Film Club update

The film at the Clark this Friday (10/23) at 4:00 pm is Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D. (1952, 89 min.) Again They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? aggregates useful background on the director, and the Criterion Collection includes two essays on the film with its dvd (here and here). I find that the Turner Classic Movies site frequently has good background in its reviews (here).

Remember that the film club will be deciding collectively which Visconti film to watch next. (Scroll down to be reminded of the choices.) And we will be open to suggestions on what to view after that, though Fellini's La Strada might be the default choice.

Bright Star

I don’t know when I’ve seen a film with a more authentic period feel than Jane Campion’s take on the Romantic entanglement of John Keats and Fanny Brawne. To me everything seems just so, not just dress and décor, but the attitudes and emotions of 1820 England. Every garment looks handsewn, each sparse interior is dimly lit by fire or candlelight or daylight slanting through a window. And a tragic unconsummated romance is believably played out in glances and delicate touches of fingertips and lips, with poetry spoken as if it were at once the language of everyday life and transcendent love. The cast is uniformly up to the task, from Kerry Fox as the widowed Mrs. Brawne, Fanny’s mother and Keats’s landlady, to Paul Schneider as his roommate and fellow poet, to Ben Whishaw as the waiflike yet willful Keats, broken by disease and poverty and critical response to his work, yet exultant in his command of Romantic feeling, for nature and the lovely, lively girl next door. That girl is Abbie Cornish, Australia’s latest gift to Anglophone film (Nicole & Cate et al. – make room!). She is the Bright Star of Campion’s film as well as Keats’ poem, a strong-willed seamstress with a thirst for fashion and passion, who ignores the liabilities of the match and attaches herself to the dying poet in spite of all the world. This chaste film burns hot with feeling. (2009, Images, n.) *8+* (MC-81.)

I happened to see Ms. Cornish in another film just two nights later. In Kimberley Pierce’s Stop-Loss, she also convinces as a Texas good old girl, fiancé to one soldier returning from Iraq (Channing Tatum) and longtime friend of his buddy (Ryan Phillippe). Coming almost ten years after Pierce’s breakthrough with Boys Don’t Cry, this film was greeted as a letdown, and flopped like every other film about Iraq. Though its approach to the subject may seem formulaic and unfocused, Stop-Loss deploys a lot of energy in laying out the familiar story of boys coming home from war, with pieces of themselves left behind, so nothing hangs together anymore. The quicksilver scenes from Iraq are vivid, and as comprehensible as the reality of the situation allows. The community back home in Texas, well-cast in every particular, is sketched in as memorably as that of Friday Night Lights, though obviously without the sustained amplitude of the latter (back for a 4th season later this month!). And the outrage at the unfair treatment of returning servicemen is well taken and important, ought to be seen and absorbed. But the film has an unresolved quality that is more frustrating than open-ended, so my recommendation is equivocal. (2007, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-61.)

Little Dorrit times two

In the Little Dorrit sweepstakes, the 8-hour 2008 BBC production wins hands down over the 6-hour 1986 film by Christine Edzard. In fact, the former renders the latter dispensible, despite admirable performances from Derek Jacobi and Alec Guinness. So let’s focus on the latest from accomplished screen adapter Andrew Davies, who scored triumphs with Pride and Prejudice and Bleak House for the BBC. Besides their long tradition of superior acting, the BBC now provides impeccable production quality, whether the location is London or Venice, a debtors’ prison or an Italian villa. So they have the luxury of television series duration with no sacrifice of film’s visual splendor. And with Dickens they are virtually guaranteed topicality, a reliable contemporary relevance, as well as that Victorian period feel. There’s one character in Little Dorrit who might as well have been called Bernie Madoff. And so many other perennial species of human fauna and flora! And so well portrayed by this cast! In the most striking contrast with the Edzard film, here Amy Dorrit is perfectly embodied in newcomer Claire Foy, who is able to go from waiflike to radiantly beautiful, as the character must do. Highest honors must go to Tom Courtenay as Mr. Dorrit, outdoing Alec Guinness and absolutely convincing through all the character’s changes, from longtime prisoner for debt to haughty "aristo." Matthew Macfadyen is also excellent as Arthur Clennam, though younger and more eligible than the life-weary Jacobi, removing the pediphiliac impediment of the earlier film (and probably Dickens’ original). In every role the tv series effaces the film, but the most striking support comes from Eddie Marsan (the driving instructor in Happy-Go-Lucky -- “En Ra Ha!”) as Pancks, and Andy Serkis, acting more evil than Golem himself, as a French murderer who doesn’t even appear in the film, but here becomes the hinge of the story. Which is a problem, because when he reveals the secrets at the heart of the story, the reveal is impossible to follow, even when you rewind and watch it again. But that is the only flaw in a literary adaptation that I cannot recommend highly enough. (MC-82)

Film club update

The next film for the Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark will be Roberto Rossellini’s Flowers of Saint Francis (1950, 83 minutes, title more literally translated as Francis, Jester of God) on October 9th at 4:00 pm.

Someone requested links to material to read in advance of (or after) the screening and discussion. So here are a couple that I’ll be using myself. One of the best aggregators of information on directors is the website, They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, where you can find links to high-quality online articles about a given director. The essay accompanying the Criterion Collection edition of Flowers of Saint Francis is available here.

To facilitate interaction among members of the film club, I am turning on the comments feature of this website (splog made me turn it off), and club members can also email me directly at: ssatullo@clarkart.edu -- with questions, suggestions, feedback, and to vote on club polls.

The first decision for the club to make collectively is which Luchino Visconti film to watch on November 6th. I will announce the choices at the next meeting and the decision will be made at the October 23rd screening of Vittoria De Sica’s Umberto D. The Visconti choice is among (in my own order of preference):

A) La Terra Trema. (1947, 160 min.) Classic neorealism with a Marxist bent, set in Sicilian fishing village.

B) Ossessione. (1942, 139 min.) Ur-text of neorealism, uncredited adaptation of James Cain’s Postman Always Rings Twice.

C) Rocco and His Brothers. (1960, 180 min.) Transition from neorealism to Visconti’s later operatic style. A Sicilian family adapts to life in Milan, with Alain Delon and other well-known actors.

Let me know what you think. Let us think about film together.

"Projections of Rome" at the Clark

A free film series on Saturdays at 2:00 pm in the Clark Auditorium

The “Projections of Rome” film series extends the Clark’s fall focus on representations of Rome from still photography to motion pictures. The Eternal City is a mirror onto which we tend to project ourselves, and especially so in the movies. We look first at two takes on Ancient Rome -- Shakespearian and “sword & sandal” -- then at two romantic fantasies of Rome in the Fifties, and finally two excursions by the cinematic bard of Rome, Federico Fellini.

October 17: Julius Caesar. (1953, 122 min.) Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, and James Mason lead an all-star cast in Joseph Mankiewicz’s bracing and intelligent adaptation of the classic Shakespeare play.

October 24: The Fall of the Roman Empire. (1964, 187 min.) Anthony Mann’s sweeping widescreen epic marshals a notable cast led by Alec Guinness and Sophia Loren, with a feel for historical accuracy in the dynastic conflict around Marcus Aurelius, a story later retold in Gladiator.

November 7: Roman Holiday. (1953, 118 min.) Audrey Hepburn bursts to stardom as the princess who goes AWOL in Rome, with American reporter Gregory Peck showing her around and photographer Eddie Alpert dogging their heels, under the direction of William Wyler.

November 14: Three Coins in the Fountain. (1954, 102 min.) The star here is the Oscar-winning CinemaScope photography on location in Rome -- a silly Fifties romance about three American secretaries finding the continental men of their dreams is redeemed by the scenery and a fine cast.

November 21: The White Sheik. (1951, 88 min., in Italian with subtitles.) Fellini’s first film, one of his best, follows a newly-wed couple from the provinces as they make a pilgrimage to Rome, the groom eager to visit the Pope while the bride only wants to see the third-rate Valentino of the title, played by Alberto Sordi.

November 28: La Dolce Vita. (1960, 174 min., in Italian with subtitles.) Fellini moves from outsiders to the in-crowd in this tour of the “sweet life” of show-biz Rome, in what became an international sensation, with journalist Marcello Mastrioanni covering the decadent scene as our guide to these infernal circles.