Lost in Criterion

Sam Fuller was hired to adapt a novel that was written by a French diplomat friend of his as an attack on that man's ex-wife Jean Seberg and her anti-racist activism. Sam Fuller attempted to remake this book into an anti-racist movie. This was a fool's errand, and as the NAACP said at the time there were better books from Black authors that took a more nuanced look at racism that could be adapted into a better movie. But Sam Fuller wasn't hired to make that movie, he was hired to make this one. And he made the heck out of it.

Years ago we watched Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime and Pat loved it. At Spine 80 it was the first time in our journey that Pat's reaction to a movie genuinely surprised me.

I'm happy to report that von Trier is 2 for 2 with Pat. Europa is an ambitious and weird movie that wears its pedigree and influences on its sleeve. And it's got trains! AND it's about the failings of American foreign policy! What's not to love?

Long time friend of the show Jason Westhaver makes his main podcast debut talking about one of his favorite movies: Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express (1994). Jason's been on a few of our Patreon bonus episodes before (www.patreon.com/LostInCriterion), so we're very happy to have him join us for a proper episode to talk about this beautiful film.

Friend of the show Donovan H often shows up for our episodes on samurai films as he’s been a life-long fan of the genre. His other big obsession isn’t covered as often but we finally get one: the spy fiction of John le Carré. Martin Ritt’s 1965 adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is among the best le Carrê films and stars Richard Burton at nearly his Richard Burtonest. We’re happy to have Donovan join us to talk about the film and give him room to talk about le Carré in general and other adaptations of his work.

Christian-Jaque's Fanfan la Tulipe was, apparently, an incredibly popular film across Europe in 1952, despite the fact that it cannot decide if it wants to be a satire of the French war machine or a silly, sexy swashbuckler. A movie could, theoretically, be both, but this one doesn't seem interested in that prospect either? 

Casey Hape is probably the person we know who has liked Wes Anderson the longest. Her husband Jonathan is also an Anderson fan (and composed our theme song). They’ve been on every Wes Anderson episode we’ve done so far, so while this one isn’t quite as full of guests as previous Anderson episodes have been, we wanted to be sure to have these two dear friends. Plus it's a special occasion! Spine 450! Halfway to the Olympics Boxset!

Bottle Rocket was Anderson’s first feature length, based on a short that had played well at Sundance. The festival did not want the feature length, which bombed, but important people were interested, so Anderson and the Wilson brothers who helped marched on.

Costa-Gavras' first film in America is "not political" according to the director, and he is wrong. Missing, the story of the wife and father of an American journalist killed in a US-backed South American coup searching for him and getting the runaround from a complicit US government is patently a political film. And a very good one.

This is the first time we've watched two Jean-Pierre Melville films in a row. After last week's very good Le doulos we were excited to see what Melville had to offer us this time. After watching it we are significantly less excited, in light of last week and the conversation there we once again dig deeper into our relationship with the man's catalogue.

A very fun Jean-Pierre Melville film causes us to reconsider how we’ve viewed the director and his works in the past. Le doulos is a comedy. It must be. Did we make a mistake in not interacting with Le Samourai as parody? Probably not.

Adam Spieckermann joins us to talk about Ozu's final film, An Autumn Afternoon from 1962. Between Adam S.'s and Pat's areas of expertise and study we have a sprawling talk about Ozu's style and post-war Japanese culture. Also, thanks to a bonus feature on the Criterion DVD we get to indulge in that most joyous of pastimes: complaining about 20th century France's racist exoticism of Asia.

We finish up a trio of Max Ophüls films with The Earrings of Madame De... costarring Vittorio De Sica who apparently acted much more often than he directed, and did both quite well, leading Ophüls to be rather embarrassed at having to direct the famed director.

Our second in a series of Max Ophüls' films adapts a selection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant, climaxing in the third part with one of the most amazing continuous takes I've ever seen. And this is the Criterion Collection! We've seen a lot of amazing continuous takes!

We kick off a string of Max Ophüls films with a sex comedy starring a narrator who may or may not be a metaphor for syphilis? La Ronde is based on an 1897 play by Arthur Schnitzler that was actively suppressed first because it was just too sexy for the general public, and then by the author himself once political backlash against the play morphed into antisemitism because everything is bad. Except this movie. This movie is pretty dang fun.

Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-Four Eyes is the story of a Marxist-leaning school teacher in rural Japan who enters her profession during the Depression, teaches through World War 2, and sees nationalism, patriarchy, and capitalism destroy her students her family to the point that she has to quit teaching until she can find hope again. It's anti-war in much the same way The Cranes are Flying is, and it's just as beautiful of a film.

Powell and Pressburger make (often) beautiful movies but their work during and about World War II leaves us wanting. The Small Back Room is no exception to either of those statements.

Guy Madden describes Brand Upon the Brain! as one of his most biographical films and I hope that's not true even in a weird metaphorical sense. There's a lot going on here, and all of it is good. Too bad its 6 years before we get to watch another Madden movie.

We revisit the world of Jaques Tati and his Mr. Hulot for one last time with Trafic, in which Mr. Hulot invents a very good car and has an adventure trying to get it to the autoshow. Along the way we talk about car culture, the proper collective name for a group of hippies, and whether or not Tati is a reactionary.

We reach a boiling point today as the Collection serves us another coming of age story about a white boy. Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine isn’t a bad movie! It’s extremely well regarded in it’s native Canada, and for good reason. But there are more stories to tell, and we’re kinda tired of this same old one.

We finally return to the work of Carl Th. Dreyer with a dreamy horror film on the edge of the silent/sound divide. Stephen G. brings some research on vampire film history as we talk the beautiful, surprising Vampyr (1932).

Milcho Manchevski's 1994 Before the Rain is a circular look at ethnic violence in Macedonia and a reminder to other countries that may view themselves as more "civilized" that violence is their daily life as well. Nationalism: it's bad!

Stephen G. joins us for a rootin’ tootin’ good time as we discuss our first proper western! Though discussion of course turns to other movies we’ve covered that are western-adjacent and also the fact that this may not be the sort of movie most people think of when they think of westerns. But there’s one shootout! And horses! And even a saloon! Anthony Mann’s The Furies (1950) has, according to wikipedia, a “reputation” as a “Freudian western” and we even have to explore the caveats needed to call this Freudian.

"Consider the risks" is the title of Claude Sautet's adaptation of the "José Giovanni" novel. Giovanni, real name Joseph Damiani, made a post-death row career of writing novels fictionalizing his own and others criminal exploits. On the one hand you love to see a man get out of prison and into a better life. On the other he and the men whose stories he draws from were all collaborators, leading Pat and I to interrogate if we have a double standard.
In any case the story of a man on the run trying to get his children into a better life is a good story no matter if the man deserves to have been chased or not, because his children don't deserve to be punished for his crimes. This is a universal truth.

Lost in Criterion posted its first episode on January 1, 2013. In the 8 years since, we have never looked been less enthused for a movie than we are for this week's film, Yukio Mishima's Patriotism. At worst this should have been an extra on the DVD for Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. At best, this shoddy, self-aggrandizing, dry run for the man's sexual suicide should never have been put in our view.

Happy New Year. It can only go up from here.

Gather ‘round your screens and join Pat and Adam with old friends Stephen G. and Ben JW to talk about the Charles Band “classic” Trancers starring Tim Thomerson as a cop from the future come to kill a mall Santa and fall in love with helper-elf Helen Hunt. Spoilers? Can you spoil a movie like Trancers?

We’ve seen a lot of good movies this year, even through our last Criterion (and first of the year next week) are real low points as far as our opinions of the Collection. But the Varda boxset was certainly a highlight, and the Teshigahara set as well. When we started this project we joked that it would take us a dozen or so years. It’s been 8 and we’re barely closer to the end now than we were then. Time and Criterions march on.

Merry whichever holiday you may celebrate this time of year, and a very happy new year to us all. May we continue the first steps we’re taking out of the long dark.

Paul Schrader makes a visually lovely movie about a man we do not care about whose politics we find abhorrent, and who Schrader seems to have far more empathy for than we can muster.