Lost in Criterion

Kalatozov's The Cranes are Flying takes a critical look at what World War II did to the average person's psyche. Well, a lot more critical than almost anything released west of the Iron Curtain.

Milos Forman claimed he didn't mean for The Fireman's Ball to be a condemnation of the Czech government. Maybe it was just a happy accident?

We're headed back to Czechoslovakia this week for a few rounds with prolific Czech director Milos Forman. First up is Loves of a Blonde, Forman's 1965 comedy about a working class girl in need of...distraction. It's possibly the best known film of the Czech New Wave, and for good reason.

In his 1977 film The Last Wave Peter Weir sought to show what it would be like if a pragmatic person started to have visions. Of course, a pragmatic person who starts to have visions would ignore them, so the premise is flawed in any attempt to make a film longer than thirty seconds. Instead what Weir makes is the classic tale of a white man trying to find meaning in traditional spiritualism after becoming disillusioned with modernity, unfortunately with all the problems such a premise usually comes with. That is not to say this is a racist or even bad film, but it certainly doesn't handle its story nearly as well as Peter Weir probably thinks it does. And yet, it remains interesting and engaging.

Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise (1945) has been called the French Gone With the Wind because it is also long and racist? At least Children of Paradise keeps its racism contained to a few background characters in terrible blackface. Also, unlike Gone With the Wind, which features a war, Children of Paradise went the extra mile by being filmed during and just after the Nazi occupation of France, taking a bit of a break for D-Day. That's right, the French undermined Nazi authority to make a movie about a mime that doubled as a day job for a good chunk of the Resistance.

Federico Fellini's 1963 navel-gazing comedy-drama 8 1/2 -- named for how many films he'd reckoned he'd made at the time -- may prove that Fellini is self-aware but it also prove that knowing and acknowledging your problems doesn't automatically absolve you of them. Still, Fellini's acknowledgement that he -- or at least his stand-in character Guido -- is really not very good at life is pretty entertaining.

Ingmar Bergman had a busy 1957, releasing The Seventh Seal in February and then running along to make a television film and Wild Strawberries. Inspired but his own memories of childhood -- and with a name meaning "an underrated place" -- Wild Strawberries is the story of a grumpy old man who takes a trip back in time as he travels to his hometown to be honored by his Alma Mater, though his actual mater isn't quite that alma. But hey, he learns an important lesson.

Donovan Hill adds a third point of view that probably isn't "truth" as he joins us to talk about Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950). The film invented an oft-poorly-imitated film convention and introduced Kurosawa to the West. Pat says modern Japan sees it as one of Kurosawa's "classics." You know, like the rest of his films.

In 1946 Alfred Hitchcock was still under contract to David O. Selznick and they still hated one another. But Selznick realized a scheme to make a little more money out of the star director: instead of producing Notorious himself, he sold it off to RKO just before shooting started. Of course he still tried to exert a bit of control, attempting to get Joseph Cotten in the lead instead of Cary Grant. Oh that David O. Selznick! This is the last in our short run of Hitchcock/Selznick pictures, and the best of the bunch.

The second of Alfred Hitchcock's films made directly under David O. Selznick, 1945's Spellbound is markedly more Hitchcockian than Rebecca, though honestly not as Hitchcockian as Sluizer's The Vanishing. It also seems to be out to prove Haxan right about the contemporary state of psychology. But there is a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali which is a total treat.

When he first started working in America, Alfred Hitchcock was under contract to legendary producer David O. Selznick and by most accounts they hated each other. Perhaps no clearer is that tense relationship more clear in the results of a film project than in their first: Rebecca (1940). We'll be talking about a few other films made under this contract in the next few weeks, but here we start with a film that feels a lot more like the Hollywood dramas Selznick was known for than the Hitchcock we're used to. Plus, and I mean this as kindly as possible, the first hour is boring. So boring. So intensely boring.

Benjamin Christensen's 1922 documentary Häxan is about as much documentary as Nanook of the North, but immensely more entertaining for its absurd claims. A history of witchcraft drawing heavily on a 15th century guide for German Inquisitors, Häxan is ridiculous in so many definitions of the word.

Hey look, a psychological thriller about a sociopath that's actually good. Now we never have to talk about Silence of the Lambs again.

Peter Medak directs Peter O'Toole in an adaptation of a Peter Barnes' play. Jeezy pete.

On the other side of the Czechoslovakian New Wave we started into last week come a film with a wholly different sensibility. Jiri Menzel's Closely Watched Trains (1966) also takes place in a Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, but instead of the emotional drama on the dangers of ignorance that was last week's film we get a coming-of-age sex romp about a kid who'd really just like to lose his virginity please -- Porky's if Porky was a legitimate Nazi.

Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos's The Shop on Main Street (1965) is an incredible film, one of my favorites we've seen so far in this project. Set against the backdrop of the Nazi aryanization of Czechoslovakia during World War II, Main Street is a tale of willful ignorance and the dangers of pretending everything is fine.

Not since Rififi has watching criminals work been so engulfing. Jacques Becker's 1960 Le Trou, the story of five men breaking out of France's Le Sante Prison, is a meticulous and suspenseful look at desperate men learning to trust an outsider, for better or worse. It's beautiful, even if based on the semi-autobiographical novel of possibly one of the worst people in history.

Torban Skjodt Jensen's 1995 documentary on the life and works of Carl Dreyer is an homage in content and style.

Gertrud abandons Dreyer's previous religious themes for a different sort of spiritual question.

There's one joke in Ordet, and Pat and Adam disagree on how good it is.

We're digging into a Carl Th Dreyer boxset this week and starting things off with Day of Wrath from 1943. Dreyer made one feature film per decade after The Passion of Joan of Arc -- well, two in the 40's if you count Two People, which Dreyer didn't so maybe we won't either -- and every one of them is a masterpiece that's going to sit with me for a long time.

Filmmaker Wrion Bowling joins us today for this documentary about two out of touch and out of mind ex-socialites, which leads to a discussion on whether the Maysles Brothers are exploiting the Beales, whether or not the Maysles Brothers think they're exploiting the Beales, and various multiverse versions of the film that obviously exist because quantum theory.

Out to make a "nonfiction feature film" Albert and David Maysles went back to their roots in Boston and their former jobs as door-to-door salesmen. Salesman (1968) follows a group of men trying to sell illuminated Bibles to middle class Catholics with varying degrees of success. It's compelling on multiple levels -- from being a simple character study to an expose on the commercialization of American religion -- and hopefully we hit a few of them.

Billy Liar is a lot like Rushmore, if Rushmore ended with no one learning anything.