything. In this case, Pinky is the aggressor impeding on Millie’s territory, threatening to force her from the space she inhabits in society. Shelley Duvall is incredibly well-defined in this role, immediately establishing herself as a well-liked, slightly vain, and innocently flirtatious young woman living in smalltown California. Also, she has a clear fondness for the colour yellow. It is a strong motif that is never referenced in dialogue, and yet one which Altman deftly draws through her matching twin beds, furniture, clothing, and even her car. When Pinky starts taking some of these for herself and shrouding herself in Millie’s favourite colour, the purpose of his sunshine-hued production design grows even more apparent.

Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Pinky on the other hand is a blank slate of a woman, gazing at Millie with perceptive eyes and slowly picking up on her mannerisms from a distance. When she first starts working at the same health spa as Millie she lets on little about her past, and even when they eventually become roommates, she still feels strangely detached. Everything we learn about her comes through those small, bizarre mannerisms which Altman subtly lingers on, such as the way she stalks and imitates a pair of twins passing by. When she expresses her desire to be one, it is brushed off by others as a mere quirk, but in the accumulation of these formal character details we recognise how integral these copycat eccentricities quirks are to her being.

“Do you think they know which one they are?”

“Maybe they switch back and forth. And one day Peggy’s Polly. Another day, Polly’s Peggy.”

It doesn’t take a lot of conjecturing then to realise why Altman lays out so many mirrors across his mise-en-scene, creating doubles of his actors who interact within some creatively blocked compositions. It is almost as if this is how Pinky sees the world, watching it through reflections and wishing to become “real” herself. The roving camera zooms and overlapping dialogue that Altman is so frequently associated with brilliantly matches her shrewd perspective as well, picking out random lines of trivial conversation and specific individuals within busy settings that she attentively fixates on. Accompanying these odd observations is Gerald Busby’s horror-tinted score of droning flutes and atonal horns, as nervously erratic in its movements and dynamics as Spacek herself.

On the other side of Pinky’s incredible obsession is a past which she has an equally intense aversion to. When her mother and father enter the film, it is easy to see why those instincts are so strong. As warm and cordial as they initially appear, their odd behaviour implies a childhood for Pinky that was marked by a lack of boundaries, especially when they disturbingly make love in her bed. Quite notably, they are also unusually old to be this young woman’s biological parents, and she even outright denies knowing them. Most telling of all is her adoption of a new identity in the moniker Pinky, shunning her birth name Mildred – though given that she shares this name with Millie, it doesn’t take long for her to start using it again.

Which brings us back to that woman who has been a consistent present in the background of this psychodrama, painting those horrific frescoes. Willie is the pregnant wife of Edgar, the ageing Hollywood stunt double who owns the apartment block much of the film is set in, and the love interest of both Millie and Pinky at different points. By taking the position of Willie in that relationship, Millie is effectively stealing another’s identity for herself, while Pinky is merely just copying her idolised roommate.

The realisation that Edgar is a pitiful, deadbeat husband who has left his wife to give birth alone marks a shift in this dynamic. While Millie rushes to Willie’s aid and delivers her baby, Pinky watches from a distance like a clueless child, and taking her point of view, Altman’s camera dreamily drifts in and out of focus. Edgar’s subsequent disappearance may be a mystery to the police, but it is plain enough in the conclusion’s subtext to surmise what has unfolded.

Between these three women, new bonds have formed over mutual disenchantment – almost like a family that has found stability in its distinct roles. In Willie’s incapacitation, she becomes a surrogate grandmother figure, passing on her wide-brimmed hats, flowing dresses, and managerial job at that local tavern to a more maternal Millie who has shed her stylish yellow clothing. Meanwhile, Pinky finds comfort in her new status as the daughter she could never be to her biological parents, playfully scorned by her mother and cherished by her grandma.

Much like Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Altman finds great tension in the enigmatic blending of identities, considering each side as conflicting parts of a whole. In the tiny yet complex ensemble of 3 Women though, Altman narrows his focus down to an intricate family portrait of ageing women, recognising when the time has come to let younger generations usurp one’s position, and consequently doing the same to one’s own elders. Only in these clearly defined roles and compassionate female relationships can any sort of harmony be found within the chaos of a worldly, modern society.

3 Women is currently available to buy on YouTube.

Werner Herzog | 1hr 47min

The blood-sucking monster of Nosferatu the Vampyre is a far more tragic creature than F.W. Murnau’s silent, rat-like creation, though the terror it inspires is no less sickening. The original 1922 film is a very loose adaptation of the 1897 novel Dracula, and so it is no surprise that this remake distances itself even more from Bram Stoker’s writing. Werner Herzog takes complete ownership of this Gothic fable and all its supernatural metaphors, interrogating the Count’s curse as an extension of nature’s merciless, godless rule. Perhaps that is why this lonely vision of Dracula so desperately craves connection. “The absence of love is the most abject pain,” he laments to the beautiful Lucy Harker, giving voice to an immortal earth which only ever sees true beauty flit by with passing glances, and yet is never able to engage with it.

“Time is an abyss, profound as a thousand nights. Centuries come and go… to be unable to grow old is terrible. That is not the worst. There are things more horrible than that. Can you imagine enduring centuries experiencing the same futility each day?”

Life may wither away like the shrivelled corpses that the film opens on, but nature cannot die, endlessly feeding on those it kills and persisting into oblivion. The journey that estate agent Jonathan Harker sets out on to reach Dracula’s castle in Transylvania sets this connection up early, traversing craggy mountains, rushing rivers, and black crevices that no right-thinking person would venture near. Herzog though is in his element, pitching his camera at daunting low angles to revel in a harsh, foggy world untouched by man or God. In the distance, the ruins of a crumbling fortress stand silhouetted against a dark sky, inviting Jonathan into a sinister void that will inevitably corrupt his soul.

And within its nightmarish halls lurks Klaus Kinski’s bald, black-robed creature, blending perfectly into Herzog’s pools of shadows. He pierces the defences of his visitor with eyes that rarely break contact, and grasps at his open wound with long, sharp claws. Around the creature, Herzog constructs an impressive feat of Gothic production design, lighting rooms with elaborate candelabras which themselves are cast onto walls as shadows. Giant archways, ornately carved furniture, and grotesque statues populate these medieval interiors, and as Count Dracula loads up his carriage with dark wooden coffins, Herzog skews his overhead shot at an off-kilter angle in true expressionistic fashion. Jonathan’s hometown of Wismar in Germany is his destination, where he will prey on new victims and spread a deathly plague.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that this adaptation of a silent film possesses such minimal dialogue, and yet the self-assurance with which Herzog teases out his slow-burn narrative is hypnotic. His pacing never wavers as mortal dread takes apocalyptic form, approaching the docks of Wismar at the same steady speed as the ship which carries Dracula and all his diseased rats. The sound design here consists merely of droning male vocals alternating between a pair of eerie notes, though elsewhere the ambient, eclectic score composed by electronic band Popol Vuh sounds naively light-hearted in its gentle guitars and piano.

These are the uneasy rhythms that Nosferatu the Vampyre drifts by on with trepidation, building tension in Herzog’s careful parallel editing. As Dracula slowly approaches the town, we also observe the increasing insanity of his servant Renfield, Jonathan’s race back home, and Lucy’s growing apprehension, thoroughly drawing each character closer together. Finally, as Dracula disembarks the ship and his pale rats begin swarming the city, Popol Vuh’s strings and horns take over with a restless, unsettling joy. It isn’t hard to see the inspiration that Bobby Krlic drew from this eerie musical exultation in composing his own dazzling score for Midsommar.

Rats frequently dominate Herzog’s imagery here, but with ordinary lives thrown into disarray by the Black Death, so too do the streets begin to fill with small fires, furniture, pigs, and crosses – remnants of the old bourgeoisie social order that has been properly undermined. Now, the townsfolk blithely dance in the streets, embracing the chaotic liberation of nature’s pestilent destruction.

Parallel to this reappreciation of life is Lucy’s own strange compulsion towards Dracula, who is equally drawn to her. Unlike so many other interpretations of vampires, Kinski’s animalistic depiction is not one which exudes sexuality, and yet as she lures him to her bedroom to kill him, a tragic passion emerges from their deathly embrace. He kneels beside her, a sorrowful look on his face, and laying her hands on him she guides him towards her neck. The tender love she has to offer comes with the intent of murder, and yet even that is wrapped up in selfless affection given his wish to die. Upon finding the release of love and death he has been pining after, the cock crows and the sun rises, ending his reign of terror at the cost of Lucy’s life.

And yet nature cannot die forever. It keeps on regenerating until all other earthly organisms extinguished, and therein lies Herzog’s curious twist on the previous versions of this tale. Weakened by Dracula’s attack early in the film, Jonathan is pushed to the sidelines, leaving Lucy to take over as our protagonist. Upon Dracula’s death, his transformation into a vampire is complete, beginning a whole new cycle of evil. He is infected with his assailant’s misery, and now he too is tasked with spreading that throughout human society, like a fruit bearing seeds of suffering. Nosferatu the Vampyre may emerge within a long lineage of Dracula adaptations, and yet is infused on every cinematic level with Herzog’s fear and awe at a godless world, pulling us into a tragic, mesmeric dread which simply longs for our love.

Nosferatu the Vampyre is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Luchino Visconti | 3hr 58min

The final piece of Luchino Visconti’s thematic ‘German Trilogy’ speaks more directly to the nation’s true history than its largely fictitious predecessors, and in striving to chronicle such dense passages of monarchical politics, he also ends up with his longest film yet. Ludwig stands at an imposing four hours long, though quite astoundingly, its pacing never drags. The odd exception here is in those uninspired, documentary-like monologues delivered to the camera by various supporting players in King Ludwig II’s life, offering criticisms of his rule that would never otherwise be expressed freely in his royal court. This is a far stronger film when it is interrogating such dissent as an extension of its rigorous character study, targeting the strange mix of sexual insecurities, mental illnesses, and artistic obsessions which roil around in the Mad King’s troubled mind. Within the opulent palaces of 19^th century Bavaria, he loses himself in the decadence of extreme wealth and fantastical dreams, and Visconti beautifully details it all in his exquisite, operatic staging.

With his angular eyebrows, sharp jawline, and bright blue eyes, Austrian actor Helmet Berger is a dashing fit for the role of the young King, who ascended to the throne at the age of 18. His sensitivity is revealed in his two great passions – the classical music of German composer Richard Wagner, who he seeks to relocate to Bavaria, and his charming cousin Empress Elisabeth of Austria, whose affection he pursues. The first half of Ludwig is dominated by these storylines, manifesting as a pair of romanticised ideals that can never quite compete with the realities and pressures of being King.

Inside the royal halls of his reign, Visconti surrounds him with the sort of elaborate period designs that carry centuries of historical weight, precisely carved to the traditions of an empire renowned for its ravishing architecture, textiles, and décor. Colourful walls and large frescos often form ornate backdrops to the historical drama, which is blocked through meticulous arrangements extending deep into his compositions. In his vibrant office of embroidered seating and scarlet wallpaper, oil paintings hang in golden frames above its royal occupants, while elsewhere giant candelabras reach all the way up to the ceiling in a cavernous corridor. Softening the intensity of these painstakingly curated interiors are large, leafy plants, infusing otherwise contrived designs with a lush greenery not unlike that which Visconti used to similar effect in Death in Venice. It also helps that he shot many scenes on location at many of Ludwig’s actual castles, making the most of their authentic halls and exteriors as the settings for his dramatised historical account.

Ludwig certainly relishes this extravagant living, and yet he possesses a dreamer’s mind that is detached from reality, preferring to shape his surroundings into wondrous fairy tale images. Upon the grounds of Linderhof Palace, he whisks himself away into a fantastical, artificial grotto that he built with the intent of staging operas, and in a wooden room that seems to be built around a tree, he hosts orgies with his servants. In his ideal world, Wagner would have unlimited funding to keep on composing music, though such lofty aspirations of enriching the minds of the people is not easily realised with the artist’s philandering and profiteering, eventually forcing Ludwig to send his friend home. Likewise, his love for Elisabeth is stifled by the expectations placed on him as a King to instead marry her sister, Sophie, which itself is further complicated by his repressed homosexual desires.

Unsurprisingly, many of Ludwig’s handpicked companions are men who, despite his Catholic guilt, arouse a romantic desire in him. Against a deep purple sunrise, Volk the waiter strips down and goes swimming in the lake, while Ludwig surreptitiously watches from behind reeds obstructing Visconti’s voyeuristic shots. When the servant is thrown out, presumably due to the King’s own inner torment, he is simply replaced with another who continues to inspire a guilty lust. Later in life, his hiring of actor Josef Kainz to follow him around and recite poetry to the point of exhaustion manifests this sensitive longing as an eccentric, poisonous obsession, which only worsens with his degrading mental state.

This deterioration is a physical one as well, and Visconti’s stylistic choice to roam his camera around scenes with zoom lenses pays off particularly well when we begin moving into close-ups of Berger’s now-grotesque face. With his black teeth, unruly hair, and red-rimmed eyes, it is clear that all self-care has disappeared from his routine, while his pale skin bears the mark of his reclusiveness from the outside world. Berger conducts himself with obstinate hostility in many of these later scenes, furiously ranting against the Bavarian government who dare to commit treason against their King, and simultaneously digging his own grave with his unhinged behaviour.

From The Leopard to The Damned, Visconti’s storytelling has consistently sought to understand historical empires through the larger-than-life characters defining them, and yet even after four hours of studying Ludwig’s erratic reign, there still remains something compellingly mysterious about his legacy. As he is arrested and confined to a manor where he receives psychological treatment, his surroundings finally reflect the pitifully tragic state of Bavaria’s own monarchy. Opulent decadence is replaced by monochrome, minimalist décor, with only a few simple paintings and a cross adorning the stark, white walls of his bedroom. This “tyrant who knows no limits in order to indulge his fantasies” is stripped of even those, and denied the liberty to imagine anything but an escape from his desolate prison.

The lingering uncertainty of the deposed King’s memory is best summed up in Ludwig’s final freeze frame, his wet, lifeless face withholding any answers as to how he died. “I am an enigma. I want to be an enigma forever, for those outside my world and myself,” he tells his psychiatrist not long before his death, and through Visconti’s tenderly drawn characterisation of this lonely, troubled figure, he is perhaps, at the very least, granted his last wish.

Ludwig is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Bernardo Bertolucci | 5hr 17min

Most of Bernardo Bertolucci’s grand historical epic 1900 is set over a huge expanse of roughly 44 years, and none of them are the one referenced in the title. The death of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1901 marks the date that Alfredo Berlinghieri is born to wealthy landowners, and that Olmo Dalcò is born to a poor labouring family working on their estate, signposting the melodrama with an operatic landmark right at the start. So too does a significant piece of Italian history mark the major turning point in their relationship as adults, with their nation being liberated from the fascists at the end of World War II, and Alfredo being ousted from his inherited position of padrone. The title 1900 does not refer to a year, but the cultural and political shift of a century, condensed into a gloriously vivid 5-hour epic by Bernardo Bertolucci and a line-up of America and Europe’s greatest cinematic forces.

Simply assembling a creative team consisting of composer Ennio Morricone and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro already points 1900 towards success, but with a cast led by Robert de Niro and Gérard Depardieu, and featuring Donald Sutherland, Burt Lancaster, Hayden Sterling, and Alida Valli, the sheer abundance of talent is tremendous. Outside the world of cinema, Bertolucci draws heavy inspiration from Italian painter Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo in his visual staging and composition of rural Italian country sides, even using his most famous work, ‘The Fourth Estate’, as a backdrop to the opening credits. As the camera slowly zooms out from the face of the man in its centre, we slowly grasp the extraordinary scope of the workers’ strike behind him, and Bertolucci immediately lays out the film’s socialist politics which will dominate every aspect of his characters’ lives.

The effect that this radical movement has on the two friends on either side of the class divide becomes the primary point of tension in 1900, building brilliant form in the constant counterpoints of privilege and poverty. Both their grandfathers, Alfredo the Elder and Leo, lead their respective divisions of the estate, one being the kind padrone who owns the land and the other being the spokesman of the peasants. Like their descendants, there is a mutual respect between them only barely concealed by Leo’s show of disdain, though when their grandchildren end up sharing the same birthday, little can hide the shared joy they feel.

Before de Niro and Depardieu take over the parts of Alfredo and Olmo, we spend a full hour and a half in their childhoods, observing how completely opposite circumstances drive them closer together. In the large hall where all the workers eat, the food is plain, the community is strong, and Olmo is condemned by his own father to always be a bastard, “son of peasants, doomed to hunger.” His lowly station in life is as ingrained his identity as Alfredo’s entitlement, whose patrician feast of cooked frogs in his family’s countryside manor stands in direct contrast. Storaro relishes using the murals of flowers and plants as stunning backdrops to the aristocratic drama, where Alfredo is disciplined by his parents and distanced from any warmth. The dynamic camera movements that float down from ceilings and through walls instil both scenes with equal liveliness though, and ultimately bring both boys to each other in search of companionship away from adults.

The match cut which jumps forward in time to the end of World War I lands with immense power, as the interior of a train carrying boys with red flags is darkened by a tunnel, before emerging again in an almost identically blocked image – though this time with de Niro’s Alfredo at the centre, surrounded by black-uniformed soldiers. The visual impact is huge, immediately sapping Bertolucci’s costumes and scenery of the rich colours which defined the film’s cinematography up until now. The bright country landscapes of verdant grass, thriving livestock, and golden sunlight fall away to bleak war camps, grey fog, and withering trees reflected in the large, silver lake, accompanying the rise of Italy’s fascist paramilitary group, the Blackshirts.

It is a very different world to the one Olmo and Alfredo grew up in. The patriarchs of both families have passed, leaving Alfredo’s cruel father, Giovanni, to take over the role of padrone, who in turn hires the psychopathic Attila to replace Olmo’s father as foreman. In place of the warmth that both Lancaster and Hayden brought to their roles, we instead find Donald Sutherland’s toothy snarl, projecting a purely evil sadism out into the world that compensates for the lack of character complexity with sheer, brutish terror. Over the course of 1900, we will see him brutally headbutt a cat to death, swing a boy around a small room until his head caves in, and kill an elderly woman to take her property, each time getting away with it due to his powerful influence. Like Giovanni, he is sympathetic to the fascists taking over Italy and their hostility towards workers, though perhaps the most chilling part of it all is how easily Alfredo gives in to his will when he finally ascends to the role of padrone.

“The new fascist movement doesn’t want vengeance. We want order first. We are the new Crusaders, and we must instil courage in our youth.”

Within the context of interwar Italy, Attila thus becomes representative of a huge cultural and political shift taking place, not just exploiting workers, but also those in positions of power who are too weak-willed to stand against the tide of fascism. Frequently implied in this anti-union sentiment is the rising trend of automation, taking jobs from horses and labourers, and giving them to machines that never grow tired or protest conditions. As such, it is just as much in the gradual technological developments as it is the historical landmarks that Bertolucci illustrates the passage of time in 1900, consistently raising the stakes for Olmo and his fellow workers across all five hours of the film’s colossal run time.

It is fortunate that Bertolucci’s craft is so dauntingly impressive in moments like these, as the second half of 1900 tends to falter at times, denying Olmo’s wife Anita a proper death scene, resurrecting her later in a very brief appearance, and featuring some poor dubbing. This is an undeniably ambitious film though, and while it is dotted with flaws which hold it back from reaching the heights of his greatest work, The Conformist, Bertolucci’s compelling narrative and sweeping scope is more than worthy of huge admiration.

Like so many socialist-minded films before it, 1900 is especially captivating to watch in those scenes where masses of common people unite in huge demonstrations of worker rights, as Bertolucci makes the most of his epic canvas to stage scenes of immense hope and pride. As the Blackshirts come riding down towards Alfredo’s farm in one scene, he tracks his camera along a wave of peasant women lying flat on the ground, guarded from behind by the men waving sticks to block the soldiers’ path. Later on, Olmo and Anita lead a protest in the town square calling out the names of the men murdered by fascists, and are soon joined by an entire procession of fellow workers adorning their dark mourning clothes with splashes of red tied around their necks, showing solidarity for a cause the Blackshirts just can’t seem to quell.

For every victory though, there is a crushing defeat, as Alfredo’s final decision to fire Attila for attempting to sell off Olmo is followed by a purely evil retaliation. Before he departs the estate, he rounds up peasants behind barbed wire fences in the pouring rain and shoots them, leaving them to lie in the muddy ground. This is perhaps the most dour, colourless scene of the entire film – a far cry from the bright palettes from the prologue, which we are incidentally on the verge of returning to in marvellous bookends four or so hours apart.

In 1945, where we open and end the film, rebellion surges like a flash flood from the moment Mussolini’s death is joyously proclaimed, seeing the peasants wield the tools of their own subordination against the ruling class, Alfredo included. Held at gun point by a farm boy, de Niro’s gentle repetition of the assailant’s mutinous catchcry is at once quietly hopeful for the peasants’ future, and despairing for his own.

“Long live Stalin.”

Almost as if in response to the preceding scene of Attila’s cold-hearted murder some years earlier, a rainbow shines in the sky, marking a new beginning for a nation that has long lived under the cloud of a fascist dictatorship. The barbed wire fences which doomed them to his brutal massacre are torn down, slogans are painted over in blissful victory, and from beneath a giant red flag, Bertolucci filters sunlight that wraps the liberated peasants up in the colours of their socialist movement.

Such bright-eyed optimism is short-lived though, as with the arrival of new authorities calling the peasants to turn in their arms comes a recognition that the class struggle may never die. Olmo only saves Alfredo’s life by convincing them that the role of padrone is dead, and therefore their fight is done. Alfredo, however, knows better.

“The padrone is alive.”

In the now-empty courtyard, a pair of boys clash, much like Olmo and Alfredo did decades before. Sometime in the future, the two men, looking significantly older, continue to play fight in vineyards and along train tracks. By the end of 1900, Bertolucci’s bold artistic statement comes full circle on the patterns echoed throughout the lives of friends from opposing sides of society, landing the full weight of their intrinsic connection as operatically as the decades of Italian history it represents.

1900 is not currently streaming in Australia.

Nicolas Roeg | 2hr 19min

Perhaps the first thing we notice about David Bowie’s off-beat, androgynous alien, Newton, is how remarkably human he is. There is no suggestion of him being an extra-terrestrial in the title The Man Who Fell to Earth, nor do many of the people he comes across suspect that his biology is any different to theirs. In stark contradiction, the second thing we might realise is his innate, irreconcilable foreignness. With his mismatching eyes, blazing red hair, alternative fashion sense, and British accent setting him apart from the rest of New Mexico, the social concept of the ‘Other’ is manifested here as a lone, tangible figure. Though we get the odd glimpse of his true visage – a white, hairless figure with yellow eyes and vertical pupils – it is primarily Bowie’s natural, otherworldly presence which reveals the sheer distance between Newton and his Earthly surroundings, literalising the alienation felt by citizens of a material, modern world.

Quite unusually for the science-fiction genre, The Man Who Fell to Earth is not based on high-concept hypotheticals or dazzling production designs, but rather seeks to understand its central alien character from a sociological perspective, built through an eccentric array of montages, flashbacks, and cutaways. There is no surprise that this is the work of Nicolas Roeg, whose piecing together of disjointed visual fragments picks up where Jean-Luc Godard’s avant-garde editing left off, and goes on to assemble an image of existential isolation within maximalist environments.

Newton is further than ever from his home planet of sprawling, arid deserts, and though Roeg’s exotic mise-en-scene is notably bizarre with strange train-like hovels and a particularly striking spaceship interior of protruding, black cylinders, intricate world building is not the aim here. Instead, it is Earth that becomes the playground of our exploration, experienced through the eyes of an alien whose soul is torn between two worlds. Finding and bringing water back to his drought-stricken home planet is Newton’s goal here, and although he encounters an abundance of it when he first comes crashing down in a New Mexico lake, it doesn’t take long for him to get side-tracked. On Earth, this precious, life-giving resource is taken for granted, while the luxuries of television sets and alcohol tempt its people into escapist fantasies, paradoxically uniting them under an indulgent disconnection.

Newton is not impervious to this either. For all the wholesome facets of humanity he absorbs with an open mind, he equally keeps falling deeper into its cheap decadence, even going so far as to set up an entire room of television sets for maximum exposure to the outside world. Animal documentaries play next to comedy shows and old Hollywood movies, forming a kaleidoscopic backdrop of sorts behind his human lover, Mary Lou, as she furiously chastises him for his indulgence, and is ultimately drowned out by their incomprehensible noise.

Within Newton’s mind, this ability to perceive so much information at once is simultaneously a remarkable neurological gift and a crippling weakness, shifting his attention away from his original goal and bouncing it around splinters of memories, diversions, and worldly pleasures. Just as montages cut rapidly between the various images flickering across his television sets, so too do they tenderly unfold his new, settled life with Mary Lou, seeing them play together naked and seek out his home planet with a telescope. Red lens flares and camera zooms often unexpectedly punctuate these scenes too, developing a curiously agitated aesthetic that Roeg blends well with his mix of jump cuts and long, dreamy dissolves, pushing his violently jagged pacing to its limit. With several sequences displaying a skilful intercutting between locations, characters, and timelines to top this off, his bold exercise in avant-garde style and structure effectively matches the erratic mind of an alien who can barely settle on a single train of thought.

In this way, further connections are built between Newton’s culture and the one he is discovering on Earth, drawing surreal parallels between human and alien sex as vaguely common ground. Upon discovering her lover’s true identity, Mary Lou initiates awkward, passionless foreplay with him, though Newton’s mind can’t help drifting back to grotesque images of his species’ version of the act, seeing pale, extra-terrestrial bodies flipping around each other and drip with a viscous, white fluid. Through Roeg’s inventive collision of these sexual rituals, we understand how the differences between both races can be reconciled on a basic, biological level, and yet the moment that the truth of his identity comes light, there is no recovering the connection they shared before. As Mary Lou suffers a breakdown over this realisation, Roeg swaps out his regular lens for a fish-eye effect, briefly warping what was once a familiar space into a twisted, extra-terrestrial world.

Much like the ‘human zoo’ of 2001: A Space Odyssey where Dave spends the final years of his life, the stark, white room where Newton is ultimately captured and studied by scientists becomes a prison of sorts, passing several decades in what feels like minutes. Where Dave ages and eventually evolves into a new life form though, Newton’s fate as a perpetually youthful, unchanging being carries sadder implications. He continues to indulge in the alcohol and entertainment of the human world, and his contact lenses are even fused to his alien eyes by accident during one unfortunate operation, keeping him from appearing as his natural self ever again. Ultimately though, the lonely space he occupies between the two species is impossible to ignore. The title of Roeg’s film may suggest a science-fiction tale of great wonder, but with this ending, it describes a darker, more urgent social allegory – this is a man who could have been great, but fell to Earth’s worldly distractions, cheaply imitating a life he can never truly embrace.

The Man Who Fell to Earth is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.