Lesson #10 of my Winter of Classics.
The kind of movie that makes you think "have I even been watching movies? Do I even know what a movie is?"
Stunning, the sets, costumes, colors colors colors. I have never gasped audibly at the sight of wallpaper as many times in my life as I have over the course of this film. I was very surprised by the completely sung dialogue, but it's so charming and magical, and the story is…
Recently been reading Stephen King's Danse Macabre, and while it's put a couple movies on my watchlist, a passage on this film made me want to watch it as soon as I woke up in the morning. Exciting and frightening film that bears more resemblance to the science gone awry films that dominated the 50s than where trends were heading in the 60s, but injects it with crushing, cosmic terror punctuated with a shockingly blunt and brutal finale. King speculates…
Lesson #2 of my Winter of Classics II.
It pains me to say that I really wanted to like this more than I did. Every image is lovingly captured and steeped in melancholic atmosphere, and I found a few impactful moments in the sparse and subdued plot; the aged actors reminiscing over their careers and lives and legacies is touching. But like the many missed connections experienced by the characters, I just felt like this slipped by me without really taking hold. Maybe another look down the road, in a different mood, would evoke something more.
Lesson #1 of my Winter of Classics II.
Starting the season off with the earliest film on the list, and another look at Chaplin after last watching City Lights. While I think that one hit me more emotionally in the end, the gags here are consistently charming and there's so much great set work (the cog stuff is just iconic). And while he was still dedicated to the silent antics, he again finds ways to employ speaking parts in creative ways for the time. An immense creative talent on all sides of the production.
Reduced me to a child, hand over my mouth, tears in my eyes, a pit in my stomach. Surreal and familiar in the same stroke, liminal horror existing at the crossroads of comfortable, mundane surroundings and everything we can imagine might be in the darkness on the other side. It leaves you anticipating the revelation, begging to see something that might reduce the horror with its tangibility, but when it finally begins to reveal itself you can only shrink and cower and plead with it to stop.
Yeah, I just burst into tears at the sight of two animated bears hugging in a theater packed full of children.
