1980s – Scene by Green

Jean de Florette & Manon of the Spring (1986)

Claude Berri | 2hr 2min & 1hr 54min

In a rural French village, set nine years apart, a pair of fables unfold around two blocked springs.

The first is located on the property of cheerful hunchback Jean, who has come from the city with his family to start a new life as a farmer. Seeking to claim the land’s water as their own though, neighbours César and Ugolin have covered it with cement and soil, keeping him from ever knowing of its existence. Now all they must do is sit back and watch, as Jean’s struggle against the elements pushes him to the brink of destitution.

*The first of two springs, promising prosperity to an uncle and nephew who plot the downfall of their new neighbour.*

The second spring is the town’s main water supply, hidden in the crevices of a nearby mountain. When Jean’s grown daughter Manon stumbles across it almost a decade later, she immediately acts on the resentment she has harboured ever since her father was driven to an early grave, blocking its flow with clay. The plot to destroy Jean may have been committed by two neighbours, but the entire community was well-aware of it, and thus they are all responsible for his untimely passing. If water is the source of all life, then it is no surprise that its suppression inevitably leads to needless deaths in both instances, formally mirroring the tragedies of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring against each other. Together, they take on an epic scope, as Claude Berri plays out the Shakespearean fall of two feuding families through greed, scorn, and betrayal.

*The second of two springs, hidden away in a rocky crevice – a chance for Manon to exact vengeance on those who indirectly killed her father.*

Based on the two-part volume novel ‘The Water of the Hills’ and shot in back-to-back productions, it is tough to consider these films as anything but a single work, strengthened by the formal connections that stretch across their conjoined narratives. César and Ugolin are our main characters in both, taking on the mantle of antiheroes from the moment they accidentally kill their neighbour Pique-Bouffigue in an altercation over his spring. Perhaps there is a bit of contempt here too, especially given that César was once in love with Pique-Bouffigue’s sister, Florette, who abandoned him many years ago.

If this is indeed the case, then it would also be safe to assume that César holds a similar disdain towards Florette’s disabled, newly-arrived son, Jean, thereby adding a second layer of motivation to ruin his life. So bitter is César that for the two years the hunchback lives on that farm, the old man cannot even bring himself to meet him face to face, instead choosing to watch his suffering play out from the comfortable distance of his home. While his nephew Ugolin directly implicates himself by cruelly denying Jean the use of his mule, it is César whose heart has been corrupted by resentment, remaining all too happy to sacrifice his neighbour’s wellbeing to accomplish his own goal of starting a carnation farm.

*Picturesque landscapes of southeastern France, basking in the golden glow of natural sunlight.*

*Lovely depth of field in Berri’s compositions, layering his actors to separate the town from its pariahs.*

*Gorgeous, scenic farmlands composed with affection and adoration for the region.*

The beauty of 1910s France’s sun-dappled pastures and settlements does well to mask the malice which resides in its seemingly humble farmers, as Berri crafts astounding visuals across both parts of this duology, basking in the golden glow of the countryside’s natural light. His establishing shots are astounding, setting quaint cottages against vast backdrops of majestic mountains, lush hills and valleys provide fertile ground for locals to cultivate. From inside their darkened homes, Berri often cuts out windows of light through which neighbours often spy on each other, though these interiors also frequently carry through that outside warmth through dim oil lamps and small fires. Across the four hours that Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring unfold over, Berri delivers enough painterly compositions to hang in a gallery, taking advantage of his widescreen frame to stage actors across superbly detailed period sets and landscapes.

*Excellent framing from tiny windows in darkened rooms, often peering out to spy on Jean and his family.*

*Delicate lighting from fires and oil lamp, weaving the golden palette through interiors as an extension of the sunny exteriors.*

When the local weather rears its nasty head though, Berri is not afraid to shed a harsher light upon these environments, testing the endurance of Jean as he struggles to grow produce in unpredictable conditions. When a dust storm strikes, Berri lays a musty, yellow filter across the lens, while winter conceals the land’s green and gold hues with pristine white blankets of snow. When clouds gather, the rain is always either too heavy for Jean’s vegetables, or taunting him from a distance as it falls several miles away. “There’s nobody up there!” he angrily swears to the sky, but each time he is ready to give up, he picks himself up again.

*Berri uses a musty, yellow filter to represent a dust storm.*

*The land is stripped of its warmth when winter falls, developing a refreshing beauty through its pristine white blankets of snow.*

*Rain falls in the distance, but misses Jean’s farm – fate seems to conspire against this tragic figure who is brought to his knees and curses the heavens like Job.*

For César, this resilience is endlessly frustrating, though from the outside we can’t help but admire the bright optimism of Gérard Depardieu’s performance. His spirit is indomitable, working against every obstacle thrown his way right up until he is fatally struck in the head by a rock during his attempt to build a well. The incident may be an accident, but César and Ugolin know very well that the guilt lies with them – as does Manon when she discovers them unplugging the blocked spring right after they purchase the property. “I hereby name you King of Carnations,” César sardonically proclaims, baptising Ugolin with water from the earth, though soon enough the young florist will wear this title with great shame.

*A baptism using the plugged up water, selfishly revelling in the fortune that Jean’s death has granted them.*

When Manon cuts off the town’s water supply nine years later in Manon of the Spring, the community is quick to lay blame on César and Ugolin – not for blocking it themselves, but for provoking God’s righteous anger. Where Berri’s staging once isolated the hunchbacked farmer from the derisive villagers, it is now the uncle and nephew who are ostracised, shrinking into small, lonely figures. Church attendance numbers surge with panicked locals suddenly “full of faith and repentance,” while the priest himself implicitly directs his homily towards those two men who everyone quietly recognises as the incidental culprits behind Jean’s death.

“I once read in a secular work a Greek tragedy, about the city of Thebes struck by a violent plague because of the king’s crimes. So I ask myself: is there a criminal among us?”

*An older Manon returns to the town nine years later, turning the tables on her father’s killers with a sense of poetic justice.*

*These villagers’ lives are deeply entwined with their faith, but only in troubled times – surely the fountain running dry is a punishment from God*.

*César and Ugolin now find themselves isolated in Berri’s blocking, taking Jean’s place as the loathsome outsiders.*

The feelings that Ugolin begins developing for Manon only further propagates his shame, though only on the most selfish level. Unlike César, he is a fool who lacks total self-awareness, and thus cannot comprehend the concept of regret or social decorum. His advances are awkward and obsessive, only deepening Manon’s disgust towards him, while she in turn grows closer to young schoolteacher Bernard. When Ugolin finally takes his life in despair, Berri does not even grant him the grace of our full attention, relegating his meagre, hanging body to the background of a long shot.

The return of the town’s water comes too late to save Ugolin, not that Manon particularly cares. The timing is impeccable, as it is only a short while after she unplugs the spring that the local fountain leaps back to life during a religious procession, seemingly reviving it through prayer. God’s love once again shines down on the village, felt by all except for César who must not only confront his grief, but also a final, devastating twist of the knife.

*Tragedy tears through this epic fable, killing Ugolin with little fanfare as his body is revealed here hanging in the distance.*

*Prayers and processions bring the town’s water supply back to life – or at least this is the easiest explanation for the villagers.*

Jean was not Florette’s child by another man, he learns from an old acquaintance visiting town, but rather the son she bore from César himself. The tragedy is heartbreaking, though not so much as to overshadow the irony of his self-destruction, wrought by arrogance and bitterness. “Out of sheer spite, I never went near him,” he mournfully reflects in his final letter.

“I never knew his voice, or his face. I never saw his eyes, that might have been like his mother’s. I only saw his hump and the pain I caused him.”

As César’s voiceover expresses real regret for the first time, Berri’s camera gracefully floats by the items in his bedroom. An envelope addressed to Manon, containing his confession and intent to leave his estate to her. A pair of spectacles, folded neatly in front. An old family photo, depicting the blood ties he has tainted through the ghastly act of filicide. Finally, we find César himself combing his hair in the mirror, preparing to lay down for the last time. Like Oedipus unknowingly slaying his father or King Lear’s hubris destroying his children, César joins history’s lineage of tragically flawed patriarchs, inadvertently cursing their own families as fate’s ultimate punishment. The stage upon which this plays out in Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring is not located within the grand halls of historical power, but as Berri paints out in the warm, intimate scenery of rural France, tragedy may topple pride in even the humblest of settings.

*A delicate camera movement drifting through César’s room as he prepares to die, intensively studying the remnants of his life left behind.*

*This tragedy deals its final blow upon the patriarch of the family, his life ending in ruin due to his own selfish actions.*

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring are currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and SBS On Demand, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV and YouTube.

Intervista (1987)

Federico Fellini | 1hr 45min

At Cinecittà Studios where Federico Fellini shot his most famous films, the ageing Italian director is preparing for his next endeavour. This is to be his adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel ‘Amerika’, though on the outer, self-aware layer of Intervista which recognises this whole enterprise as fiction, the substance of the source material barely matters. While buxom actresses desperately compete for the coveted role of Brunelda, Fellini entreats a Japanese television crew looking to report back home on his production, and old friends unexpectedly reunite to reminisce on their glory days. There is work to be done in this bustling film studio, but over the decades it has also become a second home for him to relax and play in, like “a fortress, or perhaps an alibi” he slyly remarks.

Just as Fellini inserts himself as the main character, so too are the soundstages and backlots of Cinecittà depicted authentically for perhaps the first time in its long history. Intervista careens almost directly into documentary territory here, pulling the curtain back even further than 8 ½ or Roma, only to intermittently expose the surrealism which has bled from his art into his life. These blurred lines are where he is most comfortable as a filmmaker, though as Fellini’s illustrious career begins to wind down into more modest projects, it is clear that his once-tight grasp on cinematic and narrative chaos has slackened.

There is not a whole let of sense to the structure of this piece, gliding aimlessly between scenes of movie productions and reconstructed memories without great formal purpose. Echoes of 8 ½ manifest in dreams of flying above the studio, but Intervista is far more compelling when it is paving new ground, casting actor Sergio Rubini as a vague blend of himself and a younger Fellini first coming to the studio in 1940. The pink dressing room where he interviews matinee idol Katya is a stunningly uniform set piece of roses, drapes, and chaise lounges, though he is far more entranced by the chaos of the studio itself, watching giant sets roll through showers of white petals and sparkling dancers take centre stage in a gaudy historical epic. Suddenly, a trunk falls off the head of a fake elephant, sending the director into a hysterical argument with his crew who begin toppling all the other cut-outs – until the older Fellini cuts them off. “You were supposed to knock over the first elephant, not the third,” he proclaims, revealing this entire sequence to be yet another layer of fiction within a film he is making about his first visit to Cinecittà.

It is a seamless transition he conducts here, not so much forcing us to question where the line is between Fellini’s life and stories than to accept them as one. Especially when Marcello Mastroianni drops in with a dramatic entrance as Mandrake the Magician, Fellini pays sentimental tribute to the cherished relationships he has built over the years through film, gathering up his old collaborator and Rubini into a car to visit Anita Ekberg at her mansion.

The Swedish actress only ever featured in one Fellini film, but as shown here, the impact that her famous Trevi Fountain scene with Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita has had on their lives may be equal to its high standing in Italian culture. When Mastroianni magically summons a white sheet at her house party, the two wistfully recreate their old dance as shadows against its surface, accompanied by Nino Rota’s instantly recognisable score. Afterwards, their eyes turn to a projection of the original Trevi Fountain scene itself, smiling and tearing up with unspoken nostalgia. All at once, we bear witness to the chemistry they shared as attractive young film stars, and how it has strengthened through years of mutual respect and adoration.

That this is the moment from Fellini’s career which he chooses to directly evoke in Intervista doesn’t just speak to his pride in its artistic brilliance. Above all else, the relationships that formed behind the scenes hold a timeless value to these artists, justifying all the pains and struggles that come with their profession. It is dismaying to see modern apartments buildings encroach on this studio lot that once hosted the grand sets of Ben-Hur and Cleopatra, yet the sad state of the industry does little to dampen the spirits of cast and crew who band together for the sake of entertainment.

This is the true joy of filmmaking, Fellini posits, and it is on full display in the absurd final scenes of Intervista when Amerika finally enters production. Out in a muddy backlot of scaffolding and cardboard cutouts, an actress complains about her cemetery scene being cut, while a crewmember sheepishly gathers up the lightweight gravestones. Suddenly, mounted stage lights begin to explode from the drizzling rain, which soon escalates into a storm and sends everyone running beneath a small tarp shelter. As a jazz band in the back of a truck plays cheery tunes into the night, cast and crew entertain themselves with games, songs, and conversation, before falling asleep in cramped, uncomfortable positions.

Unbeknownst to them, standing atop a nearby hill the next morning is a tribe of Native Americans on horseback, carrying television antennae as weapons. Their attack on the makeshift shelter suddenly transforms the scene into a Western, only to be halted by Fellini’s call to cut. “We’re wrapped it!” the crew yells. “The film’s over!”

Once again, Intervista completely blindsides us with its invisible layers of metafiction, dwelling so long in what we assume to be reality that we fail to spot the illusion. At this point at least, Fellini is done hiding his intentions from us. “The film should end here,” his voiceover considers. “In fact, it’s over.” But not before reflecting on a criticism that he has often heard levelled at his stories.

“I hear the words of an old producer of mine. ‘What? Without the faintest hope or ray of sunshine? Give me at least a day of sunshine,’ he would beg when viewing my films. A ray of sunshine? Well, I don’t know. Let’s try.”

Fellini’s films were far from the bleakest of his contemporaries, especially with Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre in contention, though these ambiguous final words are justified to an extent. Just as he revelled in entertainment and spectacle, so too did their cynical hollowness often rise to the surface in his films. The ambiguity of this ending sees Intervista dissipate without much gravity, but within it there is at least a sense of hope. “Take one,” a clapper loader announces in the final shot, commencing a new project. Perhaps it is Fellini’s, finally delivering that ray of sunshine he never quite mustered, or perhaps it belongs to another director carrying on his legacy. Either way, the lively spirit of Cinecittà Studios and the Italian film industry it houses lives on, long past their historic, illustrious golden age.

Intervista is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.

And the Ship Sails On (1983)

Federico Fellini | 2hr 8min

The passengers that gather aboard cruise ship Gloria N. to scatter the ashes of world-renowned opera singer Edmea Tetua are an eclectic mix of European aristocrats. The obese Grand Duke of Harzock is present with his blind sister, a Princess who claims she can see the colour of sounds and voices – besides the General’s, which is drolly described as “a void.” The Count of Bassano is here as well, a reclusive, obsessive fan of Edmea’s who has transformed his chamber into a shrine, and dresses as her ghost to frighten those disrespectfully trying to summon her spirit in a séance. The most dominant demographic by far though are those industry professionals who have come to commemorate their colleague’s passing. Singers, conductors, musicians, and theatre managers have no inhibitions when it comes to showing off their talents on this journey, and consequently expose egos as large as the vessel they travel on.

As for our guide through the vast ensemble of And the Ship Sails On, Federico Fellini gives us Orlando, a jovial Italian journalist with a proud dedication to his role of narrator. In the ship’s dining hall of lavish golden décor and architecture, he addresses the camera as both an outside observer and a passenger, while being pushed to the edge of the room by wait staff demanding he stand out of their way. This is a historic moment, he is sure to inform us, though one that is steeped in the absurdity of a ruling class that is no longer answerable to the conventions of mainland society. Here, they amplify each other’s most obnoxious qualities, the singers jealously competing to win the admiration of the crew in the boiler room while nobles squabble over the trivial semantics of metaphors.

This is an environment of total indulgence and pretence, constructed within an artificial world that Fellini’s narrative bookends expose as his own arbitrary cinematic invention. The recreation of silent cinema which opens And the Ship Sails On mockingly evokes the 1914 setting, using expository intertitles at the docks where characters board the cruise liner, before sound and colour slowly fade in with the reverential boarding of Edmea’s ashes. An even more bombastic shattering of the fourth wall also occurs in the film’s final minutes, where Fellini’s camera tracks behind the scenes of his marvellous set to reveal the crew, technical equipment, and hydraulic jacks rocking the entire ship, stripping away all illusion.

These are Fellini’s attempts to undercut the pomp and circumstance of the voyage, and yet the latter especially comes off as erratic, eroding the formal cohesion of the piece. Where And the Ship Sails On more successfully peels back the layers of this world is in its rich theatrics, revealing the ocean in long shots to be little more than a glittery, blue tarp, and the ship itself to be a miniature model set against painted backdrops. The interiors are equally elaborate, particularly within the golden dining hall where towering candelabras obstruct shots around crowded tables, while even Fellini’s editing resigns his characters to their stations in life. The manic fast-motion of cooks rapidly preparing food decelerates into mechanical slow-motion when it is finally served upon the guests’ plates, whereupon they raise glasses and spoons to their mouths in mindless unison. Without a single line of dialogue, Fellini draws a firm divide between the classes of passengers upon the Gloria N., underscoring the ludicrously dissimilar paces of both lifestyles.

Only when Serbian refugees are rescued and taken aboard in the film’s final act does unity unexpectedly manifest upon this ship, and for some time it would even seem that the optimist in Fellini has won out over the cynic. The blocking here is handsomely staged upon the deck, particularly as celebrations erupt with food and dance shared between passengers from diverse backgrounds. For one blissful night, all pretensions of sophistication are thrown overboard, along with concerns of the very real danger which these shipwrecked outcasts are fleeing from – though the onset of World War I’s geopolitical tensions can only remain at bay for so long.

The arrival of an Austro-Hungarian ship demanding the return of these refugees snaps the passengers of Gloria N. back to reality with jarring whiplash, softened only by Orlando’s hopeful imagining of what might have unfolded had this newfound solidarity also inspired courage. “No, we won’t give them up!” the ship’s singers belt in anthemic unison, using their art to make a bold, powerful statement.

“Death to arrogance,

No monster shall overcome us,

Violence will not conquer us!”

Fellini’s rapid dissolution of this surreal daydream is bleak, and devastatingly inevitable. “The battleship was compelled to arrest the Serbs. It was an order from the Austrian-Hungarian police,” Orlando matter-of-factly informs us, though the conflict does not end here. The Gloria N. was not merely famous for its commemorative voyage, we learn, but for the many lives lost in its catastrophic sinking.

“It’s almost impossible to reconstruct the precise sequence of events,” Orlando continues to monologue as he prepares to evacuate the ship, yet Fellini is not so elusive when it comes to the turning point in this chain of events. In climactic slow-motion, a young Serb refugee lobs a handmade bomb through the porthole of the enemy ship, setting off a chain reaction of events that ends in historic catastrophe. Maybe it was carried in a moment of furious passion, or perhaps it was a premediated terrorist act, Orlando broodingly considers, before his arbitrary musings are swiftly cut off.

All of a sudden, the gentle rocking of the camera which has persisted through the entire film escalates into a formidable lurch, sending fine furniture sliding to the other end of the dining room and effectively destroying these fragile icons of high society. Maestro Albertini conducts the operatic underscore of his own demise upon the upper deck, while The Count of Bassano weeps in his flooded room down below, watching film reels of the deceased opera singer who he will soon join in death.

Still, And the Ship Sails On is far from the mournful tragedy of Titanic, instead drawing a closer comparison to Ruben Östlund’s more recent nautical class satire Triangle of Sadness. Much like his stubbornly upbeat ensemble, Fellini remains cheery right through to the end, his attitude even bordering on careless as he feebly wavers between a few different conclusions without totally committing to any single one. It is quite understandable that he has some fondness for these outrageous caricatures, given that he has essentially instilled them with pieces of his own vanity, though he is also not one to wistfully mourn their losses. After all, within this dreamy microcosm of self-obsessed aristocrats, it is far more enlightening, enjoyable, and enamouring to revel in the macabre absurdity of their splendid misfortune.

And the Ship Sails On is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

City of Women (1980)

Federico Fellini | 2hr 19min

The outlandish matriarchal society that middle-aged philanderer Snàporaz wanders through in City of Women is not quite the grand feminist statement that one might expect, but rather a self-deprecating cinematic tool for Federico Fellini to pick at his own masculine insecurities. The women who occupy this secluded region of Italy are militant caricatures, calling the missionary position a “sociocultural oppression” and claiming wrinkles are a male invention, though they are specifically the type of radicals that one might invent as a straw man for the sake of ridicule and derision. As Fellini reveals in its closing scene, they are little more than figments of Snàporaz’s unconscious mind as he naps on a long-distance train journey, pieced together from real women travelling with him in true The Wizard of Oz-style.

Still, every so often, a sharp blade of truth slices through Snàporaz’s uneasy fantasy. He has smirked at and talked down to the attendees of the feminist convention that he has stumbled across, but he can only remain hidden in the crowd for so long. The speaker to draw him into the spotlight is the woman who he followed into this mysterious city, and now as she addresses her audience, she eloquently raises him upon a pedestal of judgement.

“Our efforts here have been useless, sisters. The eyes of that man, presently among us with that look of feigned respectability, of one who desires to know us, understand us because he insists it can better our relationship. We are only a pretext for another of his crude animalistic fables. Another neurotic song and dance act. We’re his chorus, his hula hula girls, his fiends. We enhance his show with our passion, with our suffering.”

If Marcello Mastroianni is once again performing the role of Fellini’s surrogate here, then it is plain to see the self-criticism in this passage. As a filmmaker, he recognises his own tendency towards the objectifying male gaze, while as a husband, the guilt of his affairs weighs enormously on his conscience. Only someone who has been inside his mind could design a nightmare so specifically targeted to these doubts, and only Fellini could do so with the edge of dark, chaotic surrealism present in Snàporaz’s emasculating journey through City of Women.

The visual magnificence which once guided us through the absurd dreamscapes of Satyricon and Casanova is far more inconsistent here than we are used to with Fellini, though his most familiar stylistic trademarks still make an impact. The zooming, panning, and drifting camera movements through crowds of people are stifling, while imposing set designs totally consume Snàporaz, defining each episode in this narrative with renewed visions of Kafkaesque madness and self-reflection. As he slowly descends a giant slide in a lonely amusement park, he watches memories of his childhood crushes pass by in strange exhibitions, and in a miserable, grey courtyard of portraits and candles he finds himself speechless before a panel of female judges.

The manor of Dr. Xavier Katzone where Snàporaz seeks refuge is the set piece where Fellini’s absurd spectacle lifts off though, encompassing the bewildered outsider in an eclectic mix of patterns, textiles, and phallic sculptures. Even the spires on the fence outside were designed with that resemblance in mind, the doctor explains, consciously rebelling against his matriarchal rulers. Among the more peculiar displays here too is the long, arched corridor lined with photos of every woman he has slept with, each individually lighting up and playing explicit audio of their encounters.

In effect, Snàporaz’s vanity takes physical form in Dr. Katzone, whose manor is essentially a shrine dedicated to himself. True to his ostentatious arrogance, the doctor even hosts a celebration of his ten thousandth sexual conquest that evening, complete with a giant cake and enough candles to burn down the entire building. Fellini continues ramping up the absurdity through this sequence, lingering on one guest’s party trick of sucking up coins into her vagina aided by some reverse photography, but once again the insanity comes to a halt when Snàporaz comes face-to-face with his own shortcomings – this time manifesting as his ex-wife, Elena. The bitterness in their quarrel is only drowned by a shared sorrow over their festered love, as she leaves him to wonder whether there may be some possibility of redemption in his future.

“There may still be a chance, if you wanted. Or are we too old to be young again, you and I?”

Perhaps this is why when Snàporaz is eventually put on trial for his masculinity and dismissed to go free, he nevertheless chooses to face his mysterious punishment anyway, following a corridor into a boxing ring with a giant, stone tower in the centre. “Shake her, break her, find her, lose her, open her, close her, love her, kill her, remember her, forget her,” the crowd of women chant, encouraging him to climb it and make love to the supposedly ideal woman at the top. Halfway up the ladder though, he is not so certain that this is necessarily what he desires.

“If you existed, would you be my reward or punishment? Please, let me go. Have mercy. Get me out of this mess. What good am I to you? I don’t need you, and vice versa. Could it be we’ve already met but that I don’t recognise you? My first love? No, you must be somebody new, someone born out me.”

At the top he finds only Donatella, the sole woman to have shown him kindness in this city, and a hot air balloon that has taken her form. Perhaps this is his escape then, Snàporaz half-correctly presumes, before she loads a machine gun and sends him plummeting to his death.

Back on the train, he jolts awake. “You’ve been mumbling and moaning for two hours,” the woman he previously followed off elucidates. The reveal would almost seem like a copout if the seeds of this journey were not so evidently planted within Snàporaz’s subconscious, sprouting into deliberations that he may either disregard as pesky nightmares or carry with him into the real world. As the train hurtles into a tunnel though, Mastroianni does not grant such clear answers, leaving us with an expression that could be either peaceful acceptance or smug complacency. Clearly the layers of insecurity and madness which City of Women is founded upon are slippery for any man as conceited as Snàporaz or even Fellini himself to grasp, composing an imperfect yet compelling portrait of masculinity threatened only by its haughty, self-destructive hubris.

City of Women can be purchased on Amazon.

Out of Africa (1985)

Sydney Pollack | 2hr 41min

For Baroness Karen von Blixen, the vast plains and farming communities of Africa are a liberating escape. The Danish aristocracy she was born into is one of cold conservatism and rigid social conventions, necessitating a marriage to Baron Bror Blixen – not her first choice, given that he is the brother of the man who spurned her romantic approach, but a satisfactory match nonetheless. The ranch he has purchased in East Africa is to be their new residence, and in time will expose the suffocating confines of her previous home in Europe, as a rejuvenating enlightenment unfolds through meditative voiceovers destined to one day be recorded in the pages of her memoir Out of Africa.

For big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton however, Africa is not merely an escape when the pressures of the world grow too intense. From the moment he arrived as a young man, there was nowhere else he could have possibly lived. These grasslands and savannahs are his home, not so much soothing his restless soul than embodying the untamed zest for life that has existed inside him since birth. It is clear to see how the romance between Karen and Denys blossoms in their mutual appreciation for this environment and its surrounding culture, yet this subtle difference is not an easy one to overcome. Just as this land of primal beauty defies the influence of its colonisers, so too does Denys resist the expectations of domesticity imposed by European tradition, and its attempts to impose arbitrary structures on life’s natural order.

*The frozen landscapes of Denmark open Karen’s story, and its severe aesthetic couldn’t be more juxtaposed against the warm, earthy scenery of Africa.*

*Pollack is evidently a huge David Lean admirer, composing landscapes that follow on from Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.*

*A rustic beauty to Pollack’s mise-en-scène, held together by ropes, wood, and tattered fabric*.

Set against the 1910s colonial backdrop of the nation soon to be officially recognised as Kenya, there are no two ways around Karen’s romanticisation of a disruptive, traumatic era in the history of the region, yet there is little else one can expect from the sentimental reminiscences of a Danish noblewoman. Though she labours alongside Kikuyu workers on her coffee plantation, she lives in a bubble of idyllic bliss distant from their hardships, gracefully delineated through the entwining of her lyrical narration with Sydney Pollack’s impressionistic editing. Long dissolves weave a dreamy elegance through scene transitions, and gentle montages formally bridge gaps in time between each episode in her life as she poetically reflects on her deep connection to the land, persisting even during her brief return home to Denmark. Naturally, this development unfolds purely through voiceover, as the visuals effectively keep us present with her distracted heart and mind in Africa.

*Pollack’s work with silhouettes and natural light is jaw-dropping, making up many of the film’s strongest compositions.*

*Dreamy long dissolves create new images, leading to implicit connections as Denys is surrounded with fire.*

The impact of these montages are only magnified by Pollack’s vibrant photography of Kenya’s expansive vistas, imprinting silhouettes of men and animals against hazy, red sunsets, and composing establishing shots from its dry desert scenery with a picturesque grandeur. The period production design of 1910s colonial Africa is certainly a fine accomplishment too, capturing Europe’s attempt to maintain a semblance of noble sophistication as they impose their highbrow culture on such rugged landscapes, though Out of Africa rises to even greater stylistic heights when Denys finally invites Karen aboard his biplane. Even the film’s greatest detractors cannot deny the raw power of this sequence, gliding through aerial shots of flamingos flocking across lakes, wildebeest herds galloping through plains, and waterfalls cascading into lush green forests. John Barry’s grand orchestral score reaches its dynamic peak here too, evocatively recapitulating the film’s main theme which, like the plane itself, continues ascending until it reaches a scintillating climax.

*The biplane flight is brilliantly shot, edited, and scored, revelling in the beauty of Africa from a fresh perspective in its aerial shots.*

The irony that underlies this scene’s long shots sets in with a mournful realisation – our appreciation of Africa’s staggering beauty only increases the further up we fly, with the scenery eventually disappearing altogether once we are above the clouds. These stunning landscapes can be remotely admired, but never fully embraced by an outsider like Karen, and through this conceit Out of Africa develops an eloquent metaphor for her own relationship with Denys. The nostalgic subtext of her narration tenderly illustrates this yearning, reflecting on just how much her love for both the man and his habitat has magnified from a distance, while Meryl Streep’s astounding emulation of the real Karen von Blixen’s Danish accent imbues her contemplations with an almost musical quality.

*No doubt there’s also some John Ford here with the framing of horizons, blocking, and patterns in unusual natural features – painterly mise-en-scène.*

If there is any regret expressed in these voiceovers, then it comes with full understanding that there was never any possible long-term relationship between Karen nor Denys that would have satisfied both parties. She requires stability following her divorce from Bror, yet Denys makes it abundantly clear that he does not wish to be tied down to any oppressive institution that might potentially tear him away from the wild whims of his heart. As such, their passionate romance begins to fade into memory, and is soon definitively buried with Denys’ body after a tragic biplane accident. “He brought us joy, and we loved him well,” Karen dolefully eulogises at his funeral. As she gazes out over the spectacular view from his grave though, she knows she cannot lay claim to his heart.

“He was not ours. He was not mine.”

*A fitting location for Denys’ grave, overlooking the African prairie that he had such a kinship with – lush with greenery and teeming with wildlife.*

If Africa and Denys are one in Karen’s mind, then the fire which destroys her farm and sends her back home to Denmark is essentially analogous with her lover’s death. As she quietly wanders among its people and terrains for the last time, her voiceover delivers the concluding passage of her memoir, romantically pondering what remnants of their relationship might remain after she has departed.

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughing the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I have had on? Or will the children invent a game in which my name is? Or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me? Or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

*The death of Denys formally aligns with the destruction of her farm, both equally bringing her life in Africa to a close.*

Karen understands that to revere a land as incomprehensibly vast and complex as Africa is to also realise that it will never admire her back, yet through her memory of Denys, Out of Africa preserves a vestige of hope. With her greatest love laid to rest in its rugged wilderness, Pollack’s exquisite final shot points to the remnant of her presence that eternally lingers with his spirit – the respectful, unassuming humility of an outsider, freely exchanging material possession for a divine connection to the Earth, to humanity, and to one’s own mortal soul.

Out of Africa is currently streaming on Binge, is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video, and is available to purchase on Amazon.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

Terry Gilliam | 2hr 6min

If Baron Munchausen’s tales of adventuring across oceans, into volcanoes, and through outer space are true, then he may very well belong among the greatest of all heroes. If the flamboyant, swashbuckling explorer is a liar, then he must be the greatest fraud to walk the Earth. If we are to submit to Terry Gilliam’s whimsical view of history and legend as one and the same however, then the difference is entirely negligible. After all, why shouldn’t one of modern Europe’s greatest spinner of yarns stand next to such icons as Odysseus and Heracles, purely based on the awesome wonder that he inspires in the commonfolk?

This is an especially rare talent in the war-torn city of corrupt bureaucrats that the Baron wanders into one Wednesday in the Age of Reason, taking the stage from a theatrical troupe reenacting his grand escapades so that he may correct their inaccuracies. From there, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen transcends the notion of storytelling as mere entertainment, and blurs the boundaries dividing reality and fiction with all the spirited panache of its titular unreliable narrator. So invisible is this margin that is not marked by any sort of cut or dissolve, but simply rather a slick camera movement transitioning from the stage into the ageing voyager’s story, and of course back again when it is complete. With a pair of simple dollies, life and imagination are thus delicately connected through a single line of continuity.

*A marvellous introduction to the real Baron Munchausen a shadow of his giant, distinctive nose being cast over a poster promoting reenactments of his famous tall tales.*

*John Neville is devilishly charming as Baron Munchausen, brushing off every threat thrown his way through sheer confidence, charisma, and luck.*

For Terry Gilliam, this playful mythologising is a natural extension of his work in Monty Python, ludicrously undercutting the notion of historical truth by exposing the amusing shortcomings of those who were at its centre. Wordplay, wit, and satire are still very much present in the dialogue, but it is only in this period after the comedy troupe’s breakup that he is also free to explore his magnificent stylistic ambition, formally matching majestic visuals to his farcical storytelling. It certainly helps as well that he is drawing on cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno’s experience shooting some of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti’s most extravagantly beautiful films, and using it here to capture a vibrantly expressionistic world steeped in manic surrealism. Together, Gilliam and Rotunno design their frames with an eccentric precision, often using a wide-angle lens to capture odd obstructions, abstract shapes, and staggered blocking of actors within a vast depth of field.

*A combination of extraordinary production design and staging in this shot of the Grand Turk’s harem, commencing the Baron’s grand story of heroic adventures.*

*Gilliam designs the frame with bodies staggered through the space, framing those in the midground with the slanted body of the Baron’s companion in the foreground.*

*Painterly compositions of heavy artifice, divorced entirely from reality.*

Though the real world is handsomely mounted as a lush framing device, Gilliam’s real visual talents emerge when we enter the Ottoman palace of cocky adventurer’s first tale, cartoonishly patterned with large stripes. There, he wagers his life on a bet that he only barely wins with the help of his magical companions, the super speedy Berthold and uncannily accurate marksman Gustavo. When invited to take his winnings from the Great Sultan’s treasury, strongman Albrecht helps in carrying away its entire contents on his back, while Gustavus wards off the Ottoman army with his powerful breath.

*An absolute dedication to maximalism in the cluttered mise-en-scène, dominating the characters with the sheer extravagance of their surroundings.*

*Creatively unconventional framing as the Baron stands for execution – with a giant hand ready to catch his rolling hand.*

Later, the Baron makes his way into outer space via a hot air balloon made solely out of ladies’ knickers, where he sails across a desert of lunar dust and meets the giant, floating heads of the King and Queen of the Moon. The silvery surfaces present here strike a contrast against the fiery red core of Mt Etna where the Baron encounters Roman god Vulcan, just as they are both visually distinct from the deep blue lighting inside the monstrous sea creature that swallows him whole. According to Gilliam’s design, each new setting is its own world with its own rules, manifesting an imagination so wholly detached from reality that we can only admire the pure invention of it all.

It is clear to see why Gilliam adores the source material so much, as its literary world building allows for an infinite number of ways for him to reimagine it on film, such as this boat sailing across the surface of a dark, silvery moon.

*Robin Williams is hilariously dazzling in his short but memorable time onscreen, representing the division between mind and body.*

*The belly of a sea monster, and the heart of a volcano – Gilliam lets loose with his visual creativity, calling upon ancient mythology with playful irreverence.*

Of course though, neither Gilliam nor the Baron’s tales are quite as wholly original as they might otherwise suggest. The fact aside that The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is loosely based on an 18^th century novel, elements of classic fantasy films are woven into its narrative, such as the sea monster from Pinocchio and the hot air balloon escape of The Wizard of Oz. The imprint of Victor Fleming’s Technicolour musical continues to be seen in the one-to-one connections between people the Baron sees in real life and those characters in his stories, many of whom are similarly collected along an unpredictable journey to the outskirts of civilisation and back again.

*Gilliam’s imagery draws from modern cinematic fairy tales The Wizard of Oz and Pinocchio, imbuing this incredible work with a gentle whimsicality.*

To draw parallels back even further, Renaissance art can be frequently found all through Gilliam’s production design, whether forming stylish backdrops in his elegantly designed interiors or being directly referenced in a recreation of Botticelli’s painting ‘The Birth of Venus.’ Two cupids, the sons of Venus herself, circle her and the Baron as they fly and waltz through a cavern of waterfalls, fountains, and chandeliers, while elsewhere Gilliam’s classical iconography places his protagonist’s legacy among mythical figures and inspires the visual gag of the Baron falling into Vulcan’s lair. As the Baron and his friends lie helpless at the bottom of a pit, a trick of the camera cleverly creates the illusion that Vulcan is a giant, setting up a brilliantly awkward punchline when they enter the same shot and the god’s relatively short stature suddenly comes to light.

*Visual illusions constructed in-camera make for some of the film’s best gags, heavily suggesting an enormous size difference in the framing and editing before amusingly deflating expectations.*

*Gilliam’s adoration of Renaissance art bleeds through as a young Uma Thurman wondrously recreating the Birth of Venus, and subsequently falls for the magnificent Baron Munchausen.*

*A breathtakingly romantic waltz lifting these lovers up through a vast cavern and into a cloudy sky, accompanied by tiny Cupids – jaw-dropping, painterly surrealism.*

The Baron may elderly, but he strikes a robust figure next to monsters and immortals alike, with his long goatee extending as far off his face as his impressive nose. So rejuvenating is the call of adventure for him that it seems to physically erase the wrinkles from his face, and yet he can only keep running away from the Angel of Death for so long. Surreal visions of paradise and mortality are common in Gilliam’s work, whether manifesting in the flying dreams of Brazil or the Red Knight of The Fisher King, and here they become a formal reminder of what awaits those who live such excitingly dangerous lives. Even the Baron’s young companion and frequent rescuer Sally can’t keep it at bay forever, eventually failing to banish the reaper when, just as our hero saves the city from the Great Sultan’s army, he is caught in crosshairs of the mayor’s rifle.

The Angel of Death becomes a formal motif following the Baron on his adventures, while Sally becomes an Angel of Life constantly saving his life with the grace of *innocent* *youth.*

Then again, if there is anything in this quirky cosmos that has the power to resurrect the dead, then it is that very talent which the Baron wields such creative control over. Such is the nature of storytelling that even when it is at its most preposterously absurd, it can influence reality in mysterious ways. Lessons of moderation are learned from aliens who can’t reconcile the division between mind and body, the wrath of a jealous god exposes the insecurity behind great egos, and perhaps there may even be just enough truth in such tales that those living under authoritarian rule can shed the fear keeping them locked away from the world. Whether Gilliam’s mischievous raconteur in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a hero, a fraud, or both, he is undeniably a man who can shape the lives of those who listen with open hearts and minds.

*A final frame that could be hung on a wall, exalting a hero who blends life and fiction with skilful panache and a hint of mischief.*

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, can be rented or bought Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video, and the DVD or Blu-ray can be bought on Amazon.

Possession (1981)

Andrzej Żuławski | 2hr 4min

There is something growing in the apartment where Anna resides with her son, Bob, and it is plain to see that it isn’t quite human. The first time we meet the creature, it is a grotesque, writhing mass of tentacles, pulsing with life in her bathroom. “He’s very tired. He made love to me all night,” she tells the private investigator hired by her estranged husband Mark to watch her movements, before beating him to death a broken bottle. When we meet it again, it has since sprouted an elongated head with two beady eyes, and again later Mark witnesses it making love to his wife in the kitchen.

Whatever this Cronenbergian body horror may be, its arrival has coincided with a cataclysmic crisis in Anna and Mark’s marriage. Too long have they been living in a household of abuse, pushing Anna to seek out romance with drug dealer Heinrich while Mark disappears into his job as a West Berlin spy. Now as they stand on the precipice of divorce, a simmering mixture of revulsion, self-loathing, and perverted affection boils over into public displays of madness and cruelty, exposing the inhuman, mutated hearts torn apart by mutual disgust.

*Cronenbergian body horror a few years before David Cronenberg would perfect it himself. Anna’s creature grows and mutates throughout the film, becoming her lover and child.*

Though its title might suggest otherwise, Possession eludes attempts to nail its maddening course of events down to conventional explanations of ghosts or demons. Even that unholy aberration which Anna nurtures in her home cannot take responsibility for the strange trance that compels her and Mark to dispassionately cut into their skin with an electric knife, or the fact that their son’s teacher Helen bears an unsettling resemblance to her. If we are to identify a single catalyst for this absurd state of affairs, then it comes from within the souls breaking the holy matrimony that they are sworn under, transgressing laws of nature, morality, and social convention to act on their ugliest impulses.

*Cod, dispassionate scenes of self-harm, resulting from Anna and Mark’s psychological breakdowns.*

*Hard lines and boxes drawn in the mise-en-scène, staging Anna and Mark on either side of these divides.*

From a stylistic perspective, Andrzej Żuławski uses every cinematic tool at his disposal to attack the sanity keeping Anna and Mark tethered to reality. The camera’s restless momentum is the first thing to be noticed from the outset, drifting forward, backward, and around the couple’s public argument at a consistently steady pace like an active observer. It is a bold creative choice that formally resonates all throughout Possession, conveying a perpetual instability during Mark’s work meetings in vast, empty offices and later as he maniacally lights Anna’s apartment on fire. The creeping paranoia that it imbues in urban spaces points to Roman Polanski’s Apartment trilogy as a key influence here, and one which Żuławski continues to reflect in his tremendous blocking that frequently use hard lines and tiny frames in the mise-en-scène to split this divided couple.

*Żuławski’s camera is constantly agitated, tracking through scenes in all directions, moving between wide and mid-shots.*

This restless camerawork is key to the unsettling horror of Possession, bringing even greater form to these mirrored scenes set outside Anna’s apartment building – the breakup in the opening minutes, and Mark’s return to light her flat on fire.

Even Possession’s setting right by the Berlin Wall in the early 80s offers great symbolic significance of a city cleaved right down the middle, with both halves co-existing in a state of unresolved tension. Although Mark works as a spy for West Berlin, Żuławski is largely using the era’s politics as a backdrop to this story of two sides vying for control of each other, and even going so far as to seek out their idealised doppelgangers. For Anna, this looks like a calmer version of Mark who loyally grows under her guidance, while for Mark, he need look no further than Helen. Similarly played by Isabelle Adjani, her cool, composed demeanour and soft features appear in stark contrast to Anna’s incredible volatility, and she also proves to be a stronger maternal presence for Bob.

*The setting right beside the Berlin Wall brings a historical backdrop to Possession, reflecting this divorce in a larger division standing on the precipice of all-out war.*

*Doubles in Żuławski’s casting, creating a perfect, soulless facsimile of Mark, and reflecting a stable, maternal version of Anna in Helen.*

To call Adjani’s performance anything less than a landmark of film acting would be an understatement. Where Sam Neill frequently pushes for artificial swings of emotion, Adjani’s twitchy, erratic physicality seems to emanate from a primal subconscious, and yet she also demonstrates tremendous control when reigning herself in. Her outward expression of Anna’s mental state varies wildly between tumultuous breakdowns, disconnecting from the world at her quietest so that she doesn’t even notice a homeless man steal her groceries, and physically torturing one of her ballet students at her most sadistic. Żuławski’s close-ups wield enormous power in moments like these, catching her haunted, wide-eyed gaze that frequently drifts off into the distance, and elsewhere pierces the fourth wall with a malicious, demonic grin.

Żuławski’s fourth-wall breaking, shallow focus close-ups are perfectly matched to one of the greatest performances of all time, as Isabelle Adjani’s facial expressions reveal a warped, tortured soul.

So ferociously uninhibited is Anna’s psychological disintegration that it is often hard to believe there is an actor inside that body. Comparisons to Gena Rowland’s harrowing depiction of mental illness in A Woman Under the Influence are well-earned as she tears at her hands and breaks out into panicked sweats, though Adjani’s physical performance takes up far more space in the frame, pairing especially well with Żuławski’s agitated tracking shots. We can’t quite tell at first what triggers her sudden unravelling in an empty subway station, though this is the scene that bears most resemblance to traditional possessions in horror movies, watching her scream in terror and violently throw her body around. She aggressively dashes her grocery bags against the wall until milk comes spilling out, yet still Żuławski’s camera continues orbiting her as deep, guttural gasps are forced from her throat. White fluids and blood pour from every orifice as she kneels on the ground, and it is finally at this point that we might start to recognise this as a truly hellish rendering of a miscarriage.

Adjani aggressively dashes her grocery bags against the wall until milk comes spilling out, yet still Żuławski’s camera continues orbiting her as deep, guttural gasps are forced from her throat. White fluids and blood pour from every orifice as she kneels on the ground, and it is finally at this point that we might start to recognise this as a truly hellish rendering of a miscarriage.

So explosive is Adjani’s embodiment of visceral suffering in Possession that it takes a little more straining to see the ruined world around her, mutating into an absurdist hellscape surrounding Anna and Mark’s bubble of hatred and co-dependency. Żuławski largely paints it out in drab, muted colours, only to rupture the monotony every now and again with a vibrant orange telephone or red train carriage, while the dissonant sounds of scratching, squeezing, and tapping infuse the heavily synthesised music score with an eerie practical quality. The murders that Anna commits barely go noticed for a long time, though given the strange behaviour of strangers who randomly chase people on the street and others who commit suicide with little warning, it would appear that such brutal insanity isn’t so out of place.

*Vivid piercings of colour rupture the drab palette of Possession’s desaturated, dystopian hellscape.*

Whether through geopolitical, personal, or supernatural conflict, this world is ripping apart at the seams, yet still Mark and Anna try to force their arbitrary images of marital happiness through to the very end. Shot down by police and dying on a stairwell, their blood-soaked faces passionately kiss, while their apparently flawless doubles take their places as Bob’s new parents – though clearly not for long. Whether through murder, self-destruction, or the arrival of nuclear apocalypse, death eventually comes for all in Possession. In the end, Żuławski’s warring spouses only drive themselves mad with broken vows and hearts, feverishly seeking out a love that can’t even begin to thrive within such depraved, vile souls.

*Mark and Anna try to force their arbitrary images of marital happiness through to the very end, finding blood-soaked intimacy in death.*

*Nuclear apocalypse arrives for a marriage that might finally seem functional on the most superficial level of social appearances.*

Possession is currently available to purchase on Blu-ray and DVD on Amazon.

Lola (1981)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 1hr 53min

The image of post-war Germany that Rainer Werner Fassbinder composes in Lola is remarkably distinct from the 1905 novel that provided its source material, and yet the tragic romance at its centre nevertheless carries across the twentieth century as a timeless fable of sacrifice and degraded honour. For the original author Heinrich Mann, schoolteacher Raat is an authoritarian figure falling to the liberal values of cabaret singer Lola Lola, rigidly abiding by conservative beliefs that are more likely to break before they bend. Josef von Sternberg remained largely faithful in his 1930 adaptation The Blue Angel too, even as he shifted the time frame forward 20 years to the Weimar Republic. Within his 1981 reinvention of the modern fable though, Fassbinder shows no interest in such black-and-white morality, grinding the steadfast integrity of our righteous protagonist down to a weary resignation through a slew of moral ordeals.

Can the prosperous reconstruction of West Germany in the 1950s justify the corrupt dealings making it possible? Is noble building commissioner Herr von Bohm right to stand in the way of those crooked bureaucrats if their long-term goals are effectively aligned with his? At what point should one place their personal desire for love and security over their code of honour, and is such a sacrifice truly worth it? As complications arise within this tangled web of politics, Bohm and his sweetheart Marie-Luise find that they all come down to a single, inevitable decision – to remain loyal to one’s convictions and lose everything, or to submissively fall in line with the status quo.

We have seen variations of Lola through cinema history, but it is Barbara Sukowa’s modern take on cabaret performer that elevates the character into delicate, modern melodrama, caught between two lives.

Lola is one of the 1980s’ greatest displays of colour cinematography, and a large majority of that is achieved through Fassbinder’s versatile lighting, striking incredible contrasts in warm and cool hues.

Right next to Fassbinder’s lighting, his use of frames within frames is a visual highlight of Lola, hemming Bohm into tight spaces made all the more claustrophobic by Schuckert’s large, domineering presence.

For as long as Bohm remains ignorant to the truth of Marie-Luise’s secret identity as Lola, a high-end escort, nightclub performer, and mother to the child of corrupt property developer Schuckert, the choice is easy. Being a refugee from East Prussia and a grieving widower, he has proven his spirit’s endurance, and through Marie-Luise he can see a path to rebuilding his own life. On her end, Bohm’s sincerity and optimism is incredibly refreshing, and sets him apart from the deceitful, self-serving creatures she has known all other men to be. Like her, he works in a profession that can all too easily erode one’s faith in humanity, and yet his honour has remained intact. As a result, Bohm becomes a beacon of hope to Marie-Luise, as long as she can hide her shame long enough to shed it altogether.

*Even when Fassbinder strips back the visual artifice to shoot exteriors on location, he is still proving his absolute dedication to the frame, narrowing this shot through stained glass doors.*

*Fassbinder’s creativity with his shot compositions only increases as the film goes on, using the colourful decor of regular households to trap his characters in domestic settings.*

*The added layer of glass and reflections when Fassbinder frames Lola obscures her even more in his oppressive mise-en-scène.*

Under Fassbinder’s vibrant direction, the sleazy exploitation that infects Lola’s post-war setting does little to dampen the incredible joys and tragedies of this central relationship, spilling out into a colourfully heightened world. No doubt there is an element of realism to the exterior streets and rundown brothels of this city, but the candy neon lighting that Fassbinder sheds over his scenes belong in the world of elevated sentimentality, composing images of astonishing beauty. There is no diegetic reasoning behind the green illumination of the room that sits behind Bohm’s office, and yet it visually sets his domain apart from the orange, red, and pink lights of the nightclub where Lola performs and Schuckert conducts his business dealings.

*Green lighting is reserved for Bohm’s office, while splashes of colour rupture that coolness with orange and red lampshades, and yellow and pink flowers.*

*Bohm’s association with green palettes sets him far apart from the purple and red lighting of Lola’s nightclub, blazing with passion and sparkling with sexuality.*

*An oval window, an obstruction of foliage, and candy-coloured lighting simultaneously confines Lola to a small portion of the frame on her wedding day, and sweetens the image with sickly pink hues.*

Where Dario Argento used similarly fluorescent lighting to craft a vibrant, expressionistic horror in Suspiria, Fassbinder melds them with the delicate romanticism of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas in Lola, framing his characters within the drastically narrowed borders of doorways, mirrors, and windows. Coloured lights bounce off glass panes, behind which Bohm and Marie-Luise frequently find themselves visually trapped, though Fassbinder doesn’t stop there either with his brilliant shot obstructions. The interior mise-en-scène of each set is designed with inventive precision, using the legs of upside-down bar stools to split the frame into triangular segments and isolate Marie-Luise from the rest of the ensemble, while tinsel runs along the club’s glittery walls and ceilings. Fassbinder’s staging of actors is incredibly evocative in these moments too, sending Marie-Luise dancing on top of a table as she dances wildly at her lowest point, while Bohm sinks to his knees in a mess of papers back at his office having learned of her second identity as Lola.

*One of Fassbinder’s single strongest compositions is arranged simply through the upturned barstools of the club, segmenting the shot into triangles and trapping Lola in their midst.*

*Chaos spills across Bohm’s usually tidy office after discovering the truth about Lola, and even here Fassbinder doesn’t let the colour of his papers go amiss.*

In two significant scenes where there is conversely little movement from the actors, Fassbinder compensates by dynamically circling his camera around the table where bureaucrats discuss new construction projects. In the first instance, the meeting runs smoothly, but with Schuckert and Marie-Luise’s secrets revealed to Bohm just prior to the second, a new tension hangs in the air. Our virtuous building commissioner is on a self-destructive path of righteous judgement, declaring war on Schuckert and his cronies by withdrawing the project proposal and approaching journalists with news of their dishonest exploitation. “The whole is rotten, not just parts, so the whole must be tackled,” he furiously resolves. “How could I make peace with a world that makes me sick?”

*Bohm is absorbed into Lola and Scuckert’s world of red and pink, falling to despair.*

The answer to Bohm’s question comes through two bitter realisations. Not only does the media’s equal corruption make any prospect of justice impossible, but when he is at his most despairing, Schuckert makes him one final offer to at least live comfortably within this dishonest system. Marie-Luise is his prize, released from the constraints of her employment and free to marry him if only he falls in line. If Bohm is aware that Schuckert is still bedding his wife, then that knowledge has been deeply repressed for the sake of his new, comfortable life of dishonesty. This is the culture that West Germany’s future is to be built on in the wake of World War II, and it is scarily similar to the nation’s recent past of totalitarian conformity – it has just softened its harsh edges with bribery instead of threats. In the colourfully modern world of Fassbinder’s Lola, tragedy does not end with death or heartbreak, but with a poignant, quiet resignation to the loss of one’s moral character.

*Fassbinder’s pink and yellow palettes are deceptive in the film’s final scenes, softening the betrayal captured in this mirror as Lola kisses Schuckert on her wedding day.*

Lola is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and the Blu-ray is available to purchase on Amazon.

Rumble Fish (1983)

Francis Ford Coppola | 1hr 34min

The legendary Motorcycle Boy may not be our protagonist in Rumble Fish, though this doesn’t keep Francis Ford Coppola from filtering the urban landscapes of 1960s Oklahoma through his eyes. Whatever visual restrictions are imposed by the greaser’s colour blindness are drastically offset by the dreamy expressionism elongating every angle, the timelapse footage slipping through hours in a few seconds, and perhaps most significantly, those tiny splashes of blue and red swimming through the local pet shop’s aquarium.

It isn’t that these vivid Siamese fighting fish are somehow exceptions to the Motorcycle Boy’s optical deficiency, but they occupy his attention like nothing else in this world. As he peers through the glass with his little brother Rusty James, Coppola’s camera traps both men and fish inside the same tank, drawing an oppressive visual comparison to the confinement and aggression of their fellow juvenile delinquents. Freedom is distant, but if they are to find peace with themselves and stop fighting their own reflections, it may be their only hope.

“They belong in the river. I don’t think that they would fight if they were in the river. If they had the room to live.”

*An incredibly apt use of colour in an otherwise black-and-white film, while the Motorcycle Boy and Rusty James’ faces are trapped within the same tank as the fish.*

Some time ago the Motorcycle Boy was a notorious gang leader, and the graffiti that bears his name all over town is a testament to that larger-than-life reputation. Having recently returned from his vagrant travels, he has experienced a taste of the liberation that he now desires for these fish. His emotional transformation is unmistakable in Mickey Rourke’s mellow, tender performance. He is not looking to vent any pent-up frustration, as so many other boys are. He brushes off accusations of madness with a gentle smile, and speaks with a soft voice that quells the frenzied fury around him. Twice in Rumble Fish do we watch him nurse a wounded Rusty James back to health, modelling a sensitive masculinity that seeks to heal rather than destroy, and very gradually he inspires his brother to follow him down a similar path. His colourblind view of the world is not a restriction, we come to realise, but perceives far more of its beauty than anyone else can imagine.

Coming out on the heels of The Outsiders in 1983, Rumble Fish was the second S.E. Hinton adaptation to be released that year. Both stories are based in the same setting of 1960s Tulsa, exploring the emotional depths of young greasers looking to escape the violence surrounding them, and yet the sheer gap in artistic quality between the two is so shocking that it is hard to believe Coppola directed them in consecutive shoots. The Outsiders was the greater commercial success and is far more accessible to mainstream audiences looking for an easy watch. Rumble Fish may have been more polarising, but it is also the far greater cinematic accomplishment on every level, bringing an augmented visual aesthetic to Hinton’s writing that resonates deeply with its paradoxical adolescent yearning for both excitement and stability.

*Timelapses track the movement of clouds and shadows throughout Tulsa, slipping hours away within a few seconds. These interludes are key to Coppola’s structure and formal manipulations of time.*

Adding onto that uncertainty a sense of urgency pressing these young people to sort their lives out before growing up, and the world at large seems to be working against them at every turn. Coppola weaves in his timelapse photography as a powerfully formal representation of this, cutting away to clouds racing across reflective surfaces and shadows rapidly stretching along the ground, while Stewart Copeland’s percussive score ticks and beats out propulsive rhythms in the background. The clocks that Coppola lays all throughout his mise-en-scène continue this poetic exploration of time invisibly passing by, even using a giant one as a backdrop to Rusty James’ confrontation with a police officer, and calling back to the dream sequence of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries with its eerie lack of hour and minute hands. As teenagers, abstract concepts like time aren’t exactly at the forefront of their thoughts, yet local barkeeper Benny offers a sharp perspective in his voiceover that acutely pinpoints the transience of their youth.

“Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. You see when you’re young, you’re a kid, you got time, you got nothing but time. Throw a couple of years here, a couple of years there, it doesn’t matter. The older you get you say ‘Jesus how much I got, I got 35 summers left.’ Think about it – 35 summers.”

Clocks laid throughout Coppola’s mise-en-scène, making for some powerful symbolism that integrates formally with the timelapse photography. In the lives of these teenagers, time is not a constant that can be relied upon – it speeds up and slows down all over the place.

For the young men and women of Tulsa who are not yet facing their mortality though, this irrational distortion of time is not to be pondered, but revelled in. Coppola is not one to exclude us from its subjectivity either – everyday life in Tulsa is visually heightened to an incredible degree, warping the proportions of the city’s infrastructure with an incredibly deep focus, canted angles, and split diopter lenses. Coppola’s world is in a perpetual state of commotion and contortion that verges on film noir, flooding scenes with smoke, flashing lights, and spraying water that serve no other purpose than to create incredibly dynamic imagery, and navigating these elements in long, evocative tracking shots. The dreamy atmosphere is laid on thick, loosely detaching us from reality as Rusty James envisions scantily clad women lying on classroom shelves, and deliriously hallucinates his spirit flying from his body and across town to observe the flattering grief left in wake of his imaginary death.

*Surrealism in Rusty James’ active, hormonal imagination, picturing half-naked women atop shelves in class.*

*Coppola employs an excellent depth of field, especially in his occasional use of split diopters as observed here.*

*Coppola’s scenery is incredibly dynamic with energetic cameras, flashing lights, constant smoke, vigorous fight choreography – the number of moving parts in any given shot is astounding.*

In essence, Coppola transforms a setting that most people would view as a monotonous into a fantasy land, dreamed up by mavericks wishing to break free of convention and conformity. To many small-minded locals, this eccentricity is something to be shunned, though there is a wisdom to be found in those who see its value. Rusty James’ father may be drunk and idle, but he is still among the few who sees his eldest son’s open-mindedness as a gift.

“Every now and then a person comes along, has a different view of the world than a usual person. Doesn’t make ‘em crazy. I mean, an acute perception, that doesn’t make you crazy.”

Right after Dennis Hopper slurs his way through this counsel though, he adds a caveat, drawing a very thin line in his precise wording.

“However, sometimes… it can drive you crazy, an acute perception.”

Expressionistic imagery captured through the ultra-wide angle lens and black-and-white photography, filtering everyday life in Tulsa through unconventional perspectives and a heavily subjective camera.

*A delirious hallucination of Rusty James’ death, floating through town as he dreamily observes those who mourn him after his passing.*

*Vibrant expressionism in the angular shadows and industrial set pieces, heightening every scene to an extraordinary degree.*

In this same conversation, we begin to understand where he gained this insight, and where the Motorcycle Boy might have inherited his personality – not from his father, but from his mother who abandoned her children while they were still young. Outsiders like these can only be contained in their loneliness for so long before drastically breaking free, frustrated by others’ narrow thinking. The Motorcycle Boy could have easily followed in his mother’s footsteps and run away a second time, but his enormous empathy turns him down another path instead, roping Rusty James into his mission to let the Siamese fighting fish swim free into the river.

If there is one mark that Motorcycle Boy wants to leave on the world though, it is not the liberation of these vibrant red and blue fish, but the liberation of Tulsa’s restless youth – or at the very least Rusty James. He does not seek to uphold any personal legacy, and yet it nevertheless forms in his absence, keeping his pacificist principles alive while his persecution by a prejudiced society is taken to its bitterly logical end. A single police gunshot cuts off the score’s pounding beat at the moment it takes his life, leaving only Rusty James to pick up the fish now flopping on the grass, and finish what his brother had started. The communal mourning that he once imagined in a dream manifests at last, though this time not for him, as Coppola’s sombre long take floats along a line of familiar faces gazing upon the Motorcycle Boy’s body with sorrow and horror.

*Starting from the Motorcycle Boy’s dead body, the camera floats along a trail of minor and supporting characters from throughout the film, binding them in a common grief.*

The final shot of Rumble Fish does not announce itself with the same audacious energy of Coppola’s expressionistic angles or timelapse footage, and yet the tranquil stillness of Rusty James’ arrival at the coast his brother always longed for marks a subtle departure from the chaos of Tulsa. For once there is very little depth to Coppola’s photography, as a telephoto lens instead flattens the liberated teenager’s silhouette against a vast, endless ocean, and time seems to slow down. The world of Rumble Fish may not be meant for those unusually perceptive misfits living far outside the status quo, but the best the rest of us can do is follow in their footsteps, boldly journeying beyond the borders and standards of a modern society slowly driving each of us mad.

The final shot formally marks the first use of a telephoto lens in Rumble Fish as opposed to Coppola’s ultra-wide lens, flattening the depth of field into a single layer – tranquility, freedom, and solitude expressed in a single image.

Rumble Fish is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, Google Play, Amazon Video, and the DVD or Blu-ray can be purchased on Amazon.

Wings of Desire (1987)

Wim Wenders | 2hr 8min

The god’s-eye view of humanity that Wim Wenders grants us in Wings of Desire is refreshingly distant, flying high above the streets, flats, and offices of 1980s West Berlin, before swooping down to tune into the thoughts of its citizens. Like radio waves with a transmitter but no receiver, these streams-of-consciousness aimlessly echo out into chaotic universe. They appear frivolously trivial when taken on their own, and yet they serve an integral purpose in grasping humanity’s mosaic totality.

Still, it is not always fulfilling to be as omniscient as those two angels who up until now have embraced their God-given purpose to “Look, gather, testify, verify, preserve” those hidden thoughts that reveal our truest selves. Damiel and Cassiel are purely observers, standing atop buildings and statues with their white, feathery wings spread out behind them, and only ever interacting with mortals when one vaguely senses their spiritual presence. In these moments, fleeting eye contact is made with Wender’s invisible, floating camera, and some intangible expression of hope or wonder crosses their faces. For the angels though, this is the full extent of their correspondence, while Wenders renders more physical attempts at interacting through ghostly double exposures. “To watch is not to look from above, but at eye level,” Damiel contemplates, desperately longing to make the permanent journey from the heavens to a world where one can taste, feel, and love within the limitations of an earthly body.

Wenders flies his camera around this radio tower early on, simultaneously introducing us to the setting of Berlin and setting up each of its inhabitants as their own transmitter of psychic radio waves.

*Creative use of double exposure to reveal the angels’ ethereal separation from the physical world.*

Like The Wizard of Oz and Stalker before it, Wings of Desire employs a similar formal device of alternating between colour and monochrome cinematography as we switch from fantasy to reality, though perhaps Michael Powell’s deeply philosophical romance A Matter of Life and Death bears closer resemblance to Wender’s take here. From the angels’ foreign perspective, everything appears in an ethereal greyscale – certainly beautiful in its own right, yet failing to capture the broad spectrum of colours that can only be seen when grounded on Earth, where humans relish the subtle shades and hues which come with the knowledge of their eventual passing. Up close, these tiny joys are felt even more viscerally, but only when the melancholy transience of life has also been accepted.

*Superb helicopter shots flying above Berlin, taking a distant bird’s-eye perspective before swooping down low.*

*A brilliant use of Berlin’s infrastructure to compose an avant-garde city symphony, drawing out its character.*

*Diving deep into the minds of Berlin’s citizens and projecting their inner thoughts as voiceovers, each weaving together into a rich tapestry of everyday life.*

The innocent hope that Wenders draws from these urban landscapes is shaped even further through the social and historical context embedded in virtually every shot as well, infusing his grainy location shooting with an air of poignant whimsy. Unknowingly set right before the fall of the Berlin Wall and bearing the leftover traumas of the Holocaust, Wings of Desire dwells in a space of bleak uncertainty between two world-changing events. Modernist architecture lines derelict streets, disused flats of churned-up mud stretch out for acres, and the Potsdamer Platz that one elderly man recalls from his youth is now spoiled by a graffitied section of the wall dividing Berlin, transforming this once-proud cultural icon of commerce into nothing more than a political partition.

*Wenders firmly grounds this fantasy in the reality of late-twentieth century Germany, feeling the effects of the Cold War and the division it has wreaked by way of the Berlin Wall.*

In a brief The Tree of Life-style flashback too, Wenders continues to expand our view of this setting with the creation of its land, when “history had not yet begun.” A single, withered tree stands alone in a rippling lake, imprinting its black shape against a foggy backdrop with no visible horizon, and yet somehow from this total scarcity humanity incredibly evolves into advanced, intelligent lifeforms. The angels have been there since the start to witness it all, and more than anything else in the world, they are rightfully astonished by this incredible miracle of persevering life.

*Immaculate greyscale minimalism in this glimpse of the land’s creation, poignantly observing the world before the dawn of humanity.*

Today, these mortal beings are living testimonies to the city’s complicated past and present, despite very few of them explicitly reflecting on anything beyond the day-to-day minutia. Each one of these minor figures are integral to the silent cinema homage that Wenders is conducting here, building a character out of a metropolis as he thoughtfully calls back to those avant-garde city symphonies of the 1920s like Man With a Movie Camera, lyrically teasing out a visual and aural poetry for lengthy, plotless passages of time. The abstract rhythms of his long dissolves merge with an eerie, polyphonic choir here, running multiple vocal lines up against each other in discordant harmonies, and thereby mirroring the disjointed voiceovers that continue to murmur away in the background.

*An inspired use of long dissolves in the editing, fading in glimpses of eyes and angel wings.*

Like a disembodied spirit, Wenders circles his camera around the heads that project these thoughts outwards before latching onto another, while every so often an unusual exception stands out among the cacophony of whispers that sways these angels to try and forge a connection. Tragically, these attempts are too often in complete vain, as Cassiel’s affectionate contact with a suicidal man in one instance goes entirely unnoticed, leaving the angel deep in tormented grief as he helplessly watches the bearer of messy, jumbled feelings jump to his death.

“The sun in my back, on the left the star. That’s good: sun and a star. Her little feet. Hopping from one foot to the other. She danced so sweetly. We were all alone. Has she got my letter? I don’t want her to read it. Berlin means nothing to me… Havel? Is that a lake? Over there, wedding, or what? The East is everywhere, really. Strange people, they’re shouting. I don’t care. All these thoughts. I’d really rather not think any more. I’m going, why?”

*The heartbreak that comes with the omniscience of an angel, seeing the thoughts of a suicidal man yet being unable to help.*

*Marion is a bridge between the Earth and heavens, wearing angel wings in her trapeze act where she flies high off the ground.*

Damiel’s eye is also caught by a disillusioned human who wishes to cast off ties to Earth and fly free, though in a very different manner. In a struggling circus, a French trapeze artist named Marion swings through the air wearing angel wings, and laments her loneliness in a foreign city. Emotionally, she lives in a space halfway between the worlds of humans and angels, unknowingly beckoning Damiel down from the sky as she privately reflects on the strange comfort she feels from some invisible companion.

“I know so little. Maybe because I am too curious. Often my thoughts are all wrong, because it’s like I’m talking to someone else at the same time.”

It is with this line that she turns to the camera and looks us right in the eye – not the first time a character has done this, but certainly the most intimate. Damiel feels truly seen, and that fondness that he previously felt for all humans begins to blossom into singular romantic attraction, directed towards a specific individual.

*As Damiel falls in love with Marion, so do we, locking eyes with her when she sense an invisible presence and breaks the fourth wall.*

In a strangely funny diversion from these stories, Wenders spends some time following American actor Peter Falk as he shoots a film in Berlin, before revealing that he too was once an angel who ultimately gave up his wings to be human. Falk plays himself here, expressing an immense gratitude for his rebirth into a body that allows him to smoke, drink coffee, and create art. Wenders’ dedication at the end of the film briefly hints along these lines too, expressing gratitude for his three biggest directorial inspirations – Yasujirō Ozu, François Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky, who he thanks among “all the former angels.”

To humbly bring oneself down to the level of the lowest human and then share its joy through love or art is a truly noble calling, and one that Damiel embraces the moment he wakes up as a human when a slab of metal falls on his head. He bleeds profusely and feels great pain, yet he couldn’t be happier in this moment – any sort of sensation at all is proof of his regeneration into a mortal body, and he can’t help sharing his sudden ability to perceive colours with passing strangers. In essence, his newfound wonder is a tangible extension of the nostalgic poetry formally weaved into the film’s structure, each passage prefacing lyrical ruminations on childhood with the same six words.

“When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions: why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn’t life under the sun just a dream? Isn’t what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn’t before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?”

*The angels’ view of the world is limited, unable to perceive the colourful graffiti and apartments which brings vibrant excitement to the life of humans.*

Cassiel is not wrong to feel that he has more to accomplish as an angel, thus choosing instead to remain behind, but of the two Damiel is clearly the one with the least regrets as begins his new life. When he finally approaches Marion, she once again looks straight at the camera, but this time Wenders’ colour photography captures the blazing red tones of her outfit, and the target of her gaze is fully visible. “I am together,” Damiel’s voiceover whispers as they kiss, uniting both the heavens and the Earth in a fleeting expression of devotion that stretches far beyond the transcendent, into the infinite.

*A deeply romantic and sentimental finale, bathing Damiel and Marion in a passionate red as the realms of heaven and Earth meet with a tender kiss.*

Wings of Desire is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, can be rented or buy on Apple TV, or the Blu-ray or DVD can be bought on Amazon.

May I ask, why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

May I ask why you think Barry did not take the chance to kill Bullingdon? Do you believe it comes…

[…] 13. Bringing Up Baby […]

Where would you place it on the list?

I have to say, Really shocked to see Hero not make the cut