Le trou [The Hole / The Night Watch] (Jacques Becker, 1960)
Jun
25
care package
Butchering a care package – butter, sausage and other joys of life – for contraband. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.
“Hello. My friend Jacques Becker recreated a true story in all its detail. My story. It took place in 1947 at La Santé prison.”
Le trou [The Hole / The Night Watch] (Jacques Becker, 1960)
Jun
19
International Box Day
The prisoners keep themselves occupied with making cardboard folding boxes. The second man from the right is the novel's author and real-world (ex-) inmate José Giovanni aka Jean Keraudy as Roland Darbant. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.
Inmates preoccupy themselves with making cardboard boxes. While working together, talking, gaining trust, plans for an escape unfold.
– Jean Keraudy as himself
Le trou is based on a real prison escape and introduced by one of the men involved, Jean Keraudy.
Suspense (Phillips Smalley & LoisWeber, 1913)
Now he's in the…
Suspense is not only the title of this short silent thriller, but also the state of mind the viewer is put into as soon as the film opens. Using POV (point-of-view) shots and breaking the fourth wall, the imminent threat – a vagrant trespassing and creeping up to a lone woman and her newborn child – creeps up on us. We know we're safe, on the other side of the screen, but the Tramp (a particularly haunting Sam Kaufman) looks us right in the eye. He passes us on the stairs, but he's going around us so he must be, hopefully, aware of our presence.
Meanwhile, we also see something that only cinema and books can give: multiple happenings at once. The Wife (Lois Weber) calls her Husband (Val Paul) on the phone. Suddenly the screen splits into three: in the middle, the Husband on call, listening to his Wife on the right who's begging him to hurry home. On the left, the Tramp. Unlike us, he cannot see the conversation promising a happy end. But instead that bringing some relief to the viewer, he cuts the phone cable. While we see that happen, we have no way to tell the Husband to make haste, or the Wife that the Tramp's getting closer.
What's striking too is the omnipresence of modernity: the couple's home and Husband's office have telephones and therefore electricity, and the Husband speeds off in an automobile. The cinematography for the telephone and car chase scenes are filmed and edited with great knowledge of the technical possibilities of the medium; split-screen (only gathering popularity much later, see Pillow Talk (1959), and the usage of the Entfesselte Kamera [unchained camera], the latter a mid 1920s German invention.
A similar, triangular split-screen scene from Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959) with (LtR) Eileen (Valerie Allen), Jan Morrow (Doris Day), and Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) on the party line. With Ms Day's character centred, we know that she's the one to identify with in this particular scene. DP: Arthur E. Arling.
With that, Suspense not only preceded Italian futurist cinema, but also the usage of suspense as a cinematic technique. Now go and watch, and remember
it's only a movie it's only a movie it's only a movie
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #PhillipsSmalley #LoisWeber #SamKaufman #USA #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #drama #suspense #crime #thriller #HomeInvasion #1910s ★★★★☆
Les trois couronnes du matelot [Three Crowns of the Sailor] (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)
Jun
5
A woman at a table, writing in a notebook with a pencil. There's a Chinese newspaper, a lit candle and candle stump, and stacked tableware in the form of Chinese bowls and bamboo steamers. DP: Sacha Vierny.
“I got nothing out of this crime except the ring he offered me many times; several hundred marks; a collection of old coins, of no value; and a long letter where he advised me to leave the country.”
Les trois couronnes du matelot [Three Crowns of the Sailor] (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)
Jun
4
National Week Of The Ocean
The sailor (Jean-Bernard Guillard) on his ship. DP: Sacha Vierny.
A man murders another and meets a drunk sailor. The drunk then tells the murderer about his life on the sea. Les trois couronnes du matelot is of course never a straightforward crime film. It's Raúl Ruiz, it never is.
– the student
The sailor drinks, celebrates and mourns the women and men of his past, we all get drunk on life while the dark water closes itself again above our heads.
“I don't find you the least bit amusing, Lieutenant Whatever-your-problem- is!”
Who Killed Teddy Bear (Joseph Cates, 1965)
Jun
3
A square 1960s man – Jan Murray as Lt. Dave Madden – smugly pouring himself a stiff drink. DP: Joseph C. Brun.
– Norah Dain
“Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice.”
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
May
27
Golden Gate Bridge
A pensive Novak in black in front of a sunlit Golden Gate Bridge. DP: Robert Burks.
A bridge to celebrate the 1937 Golden Gate Bridge opening.
“It's not my fault that opportunity came my way.”
Rat Fink [My Soul Runs Naked / Wild and Willing] (James Landis, 1965)
May
11
World Ego Awareness Day
Real-world teen pop idol Schuyler Hayden as Lonnie. He's very pretty, and pensive, sitting in front of a potted palm and balloons, this thumb up to his chin. His face and eyes are lit in such a way that he looks strangely sinister. DP: Vilmos Zsigmond.
Pretty boy Lonnie gets what he wants. And he wants to be out of where he came from, and he wants to be wanted and rich. And he's got the looks and the voice and the ego. So he gets it, the getting out and the love and the money. And then some. And then some. And then.
– Lonnie
Rat Fink is not your pop-idol-turned-movie-star vehicle. Something's off, no good vibrations here. It's dark – not in the least thanks to cinematographer Vilmos “The Deer Hunter” Zsigmond's doings – and gritty – real-world pop singer Schuyler Hayden doesn't hold back in his portrayal of egomaniacal pretty boy Lonnie.
If it hadn't been lost for half a century you may be fooled to believe that it spawned a certain, fictional 80s investment banker.
點指兵兵 [Dian zhi bing bing / Cops and Robbers] (Kwok-Ming Cheung, 1979)
May
6
A table set with one small plate of meat, one small plate of vegetables, three empty bowls, and one pair of chopsticks.
“Officer, come here. I wanna spit in your fucking eye!”
Ghosts… of the Civil Dead (John Hillcoat, 1988)
Apr
26
Hug An Australian Day
One of the inmates near a small window. The light's cold. DPs: Paul Goldman & Graeme Wood.
John Hillcoat's deeply unpleasant debut is based on In the Belly of the Beast (1981), a collection of excerpts of letters between prisoner Jack Henry Abbott and author Norman Mailer. True to the book's format, Ghosts consists of disjointed vignettes of monologues, #CCTV footage, title cards, and prisoners' phone calls.
For the last 37 months, these filters inform the observer, the hypermodern #supermax Central Industrial Prison has been in permanent lockdown. The cast, a mix of professional actors and ex-cons, and the location, a clean factory-style hangar in the middle of the Australian desert, underscore the underlying raw brutality of the unfolding events.
– Maynard
The #industrial soundtrack is by Bad Seed Nick Cave (co-writer and starring as Maynard), Mick Harvey, and Blixa Bargeld from when they were still closer to being birthday boys than morose crooners.
