Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
Here is such a clear and affecting portrait of human cruelty, in the same league as Sansho the Bailiff. Beautifully filmed in Provence with a series of great French actors, Jean de Florette is a wonderfully engaging portrait of an earnest man being beaten down to literal death by the uncaring qualities of nature and… Continue reading Jean de Florette
I have a weird relationship with silent comedy, because I largely do not like the origins. Not the earliest forms of silent comedy, but Vaudeville. Short, physically focused, comedic bits untied to any sort of narrative are, at best, pleasant distractions to me, and most of them tend to fall flat. However, once you get… Continue reading Silent Comedies
Ingmar Bergman moved to the small island of Faro in the early sixties with Liv Ullman and their baby. He stayed a resident of the island for the rest of his life, filming some of his most iconic films there. In the pair of documentaries that Bergman made about his adopted home, it becomes obvious… Continue reading Faro Document and Faro Document 1979
#17 in my Ranking of Bergman's Best Films. Here's a movie with layers, a lot of layers. It's a movie about lying to oneself, about holding up fictions about ones life and trying to live precisely by those lies. And yet, the movie isn't as against the idea as the quick summation may imply. Andreas… Continue reading The Passion of Anna
Before I jump into my thoughts on the film, let me clarify. The Lord of the Rings was released in three parts in three successive years from 2001 to 2003. Principle photography occurred concurrently for the entire project (the final scene at the Grey Havens was filmed on week two). Editing and the rest of… Continue reading The Lord of the Rings
David Vining, Author 