From silent films to the great Hollywood studios, from classicism to experimental cinema, from Méliès to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Magnolia’ or from C. B. De Mille to Steven Spielberg, we could probably conclude that the world of cinema has gone through more changes than 20th century literature. Fast changes. The following selection is completely available thanks to DVDs, yet another change in cinema.
1
Iván The Terrible
SERGEI M. EISENSTEIN, 1944-1946
The Boyars’ Plot
Eisenstein claimed that cinema did not begin with Edison and that it originated in past cultures: in this movie, it seems that the El Greco’s characters get in motion. The shapes, shadows, angles, distances, distorting labyrinth of stages, Prokofiev’s music that emphasizes the lyrical and operatic character of the play, and Eisenstein’s experiments with each shot with the new gadget that technology provided him with: the sound film.
Video with images of the film and with the soundtrack of Sergei Prokofiev.
2
Oharu’s Life
KENJI MIZOGUCHI, 1952
Mizoguchi presents the terrible vital unforeseen incident of a prostitute in an exhibitionist sadistic criteria: happiness is an ephemeral illusion and happy endings a supernatural impossibility. Violence, sex, and death impregnate the movie continuously, however, those elements are not seen but –felt and smelled– thanks to the elliptical manoeuvres and the splendid use of a narrative mechanism that is displayed just like a handwritten parchment.
Presentation scene of the main character.
3
Tokyo story
YASUJIRO OZU, 1953
An elderly couple visits their children in the city of Tokyo. Avoiding an exceptional argument, constantly anchored to an inevitable tendency towards routine, this movie presents an electrically dramatic plot that never falls into temptation of a mere pitiful and wild gesticulation. Relentlessly and slowly, with an exceptional script, Ozu manages to produce a sublime masterpiece, out of the blue, and depicts reality at the highest stage of truth.
4
Madame D
MAX OPHÜLS, 1953
A kind of Madame Bovary from the Belle Époque, married to a general, meets an Italian diplomatic, and, out of an inevitably circular structure, one of the purest, most winding and memorable relationships in filming history is cast by the frightening lucidity of Max Ophüls when portraying the passage of time as an engine that pushes and annihilates, is unforgiving and merciless.
5
A Journey to Italy
ROBERT ROSSELLINI, 1954
A British married couple travels to Italy on vacation and Rossellini achieves to make it obvious that the couple can be a mutually remorseful volcano that fights routine to irreversibly hurt each other. The external reality blends in with the character’s internal reality and the red-hot and slow pace dominates the stage, and the movie has no clear start or ending but a succession of gaps and time-outs that serve to explain what cannot be seen in the movie.
6
The Apu Trilogy
SATYAJIT RAY, 1955-1959<
Song of the Little Road, The Unvanquished, The World of Apu
Kurosawa compared the unfamiliarity with Satyajit Ray’s work to not ever having seen the sun or the moon. The trilogy –there is a millimetric connection between all the visual details– narrates the determining moments of Apu’s life, from childhood to adulthood, but far from being a plot about dreams come true –Apu wants to be a writer–, Ray manages to make us wary about future plans that could lead to misfortune.
7
The Searchers
JOHN FORD, 1956
‘The Searchers’ is a dark and tragic western, a story about a biblical obsession interpreted by a neurotic –or solitary– individual who lives in the desert of Texas and searches for a place to die with his daughter, who he fears to have conceived. John Ford was aware of the fact that a movie only requires what is necessary, however, behind its laconic stylistic self-restraint hides a sophisticated architecture that, in the first 12 planes, narrates a miraculous concision of the entire life of a family.
8
Hanyo
KIM-KI-YOUNG, 1960
A textbook melodrama –an adultery between a music professor and the family’s servant– becomes a fascinating horror psychological thriller. Narrated with surgical accuracy, this pictorial everyday drama mixes gothic horror –the house space becomes a more evil element than the main character himself–, the suffocation dominates every scene, and, probably, it was never expected that a cup of water would become such a lethal danger.
9
Gertrud
CARL THEODOR DREYER, 1964
This melodrama requires command of the dramatic continuum, the use of laws for emotional identification, the virtuosity in both the secret musicality and interior rhythms: in Gertrud, Dreyer elevates the main character to metaphysical heights. A dialogue-based movie, in the last scene the dialogue stops and, when the main character closes the door and waves, the invisible clock that has been ticking during the whole movie –time is concealed– it is no longer heard but instead death is knocking on the door.
Video with scenes from the film and commentary by the film critic Richard Brody.
10
Koker trilogy
ABBAS KIAROSTAMI, 1987, 1991, 1994
Where Is the Friend’s Home?, And Life Goes On, Through the Olive Trees
The main character in ‘Where is the friend’s home?’ is the justification for the self-odyssey that the filmmaker decides to undertake in ‘And life goes on’, an alter ego created by Kiarostami, and in ‘Through the olive trees’ a new actor interprets the main character that interprets a minimal scene from ‘And life goes on’ to exhaustion. Every movie is created from the last one and is questioned, shredded and corrected. This work by Kiarostami is a slow and hidden stun that calmly analyzes the new fundamentals in cinema resorting to humor.
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