I rollerna tre. Christina Olofson. 1996. ⚄

This is a documentary, er, interview film with the three main actors from Mai Zetterling’s move Flickorna (The Girls). It’s a brilliant movie, but was apparently quite controversial, and not a commercial success.

So we meet the actors again, 30 years later, and two years after Zetterling had died.

[fifteen minutes pass]

So… this isn’t quite a documentary movie: It’s quite nicely staged, and even if most of the talk seems improvised, there’s a lot of blocking (and I’m assuming retakes) going on. But it’s absolutely charming. And so well shot: One gorgeous take after another. And quite amusing.

[fifteen minutes pass]

The subtitle here is “A tribute to Mai Zetterling”, but… geeze… these three women didn’t really have much respect for her. It’s like “But how come she got to make these moves?” “Well, perhaps they found her exotic, being all international and stuff…”

And it sounds like Bibi, at least, didn’t even like Flickorna, but thought it was a rather stupid movie.

[the end]

Well, Zetterling didn’t really get mentioned much… but this movie was filmed at the house Zetterling built up from a ruin, and envisioned being an artist’s retreat. It looks like a lovely house in a fantastic location, but Zetterling died before it was completed, it sounds like.

Ah, it’s still being cared for. That’s cool. I should go there sometime.

Shadows and Fog. Woody Allen. 1991. ⚁

This is it! The final movie of the Woody Allen box set I bought some years back:

This is one movie I don’t recall… I think it’s from after I stopped watching his movies? Let’s see!

[ten minutes pass]

Wow, this is an odd movie. Sure, it’s a pastiche (and possibly a parody?) of expressionist German cinema, but… just… what? Perhaps it’s just a horrible, horrible DVD transfer, but everything is washed out and awful: It looks like it was filmed on colour stock and then the colours were dropped out? But surely that’s not possible?

And the … performances… Yes, I know, it’s meant to be funny, but it’s not. It’s like a parody in search of a subject.

Ah:

Recalling the film’s critical and commercial failure in his 2020 memoir, Apropos of Nothing, Allen joked that “the filming of Shadows and Fog went off without a hitch except for the movie.”

It really, really bombed.

[ten minutes pass]

It’s got all these famous people… was this movie just an excuse to hob-nob with all these actors?

[the end]

This isn’t a good movie.

Hannah and Her Sisters. Woody Allen. 1986. ⚄

[twenty-five minutes pass]

Wow. Watching Michael Caine playing the Woody character (well, one of them in this movie) is… kinda horrifying? When Allen does the character himself, it’s amusing, but when Caine does it, it’s really, really scary.

Perhaps that’s what they were after?

[the end]

Well! That’s a good ending.