Wild Guitar. Ray Dennis Steckler. 1962.

Hm… Ray Dennis Steckler… that name seems familiar. Is he the guy who made all those movies that MST3K makes fun of? Yup. But this isn’t one of those movies.

But it’s bad.

But it’s not, like, bad bad. It surprisingly well shot. It’s uneven, but there’s some nice-looking scenes in here. The dialogue is totally corny, of course, and it’s boring, but I’ve seen worse.

But half-way through I got so bored that I just ditched the movie.

Le sabotier du Val de Loire. Jaques Demy. 1956.

This short is an extra on the Jacquot de Nantes blu ray, and I guess that makes sense, since it’s a documentary-ish (presumably) about the same clog maker that’s featured in that movie.

This is not a good documentary. Demy ladles the bathos so thickly over his poor objects I mean subjects I mean objects that they’re rather smothered.

I mean, it’s probably not a documentary documentary, but we get to see how clogs are made. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say whether any of the rest bears any relationship to reality.

My guess is: No.

Jacquot de Nantes. Agnès Varda. 1991.

I just watched the super-nostalgic Radio Days… and here’s an even more nostalgic movie.

It’s about Jacques Demy, Varda’s husband. Demy is a director, too, but I haven’t seen a single one of his movies, I think? So I just bought a box set, because I thought I should fix that. I mean, if he was married to Varda, he’s probably pretty good. She’s got good taste.

Varda inserts what I guess to be clips from Demy’s movies illustrating how his childhood was reflected in his movies (I’m guessing!), and the cheekily does this by

blinking these hands

at us. It’s great!

I do feel that gets less interesting as time passes. It goes from being a really cute reminisce about childhood and stuff to being very specifically about Demy becoming a director, and that’s not as interesting. It goes from personal to private.

It half brilliant and half kinda boring.