Khalik Allah Day on Criterion Featuring: Urban Rashomon (2013), Antonyms of Beauty (2013), Field Niggas (2014), Black Mother (2018) Allah at the Rotterdam International Film Festival last year. Starting with Field Niggas tonight.
This was a lark! Divorce Italian Style Directed by Pietro Germi • 1961 • Italy Baron Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his nubile young cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), but one obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca). His solution? Since divorce is illegal, he hatches a plan to lure his spouse into the arms of another and then murder her in a justifiable effort to save his honor. The Criterion Collection is proud to present director Pietro Germi’s hilarious and cutting satire of Sicilian male-chauvinist culture, winner of the 1962 Academy Award for best original screenplay.
While I liked Allah's portraiture in Field Niggas I had a couple of issues with the film, in general. The title, of course, derives from the days of American slavery when black people worked in the plantation mansion as "house niggas" or (most) worked out on the plantation grounds as "field niggas" - like, as Allah points out, Malcolm X's use of it in a famous speech. The mostly homeless group of Harlem, New Yorkers Allah chose to feature are clearly meant to be seen as tbe second category of human being. Thing is, he never tells any of the participants it's how he plans to frame them. Secondly, he omits a vital part of the analogy - "field niggas" worked 15 hours out of a 24 hour day. An MTA signal repairman or even a city bus driver might have been far more apropos. What plantation overseer would tolerate drug addicts with crops? Some would push the analogy further and tag the 99 percenters who don't have controlling interests in the ownership of much of the world's capital as "field niggas". Tbe intellectual investment is not significant here (nor, would I argue, much judgement) but the heart is there. But I do wonder if Allah had seriously considered that great CC title, Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing; specifically the camerwork of Ernest Dickerson (very similar to some of Allah's approach) before he ventured filming at 125th & Lex if he'd have made a different picture.
Comparisons are odious but Allah's film did make me think of an excellent short film (22 minutes) which plays like a ghost story, featuring the denizens of a midtown Manhattan watering hole aptly titled, Terminal Bar. Now this short should be a Criterion extra on a larger set, imo. Made almost entirely of photographs it's a fascinating chronicle of the life and death of a NYC bar:
I love the Criterion Channel. This month I've watched a bunch of the 70s sci-fi flicks. There's a British film from around 1970 called Kes that I think is leaving the channel at the end of the month. I had never even heard of it before I saw it on The Criterion Channel. If you get a chance to see it before it leaves, watch it. I thought it was a great film.
New DOUBLE FEATURE today: Atlantic City was great. Another with Burt Lancaster as a lead. Check it out if you can. Recommended. Here's a clip with Richard Linklater presenting a 35 mm screening of it in 2014.
For years, I've heard great things about Atlantic City. I tried to watch it last week. Made it to the part where the drug dealer kid was getting in over his head. I'll have to try to finish it without my wife sitting beside me.
The Sci-Fi 70’s films. It was a blast from the past not all were classics but they were all interesting.
Such a poetic ending! I vitelloni Criterion Collection Edition #246 Five young men linger in a postadolescent limbo, dreaming of adventure and escape from their small seacoast town. They while away their time spending the lira doled out by their indulgent families on drink, women, and nights at the local pool hall. Federico Fellini’s second solo directorial effort (originally released in the U.S. as THE YOUNG AND THE PASSIONATE) is a semiautobiographical masterpiece of sharply drawn character sketches: skirt chaser Fausto, forced to marry a girl he has impregnated; Alberto, the perpetual child; Leopoldo, a writer thirsting for fame; and Moraldo, the only member of the group troubled by a moral conscience. An international success and recipient of an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay, I VITELLONI compassionately details a year in the life of a group of small-town layabouts struggling to find meaning in their lives.
One of my favorites. Watched it again last night and I am convinced it's one of the best films ever made. Absolutely incredible camera work. There are also many Bunuel and Fassbinder films on Criterion right now. I have been rewatching many of those.
Loads of Chaplin streaming now, too. Saw The Immigrant during lunch. Or should I say, laughed away my lunch hour with The Immigrant.
Part way through: Blow Out Directed by Brian De Palma • 1981 • United States Starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow In the enthralling BLOW OUT, brilliantly crafted by Brian De Palma, John Travolta gives one of his greatest performances, as a movie sound-effects man who believes he has accidentally recorded a political assassination. He enlists the help of a possible eyewitness to the crime (CARRIE’s Nancy Allen), who may be in danger herself, to uncover the truth. With its jolting stylistic flourishes, intricate plot, profoundly felt characterizations, and gritty evocation of early-1980s Philadelphia, BLOW OUT is an American paranoia thriller unlike any other, as well as a devilish reflection on moviemaking.
They had a Ray "festival" a couple of years ago that consisted of 9 or 10 films (I watched them all). I don't know that all of them are still streaming on the service. The restorations on the "Apu" films were awesome.
Yes, thanks. Think I'll revisit the Apu Trilogy this week. There's an extra feature on the Criterion set by Mamoun Hassan on the formal techniques of the trio. And here's a master class he conducted on it (not on the extras) that looks intriguing -
Three Cases of Murder tonight. I usually avoid murder mysteries (not terribly intrigued by murder, in general) but I was in the mood for an Orson Welles classic and my favorite performance of his (Touch of Evil) isn't on the channel. So it's this. Raves by the folks at Criterion though it's starting a bit like a rip off of Wilde's Dorian Gray. We'll see.
Rewatched Atlantic City. Left quite an impression on my first viewing a week ago. Good discussion with director, Malle, on his career, including Atlantic City:
Yesterday I decided to watch something familiar “Alexander Nevsky” (usually I use a random film generator to pick a movie). It’s a good movie and the Battle on the Ice is legendary. But at the same time I was wondering if it was an American film made the same time if we would consider it a bit corny, what with the sub plot of two men competing for a maiden by who will be the bravest in battle.
Had to rewatch this video. Fogot how to do a refined search... Everything You Need To Know About The Criterion Channel Published last April it could seriously use an update, though to be honest, not much has changed!
I love the portrait of sordidness, depravity and desperation that Kurosawa paints with this Maxim Gorky film adaptation. Course, the Renoir version is available & streaming as well; in fact, they're both presented as today's double feature but K's version is so compelling despite the nature of the subject matter that I haven't been able to look any other version of it other than the Gorky short story. I'll get to the Renoir one of these days but there's something so uncanny about the way K captures these desperados that whenever the opportunity comes to view it I get out the popcorn! It's a Donald Richie commentary viewing tonight. Think I might pick up a copy of the late Japanese scholar's book The Japan Journals. His Criterion commentaries are certainly among the best in the collection.
