Whoa! Fast boat!

I think this may be the last Rock Hudson/Jane Wyman Douglas Sirk movie I haven’t seen before? (This is a Criterion blu ray.)

But there’s a whole bunch of Sirk movies I haven’t seen yet. I’ve only seen, like, one third of those? Why doesn’t somebody release a Sirk box set? Hop to it!

Movies like this raise unrealistic expectations for hairdo preservation while driving convertibles!

Hospitals were nice in those days…

But this restoration is rather odd. Were there problems with the source material? The graininess isn’t unusual, but there’s er chromatic aberrations in a lot of the scenes. That is, sometimes there’s a shimmery orange outline that’s floating around…

Hm, it says here in the liner notes that it was created from an interpositive, so I guess the negatives were lost? (Or in bad shape.) An interpositive is copied from a negative to create new negatives, so it could theoretically be second generation.

So the plot is that Wyman’s husband (who was a total saint) died because Hudson (who was a total asshole) bogarted the life-saving equipment. So I’m guessing Wyman is going to end up marrying Hudson? That’ll be a properly melodramatic melodrama.

Hah! I knewed it!

Is that Agnes Moorehead? She’s wonderful, anyway.

Symbolism!

Oh, is this some cult movie? Seems like the good doctor was the leader of a do-gooder cult of some kind…

Wow, this isn’t going where I thought at all. I mean, it is, but not in the particulars.

This is the creepiest movie I’ve ever seen! I mean, the plot is satisfyingly preposterous, but like wow. It’s all gaslighting, but the guy doing the gaslighting is… the hero?

I guess it’s a bit ambiguous whether we’re supposed to go “aww” or “what’s the number for 911!”, but it’s… it’s creepy. I suspect Sirk is aiming for the latter?

Suddenly a scene that’s all fuzzy… I mean, image quality wise.

I’d never have guessed that a Sirk movie could be too over-the-top, but this is?

I’m not sure. It’s beautifully shot, and with very enjoyable performances from everybody involved, especially Hudson and Wyman, of course. It’s enjoyable to watch. But it’s not one of Sirk’s better movies, in my opinion. It’s just a bit to leaden, and the payoff isn’t as magnificent as this obsession seems to warrant.

Magnificent Obsession. Douglas Sirk. 1954. ⚃

This is the second film in the “Koker trilogy” (which is what the name of the Criterion box set is, even if Kiarostami was (apparently) luke-warm to grouping these films that way). And I watched the third film a couple months ago, because, er, I was befuddled.

This is like Kiarostami’s favourite shot — a man in a car, driving along some road in Iran. I guess there’s logistical reasons for that, too… I mean, the authorities in Iran are kinda “eehhh?” on Kiarostami’s films, so a car is a nice self-contained unit.

The story behind this is apparently that Kiarostami was worried about what happened to the two boys who starred in Where Is the Friend’s House? after a huge earthquake in the area. So he went looking for them. And this is a fictional account of that?

It’s kinda fantastic so far — so focused.

Whoa.

This is so meta. These three films are the kinds of films that’ll keep film clubs atwittering for centuries!

Yes, that’s the scene from the third movie — they keep rehearsing and rehearsing the scene in that movie, but this is the “original”?

WHERE”S OSHA

I think this is the best movie of the trilogy? But if you haven’t seen the other two movies, then there’s a lot of stuff that wouldn’t… quite have the resonance it has here. So I wonder how seeing the third film after seeing this one would have been? Perhaps it would have been awesome?

Instead this is the awesome movie, because I watched it last.

And the box set is rather clever.

The cover has these die cuts…

And the die cuts continue inside.

So it’s like everything is nested inside.

Trés clevaire.

I’m watching the documentary now… and it explains a lot about how his non-professional actors aren’t… very natural. I mean, I watch a lot of stuff with non-professional actors (Varda, Bresson, etc) and they get amazing performances out of them. With Kiarostami, they’re totally unnatural and kinda smirking at the camera, and he’s saying that when he wants a sad scene out of somebody, he makes them sad the night before. To get the boy crying in Where Is the Friend’s House?, he tore up a polaroid he was fond of in front of his eyes. Etc. He’s… he was kind of a monster? And the result was totally unconvincing performances.

d⁧زندگی و دیگر هی⁩. Abbas Kiarostami. 1992. ⚅

Nooo! This blu ray has been cut down to 16:9! How evil! Boo! Hiss!

What. Ever.

It’s the 90s!

I saw this movie back then, but I haven’t seen it since. I remembered it being pretty good, but it’s been brilliant so far. So snappy, so breezy. The jokes keep on coming at a dizzying pace.

Such a poseur.

Fashion!

Now here’s real literature.

This movie is pitch perfect… for the first two thirds. Then the Dreaded Third Act Syndrome happens, where Drama happens, and people Experience Character Growth, and that’s just kinda boring.

But it’s not as bad as third acts normally are.

Clueless. Amy Heckerling. 1995. ⚄