Tag Archives: Samuel Beckett

Life in Transition

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Smoke fills the screen and drifts toward the sky. We see black earth that is steaming and could be cooling lava. Then we notice small holes punched into the dark topography where smoke is being released. A wide shot reveals that we are looking at a mound of charred material that is being raked by a worker at the top of the heap. Where are we and what are we looking at? Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte (2010), which roughly translates as The Four Times, is an immersive but often disorienting portrait of life in the village of Caulonia, Italy, which often requires the viewer to make sense of a visual detail or local ritual without a frame of reference. This is not detrimental, however, to the film’s exploratory narrative but one which is enriched by a sense of mystery and wonder.

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Break Up the Dance and Other Film Shorts from Poland

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Polish film director Roman Polanski during his student years at the Lodz Film School.

At an early age Roman Polanski began to realize his true ambition to be a filmmaker with a series of short films which were made during his time as a student at Poland’s prestigious National Film School at Lodz. His debut film Morderstwo [English title, Murder aka The Crime, 1957] – a three minute short without dialogue about a senseless murder – and the one that followed it, the three-minute Usmiech Zebiczny [English title: Teeth Smile aka A Toothful Smile, 1957], about a peeping tom, were atmospheric studies in violence and voyeurism that disturbed his fellow filmmakers and raised speculations about the young filmmaker’s dark side. His third short, Rozbijemy Zabawe… [English title: Break Up the Party, 1957], however, aroused considerably more controversy over his directorial methods. 

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When the Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary

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Simone (Cox Habbema) and Freek (Hugo Metsers) are pulled into a labyrinth of mysterious happenings in THE ARRIVAL OF JOACHIM STILLER (De Komst van Joachim Stiller), a 1976 Belgium film by Harry Kumel.

Most people have a daily routine from the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night. For many of us that would involve a considerable amount of time spent at work, whether at an office or at home, and this would also include the daily repetition of uneventful tasks like taking the trash out, opening the mail or brushing your teeth. But when the daily routine gets disrupted or something odd or peculiar occurs, it usually results in a more memorable day. It could also be just the beginning of a series of occurrences that change your life and the way you look at the world. This is what happens to Freek Groenevelt (yes, it’s a weird name), the protagonist of De Komst van Joachim Stiller (English title: The Arrival of Joachim Stiller), a magical realism fantasy based on a novel by Belgium writer Hupert Lampo and adapted to film by Harry Kumel. 

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Robert Frank and The Rolling Stones

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Photographer/filmmaker Robert Frank (left) and Mick Jagger (right) on The Rolling Stones’ private jet during their 1972 tour of the U.S. to promote the album “Exile on Main Street” as depicted in the rock documentary Cocksucker Blues (1972).

After being withheld from release for 15 years, Gerald Fox’s Leaving Home, Come Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank, is finally receiving a U.S. theatrical release. Famous for his seminal 1958 collection “The Americans,” Swiss-born photographer Frank is no stranger to films being withheld from public viewing and one of his most infamous projects C*cksucker Blues, a behind-the-scenes account of The Rolling Stones’ 1972 tour of America, remains unreleased to this day.  Continue reading →

A Cowpoke and His Cow

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Buster Keaton plays a hapless cowpoke who tries to save a cow named Brown Eyes from the slaughterhouse in Go West (1925).

Peter Bogdanovich’s documentary homage, The Great Buster, is scheduled to open at theaters across the country in October 2018 and perhaps it might introduce a new generation of film-goers to the silent era legend. I would certainly recommend The General, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman to Keaton novices but even his less celebrated efforts are cinematic wonders brimming with visual poetry and imaginative sight gags like Go West (1925). Continue reading →

Roman Polanski’s Lost Film

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A Day at the Beach DVDThe headline is referencing the past, not the present, for A DAY AT THE BEACH, a film that Roman Polanski scripted and co-produced with his partner Gene Gutowski for their short-lived production company, Cadre Films, in 1969 finally surfaced on DVD in 2007 via Odeon Entertainment’s “The Best of British Collection” series in the U.K. and then in the U.S. in 2008, courtesy of Code Red, which specializes in re-releasing cult and lesser known genre films like Rituals (1977) and Group Marriage (1973).  For more than thirty five years, the film was considered lost after being shelved by Paramount following an unsuccessful limited release in Europe. But a serviceable print was discovered and preserved and any self-professed fan of Polanski’s films will want to check it out if they haven’t already.  It may not be “the lost Roman Polanski masterpiece” that the Code Red DVD cover promises but it is much more than a curiosity piece and quite compelling if you are in the mood for a bitter, bleak and harrowing character study.    Continue reading →