In The Company Of Glenn

The Golden Seventies

Two Lane Blacktop, Monte Hellman, 1971

'70s nostalgia is a common affliction among movie critics of and above a certain age, and that certain age pretty much corresponds to my own. It's something to guard against, largely because it's ahistorical, and also because it's kind of a crock (the two go hand in hand, I know). Still, every now and then...like this week, which sees the DVD releases of two entirely singular motion picture masterpieces which only have in common the decade in which they were released...one thinks, "that was an amazing time..."

And what unlikely sounding masterpieces these are, too. "This is a movie that stars James Taylor, and you're telling me it's great?" My Lovely Wife asked when the package arrived, more genuinely perplexed than irritated. Verbally describing the second film to a stranger would likely get you stopped dead around the point wherein you used "Hitler" and "puppet theater" in the same sentence. That's the thing about the truly great pictures—they rather actively defy description.

Which is just my short, bloggy way of commending you to Criterion's terrific, extras-laden release of Monte Hellman's haunting 1971 road movie Two Lane Blacktop, and the Facets/Syberberg Film release of Hans Jurgen Syberberg's massive (seven and a half hours!) 1977 world-historical/philosophical fantasia/nightmare, Our Hitler: A Film From Germany.

Our Hitler: A Film From Germany, Hans Jurgen Syberberg, 1977

'I know why, Daddy': Metatextuality and the monstrous parent in 'Bacall to Arms'

One of the most enigmatic and disturbing sequences in Robert Clampett's 1946 Bacall to Arms features two characters who are snatched away from our view almost as quickly as they are introduced.

Warning: contains spoilers.

Flash bulbs in Scorsese.

So I was dipping into Raging Bull for some screen grabs for a completely unrelated post (which I'm still working on—can you guess what yet-to-be-released film it's mainly about?) and I...well, I won't say noticed, but I will say I was struck anew by the flashbulb horror, and its most blatant re-emergence. Here goes...

His mama done told him, or, an animation circle...

I've redacted my prior text on this because it was immachoor and uncalled for (wait, lemme make sure Stu VanAirdale didn't link to it while I was sleeping...okay, phew), but the image (from The Bashful Buzzard, 1945, a sequel of sorts to Bugs Bunny Gets The Boid, included on the great new Looney Tunes box) is so compelling it really deserves display. It's also relevant to the current cinema, as I note in my review of Beowulf, which opens today; Angelina Jolie's Grendel's Mother frequently sounds like Mamma Buzzard in that cartoon. Mamma Buzzard was voiced by Sara Berner, who also gave that heart-rending/irritating speech in...

More spatial relations in Bava

I was a little let down by Beowulf last night, so when I got home I figured I'd check out Anchor Bay's new DVD of Mario Bava's 1961 treatment of Norse themes, Gli Invasori, that is, The Invaders, known here and on the disc as Erik the Conqueror. Needless to say, it did not disappoint.

Damn, check out those clouds. The guy's a regular El Greco.

The Genius of Charles Burnett

The staggering image above, evocative of the world of Wyeth but a prelude to a weirder and deeper realm, is the second shot of Charles Burnett's 1973 short The Horse. "If it were a short story by Faulkner, The Horse would have become an anthology piece decades ago; as a short film by an African-American director, it is only now being discovered," Dave Kehr aptly notes in his review of Killer of Sheep/The Charles Burnett Collection in today's New York Times. Sidestepping the fact that the acknowledgement of film's place as an art form commensurate with literature, writer/director Michael Tolkin observed of Burnett's 1977 Killer of Sheep, "If [it] were an Italian art film from 1953, we'd know every scene by heart." How much guilt one wants to shoulder for the almost criminal neglect of one of America's greatest cinematic poets is not the most pertinent question of the moment, as the two-DVD set of Burnett works that hits the streets next week is a joyous corrective to much of that neglect.

Halloween greetings

"Fire...

...walk...

...with...

Question of the day

During the shooting of Breathless, was not Jean Seberg in fact the most beautiful woman alive, and even the most beautiful woman who had ever lived?

The Criterion disc of the film streets tomorrow, and offers eloquent testimony in support of the idea.

The mother of all "Last Supper" parodies.

Trolling around some non-movie-related portions of the blogosphere, as I am wont to do, I see via Roy at alicublog that former movie reviewer Rod Dreher is displeased with an ad for some sorta leatherfest that parodies Leonardo's painting of you-know-who's last supper. Roy links to both Rod and the prolific Dan Savage, whose post features more Last Supper lampoons than I dreamt of in my philosophy, the tackiest for my money being the one presided over by Marilyn Monroe. "Where's the outrage?" Dan asks, as he well might, apropos these non-controversial sendups. Nothing's shocking anymore.

Of course, back in the early '60s, when director Luis Bunuel had his rampaging poor folk pose in attitudes suggesting The Last Supper in his magnificent Viridiana, there was outrage to spare.

I'm sure this image wasn't the only reason Franco wanted all prints and the negative of the film destroyed (as the extras on the Criterion DVD of this film show, he very nearly got his wish), but it helped! When accused of blasphemy for concocting this image, Don Luis—who, like many athiests of his particular stripe, knew Catholic dogma like the back of his hand—averred that there was no blasphemy whatsoever, as Leonardo's work, while depicting a religious scene, is in fact a secular one and not a sanctified object. (Compare and contrast Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, which if I understand correctly does pass the blasphemy test.) In the highly entertaining book of Bunuel interviews Objects of Desire, the director shrugs: "I don't understand the indignation. The beggars are eating and by chance form the same composition as in Leonardo's painting...they are believers, but at the same time they take liberties with religion. That is very Spanish."

In other Bunuel news, I just got the Facets/Cinemateca DVD of Bunuel's 1951 Mexican melodrama, Una Mujer Sin Amor (A Woman Without Love) and am relieved to report it's a pretty good-looking disc. I had reason to dread, as Facets is a label whose exceptional taste is trumped by its often execrable practices in DVD transferring. The dual-label tag tells the story—Spanish-language purveyors Cinemateca made the disc, and Facets is distributing. The less-good news is that the movie itself is no great shakes; as Tomas Perez Turrent tells Bunuel in Objects, "[It i]s the only film of yours in which I find nothing of interest." To which Bunuel replies, "Me neither. It's the worst one I made." However, Cinemateca has two very good Mexican Bunuels on tap—Susana, his adaptation of Devil in the Flesh, and El Bruto, starring a very feral Katy Jurado. I'll report on those when I get them.

LOL 'From Beyond'

Festival duties and such have kept me from properly catching up with what's pretty much a bushelful of new horror DVDs from MGM, including Stuart Gordon's more-than-respectable followup to the admitedly untoppable Re-Animator, 1986's From Beyond. Ah, those halcyon days, back when Barbara Crampton (pictured) bid fair to reign as the thinking pervert's scream queen. [Calm down, G., you're starting to sound like Jeffrey Wells...—Ed.] Gordon had a picture at Toronto this year that I managed to miss, but I was one of the few critics who happened to think quite a bit of his recent adaptation of David Mamet's Edmond. I'm also big on his way messed-up 2003 King of the Ants, which was in competition at the Seattle Film Festival when I was on a jury there. If I recall correctly, my fellow jurors liked it a lot too, but we declined to award it anything on the grounds that it was so strong it didn't need our help, or something. I see now that it only ever got a region 2 DVD release and is currently out of my price range. Hmmm.

I see my man Dave Kehr's given the seal of approval to the new, presented-as-it-should-be version of the much-hacked and re-scored Witchfinder General, another title in the MGM cache. I hope to have time to delve into these treasures further before, say, Halloween...