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Roxie Hart (1942)
Surprising
This film is, before all, a curiosity, as it was the basis for the famous musical Chicago, which was later also adapted for the cinema. And the fact that it stars Ginger Rogers, in a performance that is, in fact, very original in the context of her career as a whole, only increases the viewer's curiosity.
I must confess that the film has some sublime moments. Almost the entire trial is ironically funny, functioning as an implicit criticism of the American judicial system. A screwball comedy at its best.
Unfortunately, it does not always maintain this level. The tendency, of the time, to give the action a frenetic pace works, in this particular case, to the detriment of narrative clarity and coherence, requiring the viewer to make an additional effort to follow a plot that is sometimes confusing. The frequent flash forwards and backs do not help either, serving only to introduce an ending that is as surprising as it is unlikely.
But it is a frankly entertaining film. An intelligent and corrosive comedy about the influence of the media on modern society, in this case, during a criminal justice process.
A kind of "His Girl Friday" but with a nonsense touch, inspired by the Marx Brothers.
Una vita difficile (1961)
Light
A film that aims to give a critical image of post-war Italy. A society sold on the values of consumerism, capitalism and corruption, completely forgetting the revolutionary dream of those who fought against fascism. Silvio Magnozzi, the character played by Alberto Sordi, is precisely the symbol of these communist fighters, who do not want to surrender to the economic miracle of the bourgeois nouveau riche and, for this very reason, have a difficult life, without money and without family. It is an Italy that has forgotten its values and lives only on appearances and trivialities.
The message is interesting, but the content is superficial. Alberto Sordi is not very convincing as a revolutionary. Nor does his character show great ideological convictions, lost between his love for his wife and the revolution and constantly surrendering to alcohol.
As a social critique, the film falls short. As a comedy or family drama, it completely fails.
It is certainly not one of the best moments in cinema, neither by Sordi nor by Risi.
Ru (2023)
Resilience
Based on an award-winning novel in Canada by Kim Thúy, Ru tells the story of an upper-class Vietnamese family, the father of which held an important position in the Saigon government, who are forced to flee at the end of the war and become refugees, re-starting their lives from scratch in a land that is geographically and culturally so distant as Québec.
A story that is not particularly original, when compared to many other refugee stories, told in films or novels. The loss of status and the subjection to a modest living condition is a constant in refugee stories. And even the fact that the narrative seems to focus on the figure of the young Tinh, who could add something to the story, giving it the innocence of a child's vision, is an illusion. Tinh is used only as a metaphor, a symbol of the difficulty of adapting to the new reality. She speaks little and the plot almost never unfolds from an innocent and childish point of view. And I confess that I didn't know why the film is called Ru...
Anyway, a beautiful story of perseverance and survival against the adversity of war and exile, but it doesn't really bring anything new.
Lahn mah (2024)
Life Lesson
Thai family melodrama about a grandson who decides to accompany the last months of his grandmother's life, terminally ill with cancer, out of financial interest, to discover, after all, a rich relationship, of mutual respect and dedication, which far exceeds any inheritance advantage.
An insightful reflection on modern society, on the breakdown of family relationships and on how much is lost, with the lack of communication between generations and the frequent condemnation of older people to degrading loneliness.
A beautiful film, easily tear-jerking, but still with a very human content, which expresses a true life lesson.
Calcutta 71 (1972)
Revolutionary
This is a film that clearly demonstrates that there is an Indian cinema beyond Bollywood and that it is not even new. In fact, Satyajit Ray had been filming Indian realism since the 1950s.
This is a difficult film to classify. If in essence it is a raw and realistic work, which denounces the misery of a city (and a country) where inequalities are glaring and deficiencies reach the level of mere survival, on the other, in its segmented structure, in the message that is sometimes revolutionary, it has echoes of nouvelle vague, especially after May 1968. There are brief influences from Godard and a freshness from the young protester of 1971, which clearly contrast with the usual cinematic language of the Indian subcontinent.
A beautiful film about a terrible reality.
Dívka na kosteti (1972)
Nostalgic Spell
This Girl in a Broomstick, from 1972, belongs to the group of farces that constituted the successful comedies of the Soviet period, mostly of the late sixties and early seventies of the last century. In this case, there are, however, two important particularities: it is a Czechoslovak production and it is clearly aimed at a younger audience.
Don't expect to find here the insightful irony of a Jiri Menzel, the poetic drama of a Ján Kadár or even the audacious experimentalism of a Jaromil Jires, this is a simple film, what would pass today for a modest television film for teenagers.
But it still has some fun moments and, above all, it is an irresistible exercise in nostalgia, for those who grew up watching films like this.
Sen Aydinlatirsin Geceyi (2013)
The City of Men
This is certainly not an easy film. With a metaphorical language that often borders on surrealism, the viewer is faced with a permanent challenge to distinguish the real from the figurative, or even imaginary, although in the end, the essential message of the film is transparent, with relative clarity.
There is a violent denunciation of a hypocritical and sexist morality, which attacks women's sexual freedom. Men abuse their power, to use women sexually and then repudiate them, due to the alleged indignity of behavior, for which they were mainly responsible.
All this is presented with great creative freedom, fantasy and emphasis on violence, used deliberately to symbolize the violence that Turkish sexist society exerts on women, especially in smaller and traditional towns.
Eloquent but difficult. It is certainly not a film for all tastes, even the most cultivated.
Hellzapoppin' (1941)
Slapstick at the Best Level
I confess that I didn't know this comedian duo Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, but I want to know more. This film, an absolute madness, which could very well be elevated to the title of king of slapstick comedy, is anything but banal. It's true that physical comedy is out of fashion, but there's something here, for all tastes, and usually happening simultaneously. It's a mix of a circus show, a Marx Brothers musical comedy and an extravagant Busby Berkeley musical, all at the same time.
Also noteworthy is the little-recognized actress Martha Raye, one of the few female comedians of her generation, who masters physical comedy with the boldness of a Jerry Lewis.
Without a doubt, a pleasant surprise.
Ginger e Fred (1986)
Freak Show
It is true that, in 1986, twenty-six years after La Dolce Vita and thirteen years after Amarcord, the scenic exuberance and critical symbolism of Fellini's films were not exactly new. The main objection that can be raised against this film, and I would say to almost all of the films directed by Fellini, since Juliet of the Spirits, is that the director/screenwriter remains faithful to his own, original, but inevitably repetitive, cinematographic language. But this is called coherence and it is not a defect, but a virtue, a certificate of authenticity, an author's signature.
True to himself, Fellini criticizes, in a forceful, insightful, even visionary way, the empty and teledependent society of the eighties, which would become more accentuated in the following decades, to the point that that circus of freaks, which in the film is ironic and hyperbolic, became banal and everyday, in the television broadcasts of the following generations, personified by the infamous television millionaire Berlusconi, who, after bringing grotesque populism to television, even managed to introduce it into Italian politics.
Just like Ginger and Fred, Giulietta, Mastroianni and Fellini himself, television no longer has a place for them, other than as members of a freak show. Culture became bastardized and television was the main vehicle for this demoralization of art.
This is the essential, obvious and fair denunciation behind this Ginger and Fred, and the message is conveyed with all the pomp, imagination and irony that have always characterized the Italian master's work.
Le notti di Cabiria (1957)
Optimistic Fatalism
The Nights of Cabiria, from 1957, is the last film of Fellini's neo-realist period and also, together with La Strada, from 1954, one of his masterpieces, not only from this period but from his entire career. The director's next film would be La Dolce Vita, three years later, and with it a new phase of his work would begin, which we could classify as integrated into the "new wave" of Italian cinema, where symbolism, metaphor and a good dose of existentialism, would increasingly become part of Fellini's cinema.
But here, in 1957, when the "nouvelle vague" was already beginning to emerge in France (La Pointe-Curte, from 1955, by Agnès Varda, is generally considered the first film of this current), Fellini and Antonioni, who in that same year premiered The Scream, were still clearly navigating neo-realist waters. But brilliantly.
The Nights of Cabiria is a masterpiece of neo-realism, even late, and this was widely recognized at the time, with numerous awards, Oscar for best foreign film, best actress award at Cannes for Giulietta Massina, Zulueta award in San Sebastian, among many other awards and nominations, national and foreign. But it is equally recognized by posterity, who invariably places this work among the Italian director's best.
In fact, as in La Strada, Fellini takes advantage of the tragicomic nature of the character played by Giulietta Massina, to accentuate the dramatic, but at the same time absurd, nature of life. This neo-realist italian post-war was a hell on earth, in which the fight for survival turned any lamb into a lion, capable of the greatest atrocities, for a handful of lire. And yet, all it took was an accordion, a dance, a glass of wine, to reconcile the most unfortunate with life and give them the strength to continue fighting.
In these extreme conditions, there is no room for psychological dramas, life is simple and impulsive, live or die, survive at all costs, or die of hunger, regardless of the means.
This amorality of the struggle for survival, associated with the simplicity with which the fatality of life is accepted and the small pleasures it provides, even in the midst of misery, make these works a monument to humanism and optimism, which insists on always looking to the positive side of life, even in the midst of disappointment and misfortune.
A hymn to the love of life.
Beetlejuice (1988)
Beetlemania
A sequel, 36 years later, which, by the way, I didn't see, but surprised me by including three actors/actresses from the original film (Keaton, O'hara and Ryder), was the necessary pretext to review this 1988 Beetlejuice, which was, truly, Tim Burton's first big success (Pee Wee was a misstep and before him there were only short films, which became notable only after the director gained fame).
Even with the technological nostalgia with which we see 36-year-old visual effects, and a handful of famous actors and actresses, the film highlights the script's weaknesses that it always had, although with the additional attraction of showing, for the first time, the Tim Burton's fantastic creative universe, which would make him one of the most successful directors/producers in Hollywood, in the following decades.
A nostalgic, almost archaeological journey into Burton's healthy cinematic madness that still makes for enjoyable entertainment, nearly four decades later.
Sabrina (1954)
Times change
Sabrina, in this original version from 1954, so simple in its black and white cinematography, reminiscent of times gone by, in contrast to the glamor of Technicolor, which dominated the 50s, is, nevertheless, an inescapable proof of how comedy Romanticism has changed in Hollywood since the glorious, pre-war days.
We have the young Audrey Hepburn, 25 years old, new blood imported from Belgium, top model from the always glamorous Europe, even destroyed by war. We have the veteran Humphrey Bogart, already 55 years old (he would pass away just two years later), an unavoidable symbol of film noir in the 40s. Is there a more unlikely and less romantic pairing than this?
Post-war love has lost its sense of humor. It forgot the madness of screwball comedies and surrendered to psychological drama, the redemption of souls, after the nightmare of war.
In this sad new world, an old executive finds time for love, after a life dedicated to work and family, and a young and glamorous cook, forgets her childhood dreams, to give herself over to the responsibility of a wealthy adult life.
A gray and depressed love. A romantic drama, at the opposite of the exuberance of a Cary Grant or a Katharine Hepburn.
Even Billy Wilder, the king of comedies at the time, lost his sense of humor in this atypical (for him) melodrama, which makes us nostalgic for the 1930s, when romantic comedies were crazy and fun.
Times have definitely changed and, with them, tastes. From my pedestal of posterity, I can say, without fear or great risk, that it was in the madness of screwball comedies that Hollywood had its romantic heyday.
In all its gray glamour, this Sabrina is an unequivocal proof of this.
La stranezza (2022)
Virtual Reality
Roberto Andò and his co-writers for this film, Ugo Chiti and Massimo Gaudioso, play with the innovative creative boldness of Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), an Italian poet, novelist and playwright who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934.
Taking his most famous play, "Six Characters in Search of an Author", they invent a trip by the playwright to Sicily, where he meets two unique characters, undertakers, playwrights and amateur actors, who inspire him and become part of the plot and cast of the play that emerges in his head, mixing fiction and reality.
Interesting, especially for those who know the play and Pirandello's work. Others may be a little confused by the film's plot, but I dare say that this would certainly please its authors, Pirandello and Andò...
Salon Kitty (1976)
Absurd Eroticism
Tinto Brass is an unusual case of perseverance and coherence, in maintaining a successful career, entirely dedicated to a minor cinematic genre, such as softcore pornography.
The advent of pornographic cinema, at the end of the 60s, paved the way for the softcore subgenre, which is little more than shy, suggestive pornography, abundant in nudity, but without the explicitness that would prevent it from being shown in normal cinemas. .
With the advent of video, pornography left the cinema and was taken home, also killing softcore along the way.
However, Tinto Brass continued to do it, with relative success, until 2015. And he only stopped because he was already 82 years old...
Brass's films are elaborate productions, awarded in various technical areas, such as scenography or wardrobe, they have quality actresses, such as, in this case, Ingrid Thulin, protagonist of Ingmar Bergman's films, and there is a cinematic taste and a cult of feminine sensuality (in this film, also masculine and transgender) unquestionable.
However, the arguments are poor and often absurd, like this Salon Kitty, which transposes to the Second World War a cabaret atmosphere, typical of Weimar expressionism, which the Nazis hated so much, and the sensuality slips, too often, into simple pornographic voyeurism.
It still takes a perverse imagination to mix Nazism with eroticism. Although the trend existed in the 70s, perhaps influenced by the abundance and success of adventure films, whose action takes place during the Second World War.
These are works that explore the viewer's sexual fantasy but leave a bittersweet aftertaste. They are neither art nor pornography. They are a meaningless mix of the two, which always seems little.
Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1979)
Germany Reborn
Maria Braun's marriage is a very successful metaphor for post-war Germany, for the economic miracle played by Adenauer, himself heard several times in the film, in his speeches appealing to pride in German economic reconstruction.
In the rubble of the Second World War, Maria/Germany survives, between a tenuous hope of returning to the lost past and the agony of a miserable and dishonorable present.
But the defeated have no right to shame. It is up to them to rebuild the future in the bed of the victors, until they learn to live without them, more than autonomously, as new victorious powers, taking the place of those who humiliated them. In life, in the economy or even in football (Fassbinder coincides the narrative climax with the 1952 World Cup final, in which Germany became champion, for the first time in the history of the competition, thus using yet another metaphor for German reconstruction).
After the victory is complete, the honor is washed away, life ends and it is time to give way to others, to the future, which must not repeat the mistakes of the past.
A bold message and a powerful performance by Hanna Schygullla.
Fassbinder at his best.
Cerrar los ojos (2023)
The Relentless Time
Thirty years after Dream of Light, Victor Erice has once again directed a feature film. This time it is about an actor who disappears during the filming of a movie, only to reappear more than 20 years later, in an asylum and suffering from amnesia.
It is difficult not to draw a parallel between the two long absences, that of the director and that of the actor.
But this story is mostly about the effects of absence. About memory and its lacking in each person's life.
A recurring feature in Erice's work, it is a film of eloquent silences and striking memories. Time and its relentless effect on people.
Even more evident when watching this Close Your Eyes almost immediately after the Spirit of the Beehive. Fifty years have passed in the blink of an eye, and Ana Torrent and Victor Erice are there, in front of and behind the camera, to demonstrate it with blatant evidence.
El sur (1983)
The Weight of Defeat
Erice, true to himself, returns to the traumas of the civil war, seen through the poetic eyes of a young teenager who, despite being born after the conflict, suffers the effects of the open wounds on the spirit of the survivors.
It is curious that, since El Sur was released in 1983, ten years and a lifetime (or a death) after El Espiritu de la Colmena, and with the action also taking place more than 10 years later (in the 1950s), it seems almost like a sequel to the latter.
Revolutionaries are no longer killed in the fields of Spain, but survivors commit suicide, unable to bear the weight of defeat.
All innocently told by one of the daughters of war.
El espíritu de la colmena (1973)
The End of Innocence
At the end of Franco's rule, when the death of the dictator seems imminent, Erice films the beginning of the regime, with the silence and the subtext that characterize censorship.
This is a film of glaring silences and lost innocence, with Frankenstein serving as the theme. - Isabel, why did they kill him? - asks little Ana, without her sister knowing how to answer.
Her father also did not know how to give her an answer when they killed the fugitive soldier, leaving traces of violence to stain Ana's imagination.
But only the spirit, only the inner thoughts are above terror and violence.
A poem dedicated to Ana's generation, who grew up with the heavy burden of the civil war and the white terror on their backs, robbing them of their childhood innocence.
A bloody wound, still not fully healed in Spanish society, almost a century later.
La bella di Lodi (1963)
Banal
A romantic drama about a young woman from a wealthy family (Stefania Sandrelli) who falls in love with a mechanic (Ángel Aranda), whom she meets at the beach.
Although I recognize that the film has a fast pace, that Stefania Sandrelli is a captivating actress, that the wedding party in the family mansion has a clear purpose of social criticism, in an exposition of bourgeois decadence, and even that the character of the grandmother, the old matriarch of the family, whom Roberta will inevitably succeed, given her initiative and vigor, is of an unquestionable density, I have to conclude that all of this is not enough.
In the end, the inevitable feeling is of waste, of banality.
A film for fetishists of the beautiful Stefania Sandrelli.
Le mani sulla città (1963)
Urban Immorality
Francesco Rosi directs a script by himself and Rafaelle La Capria, Enzo Provenzale and Enzo Forcella, denouncing urban speculation and corruption in the city of Naples in the 1960s.
The period was, in fact, one of urban explosion, not only in Naples but in much of Europe, with the post-war economic boom coinciding with the massive rural exodus and the decolonization of some countries, which led to a huge growth in construction, both legal, albeit tainted by corruption, and illegal, which gave rise to vast shanty towns on the outskirts of cities.
This broader vision is left out of the film, which is exclusively concerned with denouncing urban speculation and corruption.
Perhaps, at the time, there was a lack of the necessary distance for a broader analysis of the problem, which the speculators did not create, but simply took advantage of, making money, immorally and within the limits of corrupt legality, with urban development projects and poor quality construction.
However, the most interesting thing about this film, sixty years later, is its relevance today. The urban situation today is substantially different from that of Naples in the 1960s, in most European cities. However, speculation and corruption continue to dominate the real estate sector and the actions of the authorities that issue building licenses.
These are no longer just poor-quality apartments for the people, as in the film, but pharaonic projects for the municipality, luxury housing developments for the privileged or tourist investments, which accentuate the gentrification of the historic city centres.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter what is built, but municipal administrations continue today, as they were sixty years ago, to be held hostage by the property developers and speculators who generate the wealth on which municipal management ultimately depends. In addition to corruption, which will always exist, the system ensures that public works and other local initiatives are financed essentially by revenue from taxes and fees generated by construction and real estate, thus perpetuating a vicious cycle of urban speculation and corruption.
In this sense, Rosi fails miserably in his prediction of change, expressed by Councillor De Vita, the leader of the left-wing municipal opposition.
The people change, educate themselves, and achieve substantial improvements in their living conditions, but instead of demanding morality from the political powers, they prefer to eat a little bit of the cake, however miserable it may be.
A Day at the Beach (1970)
Unpleasant and useless
With a script by Roman Polanski and featuring renowned actors in supporting roles, such as Peter Sellers or Eva Dahlbeck, also lost by Paramount for over 20 years, this film has everything to arouse the curiosity of the attentive viewer.
In addition, there is a convincing performance by the protagonist Mark Burns, who mitigates the effects of rampant alcoholism with a certain British, ironic and elitist spirit.
But despite these attributes, what remains of this rainy day at the beach? A handful of nothing. A narcissistic and depressive exercise in nihilism that cannot even be described as a denunciation of the perverse effects of alcoholism, as if these effects needed to be denounced and were, in and of themselves, suficient for a film plot.
Unpleasant and useless.
Ieri, oggi, domani (1963)
Journey to Italy
I confess that I am not a big fan of segmented films, which were fashionable in the sixties, seventies and even the eighties, especially in Italy.
But I do recognise that this one is different from the others. With three different segments, it maintains, however, not only the director in all three, but also the main couple, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, who play different characters, of very different conditions, in three different Italian cities, Naples, Milan and Rome.
If Naples appears in all its popular splendour, Milan assumes itself as bourgeois and vain, while Rome shows its contrasts, as both saint and sinner.
There is thus an evident common thread, which passes not only through the main couple, but also through a broad vision of a very diverse Italy, from the poor and ignorant south, to the industrial and modern north, passing through the capital, in the centre, where everything comes together, under the aegis of the Pope and in the grand setting of the beautiful Piazza Navona.
The plots are of different value, as is normal in these films. The gold medal goes to Naples by Eduardo de Filippo and Isabella Quaranttoti (Adelina segment), the silver to Rome by Cesare Zavattini (Mara segment) and finally the bronze to Milan, adapted from Moravia by Zavattini, Bella Billa and Lorenza Zanuso (Anna segment).
In fact, this is de Sica at his best level, not least due to the presence not only of his usual performers, but also of the scriptwriters, Filippo, Zavattini and Moravia, who are recurrent in his work, but, in a short format.
However, one always gets the impression that each of the segments would deserve a complete film on its own, thus making this adaptation poorer, of stories that could have been developed much more.
However, the memorable characters, played by Loren and Mastroianni, remain.
Pane, amore e fantasia (1953)
Folkloric Optimism
Pane, Amore e Fantasia is a light, romantic comedy of manners that seems to have been resurrected from the fascist era, when, just like in Portuguese cinema during the Estado Novo, everyone was poor but honest, happy and God-fearing. The comedies exuded a social peace and collective well-being that only propaganda could create.
However, this is a post-war film, produced in the era of neo-realism. Vittorio de Sica himself, although behind the camera, had already made Sciusciá, Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. What a contrast with the folkloric and innocent optimism of this Pane, Amore e Fantasia! Never has a title summed up a film so well.
And yet, the film also has virtues, despite its simplistic anachronism. Gina Lollobrigida plays a magnificent character, with a wild sensuality. The closed environment of the small provincial town, with its old men who know everything and control everything about other people's lives, has a delightful charm and irony, reminiscent of the best of Pagnol.
It is a light, nostalgic work, but certainly enjoyable to watch, which won the Silver Bear in Berlin and was even nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay. A luminous island of peace and love, amidst the shadows of post-war Italian neo-realism.
I girasoli (1970)
Fatalism of War
Vittorio de Sica achieved a remarkable feat in this eye-catching 1970 production, bringing together Americans and Soviets, in the midst of the Cold War, in the co-production of a Franco-Italian film.
From the Americans he got a memorable soundtrack, written and directed by Henry Mancini and nominated for an Oscar. From the Soviets he received the footage from Mosfilm, directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy, as well as the actress Ludmila Saveleva.
The script by Tonino Guerra and Cesare Zavattini has everything it needs to work, but the film gets lost somewhere in between so many attributes.
The story is basic and excessively melodramatic. The soundtrack is beautiful but quickly becomes cloying. The footage of the sunflower fields and the cemeteries of Russian combatants is powerful and eloquent, but inconsequential. This is, after all, a story of the living, not the dead. Only the final notes of the fatalism of war, which determines people's fates, far beyond their individual will, remain to give the film any meaning.
But it is not enough. A final result clearly less than the sum of its parts.
La ciociara (1960)
A late classic
Vittorio De Sica revisits the traumas of war by following the story of a mother and daughter who experience an epic journey, first fleeing Rome for the countryside in an attempt to escape the bombings, and then returning to Rome to escape the dangers of the invasion and the front lines.
A magnificent performance by Sophia Loren, which earned her an unexpected Oscar for best actress, the first time it was awarded to a non-American production.
The director who gave us classics of neo-realism such as Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D., thus returns to a genre that was already out of fashion in 1960, but still clearly held the interest of the public and critics.
A late classic.