Old Movies

Not too long ago, I finished a project where I watched one movie a day for three months and had a blog about the movies I was watching (see link in sig). This was an incredible drain on my time and energy. One of the lesser-known gems I found during this time was a Western called Bad Company starring Jeff Bridges.It's a revisionist Western (with shades of Dickens) about a band of young wanna-be thiefs or bandits that has a feel similar to Bottle Rocket in the way these kids buy into the myths and misconceptions surrounding a life of crime. The movie's also effective at debunking the myth of the American West as a place where one can easily make dreams come true. Definately worth a view.

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"In Heaven, everything is fine."
The Lady in the Radiator
Eraserhead
One Movie a Day/Week/Whenever

Not entirely a "forgotten" film, but probably pretty unknown to non-film geeks like me is the original Cat People, a horror film about sexual repression notable for the way its low budget enhances its scariness by relying on the psychology of its characters and the universal fear of the unknown. I'd gotten bummed out on horror films prior to seeing this one and it reignited my interest in the genre.

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"In Heaven, everything is fine."
The Lady in the Radiator
Eraserhead
One Movie a Day/Week/Whenever

Don't know if it's available where you are, but it was recently released on DVD as part of a Val Lewton box set. He was a producer and is known as someone who made low-budget thriller or horror films relying on all those psychological elements. Cat People is the only film in the set I've gotten a chance to view thus far, so I can't recommend the whole set, but Cat People is out there... now if they would just get going on a nice release for Double IndemnityThe director of Cat People, Jacques Tourneur also directed a wonderful film noir called Out of the Past. I was lucky enough to see this on the big screen when I was in high school (at a revival theater) and I developed a mega-crush on the lead actress of that film, Jane Greer.Finally something on EvC I can talk about with a degree of authority!This message has been edited by docpotato, 01-19-2006 11:58 AM

If you liked Night of the Demon I feel safe in saying you'll like Cat People just as much. Same technique... atmosphere, well-observed psychology, and inevitable consequences. Cat People is also lacking the artificially tacked on unconvincing monster effects that hurt Demon's beginning and end a bit.

I find meaning and vision as entertaining as plotting, scripting, or storytelling. I don't really think film's primary purpose is to tell stories, though.

Not trying to wind you up and I'm not saying that film has no business telling stories. Actually, I think that because of the way film uses juxtaposition and the way the human mind works, it can't help but tell stories. But is plot, or narrative, the most important thing about film? To my mind, not really. I've seen Bunel films that have stories even though I know the director had no narrative intent in making the film. I've seen films that I loved even though, honestly, I felt the story was trite. Again, I don't have any problem reconciling intellectualization with entertainment. I suppose the question here is, what do you mean by pure entertainment? I find the Ingmar Bergman films I've seen to be purely entertaining. I find them intellectually, emotionally, and technically engaging. Bergman is a darling of the art house. Is he guilty of adding to the detriment of pure entertainment? Hitchcock did have a message to pitch, an angle, and a hidden message. That's what makes his films so good. He may have been personally unaware of it, but if you watch a succession of his movies, it's pretty clear that certain concepts interested him. Many of his films are based on the same themes or use similar techniques to get at character. Sure, he worked in a less abstract, more representative filmic language than, say, Bergman, but his obsession with the innocent man on the run isn't much different than Bergman's obsession with dopplegangers.Anyway, back to my point: I don't think story should be the primary purpose in making a film any more than I think novels should be the primary purpose when one sits down to write something. I mean, what about poems?And just to keep this more on topic: I just watched a film called Rififi. It's a great French heist movie from the 50s with one of the best robbery sequences I've ever seen.

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"In Heaven, everything is fine."
The Lady in the Radiator
Eraserhead
One Movie a Day/Week/Whenever