I recently saw again a couple Lumet projects that I admired, so turned to this.
I think there is something to be said for artists who invent and then convince everyone afterward that what they have just experienced is the way the world is put together.
Some filmmakers do this consistently. Or they do it once, and then just live in the world they've created. Others are amazingly clever at some point, and equally banal at others. Polanski comes to mind.
When this was new, it was groundbreaking, truly an achievement. It worked.
Lumet's approach is actor-centric, not something I particularly value. But it is perfect for an exploration of a man: world growing from an individual. Lumet also likes to use space, but he doesn't know the containment properties of space, only the dividers, so we have the shop will all sorts of walls and fences. The lover's apartment as well.
What was new was this was the first movie mainstream US movie to use nudity. Its underwhelming today thank heaven, but rather shocking in its day, especially because the woman is black, and a seller of sex.
In the project, it triggers the most extended flashback sequence, one that involved our hero's deepest disaster. Overlapping flashbacks had been used, most famously in "Manchurian Candidate," which resembles this in some ways. But it hadn't been so fragmented, so apparently integrated into the fabric of the man. We see a desperate whore; he sees his humiliated wife. We see street thugs beating up a drunk; he sees the holocaust.
This cinematic device is now so common as to not be remarkable. Sex (in the form of exposed breasts) and Nazis both had more cinematic power then than now.
Is it greater art if we digest it, even if the work itself becomes ordinary in the process? Seeing this will do to you what happens with the character we see. It will undress your memory, your cinematic memory. If you saw this when you were both young, it will give you a flashback, you living both now and then.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
I think there is something to be said for artists who invent and then convince everyone afterward that what they have just experienced is the way the world is put together.
Some filmmakers do this consistently. Or they do it once, and then just live in the world they've created. Others are amazingly clever at some point, and equally banal at others. Polanski comes to mind.
When this was new, it was groundbreaking, truly an achievement. It worked.
Lumet's approach is actor-centric, not something I particularly value. But it is perfect for an exploration of a man: world growing from an individual. Lumet also likes to use space, but he doesn't know the containment properties of space, only the dividers, so we have the shop will all sorts of walls and fences. The lover's apartment as well.
What was new was this was the first movie mainstream US movie to use nudity. Its underwhelming today thank heaven, but rather shocking in its day, especially because the woman is black, and a seller of sex.
In the project, it triggers the most extended flashback sequence, one that involved our hero's deepest disaster. Overlapping flashbacks had been used, most famously in "Manchurian Candidate," which resembles this in some ways. But it hadn't been so fragmented, so apparently integrated into the fabric of the man. We see a desperate whore; he sees his humiliated wife. We see street thugs beating up a drunk; he sees the holocaust.
This cinematic device is now so common as to not be remarkable. Sex (in the form of exposed breasts) and Nazis both had more cinematic power then than now.
Is it greater art if we digest it, even if the work itself becomes ordinary in the process? Seeing this will do to you what happens with the character we see. It will undress your memory, your cinematic memory. If you saw this when you were both young, it will give you a flashback, you living both now and then.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.