moamedaliebaid Reviews

Il Grido (1957)

Il Grido

[9/10 · 15 May 2023]

A cinematic "cry" from one of the most revered of all auteurs, Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni (L'avventura, La notte, Il deserto rosso) depicts a world of heartbreaking alienation, with characters riven by trauma, cast against the stunning backdrop of northern Italy's Po Valley - where the director spent his childhood.

When sugar refinery worker Aldo (American actor Steve Cochran in a career-best performance) is jilted by his mistress, Irma (Alida Valli, famed for her role in The Third Man), he takes to the road. With daughter in tow, Aldo wanders the Po River delta, seeking temporary - but always illusory - respite with a series of lovers, who only serve to remind him of Irma. Unable to find a new life, Aldo's haunted past gives way to a fateful finale.

With a script conceived by Antonioni, exquisite cinematography (including a signature concern with desolate vistas), and a plaintive score by renowned composer Giovanni Fusco, the award-winning Il grido - which scooped the "Golden Leopard" at Locarno - is an early key work in the director's much-celebrated oeuvre.

Seven Chances (1925)

Seven Chances

[8/10 · 9 May 2023]

Based on David Belasco's play, a young executive of a company in trouble learns he has inherited a fortune if he is married by that evening.

Jimmy Shannon (Buster Keaton) meets Mary Jones (Ruth Dwyer) and wants to tell her that he loves her. Jimmy's firm needs money quickly to avoid legal difficulties. A man follows him home to show him a paper that says his grandfather left him $7,000,000 provided he is married by 7 p.m. On his 27th birthday, which is that day. Jimmy goes to ask Mary, and she says yes. When he says he must marry someone that day, she walks away. Jimmy goes to the office. Her mother (Frances Raymond) persuades her to give him a chance to explain. She tries to call and sends her hired hand (Jules Cowles) with a note to Jimmy that she will be home all day.

Jimmy's business partner Billy Meekin (T. Roy Barnes) and his lawyer (Snitz Edwards) persuade him he must marry to save the company, and they show him seven chances in a dining room. The first one laughs at him. Billy coaches Jimmy on how to ask. Jimmy tries again. Billy proposes for him, but she thinks he means the older lawyer. Jimmy fails again, and all seven are scratched. Billy says he will be at a church with a bride. The hat-check girl says no too. A girl going with Jimmy is stopped by her mother.

While talking with a woman driver, Jimmy drives into a tree. He does not ask a Jew or a Negro. Jimmy's story is on the front page. He goes to the church with flowers, a ring, the license, and tickets to Niagara Falls and Reno. He falls asleep in the front row, and the church fills up with brides with hundreds more outside. Two less attractive women sit next to him. The minister says it is a practical joke and asks them to leave. Jimmy goes out the window and hides under the building, where the hired hand gives him the note from Mary.

Jimmy drops the ring down a grate. He tries to find out the time in a clock shop and learns it is 6:15. Brides follow him down a street. They start running and pick up bricks. Jimmy tells Billy to bring a minister to Mary's house, and he runs through various places including a football game followed by the brides. He is lifted up by a crane, and for a moment the brides think he is dead. Jimmy gets entangled in barbed wire. He paddles a boat and swims. He runs up a mountain and down the other side, dodging rolling boulders.

Jimmy runs to Mary's house, but Billy's watch shows 7:03. Mary asks if they could be happy without the money. While they are being wed, Billy and the lawyer see that it is before seven.

This farce reflects a young man's shyness by exaggerating it into a nightmare where he is either rejected by one after another or deluged by a herd of would-be brides. The stampede of brides also satirizes the desire of so many to marry for money.

I Was Born, But... (1932)

I Was Born, But...

[9/10 · 9 May 2023]

Mr. Yoshii (Tatsuo Saito), his wife Haha (Mitsuko Yoshikawa), and two young sons, eight-year-old Keiji (Tomio Aoki) and ten-year-old Ryoichi (Hideo Sugawara), move to a new home in the suburbs of Tokyo. The house happens to be located near the house of Mr. Yoshii's boss, Mr. Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto). Keiji and Ryoichi struggle to fit in as newcomers in their school. A group of bullies torments them during and after school. One of the bullies, Taro (Seiichi Kato), is actually the son of Mr. Iwasaki. The two young boys plot to revenge against their bullies and to slowly rise to power as bullies themselves. They even go to the extent of skipping school and asking a truck driver to forge an "E" (for Excellent) on a school assignment. The results of that request won't be spoiled here. Meanwhile, their father encourages them to get good grades at school and to simply ignore their bullies. He treats his boss complacently and doesn't mind humiliating himself in front of him, but when Keiji and Ryoichi witness his subservient behavior, they protest by going on a hunger strike at home. Director Yasujiro Ozu and screenwriter Akira Fushimi have a knack for smoothly blending drama and social commentary together with comedy while avoiding preachiness or over-the-top scenes. Given that this is a silent film, it's quite impressive that the story unfolds so compellingly thanks to the accompanying musical score as well as the strong performances by everyone, especially Tomio Aoki and Hideo Sugawara whose facial expressions speak louder than words. The humor ranges from dry humor to sight gags, but they never overshadow the film's more serious tone and Ozu's keen social commentary. It's quite interesting to observe the parallels between Mr. Yoshii's experiences at work and his two sons' experiences with the school bullies. At a running time of 1 hour and 30 minutes, I Was Born, But... is an amusing, well-acted and intelligent slice of social commentary.

Stray Dog (1949)

Stray Dog (Japan 1949)

[8/10 · 8 May 2023]

After a rookie cop loses his gun to a pickpocket in a crowded bus on a steamy Summer day, he begins an obsessive search for the weapon.

Akira Kurosawa's 10th film, Stray Dog(aka Nora inu), directly inspired by Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948), explores the nether world of post-WW2 Japan in a story that parallels the American noir theme of the returning soldier's re-integration into civilian society. Top-line acting, innovative editing, and Kurosawa's deft direction bring the real streets of Japan into deep focus. A western soundtrack reinforces, for a western audience, the familiarity of the urban milieu depicted on the screen, where hotel signs and night club neon are in English.

Kurosawa uses the weather brilliantly to build an atmosphere charged with frustration, and most impressively in an erotic night club scene where exhausted chorus girls slump to the floor backstage breathing heavily their skin glistening with sweat.

Contrary to received expectations, the female protagonists are drawn deeply and sympathetically.

The ying and the yang of the oriental take on reality informs the theme: two men's different responses to a chance event underlie the story of pursuit tempered by empathy, and the realisation that the pursuer could as easily have been the pursued.

Night and the City (1950)

Night And the City (1950): A Near Perfect Noir

[8/10 · 8 May 2023]

Night and the city.

The night is tonight, tomorrow night... or any night.

The city is London.

This anonymous voice-over introduces Jules Dassin's Night and the City (1950), which has to be one of the great noirs: a near-perfect work.

Dassin crafted a mesmerising study of thwarted ambition and tawdry betrayal into a dark existential journey of the human soul, played out in the dives and night-clubs of post-war London fashioned as the quintessential noir city. This is not a b-movie, the production values are high, and Dassin has total command of his mise-en-scene.

But the achievement is not Dassin's alone. There is also a literate script by Jo Eisinger, wonderful expressionist photography from Mutts Greenbaum, who cut his teeth in the German silent cinema, and deeply moving portrayals by the major players. Richard Widmark's performance is frenetic and real, and the soft counterpoint of an achingly elegant turn by Gene Tierney as his girl, transubstantiate Harry's demise into the stuff of tragedy. Each supporting role is vividly drawn by an excellent ensemble cast.

You know Harry Fabian is doomed from the start: a dreamer of wrong dreams and sympathetically amoral, he is no match for fate and the immoral traffickers of wrestlers and cheap champagne, who plot his destruction. He is a hustler yes, but not in the same league as the big guys, the "businessmen" whose greed has no bounds and whose actions are never tempered by remorse. Harry thinks he knows all the angles, but he is not ruthless enough for that.

Edvard Munch (1974 TV Movie)

Edvard Munch

[10/10 · 7 May 2023]

Following a rough chronology from 1884 to 1894, when Norwegian artist Edvard Munch began expressionism and established himself as northern Europe's most maligned and controversial artist, the film also flashes back to the death from consumption of his mother, when he was five, his sister's death, and his near death at 13 from pulmonary disease. The film finds enduring significance in Munch's brief affair with "Mrs. Heiberg" and his participation in the society of anarchist Hans Jaeger in Christiania and later in Berlin with Strindberg. Through it all comes Munch's melancholy and his desire to render on canvas, cardboard, paper, stone, and wood his innermost feelings.

Made for Norwegian TV in 1974, this long but fascinating biopic by Peter Watkins mixes dramatic and documentary techniques to profile the man who painted The Scream. A documentary voice-over in English examines Munch in a calm, academic tone, observing trends in the European art world and citing notable world events to give a sense of the context. At the same time, dramatic scenes are played in subtitled Norwegian by nonprofessional actors who often stare mutely at the viewer like figures in the paintings. With fluid free-associative editing, Watkins weaves together moments from Munch's past and present as the young painter crafts his eerie domestic studies, touching on his affair with a married woman and his loss of his mother and sister to tuberculosis. Though haunting, the film is also admirably precise in its documentation of Munch's work process, with a fine tactile sense lacking in most movies about two-dimensional artists.

The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)

The Tree Of Wooden Clogs

[9/10 · 7 May 2023]

Neo-realism was eventually overtaken by Nouvelle Vague, although it did not end there. Ermanno Olmi, whose Il Posto (1961) was a classic of the genre, won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1978 with The Tree Of Wooden Clogs, a three hour marathon of peasant life in Lombardy at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, using non-actors from the Bergamo district and shot in 16mm, with the director performing the additional duties of scriptwriter and cameraman.

It is, of its kind, a masterwork, the only drawback being its length and (possibly) the absence of a storyline. The Marxist message and anti-Catholic bias fits neatly into the body of the film, without prejudicing it. The hardship of their lives may compare unfavourably with that of the landlord, who owns everything - their homes, fields, crops and the majority of livestock - yet the sense of community and shared experience is a powerful unifying force.

Amongst the chattering classes, there is a tendency to romanticise close-knit rural families, when milk came direct from cows, butter was churned in the byre, children played in the mud, geese and hens foraged free, Health & Safety hadn't been invented and everyone looked out for everyone else. Olmi is no romantic. The life of these peasants, illiterate, God fearing and hidebound by tradition, is subservient, harsh and beholden to their feudal master.

The women and young girls have babies in their arms and pails of water in their hands. They dress in black, or dark colours, and are cleaning, knitting, mending, cooking, washing and gossiping. One of the little boys walks five miles to school and five miles back every day. He's the only one. His dad carves him a new pair of clogs from one of the landlord's trees, because his old ones are warn down, and it causes terrible trouble.

The film follows the travails and small victories, such as grandpa's early tomatoes and a marriage, with compassion rather than sentimentality. The beheading of a goose and disemboweling of a live pig emphasise the reality of the farmyard. There is no cruelty intended, simply necessity. When a cow, belonging to one of the families, falls sick, they call out the vet. When a baby is due, they decide they cannot afford a midwife. In the evenings, the families gather in the stable for storytelling, singing and conversation. The young girls' suitors are welcomed in their Sunday best, but only as observers, and so stand at the back trying to catch the eye of their wished-for beloved.

"I didn't see you in church," the priest tells the widow, who takes in washing for a pittance.

"I have six children and no husband," she replies. "I could not find the time."

The priest says the Church will adopt the little ones to "relieve the burden," which is not unlike when the married couple go to a nunnery in the big city to see the young bride's aunt and are emotionally blackmailed to return with a one-year-old orphan, blessed by the holy sisters.

As a record of life before emancipation, when farm labourers had less rights than the beasts of the fields, this is a tribute to their spirit and an uplifting testament to human endeavour.

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)

Berlin Alexanderplatz

[9/10 · 7 May 2023]

Widely hailed as Rainer Werner Fassbinder's crowning achievement, the 15-hour TV miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz remains a tough beast to tackle, because it's too drawn-out and episodic to be considered a "movie," yet too sparse to be consumed like TV. Based on an 1929 Alfred Döblin novel noteworthy for its multiple perspectives and slangy language, Berlin Alexanderplatz follows the failures and follies of Günter Lamprecht, an ex-con who struggles to straighten out his life in Weimar-era Germany, only to find himself susceptible to the pitch of every huckster, political party, and gang lord in the public square. He becomes a pimp, a crook, a drunk, and a shill for the Nazi party, until finally checking into a lunatic asylum-mirroring the journey that Germany itself would take between world wars. Fassbinder captures all this by aping some of Döblin's modernist effects: quoting statistics, letting us in on the characters' interior monologues, and inserting digressive anecdotes and excerpts from literature, including the original novel. Mostly though, he makes Berlin Alexanderplatz into a typical Fassbinder film, full of extended conversations recorded in long takes with fluid camera moves. For 15 hours.

When filmmakers subject audiences to movies of extreme length, they usually either have a complicated story to tell, or an experience they want the audience to endure. For Fassbinder and Berlin Alexanderplatz, it's most definitely the latter. (Reduced to its plot alone, the film would be closer to the 1931 version, which runs 90 minutes.) As a fan of Döblin's book since boyhood, Fassbinder made this film so he could obsessively share the book's every detail, from the opening scene, when Lamprecht emerges from jail and screams in terror at the proliferation of cars and skyscrapers, to the final scene of the hero laughing maniacally at the fate of a girl he'd thought had left him. Then Fassbinder caps the whole affair with a furious two-hour epilogue that mixes modern pop songs and dream imagery, while restaging some earlier passages of the movie with the characters and locations switched around, to show how little the story would be changed if the circumstances were different. Good choices, bad choices-everyone suffers regardless. Berlin Alexanderplatz's relentless pessimism will captivate those who share Fassbinder's worldview, and likely drain the goodwill of those who don't. Regardless, it's an admirable feat of sustained despondency.

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)

Tabu (F.W. Murnau, 1931)

[9/10 · 7 May 2023]

An evening spent with a silent film is an evening well spent, especially when the film in question is as great as Murnau's swan song - a fatalist ballad of doomed, star-crossed lovers. From the very opening which is the only scene directed by the co-writer Robert J. Flaherty, it is apparent that we are in for a delightful treat.

Taken to an earthly paradise of the Bora Bora island, we are introduced to a group of indigenous fishermen one of whom will turn out to be the tragic hero. This young man by the name of Matahi falls for a beautiful maiden, Reri, but their romance gets nipped in the bud when the girl is chosen as the successor to the sacred virgin of the Fanuma tribe. From that point forth, she is tabu and to break that tabu means death, as we are informed by an elder, Hitu, who delivers his chief's message. Fleeing from the clutches of strict customs embodied by the said geezer, the couple arrives to another island, only to be unknowingly caught in the gnawing maw of western civilization which has already infested those parts. Initially, their escape appears successful, but Fate has something else in the bag for them...

Essentially, Tabu is a Romeo and Juliet story ably relocated to the breathtaking Pacific setting and transformed into a compelling piece of docufiction. Split in two parts aptly titled Paradise and Paradise Lost, it is both poetic and anthropological, and a fine example of the 'show, don't tell' method, with text cards utilized sparsely, as well as creatively, and with good deal of information being provided by virtue of the wonderfully captured imagery (many kudos to DoP Floyd Crosby). Murnau elicits outstanding performances from the non-professional cast who reveal a surprisingly wide range of emotions through their gestures and facial expressions, thus making their characters convincing, sympathetic and impossible not to root for. The chemistry between the leads is natural, and their struggle against the cruel side of tradition is deeply felt. As the viewer is immersed into the islanders' simple, sunbathed and ostensibly carefree everyday, the gloom gradually seeps in, dissolving the aura of joy and innocence that once surrounded Reri and Matahi.

Brimful of kinetic energy reaching its maximum in the lively hula dancing and boat rowing sequences, and imbued with ravishing, exotic beauty whose colors can be seen despite the monochromatic cinematography, Tabu progresses at brisk pace, putting motion (with capital M) in motion picture, with the evocative mixture of classical and traditional music operating as the propellant. Its universal appeal and undeniable timelessness are reflected in simultaneously candid and idealized depictions of those small, yet meaningful moments that people experience in their pursuit for happiness, whether they decide to break some rules or not...

Touki Bouki (1973)

Touki Bouki

[8/10 · 7 May 2023]

Written and directed by Djibril Diop Mambety, Touki Bouki (The Journey of the Hyena) is the story of two lovers who try to leave Dakar, Senegal for France as they embark into a journey filled with trials and tribulations. The film is a look into the world that is Africa and two lovers' desire for a better life. Starring Magaye Niang and Marame Niang. Touki Bouki is a whimsical and entrancing film from Dijbril Diop Mambety.

Set in the port city of Dakar and nearby rural areas, the film follows the life of a couple who want to escape the poverty of their home and do whatever it takes to go to Paris for a better life. It's a film that has a simple story yet it is told in a very whimsical and surreal fashion as it play into a couple trying to find a better life amidst the chaos of their homeland. The film's screenplay doesn't really have much of a plot as it mainly follows these two people who are trying to live their life but don't really live by the rule of conventional society in their rural environment. They do whatever they can to get money and leave Senegal as there is this element in the third act that does play into a sense of surrealism but also that blur of fantasy and reality. Especially as it play into what these two want and what would they do if they do reach that dream.

Djibril Diop Mambety's direction is very ravishing for the way he presents Dakar and its rural environment as if it is set in a world that is foreign but also kind of modern. Presented in this cinema verite style that definitely owes a lot to the aesthetics of the French New Wave, Mambety's direction has this sense of energy and looseness. The usage of handheld cameras as well as creating that sense of repetition as it play into what is real and what is fantasy. Mambety's compositions in its usage of close-ups as well as these gorgeous wide and medium shots of the location play into the beauty of Dakar as it is this intoxicating and vibrant world that exciting. Even in its rural area that is based on a more traditional idea of Africa as it crosses into something that is modern as it play into a clash of ideals and roots of what these two characters want. Notably in the third act as it is quite surreal into what happens when these two characters are given the things they want and that chance to leave Senegal but there is also that conflict of identity of who they are and what they're going to leave. Overall, Mambety creates a rapturous film about a couple trying to leave Senegal for Paris.

Cinematographer George Bracher does brilliant work with the film's very colorful and gorgeous cinematography as it has this vibrancy to the look of the locations with its beautiful colors as well as the way the sun shines on a shot or in a location. Editor Siro Asteni does amazing work with the editing with its usage of jump-cuts and other rhythmic cuts that play into its energy as well as its air of surrealism. Set/costume designer Aziz Diop Mambety does excellent work with the look of some of the places the characters go to including the home of a rich man as well as the clothes they would wear in the third act. The film's music consists of songs sung by Josephine Baker, Mado Robin, and Aminata Fall as it play into that air of fantasy but also reality as it has songs that are upbeat but also melancholic about what these characters go through.

The film's fantastic cast include a couple of notable small roles from the famed African singer Aminata Fall as the aunt of the young woman and Ousseynou Diop as a rich friend of theirs named Charlie. The phenomenal performances of Magaye and Mareme Niang in their respective roles as Mory and Anta as this young couple who are dealing with their need to escape poverty with the former already running a major debt with the latter feeling ostracized for not wanting to play by the rules as both of them want something to live for but later become conflicted in their journey of escape.

Touki Bouki is a phenomenal film from Djibril Diop Mambety. Featuring a great cast, amazing music, and loads of style in its visual presentation, it's a film that isn't just one of the quintessential films of African cinema but also world cinema as it showcases a world that is just ravishing to watch. In the end, Touki Bouki is a spectacular film from Djibril Diop Mambety.

Djibril Diop Mambety Films: (Contras'city) - (Badou Boy) - (Parlons Grand-mere) - (Hyenes) - (Le Franc) - (La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil)

Alphaville (1965)

A secret agent infiltrates the planet/city of Alphaville.

[9/10 · 7 May 2023]

It's French New Wave cinema, a type of movie that has always remained somewhat alien to me. Yes, there's some fascinating visual moments, but there's a part of me that just wants to dismiss the whole thing as self-indulgent twaddle. What prevents me from doing so, though, is an element that caught me off guard; the movie has a sense of humor at times, and it actually made me laugh on occasion. Not that the movie is a comedy; it isn't. But maybe the movie shouldn't be taken quite as seriously as the camera angles, cinematic tricks and poetry would lead you to believe. There are comic book touches here, as well as hard-boiled detective motifs, 1984-like dystopian visions, and some very nice black and white photography. Eddie Constantine has one of the craggiest faces in existence, and the movie also features familiar faces in Akim Tamiroff and Howard Vernon. I don't quite understand it myself, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who was averse to this arty sort of thing, nor am I sure that repeated viewing will really prove beneficial to me, but there was just enough here to give me the idea that I might just give it another shot one of these days.