I’m currently in the backwoods of Indiana. [Noblesville to be precise. Hamilton county is one of the richest and fastest growing counties in the nation, but it still feel like backwoods because] My aunt and uncle still depend on AOL dial-up for internet access, but I’m currently stealing WiFi from one of the $400k clonehouses that are creeping ever-closer to this turn of the century farm house. I’m consistently happy that I spent the extra bills for a more powerful receiver. My cousin is getting married later today, and there is an open bar at the reception.

CAVEAT: This post contains egregious amounts of cursing.

• When merging and you are in the yield lane, yield you motherfucker. And for chrissakes speed the fuck up on an on-ramp. You should be going at least 60 by the time you reach the merge area on the interstate.

• When on the interstate and approaching a merge, move one lane to the left, if possible. This means that neither you nor the dumb motherfucker who wouldn’t know how to yield if his arms and legs were cut off by Graham Chapman have to slow down.

• If your car won’t go over 50mph, get the motherfuck off my interstate or I will beat you like a rented mule.

• If you are in the fast lane and a faster car comes up behind you, get the fuck over before they have to put on the brakes.

• If you can’t get the fuck over because there is an even slower motherfucker in the lane next to you, speed the fuck up so the motherfucker behind you doesn’t have to apply the brakes, and then get the fuck over as soon as possible.

• No matter how fast you’re fucking going, stay in the farthest right lane that you can, because there will be a faster motherfucker coming up behind you and you can avoid lots of hassle by staying in the slower lane where you belong.

• If you’re trying to be a motherfucking badass and merge your Haibatsu Gravity Well from the fast lane to an exit lane in less than a quarter of a mile without using your turn signal, don’t get all pissy when I don’t let your sorry ass cut me off. I will fuck you up, motherfucker.

• If someone uses their goddamn turn signal, let them the fuck in your lane, unless you’re in a traffic jam and they are one of those ignorant fucksticks who think they can drive all the way up to the exact spot where their lane ends and stick their dicks in your lane. Castrate those dumbfucks.

• When exiting, don’t slow down until you’re on the fucking exit ramp. That’s what they’re fucking for.

Man, I haven’t gone on a rant in forever. That felt good. Yes, I know the title is redundant.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #326: Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan.

Metropolitan is a movie about the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie, debutantes and their escorts, people who read literary criticism but not the actual books, and kids who obsessively worry about their own downfall, debate theoretical political systems and don’t know how to drive a car. I would detest having even the slightest contact with these people, who are essentially all talk and no follow-through. Yet I enjoyed Metropolitan and I’m glad it made me go mental.

Metropolitan is a movie about class, and though the only class present is the upper-class, the “UC” as the characters so smarmily refer to it, this focused approach effectively made me examine my own class situation in a new light. Luc Sante’s essay, linked at the end of this post, says that America pretends that class doesn’t exist. I think this is close but not quite. I think many people who aren’t consider themselves to be middle class. This makes sense, since middle class can cover ground from someone like me who makes less than $30k a year to someone like a surgeon, who might make twenty times as much. We’re still people make ends meet by working for our pay. In Metropolitan, discussion centers not on the necessity of work to make ends meet, but on the choices of profession that should maintain or strengthen their status as UHB. They don’t need to work, but they need something to fill the time.

The character that lets us [middle-classers] enter in to this world is an ex-trust fund kid who, after his parents’ divorce, has become one of the middle class. In this movie, one is never poor, only “financially limited.” But Tom’s financial inadequacy is blatant. He has a rented tuxedo and can’t afford a greatcoat to keep off the chill of Manhattan winter. His parent’s are also divorced, another middle class distinction. Yet he went to prep school and has the right pedigree in all other aspects. In fact, just having a pedigree helps him enormously. Some folks think he is a fake, but as the film develops we find that, to some extent, each character is playing the role of the UHB at the price of his or her own soul, and they’re all fakes. Most importantly we learn that Nick, who seems to be the ultimate UHB, is closer to Tom than we realize.

This triggered all kinds of thought processses. I realized that I had been watching the economically derived cultural aspects of the upper class, which functions like any other cultural base, with its own taboos, rites of passage and etiquette. This in turn made me examine the cultural aspects that have resulted from my own middle class existence. This is the main strength of the film, by showing us another class trying to figure itself out, we in turn examine our own status and role. It almost seems to indicate that culture does more to stifle true expressions of self than ease interaction with others. Perhaps this is merely an effect of the examination of the strictly controlled exclusivity of the UHB, but I found myself relating to almost every male character in the film. It would be interesting to watch it with a woman to see if she feels the same in regard to the debs.

This film would be a good tag team with Spike Lee’s Bamboozled for an examination on how class and ethnicity are knotted.

Tom also serves as a reflection of the movie itself, which has be appear high class while being “financially limited.” I forgot to mention that.

• Criterion essay by Luc Sante
• The Wikipedia on class

The GMMC met for the final time in this funding round last night at the Cleveland Foundation. We had delicious Eastern European food from North Coast, recommended by Sokolowski’s. I particularly liked the stuffed cabbage. And I hate cabbage. Bob Brown from the Cleveland Planner’s office spoke to us about the update to the city plan and gave an overview of the types of activites that the office focuses on. It seems that they have input in a lot of different areas like safety and permitting, but not as much power, except in their own little fiefdom. A representative from Voices and Choices also spoke for a bit about their plan.

This was a tough crowd for her to speak to. Twenty community activists who’ve spent the last six weeks sniffing out the problems in grant proposals were quick to question the efficacy of the program. The V&C process appears to engage this workflow: Gather people to voice their concerns -> Have communities determine primary concerns -> Have communities determine possible solutions for those concerns. The key questions centered on what is going to be done with this data? Who is going to implement the solutions? Apparently V&C is going to give the results to three different colleges, which wasn’t very satisfactory to most of us, since colleges aren’t policy makers. When we finally got to the bare bones of the situation we discovered that V&C wants people from the community to take the final step on enforcing implementation.

While I think it is fine that they want community folks to do the work to improve their communities, it does leave a sour taste in my mouth that all V&C, with all its money, only focuses on getting people together to talk and not in providing technical assistance to facilitate the solutions they want us to give them.

Then we had a frank discussion about the Conflict of Interest policy since some of the committee members were wondering what constituted an “indirect benefit.” The argument could easily be made that any funding that benefits a neighborhood can constitute an indirect benefit. The upshot of this discussion was that Joel is going to revise the policy to make it a bit more specific.

We funded nearly 50% of the grant proposals we received.

Well if I hadn’t been convinced before, this month’s attempts at writing a poem a day should have convinced me that my writing process cannot be disciplined and effective. I write when the spirit moves me, when Papa Legba uses me as his horse and what not. So I’m bailing on National Poetry month a bit early and I think I might attempt to write some turboshort fiction instead. Something that even ADD can’t fight.

I spent the entire weekend cleaning my apartment. It wouldn’t pass a military inspection, but it is much cleaner than it was even when I moved in. Cleaning the windows was the worst part since they were sealed with caulk at the beginning of winter and I had to pick it all off. My hands are dry and covered in tiny cuts. And it continues today at work as I have to rearrange my new cube into a conducive work environment. I managed to get rid of a bookcase which creates an illusion of space if not the reality.

My first key had no keyhole
but I felt grown up anyway. I had
responsibility now, and secrets
though even I did not know what
lay behind its lock. I would play
with my parent’s keys and ask
them to tell me stories about
each, this one opens the
door to work, where things I
wasn’t quite grown up enough
to understand were done so that
I could have Frosted Flakes and
new shoes.

     for Megan

I don’t trust the postman. My letters
arrive in a certain order on certain
days where the shadows of limbs cross
on the mailbox like a lock. I never hear him
arrive; I try to watch for him but always
something makes me look away—Nicodemus wanting
water, flickering leaves, a strange noise
from my other room—and a full box
a moment later. Who is this phantom in
blue, impersonal herald?

I take my letters to the post office, affixing
the stamps like seals on a pharaoh’s tomb,
preserved thoughts, the paper folded
just so, the creases tight and strong. I
hope the rain won’t smear the
address. Anticipation and
                         the scratch of my pen.

What should I read this summer?

He saddled his
Sopwith Camel
and went on a milk
run for some cheese.
       snap trap!
No more
Ace in his hole.

Billy the Bully, a
school-yard terror,
likes lunch money
shakedowns and
pulling girls’ hair.

He’s mean and
mad and rude and
big. Even the
teachers think
he’s a pig. But

I’m his friend.

Sisyphus and Tantalus
are arm-wrestling on
their coffee break. One
has cracked and dusty
fingers hard as rolled stone.
One has algae in his hair
and lips like the Gobi.

Sisyphus is stronger, but
Tantalus talks good fish-
tongued trash. They’ve
got a bet. Each wants
what the other has, but
break time is over.

I haven’t written a poem of even middling quality this month. I haven’t been able to get my head in the right spot. I can’t reach the tipping point that I usually stumble on when free-writing that sparks creativity. Very frustrating.

When the siege and assault
had ceased at Troy, Aeneas
paid me a visit. I offered him
some plantains and he told me
“vegetables are what
food eats.” He strode around
my wattle and daub, grimacing.

Pulled on white gloves as if
it were inspection day,
my billet a master work
of jackleg engineering. He
asked if I was still a loyal Son
of Ilium

and opened my cupboard.
                       He asked:
“Do you have any whisky?” and
“This place is far too dirty. You
must clean it

if I am to stay the night.”
I wanted to explain that my home
was made of dirt; that I had
no meat to provide. Yet what
does one say to our savior? My
hand grips the sickle. There are
crops to get in.

The first clause is taken from the first line of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight [Tolkien's translation, naturally] and the “vegetables are what food eats” was taken from here.

Every  ime I wri e  his
 ll of  he  s,  s, and  s
dis ppe r. I  hi k  here
mus  be       e  er
hidi g be ween  he li es.

A great cloud of smoke hanged
over town. The color of my mother’s
lungs, orange-dawned sky, white
birds ravelled like thread. The
Goodyear clock hadn’t been lit
in months and even then it
only flashed the wrong time.

hey buddy, what’s up
with your loco
motive? you think
you can touch her
and make her want
you? you think
because you’re bigger
and stronger and
creepier she should
give it up to you?
or you’ll what?
tie her to the tracks?
twirl your mustache?
I’ve got news for you.
you’re the one roped
down.
and i’m the freight train.

I hate hearing about women who’ve been sexually whatevered by dudes. Makes me furious. I’m a pretty calm guy too.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #105: Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus.

The first time I saw this film I was about ten. Therefore I missed all the political criticism, sexual undertones [there should totally be a lounge band called The Sexual Undertones] and pathos contained in the film. I also knew jack about film history, so the importance of this epic in terms of backlot Hollywood machinations was also lost upon me. Now that I’ve seen it again, 15 years later, I have a slightly different perspective, although ultimately the same feeling about the film itself.

Spartacus is more about the people who made it and the reasons they made it and how they made it than it is about some long-dead revolutionary with a humongous chin. So many people had a vested interest in making Spartacus succeed [especially Kirk Douglas as producer-actor, Kubrick as director and Dalton Trumbo finally using his own name again as screenwriter] that the not-so-subtle socialist flavoring of the slave revolt mirrors the maverick wills of the filmmakers. This is a good example of why I don’t like auteur theory; too many people are involved in the production of a film and leave their mark on it, to speak of it solely as a director’s creation.

The reactionary tone to McCarthyite Communist witch-hunting could also find reflections with contemporary events; the focus on order at the cost of freedom, the compiling of lists of traitors, the opposing factions whose political maneuverings eventually destroy Spartacus. Yet where the noble goal of Spartacus ultimately fails, the efforts of Douglas & Co. succeeded in revitalizing a Hollywood that had been toeing the line to a select group of people for far too long. Even though the film moves far too slowly for my taste, I think we could use another Spartacus anytime.

• Criterion Essay by Stephen Farber
• Wikipedia article on the film

Okay, so

Tom Waits, Roberto Begnini
and John Lurie are in a
jail in Lousiana and they’ve
got one cigarette left. The
concrete walls sweat with
humidity and the mattresses
stink like stale sweat and dry
urine. These guys have one
cigarette and a pack of cards.
Begnini don’t play gin
and Lurie won’t play spades.
Waits would play with himself
but the others might see. So
no one uses the cards and
instead they all worry about
that last smoke. Lurie’s
got the coffin-nail in his pocket
he knows he’ll have to share it
if he lights it up. Maybe if he
waits until the others are asleep.

Waits sticks to his bunk like an old gym sock
and Lurie paces. Begnini won’t shut up.
They’re all thinking about the last
cigarette. Well, Waits is thinking about
waiting until Lurie falls asleep and stealing it.
His name is patient. Begnini is thinking about
baked ziti and what it felt like to crush
a man’s skull with a pool ball.

They are a good egg, down by law.

I watched Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law a while back.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #59: Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter.

There is a picture of a naked woman at the end of this review. If you or your workplace has a problem with that, you should probably not read this or wait until you get home.

The Night Porter is a film about a sadomasochistic relationship between an SS officer and a concentration camp prisoner. The film takes place in 1957, but neither Max [Dirk Bogarde] or Lucia [Charlotte Rampling] have moved on from their old lives as Nazi and prisoner, respectively.

Max is the night porter at a Viennese hotel, still proud of his Nazi past, perhaps subconsciously wracked by guilt, and now forced to “wipe people’s asses;” a taker of orders, not a giver of them. Lucia, emotionally needy and by a twist of fate, is staying at the hotel with her conductor husband. They run into each other and, out of fear and obsession, stalk each other until the husband leaves town. Then Max slaps her around a bit and they have a rip-roaring good shag.

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Max, he and his SS compatriots are performing some sort of psychoanalytic mock trials on each other, in attempts to assuage [or fully repress] any guilt they feel for their actions during the war. After each person has had their trial, any witnesses that remain alive are “filed away” and all paper trails completely destroyed. These men still feel that the Nazi dream can be fulfilled, and they know there is still at least one woman alive who knows about Max. Unfortunately, Max is in love with her, and the feeling is returned.

The Nazis lay siege to Max & Lucia, by keeping a 24/7 watch on his apartment. If either of them leave, they will be killed. They’re okay with this at first, Max chains Lucia up so “they can’t take her away” and they play their power and pain games with each other. When they are almost out of food, Lucia starts gobbling jam, they wrestle over it and then have a rip-roaring good shag. Then, after their power is cut, they escape by night and are still assassinated.

The film is ostensibly about power dynamics, especially capture-bonding, a mechanism related to Stockholm syndrome. While it was controversial at the time, for its portrayal of concentration camp culture and debasement, this setting, and the subsequent Viennese aftermath, are well suited to weaving together the interests of competing groups.

The bond that binds Max & Lucia is one that is still very misunderstood and taboo. Max always has the power, but sometimes he submits to Lucia, his captive, after he has trained her. She also fights back on her own, but only in order to up the ante, to see how far they can push themselves into cruelty. If you can call it cruelty, since they both love it. Similarly, the Nazis seek to control every possible loose end of their lives, to eradicate any threat to preserve themselves. Throughout, I get the sense that all of the players are under the control of their desire for power, instead of controlling the power of their desires. There are likely quite a few references that I missed, such as the applicability of Mozart’s The Magic Flute [with which I have only passing familiarity] and the German song that Lucia sings for the SS officers in the cabaret.

Overall, I thought this was a superb film, with excellent acting and extremely poignant dialogue [at times]. The camera work was interesting, as lots of shots hug the frame or seem like the camera could be tracked out just a bit. There are long reveals and lingering shots that create a strong sense of impending catastrophe. This one is worth a watch, if you aren’t too prude.

• Criterion Essay by Annette Insdorf
• Images Journal review by Shane M. Dallman
• The Criterion Contraption’s review.

oh,

[it is like leaping once from a mountain,
then kneeling at
the earth's core;
with wind still whistling
past your ears]

yes.

I have cut them
three times and they
are still too short.

I will
force
it.

Save me a dollar
my matreshki, work
bigger in smaller.

When I steal your
sheep, thank me
for doing it.

Say: “Verily!
Ye corporate
gods.”

jet fuel does not burn
at first; there must be
that first spark there must
always have been a first
spark, like when we greeted
each other our hellos
collided and there was a
flash but no clap
of thunder
          though there
should have been and the
sound of trumpets or at
least something more than
just hello.

Here I am in love with a ball
of hydrogen ninety-three
million miles from me and
every animal
            [including man]
enjoys
being scratched behind
the ears.

• Apparently they’re called gingerbread persons now.
• Pretty girls in Tremont run early in the morning, not in the afternoon like I do.
• Little boys named Mateo will magically appear every time you’re at the library and annoy the ever-living shit out of you while you apply for jobs.
• I love giving people directions to places in Tremont.
• I can get intermittant WiFi from Jewel Heart while sitting in my car at the laundromat.
• The squirrels are going through their first molt of the year.

my slumbering tides
shall not coalesce into
the tramping of
office buildings
cannot not coerce me
into stuffing meaning
into words like too tight
clothing or coincide
with the temper
of my weekend. There

is no coordination between
my foot and mouth,
though following them
often brings me to the
same place. I will no
longer couch my
thoughts in coy
syllogisms and logic
or be confound your
emotions.
         I will
         sit on
         the grass
         and listen.

I wrote this a real long time ago and don’t remember what I wanted to fix. I think I was just trying to be obtuse in order to appear like I had something to say.

The entryway always smelled like something rotten
in late summer. We didn’t have time to
do more than wrinkle our noses, Billy and me,
those double-glass doors with the wire inside
were just part of the distance
between mom’s apartment and the street outside,
like the torn and curled rubber on the stairwell
like the scary old woman who yelled at us in Italian
while we played stickball.

When Leon got his head put through the drywall
I was the one who found him the next morning
when I brought the trash downstairs. His head was
still stuck through like you do at the strong-man
cut-out at the amusement park. The cops
hauled him out and he was laid out in a suit I hadn’t
known he’d owned next time I saw him.

When the man came to fix the hole, he tore out
the whole wall and found a pile of bat skeletons
rattled together in a skein of bones with one
live bat on top.

None of these this week have been any good, but they do have potential. The biggest problem with this one is that it doesn’t have a point, although I think there are glimmers of one. It is loosely based on actual bats that lived [and regularly died] in the entryway of my house on Stoneybrook Lane. The crazy Italian grandmother was real too.

¿ is a
naked lightbulb
always a good idea
-
When she walks
her hips curl like
smoke and back
room deals
-
old now
bent like
a question mark
-
she bends from
? to ! in his arms
then
.
-
imperative?
imperative.
imperative!
-
What you say?

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #317: Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann.

This is another Criterion film that didn’t do so much for me. I’m not too keen on musicals and there are some very large hurdles to surmount in turning a musical into a musical on film. The Tales of Hoffmann is an opera, so the hurdles are even higher. Powell and Pressburger did a marvellous job adapting a French Opera to an English libretto and making it appealing to watch through a lens and on a screen instead of a stage. What I didn’t like was the opera itself. Bored the shit out of me. If you really care a plot synopsis is here.

So, I’m going to talk about production values, which is what truly sets this film apart. I’ll begin with the most inconsistent part, the camera work. There is quite a bit of trick photography: forced perspective staircases and lilypads, double exposures, trick dissolves, trompe l’oeil set pieces that become three dimensional with a slight shift of the camera. It is pretty magical. Unfortunately, during the epic dance sequences, the camera tends to sit at a medium long shot for extended periods of time, and even though there is plenty of movement on-screen, the pace drags. It has to be ridiculously hard to edit a musical. The sets were all fantastic, and though still obviously sets, fit well with the technicolor dreamcoats everyone was dressed in. The soundstage must have been humongous, because rarely do you see a ceiling or even sense one in the general vicinity.

To me, there is one main aspect about a musical that acts as both strength and weakness. The camera has the ability to show the action from a variety of perspectives, especially in ways that a theater-goer could never expect to see, yet at the same time, trying to hold on to the theater-going experience while making a film is hurt by this tendency. Instead of remaining stationary and having the action move around the eye of the viewer, the viewer is moved around the action, a very untheaterlike experience. This discontinuity [and the fact that most musical film drags ass like I used to in cross-country] is probably the biggest reason I can’t get my head around films like these. If you’re a fan of huge musicals though, you’ll probably like this film.

• Criterion Essay by Ian Christie
• The libretto of the actual opera [in French]
• Tons of info at the Powell and Pressburger pages.

there is a caul of dust on the stairs
where, past his bedtime, he used to
watch freedom through banister rungs
the feet on handmedown pajamas
too large; sleeves
too short.
         he still wonders
what they meant
               by
“you’ll grow into it.”

If you can’t tell already, this is speed poetry week. I’m spending ten minutes or less on these, although I will go back and workshop ‘em as time permits. This one in particular I think I’d like to flesh out.

When the bell rings he
comes from all angles, short
water drop jabs to face
and shoulders; feet cat-confident
sly-eyed with years of training.

later, a single uppercut
undercut slips by and while
he takes it standing, the
judges declare

defeat by decision.

This one goes out to anyone who has ever worked extremely hard for something only to be [what it seems like] arbitrarily dismissed as unworthy for that very thing. It needs plenty of work, but I’ll save that for later. Workshopping is always welcome on these.

We had a marathon round of interviews last night. 7 in 3.5 hours. The upside of this, however, is that we have a short week next week for the last round. We had some very impressive presentations and proposals on some tactical and general neighborhood initiatives, and I actually had knowledge that was worth sharing. I’m starting to discover that there are plenty of Clevelanders in the trenches doing good work in spite of all the obstacles thrown at them by city bureaucracy. Hopefully we can help them out a bit if the city won’t.

rail
spli
tter
tall
like
pine
thin
like
reed
lick
 any
 man
that
will
 wet
 his

horns.
you’ll
talk’em
down
first
if you
can or
if you
cain’t
you’ll
put
fire on
the
mountain
and in
our
bellies
teach
us to
speak
lead
lead us
to
speak
of your
speaking
as of
prophets
and
martyrs

you
were
all
of us
and
so we
pay
homage
at
your
monu
ment.

leader.

grim
visaged
American.

Well National Poetry Month is here and I’m going to write a poem each day Monday through Friday until it is over, much like last year. Today, since I watched a movie about Lincoln last night, my attempted poem is about Lincoln.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #320: John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln.

Young Mr. Lincoln is a film by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda, about Abraham Lincoln when he was just a greenhorn lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. The Geoffrey O’Brien essay linked at the end of this review is so well done that I insist you read it, if I can make you care about the movie itself. The Criterion liner notes also contain an essay from Sergei Eisenstein about the film, entitled “Mr. Lincoln by Mr. Ford”. If you can scrounge up a copy, that too is worth a read.

The film itself is Ford to a T; with an obvious bond between man and land, a sense of American masculinity that would continue to pervade his later films, and simple but deft camera work. Fonda plays an impressive Lincoln, actually managing to look like him at times. It appears that they cast many shorter statured folks to make Fonda’s height seem unnatural, and I think Fonda wore a suit just a little too small for him as well.

The portrait we get of Lincoln seems out of place, if we’re only used to seeing him in state and famous. Watching that famous stovepipe hat ride down a country road on a mule becomes a strange site, even though Lincoln’s down-home roots are an essential part of his mystique. So the power of Young Mr. Lincoln derives from the fact that we’re seeing a side of the man that has always been assumed but never really examined. The inimations of impending discontent are present, and ring even stronger since we know what is in store for Lincoln, though he does not. Throughout, the non-diegetic music hints at The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Lincoln himself is seen playing “Dixie” on his Jew’s Harp.

Diaspora is also a strong theme in the film. From Lincoln’s explanation that the Jew’s Harp came down and spread from King David’s harp, from the slow Conestoga roads of pioneers passing through Illinois, and most importantly from Lincoln’s own journey, displaced from Kentucky by cheaper slave labor, through Indiana and then from New Salem to Springfield, there is an obvious path and journey taking place, and this leg is Lincoln’s. Thankfully he’s got long ones.

His rivalry with Stephen Douglas is already present, but not as public, his honesty and self-deprecation are already well-honed, but his employment of these skills is sometimes inspired and at other times confusing. Lincoln’s humility and patience and especially his willingness to take a swing at whatever is presented to him are the traits we end up admiring most. Even if this story is more apocryphal than factual it still serves an important purpose by making us think about how where we’ve come from can help us get to where we’re going.

• Criterion Essay by Geoffrey O’Brien
• Senses of Cinema article on John Ford
• The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #244: Jean Renoir’s Elena and Her Men.

I’ve had plenty of strange coincidences in my Criterion viewings so far. I’ve not been picking films with any rhyme or reason, but stuff like this has been happening all too often: The last movie I reviewed was by Ingmar Bergman, and this movie stars Ingrid Bergman. Anyway, I didn’t like this film at all. I honestly can’t quite figure out why The Criterion Company decided to add it to their collection. Even the essay by Christopher Faulkner at the end shows the lengths and hoops you have to jump through to talk about this film in a semi-intelligent manner.

So Renoir is a playwright be initial profession. Ok, fine. Making a film look like you’re watching a set in a theater, and never moving the camera is boring. The sets were pretty and so was the costuming and other aspects of the mise en scene, but it was getting so obvious that people were walking on screen, hitting their mark and stating their lines, that I was getting really fidgety. I want a film to keep me rapt. A play can do the same thing, but not watching a play on a screen. The film is supposed to be a comedy. It isn’t funny at all, until the very end when all the Frogs start snogging. At the beginning, Renoir attempts to cover his ass by saying that the film is not meant to be political in nature, but it so very obviously is, and the machinations so trite that the entire film came off as a half-assed Much Ado About Nothing with crappier writing. Ingrid Bergman and her redheaded maid Lolotte looked hot though.

• Criterion Essay by Christopher Faulkner
• Les Fleurs du Mal post with lots of screen caps.