Brecht

Criterion has just released Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1931 film of Weill and Brecht’s “The ThreePenny Opera”. It’s on my list.

Oh, and Cl, “The Lady Vanishes” is on their coming soon list. And Kc, “Kind Hearts and Coronets” is on Criterion. Alec Guinness in top form.

Dreyman

Any thoughts on Dreyman? He was willing to work within the system and avoid criticizing it. He became a successful artist by playing by these rules. He even tried to steer his less restrained artistic friends away from public comments that would hurt their careers. When he finally broke, it wasn’t over his own treatment, but because of what had happened to his close friend. (The Minister of Culture blackmailing his girlfriend for sex didn’t help either.)

OT: In the mood to be scared?

With Halloween approaching, it's the best time of year to find some good horror movies on television. Several channels are running great movies, but I highly recommend AMC's lineup for a taste of the "new classics." They started Monsterfest on Oct. 22, actually, but the remaining lineup is promising:

The Howling
Psycho
Magic (with Anthony Hopkins, and so disquieting, I never finished it)
The Fog
The Exorcist and Exorcist II
Violent Midnight
Children of the Corn

And also various chapters in the Halloween series (none of which are worth your time after part II), and Alien, Friday the 13th and Hellraiser titles.

Also, the Fox Movie Channel is running a lot of older black-and-white: The Alligator People, The Undying Monster and more.

I'm going to try to sit through "Magic" this weekend.

The ending

How did you feel about the ending? I found it completely satisfying and terribly moving. (OK, so I liked the movie a lot.) But others have found it too maudlin. Did it strike the right balance for you?

Change of heart

Did you find Wiesler’s change of heart convincing? Do you think his actions were believable in light of his position and who he was?

Ulrich Mühe

I thought Ulrich Mühe was absolutely stunning as Captain Wiesler. His performance was so subtle. Everything was conveyed with a raising of an eyebrow, the tilt of his head, the tightening of his forehead. And he takes the audience right along with him with these signals.

Interestingly, Mühe discovered in his own Stasi file after the German reunification that his second wife had been informing on him. He said his experience was helpful in preparing for this role.

Mühe died in July of stomach cancer.

Characters

I thought the characters were drawn rather brilliantly. I loved that Wiesler, for example, turns out to be more than the stereotypical robotic Party tool that he at first seems.

I also loved that you were never exactly sure what any given character was going to do at any moment. In the New York Times review, the writer said the movie reminds us that even in an oppressive state, humans are still burdened with free will. The characters again and again faced monumental decisions, and I was never positive about which way they were going to go. The characters felt very real and human to me, and I cared very much about each of them.

"The Lives of Others"

Well, what did you think? Any general thoughts to share?

Did you enjoy the story? The pacing? What stood out to you?

Kim's pick

Here's one from Iran that I've heard good things about. I've recently been reading everything I can get my hands on by Iranian author Marjane Satrape. This film has nothing to do with her, but it deals with the sort of topic she would heartily engage: the banning of women from public life — here, a soccer game — in the Middle East.

Fric and Frac

What did you make of the son of the boss's brother and his friend? Why was this goofy pair in the movie? Did the disability have a special significance?

Haruna's Hit

In another thread, Kc mentioned that she found Haruna’s “ridiculous hit song to be somewhat moving and melancholy when stripped of its pop beat and electronic music”. I thought the song was a decidedly good bit of tween pop product with a strong hook and just the right sappiness in its idolized image of love. I would never sit around and listen to it, but I thought it was pretty good for what it was. And I was also impressed with how well it worked as a melancholy lament. Ben, what is your reaction to the two versions of this song?

Dubious Movie Making Devices?

One of the pleasures of having cultivated a distaste for certain movie making devices is that I can be all the more impressed when a filmmaker puts one to good use. I’ve already mentioned that Kitano did a great job of subverting my expectations about the bunraku puppets as a framing device. I would suppose that in general I’m irritated if a movie superimposes an image. Mostly this is done by ham-handed filmmakers and I’m going yeah, yeah, I got your point already so how ‘bout we move on now, ok? But Kitano is certainly not ham-handed and everything else about this film shows economy and poise. So the superimposed images kind of surprised me the first time I watched the movie. I wasn’t sure if I liked them, and I wasn’t sure if they improved the film. On second viewing, they are, of course, no longer surprising. I’m also inclined to think that they are far more integral than they first seemed. There were three, weren’t there? A picture of Haruna imposed on the blood at the car wreck, a picture of Nukui imposed on the blood being washed from the street, and a picture of bunraku puppets imposed on the costumes on the clothesline. Any thoughts?

The Threads

I thought the costumes were wonderful. The ever more bunraku-like outfits that the beggars wear were most obvious, but all the costuming fit very well. After watching the interview with Yohji Yamamoto, I’d like to take a world trip where we visited all his favorite haunts while wearing his threads. Bound to be a good time.

Miho Kanno

Miho Kanno had to play Sawako almost without speaking. She spends a lot of time on screen and is featured in many close-ups. It must intimidating to try and play such a role and develop your character with almost no lines. But I was impressed with her performance. It was a good call to have her fixate on color and minutia. Color was almost a character in this movie. And I thought the scenes with the blow toy were wonderful. Sawako’s frustration after the ball was crushed was a poignant reflection of her incomprehension of how her life had also been crushed.

The Weave

Our movie is not presented chronologically, or even chronologically with flashbacks. Instead it jumps foreword and back in time seeming at random, and we are seldom shown how the three stories relate to each other through time. For that matter, the three strands touch each other only through the wanderings of Sawako and Matsumoto as the bound beggars walk unaware through the other two dramas. Did you like this way of constructing a movie?

The Real Puppets

The first time I watched this movie, the bunraku puppets had receded into my sub-consciousness until right before Sawako and Matsumoto trudged up over that hill in the snow and saw the costumes hanging on the clothesline. Right before that scene, I suddenly thought, wow, they look like the puppets. No sooner had I had that thought, but Kitano cuts to the image of the bunraku puppets superimposed on the clothesline. I was much amazed that the timing of the film perfectly matched my own growing awareness.

At what point did you come to see the bound beggars as puppets?

Fairy Tales

Two of our stories seem like fairy tales: the bound beggars, and the woman who waits all her life on a park bench for the boyfriend who doesn’t return. But again, the story of Haruna Yamaguchi and Nukui is different. This is just the kind of thing we expect from a fixated fan who has no life outside of worshiping the star. What do you think of weaving this all too believable story between the other two more magical tales?

Betrayal?

The three relationships in “Dolls” are all doomed. In two of them, Sawako/Matsumoto, and Hiro/Ryoko, you can say they are doomed by betrayal that cannot be set right. But what do you make of the story of the pop idol Haruna Yamaguchi and her fan Nukui?

Dolls

Should we start with first reactions? Takeshi Kitano was known for movies about Yakuza (“Brother” 2000) and cops (“Hana-bi” 1997) that were, at times, quite violent. So when “Dolls” came out in 2002, I wonder if it really found its audience. But then I’m not sure who had been watching him. I’ve not seen “Brother” or the other two films in the ‘Yakuza Trilogy’, but I did see “Hana-bi”. It is strange for a cop film. It centers on character not plot. Key characters are ex-cops instead of active duty. And it focuses on efforts to cope, or failure trying, that would never be found in your bang-bang-get-the-bad-guy flick.

Still, “Dolls” is an unusual movie that doesn’t readily fit into a category. It has a framing device of puppets that turns out to be more integral than a mere framing device. Color and costume are front and center in the presentation. And there are three stories braided together like the rope on the ‘bound beggars’.

Did you like this? Is it too stylized or abstract?

Location, location, location

I rewatched "Vertigo" last night and was struck not so much by the story, which I found clever but ponderous, but by the importance given to the location. Rick, you mentioned that you like "Vertigo" because you like San Francisco, and that's a good reason to like it. The city is as much a character in the movie as Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak. The location was one of the things I liked best about "The Lady Vanishes," too. Alpine, scenic. Storybookish and sinister. Cosmopolitan and provincial all at once, like San Francisco. And location was a big draw in "The Man Who Knew Too Much," too. Morocco and London. And the Americana of "Psycho." The French Riviera of "To Catch a Thief." On and on. And the locations are not just scenery. They're integral to the story.

I read this when I was looking up somethng about "Vertigo": According to Herbert Coleman, Vertigo's associate producer, Hitchcock often picked a location and then developed a story to be filmed there. He liked to show a familiar location and introduce a twist of malice. When he first saw San Francisco, he said it would be a good place for a murder mystery, and he chose a French novel, "D'Entre les Morts" (From Among the Dead).

Next pick

I have been wanting to see "The Lives of Others" for some time now, and it's finally out on DVD.

East German political oppression, spying, romance, compassion ... Enjoy!

What's in your Netflix queue?

Do you save your queue for Cinema Chatter picks, or do you have some other must-sees or guilty pleasures on your list? Some of my queue: "The Abominable Dr. Phibes," a Miss Marple TV movie collection, "Night Porter," "Alice, Sweet Alice," "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Martha's Spring Gardening."

Also, I noticed that Netflix lists "Dr. Strangelove" among local favorites for Lawrence. Do you think our requests put it on the list?

A Quick Film Poll

Who is your favorite Russian agent?

I’ll go with Severn Darden as V. I. Kydor Kropotkin in the satirical gem from 1967 “The President’s Analyst”. I’d seen this film as a kid, but could only remember two scenes from it and the overall arc of the story. A film blogger reminded me of it recently and spoke in such glowing terms that I had to see it again. Glad I did.

Who else had a good turn as a commie spy?

Hitchcock's men

I like this description of Michael Redgrave from our big film book: "His debut was the prancing musicologist in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, a lively study of the ingenious idiot hero, too seldom investigated by Hitchcock."

We talked a little about Hitchcock's leading ladies (cl, I meant to ask you what you thought about Doris Day). Do you have a favorite Hitchcock "hero"? Or maybe another way to phrase that is simply Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart?