8 ½ (1963)
Federico Fellini
In 8½ we take a look into the life of director Federico Fellini. Annoying journalists, self-righteous actors and raving producers who always seem to know better all revolve around the Italian director as we take him on a walk through his flamboyant life. Simply put 8½ is about making the movie itself. The viewer experiences this process through the eyes of the director, with all his fantasies, memories and daydreams.
The character representing Fellini's alter ego is called Guido and is played by the always charming Marcello Mastroianni. Guido has a writer's block and retreats to a spa where he looks for inspiration for his new film (this film).
He does not reveal anything about the upcoming film, mainly because he himself does not yet know what the film will be about. As a spectator it is difficult to understand whether we are initially looking at Guido's real life,
the film within the film, a memory or a dream of Guido. Fellini shows that film is basically a projected form of dreams, a visual spin derived from our perceptions of everyday madness. The scenes feel strange and there is always something just not right. In this way, as a viewer, you are carried away with a entangling fascination on the flow of images.
For example, a scene that cannot be easily forgotten is the opening scene. The film starts with a dream in which Guido is stuck in a traffic jam. Everyone in the traffic jams along slowly, on the same road, until death. Guido suffocates in his car, but manages to fight his way out in time to escape the traffic jam, in order to be free.
The movie is called 8½ because before this he made seven films, one of which was a collaboration, which makes this number eight and a half.
All elements of what makes a film a real Fellini are present: the personal childhood sentiments such as in Amacord (1973), Roma (1972) and
I Vitelloni (1953), the circus figures and decorations of La Strada (1954), Satiricon (1969) and Il Casanova (1976), his quest for eternal beauty as can be found in La Dolce Vita (1960) and the perfectly fitting lounge music of Nino Rota.
But the most interesting thing about Fellini's films are the women. In both
La Dolce Vita and 8½ there are primarily three types of women dancing around him. The woman who only arouses the libido, but you would rather not hear her talk or think. The woman who can challenge him and is his equal in the intellectual field, but whose love carries with it a confrontational transience. And finally the angel. The woman Guido will never have.
An idealized image of desire that one should only dream about. In 8½ it is the beautiful Claudia (played by Claudia Cardinale). Fellini flirts with the first woman, restlessly engages with the second woman and dreams of the angel. The women also symbolize his films. The simple commercial versus quality films where filmmakers have to fight against studios in their search for inscrutable artistic values.
When Guido looks at the older men in his life, he gets scared. Exhausted men of simple pleasure without any passion in their lives. Fellini's characters are never truly happy but forever doomed to search restlessly for heavenly beauty.
In Fellini's films, all themes are intertwined into an ambiguous whole that seems to be about everything and nothing at the same time. Every scene of 8½ works like a separate short film with a farcical parade at the end. Like the last part of Ode to that Freude by Beethoven, everything comes together in a carnivalesque conclusion. All the bravura of the past is swept aside and Fellini once again impresses us that we shouldn't take life too seriously in all its beautiful but intoxicating melancholy. All extras pass by in this last parade. Everyone who played a role in his film, his life, his dreams, his circus.
Citizen Kane(1942)
Orson Welles
Citizen Kane is more than a representation of a single human life. Where Fellini let his characters search for extra-essential beauty and Hitchcock's characters focused on the dark conflicting truth of human nature, in Charles Foster Kane we find only a man who wanted to be loved. At the same time, Welles mirrors twentieth-century society and its zeitgeist in Kane.
​
Who was Charles Foster Kane? This is a core question that matters both in the film and outside of the film. Orson Welles supposedly based his character on several people. He appears to have taken inspiration from the life of William Randolph Hearst. But actually, as can be deduced from interviews, he mainly wanted to portray a kind of person. Charles Foster Kane was a beloved, important, wealthy man, with a life thrown into his lap. A figurehead capitalist, with a taste for fame. Nevertheless, Kane was not an unsympathetic man. Welles didn't caricature Kane, he makes him human, and also - in Scorsese' words - an enigma.
​
The film begins with Kane's death, after which the viewer looks over the shoulder with a journalist who goes in search of the man behind the legend. Based on the stories of his loved ones, we get a picture of his life in fragments, from childhood to death.
​
The narrative style is carelessly accompanied by technical refinements.
Kane plays with symbolism, what he shows and what he doesn't, and explains the emotions of his characters in their actions. This had never been seen in such a way and is still a rare phenomenon to this day, in this degree.
​
Orson Welles was 25 when he made Citizen Kane. He had the complete freedom of the film studio, something unthinkable in contemporary cinema. He never got this freedom again in the rest of his career. Orson Welles was a prophet who had to be stopped, he says. His work didn't fit into the system because it went against it. As a 25-year-old, Welles made perhaps the best film ever made; the ideological victory of a young idealistic man in his twenties. The twenty-something who preaches to the old capitalists of the world that he does not hold utopian sentiments, but that they go through life sour and depraved. Confusing money with happiness.
​
In his own words, Citizen Kane was intended as a critical note on capitalist society. A story about a poor boy who is adopted by a millionaire and suddenly has everything but true love. Citizen Kane is a sneer at the corrupting power of possessions and its insufficiency for happiness.
This corruption colors the sympathetic Kane with a lurid emptiness. A man who succumbs to his blind greed and desire for recognition. Charles Foster Kane was a man who had everything, yet always wanted more and it always had to be bigger, but nevertheless as a consequence, became more hollow.
Caché (2005)
Michael Hanke
The mystery of this film that imposes itself on the viewer can hardly be unraveled in one viewing. In contrary to what the title might suggest, the answers are given openly. Nowadays you can basically find any answer or interpretation on the internet, yet I challenge you not to do this, and to play the detective yourself. Although Haneke himself thinks that a viewer who is desperately looking for the answer to the question raised by the film completely misses the point of the film.
Haneke warns for the digital age in which we live. Man gets all his drama from the screen and thereby distances himself from reality. The first shot of the film illustrates this best. The viewer is deceived as it appears as if one is looking at reality, but it is only a video tape (it's played on your screen anyway). In Haneke's work, media and reality are always blurred and intertwined into a disturbed whole.
​
In Caché, the confrontational reality finds its way into the lives of the main characters via anonymous videotapes sent to them. These tapes contain long fragments of the home of George Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche). The two live in wealthy circles and live the Parisian bourgeois life. Yet beneath their serene existence reigns a dark secret, a deep-rooted subtle violence that is rekindled by the mysterious videotapes.
A violence that is not only involved in the roots of the lives of these two Parisians, but that casts a critical eye on Western society as a whole.
A concept that takes root more strongly in the consciousness of the viewer with the viewing.
​
The damage done by previous generations is often snowed under by a stubborn hardening of society. These consequences seem buried deep in the consciousness of prosperous Europe. A hardening grounded in greed and lies about morals and principles. In a world in which everyone is completly responsible for their own failure or happiness, there is no room for, as Mark Rutte would say, so-called “sociological explanations”.
​
An act can never be judged as an act in itself, and must always be viewed in its historical context. Caché in this light, is a perfect parable for social tensions in the area of migration and the multicultural society. In addition, it is a subtle character study of a broadly supported pathology. But above all, the film is a skilful thriller. Haneke tells the story slowly, which means that the viewer is not paying attention at important moments. Yet the film is never really boring because there is always an undefinable threat in the background.
​
There isn't much else I want to say about Caché. The rest has to be experienced by yourself, thought about and revisited a number of times.
The film does demand a high degree of concentration from its viewers. Haneke takes pleasure - in his own words - from the frustration of the viewer spoiled by Hollywood.
​
Media has become an important part of human consciousness in modern times; the new reality. A phenomenon that has already been depicted effectively in films such as Videodrome (1983) and Network (1977). Man and the screen are connected in a complicated way. In every aspect of modern existence, man lives through screens. Haneke shows in Caché that Europe's treatment of refugees is not just the delusional world of media and politics, but the painful reality that is likely to overtake us by force.
City Lights (1931)
Charlie Chaplin
I believe that if we stop laughing at Chaplin, we are doomed to sink into our own cynicism. The humor from silent films seems difficult to translate to contemporary taste. Yet today it can be particularly useful to take a look at this old pantomime player. His moralistic childlike innocence arms us against the depravity of the modern soul.
​
With his latest silent film, Chaplin wanted to emphasize that films do not necessarily benefit from speaking actors. His silent films knew no national borders or language barriers. In Chaplin's famous speech from
The Great Dictators (1940) he underlines that technology is good by nature but carries with it a tendency towards a sweeping individualization that closes us rather than brings us together. He was right. Technology makes life easy but doesn't really connect people. It is only a means, not an end.
​
Chaplin warned us about this in Modern Times (1937) and The Great Dictators but actually shows it with City Lights. City Lights was released at a time when the talkies were just around the corner. Nevertheless, Chaplin chose to make another silent film. Chaplin didn't need new technological developments to touch people. Speech, color, 3D, Imax, all formalities that don't beat Chaplin's craftsmanship. In the film's opening scene, Chaplin causes a rowdy crowd to artificially jeer, an explicit nod to his audience who were no doubt wondering if the tramp was finally going to speak. His fans had to wait at least another ten years before that wish became a reality.
​
The story of City Lights is simple but has a polished innocence in it.
Naturally, the film focuses on the playful situations in which the tramp finds himself. He is introduced to two characters throughout the film. A wealthy hapless alcoholic and a blind flower seller. The rich man uses the tramp to fill his own void, only recognizing him when he is drunk. He doesn't like the slob when he wakes up sober the next morning. The flower girl cannot see the tramp and thinks he is a wealthy gentleman. The tramp helps the girl and pays for her eye surgery so that she can see again. Both characters initially do not see the tramp for who he really is. Where the rich man casts off the tramp when they meet in unadulterated form, the shabby showing makes no difference to the flower girl. This results in, in my opinion, the most touching scene in movie history.
​
There is a purity in a romance between a man who does not speak and a woman who does not see, and who can only express their love in gestures of affection. Chaplin shows us his cinematic power by telling as much as possible in as few words as possible along the way of his restrictions.
He uses the film medium and the power of visual gesture in optima forma.
There were quite a few critics who thought that Chaplin should not venture into political themes. A serious clown is not what people were waiting for.
But like Frank Capra, Chaplin felt that with his stature and audience came great responsibility. Chaplin's later films dealt with virtue, humanity and the evil that springs from greed and power. Before the 1930s, Chaplin was the amusing pantomime player, the simple entertainer and Buster Keaton the witty comedian of the time. But like the rich drunkard and the flower seller, people didn't see the humanistic intellectual that Chaplin really was. Of the importance of satire and freedom of expression in The Great Dictators to the danger of a capital-oriented machine-driven society in Modern Times, Chaplin's oeuvre is great and so is his vision.
Citizen Kane (1941), Vertigo (1958), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) requires multiple viewings and intellectual analytical skills from its viewer.
City Lights does not. City Lights leaves little room for interpretation.
If you cut away the fat edges with all the insignificant elements in our lives, you will find the core of our humanity, our expressions in extremis: a tear and a smile. And this core of human emotion is nowhere more faithfully embodied than in City Lights.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Martin Scorsese
On Travis Bickle's sunken face we see the projection of New York's sweltering nightlife. The night in a busy city like New York has the illusion of cosiness and atmosphere, as it is actually filled with lonely souls looking for some meaning or anesthesia. Travis drives around in it, caught up in his own fragmented thoughts.
The empty nights are accompanied by a splitting saxophone. It is the intoxicating sounds that make the evening romantic and calming, but soon behind those sounds one hears the looming patter of a menacing drum set. This is what nightlife in a big city like New York must feel like for a cop or taxi driver; it has two faces. Bernard Herrmann has managed to capture this sentiment perfectly in his soundtrack.
In Taxi Driver we see a character study exploring the twist from loneliness to madness. Travis Bickle (played by Robert De Niro) is a man who has struggled to lead his life in the right direction since his duty in Vietnam.
It is difficult for him to comprehend day-to-day life. Sleepless nights, excessive drinking, driving around aimlessly and regular trips to the pornographic cinema now fill his days. His existence begins to take a toll, and Travis Bickle slowly begins to lose touch with social reality. A job where he gets paid for his needless wandering seems a logical choice.
Scorsese films also have a dichotomy. Scorsese has made a firm split in his way of filmmaking since the 1990s. For me, there are two directors in Martin Scorsese. The Scorsese from before Goodfellas (1990) and the Scorsese after Goodfellas. Before Goodfellas his films were about characters, with perhaps the exception After hours (1985). The story developed around its characters, but the characters always remained the center. Goodfellas
changed that, slightly, by putting more emphasis on style and action.
Movies like Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982),
Mean Streets (1973), New York, New York (1977),
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and Taxi Driver are purer character studies where the people came to the fore much more than the action and the style. The movies were more personal, there was more craziness from Scorsese himself.
Travis Bickle is a man with a lot of frustration in his life. Frustration that probably originated in Vietnam. In Bowling for Columbine (2002) there is a scene that immediately springs to mind in Travis Bickle's analysis. How can we demand non-violent coexistence within a state when the president is murderously bombing abroad? That's what the father of a shot student wonders. The violence of the American state seeps its way into society.
If only in the form of disorders in veterans as well portrayed in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1988).
Travis Bickle is America. He becomes obsessed with guns and seems to be preparing for upcoming conflicts. Conflicts in his head that slowly work their way into his life: a path of destruction that he seems to be deliberately pursuing. The constructed reason for the violence is an underage prostitute whose life is controlled by a pimp. A prostitute who doesn't want to be saved but whose liberation Travis decides deserves the concentration of his pent-up aggression; it is the same interplay that can be found between America and Vietnam.
Yet Travis' frustration isn't just symbolism pertaining to the country's political situation. It is also the violent revival of a man who has fallen out of society. A man who no longer seems to fit into society. Humiliation, weakness, futility now haunt his mind and the only thing that can give him strength again is the muzzle of a gun. It is the same psychological phenomenon that can be found in Bonnie and Clyde (1968). Masculine insecurity and impotence transform into aggression and unfold into a tragedy of Greek proportions.
​
The ending is basically the same ending as inThe King of Comedy and
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013); the world upside down. Do we actually realize what we're applauding, or do we no longer care for the madness of our society?
Rear Window (1954)
Alfred Hitchcock
In Rear Window we see a projection of mysticism and drama playing out in the windowsill of the neighbors across the street. There is a distance between what goes on there and the actual life in your own living room. It is the same connection that one feels towards film and what manifests itself on screen. The fascination with the darkness on the other side acts as an invitation to reality.
'You are what you eat.' Is a well-known statement that relates to the (un)healthy nature of our food regime. Rear Window, however, presents us with the cinematic variant: 'You are what you look at.' Hitchcock is known for his psychoanalyst films. In Rear Window the psychoanalysis does not only connect with the characters. What do the films I watch and appreciate say about my person? Am I a fleeing viewer? A viewer with a fascination for violence and sex? Or am I looking for understanding? Company? Love even?
James Stewart and Grace Kelly are back to star in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. This time Stewart is slightly gray, which suits him well, and Kelly an elegantly dressed chic woman. Hitchcock and Stewart already worked together in Vertigo (1959), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Rope (1948).
In Rear Window Stewart plays the home-sitting photographer Jeff, who has ended up in a wheelchair due to an accident and who, out of boredom, watches the neighbors with binoculars. It's summertime in New York and Jeff, a born adventurer, is going crazy with boredom. The only ones who pay him a visit from time to time are his caretaker (played by Thelma Ritter) and his then-girlfriend Lisa Fremont (played by Grace Kelly). Kelly already worked with Hitchcock in Dial M for Murder (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955). According to Kelly, Hitchcock would during the making of Dial M for Murder talk a lot about Rear Window. Understandably so, it doesn't happen every day that an entertaining thriller encounters life in such a way.
The most powerful element about Rear Window is it's simplicity. Hitchcock uses only Jeff's apartment and the view of the neighbors across the street as a backdrop. Every city dweller knows some kinship with a balcony view and a courtyard where people see each other (intentionally or not) eating dinner, quarreling, receiving company and staring out of the window. The distance relationship it creates between local residents is a one-sided relationship. One in which the lonely neighbor across the street fulfills the role that you project onto him or her. This relationship can be compared to the relationship that viewers have with movie characters. The moment this one-sidedness is broken, through obsession or unhealthy projection, you invite not only the simple face, but the possibly undesirable hidden darkness behind it into your reality.
Hitchcock wouldn't be Hitchock if he didn't turn his film into a story of crime and mystery. The cozy homely atmosphere of the courtyard is suddenly disturbed by a shout from behind closed curtains. Jeff, who has nothing better to do anyway, follows the closed curtains like an exciting soap opera. There is a special relationship in Hitchcock's work between the tensions of a crime story and the psychological sketch of desires he derives from it. Hitchcock belongs to the special kind of director who was able to both captivate the general public with the way he played with expectations and tension arcs, and to wet all critics with the intellectual layering of his films.
The relationship between the first face and the hidden life behind it is also reflected in the relationship between Jeff and Lisa. A relationship that seems to be on the verge of a break-up. Jeff says Lisa is too perfect and longs for a more adventurous woman who isn't afraid to get her new dress dirty. Lisa is always dressed in high fashion, elegance is her true synonym. The demise of their relationship is negated by the shared fascination with the closed curtains across the street. Jeff takes her into his fueled intrigue, one in which the two lose themselves in a sense, but find each other again.
In the Mood for the Love (2000)
Wong Kar Wai
Every relationship is a relationship between four people; the two actual people, and their romantic conceptions. In In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-Wai plays with this idea and incoporated it into a waltz of unrequited desires.
Wong Kar-Wai's style is undeniably elegant. The music and colors are a feast for the senses and dance to a virtuoso rhythm that passes the viewer.
The camera is always hidden behind a curtain or eavesdropping from a corner, as if the viewer is secretly following the affair in question.
Wong Kar-Wai uses original camera positions, mirror reflections and slow moving shots, his craftsmanship is reflected in every camera instruction.
Particular attention should be paid to the music. Music that really cannot be avoided. It fits perfectly with the sentiments of the film and instantly generates a melancholic mood. Every face gets an emotional release when hearing the cutting violin in Yumeji's theme by Michael Galasso.
Mrs. Chan (played by Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (played by Tony Chiu-Wai Leung) are neighbors who are pushed together by circumstances.
They become entangled in an affair because they find that their partners go on business trips remarkably frequently and for long periods of time. Their absence is crucial for the way the story is told. When the two main characters - although their eyes have been following each other for quite some time - decide to fill the void left behind with each other's company,
a tragic love game begins. Both actors play the game subdued, the emotion is carried by the compensating burning contrast.
Time is a recurring theme in the work of the Hong Kong director. Close-ups of clocks and slow-motion shots reflect the documented emotion of the moment. Time takes no account of anything. It takes us by the hand, gradually changes us and leaves a trace of lived emotion. Emotion that cannot be relived, only romantically remembered.
Wong Kar-Wai has two faces. Mr. Chow expresses this, as an extension of the director. Wong Kar-Wai tells two kinds of stories; gangsterstories and romantic stories. In Fallen Angels (1995) Wong Kar-Wai tries to combine the two story types, with some success. Also in Chungking Express (1990) the director seems to be working in a similar dilemma. This characteristic split in his oeuvre can already be found in his first film As Tears Goes By (1988),
a somewhat flawed visually striking filmadaptation of Mean Streets (1973) by Martin Scorsese.
But in In the Mood for Love Wong Kar-Wai finally confesses his color, and undeniably shows that the director was born for melancholy and romance.
In that style of intoxicating urges, Wong Kar-Wai is undeniable. No director can do what he can; the metropolitan lights of the night loom before his lonely characters, whose lives cry out for love.
In the Mood for Love is like an impossible summer love. Is it true infatuation that brings the two together or just a burning desire born of an impulsive fantasy? And what does it really matter? No infatuation survives the transience of time. Yet perhaps it is precisely the memory of an unrequited love that takes root most potently in our memory.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick
The grand of 2001 is the vision with which Stanley Kubrick approached this project. A film about human evolution. Kubrick rises above his peers and analyzes our existence from an alien perspective. If we ever come into contact with extraterrestrial life, it may be wise to show them 2001: A Space Odyssey.
​
The film consists of four segments, each representing an important milestone in human evolution. Kubrick shows us the beginnings of using tools, the exploration of the universe, the realization of artificial intelligence and the unforeseeable beyond.
The drumming of an ape, spaceships moving slowly to classical music and the rebirth at the end; the film contains some of the most influential images in film history and has inspired an unimaginable number of other filmmakers.
2001 however, is not a movie that you just turn on. It demands abstract thinking from its viewers. The stubborn confidence that expresses itself in a kind of comprehensiveness may go down the wrong way with some. This is a movie that with time can develop in the viewers mind, in size and dominance into an important cultural reference point.
But it's not easy to immediately get full affinity with it in one viewing. This is also the reason why the film initially received moderate reviews upon its release. And that may be exactly what the film wants to tell us with its ending. The room symbolizes the human limitations of our reality. Similar to Fellini's file at the beginning of 8½ (1963), Kubrick sketches our finitude and the limits of our perseiving ability. Many viewers and critics therefore reacted negatively to this difficult to comprehend film. But everything worthwhile in life is often difficult to experience in the beginning.
Realizing that 2001 was made before the first moon landing is unimaginable. The film is therefore full of bold future predictions and assumptions that have mostly come true.
In addition 2001 is more scientifically accurate than 99% of science fiction movies today.
I interpret the end of the film in which the “space baby” is shown as a prediction of a scientific discovery of the last few years. Scientists have discovered that the CRISPR system can be used to modify human DNA. The designer baby suddenly seems very close. The possibilities seem endless and it is even speculated that this can defeat the phenomenon of aging. This is what the last segment of 2001 must be an indirect reference to. The boundless unpredictable future of science and human evolution.
​
But there's more. In 2001 a future is sketched in which technology has developed to such an extent that it reduces man to a passive and subordinate being. There aren't really human characters in it 2001. The only character who shows some human traits is the artificial intelligence Hal 9000. In the gloomy sterile future that Kubrick depicts, there seems to be no room for humans. The final scene can also be seen as an eruption of human emotion trying to escape this sterile reality. Nietzsche wrote that man must perish in order to rise again as the Übermensch. Hal 9000 seems to understand this idea all too well. It also seems to me no coincidence that Kubrick Also Spoke Zarathustra by Strauss as the soundtrack.
​
2001 for me belongs to a special list of films with which I had no affinity at all at first, but this turned 180 degrees the more I thought about it. Movies like Satyricon (1973) and Playtime (1967) also had this effect on me, mainly because I was still too young to understand these films. Kubrick showed me the chameleonic power of art in its ability to be completely rediscovered years later. 2001: A Space Odyssey is like a movie temple for me that I have to visit from time to time.
Vertigo (1958)
Alfred Hitchcock
Freud claimed that human action has its origin in the entanglement of our fears and desires arising from our subconscious.
A subconscious that he describes as an obscure inscrutable dimension full of suppressed violent and sexual tendencies. Hitchcock was a great admirer of Freud's work and has been throughout his career often reverted to typical Freudian ideas. Likewise in Vertigo, his most complex film.
John Scottie Ferguson (played by James Stewart) is a retired detective who takes on one more assignment. A friend asks him to follow his wife Madeleine (played by Kim Novak) on her strange outings. Scottie falls under the spell of Madeleine and the love seems mutual, until she throws herself - in a confused state - from a church steeple. Scottie, transfixed by his fear of heights, looks on helplessly at the loss of his loved one.
Lost, he then wanders the streets of San Francisco until he meets a woman who reminds him of Madeleine. He pounces on her and asks her to wear the same clothes, dye her hair and put on make-up in the same way. Scottie projects his fantasy image of Madeleine onto this woman in a way that is reminiscent of what Simone de Beauvoir wanted to show in her book
The Second Sex. Fantasies that he doesn't even realize aren't his own. Scottie chases a dream that someone else has outlined for him. An improper ideal image, preconceived in abstraction, that presents itself as its dream woman. In doing so, Hitchcock mirrors the damaging development of the media-fueled cultural ideal of beauty and also emphasizes the emptiness that lurks behind the face of the supposedly perfect fantasy. Achieving this fantasy often reveals a nightmare.
The scene of Madeleine's fall contains an iconic shot that's called the vertigo shot. It's the shot where Scottie is looking down and the lens is moving backwards at the same rate as it zooms in. From its quick editing in Psycho (1960) to the dream scene Vertigo where the camera rotates 360 degrees, Hitchcock is regarded by many as the most influential technical director. However, his work cannot only be admired because of its technical excellence. Vertigo contain all the desired elements of a masterpiece.
His stories are original compelling thrillers full of unexpected twists and layered psychological motifs, which he allows to blossom in it's symbolism.
The term vertigo is often incorrectly used to indicate only the phobia of heights. It's more of an umbrella term for a triggering by tension and movement. Scottie is afraid of heights but especially afraid of falling in love. Vertigo is about the fear of being moved, the fear of actually feeling something and confronting the subconscious and the desires that follow from it. Scottie's fear that by falling in love, his fear of losing the object of his desire will become reality seem to haunt him endlessly. And those who are afraid of losing lose everything.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Milos Forman
Rarely has an actor been so appropriately cast as Jack Nicholson for the role of Randle McMurphy. It is as if Nicholson was born to cross the ranks of men with his spirited grimace. His acting has always embodied a charming playfulness, whose energy is particularly contagious to her spectators. The rebel, the bon vivant, the ruthless egotist, the adventurer, are all captured in Jack Nicholson's mischievous gaze as he leads the viewers and the patients of the Columbine Institute and defies the impediments of the fractured mind.
​
It doesn't take much to entertain McMurphy. He is a man of futile pleasures, whose main hobby is gambling. He is constantly challenging people and making the boldest bets. In combination with his lust for women, the consumption of alcohol and his hot temper, he elevates himself as the talisman of the free-spirited, whose fights have since been reduced to a struggle against the chilling nurse Miss Ratched (played by Louise Fletcher), who personifies the institution.
Men against institution, that is the theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with the psychiatric institution as the central monstrum. One Flew
shows us the crushing power of conformity. Michel Foucault in his book
Folie et déraison. Histoire de la foil à l'âge Classique quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky, who once rightly wrote:
'You cannot convince yourself of your own sanity by locking up your neighbor.'
​
One of Foucault's primary conclusions was that in the midst of the serene world of mental illness, modern man has lost communication with the madman. McMurphy joins in by shouting in amazement to his endearing entourage:
​
'What do you think you are, for chrissake, crazy or somethin? Well you're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin around on the streets and that's it.'
​
In this cry lies the central assumption of the film. The film shines an investigative light on the twilight line between madness and norm. Even the most ordinary behavior is subject to the judgmental eye of the institution.
In its critique of this suffocating ambiguity, the film also includes the intolerance and inability to deal with strange customs from foreign cultures, embodied by Chief Bromden (played by Will Sampson). Loose missiles like McMurphy and Chief Browden should be turned into tame lambs until they can be archived defenseless, oppressed under the coercion of the institution.
​
The book on which the film is based had spawned a social debate about the treatment of the mentally ill, especially regarding the use of shock therapy. Miloš Forman has appropriately approached the translation to film by placing a childish innocence in the middle of a crazy adult rationality, a clinical rationality that crushes any human spirit.
​
It is often said that stories are better told in books than in films. As a filmcritic, I have some reservations about that. Books and movies approach a story from a fundamentally different force. Movies show in the actions, while books describe, and are better at explaining thoughts and intentions.
In Forman's version of the story, the power of the institution, especially Nurse Ratched, is less emphatically displayed. He sketches a more subtle unspoken cold power that hangs like a dark cloud over the heads of the patients. In the look of Louis Fletcher and her stiff mimicry we see more than words can clarify. In addition, Miloš Forman was a master at creating atmosphere and coziness. The fellow patients are lively and colorful people (thanks in part to great acting by the entire cast) who elicit an unambiguous empathetic response. It feels as if the viewers are trapped in the institution with the characters, but despite the dark clouds, the icy looks and the hellish measures, the film is an endearingly insane party.
​
​
​
12 Angry Men (1957)
Sidney Lumet
Every lawyer needs to see Sidney Lumet's12 Angry Men. The film revolves around one of the most fundamental legal principles known to our legal system: the presumption of innocence.
​
Part of the film's charm lies in its simplicity. Just like in
My Dinner with André (1981), Rope (1948) and Rear Window (1954) the entire film takes place in one room. The jury room arranges itself as a blank page on which the twelve men can express their ideas about the case. As a viewer, you listen in and follow the debates from a distance. The camera is set high at the beginning, looking out over the gathering heads. At the end of the film, when everyone passionately defends their point of view on the matter, the camera is placed below the actors. Drops of sweat are on the men's foreheads, the jackets are off and the neck is freed from the oppressive tie.
The actors argue angrily over the viewers, while the viewer slowly realizes that the viewer himself is the real jury.
​
Speaking of the actors, the cast is an impressive ensemble of established names of that era. Fronted by Henry Fonda, at that time primarily known for John Ford's
The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Fonda is perfectly cast as the conscience of the balanced all-considering judge. He squarely opposes Lee J. Cobb, known at the time for his villainous role in On the Waterfront (1954). In this film he is also hard and unrelenting, but as the film progresses you notice that he is not necessarily evil, rather stubborn and ignorant.
​
The premise is very simple; twelve men debate in a small room. But because the complexity of the case and the personalities of the jurors unfold slowly during the conversation, there is never a dull moment. In Dog Day Afternoon (1975) 18 years later, we see a confirmation of the craftsmanship of Lumet's tension arcs. Lumet is an activist and his films are arranged in such a way, both in terms of content and style, that the viewer cannot look away for a moment.
​
The presumption of innocence is crucial to a decent justice system. Without the presumption of innocence we get a Kafkaesque world as described in
The Process with prosecutions without rights for the suspects and convictions without evidence. In the Netherlands, a conviction should only take place when a minimum of evidence has been reached but always in combination with the judge's personal conviction. In America the term evidence beyond reasonable doubt is used for this.
If there is any doubt, the suspect should be given the benefit of the doubt. After all, this is about human lives, Fonda firmly preaches to his jurors.12 Angry Men has - rightfully so - the status of the best legal film; Lumet mixes the emotion that triumphs in art in a legal debate and at the same time adopts a principled position in the search for justice.
Le Mepris (1960)
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard als artiest, en tevens als vlaggenschip van de Nouvelle Vague, staat voor een onderscheiding in stijl. Godard belicht in zijn films de nadrukkelijke tegenstelling tussen de Amerikaanse filmstijl en de Europese, iets dat vandaag de dag zonneklaar lijkt, maar pertinent afgedwongen is door filmmakers als Godard. Tegenwoordig is dit verschil - alhoewel de Europese stijl zichzelf steeds meer lijkt te verloochenen in dienst van het commerciële - nog steeds voelbaar in de cinema. Deze verloochening, deze overgave aan het marktdenken dat stroomt door de aderen van Hollywood, lijkt de thematische kern te zijn van Godard’s meest tot de verbeelding sprekende film: Le Mepris.
​
Net zoals Fellini dat in 8½ datzelfde jaar deed, spiegelde Godard zijn strijd in de zoektocht naar de schoonheid in kunst met zijn verlangens in de liefde. Le Mepris is in de eerste plaats een film over de filmindustrie zelf. De film opent dan ook in een filmset met het aantreden van een dichterbij komende camera gevolgd door een introductie van de personages die allen staan voor een andere kijk, een andere benadering, tot het maken van een film. De hoofdpersoon is de Franse schrijver Paul Javal (gespeeld door Michel Piccoli) die door een Amerikaanse producent Jeremy Prokosch (gespeeld door Jack Palance) benaderd wordt om mee te werken aan zijn nieuwste project, een verfilming van Homer's Odyssey, geregisseerd door de grote Fritz Lang (die zichzelf speelt). Een op het eerste gezicht onmogelijke verfilming waarbij Prokosch toeziet op het commerciële belang terwijl Lang met hele andere filosofisch georiënteerde ideeën wil werken. Paul’s interesse voor het project is gelieerd aan Lang’s betrokkenheid bij de film, maar toch ook vanwege zijn vrouw en het succes dat er te behalen valt voor hem als schrijver, hetgeen Prokosch bijdehand opmerkt. In deze ingewikkelde verhouding legt Godard een brug tussen kunst en liefde.
​
De vrouw van Paul, Camille Javal, wordt gespeeld door de befaamde Brigitte Bardot. Met een verveeld ongenoegen paradeert Bardot door het scherm, terwijl Paul achter haar aan hobbelt, zich continu afvragend wat er in haar hoofd omgaat. Aan de ene kant is Paul - in zijn eigen woorden - tragisch verliefd op haar, maar aan de andere kant lijkt zijn teneur toch ook een zekere onvermogen te dragen. Het onvermogen om onbegrensd van haar te houden. Aangezien hij toch ook oog heeft voor andere vrouwen, en zij toch ondergeschikt aan zijn liefde voor film lijkt.
Haar liefde voor hem moet aanvankelijk verbonden zijn geweest aan de schrijver die hij is (of was), maar lijkt toch ook gekoppeld te zijn aan zijn mogelijk succes en haar materiële behoeftes. Dit lijkt Paul zich goed te beseffen en vormt zijn persoonlijke dilemma dat leidt tot het gissen naar wat zijn vrouw nou werkelijk wil. Heeft ze meer respect voor hem als hij zijn hart als schrijver volgt in dienst van de kunst, of als hij succesvol is door het oog van de markt?
De geveinsde onverschilligheid waarmee Paul Camille in de handen van Prokosch duwt is onderdeel van het spel dat de twee spelen. De twee partners draaien de hele film meanderend om elkaar heen, en praten in raadsels met abstracte verwijzingen naar hun gevoelens zoals men kan verwachten van een Godard-film. Het prachtige landschap van Capri, de toon van de muziek en de enigmatische geverfde Griekse beeldhouwwerken vervoeren het verhaal tot een eigenzinnig, op zichzelf staand geheel zoals dat het geval is bij grote films.
​​
Le Mepris is niet per se origineel in de verbeelde ideeën, daar een films als Sunset Blvd. (1958) een vergelijkbaar verhaal vertelt. Wie Le Mepris echter ontleedt, en kijkt naar het aantal personages, locaties, en gebeurtenissen, moet toch concluderen dat er eigenlijk bar weinig gebeurt in deze film.
Des te meer valt de ambivalentie en toch harmonieuze wijze waarop Godard de thema’s aan elkaar vlecht en de kijker geleidelijk met een rijk en subliem gevoel vervoerd, te bewonderen als kopstuk van het vakmanschap van deze Franse revolutionair.
Vorig jaar met het overlijden van Jean-Luc Godard laaide de discussie over zijn werk opnieuw op. Filmliefhebbers lijken ernstig verdeeld in de beoordeling van zijn werk. Aan de ene kant staan de bewonderaars die stellen dat zijn revolutionaire stijl en kritische benadering hem tot een van de grootste regisseurs maken. Terwijl aan de andere kant men vindt dat zijn werk ontoegankelijk is en aanstellerig abstract en alternatief. Alhoewel een aantal van zijn films wel degelijk overeenkomsten kennen met de laatstgenoemde beschrijving, geldt dat niet voor films als Pierrot le fou (1965), Vivre sa vie (1962),
À bout de souffle (1960) of Le Mepris.
Enfin blijft het, ondanks de onmiskenbare stilistische bijdrage van de regisseur, een persoonlijke afweging en zal er altijd wel over zijn werk gediscussieerd worden. Ergens impliceert die doorgaande discussie eigenlijk al dat zijn werk de moeite waard is.
Godard zal relevant blijven, of we het nou willen of niet.
Network (1976)
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet's Network describes a generation raised by television. A generation that seems less interested in the news, which can admittedly be quite depressing by times. The alternative is easy entertainment. Moreover, we now live in a world where an vulgar television star can become president of the United States for the second time. Network may had a point that needs further consideration.
Network is a satire film that takes a look behind the scenes of a television broadcaster. Newsanchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is being exploited by executive producer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) who's having an affaire with ex-colleague Max Schumacher (William Holden). Diana Christensen is obsessed with her work and is only interested in the highest ratings. What is actually being broadcast, no matter how nonsensical or vulgar, is secondary. She seems to be the product - the essence - of capitalist society; characterized by a system that commodifies every part of humanity.
What Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky seem to be saying with Network is that television is nothing more than a big freak show. People like Diana Christensen respond unfiltered to the primitive sensationalism of her viewers and turn news channels into circuses. It's people like Diana who ensure that the media is fully geared to the imperfections of the human psyche. Terrorism and murder is what people tend to watch. After the 2014 US election results, once again it became painfully clear that the media apparatus is not functioning properly. The way our news is presented and the exploitation of our simple instincts has strong social and political implications.
This is what Howard Beale years ago, in all his frenzy calls out to his viewers tried to make clear. When Howard's craziness has a considerable audience, Diana gives him his own show. The more Howard opposes television and asks his viewers to turn off the television, the more popular he becomes.
A wonderful paradox that gives us a further illustration of the skewed functioning of media just like in The King of Comedy(1988) by Martin Scorsese.
It is important to challenge every dogma with alternative perspectives. Sometimes this makes you sound like a suspicious fool. But sometimes it is the only entrance to reality. You need people like Martin Luther, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Howard Beatle to reveal power vacuums in a distorted reality.
Despite that Diana is qualitatively leading the channel into the abyss and Max Schumacher lost his job accordingly, Max cannot resist her attraction. He starts an affair with a forbidden fruit, but Diana only lives for one thing: the ratings. There is no love in Diana. She was raised by television.
'She learned love from Bux Bunny' is one of the many memorable quotes from the desperately tormented Max. Love is something for during the commercials and if you don't like it, then you just switch to another channel.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Francis Ford Coppola
War is the worst thing people can do to each other. Only those who have experienced war themselves know what miseries really lie behind the notion. It is a concept from which the modern Western inhabitant feels a great distance. Their understanding of war flows only from film images and history books. War is therefore not automatically associated with suffering and sorrow. There is even an attraction to war, which you find in all the popular warfare games that draws young men and women to military careers and moves nations to battle. There is a liberating element to war which Francis Ford Coppola painstakingly dissects in Apocalypse Now.
Apocalypse Now is not the most realistic war movie. If that's what you're looking for, you better take a look at movies like Platoon (1982), The Deer Hunter (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998) or Saving Private Ryan (1998). Apocalypse Now is more like a nightmare about war.
The film walks a fine line between realism and surrealism, the likely feeling of a soldier in the middle of the battlefield.
Filmmakers like Coppola don't just make films about the moral reprehensibility of war. It's always about a bigger idea. For example, Stanley Kubrick made with Full Metal Jacket (1985) a film about the ideological subjugation of war: the brainwashing of a soldier to experience politics in black and white. Apocalypse Now plays with a complicated freedom issue. For war is the realization of a ruthless unlimited freedom. In war one can murder, rape, steal and basically do anything unthinkable in a civilization. Freedom without restriction or interpretation is an empty and meaningless concept. Freedom without equality, solidarity and tolerance derail into an ugly deformity. Apocalypse Now shows us that absolute freedom can be deformed into hell on earth.
In addition to the question of freedom, the film also contains an existentialist question, which can be found in the soldier who tries to find meaning in his daily battle. Often unaware of what he is actually fighting for, anxiously clinging to the bits of military structure that give him security and meaning, in what is actually absolute chaos, that is the precarious existence of a soldier. One can find a parallel here with the conformist blindness of career and religion as portrait in Il Conformista(1970). Where characters feel adrift, they try to restructure their lives with ideology. Ideology that can sometimes lead to inhuman outcomes. A phenomenon that also occurs in
Taxi Driver(1976).
​
Together with Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), the viewer undergoes a journey along the Nung River deeper and deeper into the infernal forests of Cambodia in search of Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando). During the journey one slowly comes to a dark Darwian sense of ruthlessness that certainly colors life there. Colonel Kurtz was once one of the best soldiers in the US Army, but retreated to the jungle to live like a king among the natives. According to stories of soldiers among themselves, Kurtz would have gone mad. But who is really crazy? He who opposes the madness and horror of war seems to me the most sensible.
Bicycle Thieves (1942)
Vittorio DeSica
Since the eighteenth century, criminology seems to have been divided into two camps as to the cause of crime. The Italian school of Lombroso emphasized anatomical and psychological abnormalities, while the French school of Lacasagne focused on environmental and social influences. The truth seems to be weighted in the middle, a weighting of both factors. The Italian movie Bicycle Thieves is ironically about the French perspective and the idea that every society - in the words of Foucault - has the criminals it deserves.
​
Bicycle Thieves takes us back to post-war Italy. Cities are in ruins and everyone is fighting for their daily living. There is a lot of unemployment and men roam the streets desperately looking for a job. So is Antonio (played by Lamberto Maggiorani), whose wife and son depend on his income.
​
Bicylce Thieves is one of the films that initiated post-war Italian neo-realism. In fact, it's the headliner with which most people approach the genre. Director Vittorio De Sica is therefore one of the big names of this movement. Neo-realism has a number of characteristics, but is mainly set in broken Italian cities in the midst of absolute poverty and the remaining misery of the Second World War. Realism works like an unruly cry for the faded fascism of Mussolini; a display of the remaining result. And in this socio-economic malaise, we see the characters of neo-realism struggle with the way the Italian state has failed its citizens.
Returning to Lacasagne's experiences with crime, we can find sympathy for this teaching in De Sica's neorealism. Crime is often a cry for help, an eruption of social abuses as reason and sobriety have become unattainable. It is easy to make judgements about good and bad when there is food on the table. Outward appearances do not do justice to the inner world from which injustice arises. In Bicycle Thieves we see a man doing his very best to stay on top of the issues of the day. We see his battle with this inner world. After seeing this film, the only question that remains is whether Antonio's actions are really criminal. Such circumstances might have moved any civilized person to the same deeds. A simple but concise truth, for which film might be the ideal medium.
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Billy Wilder
In a sense, the death of Joe Gillis can be called a suicide. Willfully, he falls prey to Norma Desmond's spell of luxury. Her huge villa on Sunset Boulevard is like a the web of a black widow, woven with faded glory.
Sunset Boulevard is a movie about the movie industry, starring the unsuccessful writer Joe Gillis (William Holding). He is deeply in debt and accidentally comes into contact with Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Norma is a movie star from the past who wants to make her comeback with his help. They agree on a cooperative relationship that slowly leads to Joe being taken possession of. He has to choose between his artistic desire and the temptation of Norma's wealth.
​
Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, is a fallen star from another time; a time of silent movies. Norma Desmond's character also features much of Gloria Swanson's own fall from glory. Billy Wilder himself stated that the character is a combination of several old Hollywood stars. When Wilder first moved to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, he says he became fascinated by the large empty villas of old movie stars. Stars for whom the Hollywood parade had long passed. So was Swanson, once starring in such silentfilms as Sadie Thompson (1928), Queen Kelly (1929) and Male and Female (1919), whose career had dried up for years by then. Gloria was known as a spoiled actress with a vain disposition. This made her perfect for the role.
Gloria Swanson is not the only big name from the silent era to appear in Billy Wilders masterpiece. In one scene in which Norma has some old friends over to play cards, we see Buster Keaton, Anna Q Nilsson and HB Warner pass by. Cecil B. DeMille also makes an appearance a number of times. Norma asks him to read her script to make films with her just like before. However, DeMille no longer sees any future in her consumed record.
Although Norma is no longer the youngest, there is definitely an element of lust between her and Joe. It's the same tension that can be felt between Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) and McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). A lust entwined with power. Ignoring romantic love and surrendering to lust is a theme that also comes back in classics like Vertigo (1957) and Blue Velvet (1986). In Vertigo we follow Scottie's (James Stewart) lust and fantasies until they result into a
nightmare. Sunset Blvd. is a fascinating look at the destructive dualistic nature of desires. In the face of Norma, Betty (Nancy Olson) also finds a way into Joe's life. She is everything he's looking for, but he is completely under the spell of Norma and her big mansion.
Norma's home on Sunset Boulevard is looming and grand in every sense.
The house is reminiscent of the characteristic palace of Xanadu from
Citizen Kane (1941). Norma's house can also be called its own character. It is empty, run down, desolated and laden with wealth from a bygone age; just like Norma herself. The house traps its inhabitants in a delusional world.
A world in which both Norma and Joe don't face the painful reality of their disappointments.
Joe embodies Norma's urge for youthfulness. Joe longs for someone to take care of his struggles. However, he had not taken into account that it would take such a fatal turn. Looking back submerged in her pool, maybe he should have chosen love after all.
Goodfellas (1990)
Martin Scorsese
Goodfellas was my first cinematic spell. Martin Scorsese's stylish editing and rock star characters made me fall in love with the Scorsese style of filmmaking. Like Karen (played by Lorraine Bracco), I was led by the charm of Henry (played by Ray Liotta) followed by his megalomaniac friends Jimmy (played by Robert De Niro) and Tommy (played by Joe Pesci) in the romanticized Italian gangster life of the "good fellas".
The image of a Italian gangster for me always had more to do with stature and class;
a calm brute mature force striking like a thunderstorm from the underworld, as shown in The Godfather (1972). But the gangsters of Goodfellas are different; more playful, crazy kids with more power than good for them. The mafia's code of conduct is subservient to their ruthless egos.
An important recurring element in Scorsese's films is that he makes you love the villains. He grays the areas between black and white, with a big grin he makes his characters do the most reprehensible things. But more interesting and more important is the fact that it also makes the viewer wonder what evilness really is. In Goodfellas that's obvious. Tommy is the most evil of the bunch. A disgusting masochistic psychopath. He's humorously written and comically acted by Joe Pesci, but Scorsese doesn't really make him likeable. Yet the malice in Scorsese's films is often a rather crass banality.
'The banality of evil' as Hannah Aerendt once put, describing the Eichmann trial, comes to mind.
Goodfellas marks a change in Scorsese's work as I wrote in my review of
Taxi Driver (1976). Scorsese's recipe after 1990 seems to be often immitating Goodfellas, but he never really had the same cinematic gogme afterwards. The characters after Goodfellas, seem to disappear more and more into the background.
The distinctive difference in the films of the old and the new Scorsese can be seen in the way he treats the same themes twenty-three years later. In The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) we are again dealing with charming successful criminals, only not on the streets of New York but in the high skyscrapers of the stock market. Both stories are a representation of the American Dream, or as Tony Benett's soundtrack aptly describes as from Rags to Riches. In Goodfellas we see the demise of this dream coming from miles away.
The viewer is never really under the illusion that things will turn out well. Because that's the American Dream, an illusion, a means of reproach to confront the less successful people in society by stating that they are too lazy or too stupid. 'I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook' as Henry reflects on himself after his empire falls. At the end you don't envy the wiseguys. That's different in
The Wolf of Wall Street. Idealizing successful people as a romantic paragon of virtue often goes down the wrong way with me. Both in Goodfellas as in Casino (1995), the downside of the hunger for success is dissected more responsibly and carefully. Scorsese seems to lost his genius after the success of Goodfellas somewhat. He seem to forgot his own message, blinded by the succes and feedback of his best work.
In an ironic way, his success and his oeuvre can be mirrored as the paradigm of the
American Dream.
Casablanca (1942)
Michael Curtiz
Casablanca was neutral territory during World War II. In the Moroccan city, Nazis, Allies and refugees sat side by side at the bar waiting for a visa or to be drafted into war.
For many, Casablanca was a stopover before flying to Lisbon and then leaving for America. The place to be in Casablanca is Rick's, the bar of the gruff but charming owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). He is known for never sticking out any finger for anyone and for keeping all his relationships with customers superficial. In his relationship with people he was pragmatic. This changes when his old love Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Berman) suddenly appears in his bar. They would have fled Paris together, but she let him go alone and is now here in Casablanca with another man. And with resistance leader Victor Laszlo. A man who is notorious all over the world and who has contacts in the resistance all over Europe. Rick, who retreated to his bar after the grief of a lost love, is confronted by her appearance and an urgent war he can't ignore.
Humphrey Bogart plays a cynical bitter man who shows no interest at all in the misery of others. A man with a broken heart who prefers not to meddle in other people's affairs. He looks cold and cool, but is actually secretly empathetic. Something he is good at hiding until the woman who broke his heart needs his help.
Rick's desperation to maintain his neutral detachment was America's desperation during World War II. After years of an inactive foreign policy (although US imperialism had already begun on its own continent), America was divided over the question of meddling in what was going on in Europe. Rick with two visas in his pocket has the power to help an important resistance leader, but will lose his old love again. Like America lost its neutrality and isolation policy and from that moment on it started to play a major role in world politics.
Casablanca is one of the greatest of romantic films. Rick and Ilsa's romance is comparable to Jack and Rose in Titanic (1997), Stella and Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Sandy and Danny in Grease(1978), Bonnie and Clyde in the 1967 film of the same name and Rhett and Scarlett in Gone with the Wind (1939).
Besides the iconic romantic status, the film is also full of iconic quotes; 'Here's looking at you, kid', 'We'll always have Paris. 'Play it again, Sam', 'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.' and 'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.' The script is of unforgettable glory. Along with movies like
Forest Gump (1994), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Scarface (1983), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Star Wars (1977), Casablanca is one of the most quotable films. A film that will not soon be forgotten. Here's for looking at Casablanca.
Casablanca (1942)
Michael Curtiz
Casablanca was neutral territory during World War II. In the Moroccan city, Nazis, Allies and refugees sat side by side at the bar waiting for a visa or to be drafted into war.
For many, Casablanca was a stopover before flying to Lisbon and then leaving for America. The place to be in Casablanca is Rick's, the bar of the gruff but charming owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). He is known for never sticking out any finger for anyone and for keeping all his relationships with customers superficial. In his relationship with people he was pragmatic. This changes when his old love Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Berman) suddenly appears in his bar. They would have fled Paris together, but she let him go alone and is now here in Casablanca with another man. And with resistance leader Victor Laszlo. A man who is notorious all over the world and who has contacts in the resistance all over Europe. Rick, who retreated to his bar after the grief of a lost love, is confronted by her appearance and an urgent war he can't ignore.
Humphrey Bogart plays a cynical bitter man who shows no interest at all in the misery of others. A man with a broken heart who prefers not to meddle in other people's affairs. He looks cold and cool, but is actually secretly empathetic. Something he is good at hiding until the woman who broke his heart needs his help.
Rick's desperation to maintain his neutral detachment was America's desperation during World War II. After years of an inactive foreign policy (although US imperialism had already begun on its own continent), America was divided over the question of meddling in what was going on in Europe. Rick with two visas in his pocket has the power to help an important resistance leader, but will lose his old love again. Like America lost its neutrality and isolation policy and from that moment on it started to play a major role in world politics.
Casablanca is one of the greatest of romantic films. Rick and Ilsa's romance is comparable to Jack and Rose in Titanic (1997), Stella and Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Sandy and Danny in Grease(1978), Bonnie and Clyde in the 1967 film of the same name and Rhett and Scarlett in Gone with the Wind (1939).
Besides the iconic romantic status, the film is also full of iconic quotes; 'Here's looking at you, kid', 'We'll always have Paris. 'Play it again, Sam', 'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.' and 'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.' The script is of unforgettable glory. Along with movies like
Forest Gump (1994), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Scarface (1983), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Star Wars (1977), Casablanca is one of the most quotable films. A film that will not soon be forgotten. Here's for looking at Casablanca.
Beau Travail (1995)
​​
Claire Denis
​
Mannelijke onzekerheid is misschien wel het gevaarlijkste wapen wat er is. Een man verteerd door zijn onvermogen om zich te uiten, om een mens te zijn, is spoedig tot excessief geweld te buigen. In Beau Travail, het meest geroemde werk van Claire Denis, wordt dit concept verkent in de aanwezigheid van een groep Franse soldaten tijdens een missie in de oud-kolonie Djibouti. Onuitgesproken spanningen gecombineerd met nodeloze militaire oefeningen komen samen in deze masculiene fata morgana.
De film speelt zich af als een herinnering uit het leven van ex-sergeant Galoup ten tijden van een missie aan de kust in Oost-Afrika. We zien de dagelijkse routine van het legioen waarover Galoup leiding geeft. Het legioen is vrij divers en kent een passende gelijkenis met de Franse samenleving en al haar koloniale uitwassen. Op de achtergrond komt telkens commandant Bruno Forestier in beeld, die doet denken aan Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now (1979). Een man van weinig woorden waar Galoup enorme bewondering voor uit.
Dan is er ook nog Gilles Sentain, een enigmatische nieuwkomer in het legioen. Een jonge soldaat die - in de beleving van Galoup - het gezag van de onzekere sergeant ondermijnt. Er ontstaat een concurrentiestrijd tussen de twee waarbij Galoup zijn overwicht als sergeant misbruikt, wat uiteindelijk leidt tot zijn ontslag.
Bij het zien van Claire Denis’ beelden van de eindeloze taken die de militairen moeten doen, bekruipt de kijker een gevoel van zinloosheid. Wat zijn deze mannen nou eigenlijk aan het doen daar in de woestijn aan de andere kant van de wereld? Er wordt niet gevochten, slechts geoefend. De zinloosheid van het militaire bestaan begint gedurende de film naar de voorgrond te treden, zo ook de uitgesproken spanningen die geleidelijk subtiele homo-erotische trekjes krijgen. Er wordt weinig gesproken, wat de kijker de ruimte geeft om te observeren en te interpreteren. De stilte en de onuitgesproken sentimenten denken aan het feministische meesterwerk Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Ook Chantal Akerman maakte gebruik van het nodeloos herhalen van taken om de kijker tot reflectie te bewegen. In beide films zien we hoe de zichtbare onderdrukking van emotie tot een kookpunt komt. De kracht van Beau Travail en Jeanne Dielman zit echter voornamelijk in de verwerking van de film naderhand, niet per se in de meest directe kijkervaring.
De discipline en hiërarchie van het leger zijn daarbij instrumenteel voor het scheppen van het spanningsveld dat de absurditeit van de militaire onderwerping zichtbaar maakt. Het strijken van de kleren, het strak opmaken van het beddengoed, de yoga groepssessies, de ijdele nadruk op het dragen van het uniform, allemaal kluchtige portretten van de militair en zijn masculiene profiel.
Claire Denis heeft een bijzondere relatie tot het continent Afrika, dit vinden we ook terug in haar oeuvre. Als dochter van een koloniaal ambtenaar in Kameroen spendeerde zij een groot deel van haar jeugd aan de West-Afrikaanse kust. In eerdere werken als Chocolat (1988), S'en fout la mort (1989) en het latere White Material (2009) onderzoekt Denis telkens de relatie tussen Frankrijk en haar oude kolonies. In Beau Travail paraderen de militairen door het landschap van Djibouti, onder het toeziend ook van de lokale bevolking, als een enigszins komische herinnering aan het koloniaal verleden.
Tot slot verdient de laatste scene een bijzondere behandeling. De slotscène geeft de film een machtige climax. In de meeste films over masculiene impotentie wordt er gekozen voor een geweldsexplosie zoals bijvoorbeeld in Taxi Driver (1976). Claire Denis kiest echter juist voor een uitbarsting van een meer vrouwelijke kracht. Galoup in al zijn aandoenlijke verwarring over het verleden, laat zich voor even helemaal gaan op het ritme van de nacht.