Must-See / Masterpiece – Scene by Green

L’Atalante (1934)

Jean Vigo| 1hr 29min

Life aboard Jean’s canal barge L’Atalante is not quite the romantic escape that his young bride Juliette dreamed it would be. The men who sail it up and down the Seine are clearly unaccustomed to female company – particularly the eccentric first mate Père Jules, whose horde of cats, hand-drawn tattoos, and uncouth mannerisms clash with her more refined sensibilities. She appears truly alone as the camera follows her in a tracking shot across the entire span of the ship, and there is barely room for privacy in the clutter of Jean Vigo’s interiors, as bottles, lamps, and tools crowd out every frame. His trademark high angles not only serve a practical purpose fitting multiple characters into the same shot, but from this vantage point, we also grasp the suffocating claustrophobia of Juliette’s new home

None of this is to suggest that the barge is an irredeemable prison though. L’Atalante is a fable of ruptured innocence, jealousy, and temptation, tugging at the seams of Jean and Juliette’s fragile relationship while illuminating a path to the marital bliss that has eluded them. Salvation does not lie in the city’s worldly flights of fancy, as alluring as they may be, but aboard that very boat which she longs to leave behind. For Jean as well, contentment is only found once the chains of insecurity and mistrust are shed, guiding him towards an appreciation of the woman he has married. Although this ship may feel like an oppressive enclosure at times, Vigo’s lyrical direction also reveals it to be a sanctuary of healing, freely drifting from port to port with no anchors to tether it down.

*A delicate arrangement of bottles and crockery to obstruct this romantic frame.*

*Vigo’s trademark high angles serve a practical purpose here, capturing the entire ensemble in close quarters while highlighting the ship’s claustrophobia.*

*A lonely tracking shot moving with Juliette from one end of the barge to the other.*

Quite ironically, the character that L’Atalante affords the most personable qualities is Jules, who transcends mere comic relief and becomes Juliette’s closest friend aboard the boat. As subtly expressive as Dita Parlo’s performance may be, Michel Simon outshines both leads here, fully realising the endearing humanity in Jules’ idiosyncrasies. This is a man who joyfully dances around in a skirt that Juliette has sewn, and later on falls victim to a prank when he is astounded by his apparent ability to produce music by tracing a vinyl record, only for Vigo to reveal the cabin boy playing his accordion from the other side of the room. In his own time, Jules is also a collector of souvenirs from his travels across the world, ranging from a jar of grotesque, pickled hands to a mechanical puppet which conducts an imaginary orchestra. Wherever the camera sits in this wondrous cabin of curiosities, ornaments frequently obstruct our view, reframing what initially seemed to be a hoarder’s palace into a museum of exotic tales and warm conversation.

*Père Jules’ cabin of trinkets and ornaments makes for a delightful set piece, displaying his eccentric personality via curious souvenirs amassed from his many adventures.*

*Cats and music – Père Jules’ identity captured in a frame, even without his literal presence.*

*Cluttered mise-en-scène worthy of Josef von Sternberg, impeding on the presence of this small ensemble.*

Not that Jean is particularly happy about the hospitality which Juliette finds in his first mate’s quarters. It doesn’t take long after getting married for his envy to spike, smashing up Jules’ cabin upon catching them together, and glowering at flirtatious strangers when they journey into Paris. The camera glides with them into a dance hall where a handsome street peddler entertains Juliette with magic tricks, a song, and a dance, and even after Jean pushes him to the floor, he persistently seeks to lure her deeper into the city.

*Lovely depth of field showing off the beauty of France’s canals and Jean’s playful personality.*

*Michelangelo Antonioni in the architecture – the harsh monstrosities of an industrial, modern society imposes on Juliette as she wanders without aim.*

*A decade before Italian neorealism would pioneer location shooting, Vigo was using the docks of France to ground his drama in a sense of authenticity.*

And lured she is – just as Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans portrayed the city as a metropolis of excitement and danger a few years earlier, so too does L’Atalante tantalise Juliette with its urban thrills. Vigo’s location shooting thrives along the Seine’s industrial ports, setting his drama against warehouses, chimneys, and steam trains, while her journey into the shopping district of live bands and window displays carries a vibrant energy that her husband’s boat lacks. Still, the exhilaration can only last so long. Having been left behind, she tries to buy a train fare to reach Jean’s next stop in Le Havre, yet the dark reality of Paris is alarmingly revealed when a thief steals her purse and she is forced to find work.

*The lights of Paris lure Juliette into its fleeting temptations, here reflecting storefront puppets in the window.*

*Perhaps the single strongest scene in the film, sinking Jean into surreal visions of his lost love beneath the Seine.*

It doesn’t take long for regret to strike her jealous husband either, driving him into a deep depression. Wholeheartedly believing the myth that it is possible to glimpse the face of one’s lover in water, Jean impulsively dives overboard, and Vigo capitalises on the opportunity to sink us into his aching, dreamy mind through surreal dissolves and double exposure effects. There in the depths of the Seine, she floats like a doll suspended in the currents, and a light breeze ruffles her blonde hair as she lets out a silent laugh. Trying to cheer up his skipper, Jules plays a romantic melody on his phonograph, which Vigo further uses to underscore a montage intercutting their yearning search for each other. More long dissolves bridge match cuts between their restless tossing and turning, unable to get a good night’s sleep in each other’s absence, before finally ending this astounding sequence with a dishevelled Jean facing up to his displeased company manager.

*Cross-cutting between both lovers as they longingly search for each other along the rivers of France.*

*Bound together by long dissolves and parallel montage editing as they toss and turn in their sleep.*

Perhaps it is fate that ultimately draws friends and lovers together after their lonely parallel journeys, or maybe love really is that powerful a force in L’Atalante that it echoes across canals, calling them back home. After all, ‘The Bargeman’s Song’ not only provides comfort to Juliette during her visit to a music booth, evoking memories of her days with men who regularly sung this familiar tune on the boat. It also draws the attention of Jules, who happens to be passing by at the exact moment the melody is playing through a speaker on the street. In Juliette and Jean’s embrace, past misgivings are finally forgiven, rapidly dissolving all heartache. At last, their tiny vessel becomes a home where love takes root once more, and quiet freedom is found in its gentle, unanchored drift.

L’Atalante is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

A Serious Man (2009)

The Coen Brothers | 1hr 45min

Tormented by a lack of answers to his perpetual misfortune, Jewish physics professor Larry Gopnik meets with three rabbis in A Serious Man. The first is a young optimist fresh out of college, naively suggesting that Larry simply needs to shift his disposition. “The parking lot here. Not much to see,” he ponders, staring out his office window. “But if you imagine yourself a visitor, somebody who isn’t familiar with these autos and such. Somebody still with a capacity for wonder. Someone with a fresh… perspective.” Larry’s frustration with his frivolous metaphor is plain to see.

The second rabbi chooses to share an anecdote from a member of his synagogue – a dentist bewildered by the Hebrew scripture he finds engraved on the teeth of a non-Jewish patient. Driven to uncover what this could mean and how it got there, the dentist pursued the mystery to all ends, and eventually approached the rabbi to hear his insight. “So what did you tell him?” Larry eagerly asks, only to be met with curt indifference.

“Is it relevant?”

Still searching for a shred of guidance, Larry does not even make it all the way into the office of the final and most senior rabbi. He is busy, the secretary tells him, despite our view of the clearly unoccupied old man sitting at his desk.

*The first rabbi – a young, naive optimist with nothing to offer but shallow metaphors.*

*The second rabbi – a spinner of yarns who sees life’s mystery, yet lacks the curiosity to pursue answers.*

*The third rabbi – a shrivelled old man whose potential wisdom remains just out of reach.*

The fact that this seems like the run-up to a joke with no punchline is absolutely intentional on the Coen Brothers’ behalf, typifying their darkly ironic sense of humour. In these three rabbis, we find three answers that religion commonly gives to tough philosophical questions, including one total non-response. There is no grand revelation that inspires or consoles us. Instead, we find a mirror to the long, elaborate setup that is Larry’s life, prompting us to similarly ask – what is all this leading to? Is there a guiding hand behind the breakdown of his marriage to Judith, his brother’s legal woes, and his son’s troubles at Hebrew school? And if so, why must this suffering be inflicted on a man who by most accounts is a relatively good person?

*Surrounded by books in the mise-en-scène, and yet none of these volumes can answer Larry’s burning spiritual questions.*

A magnificent frame – Larry is quite literally overwhelmed by figures and vharts in his attempt to understand the cosmos. He is a man of science, yet he remains deeply unsatisfied by his worldly knowledge.

That Larry makes a career out of searching for meaning through numbers certainly complements this existential character study too, and is perfectly distilled in his lecture on the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, suggesting that two conflicting states of being may simultaneously exist until they are observed. He is a man of both science and faith, and as far as he is aware, God both exists and does not. The mise-en-scène surrounds him with books in his attorney’s office and shrinks him beneath a colossal blackboard of equations, but all the information in the world cannot point to a simple yes or no answer.

The film as a whole is no great cinematographic triumph from Roger Deakins, yet in moments like these he draws a clean minimalism through Larry’s cookie-cutter neighbourhood and local synagogue, then every so often tips it off balance with canted angles, hazy drug trips, and surreal nightmares that bleed into reality. The discomfort is pervasive, eroding our trust in the security of Larry’s day-to-day existence, and prompting us to adopt his tentative doubt. Perhaps it would be comforting to believe in God, but then why is he being punished so cruelly? If there really is no sense to it all, how can he reckon with the random whims of pure chaos?

*Oblique shots and high angles in the local synagogue, tipping the clean, orderly setting off-balance.*

*Much like his son, Larry turns to drugs, and Deakins’ visuals hazily shift with his reality.*

Although Larry’s journey from one tribulation to the next is not difficult to follow, the formal intricacies and allusions to the Book of Job place A Serious Man among the Coen Brothers’ most profoundly enigmatic works. We are condemned to the same ungratifying search for answers as our protagonist, so the decision to set the first scene of his story far outside his perspective is a bold one indeed. This prologue grounds the film in 19^th century Jewish folklore, recounting the tale of a married couple faced with a terrifying uncertainty. Is the man they have invited into their house truly human, or rather a dybbuk – that is, an evil spirit in disguise? After the wife stabs the visitor, he wanders outside into the snow, leaving this question frighteningly ambiguous. If these are Larry’s ancestors and the old man was indeed a dybbuk, then perhaps this is the source of the curse which would ruin his life over a century later. If the visitor was a living being, maybe our protagonist is just a very unlucky man.

*The Coen Brothers’ haunting prologue plays out an ambiguous fable foreshadowing Larry’s spiritual uncertainty, as well as his incredible misfortune.*

From there, the Coen Brothers weave a tapestry of subplots through A Serious Man that mirror Larry’s identity in others. In his wife’s lover, Sy, he finds the well-respected “serious man” he wishes he could be – albeit one who coincidentally perishes in a road accident at the exact moment Larry crashes his own car. In his brother Arthur, he sees an even more broken version of himself, to whom he offers the same impractical guidance that others try to give him. As for his son Danny who struggles to fit in at school, there the Coen Brothers model a smaller scale version of his own ethical dilemmas. Is Larry justified in sleeping with his neighbour and experimenting with marijuana, now that he has split from his wife? What about accepting a monetary bribe from another student in exchange for a passing grade? If he is already being unjustly chastened by God, surely crossing these moral boundaries won’t make difference – and if God doesn’t exist, then who really cares?

*Arthur’s brokenness reveals the true depths of Larry’s despair, as well as his inability to help either himself or his brother.*

*Danny wanders through adolescence without moral certainty or guidance, and as we see in his father, answers don’t come easily with age.*

It is along this line of thinking though that Larry lets his sense of accountability gradually wear away in A Serious Man, spurred on by a helpless passivity. Danny’s subscription to the Columbia Record Club under his father’s name isn’t exactly fair, yet Larry is still responsible for making the overdue payments anyway. He reasons that he shouldn’t be punished for not doing anything, but since new vinyls are automatically mailed without customer intervention, it is precisely his inaction that has landed him in this situation.

The more we begin to recognise this dysfunctional trait in Larry, the more we see how his inclination to dwell in self-pity is at least partly responsible for many of his other problems too. He did not need to move out of his family home without standing his ground, and neither did he need to give into the pressure of paying for Sy’s funeral. Michael Stuhlbarg’s sheepish demeanour embodies every bit of this unassertive meekness, barely pushing his soft, reedy voice past a moderate speaking volume even when he shouts. Instead, he focuses all his anger at a God whose old-fashioned retribution seems ill-fitting to his upstanding lifestyle, and who conveniently isn’t present to verbally retaliate.

*A Serious Man put Michael Stuhlbarg on the map, playing to his strengths as an immensely introspective actor who can communicate entire thought processes through a simple facial expression.*

If there is a divine message to be found anywhere in A Serious Man, then it is ironic that it should come from the reclusive senior rabbi who previously declined a meeting with Larry. Instead, it is Danny who is chosen to receive his cryptic wisdom, delivered in the form of song lyrics.

“When the truth is found to be lies,

And all the hope within you dies… then what?”

Even those who aren’t familiar with ‘Somebody to Love’ by Jefferson Airplane would recognise these words from the film’s recurring musical motif. Its urgent rhythms accompany Larry’s philosophical journey with a raw, driving intensity, yet still he overlooks his life’s missing purpose hidden plainly in the song’s very title. As if to answer the question he has posed Danny, the rabbi ends their brief meeting with a simple yet valuable instruction.

“Be a good boy.”

*Finally, we hear the esoteric wisdom from the third rabbi – though Larry is not the one to receive it, and its meaning is far from apparent.*

Living with such uncertainty, is this moral imperative not the best we can do? If every one of Larry’s trials has been a test of his integrity, then has he succeeded? The Coen Brothers rarely give us the endings we expect to their films, yet with the mighty coincidence that turns up at Larry’s doorstep the moment he takes his first truly sinful action, they once again prove why they are among their generation’s best screenwriters. Drowning in legal fees, the bribe his student left on his desk begins to look very attractive, and no more than a second after he decides to give into temptation does the phone ring with dire news on the other end.

*A turning point for Larry as he transgresses his own moral boundaries – pain, desperation, and self-loathing in his expression.*

The tornado which simultaneously approaches Danny’s school only compounds our suspicion that Larry is being punished for a relatively minor transgression, once again suggesting a visitation of the father’s sins upon his children, and referencing the Book of Job where God appeared to his tormented follower as a whirlwind. The Coen Brothers’ parallel editing evocatively binds both the fatal disease and natural disaster together as a chilling, fateful condemnation, yet still we must question – isn’t this totally disproportionate to the sin that was committed? Must Larry now endure the ultimate catastrophe for cutting a moral corner that anyone under similar duress would also disregard?

*Biblical symbolism as a whirlwind threatens to end the life of Larry’s offspring – retribution sent from the heavens.*

Or is this merely a convenient explanation we would like to apply to the chaotic winds of chance? After all, those with who listen closely may pick up on the phone’s muffled ring first sounding immediately before Larry changes his student’s grade, even though the sharp interruption of the second ring is the one we consciously notice. It seems a minor difference, but if we are considering cause and effect in broad ontological terms, then it bears incredible weight on how we view the universe. Maybe Larry was always going to meet this unremarkable end, and maybe living a moral life won’t save any of us from what’s coming. Without any firm assurances though, the Coen Brothers simply leave us to dwell in A Serious Man’s eerie, senseless ambiguity. When all is said and done, perhaps being a “good boy” is the best we can do with what little we’ve got.

A Serious Man currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon Video.

Letter Never Sent (1960)

Mikhail Kalatozov | 1hr 37min

For the first half hour of Letter Never Sent, the most pressing dramas that arises on our four adventurers’ journey into the wilderness are their romantic tensions and jealousies. Tanya’s affection for Andrei particularly irritates the insecure Sergei, resulting in a physical altercation that leaves Andrei picking himself up out of a swamp, and further complicating their already challenging quest for diamonds in the secluded mountains and forests of central Siberia.

Perhaps the only level-headed member of this party is their guide, Konstantin. Unlike the others, he is not a geologist, yet he has traversed this region many times before. It is clear from the letter he is writing to his wife that their juvenile antics are of little interest to him, and instead his heart and mind linger elsewhere.

“Remembered sitting in the hallway with you. I saw love and anxiety in your eyes. But again and again some overpowering voice keeps carrying me off. I’m even glad not to have sent this letter. Now during every stop near every campfire I’ll write to you about our itinerant life in the taiga.”

*Each character is beautifully established in the opening scenes, as Kalatozov creates intimate arrangements from their faces.*

Konstantin knows better than anyone how unpredictable the natural world can be, though even he isn’t prepared for the overwhelming turn of events which shrinks these emotions into minor trivialities. This rugged environment does not exist to profit humans, but is indifferent to their aspirations and suffering, tenderising vulnerable minds with its unfathomable, primordial chaos before swallowing them whole.

Where Mikhail Kalatozov once dedicated his handheld camerawork and canted angles to the soul-destroying grief of war in The Cranes Are Flying, here his aesthetic revels in a maddening struggle for survival, bowing down before ravaging elemental forces. We can feel every breath and shiver through his ultra wide-angle lens, pressing intimately against actors’ faces while stretching out daunting landscapes behind their weary expressions. His shift in location away from the urban centres of Russia only further demonstrates the versatility of his high-contrast photography as well, studying the evocative textures of rippling water, fresh fallen snow, and charred forests with equal parts wonder and terror.

*Textured ripples in the water – a Tarkovsky trademark here that precedes his first film by two years.*

*Low angles as well point up at overcast skies, forming these gorgeous, minimalist compositions.*

*Griffith, Dreyer, Bergman – Kalatozov joins that list of directors who perfected and innovated the art of the close-up.*

Even before these explorers begin dropping though, Kalatozov is already wearing away at their sanity, sinking his majestic orchestral score into a crashing, dissonant cacophony of strings, woodwinds, and percussion. “We are straining ourselves to wrench out the mystery from the bowels of the earth,” Konstantin continues to write in his letter, his voiceover playing beneath a frenetic montage of the party trekking across mountains and fruitlessly hacking at the earth, while the faint, double-exposed imprint of a fire rages over the top. The foreshadowing should not go unnoted here. As if sparked by this raging delirium, the forest itself catches alight shortly after, tragically dooming Sergei to perish beneath a fallen tree.

*Foreshadowing in the double exposure effect of a raging fire.*

“Nature has turned herself against us,” Konstantin’s voiceover poignantly reflects, though truthfully it was never on their side. Black smoke and haze rises into the air, and Kalatozov uncharacteristically uses a telephoto lens to cut out the survivors’ silhouettes against a grey sky, creating the impression of a two-dimensional image as they vainly call for help into a radio. The smog is far too thick for even a passing search helicopter to pick them out, and so they soon find themselves isolated once again, with nothing but their wits and stamina to outlast whatever the land should throw at them next.

*A rare instance of Kalatozov using a telephoto lens, pressing his actors’ silhouettes against a dark, smoky sky to create a two-dimensional effect.*

The cleansing rain that falls in the wake of this devastation helps to douse the remaining embers and quench the adventurers’ thirst, though it is little more than temporary relief as they trudge through the spindly, black trees of the forest’s ashy remains. Weakened to the point of total exhaustion, Andrei’s dazed expression floats by in close-up as he is carried on a makeshift gurney, and we too take his immediate point-of-view as he gazes up at the trees in a trance. Realising the burden that he is inflicting on his companions, he decides to disappear into the misty swamp one night and, much to Tanya’s horror, becomes the second to perish.

*Letter Never Sent covers a huge range of natural environments, revealing central Siberia’s vast scope of danger.*

*Kalatozov specifically styled these mounds for this shot – painstaking attention to detail, even when shooting in nature.*

As the party’s numbers dwindle throughout Letter Never Sent, Kalatozov reveals a robust formal structure, not so concerned with narrative convention than his characters’ psychological disintegration. That each should meet their end in a totally different environment only further reveals the vast scope of the peril which encompasses them, particularly when winter falls and Tanya succumbs to the cold. As Konstantin carries her through the snow, Kalatozov recalls Andrei’s floating close-ups and point-of-view shots, though this time taking her perspective with a blurred lens that fades into a deep, empty darkness.

Horizontal close-ups and disorientated point-of-view shots formally connect these two *devastating* *deaths.*

*A lonely trudge through snowy wastelands, accompanied by a sparse quiver of strings.*

By the time Konstantin is left as the party’s sole survivor, the score has settled into a sparse, lonely quiver of strings, accompanied by that constant voiceover. Unlike his companions, he was never motivated by the promise of riches – he has something far more valuable waiting for him back home, driving him to persevere against all odds.

“Vera! My darling Vera! My life doesn’t belong to me. I must deliver the map to people. I can’t die. I can’t. I must live. Too much has been lost. Too much has been found.”

Floating on a makeshift raft down an icy river, hallucinations of industrial ports, cranes, and boats entice Konstantin in haunting long dissolves, while a warm vision of Vera gently calls him back to the harsh reality he must face to survive. This is just as much a psychological struggle as it is a physical one, and only those who are prepared to fight both battles may live long enough to find salvation on the other end.

*Breathtaking vistas in central Siberia as Konstantin floats down icy rapids.*

*Hallucinations of industrial ports, cranes, and boats entice Konstantin in haunting long dissolves, evoking Murnau’s masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.*

*This is as much a psychological struggle as it is a physical one, manifesting visions of Konstantin’s wife as he is on the verge of giving up.*

For Konstantin, it takes reaching the brink of death for that lifeline to finally arrive, and the deep focus image of a rescue worker descending from a helicopter above his unconscious face in the foreground is all the sweeter for it. Suddenly, our weary explorer’s eyes flutter open, and Kalatozov ends his film the way it began. Flying through the air in a reverse tracking shot, all we can do is admire the terrible beauty of this desolate, untamed land, and the chilling insignificance of those who dare to challenge it.

*Salvation arrives in this incredible shot, foregrounding Konstantin’s unconscious face while his rescuer descends from a helicopter in the background.*

*Bookended helicopter tracking shots, flying out from the personal to the epic.*

Letter Never Sent is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

The Innocents (1961)

Jack Clayton | 1hr 40min

Flora and Miles may only be children, but by the time Miss Giddens meets them in the opening of The Innocents, they have already suffered more than most their age. Besides being orphaned as infants, their uncle and legal guardian prefers to keep an emotional distance, letting hired help carry the heavy load of parenting instead. The recent deaths of his valet Peter Quint and their previous governess Mary Jessel have no doubt also left them traumatised, and so it is little wonder why Miss Giddens is so concerned for their welfare when she is hired as the latter’s replacement.

On top of all that, there seems to be another sinister influence taking hold of Bly Manor which is not so easy for her to pin down. The children’s behaviours are atypical, if not downright disturbed, especially with Flora being oddly drawn to the lake where Jessel supposedly drowned herself. Miles on the other hand acts strangely grownup for his age, unsettling Miss Giddens with inappropriately intimate gestures and hiding the dead body of one of his beloved pet pigeons beneath his pillow. Even more chilling though are the two ethereal figures flitting in and out of view, not only convincing Miss Giddens that Bly Manor is haunted by the spirits of Quint and Jessel, but that they are also possessing the children. These ghosts were lovers when they were alive, she learns from the housekeeper Mrs Grose, and now it seems that taking human vessels is the only way they can remain together.

*Lacey bed curtains framing Miss Giddens and Flora, easing into the girl’s unsettling behaviours.*

*Martin Stephens delivers an impressively creepy performance at the age of 11, his mannerisms suggesting an older, more sophisticated man living in his mind.*

*Glimpses of spirits manifesting around the manor, convincing Miss Giddens of ethereal forces possessing the children.*

Still, the doubt which Jack Clayton infuses in this supernatural mystery is hard to shake, especially given that much of it surrounds Miss Giddens herself. Beyond Deborah Kerr’s nervous infatuation when she meets the children’s uncle in the opening scene, she also carries a general uneasiness around any hint of carnal desire, hinting at a sexual repression stemming from her own conservative youth. If she is to preserve Flora and Miles’ innocence, then she must first release them from the spirits which seek to corrupt it, exposing their true nature once and for all.

*Hints of sexual repression in this initial meeting between Miss Giddens and the children’s uncle, subtly expressed in Deborah Kerr’s delicate performance.*

*Remarkable blocking and framing made possible by the deep focus lens, set design, and camera angle, looming the two creepy children over Miss Giddens further down the stairway.*

That Kerr also plays Miss Giddens with such warmth and sensitivity though only obscures our judgement of her weaknesses. She does not project the image of some deluded, Victorian relic, but rather a woman whose maternal instincts grant her empathetic insight into the lives of children and the dangers of their environment. From the moment she enters Bly Manor, she is at odds with its menacing atmosphere, blinded by the light in its picturesque gardens and absorbed into the darkness of its Gothic hallways. The sets that Clayton constructs here are remarkably detailed, filling out backgrounds with paintings, statues, and patterned wallpaper, and elsewhere framing characters within gaping archways.

*A marvellous feat of Gothic production design, filling the frame with Victorian clutter that divides the characters.*

*An incredible array of set pieces all throughout the manor, one standout being the statue garden that surrounds characters with grotesque, stone figures.*

*Picturesque flowers gardens and beautifully reflective ponds, offering up these eerie compositions even in broad daylight.*

*The gazebo becomes another prime location for the spirits to visit, and Clayton puts its pillars to excellent use in this framing.*

Just as astounding though is also his rendering of this space through delicately subjective camerawork, quietly revealing its grim, ominous nature. Despite making excellent use of the CinemaScope format, Clayton’s cinematographer Freddie Francis chose to selectively hand-paint the edge of his lenses, slightly narrowing the wide frame and creating a claustrophobic vignette effect. The impact is understated but powerful, suggesting a pervasive darkness that closes in on Miss Giddens’ very presence. The clarity that Clayton offers us in his deep focus photography of two shots is also deceptive in its apparent objectivity, in one composition positioning her nervous expression behind Flora who curiously studies a spider devouring a butterfly. Alternately, her anxious expressions are frequently foregrounded in intimate close-ups, subtly warping her face through wide-angle lenses.

*Freddie Francis hand-painted the edge of his lenses to create a vignette effect, letting the darkness creep in.*

*Exceptional use of deep focus lenses worthy of comparison to Orson Welles or William Wyler, particular in these two shots which separate Kerr from her fellow actors.*

These are piercing images worthy of comparison to Orson Welles or William Wyler, and with Clayton’s surreal long dissolves, candle-lit interiors, and creeping camera movements in the mix as well, The Innocents effectively develops its own unsettling visual character. By the time Jessel and Quint fully reveal themselves to Miss Giddens, the psychological horror has already set in – though how much of this is merely the disintegration of a tortured mind remains agonisingly ambiguous. The governess is ready to save the children no matter the cost, and so after sending Flora to her uncle’s place in London with Mrs Grose, she is finally ready to directly address these ghostly disturbances with Miles one-on-one.

*Long dissolves slip us between scenes and into Miss Giddens’ haunted dreams.*

*Dark corridors lit only by the blazing candlelight from Miss Giddens’ candelabra as she moves with the creeping camera.*

As the orphaned boy wanders through the greenhouse to the sound of trickling water and chirping crickets, Miss Giddens pursues him with an intensive line of questioning. “Sometimes I heard things,” he nervously confesses. “And when did you first see and hear of such things?” she pushes, only to be met with an unsatisfying reversal.

“Why, I made them up.”

Their faces grow clammy with sweat through this interrogation, and the glass panes of the greenhouse gradually fog up – though not enough to obscure the manifestation of Quint’s creepy, malicious grin pressing in from the outside. As if possessed by his wickedness, Miles launches into a brutally honest outburst, and drastically shifts away from his typically cool, sophisticated demeanour.

“You don’t fool me. I know why you keep on and on. It’s because you’re afraid, you’re afraid you might be mad. So you keep on and on. Trying to make me admit something that isn’t true. Trying to frighten me the way you frighten Flora. But I’m not Flora, I’m no baby. You think you can run to my uncle with a lot of lies. But he won’t believe you, not when I tell him what you are. A damned hussy! A damned dirty minded hag! You never fooled us. We always knew.”

*Perspiration forms on Kerr’s face in the greenhouse as Miles’ vitriol spills forth.*

*Deeply terrifying imagery – Quint’s grinning face slowly comes into view over Miles’ shoulder, obscured only by the fogged up greenhouse windows.*

Miles and Quint maliciously cackle in unison at the terror on Miss Giddens’ face, and even after the young boy has seemingly managed to regain his senses, the malevolent spirit does not let go so easily. Gazing down from a high angle in the statue garden, Clayton’s camera suddenly adopts a new perspective for the first time in The Innocents – that of Quint himself, his hand raised in the foreground as if casting a spell over Miles. We might almost assume this to be confirmation of Miss Giddens’ supernatural suspicions were it not for Clayton’s reiteration of this same shot a few seconds later, revealing little more than a stone statue where Quint once stood. From this dizzying height, we helplessly watch as Miles falls to the ground dead, though who or what is truly responsible for his demise remains woefully unclear.

*Clayton plays a trick of perspective here as he divorces us from Miss Giddens’ point-of-view, first taking this high angle as we look over the ghost’s shoulder…*

*…and then cutting back to the exact same angle two shots later, only to find a statue in its place.*

*Sexual repression bursting forth, or the ghost passing into her? Miss Giddens’ kiss on Miles’ dead lips remains an unsettling enigma.*

Has Miss Giddens been justified in her concern, trying to save these children from unholy evils? Are these merely ghosts of past traumas, manifesting as paranoid delusions? Does the kiss she plants on Miles’ cold lips come from her, or one of the spirits entering her body? Clayton offers few answers as this governess clasps her hands together in prayer, mirroring the image from the opening credits and sinking her into an unforgiving darkness. In their place, The Innocents simply haunts us with a stifled, neurotic madness, blurring the lines between sinful corruption and the efforts of those who obsessively seek to conquer it.

*The final shot echoing the first, encompassing Miss Giddens in darkness as she helplessly prays.*

The Innocents is not currently streaming in Australia.

Blow-Up (1966)

Michelangelo Antonioni | 1hr 51min

Even before Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni was already demonstrating the powerful tool of perception that is a photographer’s eye, angling his camera at the oppressive structures of modern civilisation. By placing one such artist at the centre of a psychological mystery though, the question is raised as to whether this intensive scrutiny may also give birth to fabrications, imposing form and purpose on an existence ungoverned by cosmic harmony. This is not necessarily an inherent human weakness – our storytelling sets us apart from less developed lifeforms after all – but to mistake a collection of unrelated artefacts for reality will only ever lead to further distortions, revealing more about the mind of the observer than the observed.

When fashion photographer Thomas begins developing the film stock of an impromptu shoot in a local park, we too find ourselves swept away by the tantalising prospect of conspiracy. Laying his celluloid strips over a light table, he passes a magnifying glass across them frame by frame, before projecting negatives onto photographic paper and submerging the undeveloped prints in a chemical bath. This is a process to be undertaken alone, methodically dedicating one’s utmost attention to each step, and yet it is only after he has meditated on these photos for some period of time that something catches his eye.

*Thomas approaches his art with methodical purpose, and Antonioni uses this sequence to similarly raise our own suspicions without a single line of dialogue.*

In the first photograph, the female subject, Jane, is leading her partner by the hand. In the second, they are holding each other in a tight embrace. When it is enlarged though, he can see her eyeline directed elsewhere. He sections off the small section of bush where he believes she is looking, and then blows that up as well into an abstract array of black and white smudges that still don’t make much sense. Nevertheless, the more he pieces together fragments of his photos, the more previously hidden details begin to emerge – until he unveils the face of a third party hiding in the shadows, and a pistol pointing directly at the male subject.

*Flitting between two black-and-white images until we, like Thomas, begin to impose our own contrived ideas onto them.*

*Thomas literally caught between the two blown-up photos, both becoming the object of his obsession.*

Antonioni plays with the pareidolia effect – the tendency to see patterns in random stimuli, and piece together meaningful conclusions. Of course here, it is the static array of black and white smudges which tangibly form evidence of a murder.

Antonioni’s construction of this sequence is tightly measured, alternating between the photos, close-ups of Thomas’s sweaty face, and wide shots of his frantic pacing through the studio. That last photo may have saved the man’s life, he decides, seeing as it coincided with the exact moment Jane realised they were being watched. No doubt her persistence in later charming him into handing over the negatives is only further proof of her guilt, he believes, though perhaps her erratic behaviour is conversely what put the idea in his mind to begin with. Either way, such fervent curiosity is hard to stop once it is set in motion, setting Thomas down a path of obsessive investigation.

*Blow-Up is Antonioni’s second film shot in colour, and he immediately flexes an impressive control over its stylish potential.*

It is no great surprise that Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window should play such a crucial role in Antonioni’s direction of Blow-Up, which itself would inspire more paranoid thrillers in years to come such as The Conversation and Blow Out. Even beyond the compelling mystery narrative, Antonioni is using his camera to manipulate our point-of-view, voyeuristically peering through frame obstructions at the subjects of our focus. The use of a deep focus lens also takes notes from Hitchcock’s classic masterpieces, staging Jane in the distance of one shot that also eyes off Thomas’ sought-after camera in the foreground, thus drawing great suspense from her concerted attempt to steal back whatever secrets it contains.

*Hitchcock would often use deep focus like this to create tension, though here Antonioni is also impressively creating a split screen effect with his meticulous framing.*

Even with these influences in play though, Antonioni’s established style of incredible architectural designs remains dominant, melding perfectly with his depiction of the Swinging Sixties as an era of vibrant self-expression and profound existentialism. Thomas’ studio is a handsomely chaotic mess of colours and textures, the centrepiece of which is a long stand of vibrant ostrich feathers running from the floor to the ceiling, and outside his location shooting continues to find a geometric synchronicity in London’s natural and manufactured aesthetics. Patterns reveal themselves in the repetition of objects, organically framing Thomas through a symmetrical line of trees and segmenting a backdrop of city streets with Venetian blinds, while negative spaces ease the weight that these shapes impose upon the mise-en-scène.

*Thomas’ studio is a handsomely chaotic mess of colours and textures, the centrepiece of which is a long stand of vibrant ostrich feathers running from the floor to the ceiling.*

*Antonioni reveals his photographer’s eye in his immaculate framing and location shooting, using these evenly spaced trees to design this shot.*

*Venetian blinds segment a backdrop of London’s streets – geometric synchronicity in manufactured aesthetics.*

Architecture is of course not all about physical buildings for Antonioni, but rather extends to the composition of bodies, ornaments, vehicles, and vegetation in any given shot, taking on the quality of a still life artwork in their representation of something larger – a social critique for instance, or a subtle paranoia. Especially when actors are partially concealed by their environments, we often find ourselves leaning forward and filling in the missing information, consequently adopting the perspective that drives Thomas forward in his quest for a greater understanding of an uncertain world.

*Posing bodies in the frame like models, turning them into part of the mise-en-scène.*

*Obstructions force us to fill in the missing visual information.*

*Thomas’ reality warps as his obsession grows, trapping him in these magnificently designed shots within his own studio.*

This is what it means to adopt the eye of a photographer, Antonioni posits – recognising that what remains unseen is just as significant as that which is visible. When interpreting a piece of art, one must essentially become a detective to unearth tangible proof of one’s hypothesis, though which comes first makes all the difference. It is difficult to dispute Thomas’ discovery of the body at the crime scene for instance, now convincing him that the murder was successful, just as the trashing of his studio by an unknown perpetrator suggests he is getting too close to the truth. Nevertheless, when evidence seems to evaporate into thin air, Thomas’ reality seems to collapse into paradox.

Such is life in the British counterculture of the 60s though, bleeding with metaphysical contradictions. While Thomas indulges in the sexual liberty and consumerism of the fashion industry, so too does he engage with more socially conscious pursuits on the side, photographing the homeless people of London for a book project. Subscribing to both escapism and performative activism is all one can do to avoid confronting the dread of Cold War-era politics, and even when seeds of existential doubt do begin to sprout, parsing truth from deception remains extraordinarily difficult.

*The Swinging Sixties bleed into Antonioni’s pop aesthetics, indulging in the sexual liberty and consumerism of the fashion industry.*

*Thomas’ attempts reach a more authentic truth by way of addressing social issues only results in more artifice.*

As such, this artist suddenly finds himself unable to trust his own eyes and ears. Is that the sound of someone stepping on a twig at the park, or is his paranoid mind playing tricks? Does the unexpected absence of a dead body suggest that he was only imagining it the first time around? With the negatives finally being stolen, the prospect of reassessing evidence to arrive at some definitive conclusion is ruled out as well.

Perhaps there really is a grand conspiracy manipulating Thomas’ perception of the world, or maybe he has just convinced himself of one. There is no doubt that there is at least some sort of illusion at play, though this knowledge doesn’t help in exposing it, as Antonioni demonstrates in his confounding final scene. Lost for answers, Thomas finds himself wandering by a tennis court where a troupe of mimes silently act out a game, and soon overcomes his confusion to participate in the imaginary act. We are not exemption from this mirage either, following the invisible ball’s arc through the air and even hearing it hit the make-believe racquets.

*A reality-defying finale as Thomas reaches the tennis game performed by mimes, eventually engaging in their imaginary act – the metaphoric implications upon the rest of his story are sweeping.*

The effect is disorientating, and yet to accept a collective fantasy is to find one’s home in a false reality, fading tangible truths into non-existence. That this should also be Thomas’ fate in a narrative that already keeps us at arm’s length from decisive answers is perfectly enigmatic, undermining whatever confidence we have left in identifying where Blow-Up’s slyly crafted illusion starts and ends. If nothing on its surface is a true representation of itself, then there may ultimately be very little keeping us too from becoming distortions in the eyes of others, spuriously skewing our very identities to the point of uncanny, elusive abstraction.

*Thomas too becomes little more than a distortion in the eye of the observer, eroding his very identity in the confounding final shot.*

Blow-Up is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

The Wind (1928)

Victor Sjöström | 1hr 35min

Impoverished ingénue Letty is absolutely convinced that the Texan wasteland where she tries to plant her roots in The Wind is haunted, though not by any malevolent poltergeist or demon. High up in the sky, she envisions a ghostly white horse galloping among the clouds, stirring a gale which tears at the foundations of ranches down below. This invisible force of elemental chaos possesses no alliance to any greater good or evil, but exists of its natural accord. It is to be marvelled at, feared, and for those who are particularly susceptible to its maddening influence, hopelessly succumbed to in total resignation.

It is through this eerie visual motif that what would otherwise be a straightforward melodrama takes on dark psychological dimensions in The Wind, delivering a metaphor of profound, existential instability. Especially for a woman like Letty whose life is so consumed by turmoil, this restless tempest is a constant companion, blowing around debris just as she herself is helplessly tossed between homes and men. What she initially hopes will be a chance for a new life in Sweetwater offers little in the way of security, especially when she begins to realise how vulnerable she is at the hands of the local bachelors – not all of whom have honourable intentions.

*California’s Mojave Desert stands in for the Texan badlands, showcasing some superb location shooting in Hollywood’s earliest days.*

*The winds take the form of a great white horse in the sky, galloping across clouds with ceaseless momentum.*

It is an uncertain, ever-changing world that she inhabits, and as an early pioneer of location shooting, Victor Sjöström is powerfully in tune with capturing its raw elements. California’s Mojave Desert effectively stands in for the Texan wilderness, and airplane propellors are cleverly situated just out of shot to simulate the titular winds, buffeting the actors’ hair and clothes. When an advancing cyclone turns a carefree party into an accelerating stampede to safety, even his blocking adopts that perpetual, unidirectional momentum. Standing amid the rush, Letty fearfully clings to her most persistent suitor Wirt, before being whisked away into an underground bunker with the other patrons. Clearly if she is to find any sort of stability, then she must hitch herself to a man, regardless of whether she finds the available options particularly appealing.

*Gish literally surrounded by suitors in this framing, pressing in from every side.*

*A rush of bodies flying past Letty, manifesting the winds in Sjöström’s blocking.*

As D.W. Griffith’s muse, Lillian Gish was certainly no stranger to playing naïve, innocent women, though Sjöström makes even better use of her talents here to corrupt Hollywood’s paragon of virtue. Even when she is safe inside, her troubled gaze is constantly drawn to windows where views of the heavy gale slowly erode her sanity, and bitterness makes a home in her heart as she perseveres through a reluctant marriage to Sweetwater local Lige Hightower. Her adamant fury when he forces a kiss is strengthened by its contrast to her usually passive demeanour, and opens the door to a deeper mistrust of those men she once believed were meant to be protectors of women.

*A landmark of acting in silent cinema, twisting and corrupting the paragon of virtue which Gish so frequently represents.*

*Our gaze is frequently drawn to window frames of the exterior view, establishing a thin barrier between safety and madness.*

Wirt’s willingness to pursue her even after she marries Lige sets him apart as the worst of the bunch. She has already rejected him upon learning that he simply wants to make her his mistress, yet still he continues his advances, driving Letty mad with panicked terror. When he is brought to her place to recover from an injury one day, she can’t help but picture his leering eyes and creepy smile as he sleeps, rendered disconcertingly in a double exposure effect. With men like this hanging around, little can soothe her anxiety, which Sjöström soon builds to a fever pitch as the fabled North Wind plagues her home with howling, frenzied chaos.

*A haunting double exposure effect layers Lige on top of himself, leering disconcertingly at the camera.*

Gish too seems possessed by this invisible force, her eyes stretching wide with terror and drooping into a hypnotic trance as she rhythmically sways with the hanging lanterns and camera. Kitchen bowls rock on shelves as if enchanted by spirits, and soon even the glass windows give in to the piercing wind, knocking over an oil lamp and setting a blanket on fire. In the sky above, that great white horse continues to whip up violent flurries, but a pounding at the door heralds an even greater peril – an opportunistic Wirt, taking advantage of Letty’s vulnerability to force himself on her.

*Remarkable montage editing as the wind enters the house, knocks over an oil lamp, and drives Letty mad.*

The relative serenity of the following morning does not bring an end to Gish’s madness. She is deeply traumatised, and as she sits stiffly in a kitchen chair, the camera’s forward tracking shot directs our gaze towards the object of her attention – a pistol, lying atop a pile of debris. She seems prepared to defend herself, though later when she finally fires it into Wirt’s stomach, she can barely comprehend her own actions. Even after burying him, all she can do is watch in terror as the wind gradually re-exposes his body, convincing her that the pair of hands forcing open the front door belong to his vengeful spirit.

*A steady camera movement inching forward from behind Gish and towards the pistol lying on the table.*

*Madness builds to another peak after Letty’s murder of Lige, the wind revealing his buried body.*

That it is Lige who enters cabin instead comes as a great relief to Letty, though even more reassuring are his words of comfort. “Wind’s mighty odd – if you kill a man in justice – it allers covers him up!” he proclaims, pointing out the weather’s mysterious concealment of her murder. Contrary to the rest of Sweetwater’s foreboding mythologising, this is the first suggestion that there might be some semblance of moral order in an otherwise lawless cosmos. Even more importantly, it is also the first demonstration of Lige’s selfless, forgiving love. With a steadfast certainty like this, all other doubts and insecurities fall away, and not even the winds hold the same psychological influence anymore as Letty and Lige bask in the draught of the open doorway. Worldly elements may ravage material constructs in The Wind, yet there is still peace to be found in Sjöström’s allegory of life’s erratic movements, delicately revealed in our ability to face its ravaging, mercurial turbulence.

*Finally embracing the elements and life’s uncertainty without fear, captured in this gorgeous frame.*

The Wind is not currently streaming in Australia.

Ivan the Terrible (1944-46)

Sergei Eisenstein | 2 Parts (1hr 40min, 1hr 26min)

So rapturous was the reception that Ivan the Terrible, Part I received from Joseph Stalin, it is hard to blame Sergei Eisenstein for recklessly pushing the boundaries of state censorship in its sequel. Both films are mirrors of each other – the first revealing an idealistic ambition in the young Ivan IV which Part II withers into paranoid cruelty, and together painting a vivid portrait of Eisenstein’s own shifting relationship with the Soviet Union. This was no longer the filmmaker who sought to reflect revolutionary principles in his experimental montage theory, but rather a disillusioned artist simultaneously defying and reluctantly cooperating with Stalin’s regime. It is a little ironic that the Communist dictator should see so much of him himself in the first Tsar of Russia, yet Eisenstein nevertheless took the metaphor as a creative challenge, risking his life and liberty to compose a vision of oppressive tyranny that stands true across centuries.

The casting of Nikolay Cherkasov as the imposing central figure here is particularly fascinating given his previous role in Alexander Nevsky, where he portrayed the titular 13^th-century Prince of Novgorod. As a young, newly-coronated Ivan proudly declares Moscow a “Third Rome,” his eyes glisten with tears and hope, sentimentalising a vision of Russia’s future which doesn’t sound so different from Nevsky’s own utopian promise after vanquishing the Teutonic Knights.

*Meticulous attention to detail in Eisenstein’s staging – this could very well be one of those images painted on the walls surrounding the young Tsar at his coronation, immortalised in history.*

This is the ruler that Stalin admires, yet who is never viewed in such a pure light again after this moment, soon developing a distinctively hunched posture and angular facial features that become living extensions of Eisenstein’s majestic production design. Ivan’s bushy eyebrows, pointed beard, and crooked nose are virtually made for close-ups, and when his distinctive profile is cast in giant shadows upon the walls, he becomes a dark, physical embodiment of 16^th century Russia’s formidable spirit.

*An extraordinary performance from Nikolay Cherkasov, physically transforming into a hunched, crooked tyrant.*

*Meticulous framing in Eisenstein’s deep focus, imposing Ivan’s visage upon the Russian people.*

*An incredibly recognisable profile, cast against walls in darkened shadows.*

Only the Kremlin’s lavish interiors can match his awe-inspiring majesty with religious iconography painted across arches and columns, reliefs carved from its stonework, and collectively resting the Tsar’s legacy upon centuries of culture and history. Eisenstein’s rich depth of field especially flourishes here, sinking the masses to the bottom of frames that revel in the overhead architecture, and symmetrically positioning Ivan at their centre. These vast, intricate halls of power may very well mark Eisenstein’s greatest achievement in mise-en-scene, borrowing heavily from F.W. Murnau’s expressionistic imagery to cloak characters in chiaroscuro lighting, and underscoring their constant psychological tension between good and evil.

*Remarkable achievements in production design, sinking his actors to the bottom of the frame to bask in the murals painted all across these halls and arches.*

*Wonderful symmetry through framing, blocking, and production design, projecting power and control.*

In the absence of formally innovative editing, Eisenstein turns his focus to composing magnificent shots like these through lighting and staging, marking Ivan the Terrible as his most beautiful work to date.

It is evident here that Eisenstein is far more than just an editor, though he nevertheless showcases those talents as well in the explosive siege of Kazan, where Ivan and his sprawling armies claim a stunning victory against the Khanate. As soldiers wait patiently upon hillsides with their cannons and banners, sappers furiously dig tunnels beneath the walled city to plant gunpowder, and Eisenstein clearly relishes the practical effects granted by his enormous budget when the time comes to blast brick, mortar, and smoke into the air. Rather than wielding his editing for intellectual purposes, here he dedicates it purely to the vast scale of his action, building Ivan’s grand authority upon the conquest of those who dare oppose his rule.

*Eisenstein uses the natural terrain to block huge crowds of extras across hills, stretching their formations deep into the background.*

*Eisenstein proves he still has his knack for action editing, lingering on the burning fuse before unleashing a series of spectacular explosions around the city walls.*

For the most part though, the greatest political threats to the Tsar are located within his own ranks, as conspirators plot to install his simple-minded cousin Vladimir as Russia’s true sovereign. The political intrigue carries a Shakespearean gravity to it, modelling Ivan after the likes of Macbeth or Richard III, and watching his games of manipulation unfold with treacherous delight. When he falls deathly ill and names his son Dmitri as heir to the throne, his aunt Yefrosinya is quick to whisper into the embittered Prince Kurbsky’s ear, perniciously encouraging him to announce her son Vladimir as the rightful successor instead. Kurbsky is smart to sniff out Ivan’s test of his loyalty here, as almost immediately after carrying out his wishes, the recovered Tsar emerges from his chambers and rewards his allegiance.

*Shakespearean power struggles, treachery, and intrigue – perhaps Eisenstein’s strongest pure narrative to date.*

Yefrosinya, on the other hand, is not so restrained. Though she prefers to pull strings from the shadows, she isn’t above getting her hands dirty, going so far as to weaken Ivan’s rule by poisoning his wife Anastasia. Later when he makes an enemy of Metropolitan Philip by overruling his religious authority, Yefrosinya again leaps on the opportunity to stir dissent among his followers, only this time rallying them behind an assassination plot that targets Ivan himself.

The murder is to take place after a banquet and theatrical performance, where Ivan the Terrible suddenly departs from the black-and-white photography which has dominated Eisenstein’s career thus far and catches aflame with hellish red hues. This vibrant burst of colour is a shock to the senses, accompanying Ivan’s final and perhaps most despicable act. Having plied Vladimir with alcohol and extracted the conspiracy from his lips, he mockingly dresses him in his own royal regalia, and lets him lead his entourage to the cathedral in prayer. Black, hooded figures trail behind Vladimir like spectres of death, and from the shadows the killer pounces, sinking his dagger into the flesh of the disguised prince.

*An avant-garde eruption of blazing red hues as Ivan prepares to commit his most despicable act yet – a shock to our senses.*

*Shadows, candles, and hooded figures as Ivan’s plan is seen through to fruition, making for an outstanding visual and dramatic climax.*

Yefrosinya’s celebration is critically premature. “The Tsar is dead!” she joyfully proclaims, before recognising the tragic turn of events which has befallen her son. Ivan cares so little for these traitors, he does not even bother to have them executed. After all, they are the ones who killed his worst enemy, and who have effectively destroyed themselves in the process.

With Ivan’s greatest threats in Moscow eradicated, the time has thus come for him to turn his attention to those on the outside – yet it is at this tantalising climax that we are left wondering what a third part to Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible trilogy might have looked like. Stalin’s fury at Part II’s tyrannical depiction of the Tsar not only kept the sequel from being released until 1958, but immediately ended production on Part III, destroying all but a single fragment of its footage. Even without completion though, the legacy of this truncated series is nevertheless secured in Eisenstein’s daring ambition. Through bold, inflammatory strokes, waves of Russian despotism are painted out in striking detail, reaching across centuries to impose familiar cruelties on this nation’s long-afflicted people.

Ivan the Terrible is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

The Mother and the Whore (1973)

Jean Eustache | 3hr 40min

In the Les Deux Magots café where intellectuals and artists of Paris gather, Alexandre tries a little too hard to blend in with the crowd. He speaks eloquently of the May 68 protests, classic filmmakers, and the state of modern relationships, yet he never quite drops the tone of cynical self-importance, barely masking the lack of substance in his political philosophising. When invited to dance at a club, he justifies his refusal with two excuses – “It bores me, and I have no money” – though it is plain to see the self-consciousness which underlies his haughty indifference. As long as he is in control of his environment, then he can maintain the hypocritical pretence that compartmentalises his misogyny, sexuality, and desperate desire to be taken seriously – an effort which is severely threatened by the meeting of his two girlfriends.

Sigmund Freud’s infamous Madonna-whore complex is baked right into the title of The Mother and the Whore, calling out the male psychological desire to pursue both love and sex, but never with the same woman. To Alexandre, Marie is the reliable caretaker who he shares a small, shabby apartment with, spitefully tolerating his affairs. Meanwhile, Veronika is the promiscuous paramour whose no-strings-attached attitude fools him into thinking she lacks any greater depth than what she presents on the surface. Where both women overlap is in Alexandre’s flattening of their identities, believing they only exist to serve his conflicting desires for stability and excitement while rendering their emotional needs inconsequential.

“You don’t love me. You love Marie. You live and sleep with her, you wash with her, you shit with her. You love a woman and fuck another.”

*Alexandre frequents Les Deus Magots café, trying to blend in with its intellectual clientele yet clearly lacking the substance to hold a thoughtful conversation that isn’t hinged on his ego.*

The extent to which the director based this character study on his own youth is clearly defined by Jean Eustache himself, who openly named the real-life people that these women were based off. Though he admitted more freely to his weaknesses than Alexandre, he nevertheless shared similar passions and anxieties, drifting around the edges of the French New Wave during its peak with featurettes and documentaries before falling victim to creative block. The concept for The Mother and the Whore struck him very suddenly in 1972, at which point there was no holding back his immense ambition for his first feature film, using its nearly four-hour runtime to apply an intensive focus to the lives of three young adults and their juvenile struggles in love.

*Like Truffaut before him, Eustache shoots on location through the streets of Paris, often with a handheld camera that underscores the film’s raw naturalism.*

*Grim, shabby minimalism in Alexandre’s apartment, which also happens to be the same apartment where Eustache lived – the autobiographical connection is strong.*

*City lights bounce off the Seine, forming a muted backdrop to this conversation between Alexandre and Veronika on a park bench at night.*

Production for Eustache’s epic drama lands firmly outside the span of time that the French New Wave covers, yet it still couldn’t be more aligned with the movement’s subversive ideals. Shot in the streets and cafés of Paris on grainy black-and-white film stock, Eustache achieves a gritty, urban naturalism in his compositions and handheld camerawork, and even lets the noise of passing cars occasionally drown out his characters’ conversations. City lights bouncing off the Seine become a muted backdrop to Alexandre and Veronika’s meeting on a bench, and their threadbare apartments are completely empty of shelves, bed frames, and decorations, leaving clutter to gather on the floors instead. Eustache’s long takes prove to be crucial in appreciating the minimalist beauty here, as well as the dedicated performances of his actors, whether it is Bernadette Lafont crying to the entirety of Edith Piaf’s song ‘Les Amants de Paris’ or Françoise Lebrun commanding a powerful close-up in Veronika’s climactic eight-minute monologue.

*The entirety of Edith Piaf’s song ‘Les Amants de Paris’ plays through this static shot as we sit with Marie in her misery, drawing a deep melancholy from the mundanity.*

*Françoise Lebrun commands an eight-minute close-up with a shattering monologue, shedding her carefree image to lament the emptiness of her sexual pursuits.*

Ultimately though, Jean-Pierre Léaud’s thorny portrayal of our two-faced hero marks the greatest acting accomplishment in The Mother and the Whore, with his casting nodding to Eustache’s colossal influences Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. As insufferably verbose as he may be, it is telling that the only thing he listens to other than his own voice is his vinyl collection of French classics and British rock, offering those artists a respect that he never affords anyone else. When Veronika notices his fondness for music and sings a poignant love ballad in a rare moment of vulnerability, it is comical just how jarringly he changes the topic by turning on his favourite radio station, landing right in the middle of a segment railing against the laziness of modern society.

*Eustache uses close-ups masterfully to forge a connection with his actors, giving Jean-Pierre Léaud the platform to deliver one of his best performances.*

Smugness evidently goes hand-in-hand with insecurity for Alexandre, and it isn’t hard to see how his loquacious brand of intellectual pretence would later go on to shape the characters of Woody Allen and Richard Linklater films, especially considering the gaping chasm that lies between his narcissistic ego and feeble masculinity. It is much easier for him to blame women at large for his romantic struggles than to turn a critical eye inwards, as he shallowly longs for an era with old-fashioned values while remaining ignorant to the fact that he still would have been just as undesirable back then.

“I wish I had known the days when girls, in the streets of our cities, on our country roads, swooned over soldiers. The prestige of the uniform. These days they swoon over sports cars. These days, young businessmen, young executives, professionals, have replaced the military. I’m not sure we’re better off.”

*Eustache’s screenplay is introspective, using Alexandre as a surrogate to put all his anxieties and shortcomings on display – and then tear them apart.*

*Eustache’s camera especially loves this brief shift to a high-end establishment in Paris, relishing its fine décor and lighting.*

The cognitive dissonance needed for a radical leftist like Alexandre to make such a conservative statement is staggering, though clearly his politics are as fickle as his choice in women. Neither Marie nor Veronika have entirely figured out who they are yet either, but at least within The Mother and the Whore they develop a self-awareness that their common boyfriend never quite finds the courage to face. When the three of them enter a polyamorous relationship, Marie and Veronica are united in a mutual understanding that leaves Alexandre deeply discomforted, helplessly watching his psychological division between love and sex slowly erode. As it turns out, these women are far more complicated than the neat boxes he has designed for them. With Marie’s façade of stability fading, she not only finds the freedom to explore her sexuality, but also unleashes a pent-up rage she had previously contained. Similarly, Veronika’s claim that she is only after sex from men completely disappears when she reveals her jealousy towards Marie and tearfully laments the emptiness of her carnal pursuits.

“If people understood, once and for all, that fucking is shit. That the only thing that’s beautiful is to fuck because you’re so in love you want to a conceive a child who looks like you, or else it’s something sordid. We should fuck only if we’re in love.”

Alexandre gets exactly what he wants – both the mother and the whore – and yet it is at this point that he also unravels, helplessly watching his psychological division between love and sex slowly erode.

Alexandre is lucky to have two girls who love him and like each other, Veronika declares, but still happiness eludes him. After all, if he were to accept this state of affairs then he must also relinquish control of a dynamic that preserves his simplistic world view and protects his ego. Perhaps this is why Veronika’s unplanned pregnancy spurs such a rapid, uncharacteristic change of heart, sending him impulsively running back to her apartment to propose, and hopefully reduce this complicated love triangle to a traditional two-way relationship.

Predictably, his regret is almost instantaneous. For as long as his arrogance keeps him from addressing his own inhibitions, he will never find fulfilment in romantic intimacy, especially when it is contained within an institution as rigidly traditional as marriage. As Alexandre sinks to the floor in the final seconds of The Mother and the Whore, he has no lengthy monologue or deflection to steal back control. Eustache simply concludes this film of endless verbal debate with bleak, dampened silence, cynically anticipating the birth of a dysfunctional family, and its fathering by an infantile egoist who cannot understand the fundamental virtue of selflessness.

A foolish snap decision that would be framed in any other film as a romantic gesture, and an ambiguous resignation to the bathroom floor as he realises what he has done. Eustache’s ending is both dryly funny and totally hopeless.

The Mother and the Whore is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Fellini Satyricon (1969)

Federico Fellini | 2hr 9min

Through the lens of our contemporary world, the past often looks like an alien civilisation, abiding by absurd customs and exotic fashions conceptualised by some bizarre foreign entity. Though Federico Fellini acutely identifies traces of modern decadence in his distorted refraction of Ancient Rome, this is the position he maintains throughout Fellini Satyricon, while slowly revealing an even more audacious statement at the heart of its manic weirdness. It is not merely our distant ancestors who are aliens to an impartial outsider, but humanity itself, bound to the same trivial obsessions and primal impulses across history. This age of decadence we live through today is merely an echo of many others that have come before, Fellini posits, each time heralding a socioeconomic decline brought about by gluttonous appetites and egos.

This landscape of widespread moral corruption is of course not unique in his filmography, especially given that Satyricon and La Dolce Vita both trace the journey of two lone men through episodes exposing Rome’s shameless depravity. Where Catholic iconography and ethics guided the narrative of Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece though, Satyricon’s tales draw directly from ancient pagan beliefs, and specifically the eponymous novel penned by Roman writer Petronius as a satire of Greco-Roman mythology. More specifically, this text directly parodied the majestic heroism and fantastical adventures of Homer’s Odyssey, which by the 1^st century AD was several hundred years old. While its lost segments somewhat hinder Fellini’s interpretation from mustering up much formal rigour, there is still an immense dedication to epic storytelling on display within the picaresque narrative chaos, reassembling the remains of a decaying world that is only barely hanging together.

Fellini’s mise-en-scène in Satyricon stands with some of his best, using his ludicrously theatrical set designs and blocking to compose off-kilter landscapes of moral debauchery and suffering. In effect, this is an ancient apocalypse – the downward slide of the once-powerful Roman Empire.

In place of the brave, charismatic hero that Odysseus typified in the Epic Cycle, Encolpius represents a far more ambiguous protagonist in Satyricon, motivated more by epicurean pleasure than love or honour. This is a man who will slaughter a temple of worshippers and kidnap a hermaphroditic demigod in hope of a obtaining a ransom, and yet who is also incompetent enough to carelessly let them die of dehydration in a scorching desert. He does not stand out from this moral cesspool, but rather blends in with its depraved surroundings, feebly falling into the off-kilter orbit of egocentric patricians, lecherous merchants, and bloodthirsty spectators who seek nothing but their own gratification. Given the self-indulgent behaviour of the Roman gods, it is fitting that their followers should celebrate them with such blatant acts of hedonism, transforming their once-glorious empire into a carnival of violence and debauchery.

*Murals and graffiti become stunning backdrops to Encolpius’ journey, rendering him as another two-dimensional figure next to those painted on walls.*

Now fully consumed by his love of Technicolour photography, Fellini doesn’t hold back either in his frenetic visual recreation of Satyricon’s Rome, especially with genius cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno joining his troupe. This is expressionistic world building at its most imposing, based around colossal, anachronistic sets that might almost belong in a theatre were it not for their vast expansion in all directions. The giant ziggurat of apartments where Encolpius lives with his slave and lover Gitón towers menacingly in the darkness above a grey courtyard, and of course to reach it from the other side of the city one must pass through a brothel where strange sexual acts unfold in full view of the public. Where 8 ½ and Juliet of the Spirits once blended reality and surrealism in fragmented dreams, Fellini immerses Satyricon in a feverish hallucination that has taken over the lives of the Roman people, and even infected the skies with a deep red that casts the land below as an infernal underworld.

*The giant ziggurat where Encolpius lives with Gitón towers menacingly above a grey courtyard, appearing strikingly apocalyptic with its darkness and crowds.*

*Red skies shed a hellish glow over the infernal underworld of Ancient Rome, damning its lost souls to endless torment and suffering.*

Fellini indulges in the artifice of his lighting, sets, and costuming. This is not an authentic recreation of Ancient Rome, but an anachronistic refraction of a satirical text, underlining the hypocrisies which led to its downfall.

It is no coincidence that some of Fellini’s most demented imagery arrives with the novel’s most famous episode, set at a banquet held by wealthy freeman Trimalchio for the entertainment of the commonfolk. Encolpius has been invited by his new friend, the eccentric poet Eumolpus, and as they venture towards the meeting place they come across an absurdly confronting sight – a hundred nude men and women waiting outside in a giant, steamy bath, surrounded by an even greater number of candles. The erotic of nature of Fellini’s blocking here is crucial to the carnal madness of Satyricon, bringing together bare bodies in uncomfortably intimate arrangements which simultaneously satiate and disturb the senses.

*Satyricon signals a shift in Fellini’s surrealism, moving away from depictions of dreams and fully bombarding us with maddening, expressionistic landscapes without narrative explanation.*

Inside Trimalchio’s gaudy manor, he continues this staging as guests lounge around the edges of the room in extravagant costumes and makeup, imprinted against red walls and enveloped in thick clouds of steam. Insanity reigns when the crowd frenetic dances to dissonant live music and organs spill across the floor from a giant roast hog, yet Fellini’s focus never wavers from the codependent relationship between the narcissistic host and his guests. Supposedly based on Emperor Nero, the insecure Trimalchio holds these lavish parties for no other purpose than to be adored by the commonfolk. He is evidently little more than a talentless, egotistic fraud using his wealth to gain respect, though his patience is short when they do not play according to his rules, even having Eumolpus tortured in the furnace for calling out his plagiarised poetry.

“In my house, I’m the poet!”

Insanity reigns in Trimalchio’s gaudy manor, where Fellini stages guests lounge around the edges of the room in extravagant costumes and makeup, imprinted against red walls and enveloped in thick clouds of steam. This is the novel’s most famous episode, and is given a bold cinematic treatment.

These characters are not actively engaged with the political climate of Ancient Rome, yet at every turn Fellini is placing Encolpius’ fate in the hands of more powerful men. The few times he does take an active role in his own story, his efforts are rapidly undercut by the turmoil of a crumbling world, whether depicted literally in the earthquake that violently tears down his home or the insurgents who install a usurper as their new emperor.

That Encolpius is the closest thing to a Greek hero that Imperial Rome has to offer is pathetic indeed, making for a comparison that only cuts deeper in Fellini’s bastardised recreation of King Minos’ Labyrinth and its fearsome Minotaur, seeing our protagonist escape only by begging for his life and confessing that he is no Theseus. Through Satyricon’s retelling of the Widow of Ephesus myth, Christian doctrine does not entirely escape Fellini’s scathing satire here either, though his most direct parody is reserved for the final minutes where Eumolpus requests for his body to be devoured by the beneficiaries of his will.

*Bloodthirsty crowds recreate the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur for their own cheap entertainment – Fellini draws on powerful iconography in these myths and legends.*

*A pair of moral fables further embed the notion of storytelling and its rich history into this tale, and even take aim at the still-nascent form of Christianity in the 1st century AD.*

True to the source material which records this as the final scene, missing segments notwithstanding, Fellini abandons his narrative mid-sentence with Encolpius leaving on Eumolpus’ ship to Africa. It is difficult to label this an anticlimax when we were never promised a great catharsis to begin with, though by taking a step back to reveal Satyricon‘s characters painted in frescoes upon ancient ruins, Fellini breaks the immersion to acknowledge that plot was never paramount in this absurd dreamscape. Cinematic surrealists like David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky would later centralise this tenet in their own filmmaking too, adapting archetypes and allegories with a subversive, Felliniesque irreverence that believes greater truth lies in the fanciful stories we fashion from skewed perceptions of our past rather than history itself. Through its surreal blend of modern art and classical antiquity, Fellini Satyricon not only examines this grand paradox of truth and fiction – it becomes a direct embodiment of our most maddening psychological conflict, farcically recognising the indelibly primal self-contradictions of humanity across all ages.

Fellini ends his narrative exactly where the text finishes – mid-sentence – before revealing the film’s characters painted in frescoes upon ancient ruins. If Satyricon is a surreal interrogation of historical legends, then we must look to their artifice and limitations to understand the true nature of the people who composed them.

Fellini Satyricon is currently available to purchase on Amazon.

I Vitelloni (1953)

Federico Fellini | 1hr 47min

Every so often, something genuinely interesting happens in the coastal Italian village where idle womaniser Fausto stirs trouble with his friends, and Federico Fellini eagerly latches onto those fleeting breaks from the monotony. As for the moments in between, I Vitelloni’s mysterious narrator has no issue condensing entire months into a few seconds, briefly noting the facial hair that Fausto’s friends grow as the most exciting thing to happen between their ringleader’s momentous return from his honeymoon and his first scandalous affair. This first-person voiceover is tinged with nostalgia, assuming the perspective of the entire group looking back on their youth, while largely resisting being pinned down to any individual. Still, it very gradually becomes apparent which of them in particular its attitude most aligns with – the only one to have broken free from those small-town constraints, and whose reflections come from a poignant distance.

Moraldo is not the main character in I Vitelloni, let alone his own story, though he is clearly the most introspective of his friends. While the others are chasing women, fame, and glory with a middle-class arrogance, he finds himself wandering the town’s cobbled stone streets at night, recognising his immediate surroundings as the source of his listless discontent. The trivial drama of Fausto’s sleazy escapades can only keep one entertained for so long before they grow wearisome and the call of grander adventures become louder, fading his formative years into memories kept alive through stories like these.

I Vitelloni was Fellini’s Mean Streets long before Martin Scorsese would break through with his own plotless hangout film in 1973, dwelling in vignettes languidly strung together in the lives of young, immature men.

It would be incorrect to label I Vitelloni as an autobiographical film for Fellini, though the essence of his own youth lived by the Adriatic Sea visibly carries from life into fiction. The meandering plotlessness of this hangout narrative would go on to influence everyone from Richard Linklater to the Coen Brothers, but first and foremost it left its mark on the global New Wave movements of the 1960s and 70s. The resemblance between Fellini’s work and Martin Scorsese’s breakout Mean Streets is especially striking, with Fausto’s philandering and Johnny Boy’s troublemaking both building towards a pair of crises that erupt with brutal consequences. Outside of these climactic reckonings, vignettes are also effortlessly strung together into landscapes of celebration and struggle, trapping characters in loops that continuously cycle between both.

Even if it diverges from Roberto Rossellini’s examinations of post-war destitution, I Vitelloni is a film to make Fellini’s neorealist mentor proud, resourcefully shooting on location in small Italian towns and crafting tremendous visuals from their historic stonework.

Much like Scorsese’s film, I Vitelloni similarly marked the first true work of cinematic brilliance from Fellini as well, though the introduction of characters through a floating camera and descriptive voiceover is purely Goodfellas. Even if it diverges from Roberto Rossellini’s examinations of post-war destitution, this is a film to make his neorealist mentor proud, resourcefully shooting on location in small Italian towns and crafting tremendous visuals from their historic stonework.

The heightened emotions of classical Hollywood are nowhere to be found here, replaced by day-to-day interactions and complex relationships that are consistently developed in Fellini’s naturalistic blocking. There is also no external conflict in our characters’ walk down to the town’s deserted beach on a windy afternoon where they playfully consider of how much money they would jump into the water for, and yet the bleak beauty of his coastal scenery, the uneven arrangement of their bodies, and their impassive expressions reveal an unspoken, disenchanted aloofness. Fellini’s staging in such moments often illustrates the indolence of these men who are described in the film’s translated title as layabouts, and yet never quite so explicitly as his magnificent shot of them lounging across chairs outside a café, alternating directions far into the background.

A wealth of meaning packed into the staging of bodies along the edge of a pier, staggered into the background as the men passively gaze out at the ocean – the sheer edge of the only society they have ever known.

*Bleak coastal scenery set beneath an overcast sky, with jagged metal wires foregrounded to the left. Fellini never simply throws away his frames.*

At least the small routines and traditions of this community connect them to some sense of cultural identity, even if they don’t quite keep them out of trouble. Whether they are attending the annual Miss Mermaid beauty contest or preparing for the chaotic carnival season, these festivities simultaneously break up the monotony of everyday life, and yet paradoxically become part of that predictable annual cycle. It is often during these events that Fellini’s camerawork, editing, and mise-en-scène grow busier too as extras fill his scenery, enveloping Fausto in intoxicating atmospheres that spur him on to make poor decisions.

*Traditions, rituals, and celebrations bring some excitement as they periodically break up the monotony of everyday life, and yet they also paradoxically become part of its predictable cycles.*

*Fellini designs the frame at festivals like Josef von Sternberg before him, cluttering the mise-en-scène with extravagant, maximalist detail and streamers.*

Not that it takes much for the playboy to rush headfirst into impulsive exploits and affairs, even after his shotgun wedding to Miss Mermaid contest winner, Sandra Rubini. His disloyalty borders on sociopathic, seeing him slyly flirt with another woman at the cinema while his wife curls up on his arm, before abruptly leaving and following the beautiful stranger home. Later when he is forced to finally get a retail job, he even tries on multiple occasions to seduce his boss’ wife Giulia, and retaliates with petty vengeance when he is fired in a far more gracious manner than what he deserves.

Fausto is easily the greatest character of I Vitelloni – a man his friends call their spiritual guide, yet who is completely devoid of responsibility and shame, leaving his wife at the cinema to cheat on her with a fellow moviegoer. As such, he becomes a complete representation of masculinity at its most immature and self-serving.

Of course, Fausto’s friends aren’t entirely blameless in all of this. They are enablers of the worst kind, convincing him to steal Signore Michele’s angel statue to compensate for the weeks of work he has lost, and directly lying to the hopelessly naïve Sandra about his cheating. They call him their “spiritual guide,” but it is clear that they are young men simply electing the coolest, most confident peer in their vicinity as their leader. Only when Sandra discovers his infidelity and runs away from home with their baby is Fausto forced to accept responsibility for his family, having thoroughly humiliated himself by crying to his old boss and being belted by his father. Whether or not he will fall prey to his lustful impulses in the future remains uncertain, and yet his illusion of self-composure has nevertheless begun to weaken, loosening his grasp over those who once held him as a paragon of masculinity.

*Fausto is a fitting name for the playboy of the group, constantly seeking out hedonistic excitement at the ultimate cost of his own freedom.*

The time has come to move on, these men realise, and yet only Moraldo has the motivation to set himself free from the past. He doesn’t know where his train will take him, but as he looks back for the last time, Fellini rapidly cuts through a montage of his friends lying in bed and becoming little more than distant memories. They too will grow old and perhaps even find success, but within I Vitelloni’s ruminations they are frozen in an eternal, static youth of idle recreation and empty pleasure, lazily hoping for the day that the world might finally give their lives greater purpose.

*A poignant ending, flitting through a montage of each friend asleep in their bed, before farewelling the only one among them with the courage to leave town and make something of his life.*

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