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60 years ago...
The Hole (1959)
Director: Jacques Becker
Country: France
Length: 132 minutes
Type: Drama
It's a shame that Director Jacques Becker died right after finishing 'The Hole' ('Le Trou') because it's a proper masterpiece and I want to see more. The film concerns a real-life escape attempt by five convicts from Paris' La Santé Prison and features one of the actual escapees playing himself (Roland Darbant aka Jean Keraudy). The camera hardly leaves the cell, or the prisoner's sides and mostly stays at their eye-level and perspective, so we feel like a 6th conspirator. There is no music so the viewer can listen intently to the echoes of the prison interior and the sounds of danger, just like the characters. To further the immersion, some sequences play out in real time, most notably when the prisoners/actors take turns to smash trough a concrete floor in one 4-minute shot. The quick thinking ingenuity the men show in using bits of mirror, an ink pot, pieces of their beds and cardboard boxes as makeshift escape tools is incredible. It's tempting to watch it all over again.
Another Yasujiro Ozu film and the last entry for the 1950s next.
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60 years ago...
Floating Weeds (1959)
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Country: Japan
Length: 119 minutes
Type: Drama
'Floating Weeds' ('Ukikusa') takes place in a quiet seaside town as an itinerant kabuki theater troupe arrives. The lead actor Komajuro uses the residency to reacquaint himself with his former mistress and his grown-up son (who has been told he's just an uncle). His happy and secretive visits attract the ire of his current mistress, so she hatches a plot to expose him. It's about class, status and generational conflict but the emotion is sensitive and understated. Ozu employs his trademark locked-off camera, precise blocking, perfect composition and POV editing style. His technique is totally stylish and stylized but somehow also unobtrusive and tranquil. I'm starting to see why Ozu is seen as such a genius.
Another Visconti film next.
<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />
With the 1950s section of the 1001 book complete (354 films), I've decided to loosen up my chronological approach. I'll still be mostly watching films in date order but if the opportunity presents itself, or if I just feel like it, I'll be watching and reviewing films from any year. It was a worthwhile exercise to see the evolution of film technology, editing innovations, changes in tastes, the advent of sound, colour and aspect-ratio. With the arrival of the "French New Wave" I think were essentially into the modern film-making era from the 1960s onwards, so a chronological approach is increasingly less valuable.
(It's only taken me 5-years and 1-month to reach the start of the 1960s )
The Hole (1959)
Director: Jacques Becker
Country: France
Length: 132 minutes
Type: Drama
It's a shame that Director Jacques Becker died right after finishing 'The Hole' ('Le Trou') because it's a proper masterpiece and I want to see more. The film concerns a real-life escape attempt by five convicts from Paris' La Santé Prison and features one of the actual escapees playing himself (Roland Darbant aka Jean Keraudy). The camera hardly leaves the cell, or the prisoner's sides and mostly stays at their eye-level and perspective, so we feel like a 6th conspirator. There is no music so the viewer can listen intently to the echoes of the prison interior and the sounds of danger, just like the characters. To further the immersion, some sequences play out in real time, most notably when the prisoners/actors take turns to smash trough a concrete floor in one 4-minute shot. The quick thinking ingenuity the men show in using bits of mirror, an ink pot, pieces of their beds and cardboard boxes as makeshift escape tools is incredible. It's tempting to watch it all over again.
Another Yasujiro Ozu film and the last entry for the 1950s next.
<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />
60 years ago...
Floating Weeds (1959)
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Country: Japan
Length: 119 minutes
Type: Drama
'Floating Weeds' ('Ukikusa') takes place in a quiet seaside town as an itinerant kabuki theater troupe arrives. The lead actor Komajuro uses the residency to reacquaint himself with his former mistress and his grown-up son (who has been told he's just an uncle). His happy and secretive visits attract the ire of his current mistress, so she hatches a plot to expose him. It's about class, status and generational conflict but the emotion is sensitive and understated. Ozu employs his trademark locked-off camera, precise blocking, perfect composition and POV editing style. His technique is totally stylish and stylized but somehow also unobtrusive and tranquil. I'm starting to see why Ozu is seen as such a genius.
Another Visconti film next.
<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />
With the 1950s section of the 1001 book complete (354 films), I've decided to loosen up my chronological approach. I'll still be mostly watching films in date order but if the opportunity presents itself, or if I just feel like it, I'll be watching and reviewing films from any year. It was a worthwhile exercise to see the evolution of film technology, editing innovations, changes in tastes, the advent of sound, colour and aspect-ratio. With the arrival of the "French New Wave" I think were essentially into the modern film-making era from the 1960s onwards, so a chronological approach is increasingly less valuable.
(It's only taken me 5-years and 1-month to reach the start of the 1960s )