At the risk of
chiming in on a dead thread, here are some notes on the twelve best older
movies I saw in 2002. I list them in order of my having seen them.
(January)
THE FUNERAL (Abel
Ferrara, 1996) [Pretty close to being a masterpiece, I think. There are so many brilliant performances in
it, with Walken and Chris Penn leading the way, this film is an embarrassment
of riches. More than other Ferraras
I’ve seen, this one seems to keep threatening to be a “normal” film, or at
least a piece of comprehensible Italian socialist-modernism. But it veers into
places too dark for even Visconti or Petri.]
THE LONG GOODBYE
(Robert Altman, 1973) [Not much left to say about this one, except that I too
think it’s amazing. The 70s were indeed the Age of Gould.]
(February)
CIRCUS GIRLS (Walter
Gutman, 1971) [Saw this bizarre short while doing research on the Kuchars at
the PFA. Gutman was (is?) a liminal Bay Area figure, underexplored. This very
personal documentary, about both the women of various low-grade traveling
circuses, and Gutman’s sexual fixation on them, is so honest, so poetic and
allusive and rambling, it’s like your weird uncle channeling Chris Marker.
Watch rep listings for it. I give it an unqualified endorsement.]
(March)
MULTIPLE SIDOSIS
(Sid Laverents, 1970) [I would have likely missed this gem were it not for
McCloud bringing it to my attention. In
the oft-forgotten world of amateur film clubs and circuits, Laverents is the
king. A cantankerous jack-of-all-trades
and erstwhile Vaudevillian, Laverents is a self-taught filmmaker, and SIDOSIS
is his crowning achievement. A musical self-portrait and a technical
tour-de-force, it defies description.
One could easily imagine Chuck Jones having remade this, with Bugs Bunny
cast in the Sid role.]
ARABIC NUMERAL
SERIES (Stan Brakhage, 1980-81) [In a year where I am feeling more and more
ambivalent about my Top Ten by the day, I am fairly certain that these Brakhage
films were the best thing I saw, period.
The qualities and textures of light on display in these almost
completely abstract films are stunning.
Sometimes I disturbed the other audience members, quite by accident, by
breaking the silence with a gasp or an “Oh, fuck . . .” Like things I saw when
I half-opened my eyes just before daybreak, with unadjusted ambient light
catching my vision out before the room made sense.]
(April)
THE CHELSEA GIRLS
(Andy Warhol, 1966) [Several people who are greater Warhol aficionados than I
am have argued that CHELSEA GIRLS is a film of diminishing returns. Seen in light of his other work, and in
light of repeat viewings, it becomes a meaner, nastier, uglier film than Warhol
fans seem to want. But as someone who
has often found the Factory material rather insular and a bit alienating, I
think this one may be a summary work.
CHELSEA GIRLS doesn’t give an inch.
It is long, rambling, self-involved, drug-addled, but it is also so
confident in its own fabulousness that it may be the closest thing to a queer
equivalent of present-day hip-hop culture.
Its unbridled bitchiness is infectious. Pope Ondine, who steals the
show, is not a nice person.]
(May)
THE MUSIC ROOM
(Satyajit Ray, India, 1958) [For various unimportant reasons, I have still not
delved very far into Ray’s work. This
and CHARULATA are the only ones I’ve seen so far. I checked it out mostly because it’s one of Erickson’s desert
island films, and I was not sorry.
Stunning central performance by Chhabi Biswas, in a heartbreaking
Chekhovian tale.]
ENTHUSIASM: SYMPHONY
OF THE DON BASIN (Dziga Vertov, U.S.S.R., 1931) [A key Vertov I had never seen
before. The soundtrack is
incredible. Basically a musique
concréte piece with some factory-worker footage to go with it. It’s no MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA, but it
doesn’t have to be.]
(July)
UMBERTO D. (Vittorio
De Sica, Italy, 1952) [While I was annoyed by the film’s reliance upon
melodramatic convention – the landlord who apparently just hates old people –
without a willingness to commit to it entirely, I nevertheless found this
simple story moving. The precise images
and understated central performance certainly helped, as did a devastating
final fifteen minutes.]
(August)
MADEMOISELLE (Tony
Richardson, France / U.K., 1966) [The weirdest thing I saw all year that I
liked. (The weirdest thing I didn’t like was Sokurov’s DAYS OF ECLIPSE.)
Jeanne Moreau is a sexually repressed schoolteacher who sets fires so she can
watch a hunky Italian immigrant put them out, sans shirt. She performs various tasks so as to avoid masturbating
onscreen. Eventually, she convinces the
townsfolk that the Italian is a bit too helpful, and must be setting the fires
himself – shades of Richard Jewell. The
first image we see of Moreau’s character has her reaching into a bird’s nest,
gently picking up the eggs, and smashing them in her fist with relish. (Oh,
that’s the emotion, not the condiment.) Anyhow, that pretty much sets the
tone.]
(October)
YOJIMBO (Akira
Kurosawa, Japan, 1961) [Again, what can I say that hasn’t been said
already? This was the standout in the
Kurosawa series – funny, bad-ass, riveting, masterfully constructed, just a
great fucking time at the movies.]
(December)
SACHA AND MUM
(Gillian Wearing, U.K., 1996) [My first exposure to this key figure in
contemporary video art. It’s presented as an installation but plays more like
an avant-garde short. Running
backwards, with a young half-naked woman and an older woman (the title
characters, we presume) in an ambiguous embrace of apparent reconciliation, we
then move through a harrowing sequence of torture. Or is it? Sacha could be
an epileptic or a mental-deficient, subject to care which appears harsher to an
outside observer than perhaps it really is.
Or, it could be some sort of strange S/M ritual, miscoded by the
title. Or perhaps we are watching a
young woman being punished for masturbating by a religious fanatic. The five minute video remains indecipherable
and undecidable as it retracts itself to its beginning, only to repeat.]