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bales2023filmchallenge

491 (Vilgot Sjöman, 1964)

Jul

7

Global Forgiveness Day

491 (1964)

One of the juvenile delinquents carving a simple arithmetical calculation into a desk during the Reverend's lecture about forgiveness. DP: Gunnar Fischer.

Early 60s, Sweden. A social experiment. Six hopelessly criminal juveniles are packed in a guesthouse – cynically named Objectivity – and loosely supervised by social workers and a reverend. The public servants speak of a new lease on life, God's servant of how Jesus forgives; all speak on their own behalf. We follow the young men closely and sense their need to break out, to be young, to be out of that house. We learn that their world, in or out, is eternally equally irrelevant.

“Jesus Christ has promised to forgive you 490 times, whatever you have done… because those were his words. But about the 491st time… He has given no words. None at all.”

– Reverend Mild

Vilgot Sjöman's 491 is an extremely, bleak, aggressive, and hopeless depiction of youth in postwar Sweden. Forgiveness is a tool of power, a method of control. And as empty as a repetitive lecture.

Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt [It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives] (Rosa von Praunheim, 1971)

Jul

6

National Daniel Day

Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (1971)

A gay couple kissing on the street in front of a black-tiled Berlin bar. A third gay man nearby looks away. DP: Robert van Ackeren.

Daniel (Bernd Feuerhelm) is a young man in #WestBerlin exploring his homosexuality. Initially he opts for a spießbürgerlich, petit-bourgeois, almost heterosexual affair. He then probes further, swings by Berlin's public toilets and pools. Only when he encounters a leftwing gay commune he finds that pride, not conformity, is his way of living his life.

“Werdet stolz auf eure Homosexualität! Raus aus den Toiletten, rein in die Strassen! Freiheit für die Schwulen!”

Von Praunheim's Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers is a plea for rebellion and visibility. For revolt and love. A wakeup call for gays and straights alike. Such a stir this film pamphlet made it became the blueprint for West-Germany's gay liberation movement.

Araya [Araya l'enfer du sel] (Margot Benacerraf, 1959)

Jul

5

Venezuela Independence Day

Araya (1959)

Workers in front of pyramid-shaped piles of salt. DP: Giuseppe Nisoli.

“Above all… don’t cut a single image.”

– Jean Renoir in a letter to Margot Benacerraf

66 scener fra Amerika [66 Scenes from America] (Jørgen Leth, 1982)

Jul

4

Independence Day

66 scener fra Amerika (1982)

Director Jørgen Leth capturing Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii [Merrick Butte] in Monument Valley, AZ, for the opening scene. He's waving a small American flag in front of the camera. DP: Dan Holmberg.

A road movie becomes interesting when the traveller is a stranger. When he or she takes that first step, head still firmly planted at home, soul on its way out.

“Salt, pepper, sugar, ketchup and napkins, New York.”

Jørgen Leth is a Danish documentary maker who in the early 80s sent sixty-six postcards from America. These postcards form a #travelogue of bewilderment. The #landscape, #food, language, anything an American may take for granted framed in a moving still. The American, ever ready for stardom, poses and orates. The scenes become show, regardless if it's a New York cabbie or a man famously (falsely) credited for predicting fame, slowly eating a Whopper.

 

The resulting 66 scener fra Amerika is as much a time capsule as it is a portrait of forever.

Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)

Jul

2

World Sports Journalists Day

Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982)

Actress Veronika Voss (Rosel Zech) with sports journalist Robert Krohn (Hilmar Thate), driving a car at night. DP: Xaver Schwarzenberger.

Veronika Voss, once one of Ufa's greats and rumoured lover of Goebbels, has a chance meeting with #sports journalist Robert Krohn. Despite not recognising her at first glance, the faded star and her world turn out to be irresistible to him.

“What do you want from Voss? She's no good at soccer.”

– Grete

Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss [litt. The yearning of Veronika Voss] is #Fassbinder's tribute to both #BillyWilder's Sunset Blvd. (1950) and real-world actress Sybille Schmitz whose career, like Voss', suffered greatly due to her #morphine dependence after the Entnazifizierung.

Ninotchka (1939)

Ninotchka and Leon (Garbo and Douglas) cracking up. DP: William H. Daniels.

Ninotchka (1939)

July 1: a joke for #InternationalJokeDay

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

Garbo laughs!

The great Garbo was known for her beauty, her coolness, her tragedy, for a lot but her laughter. So typecast she became that the tagline for Ninotchka (1939) – Garbo laughs! – is a #joke in itself.

Penned by the great Billy Wilder, the Ernst Lubitsch directed comedy unexpectedly temporarily revived #Garbo's career, who by the time 1938 came around had become box office poison. And the joke? Well…

A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table and he says, “Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream.” Five minutes later, the waiter comes back and says, “I'm sorry, sir, we have no cream. Can it be without milk?”

Ninotchka (1939)

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #ErnstLubitsch #BillyWilder #GretaGarbo #MelvynDouglas #WernerRHeymann #WilliamHDaniels #comedy #communism #romance #USA #1930s

#todo

Peppermint Frappé (Carlos Saura, 1967)

Jun

30

Drive Your Corvette To Work Day

Peppermint Frappé (1967)

Producer Elías Querejeta (far left) and others pushing Geraldine Chaplin character Elena's Chevrolet Corvette C1. Behind the wheel actor José Luis López Vázquez (Julián). DP: Luis Cuadrado.

A chance encounter with a blonde drummer during the Holy Week in the village of Calanda leaves a deep impression on Julián (José Luis López Vázquez). When years later he reunites with his childhood friend Pablo, he finds that Pablo is married to bubbly cosmopolitan Elena (Geraldine Chaplin), the spitting image of the elusive drummer. Infatuated he tries to court her, but Elena sees nothing in the drab radiologist. Julián then turns his attention to his shy assistant Ana (also Chaplin) and grooms her into becoming the two unattainable women.

“Things last as long as they last.”

– Pablo

Saura's Peppermint Frappé takes #Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) – indeed the peppermint green of the drink is an homage – with a twist of #Buñuel and serves it over an anti-#Franco​ist tale of self-doubting machismo obsessing over The Other. Even Elena's car, American instead of a much more obvious European model, dismisses fascist Spain's perceived superiority. Indeed the Generalisimo drove a Cadillac.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)

Jun

29

National Handshake Day

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Fred (Humphrey Bogart) and Curtin (Tim Holt) shake hands witnessed by gruff prospector Howard (Walter Huston). DP: Ted D. McCord.

Cheated out of their wages, broke Americans #Bogart and Holt are approached by a former prospector. There's #gold in the #SierraMadre mountains, he tells them.

“I know what gold does to men's souls.”

– Howard

Seemingly character driven, Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is an adventure moved by a relentless #landscape, the urge to drift, and #greed.

Muerte de un ciclista [Death of a Cyclist / Age of Infidelity] (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)

Jun

28

National Insurance Awareness Day

Muerte de un ciclista (1955)

Juan (Alberto Closas) looking out at María José (Lucia Bosè) and the car after the crash. The cyclist is never shown. The scene echoes Beckett's Waiting for Godot. DP: Alfredo Fraile.

A couple rushing home at night hit a cyclist. Despite knowing that the man's still alive, they opt to leave the site of the #crash and never mention it again. News reports about the death of the cyclist cause a rupture; because of the couple's #class differences – she a wealthy socialite, he a former falange soldier turned university professor – because they're lovers, and because no one can know about their whereabouts on the night of the accident.

“He's still alive.”

Striking about Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista is its outsiderness in the Spanish film landscape. By adopting the visual language of both Italian #Neorealismo and Hollywood #melodrama, Bardem elegantly circumvents #Franco​ist censorship.

Stromboli (Terra di Dio) [Stromboli] (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Jun

27

Decide To Be Married Day

Stromboli (Terra di Dio) (1950)

Antonio (Mario Vitale) and Karen (Ingrid Bergman). DP: Otello Martelli.

Karen – “Karin” in the opening credits – is a displaced Lithuanian woman in an Italy-based refugee camp. She meets an Italian military man bivouacking on the other side of the barbed wire and decides to say yes when he proposes. When the newly-weds leave for home, she finds to her dismay that he's a poor Sicilian fisherman from #Stromboli; a magnificent active volcanic island home to a small Catholic parish. Again displaced, Karen is confronted with herself more than with the others that share her faith.

“Here we are, poor wretches, in this hell, Condemned to tyranny.”

– Antonio

Roberto #Rossellini's Stromboli (Terra di Dio) is a peculiar melodramatic Italian/American hybrid that seems to strongly dismiss the Italian aspect. The significance of Struògnuli – the Sicilian name for the volcano – and the people's faith connected to the volatile mountain and the surrounding sea is presented as primitive superstition. That the Sicilian dialogue – song, prayer, life – remains untranslated and the locals' broken English is used as comic relief adds insult to injury.

 

Otello Martelli's photography excels when he manages to tear himself away from Bergman's face. Only when we're confronted with the magnificence of Struògnuli, the gifts from the ocean, and the greatness of nature we'll be able to understand why the island is man's home.