This screen is very wide. And it kinda looks like they’ve used a lens that’s kinda fishy? When a car drives across the screen, it makes strange contortions…

Hey, that’s…

Yes, it’s Fred Astaire!? Wow. From 1955?

He still looks pretty spry.

This is quite amusing. It’s quite light in the Astaire dept — he’s done half a dance and a couple of scenes.

But it’s still quite nice.

OK, here comes the dancin’.

The movie is slightly odd — it’s a 2 hour+ extravaganza, but the story is so… un-epic.

It’s also kinda “eh” in that the premise seems to be that the old Astaire character is gonna end up with the 18-year-old Leslie Caron character — he just has to wait a couple years for her to be all growed up first.

That’s a nice green colour.

It’s a strikingly… transparent film. I mean, it’s just so professional? It’s generically well-made without any distinguishing thing about it whatsoever. The name of the director, Jean Negulesco, doesn’t ring any bells at all, but he’s done a whole bunch of movies:

Of those, I’ve seen… How to Marry a Millionaire, and… no, that’s it, I think? Huh.

Oh, and Humoresque. I think that’s it.

Wow, that’s some Manhattan matte painting. It’s like a perfect, if feverish, vision of Manhattan-ness.

Well, OK, the movie does explicitly call out the creepy differences in age and power between the Astaire and Caron characters, so it’s got that going for it. But that’s only done as the third act drama bit — the thing that’s getting between them and their eventual blissful happiness, so…

Hey! Now the sofa is more blue than green…

Teal. Teal.

This is not a great film. I’m not even sure you could call it “good” on any reasonable scale. But it’s a perfect example of its genre — it distilled from a whole bunch of films that are actually good. It’s kinda flawless in that way? So I really enjoyed it — a lot, but your mileage will vary. I wasn’t bored a second. So:

Daddy Long Legs. Jean Negulesco. 1955. ⚄

This is quite like Sud — longish takes with people talking straight to the camera. But here we can also hear Akerman (presumably) asking questions.

Oh, yeah, in case you didn’t guess already, this is about the situation on the northern Mexican border.

The problem, again, is that the film is a lot more fascinating when people aren’t talking than when they’re interviewing people.

Especially when she lets assholes talk and talk.

*gasp* Now there’s even a voice-over — I think the first I’ve heard in an Akerman documentary?

Anyway, this is pretty good, but… not enough of the long silent takes?

From the Other Side. Chantal Akerman. 2002. ⚃

Heh heh so risque.

That’s like a super-hero costume.

Anyway, this 2K restoration is kinda odd — I mean, I guess it must be a problem with what they’re restoring from, but things are very soft-focused and noisy at the same time, which is an unusual combination. That is, there seems to be an abundance of film grain, but at the same time, nothing is as sharp as films from this period usually are. It’s odd.

Oh, I just read the restoration notes — it’s based on a nitrate negative duplicate (which I guess means third generation?) which was riddled with mold. It was scanned with a “wet-gate” scanner, which removed the mold, but left us with what we’re seeing here… but I swear I’ve seen earlier DVD versions that looked… better?

Or perhaps I’m misremembering:

This is the earlier DVD I watched, and it’s got none of the details of this version. But… it does look kinda swell anyway?

Nice kitty.

This film is exceptional. I mean, on one level it’s a descent into a hellish nightmare — Cary Grant is trapped (literally and not) in a mad world all of a sudden. But the film seems so say — well, what if you gave it all up to anarchy? Wouldn’t that be fun?

And indeed it is, while with just a itsy bitsy twist this would be a horror film.

This is a wonderful movie, of course. The Criterion restoration is a bit… the focus seems to be preserving as many details as possible in the (bad) nitrates this is sourced from. And it’s just isn’t all that pleasant to look at, unfortunately.

Bringing Up Baby. Howard Hawks. 1938. ⚄