I cried at the opening shot. The greatest exploration of pride in the history of art. It was almost sickening watching this film. It was sickening because I saw myself reflected in Jake. I saw myself reflected in his little envious glances, or in his corrective expressions, hiding linings of pain and pride and jealousy and presumptuousness. When Mascagni’s Intermezzo suddenly blared from the screen, those harsh strings which play as if they collect all of the pain in the…
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Broken Blossoms 1919
Even in his attempts to transcend the bounds of race, Griffith still manages to be intensely racist. We’ll get there someday, David.
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Touch of Evil 1958
The story that apparently Orson Welles went through a pile of scripts and chose the worst one to make a picture of makes sense, because Touch of Evil is a very uncoordinated and to an extent, even campy story. There’s so much you could point to that with any other director would make this a semi-forgettable B movie, yet Orson Welles still manages to craft something absolutely brilliant out of this. Behind the structural flaws and the clichéd fluff and…
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Satantango 1994
Misery. Misery perpetuated by misery. Misery perpetuated by misery in a never-ending cycle of pain and filth and greed and lust and treachery and sorrow and death. Misery perpetuated by misery in a never-ending cycle of pain and filth and greed and lust and treachery and sorrow and death fuelled by bitterness and dipsomaniacal ignorance. Stagnation. Stagnation, for we are fickle and petty. Stagnation, because we are too cowardly to tug at the shackles of indecisiveness, but too proud to…
