Yeah, totes.
This is a very shocking movie! I mean, such manhandling of the cat…
Well, it’s a movie with a series of striking images… but it feels pretty disjointed. I mean, it really feels like watching moving versions of still shots, sort of.
And Varda’s not being very generous with her subjects.
It’s a series of striking tableaux, but it feels pretty under cooked.
L’opéra-mouffe. Agnès Varda. 1958. ⚂
Oh, I thought this was gonna be a western… I’ve bought a bunch of Howard Hawks movies lately, but this isn’t that.
Instead it’s the only guy who looks like a director ought to look.
*gasp*
Noo! Jump the other way!
This is very noir (an early one; this is from 1941), so you gotta have Humphrey Bogart.
This is very early Bogart, isn’t it? I mean, he’d been hanging around for a decade, but he wasn’t really a star? But then:
This, Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca all in a row.
And that’s Ida Lupino, I guess? Who gets billing above Bogart here.
It’s a horribly racist caricature, but on the other hand, it’s an ingenious way to be lazy… But I guess that’s the joke.
I mean…
But that’s Willie Best, isn’t it? It is! I’ve seen him in oodles of movies, like The Ghost Breakers…
Now that’s scary! Bogey smiling!
That’s more like it.
YEAH! Over!
I dunno… It might just be me, because I sorta got distracted and started doing laundry in the middle of this, but I don’t think this is a very compelling movie. Lupino is just kinda… there… and Bogart is trying his best to make this movie happen, but it’s just a very, very silly plot, and nothing interesting happens, really. This movie is like they made a movie from the discards of a heist movie; collecting all the scenes that were cut from an exciting movie.
Actually, that sounds kinda interesting, but this isn’t that interesting.
This movie has it all — club-footed girls, annoying dogs, cross-eyed handymen… It’s so corny it could be Iowa.
But it also wants to be this super-dramatic movie, and it just doesn’t make sense.
Indeed. But:
It’s a well-regarded movie.
Time reviewed the film when released as having “less of realistic savagery than of the quaint, nostalgic atmosphere of costume drama.”
I dunno. I didn’t much like this movie? But I might totally be wrong.
High Sierra. Raoul Walsh. 1941. ⚂
I love the way she has two voiceovers — there’s the main one, who waxes lyrical about all these things at the Côte d’azur, and then there’s another voice that softly tells you where each shot is from… it’s kinda hypnotic.
Woolen bathing trunks!? Itchy!
Er… Dream… Hill?! That’s can’t be right.
Anyway, this is a lovely short. Beautiful shots and amusing, whimsical takes on being at the French riviera.
Hm… perhaps I should go there this winter…
Du côté de la côte. Agnès Varda. 1958. ⚅
Heh, I’m now watching the DVD extras — both this one and the previous short were financed by the Tourist Office. And they’re effective ads! I want to go all these places she’s been! Money well spent, Tourist Office!
