It's hard to be kind to a movie that was made in the comfort of Hollywood while Rossellini was working on a shoestring in the rubble of Italy inventing neo-realist cinema. Criterion has just released a new DVD set of Rossellini's war trilogy, so Italian movies of the 40's have been talked about a lot recently.
For the record, the war trilogy is "Open City" (1945), "Paisan" (1946), and "Germany Year Zero" (1948). The old prints (especially the subtitles) of these films are famously bad, so I plan to hold off seeing them again until Netflix offers the new ones.
I'll stress the positive: you can be impressed with Gregg Toland's work in 1946 only if you haven't seen "Citizen Kane" (1941). Frederick March comes home from the war and his children greet him at the door and there's Myrna Loy, his wife, in deep-focus in the background, as witness. I think Gregg Toland allowed William Wyler to look like a better director. It's sad to think that Toland would die only two years later, in 1948.
Hoagy Carmichael is really good as Uncle Butch: the scene with the other non-actor in the cast, the disabled sailer, where Hoagy gives advice while playing piano, is especially good - he plays the only real music in the movie. Hoagy's children reported that he took his on-screen persona very seriously: he played the same easy-going musician in film after film, and that casualness required an astounding amount of rehearsal.
Other films of 1946: Hitchcock's "Notorious", "The Big Sleep", and "It's a Wonderful Life", but my favorite of the year is Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast.": soft-core surrealism in a children's story, a really haunting film that will really make you forget that Walt Disney ever existed.
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Mr. C,
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to think of the disparity between European films and the Hollywood studios during post-war period. The Bicycle Thief does a great job of showing this, as the main character finally finds work pasting up movie posters of Rita Hayworth...
Today in class we watched Cocteau's "Beauty & the Beast". This reminded me of many silent films that I've seen. The scene of the father in the castle was very reminicent of Nosferatu. The shots that used 'german expressionist' shadows, and the reverse film techniques were awesome. I wonder if Cocteau was hip to Maya Deren? (Although, I'm sure she wasn't the first to experiment)
I still, going with personal taste opposed to importance to film, gotta go with my American Brethren! The Best Years of Our Lives, baby!
Good, old fashioned storytellin! Hoo-rah!
Did you see The Hurt Locker?
Tons of 'Oscar Buzz', but when I saw it months ago, I thought it was a lousy action movie. Got me to feel anxious, but that's it. If that was the point, I dunno, I think they could have done more...