A concise evaluation of films watched at the Hotel des grand hommes.
1 NOV 010 – The Lady from Shanghai (1947) Orson Welles. “Comes with a sublime, profound ending, typical of Welles, along with his funny Irish accent. Rita Hayworth is angelically evil.”
10 NOV 010 – Holy Mountain (1976) Alejandro Jodorowsky. “Jodorowsky is indeed Bunuel’s son. It’s a miracle that this film exists. Conceptually and visually an executed masterpiece. One can see with their skin’s eye that the film is the transcription of Jodorowsky’s spiritual transformation, something he launched to alter the course of his life. Since, I was lucky enough to see him in real life previous month, the epiphany I have from Holy Mountain is contributing to the same transformation I am looking for, I know which is my path.
13 NOV 010 – Garde a vue (1981) Claude Miller. “Illustrating the problematic relationship between a psychological thriller novel, plotted in a single setting which would do well in book format, and its cinematic adaptation. Even a top notch cast like this (Ventura, Serrault, Schneider, Marchand) couldn’t really keep the film float. I think this film suffers from its theatricality and dramatic distance. The same text and cast in the hands of Jean Rouch or Chris Marker would have been a masterpiece. Cinema Verité is a necessity!”
16 NOV 010 – Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) Luis Buñuel. “A fine way of attuning the tidal blur between good and evil and ambiguity for human observation… This was my second visit to Diary of a Chambermaid… I was again nailed by the pure poetry of uncertainty of motives. The genius of Bunuel, in this account, is a magnifier looking into the society of bourgeois and darkness of nationalism.”
29 NOV 010 – Loulou (1980) Maurice Pialat “Extremely accurate portrayal about the actuality of a woman. A study of how lust is indeed the eclipse of love if at all it exists… in the bourgeoisie’s natural inclination towards maintaining its mediocre ambitions… this drive, is indeed the bourgeoisie’s virility which is implicitly impotent. Pialat is a magic flutist evoking ridiculously realistic performances from the cast. One appriciates what a brilliant actress Isabelle Huppert is, the golden face as a blank canvas, projecting both naivity and somewhat a passive outburst of the awareness about the death of naivity.