What Happened Was...
A propos of... oh, fuck a propos! The first of what might be interminable random sortings of bests; who said the history of cinema, as seen from a North American’s perspective, can’t be, in its every bump and moment and peak, weighed and measured? Argue if you dare.
Best Actor of 1929: Uno Henning, A Cottage on Dartmoor
Best First Film of 1931: Madchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan)
Best Soviet Film of 1933: Outskirts
Best Screenplay of 1940: Remember the Night (Preston Sturges)
Best Short of 1944: Hell Bent for Election (Charles M. Jones)
Best German Film of 1946: The Murderers Are Among Us
Best Supporting Actor of 1948: Thomas Gomez, Force of Evil
Best Film of 1952: El
Best Cinematography of 1959: The Letter Never Sent (Sergei Urusevsky)
Best Italian Film of 1961: Salvatore Guiliano
Best Actor of 1963: Michel Piccoli, Contempt
Best First Film of 1965: A Blonde in Love (Milos Forman)
Best Supporting Actor of 1967: Boris Karloff, Targets
Best Cinematography of 1969: The Color of Pomegranates
Best Hungarian Film of 1973: Riddance
Best Short of 1977: Valse Triste (Bruce Conner)
Best Supporting Actress of 1981: Lisa Eichhorn, Cutter’s Way
Best Documentary of 1987: The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On
Best Actor of 1988: Jeremy Irons, Dead Ringers
Best Actress of 1994: Karen Sillas, What Happened Was...
Best First Film of 1999: The Blair Witch Project
Best Japanese Film of 2004: A Taste of Tea
Best First Film of 2006: The Mist in the Palm Trees
Skol!
my man! what a great fiché propos list, notably in the acting category.
piccoli was so pitch perfectly melancholy in le mepris, watching everything fall to pieces at a remove or two, not least his romance with brigitte -- compare belmondo's performances in à bout de souffle and pierrot le fou, whose roles follow similar interior, unrequited narrative arcs, but each of an entirely different quality.
and i love disctinctive actresses like lisa e., who went nowhere fast after her memorably omni-loathing turn in cutter -- she almost growls avec le mepris -- and ms. sillas, similarly seeming to disappear after this fine turn in tom noonan's deserving-of-rediscovery first directorial effort. i remember she was on a cop show with seymour cassel, of all people, for a minute before that disappearance. there's a generation-plus of these great american actresses who have brilliant performances -- and, as far as the mass culture is concerned, not much else -- to show for their brilliance. i'd add these two actresses to a list that includes people like (off the top of my head) pamela reed, diane venora, diana sands, and, as you mention blair (which i don't esteem as highly as you, but appreciate as well-executed conceptual art: "take these cameras into the woods; try this today..."), let's include heather donahue. i think i might be her biggest fan; she strikes me as very intelligent, poised and skillful in the fewish things i've seen her in, ranging from blair to an episode of it's always sunny in philadelphia. a question to apply to each/all of these actresses: why don't we see more of her?
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How many shorts from 1944 have you actually seen?
But, yes, Karen Sillas was amazing in that Tom Noonan
flick. I was really hoping we'd be seeing more of her in things other than Sci Fi Channel movies about giant squids.
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Valid question re: '44 -- I've seen 18 or so. It's always a process.
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Genius. Eichhorn and Sillas. Great choices. May I add:
Best Screenplay of 1972: Robert Dillon (Prime Cut)
Best First Film of 1988: The Chocolate War
Best Self-Crucifixion of 1985: John Landis (Into the Night)
Best Use of a Blowtorch 1984: Gene Hackman in Eureka
Best Face 1960-1980: Tuesday Weld
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Ach! But 1972 was the year of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie! And for 1988's first, I'd elect Kaurismaki's Crime and Punishment.
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“Outskirts” is available on DVD but seldom discussed nowadays, so maybe these notes will be of interest. World War I as experienced by a remote Russian village is its subject, but the film was made under Stalinist rule, and it wavers uneasily between heroic depictions of Russian battlefield victories and a more naturalistic, often sardonic depiction of less exalted emotions and behavior back home.
The film is confusing at first, until it becomes clear that we are seeing men slaving in a grubby shoe factory. Soon whistles from larger enterprises go off (they’re difficult to hear at all, let alone with sufficient dramatic force, because the film’s sound is primitive), signaling village-wide strike. The shoe workers rush out, despite the pleadings of a somewhat Dickensian money-grubbing boss. In the streets soldiers scatter the strikers. Barnet renders all this in rapid cuts, interpolating comic incidents, such as a horny youth coming on to a severe-looking lady and her dog on a bench.
Afterwords, we meet an elderly Russian man whose German boarder is also his friend and checkers partner; they address one another by both their names. We also meet the Russian’s daughter, apparently in her twenties and somewhat enfeebled mentally, doubtless from the abuse her father heaps on her, especially when she tries to sneak out for some fun. The onset of war estranges the Russian and the German, with each bristling patriotically on behalf of his homeland. A fine image shows the German climbing into a rickety wagon with his belongings in suitcases; the cobbled street slanting to the right makes the wagon seem all the more unstable as it struggles away. Later, the Russian bemoans the loss of his friend yet he brutally smashes a framed portrait of the man.
The battle scenes are fast-cut montages of frightened Russians in trenches (vivid shell bursts keep burying them in dirt), Germans firing machine guns at them, fighters from both sides advancing and retreating.
Back in the village, one captured German, allowed to work locally during the day, falls in love with the Russian’s daughter, stirring enraged local men to batter him despite his lover’s attempt at rescue; his Russian employer, who has received a letter announcing the wounding of one son in battle and the death of another, at first permits the beating, then relents. The language barrier further hampers relations between them and with the daughter.
It must have been dicey in 1933 for Barnet to depict Russians on the home front behaving treacherously. The conclusion seems to celebrate the revolution, but the overall impression is one of local humanity with a full ration of venality, selfishness, and cynicism. Barnet is generally more acute with action than with actors, who tend to emote in semi-slow motion, perhaps hindered by the inadequate sound.
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Last month I visited the Sicilian locations in "Salvatore Giuliano", where I interviewed locals around the bandit's terrain. I love Rosi's film as much you do, but it's viewed largely as fiction in those parts, and even reviled as a pack of lies by Giuliano's nephew and others in Palermo province. The graveyard custodian who let me into the crypt endorsed Paolo Benvenuti's film "Segreti di Stato" (available at www.ibs.it), as did the son of the late antimafia activist Danilo Dolci. I watched it and grew more confused; the conclusions are as spooky and labyrinthine as you'd expect in Italy. The only person I met who believed Giuliano was culpable in the May Day massacre was a little old man in San Giuseppe Jato. He pointed out a building that was formerly the Communist Party HQ bombed by the bandits, then told me that the same men killed his sister at the festival. (He didn't attend.) I asked what he thought of Rosi's film and he said, "E' la verita'!"
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So cool, Carl -- please let us know where the piece you're writing appears, I'd love to get the whole story.
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Thanks, Michael. Book, actually, pertaining to mafia hot spots in western Sicily. Self-financed so far, no publisher yet, a long way off. For those interested in the Giuliano story, there are three books in English: Gavin Maxwell's "Bandit" (Harper & Brothers, 1956); Billy Jaynes Chandler's "King of the Mountain" (Northern Illinois University Press, 1988); Marianna Giuliano and Giuseppe Sciortino Giuliano's "My Brother, Salvatore Giuliano" (Arnone Editore, 2000). That last author is the bandit's nephew who told me that his uncle's cop-killing career was justified in the name of Sicilian separatism. One objective was to make the island into a U.S. state! (I'll give back your thread now.)
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Can I just get behind Eichorn and Sillas? No porn pun intended. Although, given the chance...Oh, never mind. You all remember "Female Perversions" and The graphic girl-on-girl action between Sillas and Tilda Swinton"? Add it to your Netflix queue.
And while we're on the subject, what has become of Annabella Sciorra? Abel Ferrara, give this woman some work, please!
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